(10)
For about the sixth time that night Laurent dragged himself out of his bed and went over to his charge. The dawn was beginning. He was so tired that he could hardly stand, his eyes kept closing from lack of sleep, but his brain seemed to him unusually clear. Peering at the clock he saw that there wanted twenty minutes yet before La Rocheterie's bouillon was due. He dropped into the chair by the bed; it was not worth returning to his own again. Even yet, after half a day and a night, he could scarcely realize it, though he had tried hard to face the reversal of what he had so stoutly upheld. That haggard young man who lay there asleep before him had really been through the horrors of execution at the hands of his own followers—and survived. His men, his own men who followed him with passion, who would, as he once said, have cut their hands off for him, had fastened him to a tree and deliberately shot him—L'Oiseleur, their brilliant and adored leader! Now he understood why he had said that he would never need his floating locks again; the laurels were indeed cut down! Now he understood why he was so sensitive about his lacerated wrists, so terribly bitter about the whole affair, so unapproachable! Why, it was enough to have sent him crazy—quite enough to make him beg to be allowed to die, as with his own ears Laurent had heard him!
Yet, since their painful conversation of yesterday afternoon, La Rocheterie's demeanour towards him had undergone a certain change. He had not said the things that hurt so much, and, in the earlier part of the night, when he had been restless and in pain after the operation, he had even asked, and almost naturally, for such alleviation as Laurent could give, and had not paid him in those frigid thanks to which the young man would infinitely have preferred no thanks at all. Somehow, then, they were a little nearer to each other.
How thin he was getting to look—how increasingly transparent—worse than when Laurent had first seen him lying there like . . . what was it he had looked like? A Crusader. . . . Had a Crusader ever been shot by his men? If so, they would have used bows and arrows . . . or was it arquebuses? What exactly was an arquebus? . . . Arques. What had happened at Arques . . .
He woke, to his dismay, to find his head down on his arm across the foot of his patient's bed. The birds were singing, and the hour for bouillon well past, but the wounded man was fortunately still asleep.
His own stolen slumber, however, had not refreshed Laurent, and, by the time that M. Perrelet appeared, he was wondering how he should ever get through the dressings. He always hated the business, and, now that he knew for certain who had made those wounds. . . . Then he was ashamed of what he termed his womanish feelings. It was not he who had to bear the pain morning after morning—and without a murmur, as La Rocheterie always did . . . as he wished sometimes he would not. But then all along he had never uttered a syllable of complaint at any physical stress. "I'll be as quick as I can," he heard M. Perrelet whisper to his patient as he took up the forceps.
. . . At least Laurent supposed that he was whispering—or was it because there was suddenly such a loud buzzing in his own ears? The surgeon's figure swelled to a large size; then receded till it was about the measure of a doll. But, not realizing in the least what was happening to him, Laurent still stood at his post with a face, though he did not know it, very similar in hue to that on the pillow.
The next thing of which he was fully conscious was that he was seated in a chair right away from the bed, at the open window, and that M. Perrelet, now restored to his everyday dimensions, was undoing the collar of his uniform.
"What is the matter?" asked the young man in a dazed way. "Why am I here?"
"Because I didn't want you fainting and falling across the bed," responded M. Perrelet briskly. "Luckily my patient called my attention to you just in time. Drink this, and sit there quietly."
"But——" protested Laurent.
"Drink this!" repeated M. Perrelet firmly.
And so the brandy which was poured out ready for L'Oiseleur was drunk by his nurse.
"Fainting?" murmured Laurent. "Was that it? But the dressing . . . ?" And he tried to get up.
M. Perrelet pushed him back. "Sit there, I tell you. You are not indispensable. I will deal with you afterwards."
He disappeared behind the screen. Laurent, his head feeling like a ball of wool, sat there ashamed and confused, conscious that he had deserted his post, and still not quite understanding what had happened to him. Through the woolly mist he heard the murmur of Aymar's voice—it sounded like an interrogation—and the doctor's reply, quite clear: "It was a little too much for him this morning, I think. He was tired, I expect. I ought to have noticed sooner. . . . Now we will proceed with this shoulder of yours."
He proceeded, presumably, for there was no more conversation. Laurent gazed out of the window.
After a considerable interval M. Perrelet emerged, washed his hands, and came over to him.
"Now, young man, I want a few words with you. No, stay where you are. I have settled M. de la Rocheterie quite comfortably. But I don't want a second patient on my hands." He dropped his voice. "How much sleep did you have last night?—I thought so. And the night before? You are getting worn out. I am an old fool, but I never meant you to do without sleep like this—no one, of course, could stand it. Why have you been doing it?—it's not necessary now."
The answer was very simple—because his charge would not call him, so he must be on the alert the whole time. But Laurent was not going to give it.
M. Perrelet's little eyes scrutinized his downcast visage. "H'm, perhaps I can guess! . . . And yet I fancy you would really rather have this old butcher hurting you than him, eh?" (Laurent, aghast at his insight, turned crimson.) "Well, it is clear that I have been very inconsiderate of you. You are to lie down at once and have a nap; I will stay here with him for a little." And, to ensure his commands being obeyed, he stood over Laurent till he had stretched himself on the bed.
The young man himself was surprised to find how desirable that bed was. . . . He floated away into slumber . . . delicious! Then he came out of it again to find M. Perrelet almost in the same place, looking at him.
"I fell asleep for a moment," he said apologetically.
The surgeon smiled. "Mon enfant, you have slept for an hour and ten minutes. I should not wake you now but that your dinner is just coming up and that I have something to tell you. You need fresh air and a little change of scene, so I have arranged with Major Aubert that you are to go out for a walk every day on the terrace. No, there is no question of parole, and there is a sentry posted, so don't try to escape and get yourself shot. You can take your first promenade this afternoon."
Laurent gave Aymar his dinner and had his own. When the orderly had removed it he approached his charge to settle him for the sleep which he was supposed to have in the afternoon. No reference had yet been made to his own morning's performance, and he hoped that none would be. But he had been conscious for the last five minutes that L'Oiseleur's eyes were following him very intently, and, as he now came round the bed to pull the curtain over the window beside it, La Rocheterie suddenly said, in a very different voice from any in which he had yet addressed him—at Arbelles:
"Do you think, Monsieur de Courtomer, that you can ever forgive me?"
It was really less the words than the tone which surprised Laurent. He half turned, his hand on the curtain.
"On the contrary, Monsieur de la Rocheterie," he said with an embarrassed little laugh, "it is I who ought to make the most humble apologies to you!"
"For what?" asked Aymar, looking up at him. "For having worn yourself out with looking after me night and day? For having robbed yourself of your sleep, endangered your health perhaps—at any rate, brought yourself to this pass of fatigue . . . and all for a man who . . ." He did not finished the sentence. "On my soul, I cannot think why you should have done it, nor why I should have been possessed by such a demon of ingratitude. . . . Monsieur de Courtomer, it was not wholly ingratitude! Do you know what it is to resent pity? Yet I ought to be on my knees in thankfulness that any one in the world should do anything for me—now; and that any one should really care what happens to me . . ."
His voice broke and he turned his head away; his hand on the coverlet clenched and unclenched itself.
And Laurent, to his great comfort, was deserted at this crisis by his British heritage. He abandoned the curtain, his rather constrained attitude, everything. "Oh, La Rocheterie, how could you ever doubt it! Don't you know that I would give a great deal more than a few nights' rest to see you well again? Why, I came by way of Locmélar in the hopes of meeting with you, and when, after I was captured, by an extraordinary coincidence I saw you being brought here, unconscious, I tried to get sent back with you—only I tried too late. Pity—no! You surely do not think that I have looked after you for any other reason than because I . . . wanted to!"
He had gripped the transparent, tell-tale hand. For the first time it stayed in his grasp. And L'Oiseleur turned his head back again, and looked at him, tears in his eyes.
"I suppose I must believe it! You have proved it, God knows! Do you know I had a dream—at first I thought it was a dream—of your having fallen asleep, tired out, against the foot of my bed early this morning? But it was true! And you nearly collapsed just now. . . . It is I who ought to be adjuring you not to talk! . . ." He gave a weak little laugh, and his fingers moved in Laurent's. "And M. Perrelet tells me that you choose to be in here when you might have had a room to yourself elsewhere! I thought you were obliged to be here, and though you . . . though they had told you . . . you were humane—and you had met me before, and felt perhaps that here was a means of repaying what you insisted on calling a debt, and so——"
Laurent, inspired to rather a bold course, broke in: "If you will forgive me for saying so, was not our having met before just why you disliked my being here? Could you not either forget that fact, or—what I should prefer—try to realize that to me you are, and always will be, exactly what you were in England, or in Paris last year?"
"Oh, my God!" said Aymar to himself, and tried to take his hand away.
But Laurent would not let it go. He knelt down by the bed. "Yes, I know that you feel there is a difference. But I knew—I knew about the slur on you before I entered the room. Nothing that these people say has any effect on me—if you would only believe that! Does not that make it possible for you to take . . . anything I may have the good fortune to do for you, as you would from any other . . . friend?"
He brought out the word rather low, for he felt that it was a little presumptuous, after all.
"Friend!" Aymar caught him up unsteadily. "No, you must not call yourself my friend, de Courtomer! You will not find me desirable, even as an acquaintance, now. Do you forget that I have lost my good name . . . and not only with the enemy?"
"I do not forget it," replied Laurent gravely. "But I know that you can recover it when you wish."
A bitter astonishment dawned in the face on the pillow.
"After what happened to me in the Bois des Fauvettes? No; my reputation is as much damaged by those bullets as my body."
He made himself say it, evidently, but he said it.
"But you cannot deny," urged Laurent, "that that horrible business was a misapprehension. You must pardon my conjecture, but I fancy I know of what kind it was."
Aymar de la Rocheterie shut his eyes and slightly shook his head. "Impossible!" He lay so a moment without moving, his hand still in Laurent's, and then, reopening his eyes, said in a rather exhausted voice, "Some day, perhaps, I will tell you the story. But . . . just now . . . there are things which I cannot tell any one. I have to ask your forbearance for that, just as I most sincerely ask your pardon for my behaviour, my want of consideration. I daresay unhappiness makes one blind, and I have not been . . . very happy."
His hand stiffened. Laurent put his other over it. "There is nothing to forgive. And I shall never ask you for an explanation. For I can guess your secret, La Rocheterie You have taken someone else's guilt upon your shoulders. How long you intend to shield this other person at such a heavy cost to yourself is not my affair—but I hope it will not be for long," he added ingenuously. "I am not going to ask you if my theory is true, for to be quite consistent you would have to say that it was not. . . . I shall leave you to sleep now."
"Monsieur de Courtomer, I assure you——" began L'Oiseleur in a very low voice as his hand was loosed.
Laurent smiled as he got up and drew the curtain over the window. Of course he would deny it! But his smile died to concern as he looked at the bed again.
"I have been tiring you," he said remorsefully. "It is a good thing that I hear the guard coming to remove me. Just let me turn the pillow over, and if there is nothing you want I will leave you in peace."
But peace was not the predominant expression on Aymar de la Rocheterie's face as Laurent took a last look at it before leaving the room.