"I'll not start to run my own errands again," Douie put in suddenly, and the silent, stupid-looking Monestot nodded agreement.
"Colas will continue to serve you two while Breuc looks after us," said Quatrevaux. "That is fair enough, is it not, Hutot?"
The burly Hutot shrugged his broad shoulders. "As you will. So long as my needs are attended to without question I care not how the juniors arrange matters between themselves."
So the question was settled and now, half befuddled by the wine they had drunk, they went to bed: Roger feeling no little pleased with himself that his skilful diplomacy had succeeded in at least reducing his new masters from five to two.
Next morning, having carried up the washing-water with Colas and helped him to dean out the office, Roger breakfasted with the others in the kitchen and, immediately afterwards, was set to work under Ruttot's supervision on copying Latin documents.
The senior copyist was a frail looking, bespectacled fellow of about thirty-five, who suffered from an habitual and irritating cough. He was a man of no ambition, having been a copyist for the past ten years and expecting to continue as one all his life. But he was competent at his work and evidently anxious that Roger should become so, too; as he took the trouble to make out a list for him of Latin legal expressions and helped him without grumbling whenever he found himself in difficulties.
As Roger bad feared, the work proved extremely monotonous and, as soon as its newness had worn off, he began to feel more than ever that Fate had played him a scurvy trick in forcing him to earn a pittance in such a manner.
He soon found, too, that although he had saved himself from becoming the slave of all his colleagues, fagging for Hutot alone was worse than anything he had endured as a new boy at Sherborne. The only interests of this coarse and powerfully built young Breton were drink and women. Brigitte, the fresh-faced cook, was his permanent stand-by, but on such nights as he did not creep down to the little room that she occupied on the ground floor, and they were many, he left the house by stealth after it had been locked up to spend the best part of the night with other girls of loose morals who lived in the neighbourhood.
His method of doing so was to lower himself by a rope from the attic window to the roof of the out-jutting kitchen and, from there, scramble down into the courtyard. But lest the rope should be seen from one of the lower windows during his absence it had to be hauled up after his descent and lowered again on his return. This now became one of Roger's duties and, since Hutot rarely returned till the early morning, his abettor bad to sleep with a piece of string attached to his little finger, the other end of which, having been passed through the window, hung down into the yard so that Hutot could pull it as a signal that he had returned.
Roger intensely resented being violently woken three or four nights a week by a painful jerking of his hand, and even more the fact that Hutot often returned drunk, which necessitated putting him to bed and afterwards clearing up the disgusting mess he had made when he had been sick. Yet there was nothing to be done about it as, on the only occasion that he had had the temerity to protest, Hutot had knocked him down and kicked him savagely.
Another less unpleasant but irritating duty that Roger was called on to perform was, during the midday recess, to carry Hutot's billet-doux to his latest conquests. As the senior apprentice was not the least particular about looks or class these ranged from washerwomen to girls who were known to be the common property of the town.
They were a coarse and vicious lot, and several of them, having made advances to Roger himself without success, then took a special delight in jeering at him as a prude and trying to make him blush by obscene remarks every time he had to visit them. Not only did he come to hate these missions but they took much of his free time that he would have otherwise employed in studying his German. He dared not let his books be seen by anyone at Maitre Leger's, so his only opportunity of getting down to them,, except on Sundays, was on fine days when he could spend an hour after dejeuner sitting on a bench in the Jardin des Plantes.
Quatrevaux continued to treat him as a friend when the others were not about but, possibly from fear of losing his own prestige, was also exacting in his requirements of service. Nevertheless, his demands were much less onerous than Hutot's and mainly consisted in buying ribbons, bonbons and other presents for Mademoiselle Manon Prudhot.
Roger met Manon occasionally, going in or out of the house or on the stairs, and he did not consider her particularly pretty; but she had a beautiful figure, dressed with great elegance and had dark, roguish eyes. She was about twenty-two and, for those times, old not to be already married; but rumour had it that a scandal resulting from her having had an illegitimate child had hampered her chances in Paris; hence her coming to live with her uncle at Rennes. In any case, Roger knew that she could be no prude as often, when he was roused in the early hours of the morning by Hutot returning home, he saw that Quatrevaux's bed was empty.
After three weeks of his boring and humiliating existence at Maitre Leger's Roger felt that he could not possibly bear it much longer. The thought of Athenais had alone sustained him so long, but he had known her for only one evening and even the indelible impression made upon him by her fairy-like yet imperious beauty was becoming slightly blunted in his memory. She would, he knew, remain his dream divinity for years to come, yet his prospects of seeing much of her in the future now seemed remote, and those of his ever being able to make her his wife, positively nil.
While pondering his unhappy state one day towards the end of October it occurred to him that it was now just on three months since he had left home. By this time his father should have been re-posted and, if despatched to a distant station, would not be back in England for another year or more. If that were the case the coast was now clear for his own return. His homecoming, it was true, would not have the glamour with which he had once hoped to invest it, but at least he could say that he had succeeded in supporting himself in a foreign country for three months, which, at his age, was no small achievement. And while he was still not prepared to face his outraged father he felt that he could quite well bring himself to eat humble pie before his mother.
With this in mind he decided to write to her and, as he was apt to act at once on any impulse he felt to be a good one, he set about it that very day.
In his letter he said nothing of his nearly disastrous crossing with the smugglers, or of poor old Aristotle Fenelon, and he made his position sound considerably better than it was in fact. He once more begged pardon for the anxiety that his running away must have caused her, then went on to say that he was in excellent health and had obtained a good position with the leading lawyer in Rennes. It was, he admitted, a come-down for a gentleman to serve in a lawyer's office as a clerk, but even that was, in his eyes, an infinitely better condition of life than the miserable existence led by a midshipman in a man-o'-war. He added that while he had no intention of making law his career he should certainly stick to it until something better offered rather than return if his father was still at home. But that if the Admiral had been given a command and gone to sea again he was quite willing to take ship for England and discuss with her any ideas which she might have as to a more promising future for him. He refrained from informing her that he lacked the necessary funds to get back as he did not wish to admit that he was practically penniless, and he felt that it would be time enough to ask her to send him the money for his passage if her reply was favourable.