(3)
"And so M. Perrelet, back at Arbelles, is the nearest doctor?" repeated Laurent thoughtfully, looking at Mme Allard.
Madeleine Allard was forty-nine years of age and still comely. She had lost her husband, but she had at La Baussaine six cows, ten pigs, fifty-five hens, and an idiot son. To her that afternoon as she was kneading bread had entered her afflicted offspring making signs that there were strangers approaching. Now one of these strangers—only to Madeleine he was no stranger at all—was ensconced in her absent son Jérôme's bed, and the other was standing in her kitchen making enquiries about medical aid, which would certainly have to be procured somehow.
"Could you send for M. Perrelet then, Madame?" asked Laurent.
"I could send Jeannot with a letter, Monsieur—he could not take a message, poor boy. He is not as other boys. And, as villages frighten him, he would probably deliver the letter at the wrong house, or perhaps not at all. Yet certainly M. le Vicomte must have a doctor, and as soon as possible.—Could you not go for M. Perrelet yourself, Monsieur?"
"Yes, of course, I could," said Laurent reflectively. There did seem something ironical in the prospect of abandoning his friend, whom he had escaped to find, and risking, for his sake, the experience of a much more rigorous captivity. He would probably never succeed in reaching the village, for the whole garrison of Arbelles must be on the alert about him; still, even if he were retaken, he could doubtless contrive to get a message to the surgeon (who was to return, he knew, that evening). "Yes," he resumed, "I will go directly it is dusk—if M. de la Rocheterie is not better."
Mme Allard intimated that in her opinion there was small hope of that. Aymar's condition had deeply shocked her. To Laurent, indeed, it was still something of a mystery how he had succeeded in transporting him from the sheep-shelter to La Baussaine, seeing that no real reliance could be placed on his legs, and less and less on the directing brain. And the effort had tired Laurent himself more than a little, as Mme Allard for all her preoccupation now observed, and she begged him to eat and sleep; should the soldiers come she could very quickly hide him under the cider-press . . . but where to conceal M. le Vicomte, ill as he was, she did not know. So, for Aymar's own sake, Laurent had to tell her, to her bewilderment, that the Bonapartists would not search for him, since they had released him themselves.
The light was failing when, some hours later, he went down the three steps into the low-ceilinged bedroom on the ground floor to take his final resolution; for though he would go unhesitatingly, he still hoped that he would not have to go. But Mme Allard, who was sitting there, shook her head, and Aymar, sunk in the big, billowing farmhouse bed, now seemed very drowsy and confused; his hands were as hot as they had previously been cold, and his breathing sounded quick and shallow. And when Laurent tried to feel his pulse he said dreamily, "You will find that much more convenient, Monsieur, when the bandages are off." . . . No; Aymar must undoubtedly have M. Perrelet's care, and he himself, if necessary, pay the very unpleasant price of obtaining it. He dared not take an articulate farewell of him, lest his intention should be divined. "Good-bye, Aymar," he said within himself, and went sadly from the room.
Then he was furnished by Mme Allard, who had followed him, with an unattractive blue blouse and a sort of rough cape smelling horribly of the farmyard, and an old hat, and directions for his five-mile journey to Arbelles, to be taken, for greater safety, across country. And, looking down at himself, the Comte de Courtomer thought what a pity it was that the only patois with which he could sustain the character which he represented was broad Devonshire.
He regretted this still more when, between ten and eleven, he stood under the smoky oil lamp opposite M. Perrelet's door in the main street of Arbelles village, where every house, including the surgeon's, seemed to be wrapped in the blankest of slumbers. He had had an eventless journey, so far as human kind were concerned, though the darkness had betrayed him pretty deeply into a stagnant ditch between two fields. By carefully avoiding the neighbourhood of the château he appeared very successfully to have avoided any of its garrison; but now a series of modest taps on M. Perrelet's front door—and he dared not attempt a more sonorous summons—had failed to bring any one. If he could not get admitted to have private speech with the doctor his position was rather precarious, for any public parley was highly undesirable. But that must be risked; as must, also, the chance of that discreetly curtained window not being that of M. Perrelet's bedchamber after all.
Laurent withdrew from his pocket a handful of small stones collected en route for just such an emergency, and launched them upwards. They tinkled against the glass and fell back baffled on to the cobbles. Twice he did it. Then the curtains were violently wrenched asunder, and between them appeared a stout white form. In another moment the sash went smartly up.
No miracle-working saint could have been more rapturously greeted by a suppliant than was that nightcapped head by the young man in the street below. But he dared not proclaim his rapture.
"Who is it?" asked the head shortly.
"You are wanted, Monsieur Perrelet," responded Laurent in a cautious tone.
"That's no answer," snapped the surgeon. "I'm always being wanted. But I've got to be wanted to some purpose to-night. Are you from Mme Lambert?"
"No, from Mme Allard. It's a very urgent case," pleaded Laurent. "If you would only come down——"
"Mme Allard! Why, she's fifty, and a widow!" objected M. Perrelet. "Stay, is it that cousin of hers I promised to attend? You are sure it is not a false alarm?
"Oh, no!" replied Laurent earnestly. "It's . . . an old patient of yours. If you will only come down I will explain. He's been having the most horrible shivering fits, and now——"
"He!" fairly bellowed M. Perrelet from the window. "He! Why did you not say at once that it was a man? For nothing but a confinement will I stir from this house to-night! Go away, wretched bucolic!" And he started furiously to draw down the window.
Now Laurent was indeed desperate. Having no stave that he might uplift, and fearing to hit M. Perrelet if he threw a stone, he swirled off the cloak that he wore and sent it flying window-wards. A good deal of its unsavoury bulk caught in the descending sash and stayed its progress. The window went up again with even more passion than had propelled its descent.
"What is this filthy object you have thrown up?" demanded M. Perrelet in a fury. "Pah! it stinks! I shall be infected with I know not what!" And he threw the offensive garment down again with all his force at its wearer.
But Laurent, still afraid to pronounce either his or Aymar's name, was now trying a different and more hazardous method of self-revelation. He stepped back across the narrow street and came under the light of the lamp on the other side, where, snatching off his hat, he exposed his features to its rays, M. Perrelet, and any one else whom the altercation might have drawn to their windows. And at the sight of this young man in a blouse, holding his hat rigidly at arm's length and pointing to his own face with the other hand, all M. Perrelet's powers of speech (fortunately) deserted him for the moment. He disappeared from the window without even shutting it, which Laurent took for a hopeful sign. Darting across to the door, he was standing just outside when it opened to reveal the doctor, now clad in a dressing-gown and with a candle in his hand.
He waved the intruder into the nearest room and then said in a resigned manner, "Now, perhaps, you will be good enough to explain, Monsieur de Courtomer, why you are serenading me. I presume you are on parole. It appears to be a masquerade as well . . . pfui! that garment again!" And holding his nose he added, "I will gladly contribute some bergamot to your costume."
"You can't object to it, sir, as much as I do, who have had its company for five miles," protested Laurent. "But let me discharge my errand, and then I will leave you at once, or I may get you into trouble. You obviously don't know that I escaped last night from the château!"
"The deuce you did! Why this curious fancy for Arbelles then, and this flattering midnight visit to my door? Ah, I forgot; you said you wanted me for someone or other."
"I do," said Laurent significantly, "and I'll tell you why!"
Now M. de Courtomer had counted, during his trudge, on making some impression upon M. Perrelet with this recital, if ever he succeeded in penetrating to his presence. Nor was he disappointed; indeed he was satisfied—and even surprised—at the little doctor's language, and, considering what he himself felt on the subject of Colonel Guitton, his standard of requirement was not low. So angry, in fact, was M. Perrelet that he made short work of Laurent's half-reluctant request that, if he did not actually give him up, he should see no more of him. M. Perrelet insisted, on the contrary, on driving him back with him in his gig, into which the young man was now directed to put the mare, while her owner dressed. And very shortly the doctor and the escaped prisoner were driving comfortably away in the darkness.
Once past the château gates unchallenged (for the sentries knew this equipage well) Laurent remarked cheerfully that he should have liked a peep at the dungeon, of whose preparation he had already informed his companion.
"Humph," said M. Perrelet, "you would not have found it at all amusing, and it would probably have meant rheumatism for the rest of your days—no, that's wrong, for I should have had you out of it in a brace of shakes. But you don't seem to realize what a risk you are running for that young man. Not but what," he added, "there's something about him, even at his most difficult, that makes one want to do things for him."
"You once said that you felt something of the sort the first moment you saw him, I think," observed Laurent.
"So I did," assented the old doctor, "and he wasn't looking his best, either . . . lying there senseless on the floor of the hall, half stripped, roughly bandaged, and very extensively bloodstained. Add to that your friend Rigault had thoughtfully thrown a bucket of water over him, in the hopes of bringing him round—young idiot! I said, 'Good God, what's all this?' for every officer in the garrison seemed to be standing round him; and the Colonel replied, 'It's the Royalist leader L'Oiseleur, who has just been brought in shot—dying, if not dead. But I want him saved, if you can possibly do it.' . . . I thought myself at first that it was hopeless . . . cold as ice he was to touch anywhere—and then that damned pool of water. However, I got him wrapped up and had bricks heated, and while I worked at him they told me the story of how he had been found and what he had done—a shocking story, and one which at first I saw no reason to doubt. . . . But somehow, when I had his head on my arm, although as you know I'm no sentimentalist"—Laurent smiled in the darkness—"I found myself thinking, 'I never saw any man who looked less like doing what they say he has done!' . . . Yes, when he decided at last to come back to the world he was quitting, and his chest lifted a trifle, and I said to myself, 'Continue, my young man; you've had the habit of breathing for about five-and-twenty years, I suppose; just take it up again—it's quite easy!' . . . when that happened, I was ridiculously pleased, I admit . . . I little thought I should have it all to do over again within the week!"
They drove on in silence for a while, M. Perrelet having presumably just drained his powers of invective to the bottom over Guitton's latest brutality, and Laurent conscious that he himself could not produce anything new or better.
"Yes," resumed the old surgeon after a few minutes, "I've changed my mind. Perhaps you have converted me. I am convinced now that La Rocheterie is innocent, and that he knows who is guilty, and, though I think he's foolish, I cannot help admiring him for holding his tongue, because I can see what it has cost him.—You know, Monsieur de Courtomer," he added gravely, "there were times when I was a little afraid for his reason, especially when it turned out that his men did shoot him. But he may thank his stars for the activity of that cavalry patrol on the first of May."
"Cavalry patrol? . . . but it was not cavalry that found him, surely," returned Laurent absently; he was thinking of that desperate "I cannot clear myself."
"I know that. I mean the one that captured you, my boy!"
And on that they drove round a turn and straight into a patrol themselves . . . only it was infantry this time.
M. Perrelet acted with singular promptitude.
"Imbeciles! no, I am not to be stopped for any senseless questions! Sacrebleu! you know who I am—Dr. Perrelet from Arbelles, and I am off in a tearing hurry to the farm of La Claviere. What?—this is the boy who fetched me, of course! Let go the mare's head—she'll have me in the ditch! And every moment you delay me——"
A lantern flashed. "It's M. Perrelet all right," said a gruff voice. "Let go!" The surgeon slashed at the mare, who plunged, and the lantern light rocked past Laurent's face without revealing it. They were off again.
Laurent drew a long breath. "Monsieur Perrelet, you ought to be a general! I suppose this is the last place they would expect to find me. But if Guitton discovers——"
"Je m'en fiche de lui," observed the little doctor with great calm. "Now, I wonder if those gentry have been looking for you over at La Baussaine, and worrying that lad of mine—you're both of you nothing but lads to me. Short of that, it is better than anything one could have hoped for, that the place should be searched while you are out of it."
And when they got there, they found that this desirable thing had really come to pass. Laurent was rewarded, therefore, for having run into danger by being preserved from it. No, said Madeleine, they had not troubled much about M. le Vicomte; their business was not, they said, with the red-haired renegade, whatever they meant by that word—and anyhow M. Aymar's hair was not red! She thought that he was rather better the last hour or so; at any rate, he was quite sensible.
Aymar was, indeed, to Laurent's great relief, much more himself; he gave M. Perrelet his most charming smile as he stretched out a hot, dry hand and began to thank him for coming, a proceeding which the latter soon cut short.
"No—and M. de Courtomer doesn't want any thanks, either! Be quiet, young man! Have you got a pain there when you breathe—or there? I thought so. Have you been coughing?—Monsieur de Courtomer, oblige me by going to bed! No; I will not have you here to-night; it is not necessary."
But the moment his back was turned L'Oiseleur beckoned.
"How could you do it, Laurent!" he whispered, seizing his hands. "I should never have consented if I had known. No man ever had a friend like you! . . . But I will not try to thank you; it has gone beyond thanks between you and me now!"
"Go to sleep, mon cher," said Laurent.
"I would, only . . . it's so odd, every now and then I am in the wood again . . . I can count the trees—nine beeches, and the may-tree, and——"
"What!" exclaimed M. Perrelet, turning round "—still there? Be off at once!"
So Laurent threw himself on his bed and slept till nearly sunrise. Then, feeling suddenly wakeful, he thought he would see if M. Perrelet would let him relieve his vigil for a little.
In spite of the prohibition he crept downstairs to Aymar's door. He heard his voice, so he must be awake. He opened the door gently without knocking. Before he had time to get inside, M. Perrelet was on him, and, driving him back into the passage, closed the door behind them both.
"What do you want?" he demanded quite fiercely. "I thought I told you I would not have you here!"
"I'm so sorry——" began Laurent meekly.
"Then don't come again!" snapped the doctor, and he went in as quickly as he had come out.
"And I was going to do him a good turn!" thought Laurent, as half ruefully, half thankfully he went back to bed.