Chapter VIII: The Love of Women (2)

"I wonder how you are sure of that?" thought Laurent, looking after his ascending figure--wondering, also, despite himself, how that one-sided love-scene had ended.

Déjeuner then followed, not favoured by the presence of Mme de la Rocheterie, who, being slightly indisposed, was keeping her room. It might have gone better had she been there, though to be sure there was nothing wrong with Mme de Morsan's self-possession. Aymar, who never addressed her, was steely, and, when the meal was over, became invisible. There seemed, however, no reason why Laurent should not go for a last ride on Hirondelle, and so, after bidding farewell to Mme de Morsan, who was leaving Sessignes at two o'clock, he departed.

(7)

It fell, therefore, to Avoye de Villecresne to entertain the guest for the last half-hour of her stay, after the latter had duly made her farewells to Mme de la Rocheterie upstairs. It was to be presumed that, whatever had taken place between them that morning (for Avoye could not be blind to his attitude at déjeuner) the master of the house would reappear in time to hand the departing visitor to her carriage. In the meantime, Mme de Morsan sat ready in the salon, arrayed in a Russian mantle of pale salmon-coloured cloth ornamented with a border of maroon velvet and white silk cord.

"He is indeed a _fidus Achates_, that young man," she observed of Laurent de Courtomer when the latter had taken his leave. "Pylades, Patroclus, and Euryalus all rolled into one. (Did you know I had so much classical lore? I must have imbibed it from poor Edouard.) But I think I could better describe M. de Courtomer as Sarrasin on two legs. I have seen him looking at Aymar with very much the same expression."

"We owe him more than we can ever repay," said Avoye. She hated discussing anybody she liked with Eulalie de Morsan.

"Yes, indeed you do," agreed that lady. "Nevertheless, it is dreadful to see our poor Aymar so changed."

Worst of all was it to discuss Aymar with her. "He is getting stronger," replied Avoye briefly.

"But, mon Dieu, what he must have suffered . . . in his pride!"

Avoye winced. "Yes, Pont-aux-Rochers was a terrible blow."

"Oh, I was referring to the Bois des Fauvettes," said Mme de Morsan lazily.

"You mean his capture? Naturally he felt that, at such a time." Avoye got up, went quickly to her work-table, and opened a drawer. "What do you think of this new kind of embroidery, Eulalie? I have been wanting your opinion on it."

Mme de Morsan took the specimen brought to her, but she did not look at it. She looked up at the girl instead. "Something happened to him before his capture, did it not? . . . I see that you do not want to discuss it. Neither do I. But I must admit that I find it very interesting, the profound resemblance that there is at bottom between all men, however exceptional they seem to be. It is really something of a relief to know that our dear Aymar is human, after all--as human as any other man."

"I have no idea what you mean," returned Avoye frigidly, intensely disliking words and tone and smile.

The smile grew. "No? And yet it is wonderful to think that to-day, just as in the Middle Ages . . . You remember the legend of the original Oiseleur, and how he lost the _jartier_ through a woman?"

"Yes."

"Well, history is only a series of repetitions. Forgive the truism!"

"As I say, I do not know what you are talking about," repeated Avoye, but more warmly this time.

"Has not Aymar lost the _jartier_? Well, if he did not exactly present that to a lady, he presented her with something more valuable--his good name."

Avoye lifted her proud little head. "Are you trying to inform me, Eulalie, that report has introduced a woman into this story?"

"No, ma chère. Report has left her out--fortunately for our cousin. But she was there all the same. I happen to know the true version, and I am willing to share it with you."

"I am not quite sure," said Avoye, considering her, "that you always know what truth is, Eulalie."

"You are frank--quite like Tante Athénaïs for once--merci! But I do know; it is others, you will find, who have tampered with it. Ah, my dear Avoye, with your little white ingénue's mind . . . if you knew!"

"Please drop these hints, Eulalie, and tell me straight out what you mean!"

"With pleasure," replied Mme de Morsan, arranging her mantle. "Ask Aymar, then, whether he did not really send his famous letter to the enemy as the price of a woman's life!"

"Absurd!" exclaimed Mme de Villecresne, now thoroughly roused. "I wonder you have not more sense!"

Eulalie smiled sweetly. "Oh, I know why you are angry. You think that there is only one woman in the world for whom Aymar would do such a thing."

"Aymar would not do a thing like that for any woman!"

"Again the ingénue! Ask him!"

"Indeed I shall not!" cried Avoye contemptuously.

"No, perhaps you are wiser. . . . When are you going to marry him?--Ah forgive my indiscretion! Yet, on the whole, I think I should get his confession out of him first if I were you."

"Confession! Aymar!"

"Yes, even Aymar! . . . Have I not said that he has proved himself human, after all? Listen; the Bonapartists had in their hands at the end of April a woman whom they were, apparently, going to shoot as a spy, because they suspected her of carrying information . . . as she _had_ done, before the Restoration. To save her, Aymar made a bargain, took the fearful risk he did . . . and lost."

"Eulalie, you are dreaming!"

"It is you who are asleep, ma chère. I am trying to wake you, since you will have to come out of the trance some day. . . . Of course you think I am libelling L'Oiseleur. Well, you have only to ask him--though to be sure he may have become so much further human as to lie. . . . I suppose we shall see him before I go?" She looked at the clock. "I have not yet made him my adieux."

"It _is_ . . . a libel!" said Avoye, her breath coming short. "For no woman----"

Mme de Morsan leant forward. "For one woman, perhaps, Avoye . . . for one! Ought you not to be proud? Such a hecatomb . . . and his good name! You see it, do you not, for surely you remember in whose hands you were on the night of April the twenty-seventh?"

"But I . . ." faltered Avoye, staring at her. "I was in no danger . . . there was no talk of shooting . . ."

"Is that so? I can well believe it. But M. de Vaubernier, who brought the news to Aymar here, and acted as his intermediary, was crazed with fear for you."

Avoye had sprung to her feet. "Oh, it's impossible! It's . . . you are lying wickedly! . . . I _know_ that you are lying, for Aymar himself has told me all about the letter, and why he sent it--it was a plan he had already made. And it was not sent to where I was at all! He would have known that I would rather a thousand times . . . but no, it is too absurd to pretend that I was in danger of being shot when I was treated with such courtesy . . . and more than absurd, wicked," she added, as a fresh aspect dawned upon her, "to make out that I--_I_--was the cause of Pont-aux-Rochers!"

Eulalie shrugged her shoulders in the salmon-coloured mantle. "Well, I think I hear Aymar's step, so you can easily have me proved a liar . . . or rather, perhaps, learn that the Marquis de Vaubernier, from whom I had the story, is a romancer of the first order."

It _was_ Aymar's step. In a moment more he came in through the long window.

"Your carriage is at the door, Madame," he said coldly to Eulalie. "May I have the honour of conducting you to it?"

But Mme de Morsan was looking down, smiling and silent, contemplating her toe on the edge of the hearth. Avoye's eyes were fixed on her cousin; then she suddenly sat down as if her limbs would no longer sustain her. But it was she who broke the silence.

"Eulalie has been telling me something about you . . . which I do not believe."

"Something," completed Mme de Morsan in measured tones, "which I elicited from M. de Vaubernier--no, not at Aix. As I told you, I did not see him there. It was at Chambéry. You must not blame the old gentleman; in his horror at what had happened to you, Aymar, which he knew, and told me, he let out _why_ it had happened. And now I have incautiously mentioned it to Avoye, since she is so deeply concerned in it, and find that you had decided--wisely, I dare say--to keep her in the dark. Need I say how much I regret----"

"No!" broke in Aymar, standing before her very tall and straight. "No, you need not add a lie to what you have done! Your carriage, as I said, is at the door," and he made a gesture towards the hall. His eyes were blazing.

Eulalie de Morsan looked up at him easily, admiringly. "What I have done, my dear Aymar--how well you look in a rage!--is merely to tell the truth . . . of which you have been sparing!"

"But it is not the truth!" repeated Avoye, in the voice of one who, having been mortally stabbed, denies the wound.

Mme de Morsan rose in an unconcerned manner, and gathered together her possessions. "Well, as Aymar does not seem anxious to have a witness of his answer to that statement, I will leave you together. Au revoir, ma chère."

Avoye took no notice. Aymar was already at the door, holding it open. Eulalie went slowly past him, and, looking him in the face as she did so, said, very low, "You would have done better to strike the bargain. And now you will see the quality of _her_ love!" Yet suddenly her own face was convulsed, and she turned it aside.

He did not vouchsafe a word or a look, but, standing on the threshold, said to Célestin who, with her maid, was waiting in the hall, "Hand Mme de Morsan to her carriage," and went into the salon again, shutting the door behind him.

(8)

Avoye was standing before the great hearth, her back to him, her face buried in her hands. He stood a moment at the door, looking at her, then he crossed the room towards her. At his step she dropped her hands, and, clasping them hard in front of her, without turning towards him, without even glancing at him, said in an almost inaudible voice:

"Aymar, say that it is not true!"

No, to pile more lies on those the orchard had drawn from him--he could not do it. He had come to that hour which he had sacrificed so much to avert, when he must tell her of her innocent share in his ruin. He set his teeth for a moment as he took out the knife. If only it were destined for his breast and not hers!

"Will you tell me exactly what she said to you?"

Still not looking at him, very briefly, as one half stunned, she told him. The brutal manner in which she had herself been enlightened was clear enough. But Aymar had hardly a thought to spare for Eulalie, her perfidy, her bitter revenge. What mattered was this stricken, pitifully bewildered little Avoye, so pale in her grey gown, who would not look at him while she waited for the denial which he could not give, but only repeated again and again, in a voice that made his heart ache, "Aymar, say it is not true, say it is not true!" and then, "How can it be true? How could you have done it to save me? you did not know that I had been stopped--you said so!"

"I wanted to spare you all I could," he answered very sadly.

"To spare me? Why, what had I done?"

"Nothing--nothing! That was why."

"But I was in no danger--you did not even know that I was detained. And she says that Godfather was mixed up in it--yet you never said a word of it!" And now she was looking at him indeed. "Is it possible that down there in the orchard, when my heart was breaking about you, you took me in your arms and comforted me . . . with _lies!_"

The hated word stung him a little in the midst of everything else.

"How could I tell you the truth, my darling, when, as you say, your heart was breaking like that? And, although I sent the letter to save you, it _was_ part of a ruse--a plan I had made beforehand. Can't you believe me, Avoye?"

"But it is all so crazy!" she exclaimed. "I in danger of being shot--I to whom they apologized! . . . And Godfather, what was he doing in it? He never came there! And you really thought, _you_----"

Poor child, poor lamb, so bewildered under the touch of the knife. Oh, to get through this barbarity quickly! "Dearest, I will tell you exactly what happened. But sit down, for pity's sake." He seized and swung forward a little gilt chair. "If only I had never given that woman the chance of springing it on you like this--if only I had guessed that she knew!"

But she recoiled from him. She would none of the chair. She went back as far as the carved stone of the hearth and put a hand to that. And then she faced him. "Be quick, Aymar, be quick! I'm . . . frightened!"

So, standing in front of her, and in front of the proud, indifferent swans of their blazon, he told her shortly the other, the true, complete story. But it had a strange sound in his own ears now.

There was fear indeed in her eyes when he had finished. And when he said, "Do you see, my dear, a little, why I wanted you never to know?" and tried to take her hand, she drew it away and shook her head.

"How _can_ they both be true--that you did it for a military reason, which you told me first, and that you did it to save me because you imagined--_imagined_--that I was in danger?"

Aymar looked down at her, full of a great pity. "Do you not see," he said again, "the plan was there, ready, and I used it, that was all."

Trembling visibly, and twisting her hands a little, she said, "No; I cannot. I cannot help feeling, which story am I to believe . . . or perhaps you have another?"

"_Avoye!_" he exclaimed, flushing scarlet.

"I wish you had! I wish you had! How am I to believe, first, that you sent the letter to the Imperialist commander at Arzon as a ruse, and then, that you sent it to Colonel Richard at Saint-Goazec, to save me, who was not in danger! You have told me both of those things. . . . Aymar, Aymar, you seem somebody I have never known! You--you--to do a disgraceful thing . . . to do it for me . . . and then, not daring to tell me, to lie about it!"

For a moment he knew dizziness. They were both drowning in a sea too strong for either of them. Yet surely there must be some raft to which one might cling. The love of years could not fail like this. . . . "Avoye, I swear to you that the two stories are not incompatible! The plan _was_ a ruse--it remained a ruse, even though I used it as I did."

"But how am I to know that you did not make up the whole of what you told me in the orchard? So much of it was untrue--you admit that. What portions of it can I really feel safe in believing?" She suppressed a sob. "Did you ever meet M. de Saint-Etienne and make that plan at all?"

He gave her a look, but in words he did not answer--he could not. Who had the knife now?

"I cannot help hurting you!" cried Avoye desperately. "Do you think that it does not hurt me, too? For you never sent that letter to Arzon--that was a lie--and you _did_ know that I was detained!"

Aymar had found his voice again. "Yes . . . unfortunately!" He turned away for a moment. The waves had grown mountains high; yet there was but one thing he would appeal to. "If you would only try to understand!" he said, facing her again; and he said it very quietly.

She was trembling and very pale; her eyes were full of tears as she answered, "I do understand--I do begin to. I understand now why you have taken no steps to clear yourself. The story that was good enough to dupe me with, in the orchard, is not good enough for the world! Yes, I do understand! You are not, as I had always dreamed, the living embodiment of our motto, the very soul of honour!"

He made a faint gesture. "Then nothing that I can say is of any use."

But she went on in her blind anguish, "If a saint--yes, if our Blessed Lady herself had come to tell me that you could do this . . . and then lie about it to me . . . I would not have believed it, Aymar! I _could_ not. . . . And yet, you have done it!"

"Yes, I have done it!" He looked at her steadily. "And you are not going to try to understand or to pardon?"

"It is not a thing one could ever pardon!" she flashed out. "You have sold your honour!"

With that the blade was full in his own heart, so keen that its stab was partly physical, and involuntarily he put his hand to his side. But he took it instantly away, and gripped the back of the little gilt chair near him. He was the colour of ashes. Yet his head was high.

"No, that I have not done! And there is only one part of it which needs pardon," he said firmly, "and that is, that to save you needless pain, I told you some things which were not true. For what I _did_ I do not ask your pardon."

"You can say that after Pont-aux-Rochers!"

"I can say that after Pont-aux-Rochers. What I deliberately slew, in the hope of saving you, was not my men, but my own . . . instincts. It is not in your power or any one's to pardon me for _that_ sacrifice."

The very look he gave her, at once proud, tender, unyielding and hurt to death, the very yearning of her heart for him, only met that other tide of horrified dismay in fiercer tumult and foam. Avoye de Villecresne burst into tears, and crying incoherently, "I cannot understand you . . . I never shall. . . . This will kill me, I think . . . but I cannot bear to see you . . . as you are now!" turned and went quickly out of the open window, leaving him alone.

And Aymar stood quite still, looking, not after her disappearing figure, but at the old Spanish leather screen, with its embossed border of pomegranates and its faded gold, which had for some minutes been to him the background to her slim body in its narrow gown, her aureole of burnished hair even, in a sense, to her passionate and bewildered voice--looking at it almost as if he did not realize that she was gone. Then he, too, went from the room.

(9)

"Oh, my dear fellow," cried Laurent, bursting rather unceremoniously into his friend's bedroom, "what a divine creature your mare is! To-day's was the best gallop I have ever had. It is a thousand shames that you yourself----What on earth are you doing, Aymar?"

For in the middle of the room, with his back to him, Aymar was on his knees before a little portmanteau. He did not look up, and for a moment did not answer, but folded and refolded a coat which had previously been lying in a huddle in the valise.

"I am going away," he said at length.

"Going away!" repeated Laurent, stupefied. "Now? Not to-day, surely! And where? . . . Aymar!"

He came towards him with the intention of putting a hand on his shoulder, but before he reached him Aymar had risen and was at the window. Standing there, still with his back to him, he said very low, "Everything has gone now, Laurent--everything."

The breeze fluttered the curtain, and except for that there was silence. But the hopeless pain in his voice seemed to go on vibrating after he had spoken.

"Who has told her?" asked Laurent after a long pause.

"Eulalie. She had got it out of Vaubernier after all."

"And she--Mme de Villecresne?" But there seemed no way in which the question could be put. Its answer indeed was the little valise gaping on the floor.

Aymar turned round. "Mme de Morsan did it deliberately, from malice, in the worst way she could. And the shock . . . I tried to explain but, having had to lie the other day . . . it was too difficult for her . . . my cousin . . ." He broke off and indicated the valise. "I must finish that. I suppose they will have taken the saddle off Hirondelle by now?"

Very gently Laurent laid his hand on his shoulder. "Mon ami, you cannot go like this. And you cannot ride Hirondelle, or any other horse, just yet."

Aymar shook his head. "It is of no use, Laurent. I must go. You have galloped Hirondelle. Besides, she does not pull. Perhaps you will fasten this for me? I think I have all I want."

Laurent looked at him, deeply troubled. What was he to do? "You will let me come, too, then, Aymar, will you not? Any horse will serve for me."

"No, I am afraid I cannot let you come."

Impossible to be hurt or offended. The situation was beyond that. "But where are you going?"

Once more Aymar shook his head, and, as Laurent had not moved, knelt down again by the valise. But Laurent lifted it to a chair and strapped it up in silence. As he finished there came the earthquake quiver of the door which testified that Sarrasin had let himself down against it outside.

When he looked round Aymar was standing motionless, gazing at something in his hand.

"It was on the floor. It must have been in the pocket of that coat, which I was wearing the night it broke. . . . And I come on it again _now!_"

Laurent came to look. It was the lost _jartier_, symbol now of so much that was lost. Aymar gave a little laugh, and crushing it together threw it across the room towards the fireplace. Laurent had an impulse, soon gone, to protest; but what did it matter now?

"You will at least write to me, to Paris?" he said pleadingly. "Aymar, do consider----"

"Yes, I will write." He had pulled down a cloak. "It is only that I must get away to . . . to think things over. I have written a note to my grandmother. I dare not see her--she would guess."

An idea struck Laurent. He went up to him and put a hand on his shoulder once more. "Aymar, unless you will give me your word of honour that you are not going away to do . . . what you spoke of in the cave . . . I _shall_ accompany you!"

The faintest trace of a smile came. "Dear Laurent! . . . I give you my word."

"May I at least come down the avenue with you?"

"Please. And . . . forgive my leaving you--your last night. I am ashamed . . . but I cannot stay till to-morrow."

Laurent made a gesture. "As if you ever needed to apologize to me!"

When they got to the door of the room he said suddenly, "Has Mme de Morsan left the house?"

"Yes, about an hour ago."

"Thank Heaven! Because--I suppose men have shot women before now!"

Again there was an almost imperceptible flicker of amusement.

"Who do you propose should do it, Laurent--you or I?"

"I, by God! Don't tell me which way she has gone!"

"Long ago," said Aymar de la Rocheterie reflectively, his hand on the door knob, his eyes, wide and dark with pain, fixed on him, "long ago I found, Laurent, that there never was a partisan like you. Nor a friend. Nor one who understood so well. . . . You do understand why I must go alone now?"

"Yes," said Laurent. And he added, with a miserable little laugh, "There is another partisan on the other side of the door who will not, however. You had better take him with you."

"No," answered Aymar, opening the door. Sarrasin was up in a second, his eyes on the cloak over his arm. "Go in and lie down, Sarrasin," said his master. "You cannot come with me."

The great dog gave him a long, melancholy look, licked his hand, and went in like a puzzled but obedient child.

There happened to be nobody in the stable-yard when they got there. Hirondelle was still bridled. Laurent slipped her saddle on again and helped Aymar into it.

He walked down the avenue by him in a dream. Nothing seemed to be true. He had never seen his friend on a horse before, and thought he should never henceforward see him, in memory, anywhere else. Save for his face, he looked so supremely himself there. But how long would he be able to stay in the saddle?

At the gates Aymar spoke at last. "I think, perhaps, that I will go to Eveno for a little. That is instead of taking Sarrasin with me. . . ." He had reined up. "I will not sleep in a ditch, Laurent. I will not throw away all the care--the unspeakable care--you have lavished on this very useless body; and I will write to you--soon. And for this going . . . forgive me again!"

He bent from the saddle and kissed him on either cheek; then Hirondelle carried him between the stone-balled gateposts. The sunlight struck across him; after that he was engulfed in the green gloom of the chestnuts. He did not turn round. Laurent watched him for a little; then he suddenly leant against the post with his arm over his eyes. When he removed it the road was empty.

(10)

"Perhaps we had better not wait any longer for my cousin," said Mme de Villecresne at last to the guest. "He must be out, I think."

The two of them were alone in the salon. Supper had been announced five minutes ago, since which event Laurent had been grimly waiting to cast his bombshell--as, obviously, it had not already been cast.

"He _is_ out," he replied briefly. "I would have told you before, Madame, had I realized that it was for him that you were waiting." (For until that moment he had forgotten that Mme de la Rocheterie was not going to make her appearance at the meal.)

The news discomposed his companion, he could see. Did she then expect Aymar to come and sup with them as if nothing had happened?

"How strange!" she murmured. "Did he say, Monsieur de Courtomer, at what time he intended to return?"

"No, Madame. He has gone away, I fear--if not for good, at least for some time. So, if you will allow me----"

He held out his arm. But Avoye de Villecresne stood perfectly still; she had gone white, then red, and was now white again. Oh, how was it possible that with such eyes as hers she could have done it!

"Gone away!" she whispered. But at that moment the door suddenly opened, and admitted Mme de la Rocheterie, on the arm of her elderly maid, colour in her delicate cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. She might be indisposed, but she was clearly very angry. In her hand was a letter.

"That will do, Rose." And when the door had closed she stood in the middle of the room, extremely erect, and said to Laurent, "As my grandson has so little idea of the courtesy due to a guest, to a departing guest, and one to whom he is under such an obligation, I am constrained to take his place. If you will accept my apologies for his extraordinary behaviour, Monsieur de Courtomer, be good enough to give me your arm to the dining-room."

Laurent, petrified, offered it.

The discomfort of the meal was intense. For one thing only was Laurent grateful--that Mme de la Rocheterie was so wroth that, after announcing that the culprit had said he had gone off on business connected with the late Eperviers, she left the subject of Aymar's defection alone, and kept the conversation going on other subjects. Mme de Villecresne, on the contrary, seemed almost dazed.

After supper, half to Laurent's relief, the Vicomtesse withdrew again, leaving her granddaughter to give him coffee in the salon.

Laurent was in reality quite unwilling to accept even this conventional office from the hands of Mme de Villecresne. That he had come to think her charming only made this evening's revulsion fiercer. _She_ a worthy mate for Aymar, whom she had forsaken in his bitterest need, stabbed when--nay, because--he had endured so much for her! But, though he was brimming with anger against her, he would probably have held his hand if she, too, had not murmured, as she gave him his cup, something not very coherent about an apology. How was he to guess that she was so torn with misery and dismay that she hardly knew what she was saying, and caught at any banality lest she should weep before him?

He drank off the coffee and cleared his decks for action.

"There is no need for apology, Madame," he observed. "The situation is not unfamiliar to me. It reminds me of the evening I spent when M. de la Rocheterie was turned out of Arbelles."

Mme de Villecresne looked faintly startled.

"You mean the evening after he was released?"

"No, Madame. He never was 'released' in the sense commonly attached to that term. He was turned out into the road, weak and ill, at a quarter of an hour's notice--turned out before the eyes of the whole garrison."

The blood began to ebb from Avoye's face. "But why----"

"Why? To humiliate him, and because, weeks earlier, he would not betray M. du Tremblay's plans. The attempt to wring information out of him then, when he was barely able to speak, nearly killed him as it was."

"Tried to wring information out of him--out of _Aymar!_" repeated Avoye in a horrified voice. "And turned out of Arbelles! But, Monsieur de Courtomer, why have I not been told these things before--why have they been kept from me, and I allowed to think . . ."

Laurent, who had been standing, sat down heavily. "Yes, it might have been better not. But he would do it--anything to spare you a moment's pain."

She stiffened. "I do not like being spared, Monsieur de Courtomer."

"No, Madame. And I know that you are brave; your cousin knows it, too. But it is difficult for a man--for some men, that is" (he did not at the moment feel himself to be of their number) "to hurt a woman when by keeping the hurt to themselves they can spare her."

"I know they think that. They do not realize what a woman--what some women--feel about it. And need sparing a woman involve lying to her?" There was a passion of abhorrence in her tone--then, with extreme suddenness, she caught herself up. "I do not mean, of course, that my cousin lied to me!" And there was almost defiance in the gaze with which she met Laurent's. But as that young man was speechless, trying to digest this remarkable statement, she was able to hurry on to say, "Then I was misled when I thought he was well treated at Arbelles?"

"I verily believe that she is trying to prove _me_ the liar, Aymar having suddenly become so immaculate!" thought Laurent. He replied soberly, "You must pardon me, Madame, but that was not a thing on which anybody consciously misled you. You assumed it, because he had excellent medical attention and was 'released.' But in other respects he was treated abominably--at least when the Colonel was there." And he proceeded to give her a résumé of what Aymar had undergone at their hands, told her how he had found him exhausted under a haystack--in short, what had nearly been the consequence of his "release."

Avoye turned her face away. After a silence she said in a voice whose tremulousness was pierced with terror, "I knew that there was something more amiss with him than wounds! Monsieur de Courtomer, you swore to me . . ."

She became inaudible; all he could catch was the word "decline."

"No, no, Madame," he said quickly, anxious to reassure her (for it was plain that in spite of what she had done she did care). "No, his condition is merely the result of the blood he has lost. The doctor said so clearly, and that it would perhaps be as much as a year before he was strong again."

"How did he come to--to lose so much blood?" she asked faintly. "Was it then so long before the enemy found him after . . . after what happened in the Bois des Fauvettes?"

"Not so very long--not more than an hour perhaps; but you see he struggled hard to get free, and being fastened like that, upright----"

He broke off before the uncomprehending horror of the face she had raised. Was it possible that she did not know that essence of "what had happened in the Bois des Fauvettes"?

"Don't you know?" he jerked out almost mechanically.

"Know what? Struggled to get free . . . _fastened_ . . . Monsieur de Courtomer, what awful thing are you talking about?"

And Laurent cursed himself. Aymar had not told her the worst. Equally, of course, he did not wish her to know it.

"Oh, nothing, Madame," he stammered. "I would not for worlds have mentioned it had I not thought that you knew already."

"O God!" cried the girl rather hysterically, "more things kept from me! For pity's sake, Monsieur, try to forget that I am a woman!"

Laurent, recovering himself, bowed. "If you wish it." And on that, sparing her very little, he did tell her the true and full story of the Bois des Fauvettes. But he had the grace not to look at her meanwhile.

"Aymar made out that it was . . . all over very quickly . . . done in the surprise . . . almost a mistake," she said faintly at the end.

"On the contrary," replied Laurent remorselessly, "it was as protracted and deliberate as I have told you. You can imagine that the Imperialists, finding him in the situation they did, were not likely to show him more consideration than . . . than some of his friends have done since. He was taken to Arbelles, senseless, in a farm cart. How he was looked on there I have told you. One would have thought he had paid enough. . . ."

He was very brutal; he knew it. He was going very far--he did not care. He was so worked up that a very little more would have brought out the story of the ramrod. But there was also a limit to what his hearer could endure. He saw her now get up, and ask him to excuse her "for a few minutes." As he shut the door which he had held open for her he was almost sure that he heard a stifled sob on the other side.

Then he paced up and down the room thinking, "I have done it now! What would Aymar say if he knew! I don't care, I don't care! It was time she heard these things. Look what keeping this from her has resulted in!" And this was his most secret thought: "She has hurt Aymar bitterly, unbearably: _but I have hurt her!_"

He did not believe that she would reappear that evening; and she did not. By that he knew that his blows had gone home. After waiting a little he wandered round the salon again, coming finally to an anchor in front of the picture of the two children. _That_ to end in this! "How could you?" he said to the laughing little girl, and soon afterwards went unhappily, guiltily, yet unrepentantly to bed.

(11)

When Laurent came downstairs next morning, after taking his farewell of the Vicomtesse, he was greatly surprised to find Mme de Villecresne, a little ghost in white organdie, in the hall--waiting for him as was evident by her request that he would speak to her, if he had the time. And as he went out with her into the garden, which she seemed to indicate as the scene of their interview, his conscience rather smote him for last evening's free speech. But the mantle of the avenger had not yet fallen from his shoulders. Mme de Villecresne's first words, however, gave the panoply a perceptible twitch.

"I am very grateful to you for speaking to me as you did last night, Monsieur de Courtomer," she said. "I am sure you cannot have liked doing it." (Laurent surveyed the grass at his feet.) "I want, while I still have the chance, to ask you something more."

They were now in the middle of the rose-garden, by the sundial, and here she paused; paused, too, in her speech and looked away. Whatever she was going to ask him was not easy to bring out. He supposed he must give her time, even if he had to hurry for the diligence. So he looked down in silence at the sundial, which assured him in its antiquated French "_Icy ne verras que les heures sans nuages_," though a later hand had scrawled on the copper of the dial the cynical proviso, "_Si de telles heures existent!_"

Suddenly it came out, in a voice that shook. "Is it really true that it was all done for me?"

"Yes, Madame," said Laurent.

"Then it is the other story that is not true?" said the voice still more tremblingly.

At that the young man looked at her. "Do you mean the sending of the letter as part of a plan already made?--They are both true."

Mme de Villecresne did not exclaim that that could not be, nor did she ask him how it was possible. She went very slowly to the nearest rose-hedge and picked a rose or two. Then she came back. "That was what Aymar said," she murmured as if to herself. "If I could only see how the two stories are compatible--if I could only see it!" And the roses were clutched in her two hands as if they wore no thorns.

"Shall I try to explain it to you?" suggested Laurent gently. She seemed so young suddenly, only a girl--only his own age. She was amazingly free from rancour, too, considering what his "explanations" of last night had been like for she said, with a really touching gratitude, "Oh, if only you would, Monsieur de Courtomer!"

Over the sundial then, Laurent explained to the very best of his ability, and found himself, like Aymar before him, tracing out the figures there meanwhile.

"But I cannot understand how Aymar could be so deluded!" broke out Mme de Villecresne at the end. "M. de Vaubernier, perhaps . . . but Aymar!"

The advocate reminded her that she _had_ once obtained military information for her cousin, as he well knew; reminded her also of the known fate of Marie Lasserre. Before the cruel story of the practical joke he hesitated a moment in his new-found consideration, but for Aymar's sake she must hear it. Only, since she was so pale already, he suggested a move to the stone bench in the corner, and she complied. Then, in the very place where the lying information had, all innocently, been passed on to Aymar, he showed her how convincing it had been.

"And, Madame," he concluded, "put yourself in your cousin's place; suppose yourself waiting for his arrival here in this very garden, and suppose yourself receiving instead news of his desperate peril. And suppose further that you had in your pocket a plan for the destruction of the enemy which you had been on the point already of putting into practice, which indeed only needed the pretext of a bargain to make it plausible. Do you mean to say that you would have gone peaceably to bed and said 'Nothing can be done'?"

"No," she said with a strangled sob. "No, indeed, I would not. And so he was tricked . . . tricked. . . . All this misery . . ." As she twisted her now empty hands in an effort to keep her composure Laurent saw how her roses had wounded them. "Yet Aymar told me," she went on, recovering herself, and facing him as pale and piteous as a child, "Aymar told me . . . some things that were not true . . . that were not true at all! I could not have believed that he would tell the merest fraction of a lie--even to spare me."

Laurent could not bear those little scratched hands, and in an almost fatherly way he took out his pocket-handkerchief. "If you will permit me, Madame . . ." and he dabbed at the beads of blood, the girl apparently quite oblivious of what he was doing. "I could not have believed that he would lie," she repeated.

Yes, that was the main stumbling-block of the situation. And Aymar had known it, too.

"No, I can quite understand your feeling that about him," said Aymar's friend, loosing the passive hands. "I should think that a more naturally truthful person does not exist. And yet, Madame, there are instincts . . . For instance, I dare say it has not struck you that last night, to shield him, you told a lie yourself?"

"I?" she exclaimed, and a flush stained her pallor.

"It was so instinctive that you have forgotten it already. I expect you were hardly aware of it at the time. Yet, to protect him from what I might think of him you told me, in so many words, that your cousin had not lied to you. Can you deny that?"

He smiled at her. He did feel himself rather like a wise uncle now--an odd sensation.

The flush ran over Avoye's face again. She dropped her eyes to a tiny red spot on her muslin gown. "That is quite true," she murmured.

"Do you think he would ever lie to save himself," went on Laurent, pursuing his advantage, "any more than you would?"

She shook her head mutely. "But, Monsieur de Courtomer, if he had not kept me so much in the dark--let me think that I knew it all--left me to be enlightened by Mme de Morsan . . . it is that which hurts so."

"Yes, I dare say that was a mistake," assented Laurent, feeling about sixty by this time. "It was a risk, but only his consideration for you prompted him to take it. Yet, as far as that goes, were not you and he leagued together to keep your grandmother a great deal more in the dark? Did that trouble you--the thought of what was being kept from her?"

Avoye raised her eyes and looked at him. "No," she said. "It seemed the only, the right thing to do."

"One does those things instinctively, you see, with those one cares for," the sagacious young man pointed out to her.

She pondered this, her eyes downcast. Never could the mentor beside her have imagined himself admitted into so much intimacy. Heaven send he had made good use of it! He sat quite motionless, for it was a thousand times better to miss the diligence altogether than to cut short this wonderful chance she had given him. Aymar _could_ not have explained fully to her yesterday, or else she had been in no state to comprehend the explanation.

As he revolved this conclusion Avoye herself said suddenly, "But I am forgetting; you will miss the coach if I keep you longer." She rose, growing less the child. "I can never thank you properly, Monsieur de Courtomer, for what you have done. At least now I understand." Her lip suddenly trembled. "I have really heard everything now, have I not?"

"Everything that matters," replied Laurent after a second's hesitation. The ramrod story had so thin a connection with her, and it would horrify her so--and his last night's desire to do this was now as dead as last night's dreams. "No," he exclaimed abruptly, "there _is_ one fact more I should like you to know. Your cousin has done many brave things in his career, but you have never heard the bravest. And it was done for you."

Therewith he sat down again and told her the story of the interview with Colonel Richard.

(12)

There did not seem to be any place remote enough to shelter her grief and her remorse. Not the house, where Grand'mère might at any time find or summon her; not the rose-garden, where she, the faithless lover, had just said farewell to the faithful friend; not the orchard, where she had once been comforted . . . with lies, as she had said to Aymar yesterday. They _were_ lies . . . but he was not a liar. Yet she had told him that he was--told him that he had sold his honour, flung his justification back in his face. At the one moment in their lives when her trust in him should have stood firm it had snapped like rotten thread. After all that he had suffered for her sake it had remained for her, who loved him, to give him the last, the intolerable, enduring wound--the lover who, as she had just learnt, had not spared to crucify for her his pride and his most intimate feelings, and make an appeal to his victorious enemy for silence. And this Colonel Richard, a stranger, a foe, who knew everything, had taken his hand--whereas she . . .

The Aven, by which at last she sat dry-eyed, with a pain in her breast as though it were her own heart, and not Aymar's, which she had stabbed, rippled contentedly through the pastures . . . on its way to Pont-aux-Rochers. Yes, and despite the strain, the unfulfilment, it seemed to her now that these past years at Sessignes had been like this placid and contented stream, compared with the torment into which one hour had hurried her life. Oh, if only she had been able to keep the pale sunshine of those days, even though it should never have been transmuted into a brighter radiance! They would never come again--never, never.

The Aven smiled assent; a wagtail walked alertly at the brink, and the martins swooped above it. But it was going to Pont-aux-Rochers . . .

That afternoon Anselme, Aymar's man, came to her and apologetically asked her if she had enough influence to get Sarrasin out of M. le Vicomte's room, as he refused to stir or to let any of the servants enter. She went in to try. She might have hesitated had she realized how full the empty room would be of Aymar's presence, and how poignantly the traces of his hasty departure would smite at her--the disorder which no one had repaired because Sarrasin would not admit even Anselme into the sanctuary which he was guarding. She could not bear to look at them, and turned her attention instead on the guardian himself who, having risen at her entrance with a soberly wagging tail, was now thrusting his nose into her hand. But even as she looked at him he stalked back to his post by the bed, and lay down in his former attitude, his nose on his paws.

Avoye walked to the door calling him, telling him he must come out of the room. But he only looked at her; he did not stir. The childish thought then came to her that, wise as he was, he knew that his master was soon coming back, and that his refusing to move was a sign of this. But she must put his knowledge to a genuine test, for if he consented to come away, it would show that Aymar was not returning. So she took a coat lying on a chair and showed it to him, and while he sniffed at it she told him that he must take care of it downstairs. Then, going to the door, she held it out to him and called him. He lifted his head and gazed at her earnestly with his wonderful, inscrutable eyes, and she looked back at him and said in her heart, "Oh, _don't come_, Sarrasin!" Then with a sigh he got up and came to the door.

So she knew that Aymar was not coming back. She stood with the coat pressed closely to her and eyes that were beginning to swim; then she opened the door, called to a passing servant, told her to take the coat and the dog downstairs, and going back turned the key in the lock.

"I cannot bear to see you . . ." Well, she had her wish; she could not see him; she would never see him at Sessignes again. There was no danger of his finding her here in his room, any more than there was a chance of unsaying what she had said, of begging him to listen, to believe that she had spoken in the confusion of shock and fear. He was gone.

He was gone, and on the hearthstone, broken and thrown aside, lay the useless _jartier_. Had it been thrown there because he felt that all it represented was over for him now? Oh no, no, no! He might not be her lover any more, but he should not, he could not cease to be L'Oiseleur; and he should not throw away the talisman. She had not now the right to keep it for him herself, and she looked round the deserted room for a safe place in which to bestow it. Out of a half-open drawer there trailed the sleeve of a uniform. The _jartier_ seemed to have more affinity with that than with anything else. She put it for a moment to her lips, and, taking out the coat, slipped the amulet into the breast pocket. Then she gave a miserable little laugh. "I always said I should end by being superstitious about that thing!"

She was on the point of leaving the room, when, passing by the bed, she perceived something she had not noticed before. By the impress on the coverlet it was clear that at some point yesterday Aymar must have thrown himself there, worn out, he who had never before in his life known other than reasonable fatigue. Probably he had dragged himself from this refuge to come down to _that_ interview with her. Avoye bent over the pillow as though his head were really resting there, and broke suddenly into bitter sobbing.

How she got through the next three empty heartsick days she could hardly tell. On the third she became desperate. For if Aymar really were not returning the precious hours were slipping away, and she was doing nothing to make a last effort to retrieve her shattered happiness, or even to tell him how deeply she sorrowed for what she had done to him. He must be thinking--if he thought of her at all--that she was still of the same mind. But what could she do? She had no idea where he was, and unfortunately she had never asked M. de Courtomer if he knew.

But Eveno might know, because Aymar had spoken in his note to Mme de la Rocheterie of having gone on business connected with the Eperviers. Then it suddenly occurred to her that Aymar might actually be found in person at Eveno's cottage, conferring with him. What if she, too, went there in person? And, though the thought of that meeting was not easy to face, she set out that afternoon on horseback, a groom following her, for the cottage in the wood to which she had once declared that she would make pilgrimage.