(3)
There was a moon that night. She had the air of sailing fast out to sea like an enchanted ship, for light clouds were blowing inland at a great rate, giving her all the effect of nimble motion. And after her, in a lake of blue, swam Jupiter, following like a pinnace.
"What a night!" exclaimed Laurent, standing at the mouth of the cave. "Aymar, go to bed!"
"Why should I?" demanded his friend, who was sitting there also. "Why should I, too, not enjoy this spectacle? And I was thinking."
Laurent removed his gaze from the heavens.
"Thinking, for one thing," went on Aymar reflectively, "what a fool I was not to have told you all this earlier. It is always a mistake to be a coward, Laurent. But I could not bring myself to it. I could not tell the story in a word or two without producing a false impression either one way or the other, and . . . well, you see that in giving the necessary details I have told you things about myself that I never thought to tell any one in the world. . . . Yet I hated taking all you did for me at Arbelles, and accepting your championship, when you did not know the truth. Day after day I said to myself that to-morrow—and then Guitton put an end to to-morrows."
"Not to speak of the fact," commented Laurent, "that at Arbelles you were never within a mile of being fit to embark on that story. Nor at La Baussaine either, if it comes to that."
"On the contrary, I nearly told you when we were sitting under the pear tree. But this was too recent," he looked down at his bandaged arm, "and you had taken it so ridiculously to heart. It would have given me an unfair advantage."
"Oh, Aymar, you really are——" "sans tache, like your motto," was on Laurent's lips, but he did not say it aloud.
"No," said L'Oiseleur, looking up with a smile, "in this case I was not really a fool, as I suppose you were going to call me. You were too émotionné that afternoon to be capable of judging anything dispassionately. You admitted as much this morning."
"Perhaps so," replied Laurent, who had in fact made a clean breast of everything. "But I was certainly not going to call you a fool just now. I should never dare! Have you any idea, L'Oiseleur, how unapproachable you can make yourself when you wish?"
"How intolerable, I suppose you mean? But I am not being that now, am I? Those first days at Arbelles, however——" He broke off, and looked up at him keenly. "Now, confess, Laurent, that I did not make your task easy for you!"
"It was, perhaps, a little like nursing a porcupine," acknowledged the nurse, smiling. "You would not let me show what I felt. But now that I know what you had just been through, I wonder you did not go out of your mind."
Aymar looked away. "I think I was pretty near it once or twice," he said after a moment, "or I could not have felt, as I did, that everyone in the world was against me—even you. Sometimes I used to dream that it was all a dream—a nightmare. Then I would wake up . . . still in the nightmare. So—I suppose I wanted to hurt someone, too!" He turned his eyes on Laurent again. "Yet you stayed, and put up with it—and with all my subsequent tiresomeness, too! For though I know you have forgiven me for those early days, what about yesterday evening?"
"Yesterday evening?" exclaimed Laurent. What had happened in that remote epoch, yesterday evening?
"Yes, yesterday evening, when I sat in a ditch and refused to stir, and you had to use . . . drastic measures! If I can be unapproachable as you call it, you can certainly be severe, mon ami!"
"Oh, do let's forget about yesterday evening!" cried Laurent, flushing in the moonlight.
"Agreed!" said Aymar, laughing. "As a matter of fact, I don't remember much about the latter part of it. Between trying to come to a decision about the future which I had not expected to have to take for days yet, and the jolting of that infernal cart, I really had such a headache that I could hardly see. You observe that I am not too proud to make excuses—to you."
Laurent suddenly sat down by him. "And what excuses am I to make," he said, averting his face, "for my horrible blindness of this morning? When I saw what I had done, I could have beaten my head against the cave wall."
Aymar put his hand over his. "Never mind. It is the only time you have ever failed—and I daresay I should have made it clearer to you that I was absolutely on the rack till I knew what you thought . . . I don't mind telling you now—only do not let us talk of it again—that in those few minutes, or hours, or whatever they were, when I thought you had thrown me over, I saw a third and much simpler alternative to those of leaving France or staying to face the future. If you had deserted me I should have done what you did this afternoon, Laurent—I should have gone for a swim. . . . But I should not have come back again."
Laurent, hearing the sincerity of that intention in the quiet voice, turned rather pale. Had so much, then, hung on his verdict? He was very far indeed from elation; he had never felt more humble in his life.
"But that would have seemed like a confession of guilt," he murmured, hardly knowing what he said.
"Yes, I know. But I am guilty—in fact, if not in intention."
"My dear Aymar, don't let us go over all that again now! I am sleepy, if you are not." He got up and held out his hand. "Do you think I had better look at your arm again before we turn in?"
Aymar got up, too, shaking his head. "It is quite comfortable."
"You are such a confounded liar about yourself," retorted Laurent, confronting him, "that I never know when to believe you! That worst burn, when I looked at it this morning . . . I wish M. Perrelet——" He stopped, seeing the swift pain on Aymar's face, and then plunged boldly into the subject. "Aymar, what is to be done about Père Perrelet?"
Aymar pushed at the sand with his foot. "Nothing can be done. For him I am condemned out of my own mouth." He sighed suddenly. "Let us go to bed."
As they were both dropping off to sleep Laurent said, "Aymar, I have an idea. Will you give me leave to write to M. Perrelet?"
"To write what?"
"To tell him that whatever he heard that night was not the whole truth. That I know it all now, and can assure him that it is not a dishonourable story, as he must have thought."
"And as he made you think," finished L'Oiseleur drily. Then, after a little silence, he added, "My dear fellow, he would only conclude, either that I had been telling you lies, or that you were very impressionable."
"Aymar, he may be impulsive, but you know that he was extraordinarily fond of you," said Laurent with reproach in his voice. "I think that was why he was so upset."
"Well, write me a certificate then," replied Aymar. Then he dropped his caustic tone, and said quite simply, "You can do whatever you think best, my dear Laurent. I owe him so much that if it would be any compensation to him to have a better opinion of me again I should be glad." And he added, with a deep sigh, as if to himself, "There is a letter that I ought to have written many days ago."
Laurent woke about an hour later, when the moon was shining straight into their refuge. He thought of last night, and gave a long sigh of relief and contentment; and the next moment, though he had believed Aymar asleep, a hand stole into his, and he gripped it in return. There was no need of words, and none were spoken; but when Laurent went to sleep again his friend's hand was still in his.