The Wounded Name

by D. K. Broster

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."