The Best Short Stories of 1920 Part 51

All the months of the summer before she had watched and tended the flowers. The seeds she had found in grand'mere's cupboard. Jacques had scolded about the place that had been given them in the garden patch.

But Claire Rene 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 Rene 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'mere'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'mere would open her eyes.

In the spring Claire Rene 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'mere stirred in her chair by the window; Claire Rene thought a flicker of pain traveled over the worn face; she thought the closed eyes twitched; Madame Populet stretched out her hands.

Claire Rene 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'mere had enough of sorrow; she must never know of the second telegram in the house.

Thoughts came crowding into Claire Rene'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 Rene. 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 Clement 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'mere'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 Rene 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 Clement--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 Rene 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'mere'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 st.u.r.dy 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 Rene 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 Rene 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 Rene and grand'mere and Jacques.

Grand'mere lay in her bed most of the day. Sometimes, when the sun shone and the birds sang, Claire Rene would make her aching arms bathe and dress grand'mere 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'mere's calico dresses, folded so neatly in the cupboard. But grand'mere, she argued, would need them for herself when the Great Day came, when Clement and Fernand and Alphonse would come with ringing laughter through the forest--laughter that would surely open grand'mere's eyes--and her ears. When the birds sang and the sun shone Claire Rene believed that day would come.

Jacques was always kind. But he had become a part of the great silence; almost as still as grand'mere he was. For hours he would sit and look at Claire Rene 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 Rene 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 Rene 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 G.o.d 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 Rene 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 pet.i.te!" he cried.

He dropped on the mossy place beside her and rocked back and forth with his hands clasped about his shaking knees. Claire Rene 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 Rene 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 Rene 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 Rene 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 Clement 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 Rene's cold hands against his grizzled cheek. "But, my little one, why are you cold?"

Claire Rene 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 Rene 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 Clement 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 Rene asked where the great man lived.

"In Paris, ma pet.i.te."

"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 pet.i.te, but he has in his heart the Sons of France."

"And Clement and Fernand and Alphonse also?"

Claire Rene waited while Jacques pa.s.sed his fingers through her hair.

"Yes, ma pet.i.te," he said at last.

Claire Rene 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?"