Wounded Name — Chapter 3: In the Dust, part 1

"La blessure intime et profonde qui assombrit une Ame noble, qui la fait se redresser pleine d'orgueil et de haine .

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."

RENE BOYLESVE, _Mademoiselle Cloque_.

"Yea, twofold hosts of torment hast thou there, The stain to think on, and the pain to bear."

_Oedipus Rex_ (Gilbert Murray's translation).

"I would not hear your enemy say so, Nor shall you do my ear that violence To make it truster of your own report Against yourself .

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."

_Hamlet_, Act.

1, Sc.

2. (1) On Monday, the first of May, 1815, a fresh, cloudless afternoon, a young man in the Vendean uniform, holding by the bridle a sorrel horse, stood at the fork of a road not far from Locmélar in Brittany, and peered up at a rough and almost illegible signpost.

The young man was Laurent de Courtomer, who, until about half an hour ago, had been in possession of a happiness as unclouded as this May sunshine--and who was still enjoying himself.

The misunderstandings and delays in Vendée, the fiasco of the Duc de Bourbon's short sojourn in the west, his precipitate departure, first from Angers and then from Beaupréau, because some of the leaders, M. d'Autichamp himself chief among them, thought the time not ripe for a rising, and were nervous for the safety of the old man's princely person--all this had very much irked M. d'Autichamp's aide-de-camp, Comte Laurent de Courtomer.

And towards the end of April that aide-de-camp became so restive that his general had to find him some employment.

He gave him, therefore, a despatch to carry to North Brittany, to M. de Pontbriand and the rest of the Chouan leaders there, not disguising his doubt whether Laurent would ever succeed in reaching them, nor his conviction that he would fail to return across the Loire.

The young man was authorized, in that case, to join one of the Breton chiefs if he pleased; "not," added M. d'Autichamp, "but that I should prefer to have you back again with me, in the event of our moving later on."

Laurent went off in high feather.

Moreover, he succeeded in reaching his destination, delivered his despatches, which did no more than set forth a general desire on the part of the Vendean chiefs for such cooperation as was possible with their comrades on the right bank of the Loire, and was complimented on the address he had displayed.

Elated by his good fortune, and seeing that nothing but the merest skirmishes had as yet taken place between the Royalists and the Imperialists, and that he was now unencumbered with despatches, he determined to return by a different and rather less secure route--through the Penescouët district in fact, though he was warned against it.

For that was L'Oiseleur's country, and it might so well be that he should come up against him somehow--the figure out of a fairy tale, with the hawk and the mistletoe--in his real surroundings.

If he got only a glimpse of him it was well worth the risk .

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if there were extra risk, which he did not believe when he set out.

However, he thought rather differently about that now, and quite differently about his chance of meeting L'Oiseleur.

For, having ridden all morning happily and expectantly through the deep Breton lanes, he came at noon to a solitary little inn which had been recommended to him.

It was kept by a very lame young man.

His face had clouded over at Laurent's enquiry as to L'Oiseleur's possible whereabouts.

"You have not heard, then, Monsieur?

Alas, L'Oiseleur met with a great disaster last week at the Pont-aux-Rochers, over Plumauden way.

Three days ago it was--last Friday morning.

His men were ambushed by the Blues, and nearly all captured or killed.

It is terrible .

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he who had so often entrapped them."

"Good God!"

said Laurent, staring at him.

It was the very last piece of news for which he had been prepared.

"And L'Oiseleur himself?"

he asked, his heart beating fast.

"Escaped, Monsieur, it is believed.

He has the _jartier_, you know.

But he can have few men left now, and it is not known where he is.

I wish I could join him; I should have done so long ago but for this."

He pointed to his shrunken leg.

It was all the news he could give.

Laurent rode very soberly away.

He had only been thinking of success for his friend--for sometimes he ventured privately so to call him.

And this--at the very outset of the campaign!

Still, if La Rocheterie himself had escaped, as was rumoured, that was chiefly what he cared about.

If he could only be sure of that;

for that he should meet him now was a thousand times more unlikely than before.

He must be in hiding--pursued perhaps.

.

.

And the desire to meet him, to share his danger, grew with every second that Laurent frowned at the signpost.

As it was impossible to read it he stooped at last to do what he had in reality dismounted for, take a stone out of the sorrel's shoe.

He had just dislodged the obstacle when he heard a sound that made him raise himself sharply.

Yes, not more than two hundred yards away, trotting up the sloping road on his left towards the signpost, was a patrol of Bonapartist cavalry--red and green hussars.

And here he was, dismounted, in uniform, full in their view!

He did not long remain so, at least--he was in the saddle and dashing along the road in front of him as hard as he could go; and as he went he thought, "This has solved the problem of the choice of road, anyhow!

What a fool I was .

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.

but it is rather good fun, all the same!"

He could not see the hussars yet over his shoulder, but from the sounds and shouts they were certainly after him.

However, he had a good horse, and though there was nothing to take from him now save his liberty, he was not going to make them a present of that if he could help it.

And what if he were to make across country?

The bank here was no more than an English hedgerow.

He set the sorrel at it.

Laurent was staring up into the blue sky, and everything was going round.

The sensation having been his once before he knew of course what had happened--a fall out hunting.

But why was someone kneeling on his chest and pinning his arms down?

It was a curious way of succouring an accident in the hunting-field; he could not breathe.

"Damn you, get off me!"

he said angrily and indistinctly in English.

"Tiens, c'est un Anglais!"

exclaimed a surprised voice.

But Laurent was soon able to explain the falsity of this deduction.

The hussars helped him up, disarmed and searched him, finding little.

The officer said courteously, "You have a deep scratch on your forehead, Monsieur, taken, no doubt, from the hedge when your horse fell with you.

--One of you tie it up, and then we must be getting on."

It appeared that no shot had been fired, no blade unsheathed.

His horse had fallen at the leap, and then they had come and sat on him; thus ingloriously was Laurent de Courtomer made a prisoner.

Even the blood which was now trickling rather copiously down his cheek had been drawn by nothing more lethal than a broken bough.

He was a little savage, but there was no profit in ill-temper.

His captors were quite pleasant; one of them tied up his forehead with his handkerchief, and then they mounted, fastened his bridle to one of theirs and trotted back the way they had come.

It seemed that they were out scouting from a considerable distance, and knew little of happenings in this neighbourhood, beyond the bare fact that there had been a Royalist defeat there a few days ago.

And so, said Laurent to himself, ends my dream of meeting with La Rocheterie.

Seeing what it had brought about, he almost regretted having indulged it.

As evening drew on, they entered a village to water the horses.

The officer went into the inn.

M.

de Courtomer was by now beginning to revolve the chances of escape, but his captors were pretty wary.

It was best at least to appear resigned, so he sat most meekly on his slightly lamed steed between his guards at the village trough, speculating as to what the village was, and where, for he had lost his sense of direction.

And, thus engaged, he found himself all at once observing the slow approach of a farm cart along the one street of the place--an ordinary and rather small cart drawn by an old white horse, but driven, oddly enough, by a soldier, and having another, with fixed bayonet, seated sideways on the edge.

That there was something unusual about this conveyance was shown by the fact that everyone whom it passed in its progress over the cobbles was straight away smitten with immobility and remained staring after it.

Laurent himself became curious to see what was in it.

As the cart came within range, the hussars at the horse-trough began to call out pleasantries to the grenadier driver: what was he taking to market; it was true he looked better suited to a farm than the army, and so on.

"_You_ look like a performing circus!"

retorted the grenadier.

"We have a prisoner in here; that's what we've got."

Yet he had his musket idly between his knees and a straw in his mouth.

"We've got one, too!"

replied the hussars.

Then the cart came abreast.

On its tailboard, let down nearly level at the back, was visible an inert head and shoulders.

And the sun of the Mayday evening shone on hair that Laurent knew, hair that fell back from a face like death--like tragic death .

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.

Aymar de la Rocheterie's. Laurent gave a sharp exclamation, and the sorrel responded to the half-automatic pressure of his knees.

A hussar at once seized his arm, and a pistol was pressed into his ear, with an enquiry as to whether he wished to join "that one" in the cart with a bullet in his head?

He did not answer; he was too stunned.

But he made no further movement.

The cart rumbled slowly past with its burden.

L'Oiseleur was plainly quite unconscious, if not dead; his head rolled slightly with the comfortless motion of the conveyance.

On the mortal pallor of his face there showed up a faint smear or two of blood, and the white dust of the country road had drifted into his loosened hair, together with some bits of the straw on which he had been laid.

A dark green uniform coat similar to that in which Laurent had last seen him was flung over him, but his shirt had obviously been removed, and one shoulder at least was swathed round with a bloody wrapping.

And the sunlight showed how deeply stained was the coat also.

Before Laurent had recovered from his stupefaction the cart had passed.

All the hussars turned in their saddles and looked after it, oddly silent, except one irrepressible spirit who shouted out an enquiry as to why they were going like a funeral.

"To avoid one, son of an idiot!"

called back the man with the musket.

"We happen to want this parishioner alive.

It's a damned nuisance, going at this pace, but if we hurry--" He made an expressive gesture.

"Where are you taking him to?"

But either the soldier did not hear, or did not answer, because the hussar officer came at that moment out of the inn shouting an order.

And hastily, with much jingling of accoutrements, the patrol began to move off up the sunny street in the opposite direction, Laurent in the midst.

He was feeling very dismal.

Rumour was incorrect, and L'Oiseleur _had_ paid in person for his defeat--and paid heavily.

He had fallen with his men after all .

.

.

no, hardly, because the affair at the bridge was three days old, and the blood on him was fresh.

He must have been tracked down afterwards .

.

.

horrible!

But how strange that there was no escort with the cart--for though L'Oiseleur himself was only too obviously in no condition to escape from it, there must always be the risk of a rescue so long as any of those devoted followers of his were at large.

Or did the absence of an adequate guard signify that the whole of his remaining force had since been wiped out--and was that the meaning of the look, almost of horror, which had persisted even in unconsciousness?

Laurent could not get that look out of his head, nor the way the cart had jolted.

Surely, if they wanted him kept alive, that soldier might have held him in his arms; surely---- The young man gave an exclamation.

Slow-witted dolt that he was!

"I must speak to your officer at once!"

he said to the hussar who had command of his reins.

But it took time, in that quickly trotting advance, before his demand could be complied with, and already when he proffered his suggestion it seemed absurd, seeing that by then the cart with its burden and he, who was not a free agent, were a mile or more apart.

So the officer not unnaturally replied that it was out of the question to send him back now to bear the other prisoner company.

(2) To a young man deeply conscious of how unwelcome it is to be made a captive it is not likely to occur that he may also be unwelcome to his captors.

This fact was nevertheless made plain to Laurent next morning when the officer came into the barn where M. de Courtomer had spent the night with the patrol, and told him frankly that he was becoming a nuisance to them.

They wished to return with all possible speed to headquarters, yet the sergeant reported that the strain taken by the prisoner's horse in its fall yesterday was much worse.

The officer really wished, he avowed, that he _had_ bestowed his captive in the cart with the other; he proposed now, instead of dragging him further with them on his lame beast, to hand him over to the care of the garrison at Arbelles, which was still within a few hours' ride.

Laurent replied indifferently that he must do as he thought best.

He had passed a haunted night; had La Rocheterie lived to see this day break?

He doubted it.

The crux came over the question of parole, which was required of him because only one hussar could be spared to take him to Arbelles; and in the end Laurent agreed to give it until he was in the hands of his new gaolers; and so, fettered by his word, he set out in a corporal's charge.

But he was feeling too much depressed this morning to care to think of a dash for freedom.

He had had his wish: he had seen L'Oiseleur, and doubted if he should see him more in this life.

And about midday, riding slowly because of the sorrel's condition, he and the corporal came in sight of their destination, the château of Arbelles, a really fine and extensive Renaissance building, capable of containing, as it then did, a considerable number of troops, though plainly not designed for any warlike end.

It belonged, Laurent subsequently discovered, to a Royalist gentleman absent in Paris, and during his progress up the avenue the prisoner wondered how long, under military occupation, it would retain its general air of well-kept luxury, almost that of a big English country house.

In the imposing hall, with its great oriel window and vast hearth, he was delivered over to a tall major of the line of a lifeless and, as Laurent privately thought, stupid visage.

The hussar made his report and handed over Laurent's papers.

The officer was looking at them in a slow, undecided way, when a quick step was heard and he turned round and saluted a big, burly, hard-faced man in the green and yellow of the dragoons--a man with a choleric eye and close-cut grizzled side-whiskers coming to the level of the cheek-bone.

To him Laurent was presented as a prisoner on parole just sent in.

"But I take back my parole, sir, now that I am in your hands," put in the captive quickly.

The dragoon colonel gave a mirthless smile.

"As you please, Monsieur"--he looked at the papers.

"Lieutenant le Comte de Courtomer, is it not?

You have a report, corporal?"

The corporal made it, and the Colonel proceeded--quite civilly--to question his prisoner.

But the fact that Laurent, when captured, had been coming from the north, as he readily acknowledged, appeared to annoy the commander of Arbelles, whose preferences seemed to be for a prisoner from the south-west.

Could not M. le Comte give him any inkling of what was going forward in the Plesguen district?

Laurent intimated that he was totally unable to do so, not having been there;

nor, he added coldly, did he see that he was called upon to present such information to an enemy if he had had it.

And the Colonel did not press the point; he muttered something cryptic to the impassive Major about having patience and waiting a little longer.

After which, looking at the handkerchief round Laurent's brow, he observed almost solicitously, "You are wounded, I see, Monsieur le Comte.

You must have that attended to.

Where is M. Perrelet?"

A young, loose-limbed lieutenant of _chasseurs à cheval_ standing by said, with a significant lift of the eyebrows, "Still in that room, sir."

"Ah," said his superior.

"Well, I hope he is in it to some purpose.

I

think that this officer then, had best go up there to M. Perrelet, to have his hurt dressed, and meanwhile we can consider where to lodge him.

--We are rather full for the next few days; you must excuse us, Monsieur le Comte."

"I am your prisoner," responded Laurent rather stiffly, disliking the effect which his title appeared to be making on this certainly not aristocratic foe.

"Rigault," said the latter to the young officer who had spoken, "take a couple of men and conduct M. de Courtomer upstairs.

I am to understand that you definitely withdraw your parole now, Monsieur?"

"Definitely, Monsieur le Colonel."

But when the chasseur returned with two soldiers the Colonel announced that he had changed his mind, and would go with the prisoner himself, as he wished to speak to the doctor.

They mounted the noble staircase together.

At the top they met an orderly, of whom the Colonel asked if M. Perrelet were along _there_, indicating a certain passage.

The man replied that the surgeon had just left the room for a moment, but would soon return; on which his commanding officer told him to inform him that there was a captured Royalist officer there awaiting his services.

Then, followed by the two soldiers, he went down the passage with his prisoner, talking as he went.

"I must apologize, Monsieur de Courtomer, for asking you to see the doctor in this particular room, but he is very much taken up with a wounded prisoner who occupies it, and he has his dressings and so forth there.

But of course I shall have you put elsewhere when he has done what is necessary for you."

"Oh," said Laurent cheerfully, "I am not averse to company, sir, if the prisoner in question is not too ill for it."

The Colonel shrugged his shoulders.

"It is not on his account that I would not quarter you there, though he _is_ very ill, but on quite another--that on which I really feel apologies are due to you for being required to spend even a few minutes in his society."

He broke off as he stopped at a door on his right hand, and beckoned to the soldiers.

"One of you must stand sentry here while this officer is within, and the door must be locked, now.

.

.

.

No," he resumed to Laurent, his hand on the door knob, "I should not dream of leaving you with this man, officer of your own side though he is, for I am sorry to say he has just turned traitor--betrayed his own men into an ambush four days ago, and was himself shot yesterday by those that were left."

And seeing Laurent's look of incredulity and aversion, he added, "Yes, he was found tied up to a tree, all but dead, outside his own headquarters.

The doctor, at my request, has been doing his best for him since yesterday evening, but it seems doubtful if he will live .

.

fortunately for himself, perhaps."

He turned the handle of the unlocked door and motioned the now reluctant Laurent in.

"With apologies!"

he said once more.

The door shut again, the key turning.

And on its inner side Laurent de Courtomer, appalled, stood staring .

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staring .

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fighting with all his mind against the evidence of his eyes.

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(3) The bronze hair was scattered on the pillow.

Except for brows and lashes the only trace of colour in the upturned face that it surrounded was the blue stain beneath the shut eyes, for the shut lips had none.

But the blood and dust which had disfigured that visage yesterday were gone; it was now so utterly bloodless that it had become mere sculpture, too fine-drawn for life--a little severe, almost disdainful.

Lying there so straight and motionless and low, Aymar de la Rocheterie, in the hands of his enemies, had the aspect of a dead Crusader.

And it was of _him_ that vile thing had just been said, the other side of the door!

Laurent stood petrified.

He felt himself guilty, polluted, a party to that terrible lie.

His instant impulse was to cry to the still figure, "Forgive me for having even heard it--for not having had time to deny it for you .

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this idea of a madman!

_You_ betray your men!"

Then the knowledge swamped him like a flood to what deaf ears he would cry.

L'Oiseleur was .

.

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surely .

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dying.

Oh, why had he not tried sooner to go with him yesterday?

Now it was too late.

There was no visible lift of breathing under the bedclothes, smoothly disposed as they were up to the very chin.

And, pierced with an even keener pain than yesterday's, Laurent went nearer to the bed, drawn as by a magnet to something he was half afraid to approach, remembering Devonshire and the bright salmon river, the stranger who had so lightly risked his life for him, who had shown him the amulet--the useless amulet--the brilliant friend he had reëncountered in Paris, the lover he had guessed at in the Tuileries garden.

Was this to be the end of all that charm and vigour and young renown?

And at that moment, as if to answer him .

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but in what sense?

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.

Aymar de la Rocheterie opened his eyes and looked at him.

Laurent suffered a double shock, since, apart from their unmistakable warm red-brown colour, they did not seem to be L'Oiseleur's eyes at all.

They were immensely large and even lustrous, but they had no life in them, nor, as Laurent almost instantly realized, any power of recognition worth the name.

They might have seen something, but it certainly was not he.

For the space of ten heart-beats or so they remained open; then the lashes fell again on to the blue circles and so stayed.

There was no other movement.

Thank God, he was still alive then.

But why, in this extremity, had he been left alone?

The Colonel had said that they were doing their best to save him.

There seemed a quantity of objects to that end on the table by the bed; the grey-panelled, well-furnished room with its two windows--a sitting-room, evidently--was very pleasant; there was a little fire burning; the bed itself, even if narrow, had fine linen sheets and an embroidered counterpane.

But for all that it was patent that he who lay in it lay very near the brink of a swifter river than the Dart.

That indeed Laurent had guessed and feared yesterday; but the other dark flood lapping at him--the atrocious calumny--how was that to be stayed?

Yet, if Aymar de la Rocheterie were dying, so long as _he_ had a tongue in his head he should not die sullied by so horrible a charge.

And, with a rapidly beating heart, he found himself away from the bedside staring through the window.

How _dared_ they say such a thing?

As he asked himself the question the key turned in the lock.

A sharp voice outside said rapidly, "Sentry?

nonsense!

I won't have one here, tell the Colonel!

--Another prisoner waiting for me?

Yes, I know."

And the speaker entered, a short, stout, more than middle-aged man in civilian attire, with a pair of rather fierce eyes under shaggy grizzled brows.

He threw a quick glance at Laurent, said, "In a moment!"

and, crossing to the bed, bent over its occupant and slipped his hand under the bedclothes.

He was there a full minute; then he came away compressing his lips and frowning.

"Now, Monsieur, I am at your service.

It is your head, I see.

Sit down, please.

A cut?

Anything else?"

Laurent did not sit down.

"For God's sake, Monsieur le Docteur, tell me what is the meaning of that?"

And he made a gesture towards the bed.

"Heart failure and collapse from excessive loss of blood is the meaning of that, Monsieur," replied the doctor rather curtly.

"If you will kindly sit down and let me examine your head--" "There's nothing there but a scratch," returned the young man, still uncomplying.

"And that is not exactly what I meant.

It's this dreadful story--they must all be lunatics in this place to think such a thing of _him_!"

The surgeon looked at him keenly.

"You know who he is, then?"

"I do; but surely the Bonapartists do not--that is their only excuse.

L'Oiseleur, the Vicomte de la Rocheterie, betray his own men!

It's .

.

it's grotesque!"

"You speak very confidently, Monsieur.