(9)
"Well, I am glad that is satisfactorily over," remarked M. Perrelet next morning as he washed his instruments at the table in the middle of the room. "All the same, as I told you, I have put him to sleep because that shoulder will hurt for some time like the devil, and I am very anxious to avoid unnecessary heroism—it's bad for his heart. We have had quite enough of necessary this morning as it is."
For though it was out of his power to drug his patient for the operation itself, he had given him a strong opiate immediately afterwards, and to this La Rocheterie had very quickly succumbed.
"Yes, it has been worrying me," went on the old surgeon, "how to get that ball out without too much shock. . . . You look a bit white, my boy. Are you all right?"
"I am very much all right, thank you, sir," returned Laurent, pallid but smiling. For he, at any rate, had derived from the detestable business something which made what he had gone through worth while.
"And in the process of becoming quite a useful assistant to me you have not lost your zeal as a champion, eh?"
"Not a bit," said Laurent. "Though I admit that I would give a very great deal to get to the bottom of the business."
M. Perrelet flashed a shrewd glance at him. "You still don't think you would be sorry when you got there?"
Laurent drew himself up. "Not in the sense you mean, Monsieur. And surely you yourself, who have saved his life——"
"That's my job, Monsieur de Courtomer. It's nothing to me that the bullet I have just fished out of that young man's shoulder came from some old Chouan musket of the year one—look at it—nor that that young man was found lashed to a beech tree outside his own headquarters, nor that he has, undoubtedly, something very grave on his mind—my business is to set him on his legs again, if I can."
"Monsieur Perrelet," said Laurent earnestly, "I believe I can account for everything. He is shielding someone else. I am positive of it. It cannot be an agreeable thing to do; it has cost him terribly in the past, it is costing him terribly now, and as for the future——" He broke off rather abruptly.
M. Perrelet gave a little shake of the head; his smile was half amused, but half touched, too. "My dear boy, excuse my saying so, but you are very young! It is only in romances that men do that sort of thing. In real life, when they see what it may lead to, they are not so quixotic. And, in my opinion, M. de la Rocheterie's demeanour is not consistent with innocence. He is in too much personal agony of mind—can you deny it? Why, otherwise, when I warned him just now that I was going to hurt him, should he have said to himself, 'So much the better?' If he were merely playing the scapegoat a young man as sensitively organized as he would hardly have welcomed my probe and scalpel because they gave him something else to think about! No, I am afraid your theory won't hold water." He put away his instruments, then suddenly walked back to the bed and stood for some time with his hands behind him, studying the unconscious face, with its strong, delicate features, much less as a doctor studies a patient than as one man scrutinizes another to see what of his character he can read on his visage. Then he bent over the drugged sleeper, satisfied himself as to his condition, and came back again.
"The best argument for your view of the case, my young friend," he admitted, "lies, of course, on the pillow there. One can't, after all, look at that face and believe him capable of anything infamous—it was my thought when I first saw him, all blood and dust, on the floor in the hall more than a week ago. . . . Yet, if he is innocent, he has no right to my thinking, to have deprived his party of his services to cover another man's misdoing. . . . Well, keep an eye on him. I will look in again about the hour he should wake."
Slowly the sunlight moved down the bed from the side window as Laurent sat by it, a book on his knee which he made no attempt to read. From time to time he took out and fingered at leisure his own private gain—the fall of the barrier which L'Oiseleur maintained between them . . . for how could he interpret the episode otherwise when Aymar's clenched right hand, suddenly and blindly putting itself forth, had encountered his wrist where he bent over the bed ready for emergencies, and had closed on it, gripping it hard. Moved by that significant act, Laurent had grasped the bandaged wrist in return. So when, under contracted brows, the red-brown eyes, unclosing, looked up desperately for a moment into his, though they were alight with pain and he was torn with concern, his heart had leapt to greet the moment. . . . Then M. Perrelet's hand made a movement, the bullet tinkled into the basin, and, the second after, with a deep sigh, Aymar's grip on the friendly wrist relaxed and his head rolled sideways. . . . Yes, how could he interpret otherwise that appeal in the hour of need?
As for M. Perrelet's arguments, Laurent was entirely unmoved by them. So far from considering La Rocheterie's demeanour incompatible with innocence, he thought it a marked proof of it. Would a man capable of betraying his own troops be so bitter and sensitive about his own subsequent position? Surely he would expect some measure of contumely for his deed! But in Aymar's desolation of soul there was a fierce resentment. "He dared to ask me!" he had said. No, that theory of his shielding another, once enunciated, gained immensely in probability. A man like the Aymar de la Rocheterie he had known last year would have done a thing like that without counting the terrible cost to himself, even as he had jumped without hesitation into the flooded river. If this Aymar, who had been so near death after paying part of it, found what remained almost more than he could endure, who could wonder? For whom had he done it—a friend, a comrade? He must love him extraordinarily. But how could any one accept such a sacrifice, greater than that of life itself? Perhaps the unknown was not aware of it. Perhaps he was dead. It was to be hoped so, for then this immolation could, surely, cease.
Not for the first time in his vigil, Laurent bent forward and felt L'Oiseleur's pulse. This time the fingers of the sleeper suddenly twined themselves round his wrist again. Laurent let his hand stay in the unconscious clasp, and it was because it was there that he found the hot words of protest forming on his lips, though they went unuttered—Why did you do it? It is killing you, L'Oiseleur. You are of too fine stuff to stand the strain, the obloquy, the contempt of the contemptible!
The drugged sleep, however seemed to be breaking, for Laurent had not long sat so, his hand a prisoner, when Aymar began to stir. A contraction passed over his face. Another moment, and his eyes slowly unclosed, and he was looking at the watcher, half dreamily.
"It is over," said Laurent gently.
"Over? What is over?"
"The extraction—your shoulder. You fainted at the end, then the doctor gave you an opiate. You have slept for nearly four hours."
"I remember. Yes." His eyes fell on his own hand, and he immediately loosed his clasp and moved the hand away. Laurent reddened; but the next instant L'Oiseleur's lashes dropped again and he relapsed into slumber.
A little later M. Perrelet came in, expressed himself satisfied, and said that Laurent need not sit by him like a sentry unless he pleased. So the young man went over to his own side of the room and threw himself on his bed. Why had La Rocheterie moved his hand away like that? Was he, after giving that glimpse of his necessity, going on as before? Laurent was sore, disappointed, and beginning to realize that the combined strain of anxiety, want of sleep, and his charge's attitude was making him curiously tired.
He lay there some time till, hearing Aymar move, he jumped up and went round the screen and found him fully sensible, staring up at the ceiling with a rather set mouth.
"I did not know you were awake," said Laurent somewhat timidly. "Is the pillow all right for your shoulder? Is there anything I can do?"
"If it is not troubling you too much, I should like a drink," was the frigid reply.
Laurent lifted his head and gave him some water. To judge from the way he drank it, he must have come out from under the opiate parched with thirst. Why could he not have called for such a simple thing? Laurent suppressed a desire to ask, and when he had finished merely enquired if his shoulder were paining him much.
"Nothing out of the way, thank you." So Laurent, with an inward sigh, went round the bed to replace the glass. He suspected that the reply was far from the truth. When he got to the bottom of the bed Aymar de la Rocheterie spoke again.
"I am quite at a loss to know why you should do all this for me, Monsieur de Courtomer."
Laurent was goaded into replying, "All this! You do not give me much chance of doing anything!"
But Aymar, disregarding him, went on in his weak, uneven voice, "You put me under a very heavy obligation to you."
Laurent flushed. "I had much rather you did not look at it in that light. To do anything for you—although I know I am clumsy and inexperienced . . . I mean . . . you need not feel . . ." He stumbled; the set, unsmiling visage disconcerted him.
"It is very good of you," repeated L'Oiseleur in the same unmoved tones. "And you must not think that because I took advantage of your charity this morning I do not realize, equally with yourself . . . especially since Colonel Guitton's visit——"
But even he could get no further for the moment. Laurent removed his eyes from his face; it was suddenly tortured.
"—that you are dealing with an outcast, a leper," finished the voice inexorably.
"How can you talk like that!" broke out Laurent, half choking. "I—charity—you think I—" But adequate expression of his feelings was beyond him; besides, L'Oiseleur would not listen—merely overrode him. What could it be that made him behave like this? Was it possible that his brain was becoming affected by what he had been through, or that the pain which he would not now acknowledge, or the drug, or both, had flung him into a sort of delirium? But it was such a cold purposeful delirium. . . . Laurent plucked feverishly at the coverlet, and at last lifted his eyes for an instant. "I do not believe a word of what that blackguard said. . . . I should have liked to kill him!" he added between his teeth. "Of course," he went on after a second or two, studying the floor again, "it is obvious that you have been shot. I realize that it must have been done. . . ." But no reference, after all, to trees and tying up was possible.
"Exactly," said L'Oiseleur with a horrible calm. "You realize how—do you realize by whom it was done? . . . Yes, evidently you have been told that it was my own men, though perhaps you did not believe it. But . . . it is quite true!"
Laurent had the sensation that about five squares of the parquet flooring flew up and hit him on the head. He could feel the blood rushing to his face. It was not true!
He looked up, dazed, and saw Aymar de la Rocheterie scanning him in a way he could not interpret. "I see, indeed, that you had not believed it," came his voice, cool and faint. "Well, now I have convinced you. But in justice to my . . . my executioners, I should like you to know that they were not directly responsible for the state of my wrists. I did that myself, trying to get free—afterwards. . . . Have you ever been tied to a tree, Monsieur de Courtomer, and left there? Hardly, I suppose."
This must be stopped somehow. "Monsieur de la Rocheterie," said Laurent firmly, "I refuse to hear another word. But I am going to say just one thing myself. Your men may have shot you—since you tell me so I suppose I must believe you—but even you cannot make me think that they did it otherwise than under a misapprehension. The sun must fall from heaven before I can believe that you did—what rumour accuses you of! Surely you know that!"
He spoke with passion. The Vicomte de la Rocheterie stared at him out of his great sunken eyes, words visibly smitten from him. Then he dragged up his right hand and covered them. "You are . . . very hard to convince," he said with a catch of the breath. And at that moment, to Laurent's intense relief, M. Perrelet came in.
He looked from one to the other. "You have been talking to him," he said sharply to Laurent.
"No, I have been talking to him," put in his patient quickly.
"Then you will kindly not do it any more," grumbled the little doctor, stooping over him. "A nice state you have got yourself into! M. de Courtomer should have stopped you!"
Laurent had turned blindly away to the window. So it was true—his own men!