(2)
To a young man deeply conscious of how unwelcome it is to be made a captive it is not likely to occur that he may also be unwelcome to his captors. This fact was nevertheless made plain to Laurent next morning when the officer came into the barn where M. de Courtomer had spent the night with the patrol, and told him frankly that he was becoming a nuisance to them. They wished to return with all possible speed to headquarters, yet the sergeant reported that the strain taken by the prisoner's horse in its fall yesterday was much worse. The officer really wished, he avowed, that he had bestowed his captive in the cart with the other; he proposed now, instead of dragging him further with them on his lame beast, to hand him over to the care of the garrison at Arbelles, which was still within a few hours' ride.
Laurent replied indifferently that he must do as he thought best. He had passed a haunted night; had La Rocheterie lived to see this day break? He doubted it.
The crux came over the question of parole, which was required of him because only one hussar could be spared to take him to Arbelles; and in the end Laurent agreed to give it until he was in the hands of his new gaolers; and so, fettered by his word, he set out in a corporal's charge. But he was feeling too much depressed this morning to care to think of a dash for freedom. He had had his wish: he had seen L'Oiseleur, and doubted if he should see him more in this life. And about midday, riding slowly because of the sorrel's condition, he and the corporal came in sight of their destination, the château of Arbelles, a really fine and extensive Renaissance building, capable of containing, as it then did, a considerable number of troops, though plainly not designed for any warlike end. It belonged, Laurent subsequently discovered, to a Royalist gentleman absent in Paris, and during his progress up the avenue the prisoner wondered how long, under military occupation, it would retain its general air of well-kept luxury, almost that of a big English country house.
In the imposing hall, with its great oriel window and vast hearth, he was delivered over to a tall major of the line of a lifeless and, as Laurent privately thought, stupid visage. The hussar made his report and handed over Laurent's papers. The officer was looking at them in a slow, undecided way, when a quick step was heard and he turned round and saluted a big, burly, hard-faced man in the green and yellow of the dragoons—a man with a choleric eye and close-cut grizzled side-whiskers coming to the level of the cheek-bone. To him Laurent was presented as a prisoner on parole just sent in.
"But I take back my parole, sir, now that I am in your hands," put in the captive quickly.
The dragoon colonel gave a mirthless smile. "As you please, Monsieur"—he looked at the papers. "Lieutenant le Comte de Courtomer, is it not? You have a report, corporal?"
The corporal made it, and the Colonel proceeded—quite civilly—to question his prisoner. But the fact that Laurent, when captured, had been coming from the north, as he readily acknowledged, appeared to annoy the commander of Arbelles, whose preferences seemed to be for a prisoner from the south-west. Could not M. le Comte give him any inkling of what was going forward in the Plesguen district? Laurent intimated that he was totally unable to do so, not having been there; nor, he added coldly, did he see that he was called upon to present such information to an enemy if he had had it. And the Colonel did not press the point; he muttered something cryptic to the impassive Major about having patience and waiting a little longer. After which, looking at the handkerchief round Laurent's brow, he observed almost solicitously, "You are wounded, I see, Monsieur le Comte. You must have that attended to. Where is M. Perrelet?"
A young, loose-limbed lieutenant of chasseurs à cheval standing by said, with a significant lift of the eyebrows, "Still in that room, sir."
"Ah," said his superior. "Well, I hope he is in it to some purpose. I think that this officer then, had best go up there to M. Perrelet, to have his hurt dressed, and meanwhile we can consider where to lodge him.—We are rather full for the next few days; you must excuse us, Monsieur le Comte."
"I am your prisoner," responded Laurent rather stiffly, disliking the effect which his title appeared to be making on this certainly not aristocratic foe.
"Rigault," said the latter to the young officer who had spoken, "take a couple of men and conduct M. de Courtomer upstairs. I am to understand that you definitely withdraw your parole now, Monsieur?"
"Definitely, Monsieur le Colonel."
But when the chasseur returned with two soldiers the Colonel announced that he had changed his mind, and would go with the prisoner himself, as he wished to speak to the doctor.
They mounted the noble staircase together. At the top they met an orderly, of whom the Colonel asked if M. Perrelet were along there, indicating a certain passage. The man replied that the surgeon had just left the room for a moment, but would soon return; on which his commanding officer told him to inform him that there was a captured Royalist officer there awaiting his services. Then, followed by the two soldiers, he went down the passage with his prisoner, talking as he went.
"I must apologize, Monsieur de Courtomer, for asking you to see the doctor in this particular room, but he is very much taken up with a wounded prisoner who occupies it, and he has his dressings and so forth there. But of course I shall have you put elsewhere when he has done what is necessary for you."
"Oh," said Laurent cheerfully, "I am not averse to company, sir, if the prisoner in question is not too ill for it."
The Colonel shrugged his shoulders. "It is not on his account that I would not quarter you there, though he is very ill, but on quite another—that on which I really feel apologies are due to you for being required to spend even a few minutes in his society." He broke off as he stopped at a door on his right hand, and beckoned to the soldiers. "One of you must stand sentry here while this officer is within, and the door must be locked, now. . . . No," he resumed to Laurent, his hand on the door knob, "I should not dream of leaving you with this man, officer of your own side though he is, for I am sorry to say he has just turned traitor—betrayed his own men into an ambush four days ago, and was himself shot yesterday by those that were left." And seeing Laurent's look of incredulity and aversion, he added, "Yes, he was found tied up to a tree, all but dead, outside his own headquarters. The doctor, at my request, has been doing his best for him since yesterday evening, but it seems doubtful if he will live . . . fortunately for himself, perhaps."
He turned the handle of the unlocked door and motioned the now reluctant Laurent in. "With apologies!" he said once more.
The door shut again, the key turning. And on its inner side Laurent de Courtomer, appalled, stood staring . . . staring . . . fighting with all his mind against the evidence of his eyes. . . .