The Scarecrow and Other Stories Part 45

"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? Sacre, 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 d.a.m.ned 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. G.o.d! 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 p.r.o.nounced. 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.

"Sacre, but I thought you were about to sleep." The tone sounded as if it might be angry. "I a.s.sure 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. G.o.d 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 ma.s.s 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. Sacre, 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 G.o.d 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 poppyc.o.c.k--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 hoa.r.s.ely in the man's throat.