"You must have been most miserable
To be so cruel."
E. B. BROWNING, _Aurora Leigh._
(1)
How is it that the Fate who spins seems sometimes to take pleasure in
falsifying, not only one's anticipations, but even one's apprehensions
as to the pattern which her threads will weave? This reflection, or
something like it, was Laurent de Courtomer's next afternoon at
Sessignes, where he sat on the window-seat in Aymar's pleasant room.
Things had proved so much less trying than he had feared; supper last
night with the two ladies, for instance (Aymar was in his bed), had
been punctuated only by questions such as he could answer. The ladies
naturally wished to know the details of his friend's captivity and
illness, but among these he had been able to exercise selection; and he
was certainly not going to undeceive them when they jumped to the
conclusion that it was on account of his health that Aymar had been
"released." Details of the affair at Pont-aux-Rochers they could hardly
expect from him, nor did Mme de la Rocheterie press for them, while her
granddaughter, as he knew, had already been told enough by her cousin
to avoid that subject, in public, like the plague.
In the second place, he and Aymar were not going to part immediately
after all. Once again the Spinner had twisted the thread. The newspaper
that morning, which confirmed the account of Napoleon's abdication, and
told them that the King was on French soil again, apprised them also of
the fact that Vendée had made peace two days before. There was,
therefore, not the slightest need for Laurent to return thither, and he
had yielded only too willingly to Aymar's solicitations to remain a
little at Sessignes. Aymar himself had been examined that morning
(considerably against his will) by the doctor whom Mme de la Rocheterie
had summoned, and as a result, had been confined for the present to his
room. Under a promise of secrecy he had also, to Laurent's relief,
allowed the doctor to see and prescribe for the burnt arm.
He was lying at this moment on a chaise-longue, pulling the ears of the
enraptured wolfhound, whose head lay on his breast.
"When are you going to ride Hirondelle, Laurent?" he asked, looking up.
"She is at your disposal any time, you know. There are rods in the
hall, and fish, though they are shy, in the stream; and if you want a
gun, you have only to ask Célestin. And if this one-idea'd beast will
go with you, perhaps you will take him for a walk some time?"
The word seemed to be familiar to Sarrasin, for he beat his tail upon
the floor so vigorously that a light knock at the door was scarcely
audible. A voice was then heard saying, "May I come in, Aymar?"
Laurent jumped up. It was Mme de la Rocheterie. L'Oiseleur also made
instinctively to rise.
"Do not be foolish, Aymar; stay where you are," said his grandmother in
her cold, gentle tones. "And do not let me disturb you, Monsieur de
Courtomer. I have brought our invalid some peaches." She had indeed a
shallow basket in her hand, and a scarf thrown over her brilliant white
hair, as though she had been in the garden. "Ah, that incorrigible dog
is up here again!"
"You mean that I am incorrigible, Grand'mère," said Aymar,
good-humouredly, and he ordered Sarrasin to remove himself to a
distance.
Meanwhile the Vicomtesse had accepted from Laurent a chair by the couch,
and though she again besought the young man not to depart, he
thereafter vanished, somewhat regretting that a gentleman could not
listen at the keyhole.
Sitting there beside the chaise-longue Mme de la Rocheterie subjected
its occupant to a long, quiet scrutiny. Little, however, of what she
really felt or thought was to be seen on her face.
"Gellois does not give me a very good account of you, Aymar," she said
at last. "But, from the look of you, I hardly expected it."
"You know that he is an alarmist, my dear grandmother," replied the
invalid. "There is nothing the matter with me now except that I get
tired rather easily."
"He says that your heart is impaired."
"Temporarily, I dare say. I suppose that is why he has condemned me to
lie here in this ridiculous fashion."
"But, my dear boy, you have been very--by which I mean dangerously--ill,
and you know it. It is of no use to deny it, for M. de Courtomer has
admitted the fact."
"I hope that you are being very charming to M. de Courtomer," responded
her grandson, shifting the ground a little. "If I have been as ill as
you say, all the more credit and thanks to him that I am well now. He
nursed me with a devotion for which there are no words."
"You consider, in short, that you owe your life to him?"
Aymar smiled a little. "If I cannot give him his due without making the
admission which you are so anxious to wring out of me, Grand'mère yes,
I do--to him and the doctor. So be kind to him--for he is not leaving
us to-day after all, I am glad to say."
"No friend of yours shall have anything to complain of from me, Aymar,"
responded his grandmother, "particularly one to whom you are so much
indebted. He seems a well-bred young man, for all his English
upbringing. The name, of course, is good. I suppose he bears _sinople,
three lions argent?_"
"I suppose so," said Aymar with a smile. "The one thing which I do know
for certain that he bears is--_a heart, or._"
A smile flickered over Mme de la Rocheterie's face also. "What a pretty
speech! M. de Courtomer ought to be here.--Now I will peel you a peach,
and if it does not tire you to talk, you shall tell me of this
unfortunate business of Pont-aux-Rochers. We have heard the most
unpleasant rumours about it here."
The young man twisted a trifle in the chair. "Rumours of . . .
treachery?"
"Yes," continued the Vicomtesse, selecting a peach from the basket. "And
from all the details we could gather, from the completeness of the
disaster--and from the fact that you were not there in person--it seems
to me probable that they are true. But I should like to know." However,
it was with a very undisturbed air that she began to peel the peach.
Aymar watched her for a moment. "I understand that the idea might have
arisen," he said at last. "But it is a false one. There was no
treachery over the business."
His grandmother raised her eyebrows. "My dear boy, what was there, then?
A miracle, worked for the Bonapartists?"
"A miscalculation--a grave error of judgment."
"Ah, I think I can guess whose!"
"Can you? I fancy not!" He gave a rather wan, ironic smile. "It was my
own, Grand'mère."
And at that Mme de la Rocheterie not only lifted her eyes from her
occupation, but looked at him so piercingly that under her gaze the
easily raised flush of convalescence ran across Aymar's own face for an
instant.
"Your error in judgment, I suppose you imply, because you chose an
incapable man for your subordinate," she remarked. "I warn you, mon
fils, that I have no patience with that kind of quixotry. Our name,
your reputation, shall not be used to shield a man who is a bungler, if
no worse."
The flush came again, and deeper this time, but it left Aymar very pale.
"If you mean M. de Fresne, he is in no need of shielding--_shielding_,
my God!" he said under his breath. "I committed the . . . the mistake
myself. But if you have no objection, we will not talk about it."
"As you please," said the Vicomtesse calmly. She had finished her task,
and delicately wiped her fingers. "I have you back safe and
comparatively sound, which is all I care about. The reputation of
L'Oiseleur is strong enough to take care of itself. All the same, as I
do not wish you to be under a misapprehension as to my intelligence, I
must tell you that I do not believe you about M. de Fresne."
Her grandson gave almost a groan of irritation and anger. "You accuse me
of lying, then?"
"I accuse you of having a bad memory. The evening that you were here in
April--the evening before the ambuscade--you told me casually at supper
that M. de Fresne, without awaiting your orders, was moving your men
across the river next morning. I could see, though you did not say so,
that you were a little annoyed. Late that evening you received news
which made you rush off post-haste to them; the next thing we hear is
that they have walked into a trap and been cut up. And then you say the
blame is yours, and not your thick-headed lieutenant's! You see, my
dear boy, that you cannot hoodwink me like that!"
Aymar, taken aback as he was for the moment, pulled himself higher on
the couch. His eyes were bright, his mouth determined. "I absolutely
refuse to have M. de Fresne made a scapegoat any more!" he said hotly.
"I, and I alone, am responsible for what happened at Pont-aux-Rochers.
I will not have another man's reputation sacrificed to save mine!"
"I was not aware," said his grandmother drily, "that M. de Fresne had
any particular reputation to sacrifice. But if you are going to agitate
yourself over it like this, you shall take all the blame you want. Lie
down again, for Heaven's sake!" She got up and rearranged his cushions.
"I begin to think that part of the reason why you look like a seven
days' ghost is that you are taking this, your solitary reverse, so much
au grand tragique. That comes, my dear Aymar, of being the favourite of
fortune--and of being young. Well, time, unfortunately, will cure the
latter----"
"And has already cured the first," finished Aymar with a queer little
smile, shutting his eyes for a second. "Thank you, Bonne-maman." He
opened them again and looked at her as she resumed her seat. "It is
plain that you do not know how many men I lost over that affair."
"But what were your men for?" enquired the Vicomtesse. "I do not say
that you exactly kept them in cotton-wool, but you have always been
ridiculously sensitive about their welfare. One must break eggs to make
an omelette, as the vulgar say.--Well, let us talk of something else.
There is a much pleasanter subject to hand, is there not?" And her
smile, though mischievous, was not unkind.
But Aymar looked away and said nothing.
"I have tired you so much that you cannot even talk about _her_?" asked
his grandmother after a moment. "I shall have the young gentleman with
the heart of gold taking me to task." She got up, putting the peach
near him. "Another time, then; just now you can lie here and reflect
how true it is that everything comes to him who waits. . . . Only, my
dearest boy"--she bent and kissed him tenderly--"do try to see your
late reverse in its proper proportions! I should like to point out--if
you will not take the consolation amiss--that now, owing to the signal
victory of mid-June, it is of small consequence what happened to your
little force at the end of April!"
Of small consequence! Oh, if only it were! As the door closed behind her
Aymar turned and lay motionless, his face hidden in one of his
cushions.
(2)
The wolfhound Sarrasin, who, having a soul above rabbits, usually
disdained the investigation of hedges, paced soberly along at Laurent's
heels one fine evening, four days later, on the return from the walk
they had taken together. Their respective master and friend was not yet
strong enough to accompany them, for he had only made his first
appearance downstairs at déjeuner that day; moreover, he was closeted
with Jacques Eveno, now become a kind of enquiry agent for him with
regard to the victims of Pont-aux-Rochers.
It was nearly sunset, and Sessignes, as it came into sight, was bathed
in a warm and flattering radiance. Already Laurent loved the place,
which seemed to fit Aymar so well--old and noble and secure and
unpretentious. Yet, much as he delighted in being here, and in feeling
that he was of use to Aymar, both as his only real confidant and as an
accomplice in diverting awkward questions, he was torn also with a
desire to get back to his mother. But Paris was probably invested by
this time; though a friend, he was not likely to succeed in getting
through the English and Prussian lines. Directly, however, that there
seemed to be a chance of penetrating to the capital, he would set off
to her.
On the whole, these four days, like his first supper-party at Sessignes,
had been less agitating than he had feared. There was strain, of
course, for Aymar, and for him, and, presumably, for Madame de
Villecresne up to a point, because of what she knew; but Mme de la
Rocheterie had not added to the inevitable malaise the extra tension
which he had anticipated. Her attitude at present was one of
half-amused toleration of Aymar's concern for his unfortunate men, and
of a disregard of the possibilities of blame which was sublime in its
contempt. Laurent's only hope was that sleeping dogs might be left to
lie. For, used as he was to the society of old ladies, and versed in
the ways that pleased them, Mme de la Rocheterie inspired in him a
latent terror which his own formidable great-aunts had never roused.
With her, one felt very much in the presence of an intelligence. When
she set that intelligence to finding out anything, he was sure that she
would succeed. He could only pray that his might not be the unwary
tongue to kindle this desire.
About Mme de Villecresne he had now quite made up his mind. More girlish
than he had pictured her, the widow, the six years' nominal wife (no
older, indeed, than himself) more beautiful even than he had thought at
first, and with a nameless charm of glance and voice, he now found her
bewitching. He was for ever on the watch for the fleeting,
half-tantalizing resemblances to Aymar himself; these, indeed,
completed his subjugation. So, except that in his heart of hearts he
did not think any woman good enough for his friend, he approved his
choice. And, fortunately, there was no shadow of doubt that she loved
Aymar deeply. He had seen her with him in the chaise . . . and looking
at him to-day at déjeuner. And now, if it were not for this horrible
cloud over him, of whose full proportions she was not aware, their
long-delayed happiness was at hand. He did hope that Aymar would have
no hesitation about taking it quickly. From something which his friend
had let fall the other day he was a little afraid. . . . Being cousins,
they would of course have to get a dispensation first. . . .
The young man reflected on their cousinship as he swung along. Had they
not been lovers they must almost, he thought, feel like brother and
sister, brought up together as they had been from so tender an age. And
his thoughts flew instantly to a picture in the salon of the château
which had charmed and delighted him from the first--a pastel wherein a
beautiful, serious boy of ten or thereabouts held by the hand a younger
girl-child, bright-haired like himself and smiling rather roguishly at
the spectator. The little Aymar had a kite on which his other hand
rested, somewhat as if on a shield, but his attention, obviously, was
concentrated on his companion with an effect of care and protection not
usual at the kite-flying age. It came to Laurent, as he neared
Sessignes, how deeply that same attitude was still Aymar's, and how, to
shelter his cousin now from the knowledge of what she, all innocently,
had brought upon him, he was running what his friend could not but
consider a very grave risk indeed. But it was not for him to say, "Tell
her everything!" Aymar knew what he was doing.
And the whole future? The nightmare idea of arrest by his own side still
sometimes visited Laurent, since the morning when Aymar had referred to
it. But such a blow was unlikely to fall on him because, having raised
and equipped his Eperviers entirely by his own efforts, he was under
the direct orders of no commander whatever, not even of Sol de
Grisolles himself. Yet, in spite of that, suppose that one day he
_were_ dragged off from Sessignes to answer for what he had done. . . .
That was the terrible part of it--for what he _had_ done.
"Oh, Sarrasin," said Laurent with a shiver, "you wise dog, if only you
could help your master!" But the wolfhound merely swayed his tail, and
they came up the avenue to the château, and turned along the side of
the house to the highest terrace. And here the sunset, already
brightening behind the woods that flanked the pastures on the other
side of the Aven, was seen in all its half-tragic splendour, like the
death of a hero. It tinged the river and smote on the bright, uncovered
head of her who had been the little girl in the picture, as she stood
by the terrace wall gazing out into the distance.
Laurent caught sight of her face; it looked so exceedingly grave that he
stopped before she had perhaps, even heard his step. But Sarrasin went
up to her, so she turned, and Laurent, realizing that she wished to
speak to him, approached her.
"Monsieur de Courtomer," she began rather abruptly, "I want to consult
you about something rather terrible--something which I hope may be kept
from my cousin's knowledge."
"I am at your service, Madame," replied Laurent. This was indeed turning
the tables in the matter of concealment.
Mme de Villecresne moved a trifle away, and, looking down, fingered the
warm lichened stone of the terrace wall for a moment. The little curls
at the back of her neck glowed like burnished gold. "It is about
Pont-aux-Rochers. My cousin warned me himself that I might hear it said
that the supposed treachery there was--his own. I had not heard it, and
till this afternoon I could have sworn that it was impossible so
atrocious a slander should even be breathed in Brittany of L'Oiseleur!
Yet this very afternoon I have just heard worse--if it were
possible--and I do not know what to do about it."
Her breath seemed to fail her for an instant. Laurent looked at her in
mute uneasiness.
"I pray that Aymar himself does not know. . . . I hardly like even to
repeat it, but my maid tells me that she heard a man in the village
saying he had heard a report that it was Aymar's own men who shot him,
on account of the disaster at the bridge. If only he has not heard it
himself--if only we can keep it from him!"
She raised her eyes at the last words. But what she saw on the candid
visage of her cousin's confidant caused her to put a hand quickly to
her heart.
"Merciful Heavens--it is not _true!_"
Laurent lowered his head. Mme de Villecresne gripped his arm,
breathlessly repeating, "It is not true!--it cannot be!"
"Unfortunately . . . it is true," responded the young man, more than
unwillingly.
His fair head and the sunset all reeled together, obviously, before the
girl's eyes. She loosed his arm and sank down on the broad wall beside
him, her face drained of colour; then, as Laurent, alarmed, took a step
towards her, she made a gesture as if to ward him off, and covered it
with her hands.
"It was only two or three of them," added Laurent hesitatingly.
She made no answer, and after another terrible silence, during which her
informant rooted up an entire pink from between the stones of the wall,
she rose, her face still hidden, and went from him.
Aymar, sitting at a table in his room with a pen between his fingers and
fatigue on his face, heard from Laurent the account of what had just
happened without comment or change of expression.
"Where is she now?" he asked, getting up.
"I do not know. Oh, Aymar, I cannot blame myself enough!"
"There is no need to blame yourself at all. It will be all over the
place in a day or two. I have just had a terrible scene with Eveno. He
had heard it in the village, too; and he was nearly demented. He wanted
to go off and do murder."
"He will not, I hope?" exclaimed Laurent, startled.
"Not now. Besides, he does not know, since I would not tell him, whom to
murder. Ninety men is rather a large order, single-handed." He gave a
weary little laugh, and went to the door. "Really, I do not know which
is more difficult to handle, the rebel or the fanatically faithful!"
For his friend's sake at least Laurent could not but be glad when he
learnt later that he had not succeeded in getting speech with his
cousin. She had gone to her room, whence she did not appear again that
evening. She had a bad headache, it seemed. But the Vicomtesse was in
great spirits at supper, and entertained Laurent with some witty but
rather doubtful stories. "I wonder if she knows what heartache is,"
thought the young man . . . and then remembered her guillotined sons.
(3)
"I think that Mme la Comtesse has gone to the orchard for some flowers,"
said old Célestin next morning in answer to his young master's enquiry.
And he added, looking at him affectionately, "It is good to see you
about again, Monsieur Aymar!"
So, wishing that she were anywhere but in the apple-orchard, Aymar went
towards it in the haze of heat which brooded over everything, and
opened the gate, for he could not vault gates nowadays. And when he was
among the trees he saw why Avoye should have come here for flowers, for
where the grass had been left long it was starred with moon-daisies.
Yet for a moment, with relief, he thought that she was not in the
orchard at all. Then he saw her, an empty basket beside her, crouched
at the foot of an apple tree, her head against the trunk, in the most
forlorn attitude imaginable. He quickened his steps. "Avoye, what is
the matter? Are you ill, my dear? Can I----"
On that he saw that she was crying as if her heart would break. He went
down on one knee beside her. "Avoye, my darling . . ."
She turned to him instantly, and clung to him like a child. "It is . . .
what M. de Courtomer told me yesterday. . . . I cried nearly all night
. . . now again . . . Aymar, Aymar, I can't bear it for you!"
Holding her to him, he soothed her as one soothes a child; and indeed
she seemed very small. "My little heart, it is not worth crying over.
It all happened in a hurry--the Blues were on us. It was really one
man's doing only, and he had a grudge against me. My darling, you never
expected me always to come off scot-free?"
A long sob, shaking her there against his breast, seemed to say that
_that_ was very different. He held her closer. And gradually comforted
by his presence, she grew calmer, and finally ceased to sob.
And here he was, holding her in his arms again, he who had come out into
the orchard to tell her why he could not marry her yet. And that had
got to be done. This beginning had not made it easier to do. He would
not have the fortitude to tell her at all while she clung to him. So,
somehow, he got her to her feet, and then to a seat under one of the
old apple trees, and, instead of sitting down, too, stood before her.
"Avoye, I came out here to tell you the story I promised you in the
cottage--the story of how and why this happened to me. It is time that
you knew."
"Since I know the end," she said pitifully, "need I know the beginning?"
Aymar hesitated. "If the . . . the end, then, will stand to you for
sufficient reason why, as an honourable man, I cannot ask you to marry
me at present, perhaps not. Will it, Avoye?"
She twisted her damp handkerchief into a ball. "Why should I not marry
you, Aymar, because you have been nearly murdered for someone else's
fault?"
So he was not to escape the ordeal of lying to her. For if the tale was
told at all, it should be told in his way. On that point he never
wavered. What, let her, heart-broken as she was already, let her know
that she herself was the cause of what he had suffered? He drew a long
breath.
"Very well," he said quietly. "I shall have to tell you whose the fault
was, and then you will see things differently." He came and sat down
beside her, under the tree, but not very near. "I will begin at the
beginning."
To any one who knew how the story was going to end it would have been
passably painful hearing, but when the hearer was a woman and the
narrator was the man she loved it was nearly intolerable. Making the
narrative as brief as possible, Aymar got without interruption or pause
as far as his finding de Fresne's letter at Sessignes, and his thought
of how he could still send it and bring off the move he had discussed
at Keraven. All reference to Vaubernier and his tidings he naturally
omitted, and merely said, "So, in order to lure the Imperialists to
Pont-aux-Rochers, as we had talked of doing, I sent them de Fresne's
letter. I will not tell you how I sent it, nor by whom, nor how I made
it plausible . . . Yes, there was some risk, I grant you, but not
much--or so I saw it then, fresh from my interview with Saint-Etienne.
How deep my repentance was afterwards--but that you can guess."
Avoye's gaze was on him, smitten, horrified.
"You actually sent it--you yourself! It _was_ really your doing--
Pont-aux-Rochers!"
"Yes," he returned, meeting the gaze. "But it was not treachery."
"Aymar, Aymar, as if I needed that saying to me! But it was hazardous
beyond words, surely, and . . . and strange!"
Yes, he could see that there was something repugnant to her, even as
there had been to him, in the act--not in the risk, but in the act
itself.
"It was a ruse de guerre, Avoye--defensible, I think, from that
standpoint. One cannot, unfortunately, be too particular sometimes as
to the means one uses. And I, too, did not overmuch relish doing it."
"I see that it was a ruse. And no one, of course, would have blamed you
for it if your real intention had been obvious. But, as it did not
succeed, your men thought that you had sent information of their
movements to the enemy _meaning_ to betray them! . . . Oh, Aymar, I see
it all--how terrible, how unspeakably terrible! . . . But go on, my
darling; what happened next? Some dreadful misfortune, I know it!"
He went on, his hand shading his face lest it should betray him. But the
agony point of the narrative was past; he hoped he need lie no more.
Avoye did not interrupt again; indeed, when she heard of Keraven
reached at dawn and empty, she put her hands over her face. Aymar
mentioned his interview with de Fresne and his having given up his
sword, laid as much stress as possible on Magloire's insubordination,
let her see that, in a sense, he had had to sacrifice himself to save
his lieutenant, and left, he hoped, in her mind a picture of a
surprise, a scuffle, a chance shot or two . . . just enough,
unfortunately, to give colour to the statement that the Eperviers had
shot their own commander for treachery.
After that he leant back against the trunk of the tree in silence. It
had been as much as he could do to get through. The tit which for some
moments had been busy, perhaps eavesdropping, in the apple-boughs above
them dislodged a tiny twig, which fell on to his knee. He took it up
and fingered it absently. After all, he had not had to lie much. He had
but told her a half-truth.
"I wish," said Avoye, breaking the silence at last, her eyes full of
tears, "I wish you had never met M. de Saint-Etienne! It was his fault
that all this happened to you, Aimé; it was he, or his friend, who gave
you this fatal idea. I am sure it could not have been a plan of yours,
to send information in that way, without any real necessity--not
because you were in a difficult situation and had to extricate
yourself, but just for the chance of snaring the Blues. If you had been
in difficulties----"
Aymar threw away the little twig and roused himself. This was a
dangerous line of thought. But he could think of nothing better with
which to check it than, "I have regretted it enough since, my dear."
Avoye shivered a little. Then she put a hand on his. "But surely the
Imperialists, who looked after you so well, did not think--that thing
of you? They must have understood?"
"When my own men did not? No, Avoye, they did not . . . understand."
She caught her hands together and the tears brimmed over.
"Oh, why did you not make a better story--save your name somehow when
you sent the letter? Why did you send it at all?"
And as he did not answer, but sat with downbent head, she went on, "But
I do not mean to criticize, to scold! It sounds so cruel, when you have
suffered so!"
Aymar lifted his eyes, and smiled at her out of his pain and fatigue.
"No, little heart, I know you did not mean to do that." He put his hand
over hers and they relapsed into momentary silence.
"Aymar," said his cousin suddenly, "to whom did you say you sent the
letter?"
His hand loosed itself a little. "I did not mention any name, I think,"
he answered warily. "Why?"
"Because I wondered for a second whether it could have been to the
Imperialists who stopped me at the _Cheval Blanc_--under a Colonel
Richard, I think the name was--for you remember, perhaps, that that was
the very night I was detained. And it would have been a horrible
coincidence, for I heard those men marching out early next morning. But
of course, if it was not to him----"
There was no help for it if she questioned him. He withdrew his hand
first. "No," he answered, sick at heart and quite composed, "I sent it
to the commandant at Arzon."
There was a sigh of relief beside him. "I am so glad," said Avoye. "And
I am so glad, too, that you did not know at the time that I was a sort
of prisoner, because it would have distressed you unnecessarily. . . .
You did not know, did you?" she asked, in a slightly different voice.
He shook his head. Hell must be like this. "I learnt of it first when I
got your letter. Yes, I am glad I did not know.--As for that letter,"
he went on after a second or two, "I hope you understood, my darling,
why, as a prisoner, I could not answer it as I should have done had I
been free . . . and why, now, I must not ask you yet to take our name
again."
"I see why you think you must not," she said gently. "But, Aymar, with a
reputation like yours, you have only to tell the story as you have told
it to me to clear yourself! Other Royalists might perhaps criticize you
for taking too much risk, but as for thinking that you deliberately
betrayed your own men----"
"No, Avoye," he broke in quickly, "other Royalists do think that--at
least some of them." And as she stared at him incredulously he told her
the story of M. de Lanascol, and of the acquaintance who had walked out
of the inn at his entry.
"But, Aymar," she said indignantly, "they must be mad! You, with your
past--you, L'Oiseleur!"
"Darling, you must face it; I have a different past now--a present,
rather. You see, the very fact of what happened to me in the Bois des
Fauvettes condemns me unheard. Royalists, even one's own acquaintances,
are saying--unwillingly, in many cases, perhaps, and shocked as much as
you like--'It must be true, because his own men shot him for it.'"
A quiver ran through her. "Then it rests with you--and with M. de
Saint-Etienne--to show that it is not true!" And, looking at him with
all her heart in her eyes, she put her hand in his. "If only we had the
dispensation I would marry you to-morrow . . . to show how little I
care for such evil tongues."
He bent his head over the hand. "You must leave me some pride, Avoye."
"No one will ever succeed in robbing you entirely of that, my
dear. . . . But I have not left myself much, have I, to say such a
thing?"
Somehow she was in his arms again. He kissed her hair, and they were
both silent.
"Aymar, am I hurting you?" she asked suddenly. "Was it--this shoulder?"
"Hurting me!" he answered in a low voice. "You weigh about as much as a
wren! And if it were not healed it would be from this moment. Don't
move! . . . You can't!" he added with a little inflection of triumph.
Yet the next moment he had loosed her himself, and stood up. "I beg your
pardon, Avoye. I have not . . . I must wait."
She saw that he meant it; she knew why he felt as he did. Unnecessary as
she might think his scruples, she was not going to hurt his pride more
than it had already been hurt by making self-control more difficult for
him. She too got up, and gave him her hand. He was her lover, but he
was almost her brother, too. "You shall do what you think best, Aymar.
I can wait also."
He kissed her hand, and going with her to the orchard gate, opened it
for her without a word. And after he had watched her go he went and
leant against a tree, with his arms folded, in the very place and
almost in the same posture as he had waited her coming with such dizzy
rapture three months before, when she had not come, but instead of
her--disgrace. And Aymar faced that reflection now, standing motionless
as, nine weeks ago to this very day, he had stood against another
tree. . . . What had been blossom above him here on that magic and
hateful April night was fruit now, green and immature; but in his
ruined life the fruit of what he had done had ripened much more
quickly. He had said that he could not ask Avoye to marry him yet--but
when could he? How was he ever going to wash away the stain?
He leant there long after she had gone, his eyes fixed on the blue line
of woods beyond the sloping pasture, his thoughts entangled, like his
whole existence now, in this dark forest where his own act had plunged
him--leant there till the peacock's ugly note came, as once before, to
rouse him, and he stood up, though this was morning and July, with a
little start and shiver, and went from the apple-orchard which at last
had seen the meeting of lovers.
(4)
Three more hot summer days slid past much as their seven predecessors
had done. But Avoye de Villecresne's face had become shadowed in their
passage. And as, on the third afternoon, Aymar, followed by Sarrasin,
came over the sloping meadows towards the river, more than the now
customary sadness looked from his eyes. Yet, when he caught sight of a
fisherman sitting very much at his ease on the other bank, his face
lightened.
"Don't jump in this time!" called out Laurent. "Though indeed it is
pleasanter weather for a bathe than it was that day."
Aymar crossed by the little bridge. "One doesn't bathe, if one can avoid
it, in the presence of Sarrasin," he said, as he came up to him. "He
has a most unfortunate conviction that it is his duty to rescue you. My
first experience of his zeal was exceedingly painful."
Sarrasin, aware that he was being talked about, sat down, panting
vehemently, and self-consciously offered Laurent a paw.
"I wonder what would have happened if he had been with you beside the
Dart," murmured Laurent. "Thank you, Sarrasin, once is sufficient
honour! If you pant like that you will frighten the fish--not that
there are any this afternoon, and no one but a fool would have brought
a rod down."
Aymar threw himself at full length on the bank, and, pushing the big dog
into a recumbent position, pillowed his head upon him, much to
Sarrasin's gratification, and there was silence.
"Has Eveno gone?" asked Laurent presently.
"Yes. I shall soon be strong enough to ride and interview people myself.
But I see already . . ." He stopped for a second or two. "Laurent, I am
afraid that some day I may have to sell Sessignes."
"_What!_"
"I can see no other way to get the money I require for pensions and the
rest. I can no doubt raise it by loan or mortgage on the place, and I
should not dream of selling the estate while my grandmother lived, but
as I am at a loss to know how I should repay the borrowed money
otherwise----"
Laurent looked across the river at the fair domain, at the towers for
which he himself had developed such a feeling. "Aymar, that would be a
terrible thing to do!"
"Yes, it would," agreed the Vicomte de la Rocheterie in a hard,
unnatural voice. "Seven hundred years has it sheltered us. But then the
thing I have already done, unfortunately, is terrible."
There was another silence. Sarrasin snapped his great jaws at a fly.
Laurent, thunderstruck, began to turn over with fresh hope a resolve
which these last few days had been taking shape in his mind.
"May I say something?" he enquired at last in a somewhat stifled voice.
"You know that you can say anything you like," responded Aymar without
moving.
"Even something that _you_ will not like?"
"Even that!"
Laurent fixed his eyes on a point across the river.
"Have you ever thought of digging for treasure in the old part of
Sessignes?" he asked.
He was aware that Aymar smiled. "My dear Laurent!"
"If you did," went on Laurent, unperturbed, "you might find a hoard
which you could devote to those families. . . . You might! Or I might
find one for you!"
"I only wish you could!"
Laurent plucked at the grass. "You would not be very particular as to
its date, in that case, would you, Aymar? I mean, you would not require
it to be a very ancient treasure?"
"What do you mean?" demanded his friend. "You cannot have been so
foolish--forgive me!--as really to have started explorations with that
object?"
"No," said Laurent. "I have not, but if I did, I know I should find
something. And, as I said, it would not matter for this purpose that it
would be modern money, and that I . . . that I should have put it there
myself." And as Aymar lifted himself on to his elbow and stared at him,
he rushed at the fence. "I have never told you, Aymar, but the fact is
that I have become rather absurdly rich since I first met you. Just
before I went to Vendée my English grandfather died, and left me nearly
all his money--about six thousand pounds a year--and besides that
I----"
Aymar had sat up, suddenly paling. "Please don't say any more, Laurent.
I am very sorry I ever mentioned the matter to you."
Laurent plucked more desperately than ever at the grass, but he stuck to
his guns. "You must forgive me, but you gave me leave to say anything I
liked."
"Well?" said Aymar, not encouragingly.
"You know that I should never presume to offer you money----"
"Then what are you doing now?"
Try as he would Laurent could not help wincing at the tone. He looked at
the dancing water in silence for a moment.
"It is not for your own benefit, the money, Aymar! Am I to stand by and
see you ruin yourself--see you break your heart--when I could so easily
prevent it? Why, it would be less than one year's income of this
fortune which I do not want and have not yet touched! And after all you
have said--because I cannot forget your words, even though I never
deserved them--after all that, I am so little to you that you will not
let me do you this paltry service! It's"--he laughed with nervousness
and anxiety--"on my soul, it's Arbelles over again!"
"You don't know what an impossible thing you are asking," replied Aymar,
his head turned away.
"You have done more impossible," pleaded Laurent. "You went and asked a
favour of your enemy . . . for the sake of another. Yet you will not
take a gift from a friend--though that, too, is for the sake of
others."
There was a long pause. Sarrasin had a fresh access of snapping, and in
the Aven a fish actually jumped.
"Perhaps I might . . . take it as a loan," said Aymar at length with, it
was clear, the utmost difficulty.
"And sell Sessignes to repay it!--Oh, Aymar, it's not for yourself! I
. . . I think it's for me!"
Another silence. Aymar's head was still turned away; he was digging one
hand into the grass farther than Laurent had ever done. Did it mean
that he was going to accept? Oh, if only it might be!
And then Laurent became aware of someone approaching the stream.
"Here is your cousin!" he exclaimed in surprise. Aymar looked up, and
they both scrambled to their feet.
"Eulalie de Morsan has just arrived, Aymar," Laurent heard Avoye say, as
Aymar went over the bridge towards her. "She is going to stay the
night. I came to tell you; Grand'mère is asking for you."
On this news Aymar made no comment; he merely thanked its bearer for her
trouble. And as Laurent, inwardly cursing the moment chosen by Mme de
Morsan for her arrival, went up to the house with the cousins, he
learnt that the lady was on her way home from Aix-les-Bains or
somewhere, and had elected to pay them a visit en passant. His
annoyance was, however, a little dispelled on hearing that she had
brought with her the news that Paris had capitulated to the Allies
three days ago.
(5)
Mme de Morsan's start of surprise when she saw Aymar, her shocked "Mon
cousin, how ill you look!" which pleased the "cousin" in question not
at all, her raising of the eyebrows and her surveying of Avoye de
Villecresne, presumably because she had the temerity not to be wearing
mourning, were the first impressions which Laurent gathered at this his
second encounter with the fair traveller, who was graciously pleased,
for her part, to assert a vivid remembrance of their first meeting, and
of their conversation. Later, at supper, she was pretty well occupied
in answering Mme de la Rocheterie's questions about her own doings
during the twelve months or so which had passed since the Vicomtesse
and her nephew's widow had met. Laurent could easily see that Mme de la
Rocheterie had a penchant for this lively, free-spoken, handsome
kinswoman, but that Mme de Villecresne did not share it. Compared with
that opulent beauty in her elegant "half-dress" of rosecoloured
sarcenet embroidered with shaded chenille, she looked like an evening
primrose by a tiger-lily. As for Aymar, he was courteous and attentive,
but no more; indeed, he was somewhat silent in the salon afterwards,
and so was Avoye.
But Mme de Morsan was talkative enough, and soon began to direct most of
her conversation at the other guest, an attention with which he could
well have dispensed, for the company was not numerous enough to make it
private, and it developed uncomfortable elements. So he had been able
to repay that romantic leap into the river! And had the hero been a
good patient? She could fancy him being just a little exacting, but
since they were such friends Laurent would hardly betray him. And was
it true that it was because he had been so ill that the Imperialists
had released him? Yes, said Laurent brazenly; and Mme de la Rocheterie
here intimated her conviction that their commander, for all his
politics, must have had a kind heart. On this the visitor introduced
into the conversation a topic equally thorny and unforeseen, for she
declared that she could not imagine how this Guitton (Aymar had been
obliged to supply her with the detested name), whatever his humanity,
could ever have allowed such a capture as L'Oiseleur to leave his hands
without giving his parole. Or had he given it? And when Laurent
evasively replied that it would have been ridiculous to insist upon
parole with a man in M. de la Rocheterie's then state of health, Mme de
Morsan, looking pensively at her sandal, opined that it was hardly a
compliment to be released unconditionally. When she further added, even
though with a smile at Aymar and the air of uttering a pleasantry, that
it was obvious the Imperialists must have had some reason for wanting
to get rid of him, a cold and curious suspicion was already worming its
way into Laurent's mind that behind this rather sub-acid banter there
was knowledge of some kind. Yet it was half dispelled by the way in
which she then said, laughing outright, "I will again hazard the guess
that he was a trying patient!"
"Well," put in Mme de la Rocheterie with the tiniest shade of
impatience, perhaps even of displeasure, "we shall never find that out
from M. de Courtomer, so we can abandon the subject. Tell us, Eulalie,
more of the news about Paris."
But it appeared that their visitor knew no more than the bare fact of
the capitulation. As she remarked, she did not come from the
neighbourhood of the capital, quite the reverse.
"I think you said you had been at Aix, did you not?" asked Avoye,
speaking for almost the first time since supper. "Did you chance to
meet M. de Vaubernier there?"
Aymar's and Laurent's looks met for a second. "The Marquis de
Vaubernier," repeated Mme de Morsan, in evident surprise. "Has he been
at Aix? No, I did not meet him there. When did he go, and why?"
It was the Vicomtesse who supplied this information, adding that, if he
had returned home, she would have invited the old gentleman over that
evening; he was so fond of a game of whist. And she thereupon suggested
that the four young people should play a rubber. Two of these--probably
three--were profoundly grateful for the suggestion, and they played
cards in peace till bedtime, Laurent only suffering one spasm of
probably needless apprehension and dismay when he thought he discerned
Mme de Morsan looking very fixedly at Aymar's wrists as he dealt. But
he could see nothing there now.
By tacit consent he went with Aymar into his room when they were
upstairs.
"Do you think that Mme de Morsan can possibly know anything?" was his
first question.
"I am sure she does. What it is, exactly, I must find out to-morrow."
"Yet, surely," observed Laurent, looking bothered, "she could not have
said those things to you . . . about you . . . intentionally, of set
purpose!" (For how could a woman enjoy seeing the man of whom she was
enamoured writhe--not that Aymar had writhed . . . outwardly.)
"Why not?"
"Well, because you--because she--because it would be unkind," responded
Laurent, rather red.
"All the stronger incentive," observed Aymar drily. "I shall have it out
with her to-morrow."
So Laurent left that subject and embarked, half regretfully, on the
next. Paris having capitulated, he felt that he must go to his mother
at once, premising, however, that the day after to-morrow would be
early enough to start. If Aymar had no objection, he should like to
outstay Mme de Morsan.
Aymar smiled at that. Laurent took up his candle again, went a few paces
towards the door, and stopped. "I wish I could know to-night, Aymar,"
he said wistfully, "if you are going to agree to what I proposed this
afternoon? It would be the best parting gift you could give me--the
thing I want most in the world just now . . . except that you should be
cleared."
For a very long minute Aymar stood looking down at the floor.
At last he raised his head. "I wish," he said, drawing a long breath,
"that it were not so hard to give in to what is . . . happiness to me
also." And he gave Laurent the most wonderful smile he had ever seen.
(6)
It was partly with the idea of leaving the field free for Aymar to have
his explanation with Mme de Morsan that Laurent took himself off for a
walk next morning, starting from the water-meadows below the château.
He walked for a good hour and a half, steering himself by the towers of
Sessignes on the rise, and accompanied all the time by the intense and
quiet joy which had dwelt with him since last night--since Aymar had
given him that overwhelming proof of his affection. For that acceptance
of his was a greater happiness to Laurent than even the happiness of
having something to offer him. . . .
Absorbed in this content, he was returning through the pastures, by the
side of a hedge which divided one of the big fields from the next, when
he was brought back to his surroundings by voices on the other side of
it, a little ahead of him. He had advanced a few steps more before he
realized that one was undoubtedly Aymar's. The other was a woman's--Mme
de Morsan's?
If so, his manoeuvre had not been very successful. However, he need not
interrupt the interview, for the hedge was too tall and too thick for
them to see him, and if he passed swiftly and quietly they would
probably not hear him either. Eavesdropping was naturally the last
thought in his mind, since for one thing he knew the purpose of the
meeting, and would certainly hear its result later from Aymar. He
quickened his pace to get past, the grass muffling his footfall, when
through the hedge there burst these startling words:
"Aymar, you cannot be as cold as you seem! Kiss me--kiss me only once,
and you will know that you are not!"
The voice _was_ Mme de Morsan's. And Aymar's quick "Eulalie, you are
mad. Has the sun----" was swallowed up in the vehemence of her passion.
"The sun! It is you, with your pallor and your unapproachableness and
your wounded honour! And you would be safe with me as you never will be
with _her!_ I do not care what you did! Aymar, Aymar! . . ."
Laurent heard no more. He had fled stealthily back on his tracks. Good
Heavens! Poor Aymar! It was certain that the whole of this interview
would never be related to him now!
He made a wide detour, but when he approached the river some half-hour
later he pulled up again. A lady was leaning over the rail of the
little bridge which he must traverse, staring into the water and
swinging to and fro a tiny pink sunshade. It was Mme de Morsan. Well,
it was unlikely that she would want to kiss _him!_ Raising his hat, he
courageously passed her, noticing that she was more than usually pale
. . . whereas he thought that she ought to have been red. She gave him,
however, a rather absent but quite unembarrassed smile.
It was Laurent himself who was embarrassed when, after search, he came
on Aymar before déjeuner, in the hall. He had only just come in, and he
had evidently been walking furiously, and was angry with something of
the consuming anger of that penultimate day at Arbelles.
"Yes, she knows everything," he said curtly, as he went past Laurent to
the stairs, "--everything but the cause, that is. But she will not tell
what she knows."
"I wonder how you are sure of that?" thought Laurent, looking after his
ascending figure--wondering, also, despite himself, how that one-sided
love-scene had ended.
Déjeuner then followed, not favoured by the presence of Mme de la
Rocheterie, who, being slightly indisposed, was keeping her room. It
might have gone better had she been there, though to be sure there was
nothing wrong with Mme de Morsan's self-possession. Aymar, who never
addressed her, was steely, and, when the meal was over, became
invisible. There seemed, however, no reason why Laurent should not go
for a last ride on Hirondelle, and so, after bidding farewell to Mme de
Morsan, who was leaving Sessignes at two o'clock, he departed.
(7)
It fell, therefore, to Avoye de Villecresne to entertain the guest for
the last half-hour of her stay, after the latter had duly made her
farewells to Mme de la Rocheterie upstairs. It was to be presumed that,
whatever had taken place between them that morning (for Avoye could not
be blind to his attitude at déjeuner) the master of the house would
reappear in time to hand the departing visitor to her carriage. In the
meantime, Mme de Morsan sat ready in the salon, arrayed in a Russian
mantle of pale salmon-coloured cloth ornamented with a border of maroon
velvet and white silk cord.
"He is indeed a _fidus Achates_, that young man," she observed of
Laurent de Courtomer when the latter had taken his leave. "Pylades,
Patroclus, and Euryalus all rolled into one. (Did you know I had so
much classical lore? I must have imbibed it from poor Edouard.) But I
think I could better describe M. de Courtomer as Sarrasin on two legs.
I have seen him looking at Aymar with very much the same expression."
"We owe him more than we can ever repay," said Avoye. She hated
discussing anybody she liked with Eulalie de Morsan.
"Yes, indeed you do," agreed that lady. "Nevertheless, it is dreadful to
see our poor Aymar so changed."
Worst of all was it to discuss Aymar with her. "He is getting stronger,"
replied Avoye briefly.
"But, mon Dieu, what he must have suffered . . . in his pride!"
Avoye winced. "Yes, Pont-aux-Rochers was a terrible blow."
"Oh, I was referring to the Bois des Fauvettes," said Mme de Morsan
lazily.
"You mean his capture? Naturally he felt that, at such a time." Avoye
got up, went quickly to her work-table, and opened a drawer. "What do
you think of this new kind of embroidery, Eulalie? I have been wanting
your opinion on it."
Mme de Morsan took the specimen brought to her, but she did not look at
it. She looked up at the girl instead. "Something happened to him
before his capture, did it not? . . . I see that you do not want to
discuss it. Neither do I. But I must admit that I find it very
interesting, the profound resemblance that there is at bottom between
all men, however exceptional they seem to be. It is really something of
a relief to know that our dear Aymar is human, after all--as human as
any other man."
"I have no idea what you mean," returned Avoye frigidly, intensely
disliking words and tone and smile.
The smile grew. "No? And yet it is wonderful to think that to-day, just
as in the Middle Ages . . . You remember the legend of the original
Oiseleur, and how he lost the _jartier_ through a woman?"
"Yes."
"Well, history is only a series of repetitions. Forgive the truism!"
"As I say, I do not know what you are talking about," repeated Avoye,
but more warmly this time.
"Has not Aymar lost the _jartier_? Well, if he did not exactly present
that to a lady, he presented her with something more valuable--his good
name."
Avoye lifted her proud little head. "Are you trying to inform me,
Eulalie, that report has introduced a woman into this story?"
"No, ma chère. Report has left her out--fortunately for our cousin. But
she was there all the same. I happen to know the true version, and I am
willing to share it with you."
"I am not quite sure," said Avoye, considering her, "that you always
know what truth is, Eulalie."
"You are frank--quite like Tante Athénaïs for once--merci! But I do
know; it is others, you will find, who have tampered with it. Ah, my
dear Avoye, with your little white ingénue's mind . . . if you knew!"
"Please drop these hints, Eulalie, and tell me straight out what you
mean!"
"With pleasure," replied Mme de Morsan, arranging her mantle. "Ask
Aymar, then, whether he did not really send his famous letter to the
enemy as the price of a woman's life!"
"Absurd!" exclaimed Mme de Villecresne, now thoroughly roused. "I wonder
you have not more sense!"
Eulalie smiled sweetly. "Oh, I know why you are angry. You think that
there is only one woman in the world for whom Aymar would do such a
thing."
"Aymar would not do a thing like that for any woman!"
"Again the ingénue! Ask him!"
"Indeed I shall not!" cried Avoye contemptuously.
"No, perhaps you are wiser. . . . When are you going to marry him?--Ah
forgive my indiscretion! Yet, on the whole, I think I should get his
confession out of him first if I were you."
"Confession! Aymar!"
"Yes, even Aymar! . . . Have I not said that he has proved himself
human, after all? Listen; the Bonapartists had in their hands at the
end of April a woman whom they were, apparently, going to shoot as a
spy, because they suspected her of carrying information . . . as she
_had_ done, before the Restoration. To save her, Aymar made a bargain,
took the fearful risk he did . . . and lost."
"Eulalie, you are dreaming!"
"It is you who are asleep, ma chère. I am trying to wake you, since you
will have to come out of the trance some day. . . . Of course you think
I am libelling L'Oiseleur. Well, you have only to ask him--though to be
sure he may have become so much further human as to lie. . . . I
suppose we shall see him before I go?" She looked at the clock. "I have
not yet made him my adieux."
"It _is_ . . . a libel!" said Avoye, her breath coming short. "For no
woman----"
Mme de Morsan leant forward. "For one woman, perhaps, Avoye . . . for
one! Ought you not to be proud? Such a hecatomb . . . and his good
name! You see it, do you not, for surely you remember in whose hands
you were on the night of April the twenty-seventh?"
"But I . . ." faltered Avoye, staring at her. "I was in no danger . . .
there was no talk of shooting . . ."
"Is that so? I can well believe it. But M. de Vaubernier, who brought
the news to Aymar here, and acted as his intermediary, was crazed with
fear for you."
Avoye had sprung to her feet. "Oh, it's impossible! It's . . . you are
lying wickedly! . . . I _know_ that you are lying, for Aymar himself
has told me all about the letter, and why he sent it--it was a plan he
had already made. And it was not sent to where I was at all! He would
have known that I would rather a thousand times . . . but no, it is too
absurd to pretend that I was in danger of being shot when I was treated
with such courtesy . . . and more than absurd, wicked," she added, as a
fresh aspect dawned upon her, "to make out that I--_I_--was the cause
of Pont-aux-Rochers!"
Eulalie shrugged her shoulders in the salmon-coloured mantle. "Well, I
think I hear Aymar's step, so you can easily have me proved a liar
. . . or rather, perhaps, learn that the Marquis de Vaubernier, from
whom I had the story, is a romancer of the first order."
It _was_ Aymar's step. In a moment more he came in through the long
window.
"Your carriage is at the door, Madame," he said coldly to Eulalie. "May
I have the honour of conducting you to it?"
But Mme de Morsan was looking down, smiling and silent, contemplating
her toe on the edge of the hearth. Avoye's eyes were fixed on her
cousin; then she suddenly sat down as if her limbs would no longer
sustain her. But it was she who broke the silence.
"Eulalie has been telling me something about you . . . which I do not
believe."
"Something," completed Mme de Morsan in measured tones, "which I
elicited from M. de Vaubernier--no, not at Aix. As I told you, I did
not see him there. It was at Chambéry. You must not blame the old
gentleman; in his horror at what had happened to you, Aymar, which he
knew, and told me, he let out _why_ it had happened. And now I have
incautiously mentioned it to Avoye, since she is so deeply concerned in
it, and find that you had decided--wisely, I dare say--to keep her in
the dark. Need I say how much I regret----"
"No!" broke in Aymar, standing before her very tall and straight. "No,
you need not add a lie to what you have done! Your carriage, as I said,
is at the door," and he made a gesture towards the hall. His eyes were
blazing.
Eulalie de Morsan looked up at him easily, admiringly. "What I have
done, my dear Aymar--how well you look in a rage!--is merely to tell
the truth . . . of which you have been sparing!"
"But it is not the truth!" repeated Avoye, in the voice of one who,
having been mortally stabbed, denies the wound.
Mme de Morsan rose in an unconcerned manner, and gathered together her
possessions. "Well, as Aymar does not seem anxious to have a witness of
his answer to that statement, I will leave you together. Au revoir, ma
chère."
Avoye took no notice. Aymar was already at the door, holding it open.
Eulalie went slowly past him, and, looking him in the face as she did
so, said, very low, "You would have done better to strike the bargain.
And now you will see the quality of _her_ love!" Yet suddenly her own
face was convulsed, and she turned it aside.
He did not vouchsafe a word or a look, but, standing on the threshold,
said to Célestin who, with her maid, was waiting in the hall, "Hand Mme
de Morsan to her carriage," and went into the salon again, shutting the
door behind him.
(8)
Avoye was standing before the great hearth, her back to him, her face
buried in her hands. He stood a moment at the door, looking at her,
then he crossed the room towards her. At his step she dropped her
hands, and, clasping them hard in front of her, without turning towards
him, without even glancing at him, said in an almost inaudible voice:
"Aymar, say that it is not true!"
No, to pile more lies on those the orchard had drawn from him--he could
not do it. He had come to that hour which he had sacrificed so much to
avert, when he must tell her of her innocent share in his ruin. He set
his teeth for a moment as he took out the knife. If only it were
destined for his breast and not hers!
"Will you tell me exactly what she said to you?"
Still not looking at him, very briefly, as one half stunned, she told
him. The brutal manner in which she had herself been enlightened was
clear enough. But Aymar had hardly a thought to spare for Eulalie, her
perfidy, her bitter revenge. What mattered was this stricken, pitifully
bewildered little Avoye, so pale in her grey gown, who would not look
at him while she waited for the denial which he could not give, but
only repeated again and again, in a voice that made his heart ache,
"Aymar, say it is not true, say it is not true!" and then, "How can it
be true? How could you have done it to save me? you did not know that I
had been stopped--you said so!"
"I wanted to spare you all I could," he answered very sadly.
"To spare me? Why, what had I done?"
"Nothing--nothing! That was why."
"But I was in no danger--you did not even know that I was detained. And
she says that Godfather was mixed up in it--yet you never said a word
of it!" And now she was looking at him indeed. "Is it possible that
down there in the orchard, when my heart was breaking about you, you
took me in your arms and comforted me . . . with _lies!_"
The hated word stung him a little in the midst of everything else.
"How could I tell you the truth, my darling, when, as you say, your
heart was breaking like that? And, although I sent the letter to save
you, it _was_ part of a ruse--a plan I had made beforehand. Can't you
believe me, Avoye?"
"But it is all so crazy!" she exclaimed. "I in danger of being shot--I
to whom they apologized! . . . And Godfather, what was he doing in it?
He never came there! And you really thought, _you_----"
Poor child, poor lamb, so bewildered under the touch of the knife. Oh,
to get through this barbarity quickly! "Dearest, I will tell you
exactly what happened. But sit down, for pity's sake." He seized and
swung forward a little gilt chair. "If only I had never given that
woman the chance of springing it on you like this--if only I had
guessed that she knew!"
But she recoiled from him. She would none of the chair. She went back as
far as the carved stone of the hearth and put a hand to that. And then
she faced him. "Be quick, Aymar, be quick! I'm . . . frightened!"
So, standing in front of her, and in front of the proud, indifferent
swans of their blazon, he told her shortly the other, the true,
complete story. But it had a strange sound in his own ears now.
There was fear indeed in her eyes when he had finished. And when he
said, "Do you see, my dear, a little, why I wanted you never to know?"
and tried to take her hand, she drew it away and shook her head.
"How _can_ they both be true--that you did it for a military reason,
which you told me first, and that you did it to save me because you
imagined--_imagined_--that I was in danger?"
Aymar looked down at her, full of a great pity. "Do you not see," he
said again, "the plan was there, ready, and I used it, that was all."
Trembling visibly, and twisting her hands a little, she said, "No; I
cannot. I cannot help feeling, which story am I to believe . . . or
perhaps you have another?"
"_Avoye!_" he exclaimed, flushing scarlet.
"I wish you had! I wish you had! How am I to believe, first, that you
sent the letter to the Imperialist commander at Arzon as a ruse, and
then, that you sent it to Colonel Richard at Saint-Goazec, to save me,
who was not in danger! You have told me both of those things. . . .
Aymar, Aymar, you seem somebody I have never known! You--you--to do a
disgraceful thing . . . to do it for me . . . and then, not daring to
tell me, to lie about it!"
For a moment he knew dizziness. They were both drowning in a sea too
strong for either of them. Yet surely there must be some raft to which
one might cling. The love of years could not fail like this. . . .
"Avoye, I swear to you that the two stories are not incompatible! The
plan _was_ a ruse--it remained a ruse, even though I used it as I did."
"But how am I to know that you did not make up the whole of what you
told me in the orchard? So much of it was untrue--you admit that. What
portions of it can I really feel safe in believing?" She suppressed a
sob. "Did you ever meet M. de Saint-Etienne and make that plan at all?"
He gave her a look, but in words he did not answer--he could not. Who
had the knife now?
"I cannot help hurting you!" cried Avoye desperately. "Do you think that
it does not hurt me, too? For you never sent that letter to Arzon--that
was a lie--and you _did_ know that I was detained!"
Aymar had found his voice again. "Yes . . . unfortunately!" He turned
away for a moment. The waves had grown mountains high; yet there was
but one thing he would appeal to. "If you would only try to
understand!" he said, facing her again; and he said it very quietly.
She was trembling and very pale; her eyes were full of tears as she
answered, "I do understand--I do begin to. I understand now why you
have taken no steps to clear yourself. The story that was good enough
to dupe me with, in the orchard, is not good enough for the world! Yes,
I do understand! You are not, as I had always dreamed, the living
embodiment of our motto, the very soul of honour!"
He made a faint gesture. "Then nothing that I can say is of any use."
But she went on in her blind anguish, "If a saint--yes, if our Blessed
Lady herself had come to tell me that you could do this . . . and then
lie about it to me . . . I would not have believed it, Aymar! I _could_
not. . . . And yet, you have done it!"
"Yes, I have done it!" He looked at her steadily. "And you are not going
to try to understand or to pardon?"
"It is not a thing one could ever pardon!" she flashed out. "You have
sold your honour!"
With that the blade was full in his own heart, so keen that its stab was
partly physical, and involuntarily he put his hand to his side. But he
took it instantly away, and gripped the back of the little gilt chair
near him. He was the colour of ashes. Yet his head was high.
"No, that I have not done! And there is only one part of it which needs
pardon," he said firmly, "and that is, that to save you needless pain,
I told you some things which were not true. For what I _did_ I do not
ask your pardon."
"You can say that after Pont-aux-Rochers!"
"I can say that after Pont-aux-Rochers. What I deliberately slew, in the
hope of saving you, was not my men, but my own . . . instincts. It is
not in your power or any one's to pardon me for _that_ sacrifice."
The very look he gave her, at once proud, tender, unyielding and hurt to
death, the very yearning of her heart for him, only met that other tide
of horrified dismay in fiercer tumult and foam. Avoye de Villecresne
burst into tears, and crying incoherently, "I cannot understand you
. . . I never shall. . . . This will kill me, I think . . . but I
cannot bear to see you . . . as you are now!" turned and went quickly
out of the open window, leaving him alone.
And Aymar stood quite still, looking, not after her disappearing figure,
but at the old Spanish leather screen, with its embossed border of
pomegranates and its faded gold, which had for some minutes been to him
the background to her slim body in its narrow gown, her aureole of
burnished hair even, in a sense, to her passionate and bewildered
voice--looking at it almost as if he did not realize that she was gone.
Then he, too, went from the room.
(9)
"Oh, my dear fellow," cried Laurent, bursting rather unceremoniously
into his friend's bedroom, "what a divine creature your mare is!
To-day's was the best gallop I have ever had. It is a thousand shames
that you yourself----What on earth are you doing, Aymar?"
For in the middle of the room, with his back to him, Aymar was on his
knees before a little portmanteau. He did not look up, and for a moment
did not answer, but folded and refolded a coat which had previously
been lying in a huddle in the valise.
"I am going away," he said at length.
"Going away!" repeated Laurent, stupefied. "Now? Not to-day, surely! And
where? . . . Aymar!"
He came towards him with the intention of putting a hand on his
shoulder, but before he reached him Aymar had risen and was at the
window. Standing there, still with his back to him, he said very low,
"Everything has gone now, Laurent--everything."
The breeze fluttered the curtain, and except for that there was silence.
But the hopeless pain in his voice seemed to go on vibrating after he
had spoken.
"Who has told her?" asked Laurent after a long pause.
"Eulalie. She had got it out of Vaubernier after all."
"And she--Mme de Villecresne?" But there seemed no way in which the
question could be put. Its answer indeed was the little valise gaping
on the floor.
Aymar turned round. "Mme de Morsan did it deliberately, from malice, in
the worst way she could. And the shock . . . I tried to explain but,
having had to lie the other day . . . it was too difficult for her
. . . my cousin . . ." He broke off and indicated the valise. "I must
finish that. I suppose they will have taken the saddle off Hirondelle
by now?"
Very gently Laurent laid his hand on his shoulder. "Mon ami, you cannot
go like this. And you cannot ride Hirondelle, or any other horse, just
yet."
Aymar shook his head. "It is of no use, Laurent. I must go. You have
galloped Hirondelle. Besides, she does not pull. Perhaps you will
fasten this for me? I think I have all I want."
Laurent looked at him, deeply troubled. What was he to do? "You will let
me come, too, then, Aymar, will you not? Any horse will serve for me."
"No, I am afraid I cannot let you come."
Impossible to be hurt or offended. The situation was beyond that. "But
where are you going?"
Once more Aymar shook his head, and, as Laurent had not moved, knelt
down again by the valise. But Laurent lifted it to a chair and strapped
it up in silence. As he finished there came the earthquake quiver of
the door which testified that Sarrasin had let himself down against it
outside.
When he looked round Aymar was standing motionless, gazing at something
in his hand.
"It was on the floor. It must have been in the pocket of that coat,
which I was wearing the night it broke. . . . And I come on it again
_now!_"
Laurent came to look. It was the lost _jartier_, symbol now of so much
that was lost. Aymar gave a little laugh, and crushing it together
threw it across the room towards the fireplace. Laurent had an impulse,
soon gone, to protest; but what did it matter now?
"You will at least write to me, to Paris?" he said pleadingly. "Aymar,
do consider----"
"Yes, I will write." He had pulled down a cloak. "It is only that I must
get away to . . . to think things over. I have written a note to my
grandmother. I dare not see her--she would guess."
An idea struck Laurent. He went up to him and put a hand on his shoulder
once more. "Aymar, unless you will give me your word of honour that you
are not going away to do . . . what you spoke of in the cave . . . I
_shall_ accompany you!"
The faintest trace of a smile came. "Dear Laurent! . . . I give you my
word."
"May I at least come down the avenue with you?"
"Please. And . . . forgive my leaving you--your last night. I am ashamed
. . . but I cannot stay till to-morrow."
Laurent made a gesture. "As if you ever needed to apologize to me!"
When they got to the door of the room he said suddenly, "Has Mme de
Morsan left the house?"
"Yes, about an hour ago."
"Thank Heaven! Because--I suppose men have shot women before now!"
Again there was an almost imperceptible flicker of amusement.
"Who do you propose should do it, Laurent--you or I?"
"I, by God! Don't tell me which way she has gone!"
"Long ago," said Aymar de la Rocheterie reflectively, his hand on the
door knob, his eyes, wide and dark with pain, fixed on him, "long ago I
found, Laurent, that there never was a partisan like you. Nor a friend.
Nor one who understood so well. . . . You do understand why I must go
alone now?"
"Yes," said Laurent. And he added, with a miserable little laugh, "There
is another partisan on the other side of the door who will not,
however. You had better take him with you."
"No," answered Aymar, opening the door. Sarrasin was up in a second, his
eyes on the cloak over his arm. "Go in and lie down, Sarrasin," said
his master. "You cannot come with me."
The great dog gave him a long, melancholy look, licked his hand, and
went in like a puzzled but obedient child.
There happened to be nobody in the stable-yard when they got there.
Hirondelle was still bridled. Laurent slipped her saddle on again and
helped Aymar into it.
He walked down the avenue by him in a dream. Nothing seemed to be true.
He had never seen his friend on a horse before, and thought he should
never henceforward see him, in memory, anywhere else. Save for his
face, he looked so supremely himself there. But how long would he be
able to stay in the saddle?
At the gates Aymar spoke at last. "I think, perhaps, that I will go to
Eveno for a little. That is instead of taking Sarrasin with me. . . ."
He had reined up. "I will not sleep in a ditch, Laurent. I will not
throw away all the care--the unspeakable care--you have lavished on
this very useless body; and I will write to you--soon. And for this
going . . . forgive me again!"
He bent from the saddle and kissed him on either cheek; then Hirondelle
carried him between the stone-balled gateposts. The sunlight struck
across him; after that he was engulfed in the green gloom of the
chestnuts. He did not turn round. Laurent watched him for a little;
then he suddenly leant against the post with his arm over his eyes.
When he removed it the road was empty.
(10)
"Perhaps we had better not wait any longer for my cousin," said Mme de
Villecresne at last to the guest. "He must be out, I think."
The two of them were alone in the salon. Supper had been announced five
minutes ago, since which event Laurent had been grimly waiting to cast
his bombshell--as, obviously, it had not already been cast.
"He _is_ out," he replied briefly. "I would have told you before,
Madame, had I realized that it was for him that you were waiting." (For
until that moment he had forgotten that Mme de la Rocheterie was not
going to make her appearance at the meal.)
The news discomposed his companion, he could see. Did she then expect
Aymar to come and sup with them as if nothing had happened?
"How strange!" she murmured. "Did he say, Monsieur de Courtomer, at what
time he intended to return?"
"No, Madame. He has gone away, I fear--if not for good, at least for
some time. So, if you will allow me----"
He held out his arm. But Avoye de Villecresne stood perfectly still; she
had gone white, then red, and was now white again. Oh, how was it
possible that with such eyes as hers she could have done it!
"Gone away!" she whispered. But at that moment the door suddenly opened,
and admitted Mme de la Rocheterie, on the arm of her elderly maid,
colour in her delicate cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. She might be
indisposed, but she was clearly very angry. In her hand was a letter.
"That will do, Rose." And when the door had closed she stood in the
middle of the room, extremely erect, and said to Laurent, "As my
grandson has so little idea of the courtesy due to a guest, to a
departing guest, and one to whom he is under such an obligation, I am
constrained to take his place. If you will accept my apologies for his
extraordinary behaviour, Monsieur de Courtomer, be good enough to give
me your arm to the dining-room."
Laurent, petrified, offered it.
The discomfort of the meal was intense. For one thing only was Laurent
grateful--that Mme de la Rocheterie was so wroth that, after announcing
that the culprit had said he had gone off on business connected with
the late Eperviers, she left the subject of Aymar's defection alone,
and kept the conversation going on other subjects. Mme de Villecresne,
on the contrary, seemed almost dazed.
After supper, half to Laurent's relief, the Vicomtesse withdrew again,
leaving her granddaughter to give him coffee in the salon.
Laurent was in reality quite unwilling to accept even this conventional
office from the hands of Mme de Villecresne. That he had come to think
her charming only made this evening's revulsion fiercer. _She_ a worthy
mate for Aymar, whom she had forsaken in his bitterest need, stabbed
when--nay, because--he had endured so much for her! But, though he was
brimming with anger against her, he would probably have held his hand
if she, too, had not murmured, as she gave him his cup, something not
very coherent about an apology. How was he to guess that she was so
torn with misery and dismay that she hardly knew what she was saying,
and caught at any banality lest she should weep before him?
He drank off the coffee and cleared his decks for action.
"There is no need for apology, Madame," he observed. "The situation is
not unfamiliar to me. It reminds me of the evening I spent when M. de
la Rocheterie was turned out of Arbelles."
Mme de Villecresne looked faintly startled.
"You mean the evening after he was released?"
"No, Madame. He never was 'released' in the sense commonly attached to
that term. He was turned out into the road, weak and ill, at a quarter
of an hour's notice--turned out before the eyes of the whole garrison."
The blood began to ebb from Avoye's face. "But why----"
"Why? To humiliate him, and because, weeks earlier, he would not betray
M. du Tremblay's plans. The attempt to wring information out of him
then, when he was barely able to speak, nearly killed him as it was."
"Tried to wring information out of him--out of _Aymar!_" repeated Avoye
in a horrified voice. "And turned out of Arbelles! But, Monsieur de
Courtomer, why have I not been told these things before--why have they
been kept from me, and I allowed to think . . ."
Laurent, who had been standing, sat down heavily. "Yes, it might have
been better not. But he would do it--anything to spare you a moment's
pain."
She stiffened. "I do not like being spared, Monsieur de Courtomer."
"No, Madame. And I know that you are brave; your cousin knows it, too.
But it is difficult for a man--for some men, that is" (he did not at
the moment feel himself to be of their number) "to hurt a woman when by
keeping the hurt to themselves they can spare her."
"I know they think that. They do not realize what a woman--what some
women--feel about it. And need sparing a woman involve lying to her?"
There was a passion of abhorrence in her tone--then, with extreme
suddenness, she caught herself up. "I do not mean, of course, that my
cousin lied to me!" And there was almost defiance in the gaze with
which she met Laurent's. But as that young man was speechless, trying
to digest this remarkable statement, she was able to hurry on to say,
"Then I was misled when I thought he was well treated at Arbelles?"
"I verily believe that she is trying to prove _me_ the liar, Aymar
having suddenly become so immaculate!" thought Laurent. He replied
soberly, "You must pardon me, Madame, but that was not a thing on which
anybody consciously misled you. You assumed it, because he had
excellent medical attention and was 'released.' But in other respects
he was treated abominably--at least when the Colonel was there." And he
proceeded to give her a résumé of what Aymar had undergone at their
hands, told her how he had found him exhausted under a haystack--in
short, what had nearly been the consequence of his "release."
Avoye turned her face away. After a silence she said in a voice whose
tremulousness was pierced with terror, "I knew that there was something
more amiss with him than wounds! Monsieur de Courtomer, you swore to me
. . ."
She became inaudible; all he could catch was the word "decline."
"No, no, Madame," he said quickly, anxious to reassure her (for it was
plain that in spite of what she had done she did care). "No, his
condition is merely the result of the blood he has lost. The doctor
said so clearly, and that it would perhaps be as much as a year before
he was strong again."
"How did he come to--to lose so much blood?" she asked faintly. "Was it
then so long before the enemy found him after . . . after what happened
in the Bois des Fauvettes?"
"Not so very long--not more than an hour perhaps; but you see he
struggled hard to get free, and being fastened like that, upright----"
He broke off before the uncomprehending horror of the face she had
raised. Was it possible that she did not know that essence of "what had
happened in the Bois des Fauvettes"?
"Don't you know?" he jerked out almost mechanically.
"Know what? Struggled to get free . . . _fastened_ . . . Monsieur de
Courtomer, what awful thing are you talking about?"
And Laurent cursed himself. Aymar had not told her the worst. Equally,
of course, he did not wish her to know it.
"Oh, nothing, Madame," he stammered. "I would not for worlds have
mentioned it had I not thought that you knew already."
"O God!" cried the girl rather hysterically, "more things kept from me!
For pity's sake, Monsieur, try to forget that I am a woman!"
Laurent, recovering himself, bowed. "If you wish it." And on that,
sparing her very little, he did tell her the true and full story of the
Bois des Fauvettes. But he had the grace not to look at her meanwhile.
"Aymar made out that it was . . . all over very quickly . . . done in
the surprise . . . almost a mistake," she said faintly at the end.
"On the contrary," replied Laurent remorselessly, "it was as protracted
and deliberate as I have told you. You can imagine that the
Imperialists, finding him in the situation they did, were not likely to
show him more consideration than . . . than some of his friends have
done since. He was taken to Arbelles, senseless, in a farm cart. How he
was looked on there I have told you. One would have thought he had paid
enough. . . ."
He was very brutal; he knew it. He was going very far--he did not care.
He was so worked up that a very little more would have brought out the
story of the ramrod. But there was also a limit to what his hearer
could endure. He saw her now get up, and ask him to excuse her "for a
few minutes." As he shut the door which he had held open for her he was
almost sure that he heard a stifled sob on the other side.
Then he paced up and down the room thinking, "I have done it now! What
would Aymar say if he knew! I don't care, I don't care! It was time she
heard these things. Look what keeping this from her has resulted in!"
And this was his most secret thought: "She has hurt Aymar bitterly,
unbearably: _but I have hurt her!_"
He did not believe that she would reappear that evening; and she did
not. By that he knew that his blows had gone home. After waiting a
little he wandered round the salon again, coming finally to an anchor
in front of the picture of the two children. _That_ to end in this!
"How could you?" he said to the laughing little girl, and soon
afterwards went unhappily, guiltily, yet unrepentantly to bed.
(11)
When Laurent came downstairs next morning, after taking his farewell of
the Vicomtesse, he was greatly surprised to find Mme de Villecresne, a
little ghost in white organdie, in the hall--waiting for him as was
evident by her request that he would speak to her, if he had the time.
And as he went out with her into the garden, which she seemed to
indicate as the scene of their interview, his conscience rather smote
him for last evening's free speech. But the mantle of the avenger had
not yet fallen from his shoulders. Mme de Villecresne's first words,
however, gave the panoply a perceptible twitch.
"I am very grateful to you for speaking to me as you did last night,
Monsieur de Courtomer," she said. "I am sure you cannot have liked
doing it." (Laurent surveyed the grass at his feet.) "I want, while I
still have the chance, to ask you something more."
They were now in the middle of the rose-garden, by the sundial, and here
she paused; paused, too, in her speech and looked away. Whatever she
was going to ask him was not easy to bring out. He supposed he must
give her time, even if he had to hurry for the diligence. So he looked
down in silence at the sundial, which assured him in its antiquated
French "_Icy ne verras que les heures sans nuages_," though a later
hand had scrawled on the copper of the dial the cynical proviso, "_Si
de telles heures existent!_"
Suddenly it came out, in a voice that shook. "Is it really true that it
was all done for me?"
"Yes, Madame," said Laurent.
"Then it is the other story that is not true?" said the voice still more
tremblingly.
At that the young man looked at her. "Do you mean the sending of the
letter as part of a plan already made?--They are both true."
Mme de Villecresne did not exclaim that that could not be, nor did she
ask him how it was possible. She went very slowly to the nearest
rose-hedge and picked a rose or two. Then she came back. "That was what
Aymar said," she murmured as if to herself. "If I could only see how
the two stories are compatible--if I could only see it!" And the roses
were clutched in her two hands as if they wore no thorns.
"Shall I try to explain it to you?" suggested Laurent gently. She seemed
so young suddenly, only a girl--only his own age. She was amazingly
free from rancour, too, considering what his "explanations" of last
night had been like for she said, with a really touching gratitude,
"Oh, if only you would, Monsieur de Courtomer!"
Over the sundial then, Laurent explained to the very best of his
ability, and found himself, like Aymar before him, tracing out the
figures there meanwhile.
"But I cannot understand how Aymar could be so deluded!" broke out Mme
de Villecresne at the end. "M. de Vaubernier, perhaps . . . but Aymar!"
The advocate reminded her that she _had_ once obtained military
information for her cousin, as he well knew; reminded her also of the
known fate of Marie Lasserre. Before the cruel story of the practical
joke he hesitated a moment in his new-found consideration, but for
Aymar's sake she must hear it. Only, since she was so pale already, he
suggested a move to the stone bench in the corner, and she complied.
Then, in the very place where the lying information had, all
innocently, been passed on to Aymar, he showed her how convincing it
had been.
"And, Madame," he concluded, "put yourself in your cousin's place;
suppose yourself waiting for his arrival here in this very garden, and
suppose yourself receiving instead news of his desperate peril. And
suppose further that you had in your pocket a plan for the destruction
of the enemy which you had been on the point already of putting into
practice, which indeed only needed the pretext of a bargain to make it
plausible. Do you mean to say that you would have gone peaceably to bed
and said 'Nothing can be done'?"
"No," she said with a strangled sob. "No, indeed, I would not. And so he
was tricked . . . tricked. . . . All this misery . . ." As she twisted
her now empty hands in an effort to keep her composure Laurent saw how
her roses had wounded them. "Yet Aymar told me," she went on,
recovering herself, and facing him as pale and piteous as a child,
"Aymar told me . . . some things that were not true . . . that were not
true at all! I could not have believed that he would tell the merest
fraction of a lie--even to spare me."
Laurent could not bear those little scratched hands, and in an almost
fatherly way he took out his pocket-handkerchief. "If you will permit
me, Madame . . ." and he dabbed at the beads of blood, the girl
apparently quite oblivious of what he was doing. "I could not have
believed that he would lie," she repeated.
Yes, that was the main stumbling-block of the situation. And Aymar had
known it, too.
"No, I can quite understand your feeling that about him," said Aymar's
friend, loosing the passive hands. "I should think that a more
naturally truthful person does not exist. And yet, Madame, there are
instincts . . . For instance, I dare say it has not struck you that
last night, to shield him, you told a lie yourself?"
"I?" she exclaimed, and a flush stained her pallor.
"It was so instinctive that you have forgotten it already. I expect you
were hardly aware of it at the time. Yet, to protect him from what I
might think of him you told me, in so many words, that your cousin had
not lied to you. Can you deny that?"
He smiled at her. He did feel himself rather like a wise uncle now--an
odd sensation.
The flush ran over Avoye's face again. She dropped her eyes to a tiny
red spot on her muslin gown. "That is quite true," she murmured.
"Do you think he would ever lie to save himself," went on Laurent,
pursuing his advantage, "any more than you would?"
She shook her head mutely. "But, Monsieur de Courtomer, if he had not
kept me so much in the dark--let me think that I knew it all--left me
to be enlightened by Mme de Morsan . . . it is that which hurts so."
"Yes, I dare say that was a mistake," assented Laurent, feeling about
sixty by this time. "It was a risk, but only his consideration for you
prompted him to take it. Yet, as far as that goes, were not you and he
leagued together to keep your grandmother a great deal more in the
dark? Did that trouble you--the thought of what was being kept from
her?"
Avoye raised her eyes and looked at him. "No," she said. "It seemed the
only, the right thing to do."
"One does those things instinctively, you see, with those one cares
for," the sagacious young man pointed out to her.
She pondered this, her eyes downcast. Never could the mentor beside her
have imagined himself admitted into so much intimacy. Heaven send he
had made good use of it! He sat quite motionless, for it was a thousand
times better to miss the diligence altogether than to cut short this
wonderful chance she had given him. Aymar _could_ not have explained
fully to her yesterday, or else she had been in no state to comprehend
the explanation.
As he revolved this conclusion Avoye herself said suddenly, "But I am
forgetting; you will miss the coach if I keep you longer." She rose,
growing less the child. "I can never thank you properly, Monsieur de
Courtomer, for what you have done. At least now I understand." Her lip
suddenly trembled. "I have really heard everything now, have I not?"
"Everything that matters," replied Laurent after a second's hesitation.
The ramrod story had so thin a connection with her, and it would
horrify her so--and his last night's desire to do this was now as dead
as last night's dreams. "No," he exclaimed abruptly, "there _is_ one
fact more I should like you to know. Your cousin has done many brave
things in his career, but you have never heard the bravest. And it was
done for you."
Therewith he sat down again and told her the story of the interview with
Colonel Richard.
(12)
There did not seem to be any place remote enough to shelter her grief
and her remorse. Not the house, where Grand'mère might at any time find
or summon her; not the rose-garden, where she, the faithless lover, had
just said farewell to the faithful friend; not the orchard, where she
had once been comforted . . . with lies, as she had said to Aymar
yesterday. They _were_ lies . . . but he was not a liar. Yet she had
told him that he was--told him that he had sold his honour, flung his
justification back in his face. At the one moment in their lives when
her trust in him should have stood firm it had snapped like rotten
thread. After all that he had suffered for her sake it had remained for
her, who loved him, to give him the last, the intolerable, enduring
wound--the lover who, as she had just learnt, had not spared to crucify
for her his pride and his most intimate feelings, and make an appeal to
his victorious enemy for silence. And this Colonel Richard, a stranger,
a foe, who knew everything, had taken his hand--whereas she . . .
The Aven, by which at last she sat dry-eyed, with a pain in her breast
as though it were her own heart, and not Aymar's, which she had
stabbed, rippled contentedly through the pastures . . . on its way to
Pont-aux-Rochers. Yes, and despite the strain, the unfulfilment, it
seemed to her now that these past years at Sessignes had been like this
placid and contented stream, compared with the torment into which one
hour had hurried her life. Oh, if only she had been able to keep the
pale sunshine of those days, even though it should never have been
transmuted into a brighter radiance! They would never come
again--never, never.
The Aven smiled assent; a wagtail walked alertly at the brink, and the
martins swooped above it. But it was going to Pont-aux-Rochers . . .
That afternoon Anselme, Aymar's man, came to her and apologetically
asked her if she had enough influence to get Sarrasin out of M. le
Vicomte's room, as he refused to stir or to let any of the servants
enter. She went in to try. She might have hesitated had she realized
how full the empty room would be of Aymar's presence, and how
poignantly the traces of his hasty departure would smite at her--the
disorder which no one had repaired because Sarrasin would not admit
even Anselme into the sanctuary which he was guarding. She could not
bear to look at them, and turned her attention instead on the guardian
himself who, having risen at her entrance with a soberly wagging tail,
was now thrusting his nose into her hand. But even as she looked at him
he stalked back to his post by the bed, and lay down in his former
attitude, his nose on his paws.
Avoye walked to the door calling him, telling him he must come out of
the room. But he only looked at her; he did not stir. The childish
thought then came to her that, wise as he was, he knew that his master
was soon coming back, and that his refusing to move was a sign of this.
But she must put his knowledge to a genuine test, for if he consented
to come away, it would show that Aymar was not returning. So she took a
coat lying on a chair and showed it to him, and while he sniffed at it
she told him that he must take care of it downstairs. Then, going to
the door, she held it out to him and called him. He lifted his head and
gazed at her earnestly with his wonderful, inscrutable eyes, and she
looked back at him and said in her heart, "Oh, _don't come_, Sarrasin!"
Then with a sigh he got up and came to the door.
So she knew that Aymar was not coming back. She stood with the coat
pressed closely to her and eyes that were beginning to swim; then she
opened the door, called to a passing servant, told her to take the coat
and the dog downstairs, and going back turned the key in the lock.
"I cannot bear to see you . . ." Well, she had her wish; she could not
see him; she would never see him at Sessignes again. There was no
danger of his finding her here in his room, any more than there was a
chance of unsaying what she had said, of begging him to listen, to
believe that she had spoken in the confusion of shock and fear. He was
gone.
He was gone, and on the hearthstone, broken and thrown aside, lay the
useless _jartier_. Had it been thrown there because he felt that all it
represented was over for him now? Oh no, no, no! He might not be her
lover any more, but he should not, he could not cease to be L'Oiseleur;
and he should not throw away the talisman. She had not now the right to
keep it for him herself, and she looked round the deserted room for a
safe place in which to bestow it. Out of a half-open drawer there
trailed the sleeve of a uniform. The _jartier_ seemed to have more
affinity with that than with anything else. She put it for a moment to
her lips, and, taking out the coat, slipped the amulet into the breast
pocket. Then she gave a miserable little laugh. "I always said I should
end by being superstitious about that thing!"
She was on the point of leaving the room, when, passing by the bed, she
perceived something she had not noticed before. By the impress on the
coverlet it was clear that at some point yesterday Aymar must have
thrown himself there, worn out, he who had never before in his life
known other than reasonable fatigue. Probably he had dragged himself
from this refuge to come down to _that_ interview with her. Avoye bent
over the pillow as though his head were really resting there, and broke
suddenly into bitter sobbing.
How she got through the next three empty heartsick days she could hardly
tell. On the third she became desperate. For if Aymar really were not
returning the precious hours were slipping away, and she was doing
nothing to make a last effort to retrieve her shattered happiness, or
even to tell him how deeply she sorrowed for what she had done to him.
He must be thinking--if he thought of her at all--that she was still of
the same mind. But what could she do? She had no idea where he was, and
unfortunately she had never asked M. de Courtomer if he knew.
But Eveno might know, because Aymar had spoken in his note to Mme de la
Rocheterie of having gone on business connected with the Eperviers.
Then it suddenly occurred to her that Aymar might actually be found in
person at Eveno's cottage, conferring with him. What if she, too, went
there in person? And, though the thought of that meeting was not easy
to face, she set out that afternoon on horseback, a groom following
her, for the cottage in the wood to which she had once declared that
she would make pilgrimage.
But she had not ridden half the distance when she saw, between the
chestnut boles, another horse and rider coming slowly towards her. The
horse she knew in a moment. The rider . . . her heart stood still . . .
No, certainly not Aymar. She moved forward again, and soon saw, with an
indescribable sinking, that it was Eveno himself, riding the mare very
softly, the reins in his right hand.
He had to shift them to his teeth before he could uncover, and remove
the reins again before he could speak. But Avoye guessed.
"M. le Vicomte? Yes, Madame, he has been with us these three days. But
he left this morning early, and I do not know where he has gone--a long
distance, I think, for he went to catch the diligence. I am bringing
Hirondelle back to Sessignes as he ordered me. Perhaps Madame would
wish to ride her now, if I changed the saddles?"
"No," said Avoye with a catch in her breath, as she turned her horse's
head homewards. "No, stay where you are, Eveno. I think M. le Vicomte
would prefer it!"
(13)
And meanwhile the Vicomtesse de la Rocheterie had come to the end of her
patience.
The relations of Avoye and Aymar for the last five or six years, as with
a shrug of the shoulders she would admit, had been frankly beyond her
comprehension. Mid-eighteenth century in her outlook as she was to the
marrow, she had often told herself that in her young days such a
situation as continued year after year at Sessignes would have been
impossible; no Frenchman who prided himself upon being a _galant homme_
would have endured it for more than a month or two. The cold Northern
strain in his blood, inherited from his and Avoye's paternal
great-grandmother, presumably accounted for, though it hardly excused,
Aymar's patience. A man might have a mistress, and he might have a
wife, but for a young man to live for years under the same roof with
the woman he loved, who was neither, really struck Mme de la Rocheterie
at times as improper.
But now the arrangement, which one would have thought just about to
issue in a more satisfactory relation, had received a shrewd blow of
some kind. Of the hand that had dealt it there could be no doubt; it
only remained to discover the weapon which had been used. To this end
she had just summoned her granddaughter to her boudoir, and as she sat
there, beautifully attired as usual, there was that in her air which
told the girl at once what the subject of the interview was likely to
be.
There was indeed not time for doubt. Mme de la Rocheterie, motioning her
to a chair, said coldly:
"I should like to know, Avoye, for what reason you have driven Aymar out
of his own house?"
The fact that the phrase embodied her own self-reproach did not prevent
Avoye from resenting it. Her colour rose. She could not possibly give
the reason. . . . At that moment, with an almost sickening leap of the
heart, she saw on the little table at her grandmother's elbow an opened
letter in Aymar's handwriting.
"It is true that Aymar and I have had a . . . a disagreement," she
admitted, her eyes fixed on the letter. "But I assure you, Grand'mère
that I had not the slightest idea that he was going to leave the house
like this, and I . . . I hope he is coming back."
Her grandmother's very rings seemed to flash hostility at her as she
stretched out her hand and deliberately dropped the letter into the
little fire which, despite the summer weather, burnt on the hearth
beside her. "No, he is not," she replied curtly, "and therefore I think
I have a right to know why you are, as I say, keeping him out of his
own house just when he most needs a home and the care he can get
there."
The thrust told. Avoye dropped her head. "I never meant to drive him
away," she repeated.
"Nonsense," said Mme de la Rocheterie. "Do not pretend that you are
ignorant of what you are doing where Aymar is concerned. You know only
too well! Ever since your marriage you have been his evil genius--ever
since you left your husband I have had to stand by and watch you slowly
ruining his life. All I could do to enable me to bear the sight was to
tell myself that a day would possibly come when you could repair the
suffering you had caused him. That day has come . . . and how do you
act? You choose the moment when he is ill, in straits of some kind--do
you think I am so blind as not to know that?--to turn on him and----"
"Please stop!" said Avoye, trembling a little. "There is no need for you
to say that again. I will leave Sessignes myself--at once--and then
Aymar can come back."
Mme de la Rocheterie gave a short laugh. "As if that would put matters
right! You know that he is besotted over you! If he comes back and
finds you gone, I shall only have another scene . . . and I am getting
too old for scenes. . . . But, for all that, ma fille, you are mistaken
in thinking that you can play fast and loose with him like this!"
"Please tell me where he is?" asked Avoye humbly.
"There was no address. He is moving about, he says . . . on affairs. He
is well fitted in health for that just now, is he not?--I ask once
more, Avoye, on what grounds you drove him away?"
"I told you, Grand'mère, that we had a disagreement, which I regret very
much."
"Is that an answer to my question?"
"I cannot answer it more explicitly."
"Perhaps then you will be kind enough to enlighten me as to why this
mysterious quarrel coincided with his return from captivity."
"But, Grand'mère, it did not! It . . . it came about suddenly, only the
day he left, and it was . . . my fault."
"Indeed!" remarked the Vicomtesse. "And you are now penitent!
Nevertheless, I do not believe you. I had observed you for days before
that--not at all the happy lovers I expected to see. Tell me, has Aymar
taken any steps yet about the dispensation for your marriage?--Answer
me, has he?"
"No."
"Why not, pray?"
But Avoye could not, without betraying Aymar, reveal that the abstention
was entirely on his side. She did not answer.
"You did not find him so attractive when he was unsuccessful, I
suppose?" suggested Mme de la Rocheterie.
"You have no right to say that, Grand'mère!" retorted the girl, firing
up. "It is false!"
"How, then, did you prevent so constant a lover from taking that
necessary step?"
"I did not prevent him." The words escaped her against her will.
"You expect me to believe that Aymar himself was willing to relegate his
marriage to I know not what epoch? He knows how long those matters
take." She looked keenly at her granddaughter and again receiving no
answer, said: "Then you must have shown him pretty plainly what your
feelings were about it."
"I did," said Avoye, goaded, "but they were not what you think."
"You mean to tell me that you did not deter him?"
"I said I would marry him to-morrow if he had the dispensation."
"Oho!" said her grandmother. "So much warmth--after so much
scrupulosity! And in the face of that, Aymar--_Aymar_--still hung
back!"
"He had his reasons," said Avoye, very low. "I did not endorse them."
"So you say. If I am to believe that I must know what they were."
But Avoye shook her head obstinately.
"Perhaps he had discovered that he was not your only admirer? Aymar is
somewhat exclusive."
"You can think that if you like," replied her granddaughter scornfully.
"Or that _you_ were jealous--of Eulalie, for example?"
Avoye gave a little laugh. Yet she was unable to avoid reddening at the
name, a fact which by no means escaped Mme de la Rocheterie, who said,
watching her closely: "It certainly was curious that he should ride off
in that extraordinary fashion the very day she left."
"Do you really think, Grand'mère, that he rode after _her?_"
"No, I am not such a fool," admitted the Vicomtesse. "Unless, indeed, he
wished to question her more closely."
"Question her? Why should he?" For she was obliged to say something.
"Because I have been thinking over Eulalie's remarks that evening,"
answered her grandmother coolly, "and I am convinced that she was not
making them innocently. And since his return, Aymar's demeanour has
been such----Yes, there is something behind this talk of treachery and
mistaken judgment. You will kindly tell me, Avoye, what it is!"
"Why did you not ask Eulalie?" said the girl, her eyes on the ground.
The Vicomtesse waved the question aside. "What story is going about
connecting Aymar unfavourably with his defeat?"
No answer.
"Is it some calumny based on his actual absence from the fight?"
"No."
"Or that he is--as I have suspected--shielding the person responsible
for the ambush, the person who, I suppose, sent the necessary
information to the Bonapartists?"
Avoye shook her head.
"What is it, then? Have I not a right to know?"
Yes, she had, she had! Was she a woman who needed to be "spared" any
more than she, Avoye, herself? Mme de Villecresne lifted her head.
"People are saying that it was Aymar himself who sent the information."
Mme de la Rocheterie drew a long breath. Her hands clenched themselves
on the arms of her chair, her eyes sparkled. Instead of being withered
by the blow, she actually looked younger, rising to meet it. She
laughed.
"As 'people' were about it, they might have invented a more likely
slander. This one is somewhat ludicrously wanting in plausibility.
Aymar betray his cherished Eperviers! But I thank you for telling me,
since the imbecility of human nature has always delighted me."
She stooped to replace a piece of wood fallen from the fire, and,
raising herself rather suddenly, caught sight of Avoye's expression.
Her own changed with startling rapidity.
"Avoye! Is it _possible!_ . . . Am I to take you for one of the
imbeciles?"
"Of course, he sent it as a ruse," murmured Avoye out of her stiffened
lips.
Mme de la Rocheterie took no notice.
"You believed it--you believe it!--My God, no wonder Aymar would not
stay under the same roof with you! And this is your disagreement, your
lovers' tiff, after which you dare to hope he will return to you as if
nothing had happened. A La Rocheterie come cringing back to the feet of
a woman who could believe him capable of such an infamy! I am glad that
he left the house instantly!"
Avoye tried dizzily to think. The fierce, proud old woman, it was clear,
would once more pay no heed if she were to repeat the explanation about
a ruse. She did not need that explanation for a moment, she who had met
the accusation merely with ridicule. Pray God, then, that that was all
the impression it would ever make on her! Some atonement, therefore,
she herself could offer for the wrong she had done Aymar, by consenting
to be sacrificed to that end . . . by holding her tongue and not
justifying herself . . . by not saying that it was true, for he had
told her so with his own lips . . .
She bowed her head. She made herself, as far as she could, deaf to what
her grandmother was saying; she took the lashes in silence, for Aymar's
sake--though he could never know . . .
This she heard, after other words:
"I had sent for you to tell you that, unless Aymar could be induced to
marry someone else, you would have to marry him, after having kept him
dangling all these years, the last of his name. But to demand such a
sacrifice of him after this would be infamous! He is free of you at
last--I thank God for it!"
It must surely be almost over now. But Avoye raised her head to see her
grandmother looking at her with that emotion so terrible to witness in
a person of one's own blood--hatred. Drawn and aged enough now, the
Vicomtesse said, with astonishing venom, "If only the Fates had not
made you that selfish and disastrous creature commonly known as a
virtuous woman! Or was it calculated wisdom that has made you refrain
from the attempt to sweep Aymar off his feet? You could have done it, I
believe, if you had wished, for he has hotter blood than you think--and
even in this new century men are still men. . . . But you knew that it
was better to keep yourself the unattainable, because a lover may get
tired of the attainable.--Yes, if you had been more . . . accommodating
. . . he might have been tired of you by now, and have made a marriage
worthy of him. And his wife, I fancy, would----"
"Stop, Grand'mère stop!" cried Avoye, trembling from head to foot, and
putting out her hands as though to ward off less the insults than the
atrocious regret which beat through the old woman's words. "Stop, you
cannot know what you are saying!"
It was probable that this was true, though, save for the glitter in her
eyes and a slight half-palsied movement of her hands, Mme de la
Rocheterie's manner did not suggest loss of self-control. She went on
exactly where she had been interrupted:
"His wife, I say, would have displayed more faith in him than you--you,
so immaculate and so base-minded! And all these years you have
pretended to love him! Why, body and soul, the cheapest girl of the
Palais-Royal has a better notion of love than you! Yet you are my
granddaughter . . . at least I suppose so! But I shall hope, during the
rest of my life, to forget it."
"Oh, I think you have already succeeded!" cried Avoye, almost beside
herself. "You who bore my father, to say such things to me! If Aymar
were here----" She stopped, suddenly choking.
Her grandmother leant back in her chair with an air of complete victory,
and a smile that matched it. "Yes?" she enquired, "if Aymar were
here--_now_--what, then?"
Avoye stared at the pitiless old face and saw completely, nakedly, what
her own lack of pity towards her lover had done for herself. The shield
between her and that hostility was gone for ever; and till this hour
she had not realized how efficaciously it had been her shield. Indeed,
there was nothing for her now but the roof of another.
"I shall start for Paris at once," she said, clutching to her the last
poor remnants of her composure. "You need not fear, this time, that I
shall ever return."
"No, I imagine that I am scarcely in danger of being forced a second
time to receive you back," agreed her grandmother, and the smile grew
sharper. "--Will you kindly ring the bell for Rose as you go out?"