damp, dank underbrush; an odor that, in its putridness, almost
suffocated him.
Breathless and half crazed with an unexplainable dread, he fought the
forest, beating his way with his naked hands through the dense bushes.
And then he heard a sound. The first sound he had heard since entering
the forest. It was quite distinct. Vibrating loudly through the deadly
stillness of the wood, came the steady patter of a four-footed thing.
The next instant something leaped out of the darkness--something huge
and strong that tried to catch at his neck. He fought for his life then.
Fought this horrible thing that had been concealed by the forest. Fought
with the darkness shutting down on him and that putrid odor smothering
his breathing. Panting and blinded, he and the thing swayed to and fro,
crashing against the tree-trunks, springing again and again at each
other from the tangled underbrush. He never knew how long he struggled
there in the blackness of the wood. It might have been hours; it might
have been minutes. And then he had the beast by its great, hairy throat.
The infuriated snarling grew weaker--
He felt the body become rigid.
Silence.
He threw the thing from him.
He staggered farther into the wood.
He had not gone far when he came upon Kathleen.
She was walking uncertainly toward him.
The moonlight trickled clear and yellow through the branches now.
He could see her lips moving--moving--He knew that she was praying. Her
eyes looked out at him dazed and unseeing; and in her right hand that
was reached before her he saw the little, silver crucifix.
He did not dare speak to her. He was afraid. He sank back against the
bushes and let her pass. The moonlight flooded the place with its
haunting golden light. A strange feeling of relief came over him and
with it a vast calm. And very quietly he followed her.
She went a bit further. And she came to that spot where he had killed
the thing. He heard her shriek. The wild cry that had awakened him.
"The wolf--Gregory--the wolf!"
He caught her in his arms as she fainted. Then he looked down.
There at his feet lay the body of the Russian, Stephanof Andreyvitch.
_This will I prove. At some unknown time will I show that in this world
a certain devilish influence worketh most evilly against the high
Heavens and the good in man. I do confess the knowing of this to be
true, and many times and oft have I convinced myself that this Satanic
thing hath the power to become incarnate._
_In the morning I hang. God, the Father, Christ, the Son, come unto me
in purgatory that I may fulfill my sacred oath and that the soul of her
I love may find peace within the seven golden gates of Heaven._
BEFORE THE DAWN
He had gotten as far as the cross-roads. He could not go on. His feet
ached; his eyes hurt with the incessant effort of trying to penetrate
the obliterating dark. Where the three roads met he stopped.
Above him the black, unlighted skies. Before him mile upon mile of deep,
shadow-stained plain. Somewhere beyond the plain, at the foot of the
hills, lay Charvel. Jans was waiting for him at Charvel. His orders to
meet Jans were urgent; but now he could not go further. Jans would have
to wait until morning, when, by the light of day, he could again find
the way which he had so completely lost in the night.
He sank down at the base of the crucifix. It loomed in a ghostly, gray
mass against the muddy white of the wind-driven clouds. He pulled his
coat collar up about his ears. His eyes were raised to where he thought
to see the dimly defined Christ figure; but the pitch black gloom
drenched opaquely over everything. There was something mysterious;
something remote, about the cross. He imagined peasants kneeling before
it in awed reverence, gabbling their prayers. The ignorance of such
idolatry! Their prayers had not been proof against the enemies'
bullets; and still they prayed. Tired as he was, he laughed aloud.
"Why do you laugh?"
He started to his feet. The voice, quiet and deep, came from directly
behind him. He had not conceived the possibility of any human thing
lurking so dangerously near. He peered blindly through the obscuring
dark.
"Who's there?" He questioned, his fingers involuntarily closing tautly
about the butt of the revolver at his belt.
"You, too, ask questions, eh?" The voice went on. "I can almost make out
the shape of you. Do you see me?"
It seemed to him then that by carefully tracing the sound of the voice
he could dimly define the outline of a man's form lying close within the
murked, smudging shadow of the crucifix.
"Yes, I think now I almost see you." His tone was anything but assured.
"What are you doing here?"
"What is there to do but sleep?" The muttered words were half defiant.
"Name of a dog! it was your laughter that woke me. Why did you laugh?"
"If I weren't so tired, I might explain it to you." He hesitated a
second, playing for time. "I was thinking--drawing up a mental picture
of the ignorant peasant praying here before your back-rest."
"My back-rest?" The man's voice was sleepily puzzled. "It's this cross
you mean, eh? Well, never mind, my fine fellow. It has comfort--And
that's something to be grateful for."
"Not the sort of splintery comfort I'd choose."
He wondered what sort of a man this was. He was used to judging men at
sight. He cursed inwardly the unlighted night.
"I'm not spending my time out here from choice--I can tell you that!
This does for me well enough. I told you, didn't I, that I was asleep
until your stupid laughing woke me? Sacré, why did you have to laugh?
What's the joke, eh?"
"Perhaps it's my natural humor; even when I'm dead tired." He grinned to
himself. He had reached his decision. This sleepy fool sounded safe
enough; besides the question itself was non-committal. He asked it:
"Say, do you know the way to Charvel?"
"You're miles from Charvel, my friend. You've surely lost all sense of
direction."
"Right. I don't know where I'm at. It's this damned blackness. Never saw
such an infernal night. Started to walk from Chalet Corneille this
afternoon. Didn't count on its getting dark so early. Then I lost my
way. Been wandering about for hours. Probably in a circle. And now I'm
half dead. God! I'm all in!"
"It's almost morning. If you wait for the light, you'll not miss your
road again; but I shouldn't counsel you to try to find it till dawn."
He wondered if he dared to go to sleep with this man beside him. There
were the papers carefully concealed in his right boot-leg; the papers
Jans was waiting for. The man sounded plain-spoken and courteous
enough, considering he had been aroused from supposedly sound slumber.
He felt he wasn't a soldier. That is, he couldn't be one of Their men.
He knew what Their men were like. Despite Their world reputation he had
heard they were anything but courteous. But then one never knew. And
anyway hadn't this man spoken to him in irreproachable French? Still,
French was the language of the country and his own gift of languages was
rather pronounced. Of course it tended to make him a bit suspicious; but
logically he couldn't lay much stress on it. If only he had gotten
beyond Their lines before night, everything would have been all right.
As it was he must have been wandering round and round, covering the
self-same ground and getting no nearer to Charvel, where Jans was
waiting for him and the papers.
Taking all in all into consideration, he decided it best not to let
himself sleep; even if the staying awake was not an easy plan for a man
utterly tired. He would have to do it somehow or other.
"You're a native of these parts?" He asked, trying to keep any trace of
speculation as to what the man really was out of his voice.
"Sacré, but I thought you were about to sleep." The tone sounded as if
it might be angry. "I assure you it will soon be morning."
"Don't feel like sleeping. If you don't want to talk I can easily be
quiet."
"No--no! It makes no difference to me. I've had my forty winks. We'll
talk, if you want. Not that I was ever one for doing much talking. I'm
too little of a fool for that--still--Why don't you lean back here
beside me against this beam?"
He wriggled backwards and propped his drooping head stiffly against the
wood of the cross.
"I can't see you at all." He closed his eyes; it wasn't worth the
throbbing strain of it to try to penetrate the obliterating, dripping
darkness. He couldn't do it. "I'd like to see you."
"I'd like to see you, my friend. But what good are wishes, eh? Do you
say you live at Chalet Corneille?"
On the instant he was alert.
"Why do you ask?"
"Curiosity, my friend. I know of some good people there by name of
Fornier. Perhaps they might be friends of yours."
"Don't think I know them." He paused to collect his wits. He had been
startled by the man's suave question. He wondered if he was going to try
to trap him. He thought he couldn't have done it more neatly himself.
This job of stalling when he was almost too tired to think wasn't an
easy thing to do. He called upon his imagination. "I'm an artist," he
lied smoothly. "Sent over here to paint war scenes. I couldn't miss the
chance of a ransacked village. Its picturesque value is tremendous. I've
just finished my painting of Chalet Corneille."
He waited tentatively. Surely if the man were just some simple, sleepy
fool he'd say something now to give an inkling of what he was.
"One week ago it was splashed in blood--Soldiers too, in their way, are
artists," was all he said.
"Then you're not a soldier?"
"What made you think I was?"
"I don't know what you are," he answered truthfully; and then quite
frankly he came back with the man's own question. "Did you say _you_
lived in Chalet Corneille?"
"No--I asked if you knew people there by name of Fornier?"
"Mighty few folk left there now." The picture of the razed town came
before him. "Some old men waiting for the lost ones to come back to
them; some young children and three or four sisters of charity. And then
this morning I saw a woman--she wasn't much more than a girl--she had a
face you couldn't forget. They told me about her at the inn, where I
breakfasted."
"Tell me," the man suggested grudgingly; "we're comfortable enough.
Dawn's a long way off, and I suppose you want to talk."
"There isn't much to tell. She left the town; was driven out of it with
the others. Unlike them, she came back. God knows what she wanted to do
that for! They told me of her goodness; and her beauty and her kindness.
They dwelt on it at great length. Don't know as I blame them for harping
on all that. And now it seems the spirit of the war has lit upon even
her. She's changed--they say she's absolutely no good these days.
Steals--lies--has done everything, as near as I can make out, excepting
commit murder. But you ought to have seen her face. I'll wager that
once seen, it would rise to haunt any one. I don't care who it'd be. It
was beautiful--but--"
He felt the man look up at the sky and the ghostly, gray mass of the
crucifix stretching across it.
"Strange creatures, these peasant people." The man's words were
speculative. "Dumb kind of beasts--these soil-tillers--the best of them.
Got nothing in their lives but work and religion. Don't know as I blame
you for laughing when you looked up there. Sacré, but there is nothing
real about religion to me!"
"You're right." He stifled a yawn. "All that sort of thing went out of
the world years ago. Thinking people aren't religious nowadays. It
doesn't give them enough food for logical thought. It's all too palpably
obvious and absurd for an intelligent person to bother with."
"Rather a strange view for an artist, my friend, is it not?"
"What do you mean?"
"Thought you fellows traded on the beauty of faith, the talk of priests,
and all that sort of thing."
"Good Lord, no." His voice was energetic enough now. He was becoming
interested. "All this belief in God and man and the innate good, and the
rest of it, is tommyrot--That's what it is! And the soul within you--and
the teachings of Christ"--he paused to regain his breath. "We'd know
those things all right enough, if they were real. We'd see them,
wouldn't we, if they were real? They'd happen--They couldn't help but
happen--every day. But they don't, and so they're just talked about. I
tell you if there were such things, we'd know it!"
"Yes--yes--Surely we would see it--some time."
"I haven't had more than the average University education," he went on.
"But I've seen men and women, and I know that some of them are bad, and
some of them are good, and that's all there is to it. If a man wants to
be a liar--he'll lie. What's going to make him tell the truth, I'd like
to know?"
"It doesn't sound like artistic idealism, this talk of yours."
"What do I care for any kind of idealism? There's too much of the
poppycock--too many of those long-haired, long-winded donkeys playing
the miniature creator for my taste. Lord, but I'd like to see an army of
them in the field!"
"You speak like a soldier, my friend."
"I'm proud, sir, of being a soldier!"
In a flash he realized what he had said. Beneath his breath he cursed
furiously. Never before had he been guilty of such blatant stupidity. A
sudden anger welled within him against this man who had caught him in
his lie. Yet the man seemed harmless and indifferent enough. Perhaps he
could still get out of it. What in the name of heaven had drawn the
truth from him? He glanced up at the crucifix and his cursing abruptly
stopped. He fell to wondering if he had better strike out again in the
dark. He couldn't tell who the man was, and he had the papers to guard.
Dawn wasn't a long way off. He wondered if he ought to chance it.
"See here"--the man's voice caught in on his train of thought. "I know
what's going through your head. You didn't want me to know that you were
a soldier. I wasn't going to tell you, either. But I'm one, too. Only
I'm not one of Them; not one of that blood-thirsty, blood-drunk
canaille. You're not either. I knew the minute I heard you speak. And
see here, I pretended at first that I didn't want to talk. But it wasn't
true. I was starving for a word with one of my own kind. I told you I
was comfortable, didn't I? I told you I was asleep? Well--I lied. I've
been writhing here for hours. I'm in agony. My leg's shot off--that's
what They did to me. I've been lying in this place for a day and a half.
A peasant stopped to pray here to-night. He gave me some water; but he
was afraid to touch me." A sob vibrated hoarsely in the man's throat.
"My brother, I want your hand."
Without hesitation he put out his hand, his fingers fumbling over the
hard earth, until at last they found and grasped the man's hand.
"Is there anything I can do?" He asked.
"No, it's too dark. We must wait for the dawn. Then if you'll help me
along the road a bit"--His voice trailed off into silence.
So they sat there.
"There's some one coming," he said.
He felt the man try to struggle to a sitting position.
"No use," he moaned. "I couldn't see through the dark, anyway. Sacré,
didn't I try it before, when you came along?"
Breathlessly they waited. There was nothing pleasant about this meeting
people one couldn't see. It was just luck that the man beside him hadn't
been one of Them. He wondered if the approaching person would stop
before the crucifix or would go on.
The footsteps came nearer and nearer. Louder and louder they grew until
the sound of them echoed clatteringly through the silence of the night.
Then sudden deafening stillness.
As yet he could make out no form. He wondered what was happening. Slowly
he realized that the gloom-merged mass of the crucifix had been seen and
that the feet were coming toward it. A long half minute and then
something soft and cold brushed his cheek. A quick, half-smothered cry.
A woman had reached him with her outstretched hands. Her fingers had
touched his face.
"Mon Dieu!" She whispered. "Then I am not alone? Mon Dieu! Who are you?"
He answered her.
"I've lost my way. I'm waiting for the dawn."
"You will not hurt me?" Her whimpered words betrayed her fear. "You will
let me stay to wait the daylight with you?"
"That makes three of us," he said, "waiting for morning."
"Non--non; how is it then three?"
"My brother here--you--and--I."
"Mon Dieu! Such a darkness. Tell me, it is a sign of luck, is it not, to
meet with two brothers?"
"Well," his tone was apologetic. "We're not blood-brothers--just--" He
hesitated.
"Ah!" She breathed softly. "Is it, as the curé says, 'a Brotherhood of
man'?"
He could not explain to himself why he should so resent her comparing
him to her priest.
"It is a brotherhood of understanding," he said. "It is because we are
friends."
"Friends?" She questioned.
"Of course," he stated emphatically. And at the same time he wondered at
his own vehemence. Why should he call this man, whom he could not even
see, his friend? "Surely you do not think that I could sit here in the
dark, holding my enemy by the hand?"
"But no," she muttered as though to herself. "No hands are given in this
time of war. No hands but the hands of hate."
For the first time the man spoke.
"Hate has made men of us. Sacré, but is there anything greater than
hate?"
"Mon Dieu! It is all so cruel--this hate that has crippled our men. Look
you, you two brothers--I would avenge them as you avenge them, but
voilà--there is so little--so pitifully little that I can do!"
"Will you sit beside me?" The man asked gently. "I'd move, if I could,
but They've shot off my leg, and moving isn't easy."
"The barbarians have caught you too?" She sank to her knees beside
them. "How I loathe Them! Ah, how I detest Them! They burned my
home--They drove me out of Chalet Corneille--my father and my mother and
I. We fled by the light of our flaming farm-houses. I thought that bad,
but it wasn't the worst. That came when They took me away with them.
What I have been through! It is as if I had suffered and suffered; and
now there is nothing left me to feel but hatred. And I've been back
there, thinking my people might come for me. Mais, they never came, and
so I must go on. I've an aunt in Charvel. There's just a chance--But
even if I do find a home, I'll still hate those soldiers. I'd kill Them
if I could. I pray to Christ that some day I may kill to avenge."
"Is that what you're here for?"
"I'm here to await the dawn."
"Madame is religious?"
"The sisters and the curé were my only teachers."
"And now before the crucifix, Madame prays Christ for the power to
kill?"
"Non--non," her voice rose shrilly. "There is no Christ here on this
cross. The canaille pulled him down and dragged him away in the dirt
when They passed. There were peasants who begged Them to leave the
figure, but They left only the cross--and once--three days after They
had defiled it--I saw a spy crucified there. I helped cut him down. Now
it's empty!"
"Sacré, it is like Them," the man said. "I'd wondered why the cross was
bare. I'm not one of your believers, but I can see how it would hurt a
good woman like you."
"A good woman?" She questioned vaguely, as if in her innocence all were
good. "Mon Dieu, I only know that it hurt."
He looked up at the crucifix. The sky was slowly, very slowly,
lightening.
"It will soon be day," he said.
They were silent. And in the stillness they could feel the expectancy of
dawn; the terse waiting for the light. The eager, anticipating stare of
each was fixed upon the other's face.
The black of the sky merged very gradually into a pale, sickly gray. Far
to the east quivered a thin streak of yellow light.
The three drab shadows of them cowered beneath the cross.
Mauve and pink and golden light spread slowly over the firmament.
"No, it can't be!" He muttered, his eyes upon the man's face--this man
whom he had sat with those long hours before the dawn, whose hand he
still held in his. He thought he caught the man's whispered "sacré!"
The woman was the first to speak.
"Voilà!" She taunted. "But it is--oh, so pretty! A French soldier with a
leg shot off and a German officer to nurse him. You two--you who spoke
of hate, do you still sit hand in hand?"
"The girl from Chalet Corneille!" He had known he would not forget her
face.
"The dark has made cowards of you," she mocked. "Before the morning you
clung together. But now it is dawn!" Her voice rang out bitterly,
brutally clear. "Did not one of you ask, 'Is there anything greater than
hate'?"
"Sacré! What you say is just." The wounded man's eyes were raised to
glance at the light-quivering firmament. Slowly the eyes caught the
sight of something else. Very gradually they took in that
unexpected thing. Mechanically the words were jerked out:
"It--was--I--who--asked--" A sudden pause--a quick gasp--"God forgive
me--it--was--I!"
The uncanniness of the words shocked him. In spite of himself, his own
eyes followed the man's wide stare; followed it from the eastern
horizon, over the shimmering sky; followed it until he reached the
crucifix. The hand, which, at the girl's words, had half-heartedly
sought his pistol, shook now as he crossed himself.
Was it the smudging shadows, the still unlighted mass of them up there
on the arms of the crucifix? Would shadows take on so the semblance of
the human body?
"If there were such things--we'd know it--" Fragments of their talk in
the night came vividly back to him. "If these things were
real--sometimes--we'd see it!"
The girl dropped to her knees. Her hands were clinched over her heaving
breast; her gaze riveted itself upon that mass of shadows, high up on
the cross; that mass of shadows so mysteriously like the dimly defined
Christ figure.
With a hoarse, racking sob that shook his whole frame, the wounded
soldier fell upon his face. Quickly the officer bent over him, his hand
on the shaking shoulder, his breath coming and going in short, rasping
gasps. Motionless he stood there, moving only to catch hold of the
girl's fingers, that reached up and clung to his.
The faint, cold light of early morning tinged across the gray-white of
the sky. Daybreak lighted the three grouped figures huddled so close
together beneath the crucifix. Dawn showed clearly the brown wooden
cross and the great half-ripped out nails that had once held the
Christ.
THE STILLNESS
He cringed in shuddering awe beneath the stillness. He could not stand
the heavy, deep silence of it; the muffled, sucking thickness absorbing
so completely all sound into its deadening mat. He had gotten so that he
had to be perpetually stopping himself from screaming. He had to keep
watch on himself always. He was terrified that he might go mad. He
feared the oppression of the awful quiet would craftily draw his reason
away from him. He did not want to scream. He did not want to attempt to
defy the harrowing, rending silence. He was afraid of the blanketing,
saturating weight of the stillness.
Sometimes when he could bring himself to think he thought that he might
after all like to go about shouting at the top of his lungs. His mind
kept on surreptitiously toying with the thought of the relief from the
thing. He thought of it a lot. He knew that shouting about his own farm
would not do him any good. He was too far away from everything and
everyone in the strip of valley hemmed in between the rolling hills. Of
course there was old man Efferts. Old man Efferts did not live so very
far away. He knew he could not count on Efferts. Efferts had lived there
too long in the stillness that rolled down to him from the hills and
came together to lie flat and sluggish, thudding down on the valley
land. If he could bring himself to walk into the ten-mile-off town
shouting so that other people would follow after him shouting; so that
there would be some kind of continuous, human noise for a while. It was
that he wanted more than anything else; human noise.
At night he would wake suddenly from his heavy, quiet slumber; from the
dreamless, ponderous pit of it and listen to the stillness.
When he first went to bed it would take him hours before he could get
himself off to sleep. He dreaded the muted, frantic struggle of those
dragging, pulling hours in which he would try to shut his ears to the
soundless, deafening silence that throbbed noiselessly from a great
distance and was noiseless in the room all about him; and pressed
noiselessly against his blood filled ear-drums. He had the feeling at
night that the stillness became more real sweeping in a greater rush
down the hills; that it had an heightened, insidious power to get inside
of him.