“You think I don’t mean it,” he said unsteadily, and without a trace of his usual light manner. “I do, on my honour!” He put up his right hand and caught weakly at Gilbert’s wrist. “Promise me, promise me,” he repeated imploringly, “that if they come here after us you will do the best for yourself!”
“I shall do that in any case, my dear boy,” replied his cousin. “Now, if you will let go my hand and lie still I will bandage this shoulder.”
The young man sighed, and released the hand. Nor did he say another word while the Marquis bound up his shoulder, using his cravat in default of anything better, except to remark, at the end of the operation, that he was very sleepy. He seemed, indeed, to be slipping back into unconsciousness of some kind. Gilbert arranged the surrounding hay as comfortably as he could, found on a nail an old and not very dirty horse-cloth, spread it over the Vicomte, and gave him some more brandy. As he withdrew the arm which he had put beneath his cousin’s head to raise it, Louis rallied himself for a last effort.
“If ever you loved me, Gilbert,” he pleaded, “promise me that you will do what I ask—that you will leave me if there is an alarm. If you are taken what will become of everybody at Chantemerle? What use is there in sacrificing yourself . . . and for me too. . . . For God’s sake, promise me!”
For the sake of quieting him Gilbert gave the promise he had no intention of keeping. The light of real feeling in the anxious, tired grey eyes had given him a little shock of emotion. He took his hand.
“I promise you that I will consider myself first. Now, will that satisfy you? . . . My dear Louis, you absolutely must get to sleep!”
“I obey,” said the Vicomte, smiling. “I expect I shall be all right to-morrow. If not, I rely on your promise. Good-night.”
He shut his eyes. Gilbert surveyed him for a moment, picked up the lantern, and went with it to the other side of the loft, leaving the recumbent figure in semi-darkness. He sat down himself with his back against the wall, and for prudence sake blew out the light. It was not till then that he discovered that the moon had risen.
He must have dropped off to sleep as he sat there, for he woke suddenly with a start to wonder where he was. He remembered instantly, and looked hastily across the half-darkness of the loft at the still figure on the other side. A shaft of moonlight, passing through the round aperture, lay across Louis’ breast and the lower part of his face. The silence, the danger, the fact that he had so lately carried his cousin senseless in his arms, suddenly tugged at the Marquis’ heart. They were playmates of but a few years agone. . . . As he gazed, the stream of moonlight broadened and grew brighter, and, lying like a pool of silver round Louis’ head, threw up his beautiful profile into startling pallor and relief. Château-Foix left his place, and going quietly through the rustling hay sat down by him.
The Vicomte was lying quite motionless, but his regular breathing and a short scrutiny showed that he was not unconscious but asleep. He was very pale; his hair was tangled and dusty, the ripped coat showed his torn and bloody shirt and bandaged shoulder; his left arm lay stiffly by his side. As Château-Foix sat with his chin in his hand and looked at him memories full of faint fragrance stirred in his heart. It was odd how Louis had retained his boyish appearance. At twenty-six he was still sometimes the self-same engaging boy, “beau comme l’amour et gentil comme un ange,” as all the countryside considered him, who had laughed and danced away his childhood in the old garden at Chantemerle. And there flashed into the watcher’s mental vision the picture of a certain day in their boyhood when Louis was brought home senseless, the result of a fall from a horse which he had been forbidden to ride. Just so he had looked when he had been carried in by lamenting servants, with a broken collar-bone and a livid bruise under his curls. As it had been of yesterday Gilbert recalled his mother’s horror, and his own terrified conviction that his cousin was killed. There, in place of the dark loft, was the wide hall at Chantemerle, the crackling fire, the boy, white and still, on the carved settle, the keen snowy air blowing in through the open door, and, breaking through the men who had just laid down their burden, a frightened, beautiful child, who clung sobbing to him because Hector had thrown Louis in the avenue, and he was dead.