The Wounded Name

by D. K. Broster

He turned the handle of the unlocked door and motioned the now reluctant Laurent in. "With apologies!" he said once more.

The door shut again, the key turning. And on its inner side Laurent de Courtomer, appalled, stood staring . . . staring . . . fighting with all his mind against the evidence of his eyes. . . .

(3)

The bronze hair was scattered on the pillow. Except for brows and lashes the only trace of colour in the upturned face that it surrounded was the blue stain beneath the shut eyes, for the shut lips had none. But the blood and dust which had disfigured that visage yesterday were gone; it was now so utterly bloodless that it had become mere sculpture, too fine-drawn for life—a little severe, almost disdainful. Lying there so straight and motionless and low, Aymar de la Rocheterie, in the hands of his enemies, had the aspect of a dead Crusader.

And it was of him that vile thing had just been said, the other side of the door!

Laurent stood petrified. He felt himself guilty, polluted, a party to that terrible lie. His instant impulse was to cry to the still figure, "Forgive me for having even heard it—for not having had time to deny it for you . . . this idea of a madman! You betray your men!" Then the knowledge swamped him like a flood to what deaf ears he would cry. L'Oiseleur was . . . surely . . . dying.

Oh, why had he not tried sooner to go with him yesterday? Now it was too late. There was no visible lift of breathing under the bedclothes, smoothly disposed as they were up to the very chin. And, pierced with an even keener pain than yesterday's, Laurent went nearer to the bed, drawn as by a magnet to something he was half afraid to approach, remembering Devonshire and the bright salmon river, the stranger who had so lightly risked his life for him, who had shown him the amulet—the useless amulet—the brilliant friend he had reëncountered in Paris, the lover he had guessed at in the Tuileries garden. Was this to be the end of all that charm and vigour and young renown?

And at that moment, as if to answer him . . . but in what sense? . . . Aymar de la Rocheterie opened his eyes and looked at him.

Laurent suffered a double shock, since, apart from their unmistakable warm red-brown colour, they did not seem to be L'Oiseleur's eyes at all. They were immensely large and even lustrous, but they had no life in them, nor, as Laurent almost instantly realized, any power of recognition worth the name. They might have seen something, but it certainly was not he. For the space of ten heart-beats or so they remained open; then the lashes fell again on to the blue circles and so stayed. There was no other movement.

Thank God, he was still alive then. But why, in this extremity, had he been left alone? The Colonel had said that they were doing their best to save him. There seemed a quantity of objects to that end on the table by the bed; the grey-panelled, well-furnished room with its two windows—a sitting-room, evidently—was very pleasant; there was a little fire burning; the bed itself, even if narrow, had fine linen sheets and an embroidered counterpane. But for all that it was patent that he who lay in it lay very near the brink of a swifter river than the Dart. That indeed Laurent had guessed and feared yesterday; but the other dark flood lapping at him—the atrocious calumny—how was that to be stayed? Yet, if Aymar de la Rocheterie were dying, so long as he had a tongue in his head he should not die sullied by so horrible a charge.