"Oh no, sir. But I don't care for so much responsibility."
"Shall I have a look at him?"
"Oh no," a much more decided negative. "I wouldn't go near the
Major, sir, not if I was you."
"Why, what's the matter with him?" Lawrence asked curiously. But Barry refused to commit himself beyond repeating that the Major was very queer, and after promising to send Val to the rescue Lawrence dismissed him, as Gaston came hurrying up. Something suspiciously like a grin twinkled over the little Frenchman's face when he found his master waiting for him on the sill of Caroline's pantry, silhouetted against row on row of shining glass and silver, and wearing at noon-day the purple and fine linen, the white waistcoat and thin boots of last night. But his French breeding triumphed and he remained, except for that one furtive twinkle, the conscientious valet, nescient and urbane. Lawrence did not give him even so much explanation as he had given Catherine. "Is there a back staircase?" he asked, and then, "Take me up by it. I'm going to my room."
Gaston led the way through the servants' hall. Lawrence, following, had to fight down a nausea of humiliation that was almost physical: he had never before done anything that so sickened him as this sneaking progress through the kitchen quarters in another man's house. At length Gaston, holding up a finger to enjoin silence, brought him out on the main landing overlooking the hall.
There was no carpet on the polished floor but Lawrence when he chose could tread like a cat. He stepped to the balustrade. It was as dark as a dark evening, for the great doors were still fast shut, and what scanty light filtered through the painted panes was absorbed, not reflected, by raftered roof, panelled walls, and Jacobean stair. But as he grew used to the gloom he could distinguish Bernard's couch and the powerful prostrate figure stretched out on it like a living bar. Bernard's arms were crossed over his breast: his features were the colour of stone: he might have been dead.
Lawrence was startled. But he could do no good now, and the
Frenchman was fidgeting at his bedroom door. Later . . .
Secure of privacy Gaston's decorum relaxed a trifle, for it was clear to him that confidences must be at least tacitly exchanged: M'sieur le captaine could not hope to keep him in the dark, there never was an elopement yet of which valet and lady's maid were not cognizant. Like Catherine, "You wish I pack for you, Sare?" he asked in his lively imperfect English. He was naturally a chatterbox and brimful of a Parisian's salted malice, even after six years in the service of Captain Hyde, who did not encourage his attendants to be communicative.
Lawrence was tearing off his accursed evening clothes. (All day it had been the one drop of sweetness in his bitter cup that he had borrowed Lucian's razor and shaved in Lucian's rooms.) "Get me a tweed suit and boots."
Gaston frowned, wrinkling his nose: if M'sieur imagined that that nose had no scent for an affair of gallantry—! But still he persisted, even he, though the snub was a bitter pill: himself a gallant man, could allow for jaded nerves. "You wish I pack, yes?" he deprecated reticence by his insinuatingly sympathetic tone.