(5)
At the conclusion of his vigil in the morning Laurent, heavy-eyed but relieved, was rewarded with praise. A little later another milestone was passed: Aymar de la Rocheterie spoke for the first time.
Laurent had already pricked up his ears when he heard M. Perrelet, on the inner side of the screen, saying to him encouragingly, "Ah, now I am beginning to be pleased with you!"
And to this a voice—more a breath than a voice, and broken at that—said, slowly and with effort,
"You are the doctor, Monsieur? . . . Where am I?"
"In the château of Arbelles," responded M. Perrelet, "where we are going to make you quite well again."
"How long . . ."
"Since Monday evening. This is Thursday morning."
"Arbelles," murmured the voice. There was a pause; then it said, "But that Royalist officer . . . here sometimes . . . ?"
"He is a prisoner like you, Monsieur," responded M. Perrelet. There was a moment's silence, and then the wounded man said,
"And it was the . . . Bonapartists then who . . . brought me here?"
To some sudden strand of anguish in the voice M. Perrelet replied soothingly, "Well, it does not much matter who brought you. Yes, they found you unconscious. Now you had better not talk any more. I am going to do your dressings."
He was obeyed. Indeed it was obviously as much as La Rocheterie could do to retain his hold on consciousness at all during the next half-hour. But he made no shadow of protest or complaint, and when at last the business was over, he lay motionless again, with his eyes shut, just a little more nearly the hue of the sheets than before.
He seemed in fact to be in a drowse when M. Perrelet came back to the bedside with a towel and the bandage scissors in his hand. "I meant to have cut off this long hair before," he remarked to Laurent, still on the farther side of the bed. "He will be much more comfortable with it gone. Curious colour!" He touched a bronze ripple.
"You are going to cut it off!" exclaimed Laurent in a low tone. The intention seemed almost sacrilege.
The surgeon nodded. "At least, you shall do it, while I hold his head up."
"Oh, but . . ." said Laurent, hesitatingly accepting the scissors, "perhaps he would not wish it. . . . Unless of course it is necessary. . . ."
"I don't know that it is necessary," returned M. Perrelet, "but——"
Here, immensely to the surprise of both of them, he over whose body they were holding this debate opened his eyes and faintly said something. The old doctor bent down to catch it, but Laurent, whose hearing was sharper, had no need to stoop. L'Oiseleur had whispered, "Cut it off. . . . I shall not want it so . . . any more. . . ."
After that there was nothing to say. But Laurent had his teeth in his underlip as he played the executioner, nervously clipping away at the "tiresome stuff," as its owner had once so insouciantly called it, till the shoulder-long locks, curling a little at the ends, lay like autumn beech-leaves on the linen.
"Nous n'irons plus aux bois,
Les lauriers sont coupés,"
—that most haunting couplet came into his head meanwhile, to stay there all the rest of the morning.
"That will be much better, thank you, Monsieur de Courtomer," said M. Perrelet, settling the shorn head back again.
Was it only Laurent's fancy that a slight change passed over Aymar de la Rocheterie's half-conscious face at the name?
And, waking that afternoon from a short doze himself, Laurent found his charge's conscious gaze fixed full on him. As Laurent's glance met his the very faintest tinge of colour mounted to his face—he was too bloodless to show more. But he looked away, saying nothing.
Laurent felt certain, however, that he had recognized him. In his present great prostration this was probably a shock; he must give him time to get over it. He would obviously have to wait a little for the story of the doings in the wood; La Rocheterie would not have the strength to tell him yet.
Nor, perhaps, the inclination, it occurred to him later, when, having asked the wounded man whether there was anything he could do to make him more comfortable, he replied in the negative in a voice that seemed to the enquirer, for all its weakness, to be so extremely glacial that he felt a chill at the heart. Had La Rocheterie not recognized him, after all? Should he recall himself to his memory? Better not: M. Perrelet would probably disapprove.
But during the night he was faced with a new idea. Was it possible that L'Oiseleur, even though he had recognized him (for the more Laurent thought about that the more he felt sure that he had), did not want to admit the fact? And if so, in Heaven's name why not? Was it possible that—after all, he did know something of the terrible imputation under which he lay? But even then—Laurent was at a loss, and no amount of studying his face, at moments during the vigil when La Rocheterie was asleep, helped him to a solution. All he gained was a completer impression of the extraordinary effect of candour, innocence, and helplessness given to it in repose by the motionless lashes, as long and curving as those of a boy.
Another morning brought a repetition of the morning before. M. Perrelet seemed pleased, and, presumably of set purpose, he talked a little as he did the dressings. But his patient did not respond to his encouragement, and Laurent could not disguise from himself that he himself was beginning to be a trifle . . . yes, disappointed in him. La Rocheterie was very likely in pain from the wound in his chest with every breath he drew, and, worse, was so drained of vitality that he could not move or lift a hand to help himself, but somehow one would have thought that, by this time, a man of his fibre would have rallied a little in spirit, if not in body. On the contrary, in these last two days Laurent had once or twice surprised on his increasingly haggard face such an expression of utter hopelessness as to be shocked by it. Yet it was puzzling how, despite his silence and inertia, La Rocheterie would now and then turn on M. Perrelet a gaze that seemed pregnant with some unspoken question.
Possibly the doctor himself had noticed this, or it was for some other reason that he gave Laurent a warning before he left.
"In spite of the improvement, he must be kept absolutely quiet," he said. "Whatever you do, don't go talking to him about Pont-aux-Rochers or the wood. I would not answer for the consequences if he is agitated in any way."
"To talk is the last thing he seems to want to do," observed his nurse.
"I am not so sure of that," returned M. Perrelet.