On his face, colourless as a cameo, and as sharply cut, a rather tired patience had replaced the deadly look of drained vitality. The young man was passing, in his prolonged and difficult convalescence, through the stage of restless fatigue, really more trying to endurance than earlier conditions. How weary he was of the uncomfortable mattress of oat husks on which he had lain for so many weeks, how ardently he longed for a change of position and surroundings, he could not but indirectly betray, though he rarely gave vent to any verbal expression of his desires. But usually, if he asked M. des Graves to read to him, it meant that he was finding his state difficult to bear patiently; and there had been a day when the priest, to keep him quiet, had read to him every office from Prime to Compline. Since his breviary was the only book available there was no choice of literature; and indeed Louis seemed to find the sound of the Latin soothing. M. des Graves never knew how much he attended to the actual words.
“Quia in verba tua. . . . Vocem meam audi. . . .” The reader finished the psalm, glanced at the pallet, and went on to the next. “Principes persecuti sunt. . . . Laetabor ego super eloquia tua sicut——” The river suddenly ceased to flow.
“That is only the cattle hitting their horns against the manger down there,” said Louis, without opening his eyes; “I used always to be thinking it was the Blues. Please go on, Father.”
But M. des Graves did not comply with his request. Instead, he quietly laid down his book, as three thundering blows resounded up from the cottage door.
Peace was vanished in a heart-beat. The invalid, his eyes wide enough now, strained his head from the pillow, but neither he nor the priest uttered a word during the short, supreme tension which sickeningly terminated with loud voices from below, an oath or two, the tramp of feet, and the unmistakable clank of accoutrements.
“O my God, my God!” whispered Louis. “They have come for you! Father, Father, why did I let you stay! . . .” Weak as he was, he contrived, panting, to drag himself a little higher in the bed.
The priest stood a second listening, on his face an expression removed from any earthly emotion. Then he threw himself on his knees by the pallet and clasped the young man in his arms. “Hush, my child, hush! If it has come, for either or for both of us, let us meet it without shrinking. I shall go willingly. And you, Louis, since when have you known fear?”
“You know it is not that,” choked Louis, clinging to him in all the desperation of a last farewell. The priest stooped his head, and they kissed each other. A moment after Louis loosed his passionate embrace and fell back on the pillow, and M. des Graves, risen from his knees, made the sign of the cross over him as once before, and went quietly back to his chair.
Footsteps were coming up the stairs. They were accompanied by the voice of Madame Gloannec, very loud.
“Very well, you can search, of course, for your fugitive, but all you’ll find, as I told you, is my husband’s nephew, Yves Goulven, who has been gored by one of our cattle, and a neighbour who is looking after him. And no use to ask Yves anything, for he only speaks Breton. . . . Mind the top step, Monsieur le sergent.”