Chapter V: Part 5

It was never difficult to get Gregory Manners to speak of the first evening he met Andreyvitch. It was almost as if he were tremendously puzzled, as if he thought speaking of it, even to a casual acquaintance, might clear things up to himself. He never varied the thing. At first, at any rate. Later on he became strangely, uncannily secretive about it all. That must have been when he began to suspect there was a great deal more to it than had appeared upon the surface.

"D'you know?" His words always came slowly. "Deuce take it! I thought I was going to like the fellow. I'd heard so much about him, too. Why, old chap, I was anxious; positively keen, to know him. And then--Why, when I stood face to face with him, I couldn't think of anything but that I had known him, or did know him, or something. First glance and I saw he was one of those poseurs. One of those rummy fellows who affect poses because they're always consciously trying to imitate the people about them. That's it, you know. They can't be themselves because of some queer kink they funk expressing. So they fake other people and quite naturally they overdo it."

He would usually get worked up about this time; and then he would go on a lot more quickly:

"I've seen them the world over. There was one chap--but--well--I thought this--this fellow who calls himself Andreyvitch, was just going to be one of them--poseurs, you know. He looked harmless enough to be sure. Of course there were his eyes--and the way he walks--but then--I couldn't help feeling he wasn't quite--quite cricket. That came over me confoundedly strongly at the very first minute. And when he smiled--I say, man, d'you ever see such damnably wicked teeth?"

And the man to whom he spoke always had to admit that he had never seen such teeth.

Later on Manners never worked himself up as much.

"That fellow who calls himself Andreyvitch--I've met him before. Don't know where; and at that I've a pretty fair head for names and places. But I know him. He may have looked differently, and it probably was in some of those out-of-the-way holes; but I know him. I don't say he was the Russian Andreyvitch when I knew him--but--Well, old chap, we'll see."

They stopped asking Andreyvitch and Manners around together after a while. But that never kept Manners from speaking of the Russian.

"Was Andreyvitch there?"

"They don't ask us together, eh?"

"No fear, old chap, of my insulting him; I couldn't, you know!"

"Rather a filthy sort of beggar, that Russian; makes the gooseflesh come over me. Happened before. Deuce take the thing!--If I could only think when!"

And then after Manners had dropped out of sight for a fortnight or more, he suddenly made his appearance at the club.

They were all of them unspeakably shocked by his looks. He never carried much weight, but in those two weeks he had gotten down to little else than skin and bones. His color was ghastly. His cheekbones were appallingly prominent and his eyes looked as if they were sunken back into his skull.

To all their questions he gave the same answer:

"No, he wasn't ill. No, he hadn't been ill. There was nothing the matter with him. He'd felt a bit seedy and he'd run down to his place for a fortnight. It was good of them to bother. He was quite, quite all right."

They saw he wanted to be left alone and they let him go over to the window and sit there, his great, loose frame huddled together in the leather arm chair.

There could not have been more than three or four of them sitting near him. It was only those three or four who saw him stagger to his feet, swaying there dizzily for a second. Only those three or four who could distinguish the words spoken in that low, half strangled whisper.

"That's it--I've got it now--Something rotten; always living--Always waiting the chance to do its filthy harm! The power to incarnate--in any form. The greater its loathsomeness, the greater that incarnating stuff! Probably at most times more beast than human--but it could take on human guise--that's it--that's--"

And those three or four men saw him rush out of the reading-room, his head thrown well back, his eyes ablaze with a great light.

And then Mrs. Broughton-Hollins gave the famous house-party. The house-party of which every member, although not fully understanding, tried to forget. The house-party which drove Gregory Manners and Kathleen Bennet out of England.

Mrs. Broughton-Hollins was a charming little American widow, with untold wealth and a desire to do everything, everywhere, with every one. Of course she always managed to get a lot of nice people together, and of course she picked the very nicest ones for her house-party. Then because she had set her heart on having the Russian, Stephanof Andreyvitch, she naturally got him to come, and because she had Kathleen Bennet, she had to ask Gregory. Kathleen and Gregory were engaged to be married.

She was a dear, was Kathleen. As pretty as a picture and delightfully simple-minded. Her father belonged to the clergy, and her family consisted of innumerable brothers and sisters. Gregory Manners, who had traveled the world over, fell quite completely in love with her. And she--She worshiped the ground he walked on.

No one ever quite knew whether or not Manners heard that Andreyvitch was to be of the house-party. Perhaps he had; probably he had not. If Kathleen were to be there, that would have been all-sufficient, as far as Manners was concerned.

By that time Manners had worked himself out of his frenzy of hatred against the Russian. They had been able to explain it to themselves by saying that he had talked himself into it. As a matter of fact, the whole thing was totally subconscious. Whenever he had become conscious the man was anywhere near him, he had begun to realize his hatred of him. But now it had gone infinitely further than just that.

Manners had become uncannily quiet and uncannily knowing.

They were all together in the hall when Manners, as usual, came in late. Mrs. Broughton-Hollins and an anæmic looking youth, who always lounged about in her wake; a man named Galvin, an oldish chap, who had seen service in India, and his pretty, young wife. The Dowager of Endon and her middle-aged son, the Duke, and Stephanof Andreyvitch, holding the center of the floor with little Kathleen Bennet sitting close to where he stood, her eyes fixed in awed surprise upon his face; her white fingers toying nervously with a small silver crucifix which hung about her neck.

Whether or not Andreyvitch heard the man announce Gregory Manners, whether or not he saw him standing there in the doorway, whether or not he purposely went on with what he was then saying was a subject for debate the rest of the evening.

"Faith?" Andreyvitch's low, insidious voice carried well. "But there's no such thing. Can't you realize that all this sickly sentimentality is nothing but dogmatic idiocy on your parts? Must you all drivel your catechism at every turn of the road? Must you close your eyes to filth, to vice, to everything you think outside of your smug English minds? Don't you know you're a part of it? That each one of you is part of the lowest, rottenest--"

It was then that, unable to stand it a second longer, Gregory Manners came into the room.

"I--I most sincerely hope I'm not interrupting, Andreyvitch--but--are you speaking of those things--again?"

The quiet, polite tone was full of subtle significance. And although they could not have known what Manners actually meant, they all of them recognized an emphatic significance. And not one of those people present could overlook the peculiar stress which he had laid upon that slow-drawled "again."

Andreyvitch turned sharply; his face for a second drawn into a hideous, ghastly grimace.

"It is no interruption, Mr. Manners." He was trying hard to resume his habitual insouciance. "But what do you mean, eh? What is this?"

He stood where he was, did Manners. His face was almost expressionless.

"I think you know what I mean. But see here. I'll repeat it for you, if you like. Listen this time. Are--you--speaking--of--those--things--_again_?"

The Russian was livid.

And for an infinitesimal fraction of time it seemed to those watching him that he was cowed; terrifyingly cowed.

"Your humor," he shrugged his shoulders, endeavoring to pass the thing off as flippantly as possible; "your humor is bizarre, Mr. Manners. I spoke but of that which we all know exists. Surely there is no harm in speaking of what we all recognize!"

Manners' voice rang out clearly, in surprising sternness.

"We all know what exists in this world. We know that greater than all else is faith. As long as you speak before those who know what real goodness is, who believe in it, there is no harm done! I hardly think this is the first time you've tried to impress evil on people--The reason for that's easily understood. But, thank God." His tone vibrated with earnestness. "Thank God, you can do nothing here!"

The Russian turned on him. His usual suave manner had left him. His words were little else than an angry snarl.

"You know me well--very well, indeed, my English friend. You who have met me--is it not once--perhaps, eh, twice?"

Manners laughed. A laugh that had no sound of mirth in it.

"I've met you again and again. And you know it! And there's something else we have to settle for--And you know that, too--Mr.--Mr. Andreyvitch!"

And then Gregory Manners turned to Mrs. Broughton-Hollins.

"Good afternoon," he said, quietly.

A bit flustered, the hostess got hastily to her feet.

"So good of you to come--You know every one, don't you, Gregory? You'll have your tea here with us?" And below her breath, she added: "You mustn't be too hard on Andreyvitch, Gregory. These Russians--well, they're all a bit primitive."

He went from one to the other of the men. He kissed Kathleen's hand and told her how pretty she looked. He let Mrs. Broughton-Hollins pour his tea, and he ignored the Russian completely, the while he watched Kathleen with a strange foreboding, as her eyes flickered again and again over Andreyvitch's face.

Things did not go very smoothly during the next two days. Naturally they all did the usual. Golf and riding, bridge and dancing in the evenings, and shooting. Andreyvitch was passionately fond of shooting. Manners had never so much as killed a sparrow in all his life.

There was an undercurrent of uneasiness which permeated the entire household. It was not particularly because of Andreyvitch and Manners. It was something that not one of them could have explained if they had been put to it.

The first day Mrs. Galvin told her husband that she would be glad when it was all over. And although unexpressed that was the general sentiment.

Not that Andreyvitch or Manners made the others uncomfortable. After Gregory's first outburst, and now that they were under the same roof, it rather seemed that the Russian avoided Manners. And Manners--He watched carefully every movement, every little turn or twist of Andreyvitch's. At that time it was as if he were trying to substantiate some memory of his; to substantiate it deliberately and positively.

And then because of Andreyvitch's unceasing attentions to Kathleen Bennet, word went round among the various members of the house-party that Gregory and Kathleen had quarreled.

It was Sunday afternoon when Manners came upon Kathleen walking alone in the rose-garden.

"I'll be jolly well glad," he told her, "when we get back to town again."

"Aren't you having a good time, Greg?"

"How can I?"

"But you really needed the rest--You haven't been looking any too fit, you know. I thought this would be quite nice for you, Greg."

He let loose at that.

"If you must have it, Kathleen. I can't stand you and that bounder in the same house. That's the truth of it, old girl!"

She avoided answering him directly.

"It's such a ripping place here, Gregory. All--that is, all but those forests over there. The gardener told me his grandfather used to call them the Wood of Living Trees. He couldn't tell me why--only--Isn't it a strange name, Greg?"

She wound up lamely. Evidently she had not said what she started out to say.

"Not so awfully," he answered absent-mindedly. "It's probably an old, old name. They stick to places, you know."

"But the woods," she went on slowly, "they're so dark and mysterious and all that sort of thing. I've wanted to explore them ever since I've been here--that is--that's not altogether true, Gregory. They frighten me a good bit--especially at night. I get into quite a funk about it--at night. I say, you wouldn't call me a coward, would you, Gregory?"

"Of course not, Kathleen. What utter nonsense!"

"But if I weren't afraid," she continued half to herself. "If I weren't really terrified, I'd go into the woods and show myself there's nothing to be frightened of, wouldn't I?"

"You most certainly would not!" He said. "If you did, you'd be sure to lose your way, old girl."

For a second they walked in silence.

"D'you ever feel"--she turned to face him--"d'you ever feel you'd been in a place before--and yet you knew you'd never been there at all?"

"No," he told her a bit too abruptly.

"You needn't be so stuffy, Gregory," she murmured.

"Oh, my dear!" He caught her and held her in his arms. "Can't you see that it's all like a horrible nightmare? Can't you see that I'm not able to know positively until it's actually happened--and then--oh, my God!--If it should be too late!"

Her hands clenched rigidly on his shoulders.

"Gregory," she whispered, "tell me, dear--you've been so strange of late--so terribly unlike yourself. Tell me, dear, what is it?"

"Nothing, dearest girl--nothing."

"Oh, but there is something!" She exclaimed passionately. "I've known it right along. I haven't asked because I thought you'd tell me. Why--one must be blind not to see how you've changed! You're--you're just a skeleton of yourself, Gregory." She paused for breath. "Can't you bring yourself to tell me--can't you, dear?"

"If I only knew," he muttered, "if I only knew--for certain."

Her eyes were lifted to his. The brows met in a puckering frown above them.

"Gregory--that time you were away--for a whole fortnight--did anything happen, then--Gregory?"

"Did anything happen?" She had surprised him into it. "Good God, did anything happen? Why, you don't know what it was like--You couldn't know! If they'd told me such a thing were possible--I shouldn't have believed it! I wanted to think--I wanted to work the thing out for myself--so I went down there for a rest. Rest--"

He broke off then, but she stood very silently beside him and presently he went on again.

"Have you ever felt you were going mad, Kathleen? Raving, tearing--mad? That's how I felt for two weeks. I thought it would never end. And all the time--why, I couldn't think! I couldn't do anything but feel that something was driving me to do something--something tremendous, as if the very force of my own life were making me do this thing that I had been sent into life to do. And, Kathleen," his voice sank to a hoarse whisper, "I couldn't understand--what--it--was!"

She put her arm about his neck and drew his head down until her cheek rested on his.

"I couldn't think a thought," he muttered. "I'd laid myself open to the thing. It just swept over me and through me. It saturated me with the impulse to do the thing I had come into the world to do! The one thing that stood out--was--the feeling that it would have to be done--soon." He paused for a moment. "And then one afternoon at the club--when I'd been back a day or two--something came to me-a sudden knowledge of--well, of rottenness--that--that might have to be done away with--as if that had something to do with it. Only I don't know, Kathleen--not--as yet."

He looked at her then and he saw her eyes were filled with tears. He thought he had frightened her. He waited until he had himself well in hand before he spoke again.

"Kathleen, always believe in the good of things, dearest girl. And, Kathleen," the words that came to him were almost as great a surprise to him as they were to her. "Never leave that crucifix off your neck. Promise me, dear?"

"I promise."

A little later they went in to tea.

He got to bed that night with a great feeling of relief that in the morning they would all be back in town. He had thought something would happen. He had not known what, but the feeling had been there. He did not mind admitting it to himself now, and he did not mind acknowledging that he could not understand how the thing, whatever it was, had been avoided. Unformed, undefinable, it had been powerfully imminent. He fell asleep wondering what it was that he had expected.

The full moon was streaming into the room when he awoke.

He was on his feet in the middle of the floor in a flash.

He could have sworn a cry had awakened him. A woman's voice calling for help--A woman's voice that had been strangely like Kathleen's.

He went to the window and looked out. A cloud had drifted across the surface of the full moon. The whole garden lay blotched with shadows. And there beyond the garden was the forest. Black, sinister, mysterious. The dark depth of it sickened him. Kathleen had spoken only that afternoon of the forest. The Wood of Living Trees. She had told him it was called The Wood of Living Trees.

In Heaven's name, where did the horrible, appalling significance of the Wood of Living Trees come from? What was this ghastly knowledge that sought for recognition in his own mind? What did the Wood of Living Trees mean to him?

And then he heard the faint, far cry--

His shoes--his trousers--hatless and coatless he was out in the garden.

The cloud had passed from off the face of the moon. The garden lay in the bright moonlight; even the separate flowers were visible. Beyond was the sinister depth of that black forest.

He felt it then. Sensed the insidious evil of something that emanated from the wood. Something which lurked there beneath the trees--something which clung to the tall trunks of them--something which rose and expanded among the leaves and reached out to him in evil menace. And at some time he had felt it all before.

He ran quickly through the garden; over the rosebeds; crashing through the high boxwood hedge at the farther end; and then into the forest.

His feet sank into the moss-covered slime. The trees were gigantic. He felt as if they were closing in on him. Their branches stretched out like living arms, hindering his progress. Thorns caught at his clothing, at his hands, his face. He had a vague, half-formed thought that the forest was advancing to achieve his destruction. His only clear determination was to protect his eyes.

He knew then, he had always known, that the wood was some live, evil thing--the Wood of Living Trees; and that it hid the presence of something infinitely more foul.

A queer odor assailed his nostrils. An odor that was not only of the 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.

He would toss about on his narrow wooden bed for hours; moving cautiously and carefully so as not to do anything that would offend the drugged burden of the silence. He would move a leg or an arm slyly and then he would lie quite quiet for a time holding his breath until the cracking pain came plunging again and again into his chest. He could feel the stillness filling in all the spaces and crevices around him, so that he thought it rose and swelled hideously.

He was afraid of those hours before he went to sleep; before he could drop off with that overwhelming sense that in losing consciousness he was consciously letting himself drown in a tremendous, swollen wave of silence.

And then toward morning that sudden, inevitable awakening. His rousing himself to listen. His whole body becoming rigid; tautly holding itself with straining, shaking muscles to the position in which he lay. The sweat breaking out all over him and trickling coldly down from his armpits along his sides. His cunning shifting of his head so that he could clear his ears to hear better. His futile harkening for the sound that never came. His intensive shivering waiting for it. And nothing but the stillness. He could never make himself move. The thing was so actual; suffocatingly potent; malignant. He had grown terrified of attempting to disrupt it in any of those little ways at his command. He had begun to think that the noise he would make would not be a noise. He could not have stood the shock of making a noise that would be quite vacantly without sound.

All day long, working in his fields, he used to wonder at it. In the sunlight it was with him still and bated. It rose up to him from the ground at his feet, from the soil it had wormed itself into. It crushed down on him from the clear, blue sweep of the sky. It spread unseen toward him down the long, uncertain slopes of the hills coming on always from all sides and staying.

It had become so that nothing was real to him; nothing but the stillness that drenched everything; stifling and choking.

The old mare working her way in front of the plow along the narrowed, deepening furrows, was a ghost creature to him. The grayness of her blurred ahead of him in the brightest stream of sunlight. Her foolish, stilly gliding played horridly on his raw nerves. At all times she was a phantom animal, stirring with the intangible motion of the silence. He felt that she did not belong to him; that she was a thing of the stillness.

He would trail after her, his quivering, thin hands on the plow handles, his eyes riveted on her bony withers. He would try to concentrate his thoughts on the way she moved and then overcome quite suddenly with the quiet, insidious stealth of her ambling, he would pull her up and stop to mop his forehead, his eyes going slowly around him as if he almost expected to see the thing that had lain that smothering, strangling hold on to him.

His one and only companion was a yellow mongrel that had come slinking in at the farm gate, its tail drooping between its legs. He had been glad at first of having the dog with him. And then gradually he had come to feel the oddness of the animal. If he could have done so he would have turned the dog out again into the stillness from which it had come to him. He was sure that the mongrel must be old; unnaturally old. He could not understand the dog's awful quiet. In his heart he was scared of the dog. The mongrel followed incessantly at his heels, always with dragging tail. Whenever his eyes turned behind him they met the mongrel's eyes that were fixed on him; the eyes that were filled with that uncanny, beaten look as if it had been horridly cowed. There was an age of agony in the dog's eyes. As the days went on he became more and more afraid of the mongrel's eyes.

He had come out to the farm to start with because of the silence. He had felt that he would have to get away from the noise and the tumultuous uproar of the city. After what he had done he could not stand it. He had gotten away. He thought now that his mind would snap; that it would break from under the lull which had come into it--The lull which devastated him with its hushed brutality.

He had never been fond of people. Even in those days back there in the city before he had done the thing that was wrong he had mistrusted them. And after it he had run from them. Run wildly and unthinkingly to cover with the fear of them coming on behind him. The deathly, lonely farm was to him at that time a haven of rest.

He had made up his mind to live on the farm until the end of his life. He used to think bitterly of his waiting so patiently for his death. When he could think of anything other than the silence he thought of his dying; of life being squeezed out of him by the shrouded quiet. Sometimes he would wonder if it were death that ominously waited for him in that appalling, threatening stillness.

There had been days when he had tried to recall the sound of voices he had known. He had spent long hours in awakening in his memory those voices. He had wanted particularly to think of people laughing. He used to want to get the pitch of their laughing; to surround himself with the vibration of reiterated laughter. And then when he had gotten it so that he almost heard it, so that he felt that with concentrated attention he might hear the laughing, he would find himself listening to the frightful, numbing stillness.

He had not the courage to go on trying that.

Following the plow and the old gray mare through the fields with the dog skulking abjectly at his heels, he would think of that thing which he had done that had ostracized him from the rest of humanity. He never thought of the possibility of making his life over again. He could not have thought of it if he had wanted to. It was all too hopeless; too impossible to think about. The deadening quiet in which he had been steeped had drained him; sapped from him all initiative.

When evening came he would go into his shack and close the door. He would light the oil lamp on the old table that stood in the center of the room and he would go about getting supper for himself and the mongrel. He took great care always to move his pots and pans gently. If he picked up a plate he did it slowly, softly. When he put his bowl of food on the table he slid it consciously onto the surface without noise. And going to and fro not oftener than he had to, his feet in their padded moccasins lifted him to his toes.

He ate quietly and quickly, swallowing his food without chewing, feeding himself and the dog with his fingers. And all the while feeling that the stillness was rushing down from the hills and gathering to greater force about him.