(10)
Just outside the Hôtel de Ville Laurent saw de Fresne. He went straight up to him.
"I want to beg your pardon, Monsieur de Fresne, for what I said to you a little while ago about that letter. It was cruel and unjust."
De Fresne looked at him with those hard blue eyes of his. "It was certainly cruel. Do you think I have never said that same thing to myself these three months?" He began to pale under his tan. "I have said it a hundred times. But, as you pointed out——"
"Oh, I am sorry!" broke in Laurent impulsively. "And in honour you could have done nothing else. Do forget it! I was annoyed when I spoke."
"I think you had cause," said the elder man suddenly. "I had no right to read you a homily." He held out his hand. Then Laurent was back in the place which would shortly see the scales dip to one side or the other with his dearest friend's honour in the balance—the place which he hated and which, at the same time, he was only too thankful to set eyes on again. For he had had a horrible fright. But a precious grain of consolation was that among the more than doubled number of faces in the audience this morning one was missing. It would grin here no more and was almost certainly not grinning where it was now. The President began by saying that he had an announcement to make. Since M. le Général d'Andigné, now military governor of Maine-et-Loire was staying a couple of nights in the neighbourhood, he himself had so far presumed on their very old acquaintance as to ask him, with the approval of the Court, to give them the benefit of his ripe experience in this difficult and delicate case . . . that was, subject to M. de la Rocheterie's having no objection. M. de la Rocheterie here signifying that he had none—on the contrary—Sol de Grisolles intimated that he had sent M. d'Andigné a short summary of the case as far as it had gone yesterday, so that if he came, he would be au courant. Meanwhile, they had better proceed from the point at which they left off yesterday.
So the hapless de Fresne took his stand once more at the witness-table. Laurent tried not to listen. "Fouquier-Tinville" and the stout officer between them seemed determined to probe into every minute of the interval before de Fresne's return to the wood; hence Aymar also was on his feet most of the time. Laurent began to foresee that every detail of the shooting, too, would have to be gone over again, perhaps more fully. And all to what purpose? There was nothing to discover.
Oh, what would happen if they could not see their way to clearing Aymar? It began to be torture to him to look at the figure in front of him, especially when the bronze head turned a little, and he caught the outline of the sunken cheek.
"I can't stand much more of this!" he whispered at last to M. Perrelet.
"They will not go on at it forever," the optimist whispered back, and he laid his hand over the young man's and gave it a squeeze.
"But there's nothing else to go on to!" replied Laurent miserably.
Why could they not believe Aymar's word when he said that he had all but arranged the plan with Saint-Etienne? How was it possible to look at him and think him capable of infamy? Were they all blind? And why did M. d'Andigné delay? Perhaps he was not coming, after all? He was a great man, just about to be made a peer of France, and very busy at the moment settling the King's peace in Brittany But, if he did come, surely he, the Vendean general of so much experience, he, the phenomenally cool-headed and resourceful, the hero of the incredible escapes from the Fort de Joux and the citadel of Besançon, the man of untarnished integrity and honour, he would recognize that Aymar was telling the truth!
Or, suppose that he did not!
The accursed stout officer seemed now to be criticizing Aymar's intentions and dispositions during those three days in the wood, and as it went on Laurent wondered at Aymar's patience under it. The inquisitor had just ascertained that the nearest Bonapartist troops were no more than eight miles away, at Arbelles.
"Only eight miles!" he exclaimed. "I am surprised, Monsieur de la Rocheterie, that you did not try to withdraw to a safer position! Surely you must have known that you were very dangerously placed, and that you could not hope to do anything there with ninety men!"
And Aymar said nothing.
Suddenly M. du Tremblay leant forward and addressed the speaker.
"Not do anything with ninety men, Monsieur de Noirlieu? Why not? Have you forgotten that M. de la Rocheterie held the famous Moulin Brûlé for four and a half hours against five hundred regulars with—how many men precisely had you with you at Penescouët, Monsieur de la Rocheterie?"
"Eighteen," replied Aymar.
Something hardly distinguishable from applause ran round the audience. And du Tremblay went on quickly, addressing the President, "I trust, mon Général, that I am in order in laying stress on the necessity of remembering and allowing weight to those brilliant services in the past of which M. de la Rocheterie himself is careful not to remind us. As regards the handling of irregular levies, has not L'Oiseleur, young as he is, had more experience and successful experience than any one here except yourself?"
Sol de Grisolles nodded, and the Marquis de la Boëssière remarked, "Certainly more than I have had. I am glad that you have said what you have said, Monsieur du Tremblay."
So was Laurent. He would have bestowed a decoration on M. du Tremblay.
"Yes," said M. de Noirlieu obstinately, "and that past experience is just why M. de la Rocheterie's remaining so near the enemy at Arbelles is so inexplicable."
There was nothing to be done with that man but drown him! Surely Aymar was going to give the very good reason he had for staying in the Bois des Fauvettes as long as he could! But in any case he had not the chance, for "Fouquier-Tinville" observed quickly,
"It is explicable enough on a certain hypothesis—which I do not wish to press. But I should be greatly obliged if M. de la Rocheterie would give us the reason for another delay of his which also needs explanation. I only trust they are not susceptible of the same."
Aymar's head went up. "To what delay are you referring, Monsieur?"
"To the very considerable one which you have shown in courting this enquiry. You were released on the 16th of June. Even if your health was not then sufficiently re-established for you to go to the General-in-Chief in person, why did you not at least communicate with him if, as you assure us, you were so anxious to clear yourself? You made no move whatever for a month, until the middle of July. Is that not true?"
"Yes, it is quite true," said Aymar steadily. He drew a long breath, and Laurent saw his fingers tighten on the paper he was holding.
"I suggest that the month's inaction, then, needs some justification," observed "Fouquier-Tinville" suavely.
In the silence that followed Laurent said to himself, "He was ill, unfit for it, you bully!" But would Aymar say that, since it was not the real reason? No, of course he would not! He replied at last, very coldly and quietly, looking down a little, "The reason for the delay was a purely private one."
"A reason that you would prefer not to give the Court?" suggested "Fouquier-Tinville" with a twist of the lips.
"A reason," retorted Aymar, not without a measure of defiance, "that I am not called upon to give the Court!"
At last something had been found which L'Oiseleur would not answer.
"It had nothing in common, then," demanded the inquisitor meaningly, "with your reason for remaining so long near the enemy in the Bois des Fauvettes?"
Aymar started. "Certainly not. The one was purely military; the other, as I have said, was personal."
"And you refuse to——" But a stir arose at the end of the hall, and he broke off. Laurent turned his head, and saw a glitter of staff uniforms. General d'Andigné had come!
He walked alertly to the dais, while the whole audience rose to their feet, he saluted the Court, who had also risen, was on the platform shaking hands, and, in a very short time indeed, having swept a keen glance round, was reading the notes of the morning's proceedings.
And Laurent, studying him, saw a blue-eyed man in the fifties, of no great height, with a fine, almost leonine head from whose brow the silvering fair hair was receding, and a slightly prominent underlip—a man who gave the impression of exceptional humour and vitality allied to a rare imperturbability. . . . But Laurent's deep interest in him was abruptly diverted. What had happened to Aymar? He was leaning with both hands on the little table before him almost as if he were physically overcome. Then he suddenly sat down, and, supporting his head on his hand, pulled his notes towards him. Laurent could see how deadly pale he was, and that the hand with which he was turning over the papers was shaking. "It's the strain," he thought desperately. "It's telling at last; he won't get through!"
D'Andigné suddenly raised his fine head. "Monsieur le Président, I should like to make a remark. With regard to the suppositions raised by this shooting, surely the very fact that the men immediately suspected M. de Fresne on his return entirely disposes of the theory that in the three preceding days they had discovered some proof of M. de la Rocheterie's guilt?—I might go further, and point out that it was solely to save M. de Fresne from those unjust suspicions that M. de la Rocheterie showed his men the letter . . . with the consequences to himself of which we know. Is that not so?"
"That is most certainly so, mon Général," responded de Fresne warmly. "M. de la Rocheterie undoubtedly sacrificed himself to save me."
"But, in the circumstances, could any honourable man have done less?" enquired M. de Margadel.
"No, he certainly could not," responded d'Andigné like a flash. "But then you are trying to show that he is not an honourable man. . . . And may I not also point out that, so far from his suppressing witnesses (which I see that some of you gentlemen are inclined to suspect) he here lost an unrivalled opportunity of allowing the most formidable witness against him to be suppressed by other hands. Had he let things take their course, and allowed M. de Fresne to be shot instead of him—which seems quite a likely thing to have happened—he would have got rid of the odium of the charge as well as of an adverse witness, for the man who had paid the penalty would have carried the guilt also with him to his grave. His execution would probably have cleared M. de la Rocheterie in popular opinion. Surely these considerations must have occurred to you?"
"I knew he would see things in a proper light!" said Laurent, whose spirits had gone up like a balloon, to M. Perrelet, while the Court conferred over this, and M. d'Andigné, his chin propped on his fist, darted glance after glance at L'Oiseleur's bent head.
"I think," announced the President at length, "that the Court does not wish to ask M. de Fresne any further questions. Have you any more witnesses to call, Monsieur de la Rocheterie?"
"Yes, two!" ejaculated Laurent under his breath.
And Aymar stood up—but it was not to call him. He threw back his head. "I call Monsieur le Général d'Andigné," he said in a clear voice. "That is, if he has not forgotten," he finished a little breathlessly. Laurent fell back in his chair.
Amid the universal sensation M. d'Andigné got briskly to his feet. "I was hoping that I should not have to be so pushing as to call myself," he remarked pleasantly. "Will you question me, Monsieur de la Rocheterie—I am entirely at your service—or shall I have the honour of myself giving the Court an account of our last—our first—meeting at the Abeille d'Or at Keraven on the afternoon of April the 27th?"
"The latter, if you please, General," answered Aymar.