(4)
Three more hot summer days slid past much as their seven predecessors had done. But Avoye de Villecresne's face had become shadowed in their passage. And as, on the third afternoon, Aymar, followed by Sarrasin, came over the sloping meadows towards the river, more than the now customary sadness looked from his eyes. Yet, when he caught sight of a fisherman sitting very much at his ease on the other bank, his face lightened.
"Don't jump in this time!" called out Laurent. "Though indeed it is pleasanter weather for a bathe than it was that day."
Aymar crossed by the little bridge. "One doesn't bathe, if one can avoid it, in the presence of Sarrasin," he said, as he came up to him. "He has a most unfortunate conviction that it is his duty to rescue you. My first experience of his zeal was exceedingly painful."
Sarrasin, aware that he was being talked about, sat down, panting vehemently, and self-consciously offered Laurent a paw.
"I wonder what would have happened if he had been with you beside the Dart," murmured Laurent. "Thank you, Sarrasin, once is sufficient honour! If you pant like that you will frighten the fish—not that there are any this afternoon, and no one but a fool would have brought a rod down."
Aymar threw himself at full length on the bank, and, pushing the big dog into a recumbent position, pillowed his head upon him, much to Sarrasin's gratification, and there was silence.
"Has Eveno gone?" asked Laurent presently.
"Yes. I shall soon be strong enough to ride and interview people myself. But I see already . . ." He stopped for a second or two. "Laurent, I am afraid that some day I may have to sell Sessignes."
"What!"
"I can see no other way to get the money I require for pensions and the rest. I can no doubt raise it by loan or mortgage on the place, and I should not dream of selling the estate while my grandmother lived, but as I am at a loss to know how I should repay the borrowed money otherwise——"
Laurent looked across the river at the fair domain, at the towers for which he himself had developed such a feeling. "Aymar, that would be a terrible thing to do!"
"Yes, it would," agreed the Vicomte de la Rocheterie in a hard, unnatural voice. "Seven hundred years has it sheltered us. But then the thing I have already done, unfortunately, is terrible."
There was another silence. Sarrasin snapped his great jaws at a fly. Laurent, thunderstruck, began to turn over with fresh hope a resolve which these last few days had been taking shape in his mind.
"May I say something?" he enquired at last in a somewhat stifled voice.
"You know that you can say anything you like," responded Aymar without moving.
"Even something that you will not like?"
"Even that!"
Laurent fixed his eyes on a point across the river.
"Have you ever thought of digging for treasure in the old part of Sessignes?" he asked.
He was aware that Aymar smiled. "My dear Laurent!"
"If you did," went on Laurent, unperturbed, "you might find a hoard which you could devote to those families. . . . You might! Or I might find one for you!"
"I only wish you could!"
Laurent plucked at the grass. "You would not be very particular as to its date, in that case, would you, Aymar? I mean, you would not require it to be a very ancient treasure?"
"What do you mean?" demanded his friend. "You cannot have been so foolish—forgive me!—as really to have started explorations with that object?"
"No," said Laurent. "I have not, but if I did, I know I should find something. And, as I said, it would not matter for this purpose that it would be modern money, and that I . . . that I should have put it there myself." And as Aymar lifted himself on to his elbow and stared at him, he rushed at the fence. "I have never told you, Aymar, but the fact is that I have become rather absurdly rich since I first met you. Just before I went to Vendée my English grandfather died, and left me nearly all his money—about six thousand pounds a year—and besides that I——"
Aymar had sat up, suddenly paling. "Please don't say any more, Laurent. I am very sorry I ever mentioned the matter to you."
Laurent plucked more desperately than ever at the grass, but he stuck to his guns. "You must forgive me, but you gave me leave to say anything I liked."
"Well?" said Aymar, not encouragingly.
"You know that I should never presume to offer you money——"
"Then what are you doing now?"
Try as he would Laurent could not help wincing at the tone. He looked at the dancing water in silence for a moment.
"It is not for your own benefit, the money, Aymar! Am I to stand by and see you ruin yourself—see you break your heart—when I could so easily prevent it? Why, it would be less than one year's income of this fortune which I do not want and have not yet touched! And after all you have said—because I cannot forget your words, even though I never deserved them—after all that, I am so little to you that you will not let me do you this paltry service! It's"—he laughed with nervousness and anxiety—"on my soul, it's Arbelles over again!"
"You don't know what an impossible thing you are asking," replied Aymar, his head turned away.
"You have done more impossible," pleaded Laurent. "You went and asked a favour of your enemy . . . for the sake of another. Yet you will not take a gift from a friend—though that, too, is for the sake of others."
There was a long pause. Sarrasin had a fresh access of snapping, and in the Aven a fish actually jumped.
"Perhaps I might . . . take it as a loan," said Aymar at length with, it was clear, the utmost difficulty.
"And sell Sessignes to repay it!—Oh, Aymar, it's not for yourself! I . . . I think it's for me!"
Another silence. Aymar's head was still turned away; he was digging one hand into the grass farther than Laurent had ever done. Did it mean that he was going to accept? Oh, if only it might be!
And then Laurent became aware of someone approaching the stream.
"Here is your cousin!" he exclaimed in surprise. Aymar looked up, and they both scrambled to their feet.
"Eulalie de Morsan has just arrived, Aymar," Laurent heard Avoye say, as Aymar went over the bridge towards her. "She is going to stay the night. I came to tell you; Grand'mère is asking for you."
On this news Aymar made no comment; he merely thanked its bearer for her trouble. And as Laurent, inwardly cursing the moment chosen by Mme de Morsan for her arrival, went up to the house with the cousins, he learnt that the lady was on her way home from Aix-les-Bains or somewhere, and had elected to pay them a visit en passant. His annoyance was, however, a little dispelled on hearing that she had brought with her the news that Paris had capitulated to the Allies three days ago.