"That depends which side is responsible for it. Come, now, Monsieur de la Rocheterie, it is too late in the day to ignore the fact that there was treachery over Friday's business!"
Aymar measured him. "It strikes me, Magloire," he said frigidly, "that you are a little forgetting that you owe your present position to accident, and that if you do not modify your tone you will find your tenure of it exceedingly short."
A gleam of rage shot into the Breton's deep-set eyes. "Accident! Pont-aux-Rochers was an accident, was it? How was it then, Monsieur le Vicomte, that you knew of it beforehand, and rode to warn us?"
"That is my affair," returned his leader. "It is enough that I did ride to warn you; you all know why I was too late. If that is all you wish to say to me, you can go. Keep the pickets out in case of a sudden attack!"
"If that happens, I dare say we shall find that someone knew of that also beforehand," muttered Magloire darkly.
"Then you will remember that I warned you of that, too," retorted Aymar. "I advise you to profit by the warning." And, turning on his heel, he left him.
Once inside the hut again he felt very tired. Two nights without sleep, three days of the most harassing remorse and strain, and now a passage of arms with his only efficient subordinate! But that Magloire, in spite of his words, had no suspicion ofhimhe was certain. It was jealousy and wounded vanity which were driving him. He would have to give him his congé directly it was possible. . . .
About two o'clock he was sitting at the rough table trying to work out a map from memory (all his effects having been lost at the bridge) when he heard something like an altercation at the door. The next moment it opened to admit a man who shut it behind him and stood facing him without a word—a lean, tallish man of about thirty-five, hard-featured and blue-eyed, and bareheaded save for a bandage round his forehead.
Aymar stared at him, amazed almost beyond speech.
"Good God! De Fresne! Then you were not——"
"I escaped—a careless sentry. No, not killed, if that is what you mean. Did you think I was?"
Aymar's head swam for a moment. He was unfeignedly glad, but with de Fresne he would probably have to have the matter out. He sprang up, holding out his hand.
"Need I say what I feel? But you are hurt!"
"Nothing much. I was stunned for a time." Then, glancing at his leader's outstretched hand, the second-in-command looked him in the face. "I can take your hand, La Rocheterie; can you take mine?"
The red ran over Aymar's features from chin to brow, and, ebbing, left him very pale. He dropped his hand. "What have you heard?"
Still looking at him very hard de Fresne put a hand inside his coat. "I haveseensomething—something I would almost give my eyes not to have seen—my own letter in the hands of the enemy! But since, in spite of it, I find you here with the men, cannot I hope that there is some mistake about it—that it was stolen . . . lost . . . mislaid, perhaps . . . and that you did not deliberately send it to Colonel Richard as he says you did?"
There was entreaty and pain in the harsh voice, and a loophole in what it said. No!
"I would rather not lie to you, de Fresne," answered L'Oiseleur. "I . . . did send your letter to Colonel Richard. I will tell you why."
"If you please," said the other stiffly. "You will pardon me if I sit down." And he walked past him to the table.
"I am sorry I have no wine to offer you," said Aymar. "When did you last have food?"
"I need nothing, thank you." He had spread out the letter on the table and sat back, rather haggard under his bandage. Aymar came and sat down opposite him.
"How did you get the letter back?" he asked quietly.
"Colonel Richard had me in when I was recovered, and asked me if I had really written it, and if I thought you had really sent it. I said that was inconceivable, till I . . . till I saw the deciphered passages and recognized your writing. On that I said it must have been stolen from you, and I asked for it, and Richard let me have it—was glad, I think, to be rid of it, as if it soiled his fingers—and when I escaped . . . For God's sake, La Rocheterie, be quick and explain the business!"
"It is quite simple," answered Aymar with dry lips. "I took a risk which I see now that I ought never to have taken." And, after a moment's preparation, he embarked on the story, leaving out all reference to Mme de Villecresne, and making it appear that he had sent the letter purely as part of a ruse—as he so nearly had done. To avow, with the blood scarcely dry on the stones of Pont-aux-Rochers, that he had sent it to save her was more than he could bring himself to do. It would be dishonouring her. Yet he knew that the suppression was hazardous.
"And that is the explanation," said de Fresne slowly at the end. "That is why I find my letter in the enemy's possession, and why there has been this horrible disaster—merely because you were tempted to bring off a coup? And that is all you have to tell me?"
"Yes, that is all," said Aymar with a slight shade of hauteur.
De Fresne suddenly pushed away his chair and rose, went to the little unglazed window and looked out, then came back and flung himself down again. Aymar watched him, sick at heart. Heknew—or else he disbelieved.
"But there is more," the elder man jerked out. "There is more—you know it! Why do you keep back half, you whom I have never known to lie, when I want so much to believe you? What about that bargain with Colonel Richard?"
"I have not said anything about a bargain."
"Exactly. That is what I complain of. Because Colonel Richard did."
For the second time Aymar turned white. "What did he tell you?"
"Merely that—that you sent the letter as part of a bargain struck with him. He did not specify what the compact was. But how could any compact with the enemy be honourable? You tell me the whole thing was a ruse; perhaps the bargain was part of the ruse then—a mere pretext to make them swallow the bait? If so, of course . . ."
He looked at him questioningly. And L'Oiseleur sat silent, very pale, staring at the knots in the rough table. Since, miracle of mercy, Colonel Richard had held his tongue as to the nature of the bargain and since, in the event (though not in intention) the bargain had proved a farce, no bargain at all, how easy to say so? But he had enough on his soul. He shook his head.
"You will not tell me what it is?" asked de Fresne.
"No. But there was nothing dishonourable in it. I got nothing——" But here he stopped.
"Then who did? There must be two parties to a bargain. Is there any one in the world, La Rocheterie, for whom you ought to sacrifice four hundred men—and your own honour?"
Aymar winced. "I have told you, de Fresne," he said rather hotly, "that the last idea in my mind was the possibility of my men's being victims. Have I shown myself so careless of them in the past?"
De Fresne shook his bandaged head. "It looks very bad. If you refuse to say what the bargain was, it will certainly be thought to be a dishonourable one."
"I cannot help what people think. And—pardon me for referring to it—I have a certain reputation."
"Yes," agreed the older man. "Yes, that is the tragedy of it." He put his hands up to his head and sighed. "Such an unheard-of thing—to send a letter with vital information straight to the enemy. . . . You have offered me an explanation which I do not doubt is true as far as it goes, but which has the most important factor left out. How can you expect it to satisfy me? My opinion, you will perhaps retort, is not of much account, but you must recognize yourself, La Rocheterie, that you are in a horrible position. This story will be all over Brittany in a few days, for all Richard's officers know that you sent the letter."
"Well?"
"What steps are you going to take about it?"
"None," replied L'Oiseleur, leaning his head on his hand.
De Fresne stared at him, frowning. "I do not think that you are taking this business seriously enough."
And at that Aymar raised his head and laughed. "Yes, if not having had any sleep for two nights, if thinking about it every moment of the twenty-four hours, and having only this morning finally made up my mind not to blow my brains out is not taking it seriously, then I am not doing so!"
"I'm sorry," said his lieutenant briefly. "Do you intend, then, just to go on and disregard—what will be said?"
"I thought I would try that," replied Aymar, leaning back in his chair and suddenly looking very young and tired. "I would rather tell the men, but it could do no good, and I think I ought to pull the remnant together and keep the enemy's communications cut a little longer.—You see, after all, I am not entirely bought by the Imperialists!"
"I never said you were," retorted de Fresne gruffly. "But I think that you will find yourself obliged to take some definite step.—May I say what I think you ought to do?"
The young man nodded.
"Give up your command for the time, go to Sol de Grisolles, and ask for a military enquiry, so that you can justify yourself."
"Give up my command—have myself put under arrest!" exclaimed L'Oiseleur. "No, certainly not!" He looked at the giver of this unwelcome advice a moment and added, "May I ask what you mean by 'ought'—that it would be to my advantage, or that you conceive it to be my duty?"
"Both," answered de Fresne with brevity.
Aymar's eyes flashed dangerously. "Are you going to teach me——" he began, and then, with a great effort, stopped himself. "Tell me, have you communicated any of your knowledge to the men?"
"No, of course I have not. Except for some necessary converse with them—in which I learnt that you were here—and for trying to assuage a certain excitement that there was over my reappearance, I came straight to you.—You are aware, no doubt, that they are out of hand?"
"Very well aware! And yet you suggest that I should vacate my command!"
"It would not, I admit, be a happy moment to succeed you, La Rocheterie, even temporarily. But I will take the command—if you offer it me."
Aymar sprang to his feet. "Monsieur de Fresne! This is a little too strong! I gave you leave to advise me, not to dictate to me!"
"Don't quarrel with me, La Rocheterie! believe me, I don't want to!" And de Fresne's tone showed it. "Won't you do it?" he asked again after a pause. "It is the only profitable step that you can take."
And for an instant or two, as well as his wearied brain would let him, the young man did weigh the proposal. But he had just, with no small effort, screwed himself up to quite another course. This course would involve having the core of the business dragged out into the light of day, the unveiling of Avoye's unconscious share in the disaster, the bandying about of her name, her relations to him. . . .
"I am sure that you are advising me to the best of your ability, de Fresne," he said more gently. "And I beg your pardon if I was rather short with you just now, for, Heaven knows, it would be a thankless task you would take up. But I cannot do what you ask."
Nicolas de Fresne sat for a moment without moving; then he got to his feet with a sigh. "Very well," he said. He looked down at his left side. "My sword is in the enemy's hands, so I am unable to ask you to accept it, save figuratively."
Aymar stepped backwards as if he had been struck.
"I cannot do anything else," said de Fresne, looking at the hut wall beyond him.
"You are resigning because I will not!"
"If you like to put it that way."
"Then you . . . you do think that ugly thing of me, de Fresne! Don't you know me—don't you know my family history? You, who have fought with me, and know what memories I carry, you think Icouldbetray my dead!"
"I cannot reconcile it with my sense of honour," replied de Fresne, standing up very stiff—the stiffer, no doubt, that he was moved by the agony in the appeal, "that you refuse to take the obvious method of clearing your name. I do not say that I think you a traitor, for, as you say, I know you. . . . But, painful as it is, I must ask you to excuse me from serving under you any longer."
Save for the sweep of a pine-branch over the roof the silence was then absolute. In that silence Aymar put his left hand on his sword; and very slowly his head went down on his breast.
When he lifted it his mouth was set, his eyes very bright. "I hope my sense of honour is not less keen than yours, Monsieur de Fresne," he said quietly. "I must beg to refuse your sword. . . . I will ask you, instead, to accept mine." And, unfastening it, sheath and all, he laid it on the table with the hilt towards his second-in-command.
". . . Does not that satisfy you?" asked Aymar after a moment. "I cannot do more."
De Fresne woke from what seemed a stupor. "You have done too much. Take it back—I never meant that! I have no right to demand your sword. Take it and put it into the General's hands."
His leader gave a little smile. "I had just as soon surrender it to you; and you have none yourself now.—But perhaps you would rather not wear mine."
De Fresne looked from the sheathed blade on the table to its owner, and abruptly held out his hand.
But Aymar shook his head. "No—not yet. Afterwards, if you like. . . . And now, how are you going to account to the men for my departure?"
"You will have to say something yourself, I think, L'Oiseleur.—My God, how I hate doing this!"
Aymar had sat down again. "Let me put you in possession of certain facts before I leave you," he said composedly. "First, about du Tremblay. Of course I—you—cannot support him now. I sent de Soulanges to him on Saturday morning with the news, but you must know nevertheless what his plans are. I believe I have not yet destroyed the cipher notes I made at our interview." He searched in a pocket. "No, here they are; and I can leave them with you as a memorandum. I put them into cipher because secrecy as to his real intention is all important. You see that on Friday next he proposes to move along the Aven in such a way as to deceive the Bonapartists into thinking that he means to cross. But he will not cross; his real objective is Chalais, which, having caused the enemy to concentrate, as he hopes, on the wrong side of the river, he calculates on carrying by a coup de main. Meanwhile—what's that?"
He sprang up, thrusting the paper back into his pocket, for there had come a sudden rush of feet and of excited voices outside, and—an unprecedented thing—the hut door was abruptly flung wide, revealing two or three of the Eperviers. For a second L'Oiseleur stood amazed; the next, he strode forward.
"What is the meaning of this? Who told you to come here?"
A confused babel from outside answered him. All his remaining men appeared to be there, and among them, of course, the towering form of Magloire Le Bihan. But he seemed to be trying to keep the crowd back.
"If you have a spokesman I will hear you," said Aymar, frowning. "Otherwise, leave my quarters at once!"
One of the foremost invaders, advancing a little over the threshold, thereupon threw out a hand towards de Fresne, and said meaningly, "Perhapshecan explain what happened at Pont-aux-Rochers!" And instantly other voices took him up. "He knows who the traitor was!" "L'Oiseleur, make him tell us!"
A swift glance passed between Aymar and his subordinate. It was seen and misunderstood. A roar went up.
"Comrades, it was M. de Fresne himself! And L'Oiseleur knows it!"
More Chouans began to crowd in, threateningly; the narrow doorway was blocked. Very angry, Aymar advanced on the invaders.
"Leave my quarters at once, men!" he said imperiously. "No, M. de Fresne is no traitor—far from it! There has been no treachery in this business, only a mistake."
The Eperviers retreated a little from before him, but the hut was not cleared. "Mistake . . . mistake!" the word was flung about. "A mistake that needs atoning for!" "M. de Fresne's then!" "Let M. de Fresne explain why he led us into an ambush!" "Aye, and let him explain why he moved us out of the wood here while L'Oiseleur was away!"
"M. de Fresne has nothing to account for," cried his leader hotly. "And if he had, he accounts for it to me, and not to you!"
"L'Oiseleur knows that it is M. de Fresne," repeated the originator of this idea stubbornly. "That was why he came riding all that way to warn us. Let M. de Fresne come out and answer for himself!"
They were horribly tenacious when once they had got an idea into their heads; Aymar knew that well. And this most fallacious notion must be dispelled at all costs. A little behind him, his arms folded, de Fresne was now facing the intruders with a slightly ironical expression. The men pushed forward once more.
"Give us up M. de Fresne, Monsieur de la Rocheterie! Let him come out and explain to us!" And all at once a perfect howl went up. "What is that paper he is putting into his coat?"
For the elder man, suddenly remembering the incriminating letter lying on the table behind him, had turned his back, and was now thrusting it into his breast.
"Go out of this place!" exclaimed L'Oiseleur. He laid a hand on his pistol. "I will shoot the first man who stirs another step. Go outside, all of you!"
They surged back a little.
"May I speak to you, sir?" enquired Magloire from his place in the rear. Aymar could not but motion him to come forward. After all, he was an officer, and had certainly not been inciting the rest . . . at this moment, anyhow.
The giant came, saluting. "I told you, Monsieur le Vicomte," he said in a low voice, "that they were crazy about this idea of treachery, and now, if there is going to be a mystery, there will be no holding them. Why is M. de Fresne hiding that paper? There'll be violence if you can't explain!"
Yes, de Fresne was hiding a paper—to save him! It washisdoing that his lieutenant was in this utterly false position. What must he be thinking? Intolerably nettled, Aymar acted on the first impulse that came to him—a thing he was always too prone to do when the risk was his alone.
"You are right," he replied, "and there shall be no mystery. I will show you myself what is in that paper, and then you will know that M. de Fresne is perfectly innocent in the matter of Pont-aux-Rochers. Monsieur de Fresne, give me that letter! You shall have it back."
De Fresne turned round, appalled. "La Rocheterie, don't do it!" he whispered. "They will not touch me. Don't show it them, for God's sake!"
His words, for all that he had dropped his voice, were audible in the stillness which had now descended. And they produced, not unnaturally, a tenfold stronger impression of his own guilt than before. Something like an ugly rush would have taken place towards him but that the doorway was so narrow and that L'Oiseleur, springing between him and the assailants, drew a pistol and cocked it. The wave in consequence swayed back again.
"Give me the letter, de Fresne!" he repeated over his shoulder.
"No, no—it's too dangerous!"
"Dangerous! At least, then, it shall be dangerous to the right person! Give me the letter!"
And, the pistol in his right hand directed at his followers, Aymar held out his left.
"God forgive me!" said de Fresne. The letter changed hands. Aymar replaced the pistol and advanced to the door, and, seeing that he was really coming outside, the men huddled hastily into the sunshine. Aymar followed them.
"Which of you can read?" he asked, looking round.
"You, Goulven, and you, Hervé Le Bihan? Come here, then. You see this letter, which is from M. de Fresne himself—there is his name at the end—and that it is to tell me, as was his duty, of the move he was going to make over the bridge. You can read that, eh? Well, that is all—that is the paper which you foolishly think he was trying to hide."
He kept the letter in his own hands, while, bending over it on either side, with grunts and efforts, the two men laboriously went through its contents, repeating the words aloud, unperturbed by the deciphered passage. And Aymar looked over their heads at the rest and wondered what was going to happen next. To hold them in rein now needed a tight grip, and he was very tired, and more than heartsick. . . .
"Well, are you satisfied?" he asked patiently.
"Yes," said Goulven slowly, "that is what M. de Fresne did—he took us to this place, the bridge of Pont-aux-Rochers. But why did he write it down so that the Blues knew it?"
"I tell you," said the young man, not patiently this time, "that he wrote it to me, while I was away, so that I should know it." And as they bent their heads once more, and tried to peer at the address on the other side, he added, "You can see for yourselves that it was sent to me at Sessignes," and turned over the letter.
As he did so de Fresne, behind him, made, unseen, a gesture of desperation—and Aymar himself turned cold as he saw, on the top left-hand corner of the reverse, a bold endorsement in another hand than de Fresne's . . . "Sent to me by the Vicomte de la Rocheterie, called 'L'Oiseleur', on the night of April 27th, 1815.—A. RICHARD." He shifted his hold of the paper like lightning, so that his left hand covered that corner instead of the lower; but even so the signature was visible. Perhaps the slow minds of his followers would not grasp its meaning. . . .
"There, Hervé," he said carelessly, managing to master the swift impulse to snatch the whole thing quickly away, "you see this was really sent to me." And he was on the point of folding up the letter when a hand fell on his left wrist. It was Magloire's. He had been looking over the shoulder of his cousin Hervé.
"Wait a moment, L'Oiseleur," he said coolly. "What is Colonel Richard's name doing on the outside of this letter, then?"
Aymar's blood leapt up at the presumption of the grasp and the tone. He looked at Magloire with such fire that the giant, muttering, "I beg your pardon," recoiled. And Aymar, clutching at the first excuse that came into his head, said haughtily, as he folded up the letter, "M. de Fresne has been a prisoner; it is quite natural that Colonel Richard should have examined his papers."
As acting his composed demeanour was excellent, but the excuse he had given was, as he instantly recognized, not so happy. It was admitting that de Fresne had had the letter in his possession again. And as a result the man Goulven, evidently bewildered, remarked, "But that letter could not have been among his papers, Monsieur le Vicomte. He sent it to you; you said so. You had not sent it to him!"
"No, not tohim!" broke in Magloire significantly. And, thrusting aside the man between them, he faced his young leader. "There was something else written in the corner, L'Oiseleur. Your hand was over it. Let us see that!"
He had thrown aside the scabbard. It was war. But before Aymar could say anything de Fresne, pushing forward, exclaimed quickly, "What Colonel Richard wrote on my papers only concerns me. Give me my letter back, please, La Rocheterie!"
Instantly the dull and tenacious suspicions of that crowd were rekindled. "No, no, M. de Fresne wants to hide it!" was shouted, and the words "ambush," "treachery" began once more to fly about.
But Magloire Le Bihan was unmoved by them, and simply repeated his request a little more threateningly. "Will you let us see what is written on that letter, Monsieur le Vicomte, or must we take it from you?"
"Take it from me!" exclaimed Aymar, at boiling pitch. "Takeit!" Then he suddenly stopped.
There was a tense pause. Under the wide-brimmed hats with the pendent ribbons the eyes of all those eager, saturnine faces were fixed on him. Should he tear the letter up? No—they would seize the fragments, and the very action would be a confession of guilt. He stood on the edge of an unimagined precipice; better to leap in than be pushed.
"Very well," he said contemptuously, "you can see it . . . and make what you can of it!" He held out the letter to Magloire, half turned his back on him, and folded his arms. Almost instantly Magloire smote the letter and burst into a hoarse laugh.
"Listen,les gars, what is written on this letter—what L'Oiseleur was trying to hide!" And slowly, clearly, he read out the endorsement, read it twice, "Sent to me by the Vicomte de la Rocheterie, called 'L'Oiseleur', on the night of April 27th, 1815.—A. RICHARD."
But his hearers were so puzzled that they merely gaped in silence.
"You must be fools if you don't understand!" shouted Magloire, brandishing the letter. "It is not M. de Fresne at all—it is L'Oiseleur himself who has betrayed us—L'Oiseleur who sent this with his own hands to the Blues to tell them that we should be at Pont-aux-Rochers last Friday morning . . . and took care not to be there himself!"
Aymar leapt forward. "Howdareyou——" he began; but his words were drowned in uproar. "It's not true, Magloire, he came to warn us! L'Oiseleur, say it's not true!" That brief monosyllable was hurtling about like a missile, as he braced himself to meet the crucial moment with the knowledge that his hold was slipping, slipping. . . . But there was no hesitation in the way he faced the questioners.
"It is quite true, men," he said steadily, "that I sent the letter to Colonel Richard, but the doing so was part of a plan for——"
He got no further, for the simple reason that he could not make himself heard above Magloire's triumphant bellowing.—There was nothing for it but to shoot him out of hand. He drew his pistol, cocked it, and shouting, "I will give you three seconds to stop that noise!" levelled it at the mutineer. Almost immediately his pistol arm was seized. Furious, and as surprised as furious, Aymar turned on his assailant to find that it was Hervé, Magloire's cousin. "Let go my arm instantly!" he cried. He almost succeeded in freeing it, but in the struggle he lost his pistol; at the moment it was dragged from his hold the hammer fell and a man near clapped his hand to his arm with a scream. Next second Magloire himself had seized his leader's other arm and laid a powerful hand on his shoulder. "He will shoot us all if we are not careful!" he shouted.
For an instant longer Aymar threw every ounce of his strength into the endeavour to throw off the double grasp. But Magloire only laughed; even L'Oiseleur, no weakling, was but a child in his hold. Aymar ceased struggling. If it was useless, it was a mistake.
But Le Bihan was going too fast for the majority. Out of the clamour came cries, almost terrified cries, of "Don't touch him! Let him go, Magloire—it will be the worse for you! He has thejartier! Thejartier, Magloire! Let him go!"
And the rebel was obviously taken aback for a moment; he had forgotten to reckon with a superstition which he did not share. For one instant hope flared up in his captive's brain—and died as quickly. Deliverance would never come on that score!
"Hashe got it?" yelled Magloire, his eyes on the young man's face. "Has he got it? The luck would never stay with a traitor!"
A quiver went through L'Oiseleur from head to foot.
"No, he must have it!" cried the bewildered voices. "He always wears it. Show it us, L'Oiseleur!"
Aymar, white to the lips, retorted, "I shall show you nothing of the sort till Magloire Le Bihan is shot for insubordination!"
"We need not wait for any conditions of that kind!" sneered Magloire. "Iwill show you, since L'Oiseleur is so reluctant." And before Aymar guessed what he was about he had drawn his hunting knife and inserted it under his left sleeve.
Less because of what that action must inevitably bring to light, than because it was so intolerable to him to be held as he was and subjected to search, Aymar did once more try violently for a second or two to withdraw his arm from the iron grip. It was scarcely, therefore, Le Bihan's fault that the two-edged hunting knife cut rather more than it was intended to do. An instant later Magloire's powerful hands had made short work of the seams of coat and shirt alike; these were ripped asunder to the shoulder, and he was gazing delightedly at the bare arm he held captive.
He laughed. To him, as to L'Oiseleur himself, the amulet was a farce to overawe children, but the life of him who once wore it might be hanging, for all that, on the absence of that frail circlet of rushes. Aymar had never given thejartiera thought since it had broken in that blossomladen place which had witnessed alike his brief moments of happiness and the beginning of this black hour, but now . . . Was that going to undo him in the end—the foolish, half-fraudulent charm he had thought he need wear no longer?
He was for a moment barely conscious that Magloire was holding his naked arm upwards at full stretch so that all could see the talisman was gone. Moreover, down that arm was now running a thread of crimson—blood like any other man's. L'Oiseleur, of the charmed life, was no longer invulnerable . . . and naturally, since he no longer wore the charm.
The effect of the double revelation on those superstitious minds was paralyzing. The Eperviers began to huddle away in silence from the leader who had been so lucky because he wore the amulet—and who, by the same reasoning, was a definite source of ill-luck because he wore it no longer. Thejartierhad left him; therefore anything was possible. And it was May Day . . . when much magic was abroad. . . . Magloire read all this in the fierce, frightened faces; he nodded across to Hervé, made a sign, and his own immediate partisans closed round, so that the giant was able to let another man take his place, and be free to direct the course of what he had at last accomplished.
Aymar suffered the change of guardianship without protest. What was the use of fighting the situation any longer? If his men, his own men, could turn against him like this. . . . Yet Eveno would have been dead at his feet before a finger could have been laid on his leader . . . but he himself had sent Eveno to death. . . . Out of the bad dream that it had all become now he heard only de Fresne's voice, hot and incisive:
"M. de la Rocheterie is my prisoner, men! He has already given up his sword to me, and he will answer for any mistake that he has made to——"
"No!" broke in Magloire still more incisively, "he is ours! And he will answer tous, Monsieur de Fresne! Take him down to the clearing,gars; we can go into this matter better there."
They took Aymar down the little slope from the woodcutter's hut. He went unresisting; he was in the snare, the snare of his own devising—he, the Fowler . . . and now he began to be sure that there was only one way out of it, and this wood was to see that way taken.
The clearing was some hundred yards long and thirty wide; the beech trees in all their new glory stood round it, dazzlingly green against the more reluctant oaks. There were windflowers scattered under them like snowflakes, in one place, half seen, a pond of bluebells, and at the farther end a May tree, robed as a bride.
Magloire had preceded the little procession, and was now standing near a large solitary beech at the nearer end of the glade. When they came up he pointed to it in silence.
The Vicomte de la Rocheterie, descendant of Crusaders, flushed deeply. "I give you my word of honour not to stir from this spot," he said in a low voice.
The Chouan shook his head. "You might be tempted," he replied curtly. "And if, later on . . . Hi, Eloi, fetch a rope!"
And Aymar set his teeth hard as his guards, after a second or two's hesitation, pressed him back against the smooth grey trunk, rocklike in its solidity. Even before the rope was brought someone produced a piece of rough cord, not very thick, and, extending his arms behind him part of the way round the great tree, they fastened the cord to either wrist. By that device alone he was effectually a prisoner. The biting shame of it surged over him in a tide of wrath and defiance.
"Guilen—Coatsaliou—Le Merzerr—Gloannec!" he called out suddenly, "are you going to stand by and see this done?"
A huge hand came across his mouth, forcing his head back against the tree trunk. "We are all going to see justice done, Monsieur le Vicomte," said Magloire, the hand's owner. "If it has to be done on you, so much the worse for you! But done it will be." And as he removed his hand from the disgusted lips the rope, which had meanwhile arrived, was passed across L'Oiseleur's shoulders and tightened. And when it was knotted firmly across his shoulders, across the middle of his body, and just above his knees he could not stir a quarter of an inch.
"That will do," said Magloire. "Now Monsieur de la Rocheterie can answer our questions."
Aymar's lip curled. "Do you imagine for a moment that I shall do so, after this?" he demanded.
"You would be wise," said Hervé Le Bihan sombrely. "We have a right to ask." He came closer. "Monsieur de la Rocheterie, why did you send M. de Fresne's letter to Colonel Richard?"
Aymar took no notice of Hervé, but, turning his head, the only part of his body which remained now at his own disposal, he looked steadily at the arch-rebel who had broken his dominion, subjected him to an undreamt-of humiliation, and was no doubt contemplating the last supreme outrage, and said, as coldly as if he were judge, not victim, "My reason was given to M. de Fresne; when it was offered to you, you refused to hear it. It is a farce to ask me for it now, and you know it!"
At that, as though it were an appeal to him, de Fresne sprang up from the log at some distance on which he had been sitting, his head in his hands, during the carrying out of the indignity which he was powerless to prevent. "L'Oiseleur is right!" he cried, coming into the centre of the clearing. "He has given me his reason; he is ready to give it to a court of enquiry, the only tribunal which has the right to demand it."
Magloire shook his head. "We want no courts of enquiry. We are judges here! Let us have the reason!"
De Fresne looked appealingly at the beech tree.
"You can tell them if you like," said its captive indifferently.
And de Fresne had to bring out, as the only hope of saving his leader, the justification of the latter's conduct which had been so far from satisfying him a short time ago. He did his best with it.
When he had finished there was silence for a moment. Aymar, in a curiously detached way, was trying to consider what he should say if he heard that explanation for the first time. He was also becoming aware of the extreme discomfort, not to say pain, caused by the position of his strained arm and shoulder. The discomfort was not likely to grow less.
"Now, Monsieur de Fresne," said Magloire, "tell us honestly, as you are a gentleman, what you thought of that explanation of M. de la Rocheterie's?"
De Fresne had not expected this, evidently. After a second or two's unhappy pause he said, looking on the ground, "Everybody is liable to make mistakes of judgment. I——"
"Give us a direct answer, please!" interposed Magloire.
"Tell the truth, de Fresne!" said Aymar suddenly. "It is always best."
The elder man glanced at the sardonic and defiant face, with the lock of rust-coloured hair, disordered in the struggle, fallen across the brow, and looked away. "I . . . I did not think it altogether satisfactory," he said unwillingly, "and so I advised M. de la Rocheterie to give up his sword—which you see he has done—and to submit himself to a court of war."
A growl broke out. "They do not like that term, my friend," observed Aymar. "They prefer private murder."
"It was not murder then, when you sent five hundred men to the death you had prepared for them?" asked the president of this tribunal, and Aymar did not answer him. For the last time, possibly, the vain and scorching tide of regret rose up about him, to the very throat. . . . But he was paying now—he could hardly pay more bitterly if they did proceed to murder him. . . . Murder him? No, surely, surely it could not be that he, Aymar de la Rocheterie, L'Oiseleur, was going to end like this, here and now. . . it was unthinkable. . . .
He came back to hear de Fresne saying, "What I believe is that M. de la Rocheterie had some other reason for his action which he did not see fit to reveal to me. And it must have been a good reason, worthy of L'Oiseleur, of the leader who held the Moulin Brûlé." Then his agitation got the better of him, "Oh, for God's sake untie him! you can't realize what you are doing—you, his own men!"
"Our leader, L'Oiseleur, exists no longer," said Magloire Le Bihan. "If M. de la Rocheterie has any further explanation, as you suggest, he had better give it to us at once."
"May I speak to him?" asked de Fresne suddenly.
"If you promise not to touch the ropes," answered Magloire.
"I promise," said de Fresne.
He came up to the tree, whiter than Aymar himself. "La Rocheterie, aren't you going to try to save yourself? The bargain—what was it? You must reveal it now!"
Aymar looked at him gravely. "Mon ami, I cannot."
De Fresne smote his empty hands together. "Tell them something! I cannot do anything more. It rests with you alone now."
L'Oiseleur shook his head. "What I should tell them would do me no good in their eyes—though it was not dishonourable. And even if it would save me, I would not tell them—now. . . . No, leave me to my fate, de Fresne . . . but try to get them to be quick about it!"
"You should never have shown them the letter!" said his lieutenant, tears in his eyes. "I would rather have let them think that I was to blame. If only I had not come back . . . if only I had not brought the letter! Oh, my God, to see you there like that . . . it is too dreadful!"
"No, you are not to blame," replied Aymar steadily, though de Fresne's words made the ropes seem tighter. "You acted as an honest man in coming back to me with the letter . . . I can't shake hands with you now . . . I would like you to keep my sword if you will?"
De Fresne looked hard at him, nodded, dashed the back of his hand over his eyes, and, turning away without another word, carried his agitation and, evidently, his arguments, into the midst of the discussion which was going forward, with obvious differences of opinion and with frequent glances towards the beech tree.
Aymar suddenly felt that he had been there a long time. The sun was hot; his head was aching, and he would have given anything, almost, in the world—though everything was ceasing to have value for him now—if he could have had his arms unbound.
And now Hervé and one or two others were coming to him again, Magloire remaining at a distance. "Monsieur le Vicomte," said the former, "you have heard what M. de Fresne has said. He has acknowledged that he did not find your explanation of your conduct satisfactory"—de Fresne suddenly looked round, anguish on his face—"he says that you gave up your sword and were going before a court of war. But we—what is left of us after the trap you arranged for us at Pont-aux-Rochers—consider that we have a better right to try you than a lot of gentry of whom we have never heard. Do you still refuse to say anything in your own defence?"
"I do, most emphatically," returned Aymar. "I acknowledge no right of the kind. You have defied my authority, you have outraged my person, and even if you intend to kill me in cold blood I shall not plead to you. You need not therefore waste time!"
So they went away—rather hesitatingly, it was true—and seemed to enter into fresh discussions from which de Fresne's voice emerged from time to time; he appeared to be threatening them. Aymar had an impression that they were drawing lots, but on the whole he felt curiously little interest in their deliberations. He found the delicate little windflowers at his feet more interesting; what a pity that they had been so trampled! More and more the peculiar effect of strain and lack of sleep was beginning to make itself felt—that sensation of having a hollow in one's brain, of being maimed of one's faculties. But it did not matter now . . . though ithadmattered up there by the hut, before his control of the mutineers had slipped from him. Yes, he had made a mess of that; he ought to have shot Magloire at once. . . . "But I did not seem able to make up my mind," he murmured, as if he were speaking to someone near. "And besides, everything was my fault." The windflowers looked up at him then with their shy compassion.
He lifted his head and gazed down the clearing at the shifting groups in their gay embroidered jackets, blue and yellow and white. They seemed a little blurred; did this strange feeling which was growing on him betoken faintness? Whatever they did to him it would be intolerable to faint first; they would think he was afraid. . . . Could he bring himself, rather than risk that, to ask to have his arms—only his arms untied? Not yet . . . Oh, how slow they were!
Suddenly, out of nowhere, came a vision of Avoye, waiting for an answer to her letter . . . the answer that, now, she would never receive . . . that he would never write—walking perhaps on the terrace under his window, with the dog Sarrasin beside her, thinking of those long years of patience, and how they had ended at last. . . .How they had ended!And they were ending like this!
For a second or two the young man was hard put to it to keep his composure. He threw his head back against the great pillar behind him, the heart in him beating with fury and longing and shame. Still, under his tight-shut lids, he could see her—grave, but with a little smile round her beautiful mouth—while he, who, holding her tenderly, should, only four nights ago, have bent to kiss it, had his arms stretched out behind him and was fastened himself immovably to a tree, in the sight of all his men. . . . Another wave of faintness crept towards him. . . .
—And then the dullness in his ears was suddenly rent. Two men, shouting and gesticulating, were running through the undergrowth towards the central group, and, as he heard what they were crying out, Aymar understood in a moment what had happened. They were his outposts, and the Bonapartists were advancing on the Bois des Fauvettes.
The news fell like a bombshell into the unprepared Chouans. A few ran bewildered among the trees, seeking cover; the majority were snatching up their muskets, but with panic in every movement. De Fresne and Magloire, however, had not lost their heads; the former was obviously trying to marshal the men into some kind of order to get them away. The tension held Aymar more painfully than his bonds. For there was . . . surely there was . . . a chance that he might be forgotten in the confusion! De Fresne had never once looked in his direction; with a drawn sword in his hand—which must behis—he was shepherding the men hastily out of the clearing, pointing the way, shouting encouragements; and Magloire, still farther away, was doing the same. And the men were obeying—theywerefiling out. It was not going to end like this, after all!
Was it true, indeed, or a dream, that de Fresne had actually turned back, and was running stealthily up the side of the clearing under the trees, the bare blade in his hand? He could soon free him with that! O God, if only nobody turned and saw!
Vain hope! De Fresne was only a few yards off when Magloire came running into the clearing again. "No, no—that will not do!" he shouted, dropped to one knee in the middle and took a quick, steady aim at the beech tree's target.
There was a flash, a report, and a violent blow as if someone had struck him in the left shoulder. Aymar gasped a moment with the shock; then he saw de Fresne standing with the sword half lifted.
"Oh, for God's sake put it through me and finish this!" he called out to him with entreaty in his voice, and set his teeth. But the elder man, with an oath, sprang for the side of the tree. Before he got there Magloire, still kneeling, fired his second barrel, but this time the bullet missed by an inch, whizzing by Aymar's ear into the trunk beside him. "Go back—you'll be hit!" shouted L'Oiseleur; but de Fresne had already been seized by two Eperviers who had hurled themselves on him, and Aymar saw that, farther down the clearing, another man had his musket at the level.
If only it might be through the heart this time, and this purgatory be ended! But with the report came a hot and searing sensation in the right side, and the young man, biting his lips, writhed mutely for a second. The next, the whole scene began to swim away from him; yet he heard, or thought he heard, a sort of long breath of horror or satisfied vengeance run about the place, and a voice that might have been Magloire's cry something about Pont-aux-Rochers. . . . His head fell forward on his breast.
So he never saw how de Fresne, cursing wildly, freed himself from his assailants, and turned to the urgent business of leadership, since the tragedy was now played out. But the two men who had seized him, as they left the wood, turned and fired at the motionless figure against the tree. One shot sped over the bowed head into the trunk of the beech, the other ploughed straight across L'Oiseleur's breast, cutting the ribbon of his Cross of St. Louis as neatly as though it had been done on purpose, and sending the cross itself spinning to his feet. But he never moved.
And after a little the clearing, recently so clamorous with emotion, was quiet again, and a bird, hopping cautiously out on a twig of the beech tree, looked down with one round, bright eye on the strange fruitage it bore. Probably it had never before seen a man stand so still.
The bird had flown away when Aymar came out of that vague place of forgetfulness to realities. As he lifted his head he wondered dizzily why he could not move; then why someone was pressing a knife across his breast. . . . The rest was coming back; that he could not remember. He looked down, and saw that a furrow had been cut clean across his uniform, just below the rope—and not of his uniform only. And his Cross of St. Louis lay among the trampled windflowers. It all came back . . . too clearly . . .
They had left him here, to die, alone, in pain, in ignominy, in the uttermost shame that could befall a soldier—his own men. And here, lashed immovably to this hateful tree, sick with the constraint of his position as much as with the pain of his wounds, and bleeding fast from all of them, but unable to lift a finger to staunch them—here, on his feet, looking down the clearing at the drift of hawthorn blossom, he would remain till he died.
—No! not while there was his scarcely broken strength still in him! The determination to be free suddenly possessed him like fire, and now that only the tall trees watched him he began to struggle like a trapped animal. But, even with the most furious efforts, he could hardly move his body at all, for, as he soon found, he was too tightly pinned above the knees. And, even had the ropes not held him so relentlessly he could not, try as he would, get his arms free of the separate cord which held them back, almost agonizingly by this time, against the great trunk behind him. Each of his efforts only tightened its grip on his lacerated wrists—for they were raw and bleeding before he desisted from tugging. And all the while a cuckoo mocked him with its monotonous and mechanical cry, which held no hint now of the meanings of spring, but only a horrible mirth. "You are fast, you are fast, you can't get away!" . . . Yes, this was going to be the end,hisend, after all!
Nor was it, plainly, very far off. The only effect of Aymar's struggles had been greatly to increase the haemorrhage; the warm stream coursing down his body from his side had not only soaked by this time through his uniform, but was appearing as a spreading stain on his white buckskin breeches. He looked down at it—and at the other stains, too. It was hard to believe that he, young and strong as he was—or had been, half an hour ago—was about to die merely from that, the ebb which any charitable hand could have arrested, which his own might possibly have staunched if they had not been so simply but effectually fettered. . . . Yet that was what was going to happen—unless someone came in time.
But who could come, except the Bonapartists? And to be found by them would be intolerable, for his situation admitted of one explanation only. All the countryside knew of his defeat. It would be almost better to die than that . . . even by this death, lonely and dishonoured as it was, the death without alleviation of any kind, which for Avoye's sake he had brought upon himself—and in vain.
For the first time a groan broke from him—only to be swallowed up in the chorus of birdsong with which the green, deserted wood was now ringing. He made a last effort to wrench himself free. Useless . . . useless! But—if only he might have seen Avoye to explain before he died. What would she hear . . . afterwards? She would have all the rest of her life for the evidences of his guilt to penetrate the unbelief with which he knew quite well she would meet them at first. Gradually, as the truth leaked out, she would be forced to believe him guilty in that sense in which he never had been guilty, since he had suffered a disgraceful penalty for an act of rashness to which that merciful term would never be applied now. . . . Oh, if only he had carried out his intention of this morning, and made an end of himself before the wild hyacinths became a blur of pain to the sight, and the trees in their spring bravery merely so many stakes to be tied to! He could have lain dead with less disgrace, hidden by the bluebells till they died.
Aymar was growing much weaker; he knew it. The sunlight no longer seemed warm, and his head was beginning to swim. Only one conscious desire was left soon—to be loosed, to be able to lie down on the beech leaves at his feet, for the pain in his mangled wrists seemed worse than any of his wounds, and his position was, nakedly, torture. And he was so desperately thirsty. . . . But oblivion was advancing with faster strides now, for the anemones, the laughing May tree, the bright beeches at which he was staring were beginning to vanish and reappear again, and every breath was becoming more difficult to draw. . . .
Then pain went, and he began to have the oddest fancies. He was part of the beech tree from which he could not stir—hewasthe beech tree. He had never been anything else. Once there had been a young man named Aymar de la Rocheterie, who had run and ridden and fought and moved about freely; buthehad stood here always, year in, year out, bare in the frosts of winter, clothed with green as now in spring—a splendid and vigorous tree. . . . But if that were so, how was it that Aymar de la Rocheterie was gasping so for breath—as he could hear—and that his head swam so violently . . . and that from the blue sky which showed through the brilliant leaves above him strange whirling specks like black snow were falling? How odd that was in spring . . . but was it spring when it felt so bitter cold?
As his failing senses suggested the question the spreading bough above him seemed suddenly to swoop down on him . . . then the great tree which would not let him go began itself to sink with him into a cold, suffocating darkness. . . . Aymar gave a couple of deep gasps, and his head fell forward for the second time—not to be lifted again. He had looked his last on the Bois des Fauvettes.
It was thus that the Bonapartists found him some three quarters of an hour later—save that, with the oncoming of such profound unconsciousness, the deadly haemorrhage had ceased. Only curiosity, no thought that, from his appearance, there was a glimmer of life left in him, led them to cut him down. But of their surprise, their gratification when, on searching him, they found from his papers who he was, their discovery of the cipher notes, their rough attempts at surgery and his subsequent odyssey in the cart, Aymar knew nothing whatever. Fate showed him some scrap of mercy after all.