(2)
Many times during the last few weeks had Laurent told himself how easy it would be to escape from captivity if he were ever to cast his thoughts that way. Yet, in the event, the simplicity of his departure rather staggered him; for, twenty minutes after he had clung bat-like to the sill of the window by which Vert-Vert also had left the château, he was outside the domain of M. le Baron d'Arbelles altogether, and was creeping, with looks to right and left, along the dim pallor of the Saint-Caradec road.
He had encountered no obstacles of any kind whatever, and only a minute or so of suspense, while the sentry stood meditating on the other side of the bush which momentarily concealed the acrobat after his drop. It was a dark night, which would have been auspicious for an ordinary fugitive, but was not so fortunate for a fugitive who was searching for someone else. However, Aymar must be somewhere along this road (always supposing that he had not got a lift) because he would never have had the strength to climb its high banks even if he wished to leave it.
But soon, a little to Laurent's dismay, the bank and hedge on his left broke into what seemed to be a thicket of some extent. Instantly he felt sure that Aymar had turned in there, and that he should find him. He went in. But under the trees it was so dark that he began to stumble. He listened, but only heard gently running water; he called very softly but without result. He dared not go on for fear L'Oiseleur should be there after all, asleep or unconscious; yet he could not search the thicket thoroughly until it grew lighter. So, feeling, unreasonably enough, that he was somehow betraying his quest, he lay down in a dry ditch and presently swam off into an uncomfortable slumber.
But before the first thrush began he had hunted through every foot of the coppice. L'Oiseleur was not there—not a trace of him. All these hours, then, had been wasted; while Aymar—in what plight was he by now? The night had not been warm.
Horribly disappointed and anxious, Laurent stood on the side of the thicket farthest from Arbelles and surveyed the prospect. The tiny wood gave on to rolling country, fields of large extent. He could not free himself from the conviction that Aymar had been in the wood at some time, if only to rest. By which way would he have left it in that case—by the fields or by the road? It seemed to Laurent that he must search both exits. He resolved that he would first cover a section of the road—the more hazardous proceeding for himself—and then search the field back again to the copse. After that it would become a choice between the next section of the road and the open country.
Looking to see that the coast was clear, he ran cautiously up the road, glancing to either side as he went. It was perfectly empty save for a meditative rabbit in the middle, who whisked off at his step; it gave, in fact, in the morning stillness, between its holly hedges, the impression of not being meant for human foot at all.
He clambered over a gate into the field, and was just setting his face once more for the thicket, when something about a haystack not far off caught his eye. Part of it had been sliced away, but not completely, so that there still remained, about two feet from the ground, a ledge rather wider than a man's body. And on this ledge a man was lying. . . .
Laurent stood stock still, his heart thumping suffocatingly. The next moment he was at the refuge so nearly missed. Aymar was lying slightly curled up, his face towards the wall of hay, his head pillowed on his bent arm—as a tired boy might lie. Laurent stooped over him. Yes, thank God, he was breathing naturally—in fact, he seemed to be sound asleep.
But he looked deadly weary. Laurent touched his left hand, lying loosely on his breast; it was very cold. So he took off his own coat and spread it over him, and, reluctant to wake him yet, squatted down beside him on the grass just out of his line of vision, and said to himself contentedly, "I knew I should find him!"
He had not been there, however, for more than five minutes or so when the sleeper stirred, sighed, and woke; then, realizing that there was a covering over him where covering had been none, raised himself on an elbow and gazed round in bewilderment.
"Good morning," observed Laurent, getting up and coming into view. "I have kept my word, you see. And I have brought you your breakfast." Voluntarily or involuntarily, he had adopted a thoroughly British method of cloaking his feelings. Aymar gave an exclamation and, falling back against the hay, stared as if he hardly knew him. At last, rather weakly, he began to laugh.
"I told you I should do it," said Laurent cheerfully, very much pleased with the success of his little coup de théâtre. But on that he suddenly found himself deprived of further speech. He went down on his knees by the ledge of hay and mutely embraced him, French fashion; after which he began to fumble in his pocket for the provisions he had brought—the major part of his own supper.
". . . How did you do it, Laurent—how did you do it?" Aymar was asking incredulously.
"I climbed out of the window," responded the adventurer briefly. "Have you had anything to eat since you left yesterday?"
"I was not hungry. I had the brandy, you know."
"Heavens above, you must be starving! Eat this quickly. No, first——Is the eau-de-vie in this pocket?"
"Always that brandy-flask," commented Aymar, trying to smile, as, supporting himself on an elbow, he took the little cup. But his hand shook so much that Laurent caught it from him with an exclamation, and, seating himself on the ledge, slipped an arm round his ex-patient and supported him while he held the cup to his lips. There was re-awakened fury in his heart.
"This is like old times," remarked L'Oiseleur, and lay still a moment against his friend's shoulder.
"There's only one alleviation," muttered Laurent, with some of the fury audible in his voice, "and that is, that your release was undoubtedly vengeance on that scoundrel's part. Viewed in that light, it is almost a compliment."
"Oh, are you speaking of Guitton?" murmured Aymar. "I had forgotten him for the moment. I was thinking about someone better worth considering." He caught at the hand that had held the cup, and pulled it to him. "I was convinced that I should never see you again, Laurent. . . . Shall I ever be able to repay you?"
"I don't know what you are talking about," said Laurent, as gruffly as any of his English forbears, but he returned the pressure of the two cold hands which held his. "Now eat; and when you have eaten you can tell me how you found the strength to get so far."
So Aymar ate, when Laurent had consented to do the same, and told him. It appeared that he had gone into the copse, and been there for hours, perhaps—he did not seem sure. Nor was he, evidently, quite clear whether he had lost consciousness there or not; but he admitted that he had thought, "quite erroneously," that he could not possibly go farther. . . . However, towards evening he made another effort, drank some water, and went on by the field way, rather blindly, his only object being to put as much distance between himself and Arbelles as he could. In the twilight he almost stumbled into the haystack, and having thus fortunately come on it, subsided there.
"Well, thank God for the haystack," observed Laurent. "Were you cold in the night? It's horribly open here."
"I am never very warm now," said Aymar simply. "Yes, it is open. And that is why, mon ami, you have stayed here long enough. It is high time you went on, for if they have not discovered your absence already——"
But Laurent exclaimed, as the speaker had once incautiously done to Guitton, "For what do you take me?" And he continued with warmth, "Why do you suppose I was at the trouble of wriggling out of that window? Directly you feel able we will go on (though I shall not be missed till breakfast-time) and as you know the district a little, perhaps you can think of a suitable place to make for. Was there not some woman from your part of the country? . . . No, Aymar, really it is no use arguing—it only wastes time. Remember that I have English blood in me, and that it is quite as obstinate as your Norse. I only give in to you when I am in awe of you—which at this moment I am not."
So Aymar himself surrendered, and they started, he on Laurent's arm, across the great field towards another little wood, both as affording cover and as being in the direction of the farm of La Baussaine, where lived this woman from Sessignes who had known Aymar all his life, and had married and settled and achieved widowhood in this region. Provided, said Aymar, that her elder son, a soldier of the Imperial Guard, were not at home—which in existing circumstances was practically impossible—she would be only too glad to give them shelter.
In the little wood Laurent made his companion sit down and rest, for even the short, sustained exertion had rendered him very breathless. Indeed to progress thus, in stages, was the only possible method. Even so, after about an hour, the proceeding was making nearly intolerable demands on his little stock of strength. The stages began to get shorter, the rests longer. Twice there were gates to climb, once a hedge to push through, once retirement into a ditch was thought prudent to avoid a herdsman. And when they came forth from this retreat they had still, Aymar calculated, a good mile and a half to go; on hearing which, and surveying the speaker, Laurent wondered rather despairingly whether they would not have to try to find a nearer refuge.
A large, uncompromising drop of rain on his nose startled him at that moment, and he looked up. Was it possible—a thunderstorm on a morning like this? However, one could not argue about its unfitness; the point was to prevent Aymar from being instantly soaked to the skin. In the middle of the open pasture which they were skirting he espied a long, low object that looked like the shelter over a sheep trough, save that, fortunately, there was no trough beneath it now.
"Quick, Aymar!" he exclaimed, almost dragging him along. They had to crawl in on hands and knees, but once inside it was just possible for Laurent, at all events, to sit upright. Aymar lay down at full length, his head on his friend's knee, and shut his eyes. And then the rain descended.
"Talking about rain," observed Laurent suddenly, "how wet did you get yesterday?"
"I don't know," replied Aymar. "I did not trouble about it. You talk as if I were a girl, my dear Laurent. Do you suppose I have not slept scores of times in the open before—and in the rain, too? I am a Chouan . . . that is to say, I was," he added in a lower tone, and fell silent.
"I wonder if a thunderstorm ever came à propos," he remarked a few moments later to the accompaniment of the first peal, and shivered suddenly.
Laurent looked down at him rather unhappily. "I am afraid you must be horribly tired, and the devil knows how long this storm is going on. I wish we had something left to eat."
But Aymar answered, without opening his eyes, in a voice gone suddenly remote and drowsy, "I am neither tired nor hungry—a little cold, that is all. I think I am going to sleep."
Perhaps that was the best thing that could happen to him, and if it did, Laurent saw some chance of slipping off his own coat and wrapping it round him. But he had had little sleep himself that night, and, lulled by the downpour on the shingled roof, he half dozed off as he sat there. He was recalled by a violent shiver running through the shoulders resting against his knees.
"That letter," said their owner reflectively. "That letter . . . I am glad I burnt it. It was the only way to cleanse it. It had been in his horrible hands all this while." Here he shivered again, but went on almost immediately, his eyes fixed on some point out in the rainy landscape, "Yes, he had it all the time, and never guessed. And downstairs, for all his questioning . . . I could hardly bear it . . . he never found out."
"That was fortunate," murmured Laurent vaguely, uncertain whether Aymar were speaking to himself, or expecting a reply. But speculation gave way to alarm the next moment, when a third shudder drove through L'Oiseleur's body, and his teeth clicked together.
"Mon ami, what is the matter with you? Are you so cold as that? Come up closer to me. Confound this rain!" And he edged himself nearer, till he could get his companion into his arms. Aymar's hands were as cold as ice, but there was a faint flush on either cheek.
"I saw the Colonel looking at my wrists once," he began again, with a complete absence of his usual extreme reserve. "He said . . . he said it was not there that he should like to put a rope. . . ." The narrator gave a sort of laugh. "It was round here!" He carried his hand to his throat, and a double flicker of lightning ran through the shelter as though to emphasize this disclosure.
"Damn him!" exclaimed Laurent passionately, while the long roll reverberated overhead.
"I suppose he might have done it if he had chosen," proceeded Aymar with the same uncanny fluency. "We could not either of us have prevented him, could we, Laurent? They laughed, some of them. . . . I did want very much to stand all the time . . . but I was not able to. I had to sit down. And I did not mean to lose my temper, but I did—once—and it only made it worse for me, because——" But his teeth were now chattering so that he could get no further.
"Oh, don't try to talk!" cried Laurent. "And why, in God's name, are you shivering like this?"
For his brief experience of nursing had been mainly surgical, and he had never imagined that shivering was other than a semi-voluntary action. But Aymar's whole body was beginning to be convulsed every few seconds by a sort of galvanic shock, and his teeth were now going like castanets, to the complete exclusion of any more confidences. Laurent, really frightened, stripped off his own coat and wrapped it round him, attempted to pour brandy between the chattering teeth, most of it being spilled in the process, and held him as closely as he could to the warmth of his own body.
Gradually the fit passed, but it had so exhausted its already spent victim that he lay in Laurent's hold inert, with closed eyes. Whether this seizure were due to last night's exposure or no, it was clear to the perplexed Laurent that Aymar was going to be ill—was ill already, or he would never have volunteered those revelations—and they were nothing like in safety yet. For all the splendid suppleness that had once been his, L'Oiseleur, lying across his knees like this, seemed uncommonly heavy; he knew that he could not carry him more than a few yards.
A ray of sunshine suddenly struck on to the head on his arm. The living bronze glowed (as once in the detested cart) and, looking up, Laurent realized that the storm was over. But of what use was that now? However, he must do his best.
"Aymar," he said, stooping to his ear, "it has stopped raining, and we must go on. Can you hear me?"
"Yes," answered Aymar—and actually began to struggle up. "Yes—I'll try . . ."