The Scarecrow and Other Stories Part 46

"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. Sacre, 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 ma.s.s 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 cure 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. Sacre, 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 voila--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 cure 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 pa.s.sed. 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!"

"Sacre, 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, antic.i.p.ating 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 "sacre!"

The woman was the first to speak.

"Voila!" 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.