(8)
It was evening, saffron and sea-green. Jeannot had come back from Port-Marie with a letter. Michel Royer would receive the two gentlemen, but they must not arrive till dark, and he would meet them at the turning under the chestnuts, half a mile out of the village.
"I shall very likely leave France altogether."
Whatever Laurent said or did in that wind-blown, lovely, interminable day of waiting had those words sounding through it. Surely, though Aymar might feel, as he had said, that he was unable to clear himself, surely, with the consciousness of innocence to sustain him he might try—or, at any rate, remain and mutely endure till that very endurance should speak for him. Instead of that, L'Oiseleur, the incarnation of courage and daring, was contemplating running away! That, surely, could only mean one thing.
The ramrod with its attendant heroism and horror had altered nothing; facts were too hard to be melted in the crucible of emotion. Laurent began to see that now. And, numb with misery, he fought in the little garden-plot with the spectre which yesterday, in the same place, he had thanked God was laid for ever.
At last it was dusk, and they could start. That Aymar's burnt arm should run no risk of contact with anything they put him on the right hand of the one long seat; Laurent sat next him, and Jeannot drove from the left. And very soon Madeleine and her tearful farewells and the low buildings of La Baussaine were gone.
Heavy clouds were lumbering up over what had been the sunset. Aymar hardly answered anything that was said to him, and indeed conversation was difficult, for the idiot boy's driving was rudimentary, the farm cart, though light, springless, and the roads which they had to take abominable—one succession of deep ruts, in and out of which they continuously rolled and jolted. About halfway it began to rain. Laurent silently arranged the piece of sacking provided round his friend's shoulders, and as they sat there, with bent heads, holding their rough cape round them, it seemed to him that they were rather a sorry pair of outcasts. Yet it might have been amusing and venturous, this odyssey. Perhaps that was what L'Oiseleur was feeling so intensely. But if that horrible thing should be true . . . he had made himself the outcast.
And more than once Laurent's thoughts went back to that drive in England, rather more than a year ago, when he hardly knew him, and was so elated at taking home a lion. He remembered thinking afterwards that he had been too garrulous, and that his guest in consequence had withdrawn himself a little. Now L'Oiseleur was infinitely farther away than when he had been a stranger; and Laurent himself had never had less heart for converse. At last they came to the sharp turn of the road where they were to meet Royer. But even in the gloom under the trees it was apparent that there was no one there. Aymar climbed wearily down, remarking that they were perhaps too punctual, and, the idiot boy refusing to wait on events, but driving off again, the two fugitives were left stranded in the semi-darkness to await their host. The rain, however, had stopped.
"This begins not to be amusing," remarked Aymar after a few minutes; and indeed there was no amusement in his voice. "Dieu! How tired I am!"
He had sat down on a log that lay, in the long wet grass, close to a broken-down gate which had once closed the entrance to a little lane, and against this gate he now leant back. Overhead the chestnut leaves were gently dripping.
"I'll go along the road a little and see if I can meet the man," said Laurent.
In a few moments he came striding back, rather angry.
"Aymar, where are you? A confoundedly annoying thing has happened. I met Royer in the road there, and he says he has changed his mind. It is too risky, he thinks, to take us into his house in the village, but he says that just along the coast to our left there is a smugglers' cave, the 'Panier', which we can easily reach, and which is quite habitable. He will show us the way, and he is bringing some provisions with him. He will be here himself in a minute or two."
Aymar on his log in the dusk was silent for a couple of seconds, then he said, "If this is a joke, it is a damnably bad one."
"It is not a joke. I am far too much annoyed to jest. But of course we cannot force the man to take us in."
"Well, I," declared L'Oiseleur, "am not going to set out at this time of night for a cave along the coast."
"But you cannot spend the night here by the side of the road!" cried Laurent.
"Why not?" enquired his friend.
"My dear Aymar, after that fever—itself the result of a night in the open!"
"I assure you," replied Aymar, dropping his head on to his hand, "that I don't care if I get a hundred fevers. I am not going any farther. I . . . can't."
Laurent stood looking down at him in dismay. L'Oiseleur's courage failing him at last! What on earth was he to do?
"Let us go to the inn at Port-Marie then—if there is one—and risk it," suggested he in some desperation.
"You mean that you would run the risk for my sake? I have already been told that I allow you to carry your devotion too far. No; go to your cave by yourself; I will find it in the morning—perhaps."
"I wish M. Perrelet had minded his own business!" said Laurent sharply. "Come on, Aymar!"
"I tell you I am going no farther. Leave me, for God's sake!"
"Don't be absurd! How can you imagine that I should do such a thing?"
Aymar made a dimly seen gesture. "It's all I ask! . . . Leave me—leave me! You would if you knew!"
And, as by a fleet arrow, Laurent was transfixed by annoyance. If only he did know instead of having to listen to these eternal hints and innuendoes!
"But till I know!" he riposted sharply. "L'Oiseleur, for God's sake be a man! . . . Here is my arm."
Aymar pulled himself instantly to his feet. "No, thanks!—Which is the way?"
It was too dark to see his face, but his tone showed only too clearly the effect of this adjuration. Even as he asked the question Michel Royer had come up. Laurent, keeping down something in his own breast at once miserable and fierce, drew the fisherman a little aside and whispered to him, "My friend is ill. He may want assistance—but don't touch his right arm. Give me half of what you are carrying."
The transfer was made. "This is the way, gentlemen," said the vague figure, in a hoarse voice which seemed to have known many tempests, and led off past the broken gate and down the very track by whose entrance Aymar had been sitting. Aymar followed, without a glance at his friend, and that friend brought up the rear, in a perfect daze of misery, irritation, and anxiety.