Read Ebook: The Wounded Name by Broster D K Dorothy Kathleen

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Ebook has 412 lines and 22507 words, and 9 pages

It was the stout officer who broke it. "Did M. de la Rocheterie," he asked, addressing the witness, "let his men proceed to such an extremity without any attempt to defend himself? It looks as if his followers were so convinced of something against him that no explanations of his were of any avail. Surely the Chouan, of whom we all have experience, will accept anything so long as his faith in a leader is unshaken?"

"No, not exactly," admitted de Fresne unwillingly.

"How long before, then?"

"It must have been . . . between half an hour and three quarters."

"And in all that time nobody protested?"

"Yes, a good many, but they were not so strong as the other party."

"And did not M. de la Rocheterie himself protest?"

"Once; but when Le Bihan gave him the opportunity of justifying himself he refused to say a word--as I should have done in his place."

"Then they never got the explanation, such as it was?"

"Yes; I gave it them myself in the hope of saving him."

"Without the 'bargain'?"

"Naturally, since I did not know what it was."

"And the 'explanation' was still, presumably, unconvincing to you when you gave it?"

"I was beginning to waver."

"So you were able to tell them that it had convinced you?"

"I could not quite say that."

"How many men precisely took part in shooting M. de la Rocheterie--how many shots were fired?"

De Fresne looked harassed. Once more Aymar came to his assistance.

"As M. de Fresne was trying at considerable risk to cut me free, and had also to rally the men against the Bonapartists, he can hardly have been engaged in computation. I can satisfy the Court, up to a point. I was fired at twice by Le Bihan; his first shot struck me, the second missed; and by another man, who also hit me . . . and by at least one more, as I afterwards discovered. That makes a minimum of three men and four shots; there may have been more. I do not know, because I lost consciousness after the second. But I imagine that they had not much more leisure." He sat down again; it was beyond Laurent how he could have steeled himself to get up.

Sol de Grisolles, intervening here, observed, "Well, I think we can now leave this part of the subject. It is obvious that hasty shots by three or four men cannot be said to constitute an execution."

But the stout officer said stubbornly, "Yes, General, but if he was fastened to a tree the intention at least of an execution seems obvious; and since it was nothing short of murder of a commanding officer, I cannot believe that even irregular troops would be guilty of such an unprecedented act without more reason than the showing of this letter.--And, by the way, who destroyed that letter, and why?"

"I destroyed it," replied de Fresne briefly. "And I did so because I believed M. de la Rocheterie to have died in the hands of the enemy, and I saw no purpose to be served by keeping a piece of evidence which he was not alive to refute."

"In fact," put in "Fouquier-Tinville," "you tried to hush up the whole matter! Was it for the same reason that you never attempted to have any of these men brought to justice? Did you continue to command them, by the way? What happened to them?"

De Fresne told him.

"Then you took no steps to have even Le Bihan brought to trial--you preferred the matter to go by default, even when these rumours began to get about, rather than give the men a chance of stating their case. In fact, you acted then just as M. de la Rocheterie is acting now--either from design or carelessness keeping out the men's evidence."

"Yes, I think it is quite unfounded." Sol de Grisolles looked at Fouquier-Tinville."

"Then I withdraw it," said the latter. "But I do submit that, either in those three days in the wood, or in the destroyed letter, there was some more damning proof of treachery than appears."

Aymar was on his feet in an instant. "Will you stand down, Monsieur de Fresne? I call Colonel Richard as a witness that there was nothing extraneous in the letter but my deciphering of a portion of it and his subsequent endorsement."

"There was nothing more--not a syllable," said the Imperialist.

"Then it was the unaccounted-for three days," pronounced the stout officer.

Aymar drew himself up. His temper was roused, but no one save Laurent would have known it. "I can only assure the Court once more," he said, "that nothing was further from my thoughts than to keep back any evidence. But the Court must admit that I could hardly have induced any of the men who shot me to come willingly before this tribunal and confess to what has already been qualified as murder . . . whether justifiable or no."

If Aymar did not flush, Laurent did; he almost ground his teeth.

All the way back to Aymar's lodging those words were vibrating through Laurent's whole being: "not a shred of real evidence to show that he did not deliberately sacrifice his men to save his cousin." Yet when they got into the little room, and de Fresne, who had accompanied them, revealed the depth of his gloom and of his irritation, Laurent, from pure antagonism, began to cheer up.

"I told you so!" lamented the poor gentleman. "I told you from the beginning, La Rocheterie, that it was a mistake to court enquiry now . . . and after failing to produce your two chief witnesses still more so! And what is going to happen to-morrow? We have no more evidence; the thing will become a farce!"

"I will tell you what will happen to-morrow, Monsieur," remarked Laurent rather maliciously. "You will go on giving your testimony, perhaps for hours, with that fat old fellow asking question after question about those three days in the Bois des Fauvettes which intrigue him so--the Three Days of Creation."

Aymar, who looked like a ghost, smiled in spite of himself. "That event occupied six, you will remember, Laurent." And the unfortunate de Fresne said tartly that, with such a prospect in front of him, he would betake himself to his inn and go to bed early.

As he closed the door behind his lieutenant Aymar shook his head at the tormentor.

"You are really rather unkind, Laurent!" And, as Laurent made a grimace intended to show at once a sense of self-justification and a measure of penitence, he went on gravely, "And you know, mon ami, de Fresne is quite justified in his view. I have not really any chance now . . . of being cleared, that is. Indeed, I was very strongly tempted to tell the General at the close of to-day's proceedings that it was hardly worth while wasting the time of the Court any more. But then it came to me that perhaps it was cowardly, and perhaps it was rash . . . and I have had enough of being both."

"That is true," agreed Aymar as he obeyed him. "There is nothing more to say now." And as Laurent spread a covering over him he added, with a smile, "But I did not mean you to come here to begin Arbelles over again!"

"What did you mean me to come for, then, since you will not let me give evidence now that I am here?"

Aymar made no reply in words; he merely pressed his hand. And a few minutes later, sheer fatigue overriding the nervous tension, he was sleeping like a child. But, in spite of his own brave words, Laurent's heart ached as he sat beside him and thought of the morrow. . . . And to-day? In some ways Aymar had got through better than he probably looked for--in the matter of keeping out Mme de Villecresne's name, for instance. On the other hand, they neither of them anticipated that the Court would want to burrow so deeply into that intensely painful episode of the shooting. Oh, what would be the outcome of the whole business--what, indeed, would an impartial observer have said was the real outcome of to-day's proceedings?

But in Mme Leblanc's little sitting-room no such person existed; there was only one very anxious young man watching another.

More than half an hour had passed thus when there came a knock at the door, and Laurent, tiptoeing over, was presented by Mme Leblanc with a large visiting card, and the information that there was "a gentleman downstairs asking to see M. de la Rocheterie."

Laurent gave an exclamation. "What is it?" asked Aymar, rousing.

"You would never guess!" cried Laurent in high glee. "Our dear P?re Perrelet, come, I am sure, to make amends, though dropped from Heaven knows where, and on your track Heaven knows how! You'll see him, Aymar, of course?"

And, pelting down the narrow stairs, he almost fell into the arms of M. le docteur J.-M.-P. Perrelet, in all his Sunday clothes, at the bottom. Indeed M. le docteur soundly embraced him.

"Oh, did he not!" returned Laurent. "But he owes you far too much to refuse it . . . and in any case . . . Go up; there's the door."

M. Perrelet stayed to supper, which his presence somehow enlivened into quite a cheerful meal. He was very hopeful, on what grounds could hardly be discovered. I wonder, thought Laurent once more, that he doesn't say, "I'm no optimist," and shortly afterwards, to his delight, the old surgeon did remark, "Of course I'm not one to take an unduly rosy view of things!" And Laurent himself again besought Aymar to call him as a witness, and when Aymar enquired "as a witness to what?" asseverated anew that he should not be contented till du Tremblay knew what he owed him over the cipher business--till they all knew it.

"My dear Laurent," observed L'Oiseleur a little drily, "you surely do not expect me to bring it forward as a merit that I did not betray a comrade's plans when it was suggested to me to do so!"

"Of course you would never have done it voluntarily! But I wonder how many people, in your condition, could to the very last have kept their heads sufficiently not to show so much as assent or dissent when that blackguard narrowed the issue down to a single question--that vital question of the crossing of the river?"

"Nobody who had not a will of steel," pronounced M. Perrelet.

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