“Poor fellow! He will give no more trouble to any one,” she said, after feeling the pulse of the first, and laying her hand for a moment on his heart; “bring a cloth, and cover his face; he must lie here till he can be removed.”
The concierge obeyed her. They composed the features, and laid the body under cover of the gateway.
Aline then examined the other. His arm was badly wounded. While she was still probing the wound, the man opened his eyes, stared round him for a moment with a speculative gaze of returning consciousness, made a spasmodic effort to rise, but fell back at once. “You are wounded—not severely, I hope,” said Aline; “but you must not attempt to move till we have dressed your arm.”
She despatched Mme. Cléry for the box containing her ambulance appliances, lint, bandages, etc., and then, with an expertness that would have done credit to a medical student, she washed and dressed the shattered limb, while Mme. de Chanoir watched the operation in shuddering excitement through the glass door at the foot of the stairs. What to do next was the puzzle. The concierge resolutely refused to let him into her lodge; there was no knowing who or what he was, and she was a lone woman, and had no mind to compromise herself by taking in bad characters. The poor fellow was so much exhausted from loss of blood that he certainly could not help himself, and it would have been cruel to leave him down in the courtyard, where his unfortunate comrade was lying dead within sight of him. Aline saw there was nothing for it but to take him up to their own apartment. How to get him there was the difficulty. He looked about six feet long, and might have weighed any number of stone. She and Mme. Cléry could never succeed in carrying him. He had not spoken while she was dressing his arm, but lay so still with his eyes closed that they thought he had fainted.
“We must carry him,” said Aline in a determined voice, and beckoned the concierge to come and help.
But before proceeding to the gigantic enterprise, Mme. Cléry poured out a tumbler of wine, which she had had the wit to bring down with the lint-box, and held it to the sufferer's lips, while Aline supported his head against her knee. He drank it with avidity, and the draught seemed to revive him instantaneously; he sat up leaning on his right arm.
“We are going to carry you up-stairs, mon petit,” said Mme. Cléry, patting him on the shoulder with the patronizing manner an amazon might have assumed towards a dwarf.
“You carry me!” said the young man, measuring the short, trim figure of the charwoman with a sceptical twinkle in his eyes: they were dark-gray eyes, particularly clear, and piercing.
“Me and Mlle. Aline,” said Mme. Cléry, in a tone that testified against the supercilious way in which her measure was being taken.
Aline was behind him. He turned to look at her with a jest on his lips, but, changing his mind apparently, he bowed; then, with a resolute effort, [pg 233] he bent forward, and, before either she or Mme. Cléry could interfere, he was on his feet. It was well, however, they were both within reach of him, for he staggered, and must have fallen but for their prompt assistance.