Towards midnight Madame Gloannec stole up to the granary. M. des Graves rose from the pallet, by which he was praying, and they stood together looking down in silence at its burden. Louis had not stirred since he had become unconscious; his hands were still lightly crossed on his breast as the priest had laid them after extreme unction, and in this posture, with his head thrown back on the low pillow, he had the aspect of an effigy in pale ivory, touched with a kind of morbid beauty and rendering with fidelity not only the calm, but the deadly fatigue preceding dissolution. The woman after a little while of gazing threw her apron over her head, and, turning away, was shaken with silent sobs; then, without a word, she left the priest again to his vigil.
And there came to the watcher very clearly the remembrance of standing with Louis by Gilbert’s bier before the altar, in the sacramental radiance of the tall candles, and looking at the great peace of his face. . . . Louis’ own face, now, was not so different. . . .
CHAPTER XLVII
HOW A VOW WAS KEPT
When the dawn broke Louis was still alive. It was all that could be said; yet when the cold daylight was fully come, and the priest could get a clearer view of his face, drowned as it was in the waves of an unfathomable sleep, he thought that it looked a little less deathlike. And surely his breathing was more natural.
He stayed by him all that day, and when night came a mattress was placed for him on the floor of the loft. The good Bretons were impressed to tears by his determination to remain with the wounded man instead of continuing his journey towards safety, and, set against the privilege of having a priest in their dwelling, the danger of his presence appeared negligible.
And next morning, early, ere the rush-light was extinguished, Louis stirred a little and opened eyes that were indeed unseeing, but which at least had the light of life in them. He did not know M. des Graves, but, too weak even to turn his head on the pillow, accepted his good offices like a child. Sometimes he seemed on the point of recognising his nurse, at others he was perfectly indifferent to his presence. Later in the day, with the assistance of Madame Gloannec, M. des Graves set about examining and dressing his injuries. Even his lesser hurts were not fully healed, and as for the sabre thrust which had transfixed him, the priest was little short of horrified at the methods which the peasants in their well-meaning ignorance and their want of appliances had followed. But for Louis’ youth and constitution, he must have succumbed already to such bungling treatment; perhaps it was even now too late to save him.
The operation was over at last.
“One sees that you have studied, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Madame Gloannec, collecting the scattered dressings and strips of linen.
“A little, in my youth,” answered the priest absently, looking down at his semi-conscious patient, who lay between them moaning faintly. “I am afraid that we have hurt him. My poor child. . . .” He laid his hand on the Vicomte’s forehead, gently smoothing off it the tendrils of brown hair, caught there by the sweat of fever and weakness.
“You love him, mon père,” said the Breton woman softly. “Ah well, so do I—as if he were my own son. He was like a son to me—when he could speak.”