Chapter XII: Part 12

But I did, and that before many minutes had elapsed. For fetching back into the village by the ice-house and the back-side track, I was almost in collision with a hurrying shade in the dark under Dow's willows. It was Mary. I shall not forget the queer moment of suspense as she peered into my face, nor the touch of her fingers on my arm, nor the sigh.

"Oh--you're--you're the Means boy."

An embarrassment, pathetic only now in memory, came upon her.

"I--I wonder----" Her confusion grew more painful and her eyes went everywhere in the dark. "You don't happen to have seen any one--any--you haven't seen Mr. Blake, have you?"

"No!" I shook off the hand that still lay, as if forgotten, on my outraged arm. "What you want of _him_? _He's_ no good!"

With that shot for parting I turned and stalked away. Behind me after a moment, I heard her cry of protest, dismal beyond words.

"Why do you say that, boy? What do you mean by that?"

Having meant nothing at all, except that I would have slain him gladly, I kept my bitter peace and held my way to the westward, leaving her to find her way and her soul in the blind, black shadows under the willow-trees.

No one who lived in Urkey Village then will forget the day it was known that Mary Matheson was going to marry Joshua Blake, at last. An isolated village is like an isolated person, placid-looking to dullness, but in reality almost idiotically emotional. More than anything else, when the news had run, it was like the camp-meeting conversion of a simple soul. First, for the "conviction of sin," there was the calling-up of all the dark, forgotten history, the whispered refurbishing of departed gossip, the ghosts of old angers. Then like the flood of Mercy, the assurance that all was well, having ended well. Everything was forgiven and forgotten, every one was to live happily ever after, and there must be a wedding.

Surely a wedding! The idea that Minister Malden should come quietly to the house and so have it done without pomp or pageantry--it is laughable to think how that notion fared at the hands of an aroused village. Flowers there were to be, processions, veils, cakes, rice, boots, all the properties dear to the heart of the Roman mob. In the meantime there was to be a vast business of runnings and stitchings, of old women beating eggs and sifting flour, of schoolgirls writing "MARY BLAKE" on forbidden walls with stolen chalk. Dear me!

You might think Mary and Joshua would have rebelled. Curiously, they seemed beyond rebelling. Joshua, especially, was a changed man. His old, hard mask was gone; the looseness of his lips had come to stay, and the wideness of his eyes. One could only think that happiness long-deferred had come under him like a tide of fate on which he could do no more than drift and smile. He smiled at every one, a nervous, deprecatory smile; to every proposal he agreed: "All right! Splendid! Let's have it done--" And one got the sense somehow of the thought running on: "--right away! Make haste, if you please. Haste! For God's sake, haste!"

If he were hailed on the street, especially from behind, his eyes came to the speaker with a jerk, and sometimes his hand went to his heart. Seeing him so one bright day, and hearing two old men talking behind me, I learned for the first time that the Blake boys' father had died of heart-disease. It is odd that it should have come on Joshua now, quite suddenly, along with his broken mask and his broken secret, his frightened smile, and his, "All right! Splendid!"--("Make haste!")

But so it was. And so we came to the day appointed. We had a dawn as red as blood that morning, and tho it was clear, there was a feeling of oppression in the air--and another oppression of people's spirits. For the bride's party had the "hack," and Mrs. Dow had spoken for the only other polite conveyance, the Galloway barge, and what was to come of all the fine, hasty gowns in case it came on for a gale or rain?

Is it curious that here and there in that hurrying, waiting afternoon a thought would turn back to another day when a storm was making and a tall ship standing down to weather the Head? For if there was a menace of weather to-day, so, too, was there a ship. We seemed to grow conscious of it by degrees, it drew on so slowly out of the broad, blue, windless south. For hours, in the early afternoon, it seemed scarcely to move on the mirroring surface of the sea. Yet it did move, growing nearer and larger, its huge spread of canvas hanging straight as cerecloth on the poles, and its wooden flanks, by and by, showing the scars and rime of a long voyage put behind it.

Yes, it seems to me it would have been odd, as our eyes went out in the rare leisure moments of that afternoon and fell upon that presence, worn and strange and solitary within the immense ring of the horizon, if there had not been somewhere among us some dim stirring of memory, and of wonder. Not too vivid, perhaps; not strong enough perhaps to outlast the ship's disappearance. For at about five o'clock the craft, which had been standing for the Head, wore slowly to port, and laying its course to fetch around the western side of the island, drifted out of our sight beyond the rampart of the bluffs.

Why it should have done that, no man can say. Why, in the face of coming weather, the ship should have abandoned the clear course around the Head and chosen instead to hazard the bars and rips that make a good three miles to sea from Pilot's Point in the west--why this hair-brained maneuver should have been attempted will always remain a mystery.

But at least that ship was gone from our sight, and by so much out of our minds. And this was just as well, perhaps, for our minds had enough to take them up just then with all the things overlooked, chairs to fetch, plants to borrow, girls' giggling errands--and in the very midst of this eleventh-hour hub-bub, the sudden advent of storm.

What a catastrophe that was! What a voiceless wail went up in that hour from all the bureaus and washstands in the length of Urkey Village! And how glad I was! With what a poisonous joy did I give thanks at the window for every wind-driven drop that spoiled by so much the wedding of a woman nearly twice my age!

The lamps on the street were yellow blurs, and the wind was full of little splashings and screechings and blowing of skirts and wraps when I set out alone for Center Church, wishing heartily I might never get there. That I didn't is the only reason this story was ever told. Not many got there that night (of the men, that is), or if they did they were not to stay long, for something bigger than a wedding was afoot.

The first wind I had of it crossed my path at Heman Street, a huge clattering shadow that turned out to be Si Pilot's team swinging at a watery gallop toward the back-side track, and the wagon-body full of men. I saw their faces as they passed under the Heman Street lamp, James Burke, Fred Burke, Sandy Snow, half a dozen other surfmen home for the Summer from the Point station, and Captain Cook himself hanging on to Sandy's shoulder as he struggled to get his Sunday blacks wriggled into his old, brown oil-cloths. In a wink they were gone, and I, forgetting the stained lights of Center Church, was gone after them. Nor was I alone. There were a dozen shades pounding with me; at the cow street we were a score. I heard the voices of men I couldn't see.

"Aground? Where to?"

"On the outer bar; south'rd end of the outer bar they tell me."

The voices came and went, whipped by the wind.

"What vessel'd you say? Town craft?"

"No--that ship."

"What? Not that--that--_India ship_!"

"Yep--that India ship."

"India ship"--"India ship!" I don't know how it seemed to them, but to me the sound of that legendary name, borne on the gale, seemed strangely like the shadow of some one coming cast across a stage.

I'll not use space to tell how I got across the island; it would be only the confused tale of an hour that seems but a minute now. I lost the track somewhere short of Si Pilot's place, and wading the sand to the west came out on the beach, without the slightest notion of where I was.

I only know it was a majestic and awful place to be alone; majestic with the weight of wind and the rolling thunder of water; the more awful because I could not see the water itself, save for the rare gray ghost of a tongue licking swiftly up the sand to catch at my feet if I did not spring away in time. Once a mother of waves struck at me with a huge, dim timber; I dodged it, I can't say how, and floundered on to the south, wondering as I peered over my shoulder at the dark if already the ship had broken, and if that thing behind me were one of the ribs come out of her.

That set me to thinking of all the doomed men near me clinging to slippery things they couldn't see, cursing perhaps, or praying their prayers, or perhaps already sliding away, down and down, into the cold, black caves of the sea. And then the shadows seemed to be full of shades, and the surf-tongues were near to catching my inattentive feet.

If the hour across the island seems a minute, the time I groped along the beach seems nights on end. And then one of the shades turned solid, and I was in such a case I had almost bolted before it spoke and I knew it for Rolldown Nickerson, the beachcomber.

He was a good man in ways. But you must remember his business was a vulture's business, and something of it was in his soul. It came out in good wrecking weather. On a night when the bar had caught a fine piece of profit, I give you my word you could almost see Rolldown's neck growing longer and nakeder with suspense. He would have made more of his salvaging had he carried a steadier head: in the rare, golden moments of windfall he sometimes failed to pick and choose. Even now he was loaded down with a dim collection of junk he had grabbed up in the dark, things he knew nothing of, empty bottles and seine-floats, rubbish he had probably passed by a hundred times in his daylight rounds. The saving circumstance was that he kept dropping them in his ardor for still other treasures his blind feet stumbled on. I followed in his wake and I know, for half a dozen times his discards got under my feet and sent me staggering. Once, moved by some bizarre, thousandth chance of curiosity, I bent and caught one up in passing.

Often and often since then I have wondered what would have happened to the history of the world of my youth if I had not been moved as I was, and bent quite carelessly in passing, and caught up what I did.

Still occupied with keeping my guide in eye, I took stock of the thing with idle fingers; in the blackness my finger-tips were all the eyes I had for so small a thing. It was about the size of a five-pound butter box, I should say; it seemed as it lay in my hand a sort of an old and polished casket, a thing done with an exotic artistry, broad, lacquered surfaces and curves and bits of intricate carving. And I thought it was empty till I shook it and felt the tiny impact of some chambered weight. Already the thing had taken my interest. Catching up I touched Rolldown's arm and shouted in his ear, over the roll of the wind and surf:

"What you make of this, Rolldown?"

He took it and felt it over, dropping half his rubbish in the act. He shook it. It seemed to me I could see his neck growing longer.

"Got somethin' into it," he rumbled.

"Yes, I know. Now let me have it back, Rolldown."

"Somethin' hefty," he continued, and I noticed he had dropped the rest of his treasures now and clung to that. "Somethin' hefty--and valu'ble!"

"But it's mine, I tell you!"

"'Tain't neither! 'Tain't neither!"

He was walking faster all the while to shake me off, and I to keep with him; our angry voices rose higher in the gale.

I can't help smiling now when I think of the innocent pair of us that night, puffing along the sand in the blind, wet wind, squabbling like two children over that priceless unseen casket, come up from the waters of the sea.

"It's mine!" I bawled, "and you give it to me!" And I grabbed at his arm again. But this time, letting out a squeal, he shook me off and fled inshore, up the face of the dune, and I not far behind him.

And so, pursued and pursuing, we came suddenly over a spur of the dunes and saw below us on the southward beach the drift-fire the life-savers had made. There were many small figures in the glow, a surf-boat hauled up, I think, and a pearly huddle of alien men.

But on none of this could I take my oath; my thoughts had been jerked back too abruptly to all the other, forgotten drama of that night, the music and the faces in Center Church, the flowers, the bridegroom, and the bride.

For there on the crest before me, given in silhouette against the fire-glow, stood the bride.

How she came there, by what violence or wild stratagem she had got away, what blind path had brought her, a fugitive, across the island--it was all beyond me. But no matter; there she stood before me on the dune at Pilot's Point, as still as a lost statue, tulle and satin, molded by the gale, sheathing her form in low relief like shining marble, her stone-quiet hands at rest on her unstirring bosom, her face set toward the invisible sea.... It was queer to see her like that: dim, you know; just shadowed out in mystery by the light that came a long way through the streaming darkness and died as it touched her.

Peering at her, the strangest thought came to me, and it seemed to me she must have been standing there just so, not for minutes, but for hours and days; yes, standing there all the length of those ten long years, erect on a seaward dune, unmoved by the wild, moving elements, broken water, wailing wind, needle-blown sand--as if her spirit had flown on other business, leaving the quiet clay to wait and watch there till the tides of fate, turning in their appointed progress, should bring back the fabled ship of India to find its grave on the bars at Pilot's Point.

She must have been all ready to go to the church; perhaps she was actually on her way, and it was on the wind of the cow street that the blown tidings of the "India ship" came to her ears. I can't tell you how I was moved by the sight of her in the wistful ruin of bride's-clothes. I can't say what huge, disordered purposes tumbled through my brain as I stood there trying to cough or stir or by some such infinitesimal violence let her know that I, Peter Means, was there--that I understood--that I was stronger than all the men in Urkey Island--that over my dead body alone should any evil come to her now, forever and ever and ever.

As I tell you, I don't know what would have happened then, with all my wild, dark projects of defense, had not the whole house of trance come tumbling about my ears to the tune of a terrified bleating close at hand. It was Rolldown Nickerson, I saw as I wheeled; my forgotten enemy, flinging down the precious old brown casket he had robbed me of, and, still giving vent to that thin, high note of horror, careening, sliding, and spattering off down the sandslope. And as he vanished and his wail grew fainter around a shoulder of the dune, another sound came also to my ears. It was plain that his blind gallop had brought him in collision with another denizen of the night; the protesting outburst came on the wind, and it was the voice of Miah White--Miah the prophet, the avenger, drunk as a lord and mad as one exalted.

There was no time for thought; I didn't need it to know what he was after. Mary had heard, too, and knew, too; it was as if she had been awakened from sleep, and her eyes were "enough to make one pity her," in the old words of Mother Poll. Seeing them on me, and without so much as a glance at the casket-thing which the roll of the sand had brought to rest near her feet, I turned and ran at the best of my legs, down the sand, around the dune's shoulder out of sight, and fairly into the arms of the angel of vengeance. I can still see the dim gray whites of his eyes as he glared at me, and smell the abomination of his curse. But I paid no heed; only made with a struggle to go on.

"This way!" I panted. "To the north'rd! She's heading to the north'rd. I saw her dress just there, just now----"

A little was enough to turn him. As I plunged on, making inland, I heard him trailing me with his ponderous, grunting flesh. His ardor was greater than mine; as we ran I heard his thick voice coming nearer and nearer to my ear.

"'She shall come back,' says I, 'with the hand of iron,' says I."

As always in this exalted state his phraseology grew Biblical.

"'Thou shalt stay here,'" I heard him grunting. "'Here to the church thou shalt stay, Joshua,' says I. 'And she shalt come back with the hand of iron--the hand of iron!'"

"Yes!" I puffed. "That's right, Miah; only hurry. _There!_" I cried.

The rain had lessened, and a rising moon cast a ghost through the wrack, just enough to let us glimpse a figure topping a rise before us. That it was no one but Rolldown, still fleeing the mystery and bleating as he fled, made no difference to the blurred eyes of Miah; he dug his toes into the sand and flung forward in still hotter chase--after a still-faster-speeding quarry.

I'll tell you where we caught Rolldown. It was before the church, within the very outpouring of the colored windows. When Miah discovered who his blowing captive was his rage, for a moment, was something to remember. Then it passed and left him blank and dreary with defeat. The beachcomber himself, pale as putty through his half-grown beard, was beseeching us from the pink penumbra of the Apostle Paul: "You seen it? You seen what I seen?" but Miah wouldn't hear him, and mounting the steps and passing dull-footed through the vestry, came into the veiled light and heavy scent of breath and flowers. Following at his heels I saw the faces of women turned to our entrance with expectation.

Do you know the awful sense of a party that has fallen flat? Do you know the desolation of a hope long deferred--once more deferred?

Joshua was standing in the farthest corner, beyond the pews where Miss Beedie's Sunday School class held. Looking across the sea of inquiring and disappointed faces, I saw him there, motionless, his back turned on all of us. He had been standing so for an hour, they said, staring out of a window at his own shadow cast on the churchyard fence.

It was a distressing moment. When Miah had sunk down in a rear pew and bowed his head in his hands I really think you could have heard the fall of the proverbial pin. Then, with a scarcely audible rustle, all the faces became the backs of heads and all the eyes went to the figure unstirring by the corner window. And after that, with the same accord, the spell of waiting was broken, whispering ran over the pews, the inevitable was accepted. Folks got up, shuffling their feet, putting on their wraps with the familiar, mild contortions, still whispering, whispering--"What a shame!"--"The idea!"--"I want to know!"

But some among them must have been still peeping at Joshua, for the hush that fell was sudden and complete. Turning, I saw that he had turned from the window at last, showing us his face.

* * * * *

Now we knew what he had been doing for himself in that long hour. His face was once more the mask of a face we had known so many years as Joshua Blake, dry, bitter, self-contained, the eyes shaded under the lids, the lips as thin as hate. He faced us, but it was not at us he looked; it was beyond us, over our heads, at the corner where the door was.

There, framed in the doorway, stood the tardy bride, a figure as white and stark as pagan stone, and a look on her face like the awful, tranquil look of a sleep-walker. Neither did she pay any heed to us, but over our heads she met the eyes of the bridegroom. So for a long breath they confronted each other, steadily. Then we heard her speak.

"He's come!" she said in a clear voice. "Andrew's come back again."

Still she looked at Joshua. He did not move or reply.

"You understand?" I tell you, I who stood under it, that it was queer enough to hear that voice, clear, strong, and yet somehow shattered, passing over our heads. "You understand, Joshua? Andrew's come back to the wedding, and now I'll marry you--_if you wish_."

Even yet Joshua did not speak, nor did the dry anger of his face change. He came walking, taking his time, first along the pews at the front, then up the length of the aisle. Coming down a few steps, Mary waited for him, and there was a kind of a smile now on her lips.

Joshua halted before her. Folding his hands behind him he looked her over slowly from head to foot.

"You lie!" That was all he said.

"Oh, no, Joshua. I'm not lying. Andrew has come for the wedding."

"You lie," he repeated in the same impassive tone. "You know I know you lie, Mary, for you know I know that Andrew is dead."

"Yes, yes--" She was fumbling to clear a damp fold of her gown from something held in the crook of her arm. "But I didn't say----"

With that she had the burden uncovered and held forth in her outstretched hand.

She held it out in the light where all of us could see--the thing Rolldown had discarded from his treasures, that I had picked up and been robbed of in the kindly dark--the old brown casket-thing with the polished surfaces and the bits of intricate and ghastly carvings that had once let in the light of day and the sound of words--the old, brown, sea-bitten, sand-scoured skull of Andrew Blake, with the two gold teeth in the upper jaw dulled by the tarnishing tides that had brought it up slowly from its bed in the bottom of the sea. And to think that I had carried it, and felt of it, and not known what it was!

It lay there supine in the nest of Mary's palm, paying us no heed whatever, but fixing its hollow regard on the shadows among the rafters. And Joshua, the brother, made no sound.

His face had gone a curious color, like the pallor of green things sprouting under a stone. His knees caved a little under his weight, and as we watched we saw his hands moving over his own breast, where the heart was, with a strengthless gesture, like a caress. After what seemed a long while we heard his voice, a whisper of horrible fascination.

"_Turn it over!_"

Mary said nothing, nor did she move to do as he bade. Like some awful play of a cat with a mouse she held quiet and watched him.

"Mary--do as I say--_and turn it over_!"

Her continued, unanswering silence seemed finally to rouse him. His voice turned shrill. Drawing on some last hidden reservoir of strength, he cried, "Give it to me! It's mine!" and made an astonishing dart, both hands clawing for the relic. But my cousin Duncan was there to step in his way and send him carroming along the fringe of the crowd.

The queer fellow didn't stop or turn or try again; sending up all the while the most unearthly cackle of horror my ears have ever heard, he kept right on through the door and the packed vestry, clawing his way to the open with that brief gift of vitality.

It was so preposterous and so ghastly to see him carrying on so, with his white linen and his fine black wedding-clothes and the gray hair that would have covered a selectman's head in another year--it was all so absurdly horrible that we simply stood as we were in the church and wondered and looked at Mary Matheson and saw her face still rapt and quiet, and still set in that same bedevilled smile, as if she didn't know that round tears were running in streams down her cheeks.

"Let him go," was all she said.

They didn't let him go for too long a time, for they had seen the stamp of death on the man's face. When they looked for him finally they found him lying in a dead huddle on the grass by Lem White's gate. I shall never forget the look of him in the lantern-light, nor the look of them that crowded around and stared down at him--Duncan, I remember, puzzled--Miah cursing God--and three dazed black men showing the whites of their eyes, strange negroes being brought in from the wreck: for the ship was no India ship after all, but a coffee carrier from Brazil.

But seeing Miah made me remember that long-forgotten question that the lips of this dead man had put to the deaf sea and the blind sky.

"Who is to pay the bill? Who is to pay the bill?"

Well, two of the three had helped to pay the bill now for a girl's light-hearted word. But I think the other has paid the most, for she has had longer to meet the reckoning. She still lives there alone in the house on the cow street. She is an old woman now, but there's not so much as a line on her face nor a thread of white in her hair, and that's bad. That's always bad. That's something like the thing that happened to the Wandering Jew. Yes, I'm quite sure Mary has paid.

* * * * *

But I am near to forgetting the answer to it all. I hadn't so long to wait as most folks had--no longer than an hour of that fateful night. For when I got home to our kitchen I found my cousin Duncan already there, with the lamp lit. I came in softly on account of the lateness, and that's how I happened to surprise him and glimpse what he had before he could get it out of sight.

I don't know yet how he came by it, but there on the kitchen table lay the skull of Andrew Blake. When I took it, against his protest, and turned it over, I found what Joshua had meant--a hole as clean and round as a gimlet-bore in the bulge at the back of the head. And when, remembering the faint, chambered impact I had felt in shaking the unknown treasure on the beach, I peeped in through the round hole, I made out the shape of a leaden slug nested loosely between two points of bone behind the nose--a bullet, I should say, from an old, single-ball dueling pistol--such a pistol as Joshua Blake had played with in the shadow of apple-trees on that distant afternoon, and carried in his pocket, no doubt, to the warm-lit gaiety of Alma Beedie's birthday party....

FOOTNOTE:

[16] Copyright, 1919, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1921, by Wilbur Daniel Steele.

THE THREE TELEGRAMS[17]

#By# ETHEL STORM

From _The Ladies' Home Journal_

For two years Claire René's days had been very much alike. It was a dull routine, full of heavy tasks, in the tiny crumbling house, in the shrunken garden patch, and grand'mère--there was always grand'mère to care for. Often in the afternoon Claire René wandered in the forest for an hour. She was used to the silence of the tall trees; the silence in the house frightened her. All the people in her land were gone away; the great noise beyond had taken them. Sometimes the noise had stopped, but the silence in the house, the silence in the garden, and the silence of grand'mère never stopped. It was hard for Claire René to understand.

There was no one left in her land except grand'mère and Jacques. Jacques lived in the forest and cut wood; in the summer time he shot birds, in the winter time rabbits; Jacques was a very old man.

Claire René thought about a great many things when she walked in the forest in the afternoons. She wondered how old she was. She knew that she had been seven years old when her three brothers went away a long time before. She would like to have another birthday, some day, but not until Clément and Fernand and Alphonse came home again. Then they would laugh as they used to laugh on her birthdays, and catch her up in their big, strong arms, and kiss her and call her "Dear little sister." Clément was the biggest and strongest of all; sometimes he would run off with her on his back into the forest, and the others would follow running and calling; and then at the end of the chase the three brothers would make a throne of their brown, firm hands and carry Claire René back to the door of the tiny house, where grand'mère would be waiting and scolding and smiling and ruddy of cheek. Grand'mère never scolded any more; she never smiled, and her cheeks were like dried figs.

Claire René didn't often let herself think of the day that such a dreadful thing had happened. Many days after Clément and Fernand and Alphonse had gone away, grand'mère had started to walk to the nearest town four miles distant. She was gone for hours and hours; Claire René had watched for her from the doorway until dusk had begun to fall; the dusk had been a queer color, thick and blue; a terrible noise had filled the air. Then the child remembered that her three brothers had told her that they were going away to kill rabbits--like Jacques. At the time she thought it strange that they had cried about killing rabbits. But when she heard such a thunder of noise she knew it must be a very great work indeed.

She was just wondering how there could be so many rabbits in the world, when she saw an old, bent woman coming through the garden gate. It was grand'mère; Jacques was leading her; she was making a strange noise in her throat, and her eyes were closed. Jacques had stayed in the house all the night, looking at grand'mère, lying on the bed with her eyes closed. In the morning, Claire René had spoken to her, but she hadn't answered. After days and days she walked from her bed to a chair by the window. She never again did any more than that; grand'mère was blind--and she was deaf.

Jacques explained how it all happened; Claire René didn't listen carefully, but she did understand that her three brothers were not killing rabbits, but were killing men. She knew then why they had cried; they were so kind and good, Clément and Fernand and Alphonse; they would hate to kill men. But Jacques had said they were wicked men that had to be killed. He said it wouldn't take long, that all the strong men in France were shooting at them.

Claire René had a great deal to do after that. She had to bathe and dress grand'mère; she had to cook the food and scrub the floor and scour the pots and pans. She kept the pans very bright. Grand'mère might some day open her eyes, and there would be a great scolding if the pans were not bright. Claire René also tended the garden; Jacques helped her with the heavy digging. He was very mean about the vegetables; he made her put most of them in the cellar; and the green things that wouldn't keep he himself put into jars and tins and locked them in the closet. When the summer had gone he gave Claire René the keys.

"Ma petite," he said, "you learn too fast to eat too little. You must be big and well when your brothers come back."

All the winter long Claire René watched for her brothers. Once a telegram had come, brought by a boy who said he had walked all the miles of the forest. In the memory of Claire René there lay a hidden fear about telegrams. Years before, grand'mère had cried for many days when Jacques had brought from the town just such a thin, crackling envelope. And Claire René knew that after that she had no longer any young mother or father--only grand'mère and her three brothers.

Grand'mère had enough of sorrow. The telegram was better hidden in the room of her brothers. Grand'mère would never find it there; it was far away from her chair by the window, up the straight, narrow stairs, under the high, peaked gable. Then, too, there was a comfort in that room for Claire René; it was quiet; the great silence of downstairs was too big to squeeze up the narrow way. Each day she would stroke and tend the high white bed; each week she would drag the mass of feather mattress to the narrow window ledge and air it for the length of a sunny day.

At evening she would pull and pile high again the snowy layers, as quickly as her tired back could move, as quickly as her thin, blue fingers could smooth the heavy homespun sheets and comforters. Quick she must be lest Clément and Fernand and Alphonse come home before the night fell over their sleeping place. When she placed the telegram under the first high pillow (Clément's pillow) it made a sound that frightened her.

In the evenings grand'mère's chair was pulled to the great hearth fire. Claire René would watch the flamelight spread over the stonelike face. Sometimes bright sparkles from the rows of copper pots and pans would lay spots of light on the heavy closed lids.

Claire René would spring from her chair and kneel beside the dumb figure. "Grand'mère!" she would call. "Do you see? Have you the eyes again?"

Then the lights would shift, and her head would drop over her trembling knees, and she would look away from the dry, sealed eyes of grand'mère. She never cried; it might make a noise in the still, whitewashed room to frighten her. Grand'mère might find the tears when she raised her hands to let them travel over the face of her grandchild. It was enough that once grand'mère had shivered when her fingers found the hollows in Claire René's cheeks. After that the child puffed out her cheeks while the knotted hands made their daily journey. Grand'mère's fingers would smooth the sunny tangled hair, touch the freckled upturned nose; they would pause and tremble at the slightest brush from the eyelashes that fringed the deep, gray eyes.

Claire René would pile more logs on the fire and wonder what thoughts lay in grand'mère's mind; wonder whether she knew that they had so much more wood in the shed than they had food in the larder. She was clever about cooking the roots from the cellar. But grand'mère's coffee was weaker each day, and only once in a long while did Jacques bring milk. Then he used to stand and order Claire René to drink it all, but she would choke and say it was sour and sickened her; only thus could she save enough for grand'mère's coffee in the morning.

There were many things to think about, to look at on the winter evenings by the firelight: Clément's seat by the chimney corner, where he whittled and whistled; Fernand's flute hanging on the wall; the books of Alphonse on the high shelf over the dresser. Claire René found that her heart and her eyes would only find comfort if her fingers were busy. She would tiptoe to the dresser and bring out a basket, once filled with the socks of her brothers. She would crouch by the fireside, first stirring the logs to make more light for her work. It was long since the candles were gone. It was the only joyous moment in the day when she handled the dried everlastings that filled the basket. Always she must hurry, work more quickly, select the withered colors with more care. The wreaths for her three brothers must be beautiful, must be ready on time. Clément and Fernand and Alphonse must be crowned, given the reward when they came home from killing wicked men to save La Belle France!

All the months of the summer before she had watched and tended the flowers. The seeds she had found in grand'mère's cupboard. Jacques had scolded about the place that had been given them in the garden patch. But Claire René had stamped her foot and strong, strange words that belonged to her three brothers when they were angry came to her lips. Jacques had looked startled and funny and had turned his head away; in the end he had patted Claire René on her rigid shoulders and she thought his eyes were just like wet, black beads.

On the other side of the hearth, away from grand'mère's chair, she twined and wound the wreaths. No one must know. The Great Day _must_ be soon! And in her heart she believed that on that day grand'mère would open her eyes.

In the spring Claire René finished the wreaths. The very day she placed them on the highest shelf in the dark closet under the stairs there had come a knock at the door. She was stiff with terror. Jacques never knocked; there was no one else. She clung to a heavy chair back while the same boy who had come before entered slowly and placed a second telegram in her numb fingers.

"I am sorry, mademoiselle," was all he said.

She watched him disappear through the garden gate; she listened until his steps died in the forest. Grand'mère stirred in her chair by the window; Claire René thought a flicker of pain traveled over the worn face; she thought the closed eyes twitched; Madame Populet stretched out her hands.

Claire René flew up the straight, narrow stairs; she placed the telegram under Fernand's pillow; she pressed her fists deep into the feathers; the crackle of paper made her heart stand still. There were tears starting in her eyes; she held them back. Grand'mère had enough of sorrow; she must never know of the second telegram in the house.

Thoughts came crowding into Claire René's mind. Why not tear up the white-and-blue envelopes or why not show them to Jacques--in some way throw away the fear that was eating at her heart? Then the great silence of the house below seemed to creep up the narrow stairs and lay cold hands on Claire René. Oh, why was it all so lonely! Where were her three brothers? Why must the telegrams make so great a trembling in her heart for them, make her kneel and pray that the Holy Mother would hold them in her arms forever?

Her knees were stiff when she arose; her eyes were bright, but not with tears; her back was very straight, her head held high, for was she not a grandchild of Madame Populet? A sister to Clément and Fernand and Alphonse, and through them, a child of France! She stood on her toes and dropped three kisses on the pillows of her brothers. She was big enough to keep the secret of her fear about the telegrams. It was better so.

She went downstairs singing. The sound was strange in her throat, but she must finish the song. She stood behind grand'mère's chair, and laid her hands on the still white head. When the last, high, treble note fell softly through the room she looked out of the window into the forest. There were threads of pale green showing on the tall trees; there were tiny red buds starting from the brown branches of the pollard willow that swept across the window ledge.

Claire René suddenly wanted to shout! She did shout! There was spring in the world! There was spring in her heart, in her feet, in her tingling finger tips.

She danced to the dark closet under the stairs. There they were, the wreaths, for her three brothers! The deep golden one for Clément--he was strong and square like a rock; the light golden one for Fernand--he was pale and slight; the scarlet one for Alphonse--he was straight and tall like a tree in the forest.

Claire René touched the three wreaths; they crackled dryly under her touch; she turned away and shivered. What did they sound like? Oh, yes; the crackling of the thin paper on the telegrams!

She shut the closet door softly, and went to kneel beside grand'mère's chair and looked again into the forest. The buds on the sweeping willows said "Yes"; the pale-green winding gauze through the tall trees whispered a promise. She stood up and held out her arms; she had faith in the forest; she believed what it said. Through a patch of flickering sunlight she thought she saw three forms moving toward the cottage. It was only the viburnum bushes dipping and swaying in the March wind, against the sturdy growth of darkened holly.

The noise died away entirely as the spring advanced. The silence grew greater and greater. There were few seeds for Claire René to plant in her garden; there was little strength in her arms to work them. Weeds covered the flower patch of a year ago. A few straggling everlastings showed their heads above the tangle. Claire René had plenty of strength to uproot them angrily and throw them into the overgrown path.

The three wreaths were still on the shelf in the dark closet under the stair. Their colors were dimmed, like the hope in their maker's heart; their forms were shrunken, like the forms of Claire René and grand'mère and Jacques.

Grand'mère lay in her bed most of the day. Sometimes, when the sun shone and the birds sang, Claire René would make her aching arms bathe and dress grand'mère and help her into the chair by the window. Then she would sit beside her and try to run threads through the bare places in her frocks.

At times she thought of making frocks for herself out of grand'mère's calico dresses, folded so neatly in the cupboard. But grand'mère, she argued, would need them for herself when the Great Day came, when Clément and Fernand and Alphonse would come with ringing laughter through the forest--laughter that would surely open grand'mère's eyes--and her ears. When the birds sang and the sun shone Claire René believed that day would come.

Jacques was always kind. But he had become a part of the great silence; almost as still as grand'mère he was. For hours he would sit and look at Claire René bending over her sewing, over her scrubbing, over the brightening of the pots and pans. Sometimes his shining black eyes seemed to lie down in his face, to be going away forever behind his bush of eyebrow.

Then she would start toward him and call: "Jacques, Jacques!"

He would always answer, straightening in his chair: "Yes, my little one, be not afraid. Jacques is ever near."

Claire René would sigh and go back to her work and wish that she was big enough to go out into the forest and shoot birds, as Jacques used to do. She was very hungry. She was tired of eating roots from the garden.

She would like to lie down and go to sleep for the rest of her life, or die and go to heaven and have the Holy Mother hold her in her arms and feed her thick yellow milk. Jacques no longer brought even thin blue milk. There was no coffee in the cupboard, no sugar, no bread--only hateful roots of the garden.

Claire René no longer walked in the forest. Sometimes she would lie down on a mossy place and look up through the tall trees at the patches of blue sky overhead. She wondered whether the good God still kept His home above, whether He, too, were hungry, whether the Holy Mother had work to do when her back ached and her fingers wouldn't move and were thin and bony, like young dead birds that sometimes fell from nests.

Once, when Claire René was thinking such thoughts, she saw Jacques come running toward her. His eyes were bright and shiny, and she had a fear that they might drop out of his head, as the quick breath dropped out of his mouth.

"Listen, ma petite!" he cried.

He dropped on the mossy place beside her and rocked back and forth with his hands clasped about his shaking knees. Claire René was used to waiting. She waited until Jacques found breath for speech.

Then he told her how the "Great Man from America" was coming to save France! How he was sending a million strong sons before him. How there was hope come to heavy hearts!

Claire René wanted to ask a great many questions. But Jacques went right on, talking, talking--about the right flank and the left flank and the boches and the Americans. Claire René hoped his tongue would not be too tired to answer one of her questions.

"What is America, my little one? Why, the greatest country in the world, excepting France. Where is America, my little one? Why, across the Atlantic Ocean, far from France."

Claire René sat very still with her hands in her lap. Jacques was a wise man. He knew a great deal. All old people were wise; but such strange things made them happy, far-away things that they couldn't ever touch or see, things out in the big world that went round and round. She knew that Clément and Fernand and Alphonse were out in the big world, going round and round; but in her heart she saw them only in the forest, in the garden patch, by the hearth in the tiny house, asleep in their high white bed.

In these places she could still feel their arms about her, hear their laughter, listen for their step. But out in the world! What were they doing? How could she know? Jacques made her feel very lonely. Never once did he speak of her three brothers; on and on he went about the "Great Man from America."

Presently he ceased for a moment and held Claire René's cold hands against his grizzled cheek. "But, my little one, why are you cold?"

Claire René looked for a long time into Jacques' shining eyes; then she whispered: "My brothers!"

High among the tall trees of the forest the wind was singing and sighing; beneath on a green moss bank Jacques gathered Claire René in his arms; he gathered her up like a baby and rocked her back and forth. He cried and laughed into the bright tangle of her hair.

"My poor little one! My poor little one!" he said over and over. Then he released her from his arms and held her face between his knotted hands. "Now, listen!"

She listened, and even before Jacques had finished a song began in her heart--so strong and high and true that it reached up into the treetops and joined in the chorus of the forest.

The words that came from the lips of Jacques made a great beating in her ears. Could it be so--what he was saying--that the "Great Man from America" had come to save all the Brothers of France? That soon, soon he would send Clément and Fernand and Alphonse back to the tiny house in the forest? That all the wicked men in the world would be no more? That the great and terrible noise would cease--forever?

Jacques was very, very sure that he was right about it; he had read it all in a newspaper; he had walked miles and miles to hear men talk of nothing else.

Claire René asked where the great man lived.

"In Paris, ma petite."

"And what does he look like--the brave one?"

"He is grave and quiet, like a king."

"And has he on his head the crown of gold?"

"No, ma petite, but he has in his heart the Sons of France."

"And Clément and Fernand and Alphonse also?"

Claire René waited while Jacques passed his fingers through her hair. "Yes, ma petite," he said at last.

Claire René wished that she had more hands and feet and lips and eyes and more than such a little body to hold her joy. She made circles of dancing about Jacques on their way back to the cottage. She said her happiness was so great that she might fly up into the sky and laugh from the tops of the trees. "Dear Jacques," she said as they paused at the dried garden patch, "do you think to-morrow they will come--my brothers?"

Jacques shook his head.

"Do you think one day from to-morrow?"

Again Jacques shook his head.

But Claire René was busy in her thoughts. She turned suddenly and threw her arms about him. "Will you again walk the miles of the forest for Claire René, will you?"

"But--why--for what reason, ma petite?"

She would send a letter! She would herself write to the "Great Man," and tell him about Clément and Fernand and Alphonse, tell him how good and brave they were, and about grand'mère and the silence of her eyes and ears, and about--Claire René looked frightened and clapped her fingers over her mouth.

No! She must forever keep the secret about the telegrams. Telegrams meant sorrow; there must be only happiness in the house for the brothers.

Long after twilight had fallen she pleaded with Jacques about the letter. By the firelight that same night she would write. Grand'mère had taught her to make the letters of many words; she knew what to say. In the first light of the day Jacques could be gone to the post. And then! Yes?

Not until he finally nodded his head was she satisfied. Then she wondered why so suddenly he had become heavy with sadness. Why, when she watched him trudge off into the forest, had he seemed to carry a burden on his bent back?

She thought: "Old people are like that. Grand'mère is like that; she, too, grows tired with the end of the day. They had so many long days behind them to remember--grand'mère and Jacques. And the days ahead of them?"

Claire René was often puzzled about their days ahead. They were so tired! But they would be soon happy. And grand'mère would open her eyes to see and her ears to hear when Clément and Fernand and Alphonse came back again.

Claire René ate only a mouthful of her cooked roots on that evening. For grand'mère she made a special brew of dried herbs from the forest and baked a cake from the last bit of brown flour left in the cupboard. Grand'mère was half the shape she used to be; the brothers would surely scold when they saw her so gone away.

Claire René piled the logs high on the fire; she must have light for her work, plenty of light. She searched the house for paper and envelope and pencil and when she had written she threw the paper into the fire and wept with a passion much too great for her years and her body. She had forgotten the words; they wouldn't come. And who was she to be writing to the "Great Man," a man like a king?