The Wounded Name

by D. K. Broster

The Colonel stooped. "I suppose he's not shamming by any chance?"

Laurent gave a movement. So did M. Perrelet.

"Shamming!" he exclaimed. "Do you think I am a . . . a greengrocer, Colonel? And I wish you would feel his pulse, and tell me how a man can simulate one like that!"

Colonel Guitton gave a sort of laugh. "You need not be so peppery, my dear Perrelet. I did not mean to cast any slur on your professional acumen. And, as to your patient, the charge of malingering would be a trifling one to bring against a man who has done what he has done.—Let me have a report of his progress, please, twice a day without fail," he finished curtly, and, turning on his heel, came in Laurent's direction.

"So you have elected to stay here, Monsieur le Comte, and play the Good Samaritan? Please remember that it is not my wish, and that when you change your mind you have only to ask to be moved."

Laurent had got the better of the strangling sensation which had afflicted him while the Bonapartist stood over Aymar de la Rocheterie (unhearing and unseeing though the latter was) and spoke of him like that. He was on fire, but coherently so, and having decided in the night exactly what he meant to say, he said it.

The Colonel heard him out. Then he shrugged his shoulders, remarked calmly, "Ah, a champion! Well, Monsieur de Courtomer, I am sorry for you!" and departed, M. Perrelet with him, leaving Laurent angry, dumbfounded, and thoroughly bewildered, not by his incredulity but by his inconsistency. How, if he was so concerned for La Rocheterie's life, so anxious to hear of his progress, could he speak of him with such utter contempt? If he had such an opinion of him why did he trouble to have him kept alive at all? In M. Perrelet's case he could see that he really cared, and he was, besides, a doctor, but the Colonel . . .

Then M. Perrelet returned, looking rather grim, and Laurent was immediately called upon to assist at the dressing of the patient's wounds—his first experience of the kind. Of this proceeding, indeed, L'Oiseleur himself betrayed little consciousness beyond moaning once or twice; but there was one matter of which Laurent, for his part, was even more acutely aware than of the injuries themselves. Each of M. de la Rocheterie's wrists, now seen for the first time, was encircled by a neat little bandage. After what the surgeon had said about ropes, it was not difficult to guess the reason for their presence, and it turned Laurent sick and cold. What ignominy had he suffered in that horrible wood, he, a gentleman and a hero?

The rest of the slow day was not free from anxiety, but as it wore on La Rocheterie's condition certainly improved and he became conscious for increasingly longer intervals, till at last, by the end of the afternoon, he was lying most of the time with his eyes open, though he seemed quite unaware of Laurent's presence, possibly even of the doctor's.

And when the night came which Laurent had been so dreading, he found that the responsibility for L'Oiseleur's life was not to rest entirely on his untried shoulders, since M. Perrelet was going to sleep in the château, not in his house in the village, and could be summoned at need by means of the sentry.