(8)
That evening, as they took their places for supper in the inn at their next stage, two gentlemen sitting at the neighbouring table finishing their wine suddenly broke off their conversation, stared, and then, after exchanging glances, got up and left the place altogether.
For a moment Aymar looked as though he had been struck in the face; the next, he was showing an almost uncanny self-control. "I knew that man quite well once," he observed quietly, and did not refer to the incident again during the meal.
But that he hardly slept that night Laurent was aware. As they were dressing next morning he suddenly remarked rather drily, "I imagine that yesterday evening, Laurent, must have finally convinced you of the baselessness of your optimistic views about Royalists. You see that what damns me—what you overlooked, perhaps—is my own men's having shot me." And as Laurent admitted that this rumour had, unfortunately, had two months in which to spread uncontradicted, Aymar retorted, "Rumour! It is fact! And how, therefore, can it ever be contradicted?"
So little answer could Laurent find to this observation that he resolved to go to no inn at all that day—the last of their journey—but procured instead a fowl and a bottle of wine to take with them. They halted, therefore, at midday on the outskirts of a wood, and, leaving their chaise, turned a little way up a grassy road which penetrated it. Laurent, bearing the provisions, selected a suitable spot for their consumption under a spreading tree. "You can lean your back against this very comfortably," he announced to his friend, who was following with bent head.
Aymar looked up—and advanced no more.
"Don't you like this place?" asked Laurent, surprised at his expression.
"It is . . . too much in the shade, don't you think?" replied L'Oiseleur indistinctly. "If you don't mind—there—more in the open." And, without waiting for consent, he turned and went back towards the grassy road.
They ate and drank, and did not hurry to regain their vehicle. Aymar indeed disposed himself on his face, his head on his bent left arm, and Laurent settled himself against a fallen tree trunk, and pulled his hat over his eyes. He was a little sleepy.
"I did that man who would not stay in the same room with me a service once," came Aymar's voice suddenly. "He said that he should never forget it. But I suppose the debt is liquidated by my death. For, as I say, Laurent, it was not Pont-aux-Rochers which put an end to me, but the Bois des Fauvettes. I shall erect a tombstone there one day to L'Oiseleur.—But who, I wonder, am I?"
His tone was quiet and reflective; he pulled at a blade of grass as he lay there. And Laurent, nearly as quietly, cursed in French and English the man to whom Aymar had once rendered a service.
"That does no good," observed Aymar. "And if you want to swear at any one . . . Tell me, Laurent, are you at all given to practical joking? If so, let me relate to you the story of a very successful effort of that kind; it is rather instructive."
"But I don't——" began Laurent. Aymar disregarded him.
"There was a young man the other day—a soldier, an officer, I don't know his name—who had a great turn for that sort of thing, and a tolerable gift of playing a part. Happening to be quartered with others one evening at an inn, he was witness of the arrival of a somewhat perturbed old gentleman, come to make enquiries about a lady of his acquaintance, who had been forbidden for a short time to proceed on her journey—as much for her own sake as for any other reason, since the road was required for troops——"
"Aymar!"
"Don't interrupt me, please! The old gentleman came out from his interview with the subaltern's major in a state of panic. He had mistaken the major for the colonel in command, the major had been short with him—bored by the old man's quite needless alarm about the lady, who meanwhile was peaceably sitting in her room upstairs. It occurred to this young officer that it would be excellent fooling to raise this simple old gentleman's fears to an even higher pitch, and utilizing the fact that a woman spy really had been shot by his own side a little before, and making a vague statement about the lady's past which happened to fit the case, he succeeded in so thoroughly terrifying his victim into the belief of her imminent execution that— . . . but perhaps I need not go on."
"Aymar," came at last from Laurent in a tone of horror, "you do not mean to say that this is the whole explanation of the mystery about Mme de Villecresne's danger—the whole cause of . . . everything?"
"Yes," responded L'Oiseleur unemotionally. "Nothing but that; a successful practical joke, helped out by circumstances, played in the first place on a timid and credulous nature, and then, through him, on one perhaps as credulous—too blind to hazards . . . too fond of them, it may be . . ."
Laurent felt frozen in the sunshine. "Was this detestable tale Colonel Richard's avowal of yesterday?"
"Yes. But of course he had no hand whatever in the imposture, and was horrified when he discovered it, which did not happen fully till after the fight. He was not at the Cheval Blanc at all, you see; he was quartered at the presbytère, where Vaubernier found him when he went back with the letter and asked for him by name. But, naturally, when information was offered him he was not going to refuse it. He could well assent to the 'bargain,' promise not to shoot the lady of whose detention at the inn he was not even aware! By sending any one as stupid and gullible as the old Marquis into this business the gods may have been looking for amusement. If so, I think they must have found it."
His voice ceased, and he lay without moving as before. The sun streamed down on the unprotected bronze head and Laurent saw the gleam of it all iridescent, for there were tears in his eyes. All that, those terrible and still unfinished consequences of ruin and suffering—and those not to Aymar alone—the fruit of nothing more than a moment's heartless jocularity . . . it was cruel, utterly and sickeningly cruel! If only he had that inhuman young scoundrel here to shoot—steel was too good for him! He would like to stand him up yonder against a tree, and began fiercely selecting one for the purpose, pitching without reflection on that which he had originally chosen for their own resting-place. . . . And then, as he looked at it, it came to him why Aymar could not bring himself to approach it. Blunderer that he had been . . . it was a beech tree!
He stared at it with hostility. Would the spring ever mean again to Aymar what the spring ought to mean, or would he never in his life see its green leaves except through a mist of blood and shame? He looked down at him again. His head was still pillowed on his arm, and he seemed to be asleep. . . . And he could do nothing for him; indeed it was now clear that, immediately he had got him safely to Sessignes, he would have to leave him. M. de Lanascol's news of further misfortunes in Vendée was confirmed—they had heard it this morning. And just because all there was in such disarray Laurent felt it obligatory on him to return, if he could, and Aymar concurred in this feeling. Yes, he must leave him—to what?
A step on the green track made him look up from his contemplation, and he saw that a man was coming out of the wood—a peasant with a bundle slung on his shoulder, leaning on a long stick. He walked wearily, and he was dusty; his face looked pinched and ill, and his left hand was muffled in a bandage. He seemed about thirty-five.
As he came abreast his pace slackened, and Laurent saw that his left hand was not bandaged—for he had no left hand at all. It was the stump that was wound about. He looked so tired and forlorn that Laurent held out the remains of the fowl and the loaf—without speaking, for he did not want to disturb his friend.
But the wayfarer took no notice whatever of this proffered charity. His eyes were fixed with an extraordinary eagerness on the prone form beside the giver and, exactly at the moment when Laurent recognized this, the man let his staff fall, and said hoarsely, pointing down at the russet hair, "Who is that—for the love of the Virgin, Monsieur, who is that?"
Into Laurent's mind leaped instantly M. de Lanascol's warning. He jumped up, and got between the enquirer and his quarry.
"What do you want with him?" he asked rather roughly. "No," as the man tried to move past him, "not till you tell me your business!" And he seized him by the shoulders.
But Aymar, behind him, was already on his feet. "Let him go, mon ami; it is a friend . . . and a friend I thought I had lost! Eveno!"
He held out his hand, his voice a little breathless. The peasant twisted himself free from Laurent's hold, and dropping at Aymar's feet, kissed them with a sob.
"I heard that you were wounded, L'Oiseleur, and a prisoner—and I was going to Sessignes to ask. You are wounded . . . but free . . . and alive . . . thank God, thank His Mother!"
The passionate devotion that throbbed through his words almost disconcerted Laurent, no half-hearted adherent himself, but he could see that Aymar accepted quite simply even this extreme manifestation. Only, looking down at his follower with evident relief and pleasure, his face suddenly changed. He touched him on the shoulder.
"Did you lose that hand at Pont-aux-Rochers, Eveno?" And there was the sharpest pain in his tone.
"Afterwards, Monsieur le Vicomte. They cut it off at Saint-Goazec. It was nothing; they were very kind to me. If we had won at the bridge—if you had been there—I would not give a sou for it . . . But your arm . . . you are ill yet . . . have you not been very ill, Monsieur Aymar?"
His hand slid caressingly along his leader's sound arm. Aymar stepped back.
"Eveno, that hand of yours is my doing. I was responsible for Pont-aux-Rochers—nobody else. I planned it, and the plan——" He turned his head away.
The peasant's face lit up as he knelt there. "You planned it! We thought it was a mistake of M. de Fresne's. But if it was your plan, L'Oiseleur, there is nothing to regret. You could have had both my hands!"
So the carriage, when they started again, contained Jacques Eveno also, for in spite of his protests Aymar had insisted on conveying him to his home, a plan which necessitated only a slight detour, since he lived with his old father on the borders of a wood about seven miles from Sessignes.
In the vehicle, therefore, he sat, dusty and abashed, answering his leader's questions about his treatment and his comrades' fate, but gazing all the while at L'Oiseleur with the eyes of idolatry. And, mainly for his friend's sake, Laurent was relieved to gather from what he said that the actual death-roll of Pont-aux-Rochers was much lighter than might have been expected.
Just as Aymar was instructing Eveno to come to Sessignes in a day or two to help him make a list of casualties, the chaise stopped. Aymar got out as well as the Chouan, and Laurent followed their example. He saw the smoke ascending blue from a thatched cottage against fir trees, a path going into a wood, and two saddle-horses, one of them a beautiful bay mare, tied to an oak. Aymar, saying farewell to Eveno, did not appear to have noticed these; but suddenly the mare pricked her ears, threw up her head, and whinnied.
Aymar turned. "Hirondelle!" he exclaimed, and made at once for the oak tree, the mare, when she saw him coming, whinnying again and lifting up a suppliant forefoot. But before he got up to her her master stopped, perhaps only perceiving in that moment what Laurent had already noticed, that it was a lady's saddle she was carrying.
At the same moment a man—a groom or servant of some kind—ran round the chaise and gripped Eveno by the arm. "Jacques!" he exclaimed breathlessly, "is it M. le Vicomte? Thank God! We have been so anxious, and this very afternoon Mme la Comtesse has ridden over to see if by chance your father had any news, but he has gone to the village, so she is waiting . . . I beg your pardon, Monsieur; I did not see you!"
"Had you not better tell M. de la Rocheterie?" suggested Laurent.
But Hirondelle's saddle, evidently, had told Aymar already, or else he had overheard. Laurent just saw him stooping his head to enter at the low door.