Wounded Name — Chapter 7: The Road Back, part 1

(1) .

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Was that the cuckoo?

No, it must be a gull .

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and that other sound was the breaking waves.

The voice had ceased.

So Laurent left the Bois des Fauvettes and woke, through the sense of hearing, to his actual surroundings.

He shivered, and withdrew his hands from his face.

Aymar, paler than he had yet seen him since he left his bed, his eyes sunk in their sockets, was staring past him at the wall of the cave.

There could be no doubt that he also had been, in spirit, in that ill-omened wood--with this difference, that two months before he had likewise been there in the body.

What could one say--what could one say?

And it was Aymar who broke the silence now.

"The rest you know," he said.

His voice was extremely quiet, but between his knees his hands were so tightly clasped together that it looked as if they must break each other.

_The rest!

_ Why, the first thing of which he was really fully conscious, after that dreadful finish in the wood, must have been Guitton's nightmare visit.

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"Yes.

The rest I----" Laurent got out huskily, and, for the life of him, could say no more.

So, after a second or two's silence, he got up with a gesture of absolute desperation and went out of the cave.

His head was spinning with relief and horror and shame.

Oh, how _could_ he have doubted him for an instant!

Of course there was an explanation!

But what a story--what a tangle!

There was no real culprit, after all.

L'Oiseleur's men had been betrayed by Fate; but Fate had used his hand in so cruel a manner that he would never be able to deny the fact, though the intention had been as remote as the farthest star.

And, across the midst of a relief so intense that Laurent's body almost shook with it, cut the dismayed realization of how difficult it was going to be for Aymar to avoid the stigma, if any one chose to fasten it on him.

But what, for all his passion of sympathy, he never realized, was that while he stood in the open regaining his composure--not more than three or four minutes--Aymar himself was waiting for his verdict.

In Laurent's mind was rather the consciousness of his own need of pardon, and, when the air had steadied him, he went in again with some idea of seeking that forgiveness immediately.

But Aymar was no longer sitting on the rough bed.

He lay face downwards across the sailcloth and the seaweed, one arm crooked above his head, the other, the injured one, flung out straight and stiffly.

The hands of both were tightly clenched.

And his attitude held such an utter despair that it took Laurent by the throat; this was what even the telling of that story had cost him!

"Aymar," he began.

There was no sign of movement in the prostrate figure, except that the hands clenched themselves a little tighter still.

But a barely recognizable voice came from it.

"If you are come to take farewell of me .

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you are excused.

Go quickly!"

And at that Laurent saw what he had done.

He threw himself on his knees and bent over him, seizing the rigid, outflung hand in a grip as tense as its own.

"Aymar!

Aymar!

forgive me!

How _could_ you think such a thing!

I went out--imbecile that I was--because I was afraid of making a fool of myself .

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because I could not say what I felt.

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Aymar, for God's sake!

What have you to reproach yourself with--except the most damnable ill-luck?

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Oh, mon ami, look at me, and you will see that I am speaking the naked truth!"

But Aymar did not look at him.

His shoulders moved suddenly, he brought his bent left arm under his forehead as he lay there, and in a moment more Laurent de Courtomer had the dubious satisfaction of accomplishing what neither physical pain nor prolonged mental torture, neither the catastrophe of the Bois des Fauvettes nor the contempt and insults of the Château d'Arbelles had been able to bring about.

L'Oiseleur had had just one turn of the screw too much, and that from the hand which would least have desired to hurt him.

With its relaxation he broke down completely.

(2) Occasional glimpses taken over his shoulder, as Michel Royer pulled into shore near the "Panier" that afternoon, conveyed to him the impression of two forms lying on the beach between the cave and the edge of the water; and when he had clambered out of his boat and pulled it up, he found that his impression was perfectly correct.

One of the young men he had guided overnight--the fair-haired one who wore uniform--was half sitting, half lying, against a small rock; the other was lying at full length on the sand with his head propped against him.

They seemed so engrossed in conversation that they did not hear his approach.

He cleared his throat as he got nearer, and on that the young man sitting against the rock did turn his head.

The other made no movement.

"Here is our host--if that is the correct term," he heard the former say.

"Good afternoon, Monsieur Royer.

To what do we owe this pleasure?"

"I remembered that there was no wine," said the fisherman, holding up a piece of old fishing-net.

"I have brought ye a bottle; and a rare good ham, and another loaf or two.

And I weren't easy in my mind about your friend there--him that's hurt."

He that was hurt said quietly, "I am perfectly well this afternoon, thank you, Monsieur Royer."

And Michel saw the other look down at him with a smile.

"I've come also, gentlemen," went on the old man, setting down his net, and mysteriously dropping his voice, "because I've something to tell ye which, if it's true--and mind ye, it mayn't be--will likely do ye both a power of good.

They are saying in Sarzeau, so we hear this morning, that the Emperor's had a great defeat at some place I don't mind the name of, and his army's all to bits, and retreating."

"But the last we heard was of a victory won by him on the sixteenth!"

cried the young officer.

His friend had suddenly raised himself from his recumbent position.

But for all their questions Mercury could tell them no more, and presently departed, as he came, by sea, himself only half believing that his information was correct, and not knowing that what he had just carried was the news of Waterloo.

"This may be true, or it may not," opined Laurent at length; "at any rate, I am going to have a swim on the strength of it.

Take care of my clothes for me!"

He stripped them off hastily, ran down the beach, and plunged in.

Aymar looked after him with a smile.

When the swimmer came back, laughing and dripping, L'Oiseleur said thoughtfully, "There must be something in this news.

If it is true, perhaps we need not stay here long."

"Yes," agreed Laurent, rubbing his face with his handkerchief, "but we can't move till we know something more definite.

Meanwhile"--he hurried into his clothes--"let us go and eat.

I am hungry.

We will even drink to the news in the stuff Royer has brought."

Aymar's arm was over his shoulder as they went towards the cave.

At the entrance he suddenly removed it, and said in a rather unsteady voice, ".

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I find it so hard to believe.

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Oh, mon ami, are you merely trying to comfort me when you say you hold me justified, when you say you would have done the same in my place?

Is it true, Laurent, or is it only your good heart?"

And, his face as pale as ivory against the darkness within, he looked at him with eyes that pierced and supplicated at the same time.

Laurent threw down the net of provisions and seized his available hand in both his own.

"Aymar, on my honour as a gentleman!

Have I not said so enough?

You have brooded over this thing till you are morbid about it.

I don't wonder.

But, given what went before, the almost completed plan on the one hand and a woman's life at stake on the other, I should have done the same.

So would any man.

If you will not believe me, what am I to do?

Call you out for it?"

Aymar freed his hand and put it on his shoulder.

"Did I not say that no man ever had a friend like you?"

"But it isn't friendship, it's common sense!"

retorted Laurent stoutly.

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Oh, saints and angels, I have broken the bottle of wine!"

(3) There was a moon that night.

She had the air of sailing fast out to sea like an enchanted ship, for light clouds were blowing inland at a great rate, giving her all the effect of nimble motion.

And after her, in a lake of blue, swam Jupiter, following like a pinnace.

"What a night!"

exclaimed Laurent, standing at the mouth of the cave.

"Aymar, go to bed!"

"Why should I?"

demanded his friend, who was sitting there also.

"Why should I, too, not enjoy this spectacle?

And I was thinking."

Laurent removed his gaze from the heavens.

"Thinking, for one thing," went on Aymar reflectively, "what a fool I was not to have told you all this earlier.

It is always a mistake to be a coward, Laurent.

But I could not bring myself to it.

I could not tell the story in a word or two without producing a false impression either one way or the other, and .

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well, you see that in giving the necessary details I have told you things about myself that I never thought to tell any one in the world.

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Yet I hated taking all you did for me at Arbelles, and accepting your championship, when you did not know the truth.

Day after day I said to myself that _to-morrow_--and then Guitton put an end to to-morrows."

"Not to speak of the fact," commented Laurent, "that at Arbelles you were never within a mile of being fit to embark on that story.

Nor at La Baussaine either, if it comes to that."

"On the contrary, I nearly told you when we were sitting under the pear tree.

But this was too recent," he looked down at his bandaged arm, "and you had taken it so ridiculously to heart.

It would have given me an unfair advantage."

"Oh, Aymar, you really are----" "_sans tache_, like your motto," was on Laurent's lips, but he did not say it aloud.

"No," said L'Oiseleur, looking up with a smile, "in this case I was not really a fool, as I suppose you were going to call me.

You were too émotionné that afternoon to be capable of judging anything dispassionately.

You admitted as much this morning."

"Perhaps so," replied Laurent, who had in fact made a clean breast of everything.

"But I was certainly not going to call you a fool just now.

I should never dare!

Have you any idea, L'Oiseleur, how unapproachable you can make yourself when you wish?"

"How intolerable, I suppose you mean?

But I am not being that now, am I?

Those first days at Arbelles, however----" He broke off, and looked up at him keenly.

"Now, confess, Laurent, that I did not make your task easy for you!"

"It was, perhaps, a little like nursing a porcupine," acknowledged the nurse, smiling.

"You _would_ not let me show what I felt.

But now that I know what you had just been through, I wonder you did not go out of your mind."

Aymar looked away.

"I think I was pretty near it once or twice," he said after a moment, "or I could not have felt, as I did, that everyone in the world was against me--even you.

Sometimes I used to dream that it was all a dream--a nightmare.

Then I would wake up .

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still in the nightmare.

So--I suppose I wanted to hurt someone, too!"

He turned his eyes on Laurent again.

"Yet you stayed, and put up with it--and with all my subsequent tiresomeness, too!

For though I know you have forgiven me for those early days, what about yesterday evening?"

"Yesterday evening?"

exclaimed Laurent.

What had happened in that remote epoch, yesterday evening?

"Yes, yesterday evening, when I sat in a ditch and refused to stir, and you had to use .

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drastic measures!

If I can be unapproachable as you call it, you can certainly be severe, mon ami!"

"Oh, do let's forget about yesterday evening!"

cried Laurent, flushing in the moonlight.

"Agreed!"

said Aymar, laughing.

"As a matter of fact, I don't remember much about the latter part of it.

Between trying to come to a decision about the future which I had not expected to have to take for days yet, and the jolting of that infernal cart, I really had such a headache that I could hardly see.

You observe that I am not too proud to make excuses--to _you_."

Laurent suddenly sat down by him.

"And what excuses am I to make," he said, averting his face, "for my horrible blindness of this morning?

When I saw what I had done, I could have beaten my head against the cave wall."

Aymar put his hand over his.

"Never mind.

It is the only time you have ever failed--and I daresay I should have made it clearer to you that I was absolutely on the rack till I knew what you thought .

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I don't mind telling you now--only do not let us talk of it again--that in those few minutes, or hours, or whatever they were, when I thought you had thrown me over, I saw a third and much simpler alternative to those of leaving France or staying to face the future.

If you had deserted me I should have done what you did this afternoon, Laurent--I should have gone for a swim.

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But I should not have come back again."

Laurent, hearing the sincerity of that intention in the quiet voice, turned rather pale.

Had so much, then, hung on _his_ verdict?

He was very far indeed from elation; he had never felt more humble in his life.

"But that would have seemed like a confession of guilt," he murmured, hardly knowing what he said.

"Yes, I know.

But I am guilty--in fact, if not in intention."

"My dear Aymar, don't let us go over all that again now!

I am sleepy, if you are not."

He got up and held out his hand.

"Do you think I had better look at your arm again before we turn in?"

Aymar got up, too, shaking his head.

"It is quite comfortable."

"You are such a confounded liar about yourself," retorted Laurent, confronting him, "that I never know when to believe you!

That worst burn, when I looked at it this morning .

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I wish M. Perrelet----" He stopped, seeing the swift pain on Aymar's face, and then plunged boldly into the subject.

"Aymar, what is to be done about Père Perrelet?"

Aymar pushed at the sand with his foot.

"Nothing can be done.

For him I am condemned out of my own mouth."

He sighed suddenly.

"Let us go to bed."

As they were both dropping off to sleep Laurent said, "Aymar, I have an idea.

Will you give me leave to write to M. Perrelet?"

"To write what?"

"To tell him that whatever he heard that night was not the whole truth.

That I know it all now, and can assure him that it is not a dishonourable story, as he must have thought."

"And as he made you think," finished L'Oiseleur drily.

Then, after a little silence, he added, "My dear fellow, he would only conclude, either that I had been telling you lies, or that you were very impressionable."

"Aymar, he may be impulsive, but you know that he was extraordinarily fond of you," said Laurent with reproach in his voice.

"I think that was why he was so upset."

"Well, write me a certificate then," replied Aymar.

Then he dropped his caustic tone, and said quite simply, "You can do whatever you think best, my dear Laurent.

I owe him so much that if it would be any compensation to him to have a better opinion of me again I should be glad."

And he added, with a deep sigh, as if to himself, "There is a letter that _I_ ought to have written many days ago."

Laurent woke about an hour later, when the moon was shining straight into their refuge.

He thought of last night, and gave a long sigh of relief and contentment; and the next moment, though he had believed Aymar asleep, a hand stole into his, and he gripped it in return.

There was no need of words, and none were spoken; but when Laurent went to sleep again his friend's hand was still in his.

(4) As even the most epoch-making news is not conveyed to the brain of man by a special sense, but through the medium of other men and their devices, the couple in the "Panier" remained for the next two days ignorant not only of Wellington's and Blucher's victory, but of Napoleon's brief visit to Paris, his abdication, the march of the English and Prussians towards the capital, and all the doings which were stirring their countrymen.

For Royer had not visited them again.

In the meantime, however, they had plenty to occupy them--plenty of points to debate.

Aymar had quite made up his mind to remain in France, and face whatever the future had to bring.

For one thing, he felt that he must set himself to repair, as best he could, the calamity which he had brought on his men, by providing for the welfare of the maimed and assisting the families of the killed.

Laurent, whom the very mention of the Eperviers roused to fury, soon realized, however, with relief, that his purpose applied only to those actually captured or killed at Pont-aux-Rochers or their kindred.

Yet to supply their probable needs alone he began rather alarmedly to foresee Aymar's all but ruining himself--for he was not a rich man.

As for ruin in the other sense, Laurent contended that it was impossible to imagine that their own side could believe the story about him, L'Oiseleur, though the Bonapartists had naturally been only too glad to have a handle against a foe.

To any Royalist who asked for an explanation Aymar could say, with perfect truth, that the scheme was a ruse which had miscarried; Laurent only wondered that he had never made this retort to his accusers at Arbelles.

But Aymar had replied that on "that horrible Friday" he had not the breath, and that when Guitton sent for him he was not in the mood for justifying himself.

("No," thought Laurent, "you are rather too much inclined never to be in that mood, my friend!"

) The fact that the explanation had not satisfied his own lieutenant was palpably because de Fresne knew that there was a bargain involved; so long as the bargain idea did not get about, Laurent contended that the explanation proposed ought to prove perfectly satisfactory.

But, as Aymar pointed out, there was no guarantee whatever that it would not get about, that it had not already done so, in fact--and worse, that the real nature of the bargain might not come out.

That, objected Laurent stoutly, did not make it, in his opinion, worse; it was not a disreputable compact; it was to save a woman.

And on that he elicited from L'Oiseleur his deep desire to keep from Mme de Villecresne the knowledge that she had been, most unwittingly, the cause of the whole miserable business.

That desire the young man could understand, but when his friend asserted that she would further dislike the ethics of the whole affair, and be horror-struck that he could take so great a risk for any woman's life--even though it were hers--M. de Courtomer privately disbelieved him.

But at any rate there could be no doubt that Aymar was willing to sacrifice almost anything to keep the secret from coming to his cousin's ears; what agitated him was the thought that she might already have learnt it.

To comfort him, Laurent pointed out that even "that devil" at Arbelles had no idea of what the bargain was, and that he, Laurent, had been told in early days that Richard's own officers had not known it, which looked as if Richard had kept his mouth shut.

But Aymar's fervent wish that he could ensure Richard's keeping his mouth shut in perpetuity he dismissed as a thing scarcely in the realm of the practicable.

And there was always the danger of the Marquis de Vaubernier's letting out something.

Although he had solemnly sworn secrecy he was, as Aymar acknowledged, really more dangerous than Richard, who had not.

Over the possibility of Vaubernier's indiscretion he worked himself up into such a fever that Laurent agreed to their starting for Sessignes at the first possible moment.

And they waited with growing impatience for news from Port-Marie which might enable them to leave the cave in safety, for if the tidings of the Emperor's defeat had been confirmed, it might possibly have rid the district of the Imperialists.

If this were so, it would make Laurent's contemplated journey to Sessignes less risky (especially if he discarded his uniform), for to accompany Aymar home he was determined.

No arguments would move him from his resolve, and when Aymar spoke of his military obligations in Vendée, he shamelessly retorted, first, that they could not know, the other side of the Loire, but that he was still a prisoner; secondly, that d'Autichamp had prophesied he should never get back from Brittany, and had given him leave, in that event, to join a Breton leader; and thirdly, that in this respect he had obeyed d'Autichamp to the letter, and was now going to carry out the duties of his position.

So when, on the afternoon of the second day, Royer brought them the authentic news of the great victory of the 18th of June, they resolved to start on the morrow, travelling by easy stages.

It was true that, though the period which they were afterwards to know as the Hundred Days was over, hostilities were not.

In the west neither side had disbanded; they were watching each other; and in some districts of Brittany fighting was still going on.

But in others the Imperialists were withdrawing, and Arbelles was said to have been evacuated already.

Royer undertook to procure a vehicle of some kind in Port-Marie, but a change of attire such as M. de Courtomer would have consented to wear was not to be had.

However, they proposed in any case not to start till the afternoon, and to travel only as far as the little town of Sarzeau, where they would sleep the night, and where Laurent could supply this want.

"So that we may hope you will be at Sessignes on Tuesday," he remarked to Aymar.

"And then, at last, you can be properly looked after."

"And I can also begin my campaign of deception," returned Aymar.

"I cannot tell them the whole truth, Laurent, so I shall have to lie .

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and they will believe me."

He stared at the sea--they were just outside the cave--and added, "The person in the whole world whom I most abhor the idea of lying to is just the one person to whom I can never tell the real, the full truth."

Laurent said nothing, but he could not help wondering whether it would not really be better for his friend to follow his own instincts and conceal nothing from .

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that person.

But in so delicate a matter he could hardly proffer unsought advice.

(5) When Laurent first saw that afternoon the ramshackle conveyance in the similitude of a chaise which waited for them at the famous turning under the chestnuts he thought--and said--that it would never take them even as far as Sarzeau.

And though the ancient postilion fixed Lyons or Marseilles as the goal of which it was, on the contrary, capable, Laurent was right.

The wheel did not, it is true, actually leave the axle, but its intention of shortly doing so was clear enough.

Hence the prophet of disaster found himself, towards dusk, a mile and a half out from Sarzeau, trying to help the postilion render the last services to the worn-out linch-pin, and to prevent Aymar from doing the same--Aymar who would probably now have to walk into Sarzeau before he could sup.

"When this happens in romances," observed the amateur wheelwright regretfully, "some kind Samaritan usually appears and offers hospitality."

But it was not till a good twenty minutes later, when the wheel was on the point of being pronounced good for the short distance, that an oldish gentleman came walking briskly round the turn of the road, and, to Laurent's surreptitiously manifested joy, did warmly press them to sup with him.

It seemed that he had witnessed their plight from an upper window of his house, near by, and had issued forth with that design, so that, had they wished, it would have been difficult to reject his invitation.

So the postilion was despatched with the chaise to the inn at Sarzeau to order them a room, and, as they walked away together, the old gentleman made himself known to his guests--M. de Lanascol.

Aymar and Laurent named themselves in response, and as his friend did so a slight spasm of apprehension shot across Laurent's mind: would not the name of La Rocheterie be known to their host--what might he not have heard?