Wounded Name — Chapter 8: The Love of Women, part 4
(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 .
.
.
