The Wounded Name

by D. K. Broster

But Aymar answered, without opening his eyes, in a voice gone suddenly remote and drowsy, "I am neither tired nor hungry—a little cold, that is all. I think I am going to sleep."

Perhaps that was the best thing that could happen to him, and if it did, Laurent saw some chance of slipping off his own coat and wrapping it round him. But he had had little sleep himself that night, and, lulled by the downpour on the shingled roof, he half dozed off as he sat there. He was recalled by a violent shiver running through the shoulders resting against his knees.

"That letter," said their owner reflectively. "That letter . . . I am glad I burnt it. It was the only way to cleanse it. It had been in his horrible hands all this while." Here he shivered again, but went on almost immediately, his eyes fixed on some point out in the rainy landscape, "Yes, he had it all the time, and never guessed. And downstairs, for all his questioning . . . I could hardly bear it . . . he never found out."

"That was fortunate," murmured Laurent vaguely, uncertain whether Aymar were speaking to himself, or expecting a reply. But speculation gave way to alarm the next moment, when a third shudder drove through L'Oiseleur's body, and his teeth clicked together.

"Mon ami, what is the matter with you? Are you so cold as that? Come up closer to me. Confound this rain!" And he edged himself nearer, till he could get his companion into his arms. Aymar's hands were as cold as ice, but there was a faint flush on either cheek.

"I saw the Colonel looking at my wrists once," he began again, with a complete absence of his usual extreme reserve. "He said . . . he said it was not there that he should like to put a rope. . . ." The narrator gave a sort of laugh. "It was round here!" He carried his hand to his throat, and a double flicker of lightning ran through the shelter as though to emphasize this disclosure.

"Damn him!" exclaimed Laurent passionately, while the long roll reverberated overhead.

"I suppose he might have done it if he had chosen," proceeded Aymar with the same uncanny fluency. "We could not either of us have prevented him, could we, Laurent? They laughed, some of them. . . . I did want very much to stand all the time . . . but I was not able to. I had to sit down. And I did not mean to lose my temper, but I did—once—and it only made it worse for me, because——" But his teeth were now chattering so that he could get no further.

"Oh, don't try to talk!" cried Laurent. "And why, in God's name, are you shivering like this?"

For his brief experience of nursing had been mainly surgical, and he had never imagined that shivering was other than a semi-voluntary action. But Aymar's whole body was beginning to be convulsed every few seconds by a sort of galvanic shock, and his teeth were now going like castanets, to the complete exclusion of any more confidences. Laurent, really frightened, stripped off his own coat and wrapped it round him, attempted to pour brandy between the chattering teeth, most of it being spilled in the process, and held him as closely as he could to the warmth of his own body.