The Wounded Name

by D. K. Broster

(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.