(7)
It was nearly two o'clock in the morning—but not of the next morning, the morning after that. Laurent rose from replenishing the little fire which was always burning. In a few moments M. Perrelet would relieve him and he could sleep.
Thanks to the old surgeon, L'Oiseleur had been saved—for the second time—but it had been touch and go for some hours. Before nightfall on Friday they had succeeded in pulling him back to a kind of consciousness, and all yesterday he had lain quiescent, so exhausted that it had been difficult to rouse him to take nourishment, but at least in outward peace, as Laurent kept assuring himself, for the brutality which had been practised on La Rocheterie in this room haunted him, waking or sleeping. M. Perrelet indeed was amazed at the rally, considering that the victim's heart was, and would long remain, so much impaired.
Laurent stood now for a moment at the foot of the bed—and had a sudden feeling that he should like to hang a laurel wreath there. Then M. Perrelet entered in a dressing-gown, and waved him to his own couch.
He woke about five o'clock to find, to his surprise, a low-voiced conversation going on behind the screen. Since his collapse La Rocheterie had not uttered a word.
". . . kept me alive for that!" he caught the end of a sentence, in his broken, trailing voice, suffused nevertheless with bitterness.
"Now, my boy," he heard M. Perrelet reply gently, "you cannot honestly think that was my purpose, can you? If I could have Colonel Guitton tried for attempted murder, I would willingly do so. But you must not think of it any more; it is over now."
The voice said, "Till they try again!"
"No, no!" The old surgeon sounded genuinely shocked. "The Colonel has left Arbelles. It shall never happen again, I swear it. And you did not tell him anything; you know that, don't you?"
"Yes . . . but . . . he asked me . . . he dared to ask me!" gasped L'Oiseleur ". . . and before M. de Courtomer!"
(Yes, he had recognized him—he had realized that he was there!)
"Come, come, my child, you must be quiet!" said the doctor. "I know that you went through a dreadful time, but you kept your mouth shut—that's really all you care about, isn't it? Now see if you cannot get to sleep again—to please me!"
And to Laurent's relief there was silence for a little; then the ghost of a voice began again. The question itself was inaudible.
"M. de Courtomer is here," answered M. Perrelet. "He is asleep just now. He helps me to look after you, you know."
"He is here—in the room? Always?"
"Certainly. You cannot be left."
"But, my God," came desperately from the bed, "that is the one thing I want . . . to be left alone. And instead of that he . . . who knew me once . . . was in the room . . . and heard . . . everything! Can't he be put somewhere else . . . can't I be alone?" The voice was almost sobbing in its entreaty.
Poor Laurent, in his bed, covered his face with his hand. So much for his dreams of a grateful recognition! Yes, that was it, as he had felt at the time—the intolerable humiliation, to a very proud and sensitive spirit, of having had an acquaintance a witness of Friday's proceedings.
There was a movement behind the screen. "Chut! mon enfant!" said the doctor. "You must not agitate yourself like this! M. de Courtomer is here of his own free will to nurse you, and he is so much your champion that he has twice already fought your battle with the Colonel. And if he had not fetched me in after that business on Friday——"
"I wish he had not!" broke in the faint, bitter voice. "You are kind, Doctor . . . but if you would only let me die . . ."
This was becoming unbearable. Never had Laurent conceived of the La Rocheterie he had known before, though he was young enough, than as a man—even, by reason of his quiet self-possession and his prestige, than as a man older, perhaps, than he really was. He sounded now like a broken-hearted boy. The listener put his hands over his ears.
He kept them there till he was sure that the voices had ceased. A little afterwards he heard M. Perrelet emerge very cautiously and tiptoe over to his bed. The young man's instant pretence of being asleep did not deceive the doctor. He bent over him till his mouth was almost at his ear and whispered, "Did you by any chance hear what was said just now?"
"Yes," breathed Laurent with his eyes shut.
"You won't take any notice of it, my dear boy, will you?" pleaded the surgeon in the same almost inaudible tone. "He's nearly crazy after that damnable strain."
"That's obvious. And therefore—after what he said—I had better be moved elsewhere."
"No, no, I can't spare you. He will get over this morbid feeling about you as the effects of that scene wear off."
"But shall I get over his having had it?" thought Laurent. He said nothing, but suddenly buried his face in the pillow.
"You will stay—and take no notice?" queried the voice in his ear; and after a moment Laurent gave a smothered assent.
The grasp on his shoulder tightened. "Good boy!" whispered M. Perrelet, and went away.
But it was not easy to carry out that promise. Already, by the time that the hour for dressings arrived, L'Oiseleur had contrived, without the aid of speech, to make his feelings about the unwilling witness so clear that Laurent was constrained to help himself through that ordeal by pretending that the set and frozen face below him belonged to someone whom he had never seen before. And indeed it could not have shown less sign of recognition had this really been the case.
At the conclusion M. Perrelet suddenly laid hold of his patient's arm.
"Time I had a look at these wrists again," he murmured, and began to unfasten the little bandage.
The wrist jerked weakly in his hold. "No!" ejaculated the Vicomte de la Rocheterie with a catch of the breath. "Leave them alone, please!"
Low as it was, the tone was a command, which the frown emphasized. M. Perrelet just glanced at the speaker. "My dear boy," he said, almost equally low, "it is necessary," and went on unwinding. But Laurent, averting his face, slipped away from the bed, lest he should see the marks of those accursed ropes, and L'Oiseleur have him again as an unwilling witness of his humiliation.
He was not so to avoid it. "Will you please bring that fresh lint I left on the table," came the surgeon's voice a moment later. For an instant Laurent had the idea of saying that he could not find it—the next, he snatched it angrily up and went round the barrier. La Rocheterie's head was turned stiffly away, but Laurent had the impression that he was grinding his teeth. And on the unbandaged wrist in M. Perrelet's hold he saw just what he had guessed and feared. . . . Yes, he must have struggled, indeed! Perhaps, still worse, he had been dragged about. . . . Laurent silently put the lint on the bed and went away again.
And there was more than one moment during that day—it was the Sunday—when, despite his promise to M. Perrelet, Laurent found himself saying, "I'll be hanged if I stay here!" For L'Oiseleur's demeanour towards him continued to be of a politeness so stony that his guardian would really much have preferred him to be rude. After that one approach to a breakdown to which, in his precarious state, insults and torture had brought him, La Rocheterie had evidently summoned up all his pride and his endurance. There was nothing of that heartrending boyishness about him now; he was a man again, and a desperately unapproachable one. It was extraordinary that a person who was so utterly helpless and dependent on another could contrive to keep that other so freezingly at arm's length. Yet, directly Laurent had come to the conclusion that next time M. Perrelet entered he must ask to be moved elsewhere, he had only to look at his charge lying there to feel that he could not bring himself to desert him. However much La Rocheterie might not want him, he needed him terribly.
And always at the back of Laurent's mind was the instinctive knowledge that, before he was brought to Arbelles, he must have been through some terrible experience to be so completely changed. The very attractive, courteous, self-contained young man of last year, with his modesty, his easy and quiet gaiety, his consideration for others, was entirely gone, and in his place was a phantom of that figure, sombre and tortured, too sore in spirit to accept the most willing sympathy and service. His very voice was changed. No; it was plain to Laurent that the slander was at the back of all that had happened to him even before he came to the château. And what exactly had happened? Every day, every hour, the situation seemed to blossom into fresh horrible possibilities; and before that agonized silence one was helpless. For that he would hear now from the victim's own lips the story of what he had undergone seemed so improbable that Laurent had given up considering it. The best he could hope for was that he could continue to nurse him without being asked point-blank to leave him. And though he would abstain from that request now, directly L'Oiseleur was well enough to be left he should ask to be moved—instantly.
It was a small but very wounding occurrence which fixed him in this resolve. He noticed during the afternoon that a lock of the hair which he had cut so badly, straggling over his forehead, was bothering the helpless man. Laurent could not think at first why he was feebly moving his head first to one side, then to the other, but when L'Oiseleur began slowly to try to disengage a hand from beneath the bedclothes to deal with the annoyance Laurent jumped up, murmuring, "Let me do that for you!" But as he gently put aside the recalcitrant lock he felt La Rocheterie shrink—most indubitably shrink—from his touch, flashing up at him as he did so an extraordinary glance of hostility—it could be nothing else. And Laurent had gone instantly away without a word.
He went to bed that night feeling almost desperate. His patient had intimated in the most icy tones that he did not wish for anything during the night, and that he would be extremely obliged if the light might not be kept burning as hitherto. Laurent knew that he was doing very wrong in acceding to these requests (which partook more of the nature of commands), but he simply had not the courage to contravene them.