(9)
It would be rather dark inside old Eveno's cottage; Aymar knew that. And she would be sitting on the settle by the hearth, waiting for the old man's arrival, and at the sound of the latch she would turn; and, not expecting him, would not perhaps recognize him at once, so that he must try not to startle her. And then . . . what came then? Not, at any rate, what would have happened in the orchard last April, before the lightning struck him down from the pinnacle of his happiness. Now there could only be such difficult greeting as a disgraced man could offer the woman he loved, who did not know the cloud upon him. . . . But perhaps she did? It might be easier then.
All these considerations swam through Aymar's mind between lifting the latch and pushing open the door.
Inside it was not quite as he had thought it would be. For Avoye was kneeling by the hearth in her long riding-habit, trying to revive old Eveno's dying fire for him, and in the creak and groan of the ancient bellows the lifting of the latch was lost. He had a second or two to contemplate that picture ere he stepped down the two uneven steps from the door.
"Avoye!" he said gently.
The bellows fell, breathing their soul out; and his cousin, still kneeling there, but with her head turned, made a little inarticulate sound and clasped her hands together.
"I am afraid I startled you," he said after a moment; for he must speak to steady his own composure. "I did not know that you were here till I saw Hirondelle. I came to bring back Jacques Eveno, whom I met on the road. He has been released, like . . . like me!"
And now she had got up, and was facing him, very pale. Still without speaking she held out both her hands. Aymar came nearer and took and kissed them.
"Tell me that I did not frighten you, my dear, coming in so suddenly?"
Two large tears brimmed slowly out of her wide eyes and slid down her cheeks. "You did not frighten me then . . . but now . . . you do. Oh, Aymar, to have you back, but . . . looking . . ." She put a hand to her throat. "You must have been terribly wounded."
He held her other hand still. He might do that, surely! "No. Only it was a long business, and needed nursing. I had that, unstintedly—from the friend whom I am bringing now to Sessignes with me, and whom I want you to know well, and like."
But whether she took this in he could not tell.
"To have you back, Aymar—to have you back!" But in her eyes the alarm outshone the joy.
"Is Bonne-maman well?" he asked, dropping her hand at last. "I am afraid that I have caused you both a great deal of anxiety . . . Will you drive back with us, Avoye? I have a chaise outside."
"Yes, of course I will return with you. And Eveno is there, too? How pleased the old man will be! But I thought that——" She broke off, looking puzzled.
"No, we were not imprisoned at the same place," said Aymar quickly. "I will explain about that afterwards. But I had better tell you now, before you see him, that Eveno has lost a hand."
"Oh, poor Jacques! Was that . . . because of Pont-aux-Rochers?" He nodded.
"Poor Jacques!" she said again, the tears in her eyes. "Still, he might have been killed." And then, moved to it perhaps by what she saw in his sad, changed face, she said, with some of Aymar's own occasional vehemence, "And, anyhow, it is a thousand times worse for you—a thousand times!"
He caught his breath. Yes, but for whom was it going to be worst of all in the end—whom, at least, was he going to hurt most? The way, the desolating way before him, over her tender and faithful heart.
She was gazing at him with eyes of such compassion that he could hardly bear it; she was speaking, too. "Dearest, will you sit down for a moment—only for a moment? There is something that I must ask you before we start for home (especially if you have a companion) and I cannot have you standing, looking as you do."
She indicated the settle. He sat down. God knew what she was going to ask him; there would be so many things! She sat beside him and was about to put her hand on his arm, saw that it was bandaged, touched it instead with the lightest, most impalpable gesture of caress, and said, "I only want you to tell me this, if you are free to tell it. We have heard rumours . . . almost more than rumours . . . that your defeat at Pont-aux-Rochers was due to treachery. Oh, Aymar, say that it is not true!"
Aymar put his head back in the corner of the highbacked settle and closed his eyes. But he answered firmly, "No, it is not true. There was no treachery. But you will hear it said everywhere, Avoye." Should he tell her more? She would have to know it—unless indeed she knew it already. . . . It became for an instant a question as to whether he could tell her. . . .
"What is the matter?" she asked, with alarm in her voice.
So then he had to go on. He opened his eyes. "And you will hear some say that the treachery was . . . mine!"
"Aymar!"
"You had not heard that yet? . . . I will tell you the reason directly I can. Only you will recognize, Avoye, that with this stain on my honour, I cannot regard myself at present as . . . as what I was at no time worthy to be. . . ."
His will uttered the words, because his will had always intended that they should be uttered, but as he said them it seemed to him as if all the blood left him was being drained out of his body.
Avoye had turned very pale, too. "But is not that rather a matter for me to decide? You know what I should think of so wicked a slander."
He shook his head, because he could hardly speak, and her proximity was getting more than his resolution could endure. So he slipped to one knee on the hearth and took up the abandoned bellows. "This fire is nearly out," he murmured. And as he blew the grey wood ashes stirred and eddied like ghosts; there was no glimmer underneath. The fire was out.
And on the settle Avoye de Villecresne, pressing her hands together, was saying to herself, "You a traitor . . . you! They dare to say such a thing!"
Aymar abruptly threw down the bellows and got to his feet.
"We must not tell Grand'mère. Are you ready to go, dear, or do you still wish to see old Eveno?"
She rose. "I am ready to go with you, Aymar," she said, in the sweet voice which sometimes held an echo of childhood. And she added, very low, "Always." But the voice which pronounced that word was a woman's.
Aymar heard; he looked at her with eyes of agony and ardour, lit with the flame of whose intensity she had never been quite aware, so carefully had it been controlled. He said, "Yes . . . it might be always now—since April. . . . Oh, my God, that it could be April again!"
And with that cry he caught her fiercely in his arms.
But the kiss was not fierce; it was the kiss that should have been given and taken under the stars in the orchard, clean and passionate and unprofaned. There was only one. Then Avoye dropped her head upon his breast. "My heart!" she murmured to his heart. And Aymar said, in a voice she had never heard from him before, "Beloved, your mouth is like apple blossom." For he was conscious just then of nothing but what he held in his arms. It was April again—for a few instants. All the horror and the stain were swept away; he had his brief moment of rapture, as intense as if she had come to him that spring evening, and as pure.
But it was very brief. The truth surged back upon him ten times more bitter for the ecstasy. He loosed his hold of her almost as if he were suddenly paralyzed; but her little hands were holding him fast by the lapels of his coat and all he could see was the top of her head, with its crown of burnished hair. Yet, though they were so close to each other, an icy stream seemed to Aymar to drive between them, of such a deadly cold that it sucked the breath from his heart.
"Let me go, Avoye!" he said, putting his hands on hers that held him, and the sharp change in his voice made her look up in alarm. Her arms went about him very quickly, and, before he quite knew what had happened, he was sitting once more at her side on the settle. But his head, this time, was resting on her shoulder.
Even this he ought not to permit himself. But it was so paradisially sweet, so unspeakably restful, and he was so tired.
"I should not have let you stand," the low voice like the song of a brook was saying in his ear. "Oh, my dearest, now that you are returned, and I can nurse you back to health . . ."
"I am tiring you," he murmured, and tried to move; but she held him.
"No, no, I am as strong as a rock. . . . You have a friend, you say, who nursed you? Aymar, I envy him!"
"Little to envy," he got out, and tried again to move. But he seemed to have neither strength nor will.
Avoye's glance fell on his attenuated hand, lying inert and open in her lap. Her own closed on it. "Aymar, what a hand! And cold! Oh, my dear, my dear!" She caught it to her breast as if to warm it. "And this bandaged arm . . ."
He said nothing, and for a few moments they both sat in absolute silence by the dead hearth. Then he made a great effort, lifted his head, and drew himself away. It was like leaving the gates of Eden, for he knew that he would never sit like that again with his head on her shoulder, with that heavenly feeling of being cared for by her who had always been his first care. And it was his own act which had shut those gates . . . betrayed to it by just that care for her. If he had been a really honourable man he would not have entered Eden now, even for these few blessed moments.
And something was stabbing at his mind, so weary now that it was difficult to discover what it was. At last he captured the thorn.
"Avoye, I have not yet asked after M. de Vaubernier? Is he . . . well?"
She gave a little soft, half-amused laugh, which showed instantly that she had no sinister associations with him. "Poor Godfather! At the beginning of May he suffered so from sciatica and rheumatism that he went off to Aix-les-Bains, and he has not yet come back. I saw him just before he left; he seemed very gloomy indeed, so I hope that Aix has cheered him up."
Aymar's heart resumed beating. He got up slowly from the settle.
"You know, my darling, that we must be keeping the Evenos out of their cottage, and there is M. de Courtomer waiting. We ought to go."
She seized her hat and riding-whip. "And you are tired to death, Aimé."
It was an old childish variant of his name. She slipped her hand into his, in childhood's fashion, too, as he went to open the door. Just as he unlatched it she said, glancing back at the dim interior, "I shall come back here one day on pilgrimage."
But he whose kiss had sanctified the place for her was silent. A man did not make a pilgrimage to the spot where he had broken his resolve.