What was it that the eyes asked so insistently of him? He was ready to give anything to answer them. With Louis’ hand—clenched and rigid—between both his own he bent nearer, and said in a voice full of comprehension and gentleness: “You want me, Louis?”
Suddenly the eyes wavered, the hand in his own lay limp. Louis drew a long breath between set teeth, then he turned away his head. “Perhaps it would be better to go to sleep—if I can,” he said faintly.
To whatever disclosure it was the broken prelude, the moment was gone, perhaps for ever. But even if it had been the priest’s way to attempt to elicit unwilling confidences—and the Poles were not further apart than he and that practice—he would have known better than to attempt it with his present companion. His taciturn cousin would have been no more difficult subject. The claim for help was withdrawn half uttered; it was the bitterest disappointment to him, but all that he said was: “Would you like me to read to you, Louis? Perhaps that might send you to sleep.”
The Vicomte was regaining his usual self, deeply shaken though it had been. “Thank you,” he said gratefully. “Yes, I should like it.”
“What shall I read to you, then?” enquired the Curé, not without a thought of the interrupted conversation downstairs. But that could wait.
“I will be ill for a long time if you are going to nurse me, mon père,” observed Louis parenthetically. This time the look in his grey eyes was very pleasant to see. “Surely you have . . . some book or other in your pocket. Read me some of that; I don’t mind what it is.” And with a mischievous twitch of the mouth he settled himself for Saint François de Sales.
But M. des Graves, quite innocent, sat down and felt for La Vie Dévote, only to find that it was not in the pocket of his cassock. “I have not got it,” he said, acknowledging by the pronoun the identity of the volume. “Is there nothing here?” He looked round, and seeing a little pile of books by the candlesticks took one up.
“Oh, you won’t like any of those,” interposed Louis quickly. “They are all Crébillon, and so forth. If you look in the bookcase——”
But he stopped, for the priest had with great deliberation put on his spectacles (concerning which Louis had always held the theory that they were unnecessary), and now opened one of the deprecated works.
“My dear Louis,” he said, looking at him over the top of his glasses, “do you imagine that I meant to read sermons to you? I am an old man; if you can read . . . Voltaire, I see this is . . . I suppose I may. I shall begin from this marker. Now shut your eyes and try to fancy—if you can—that you are in church and listening to a homily. That ought to be efficacious.”