The Wounded Name

by D. K. Broster

"But till I know!" he riposted sharply. "L'Oiseleur, for God's sake be a man! . . . Here is my arm."

Aymar pulled himself instantly to his feet. "No, thanks!—Which is the way?"

It was too dark to see his face, but his tone showed only too clearly the effect of this adjuration. Even as he asked the question Michel Royer had come up. Laurent, keeping down something in his own breast at once miserable and fierce, drew the fisherman a little aside and whispered to him, "My friend is ill. He may want assistance—but don't touch his right arm. Give me half of what you are carrying."

The transfer was made. "This is the way, gentlemen," said the vague figure, in a hoarse voice which seemed to have known many tempests, and led off past the broken gate and down the very track by whose entrance Aymar had been sitting. Aymar followed, without a glance at his friend, and that friend brought up the rear, in a perfect daze of misery, irritation, and anxiety.

(9)

Some three quarters of an hour afterwards Laurent stood, lantern in hand, in the smugglers' cave, the "Panier," and looked remorsefully down at Aymar, lying at his feet on the rough bed of sailcloth and seaweed in the profound slumber of exhaustion. His own burst of irritation had subsided now, and the sight of that bandaged arm made him doubly ashamed of it; though as for having forced Aymar, as he had, to use the last shred of his strength, he did not see what else he could have done. But at least it was he himself, and not Royer, who, when they had reached their goal, had guided L'Oiseleur, blind with fatigue as he was, to this couch, on which he had dropped like a log, not to move since.

Royer had gone, promising to come again to-morrow. The "Panier," as far as Laurent could see by lantern-light, seemed wonderfully dry and spacious, and there was a sufficiency of food and coverings. So there was nothing to do but to go to sleep; and in sleep he could forget the cruel rebirth which had taken place in his mind . . . perhaps in sleep it would even go from him again. He lay down as quietly as possible by L'Oiseleur and pulled a little of the covering over himself.

But it was soon obvious to him that he was not going to sleep; he was far too conscious of Aymar's proximity—too conscious that his theory about Aymar was crumbling to pieces as Aymar had foretold. Yet it was he himself who felt the traitor. How could he bear to lie there, almost touching that arm, martyred for him, and realize, as he did at length, that that martyrdom could not change the past! It still was "If you knew!" It still was that L'Oiseleur, for all his courage and endurance, quailed before the thought of a future in his own country. Why . . . why . . . why?

His thoughts buzzed and stung like flies. And now the recurrent plunge of the tide, the sound that none can stay, began to torment him. Every time the waves splashed outside they seemed to reiterate something monotonous and final, some message charged with ruin and farewell. And when Aymar, who had lain beside him all the time like a man drugged or dead, stirred, and in stirring touched him, it was more than Laurent could bear. He slipped from under the covering and groped his way across the cave to its mouth.

It was a cloudy night. The sea looked dull—not sinister, not violent, just a dimly seen expanse of moving mud. There was no moon visible and not a star. It was like his own thoughts. Laurent sat down on a keg at the mouth of the cave and gave himself over to the contemplation of these.