The Wounded Name

by D. K. Broster

"Yes," said the boy miserably. And as he stood with bent head, fumbling with the bandage round his fingers, he added, "Am I to tell M. du Tremblay that there was probably treachery at the bridge?"

L'Oiseleur turned his head away. "You can tell him . . . that it looked like it," he answered after a moment.

When Clément was gone he sat down at the little table in the hut and covered his face. He had chosen de Soulanges to carry that bitter but unavoidable message because he was fond of him, and wanted to get him out of the way before he took his pistol in his own hand, or before the inevitable consequences of the disaster came on him from without. For, safe as his remaining men might consider themselves in the Bois des Fauvettes, Aymar knew better. In a day or two the Bonapartists at Arbelles, hearing of the affair at the bridge, would certainly follow up their comrades' success and clear out the relics of that nest of hornets in the wood. And, if he himself had not blown out his brains before that happened, he could then die sword in hand, which would be preferable. So either he must disband his men in time, or make a last stand.

Yet, now that he had heard fuller details, he knew that the affair had not been so actually bloody as he had at first been given to understand. The trap had been so well set that, after the first discharge from the hidden foe—and in particular after M. de Fresne had been seen to fall—the leaderless front ranks had been obliged to surrender. But they comprised his best, his oldest followers; it was the least devoted, the least trustworthy who, being in the rear, had escaped, and these would be all the harder to get in hand again. Moreover, worn out though he had been by the close of yesterday, it was clear to Aymar that the ambitious hopes of the big Breton, Magloire Le Bihan, which for some time he had suspected, had vastly grown during his few days' absence, and were likely to swell still more, now that he found himself virtually second-in-command. Aymar's very soul was sick as he got up and went out to inspect his men's depleted equipment—so sick that something whispered to him, "Why not tell them that it is you, and you alone, who brought about the catastrophe?" But in that case reorganization would be hopeless.

He did not sleep at all that night, and he knew that under the strain of his paralyzing secret he was beginning to lose his faculty of decision. Some of the men were slipping away already. On the other hand, there was no sign of an attack on the wood. He knew that the Imperialists had always credited him with more followers than he actually possessed. If they were hesitating on that score he could still keep their communications cut a little longer by stopping where he was. Magloire supported this idea.

So all Sunday he did his best to reorganize the handful that was left to him.

About nine o'clock a letter was brought to him. The handwriting was Avoye's . . . and Avoye seemed now to have receded into another world, and that hour in the orchard to belong to a life not this. Since his return to the wood the thought that he had saved her (as presumably he had) at the cost of other men's blood—men sent blindly to the slaughter—was so terrible that he had not been able to face it. Now here was a letter from her.

He went into the hut and opened it with unsteady hands. It was from Sessignes, and dated April 28th—Friday. So she was safe—had returned unharmed. But did he not know that by what had been paid for her return? He read:

"Oh, my dearest, to have missed you, and at such a time! And by so little, as it were! I could have arrived last night, though late, had I but known that you were at Sessignes. If only I had! For though I was stopped at the 'Cheval Blanc' at six o'clock yesterday evening by a body of Bonapartists, and detained there for a few hours (on account, I believe, of the movement of troops) at ten o'clock I was told, very civilly, that I could continue my journey if I wished."

Aymar stopped reading, and leant dizzily against the wall of the hut. Was he going crazy? She "would have arrived had she but known"! At ten o'clock, when Vaubernier was still in the rose-garden at Sessignes, she had been told "very civilly" that she was free to proceed—she who was to have been shot in the morning! . . . He read on to the end, the letters dancing before his eyes.