ALVMNW BOOK FVND
THE SCARECROW AND
OTHER STORIES
THE SCARECROW
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
G. RANGER WORMSER
NEW YORK
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY
All Rights Reserved
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE SCARECROW l
MUTTER SCHWEGEL 2I
HAUNTED 37
FLOWERS
THE SHADOW 8l
THE EFFIGY IO 5
THE FAITH I2 5
YELLOW 47
CHINA-CHING l6 3
THE WOOD OF LIVING TREES 187
BEFORE THE DAWN 2I1
THE STILLNESS 22 9
THE SCARECROW AND
OTHER STORIES
THE SCARECROW
THE SCARECROW
BEN"
The woman stood in the doorway of the ram
shackle, tumble-down shanty. Her hands were
cupped at her mouth. The wind blew loose, whitish
blond wisps of hair around her face and slashed the
faded blue dress into the uncorseted bulk of her
body.
"Benny oh, Benny "
Her call echoed through the still evening.
Her eyes staring straight before her down the
slope in front of the house caught sight of some
thing blue and antiquatedly military standing waist
deep and rigid in the corn field.
"That ole scarecrow, * she muttered to herself,
"that there old scarecrow with that there ole uni
form onto him, too !"
The sun was going slowly just beyond the farthest
hill. The unreal light of the skies reflected colors
held over the yellow, waving tips of the corn field.
"Benny," she called again. "Oh Benny!"
And then she saw him coming toward her trudg
ing up the hill.
She waited until he stood in front of her.
"Supper, Ben," she said. "Was you down in the
south meadow where you couldn t hear me call?"
3
4 THE SCARECROW
"Naw."
He was young and slight. He had thick hair and
a thin face. His features were small. There was
nothing unusual about them. His eyes were deep-
set and long, with the lids that were heavily fringed.
"You heard me calling you?"
"Yes, maw."
He stood there straight and still. His eyelids
were lowered.
"Why ain t you come along then? What ails
you, Benny, letting me shout and shout that way?"
"Nothing maw."
"Where was you?"
He hesitated a second before answering her.
"I was to the bottom of the hill."
"And what was you doing down there to the bot
tom of the hill? What was you doing down there,
Benny?"
Her voice had a hushed tenseness to it.
"I was watching, maw."
"Watching, Benny?"
"That s what I was doing."
His tone held a guarded sullenness.
" Tain t no such a pretty sunset, Benny."
"Warn t watching no sunset."
"Benny!"
"Well." He spoke quickly. "What d you want
to put it there for? What d you want to do that
for in the first place?"
"There was birds, Benny. You know there was
birds."
THE SCARECROW 5
"That ain t what I mean. What for d you put
on that there uniform?"
"I ain t had nothing else. There warn t nothing
but your grand-dad s ole uniform. It s fair in rags,
Benny. It s all I had to put on to it."
"Well, you done it yourself."
"Naw, Benny, naw ! Tain t nothing but an ole
uniform with a stick into it. Just to frighten off
them birds. Tain t nothing else. Honest, tain t,
Benny."
He looked up at her out of the corners of his
eyes.
"It was waving its arms."
"That s the wind."
"Naw, maw. Waving its arms before the wind
it come up."
"Sush, Benny! Tain t likely. Tain t."
"I was watching, maw. I seen it wave and wave.
S pose it should beckon ; s pose it should beckon
to me. I d be going, then, maw."
"Sush, Benny."
"I d fair have to go, maw."
"Leave your mammy? Naw, Ben; naw. You
couldn t never go off and leave your mammy. Even
if you ain t able to bear this here farm you
couldn t go off from your mammy. You couldn t !
Not your maw Benny !"
She could see his mouth twitch. She saw him
catch his lower lip in under his teeth.
"Aw"
"Say you couldn t leave, Benny; say it!"
6 THE SCARECROW
"I I fair hate this here farm!" He mumbled.
"Morning and night; and morning and night.
Nothing but chores and earth. And then some
more of them chores. And always that there way.
So it is! Always! And the stillness! Nothing
alive, nothing! Sometimes I ain t able to stand it
nohow. Sometimes !"
"You ll get to like it ; later, mebbe "
"Naw! naw, maw!"
"You will, Benny. Sure you will."
"I won t never. I ain t able to help fretting.
It s all closed up tight inside of me. Eating and
eating. It makes me feel sick."
She put out a hand and laid it heavily on his
shoulder.
"Likely it s a touch of fever in the blood, Benny."
"Aw ! I ain t got no fever !"
"You ll be feeling better in the morning, Ben."
"I ll be feeling the same, maw. That s just it.
Alway the same. Nothing but the stillness. Noth
ing alive. And down there in the corn field "
"That ain t alive, Benny!"
"Ain t it, maw?"
"Don t say that, Benny. Don t!"
He shook her hand off of him.
"I was watching," he said doggedly. "I seen it
wave and wave."
She turned into the house.
"That ole scarecrow!" She muttered to herself.
"That there ole scarecrow !"
THE SCARECROW 7
She led the way into the kitchen. The boy fol
lowed at her heels.
A lamp was lighted on the center table. The
one window was uncurtained. Through the naked
spot of it the evening glow poured shimmeringly into
the room.
Inside the doorway they both paused.
"You set down, Benny."
He pulled a chair up to the table.
She took a steaming pot from the stove and
emptying it into a plate, placed the dish before him.
He fell to eating silently.
She came and sat opposite him. She watched
him cautiously. She did not want him to know that
she was watching him. Whenever he glanced up
she hurried her eyes away from his face. In the
stillness the only live things were those two pair
of eyes darting away from each other.
"Benny !" She could not stand it any longer.
"Benny just you just you "
He gulped down a mouthful of food.
"Aw, maw don t you start nothing. Not no
more to-night, maw."
She half rose from her chair. For a second she
leaned stiffly against the table. Then she slipped
back into her seat, her whole body limp and re
laxed.
"I ain t going to start nothing, Benny. I ain t
even going to talk about this here farm. Honest
I ain t."
"Aw this here farm I"
8 THE SCARECROW
"I ve gave the best years of my life to it."
She spoke the words defiantly.
"You said that all afore, maw."
"It s true," she murmured. "Terrible true. And
I done it for you, Benny. I wanted to be giving you
something. It s all I d got to give you, Benny.
There s many a man, Ben, that s glad of his farm.
And grateful, too. There s many that makes it
pay."
"And what ll I do if it does pay, maw? What ll
I do then?"
"I I don t know, Benny. It s only just be
ginning, now."
"But if it does pay, maw? What ll I do? Go
away from here?"
"Naw, Benny . Not away . What d you
go away for, when it pays? After all them years
I gave to it?"
His spoon clattered noisily to his plate. He
pushed his chair back from the table. The legs
of it rasped loudly along the uncarpeted floor. He
got to his feet.
"Let s go on outside," he said. "There ain t
no sense to this here talking and talking."
She glanced up at him. Her eyes were narrow
and hard.
"All right, Benny. I ll clear up. I ll be along in
a minute. All right, Benny."
He slouched heavily out of the room.
She sat where she was, the set look pressed on
THE SCARECROW 9
her face. Automatically her hands reached out
among the dishes, pulling them toward her.
Outside the boy sank down on the step.
It was getting dark. There were shadows along
the ground. Blue shadows. In the graying skies
one star shone brilliantly. Beyond the mist-slurred
summit of a hill the full moon grew yellow.
In front of him was the slope of wind-moved corn
field, and in the center of it the dim, military figure
standing waist deep in the corn.
His eyes fixed themselves to it.
"Ole uniform with a stick into it."
He whispered the words very low.
Still standing there still. The same wooden
attitude of it. His same, cunning watching of it.
There was a wind. He knew it was going over
his face. He could feel the cool of the wind across
his moistened lips.
He took a deep breath.
Down there in the shivering corn field, standing in
the dark, blue shadows, the dim figure had quivered.
An arm moved swaying to and fro. The other
arm began swaying swaying. A tremor ran
through it. Once it pivoted. The head shook
slowly from side to side. The arms rose and fell
and rose again. The head came up and down and
rocked a bit to either side.
"I m here " he muttered involuntarily. "Here."
The arms were tossing and stretching.
He thought the head faced in his direction.
The wind had died out.
io THE SCARECROW
The arms went down and came up and reached.
"Benny "
The woman seated herself on the step at his side.
"Look!" He mumbled. "Look!"
He pointed his hand at the dim figure shifting
restlessly in the quiet, shadow-saturated corn field.
Her eyes followed after his.
"Oh Benny "
"Well " His voice was hoarse. "It s mov
ing, ain t it? You can see it moving for yourself,
can t you? You ain t able to say you don t see it,
are you?"
"The wind " She stammered.
"Where s the wind?"
"Down there."
"D you feel a wind? Say, d you feel a wind?"
"Mebbe down there."
"There ain t no wind. Not now there ain t!
And it s moving, ain t it? Say, it s moving, ain t
it?"
"It looks like it was dancing. So it does. Like
as if it was making itself dance "
His eyes were still riveted on those arms that
came up and down ; up and down ; and reached.
"It ll stop soon now." He stuttered it more to
himself than to her. "Then it ll be still. I ve
watched it mighty often. Mebbe it knows I watch
it. Mebbe that s why it moves "
"Aw Benny "
"Well, you see it, don t you? You thought there
was something the matter with me when I come and
THE SCARECROW n
told you how it waves and waves. But you seen
it waving, ain t you?"
"It s nothing, Ben. Look, Benny. It s stopped!"
The two of them stared down the slope at the
dim, military figure standing rigid and waist deep in
the corn field.
The woman gave a quick sigh of relief.
For several moments they were silent.
From somewhere in the distance came the harsh,
discordant sound of bull frogs croaking. Out in the
night a dog bayed at the golden, full moon climbing
up over the hills. A bird circled between sky and
earth hovering above the corn field. They saw its
slow descent, and then for a second they caught the
startled whir of its wings, as it flew blindly into the
night.
"That ole scarecrow!" She muttered.
"S pose " He whispered. "S pose when it
starts its moving like that; s pose some day it
walks out of that there corn field! Just naturally
walks out here to me. What then, if it walks out?"
"Benny!"
"That s what I m thinking of all the time. If it
takes it into its head to just naturally walk out here.
What s going to stop it, if it wants to walk out after
me; once it starts moving that way? What?"
"Benny ! It couldn t do that! It couldn t!"
"Mebbe it won t. Mebbe it ll just beckon first.
Mebbe it won t come after me. Not if I go when it
beckons. I kind of figure it ll beckon when it wants
me. I couldn t stand the other. I couldn t wait
12 THE SCARECROW
for it to come out here after me. I kind of feel it ll
beckon. When it beckons, I ll be going."
"Benny, there s sickness coming on you."
" Tain t no sickness."
The woman s hands were clinched together in her
lap.
"I wish to Gawd" She said "I wish I ain t
never seen the day when I put that there thing up
in that there corn field. But I ain t thought nothing
like this could never happen. I wish to Gawd I
ain t never seen the day "
" Tain t got nothing to do with you."
His voice was very low.
"It s got everything to do with me. So it has!
You said that afore yourself; and you was right.
Ain t I put it up? Ain t I looked high and low the
house through? Ain t that ole uniform of your
grand-dad s been the only rag I could lay my hands
on? Was there anything else I could use? Was
there?"
"Aw maw !"
"Ain t we needed a scarecrow down there? With
them birds so awful bad? Pecking away at the
corn; and pecking."
" Tain t your fault, maw."
"There warn t nothing else but that there ole uni
form. I wouldn t have took it, otherwise. Poor ole
Pa so desperate proud of it as he was. Him fight
ing for his country in it. Always saying that he was.
He couldn t be doing enough for his country. And
that there ole uniform meaning so much to him.
THE SCARECROW 13
Like a part of him I used to think it, and . You
wanting to say something, Ben?"
"Naw naw I"
"He wouldn t even let us be burying him in it.
Tut my country s flag next my skin ; he told us.
When I die keep the ole uniform. Just like a part
of him, he thought it. Wouldn t I have kept it, fall
ing to pieces as it is, if there d have been anything
else to put up there in that there corn field?"
She felt the boy stiffen suddenly.
"And with him a soldier "
He broke off abruptly.
She sensed what he was about to say.
"Aw, Benny . That was different. Honest, it
was. He warn t the only one in his family. There
was two brothers."
The boy got to his feet.
"Why won t you let me go?" He asked it pas
sionately. "Why d you keep me here? You know
I ain t happy ! You know all the men ve gone from
these here parts. You know I ain t happy! Ain t
you going to see how much I want to go? Ain t you
able to know that I want to fight for my country?
The way he did his fighting?"
The boy jerked his head in the direction of the
figure standing waist deep in the corn field; standing
rigidly and faintly outlined beneath the haunting
flood of moonlight.
"Naw, Benny. You can t go. Naw I"
"Why, maw? W T hy d you keep saying that and
saying it?"
14 THE SCARECROW
"I m all alone, Benny. I ve gave all my best
years to make the farm pay for you. You got to
stay, Benny. You got to stay on here with me. You
just plain got to ! You ll be glad some day, Benny.
Later on. You ll be right glad."
She saw him thrust his hands hastily into his
trouser pockets.
"Glad?" His voice sounded tired. "I ll be
shamed. That s what I ll be. Nothing, d you
hear, nothing but shamed!"
She started to her feet.
"Benny " A note of fear shook through the
words. u You wouldn t wouldn t go?"
He waited a moment before he answered her.
"If you ain t wanting me to go ; I ll stay.
Gawd! I guess I plain got to stay."
"That s a good boy, Benny. You won t never
be sorry nohow I promise you! I ll be making
it up to you. Honest, I will! There s lots of
ways _rn_!
He interrupted her.
"Only, maw ; I won t let it come after me. If
it beckons I got to go !"
She gave a sudden laugh that trailed off uncer
tainly.
" Tain t going to beckon, Benny."
"It if beckons, maw "
" Tain t going to, Benny. Tain t nothing but
the wind that moves it. It s just the wind, sure.
Mebbe you got a touch of fever. Mebbe you better
go on to bed. You ll be all right in the morning.
THE SCARECROW 15
Just you wait and see. You re a good boy, Benny.
You ll never go off and leave your maw and the
farm. You re a fine lad, Benny."
"If it beckons " He repeated in weary
monotone.
"Tain t, Benny!"
"I ll be going to bed," he said.
"That s it, Benny. Good night."
"Good night, maw."
She stood there listening to his feet thudding up
the stairs. She heard him knocking about in the
room overhead. A door banged. She stood quite
still. There were footsteps moving slowly. A
window was thrown open.
She looked up to see him leaning far out over the
sill.
Her eyes went down the slope of the moonlight-
bathed corn field.
Her right hand curled itself into a fist.
"Ole scarecrow !"
She half laughed.
She waited there until she saw the boy draw away
from the window. She went into the house and
bolted the door behind her. Then she went up the
narrow steps.
That night she lay awake for a long time. The
heat had grown intense. She found herself tossing
from side to side of the small bed.
The window shade had stuck at the top of the
window.
1 6 THE SCARECROW
The moonlight trickled into the room. She could
see the window-framed, star-specked patch of the
skies. When she sat up she saw the round, reddish-
yellow ball of the moon.
She must have dozed, because she woke with a
start. She felt that she had had a fearful, evil
dream. The horror of it clung to her.
The room was like an oven.
She thought the walls were coming together and
the ceiling pressing down.
Her body was covered with sweat.
She forced herself wide awake. She made her
self get out of the bed. She stood for a second un
certain. Then she went to the window.
Not a breath of air stirring.
The moon was high in the sky.
She looked out across the hills.
Down there to the left the acres of potatoes.
Potatoes were paying. She counted on a big
harvest. To the right the wheat. Only the second
year for those five fields. She knew that she had
done well with them.
She thought, with a smile running over her lips,
back to the time when less than half of the place had
been under cultivation. She remembered her dream
of getting the whole of her farm in work. She and
the boy had made good. She thought of that with
savage complacency. It had been a struggle ; a bit
ter, hard fight from the beginning. But she had
made good with her farm.
THE SCARECROW 17
And there down the slope, just in front of the
house, the corn field. And in the center of it, stand
ing waist deep in the corn, the antiquated, military
figure.
The smile slid from her mouth.
The suffocating heat was terrific.
Not a breath of air.
Suddenly she began to shake from head to foot.
Her eyes wide and staring, were fixed on the
moonlight-whitened corn field; her eyes were held
to the moonlight-streaked figure standing in the
ghostly corn.
Moving
An arm swayed swayed to and fro. Backwards
and forwards backwards The other arm
swaying A tremor ran through it. Once it
pivoted. The head shook slowly from side to
side. The arms rose and fell ; and rose again.
The head came up and down, and rocked a bit to
either side.
"Dancing " She whispered stupidly. "Dane-
ing-"
She thought she could not breathe.
She had never felt such oppressive heat.
The arms were tossing and stretching.
She could not take her eyes from it.
And then she saw both arms reach out, and slowly,
very slowly, she saw the hands of them, beckoning.
In the stillness o* the room next to her she
thought she heard a crash.
1 8 THE SCARECROW
She listened intently, her eyes stuck to those reach
ing arms, and the hands of them that beckoned and
beckoned.
"Benny " She murmured "Benny !"
Silence.
She could not think.
It was his talk that had done this Benny s
talk He had said something about it walk
ing out If it should come out ! Moving all
over like that If its feet should start ! If they
should of a sudden begin to shuffle ; shuffle out of
the cornfield !
But Benny wasn t awake. He couldn t see
it. Thank Gawd! If only something would
hold it! If only it would stop ; Gawd!
Nothing stirring out there in the haunting moon
lighted night. Nothing moving. Nothing but the
figure standing waist deep in the corn field. And
even as she looked, the rigid, military figure grew
still. Still, now, but for those slow, beckoning hands.
A tremendous dizziness came over her.
She closed her eyes for a second and then she
stumbled back to the bed.
She lay there panting. She pulled the sheets up
across her face; her shaking fingers working the
tops of them into a hard ball. She stuffed it be
tween her chattering teeth.
Whatever happened, Benny mustn t hear her.
She mustn t waken, Benny. Thank Heaven, Benny
was asleep. Benny must never know how, out there
THE SCARECROW 19
in the whitened night, the hands of the figure slowly
and unceasingly beckoned and beckoned.
The sight of those reaching arms stayed before
her. When, hours later, she fell asleep, she still
saw the slow-moving, motioning hands.
It was morning when she wakened.
The sun streamed into the room.
She went to the door and opened it.
"Benny" She called. "Oh, Benny."
There was no answer.
"Benny" She called again. "Get on up. It s
late, Benny!"
The house was quiet.
She half dressed herself and went into his room.
The bed had been slept in. She saw that at a
glance. His clothes were not there. Down in the
field because she d forgotten to wake
him .
In a sudden stunning flash she remembered the
crash she had heard.
It took her a long while to get to the little closet
behind the bed. Before she opened it she knew it
would be empty.
The door creaked open.
His one hat and coat were gone.
She had known that.
He had seen those two reaching arms! He had
seen those two hands that had slowly, very slowly,
beckoned!
She went to the window.
Her eyes staring straight before her, down the
20 THE SCARECROW
slope in front of the house, caught sight of some
thing blue and antiquatedly military standing waist
deep and rigid in the corn field.
"You ole scarecrow !" She whimpered.
"Why re you standing there?" She sobbed.
"What re you standing still for now?"
MUTTER SCHWEGEL
MUTTER SCHWEGEL
HE was tremendously disappointed. The house
was empty. He had thought it looked unin
habited from the outside. It made him a bit dreary
to have his people away like this. That uncertain
feeling came over him again. The uncertain feeling
never quite left him of late. He was conscious of
it most of the time. It formed an intangible back
ground to all. his other thought.
He decided he would go down to the lodge pres
ently. He was certain to find Bennet at the lodge.
And Bennet s wife; and Bennet s three children.
He grinned as he thought of Bennet chasing his
children out of his gardens. He could imagine the
old gardener s gladness at his homecoming.
Going quickly up the last flight of stairs, he could
see that the door of his room stood ajar. He
wondered at the yellow glow of light trickling in a
long narrow stream out into the dark of the hall.
He went rushing along the corridor.
He pushed the door open.
The same old room. The familiar, faded wall
paper. The high, mahogany bed. The hunting
print he had so cherished on the wall facing him.
The table just as he had left it; the books piled in
neat stacks on its polished surface. The lamp stand-
23
24 THE SCARECROW
ing lighted among the books. The two big arm
chairs.
He took a deep breath of surprise.
Some one was seated in the chair facing from him.
He saw the top of a man s head. He had a dim
recognition of feet sprawling from under the chair.
On either arm of the chair rested a man s hand.
There was something he knew about those hands;
the prominent knuckles; the long, well made fingers.
The heavy, silver signet ring on the smallest finger
of the left hand was a ring he had often seen.
He crossed the room.
"Otto !"
Standing there in front of Kurz, he wondered at
the change in him. He looked so much older.
There was no trace left of the boyishness which he
had always associated with Otto Kurz. There were
gray streaks in Kurz s heavy hair; gray at the
temples of the wide forehead; gray behind the ears.
The mustache and beard were threaded with
grayed hairs.
He was astonished to find Otto Kurz in his room.
"Otto ! I had no idea that you would be
here!"
He could not understand the rigid attitude of the
man s great body; the set mobility of the man s large
hewn features.
He moved a bit so as to stand directly in the line
of those fixed staring eyes. He wanted to interrupt
the wooden expression of those eyes.
"Otto- It was good of you to come."
MUTTER SCHWEGEL 25
Kurz s eyes raised themselves to meet his eyes.
He quivered at the look in Kurz s eyes.
"My God! What is it ?"
The glazed, deadened eyes with the live, dumbed
suffering behind them widened.
"Ach Charlie I"
"What s happened, Otto?"
"I do not know. I was waiting, Charlie
for you to come."
"Good old Otto!"
He saw Kurz s hand with the heavy, silver signet
ring on the smallest finger go up trembling to his
beard. It was the old familiar gesture.
"Good? Did you say good of me, Charlie?"
"Yes, yes!" He insisted eagerly. "Of course it
was good of you to come and meet me."
I_hadtocome."
For he a second he wondered.
"But how did you know? Who told you?; I
only just got here. No one knew. How could you
have known I was coming?"
He heard Kurz sigh; a long sigh that quavered
at the end.
"I? Ach ! how I hoped !"
"That I would come?"
"That you would come, Charlie."
He could not fathom the look in Kurz s eyes. He
had never seen a look like that in those eyes. He
thought that it was not a human look.
"See here, Otto What is it?"
26 THE SCARECROW
Kurz made a little, appealing gesture with his
long, trembling hands.
"Later I will try to tell you "
"Later?"
Kurz nodded his great, shaggy head up and down.
"How did you come in here, Charlie?"
He was surprised at the question.
"How? Why, with my latch key, of course!"
He glanced over at the windows. The blinds
were up. He could see the dark pressing against
the glass; pressing tightly so that it spread. He
started for the window. Kurz s voice stopped him.
"And your family? You have then seen your
family, Charlie?"
He smiled.
"No. Not yet. They weren t here when you
came in, were they?"
"No no! I have seen no one. I could
not bring myself to go before any one. There was
an old man. He was going down the hall. I waited
till he passed. He must have come to light your
lamp."
"Well, old Otto They re not here. I ve
hunted all through the house for them. I rather
think they must have gone down to Surrey. They ve
taken the servants with them. After a bit we ll
walk over to the lodge and ask Bennet where my
people are. That must have been Bennet you saw
up here."
"Then you do not know?"
"Know what?"
MUTTER SCHWEGEL 27
"About your family?"
"But I just told you, Otto; they must ve run down
to our place in Surrey. I only came up here to get
a look at the old room. I ll go down and ask Ben-
net presently."
A quick moan escaped through Kurz s set lips.
A sudden thought flashed to him.
"You, Otto How did you get in here? With
them all away? With the servants gone?"
He saw the muscles of Kurz s face twitch hor
ribly.
"Ach ! You must not ask, Charlie. A little
time, Charlie. There are things I do not myself
know. Later I will try to tell you."
"Things you do not know, Otto?"
Kurz s mouth twisted itself into a distorted grin.
"I do not blame you for ridiculing me, Charlie.
I always thought I knew everything. Later ; you
will see."
"Why not tell me now?"
u No no !" Kurz s voice whined frantically.
"I do not know if you yourself understand."
"I was only trying to help you, old chap."
"Help ! It is that I want. It is that which
brought me here. It is because I must have you help
me."
"You ve only to say what you want."
"Your help"
"You know I ll do whatever I can for you."
"Yes ; I hoped that. I counted on your
help."
28 THE SCARECROW
He waited for Kurz to go on. Kurz sat there
silent. The long, shaking fingers fumbled at each
other.
"Well?"
"Later."
"All right I don t know what you re driving
at."
"Are you sure you do not know ?"
"But If you don t want to tell me now; why,
tell me in your own good time, old fellow."
"Yes. You are not angry? You do not care if
I say it later?"
"Of course I don t care."
"Not care If you knew ; if it is
true ; you will care !"
He could not make out what Kurz meant.
"It s mighty nice seeing you," he said after a
second s silence. "It s been a long time. Years
since I ve seen you."
"I came though, Charlie; I had to come,
Charlie."
"I m jolly well glad you did!"
"You knew I would come."
He drew his brows together in a perplexed frown.
"I knew we would meet sometime."
"Yes. Sometime."
"And the sometime s now. Eh, Otto?"
"Now?" Kurz s big body strained forward.
"What is it, Charlie; this now ?"
The frown stayed over his eyes.
"We were bound to come together again, old
MUTTER SCHWEGEL 29
Otto. You and I were pretty good pals back there
at your university. What a time we two had to
gether ! And old Mutter Schwegel ! How old Mut
ter Schwegel fussed over us! How she took care of
us! It all seems like yesterday !"
Kurz got out of his chair.
"Old Mutter Schwegel ;" he muttered.
"Dear old Mutter Schwegel !"
Kurz s eyes stole away from his face.
"Later I shall tell you of Mutter Schwegel too."
"And the talks we used to have ! The night
long talks. We settled the affairs of the world
nicely in those days. Didn t we, old Otto?"
"The affairs of the world "
"And old Mutter Schwegel coming in to put out
the light. And then standing there to hear what we
had to say of life and of death."
"Of life and of death."
"And not being able to tear herself away to go
to bed. She thought we were wise, Otto. She used
to drink in every word we said. And then she d
scold us for staying up all night. Old Mutter
Schwegel. I ve thought of her often "
Kurz made a movement toward him.
"And of me, Charlie? You had thought of
me?"
"I say, rather* ! Many a time when they
called me back from the university even after I
went out to France I thought of you."
His mind was muddled a bit. He put it down to
the excitement of his coming home. That uncertain
3 o THE SCARECROW
feeling came over him again quite strongly. But
he had thought of Otto. He remembered he had
thought of Otto a lot.
"And what was it you thought of me, Charlie?"
It came back to him that there had been one time
when he had thought of Otto particularly. That
one time when something tremendous had happened
to him. He could not quite think what. He knew
he had been glad when he thought of Otto because
he had been spared inflicting the thing on him.
He could not get it clear.
He avoided looking at Kurz.
"Why ; why, I wondered what you were doing.
All that sort of thing. You know what I mean."
"Yes. I know. I did go into the army, Charlie.
It was that sort of thing you meant, Charlie?"
He felt himself start.
"I was afraid you would do that;" he said invol
untarily.
"Yes. I, too, was afraid."
Kurz s voice was low.
"You? Afraid?"
"Ach, Charlie! You know it. The fear it was
not for myself!"
He walked over to the window. He stood there
looking down at the huge boxwood hedges looming
in thick gray bulks up from the smudging reach of
the heavily matted shadows.
He turned.
"You funked meeting me in war?"
MUTTER SCHWEGEL 31
"Ach ! God forbid ! That I should meet
you in war !"
"I too;" he said it quickly. "I too was afraid
that I should come upon you. It haunted me ; that
fear I might harm you. It stayed with me ; day
and night. I shouldn t want to hurt you, Otto. I
I prayed." It came back to him how often he had
prayed it. "I always prayed that it might never
be you!"
u Yes ; I know."
He went and stood close beside Kurz. He found
himself staring at Kurz intently.
"But you re here; in England. I say, did they
make you a prisoner? Could my people get parole
for you?"
u No. I do not think they do that here in your
country. I do not need parole, Charlie."
"I thought perhaps "
"No!"
"But how did you get here, then?"
"Charlie ; Charlie ! ach ! will you not
then wait?"
"Come, come, old Otto. YouVe got something
to tell me. If you don t want to say how you got
here, why, all right. Only, you d best get it off
your mind. Whatever it is you d better come out
and say what you came to say."
Kurz slid back into the chair again.
The room was still. Heavy with silence.
"Yes. I ll tell you if I can. Charlie, it is hard
to say."
32 THE SCARECROW
He tried to help Kurz.
"It s about this war of ours; that s it, isn t it?"
"About the war? Yes !"
"Then tell me."
He saw Kurz s massive shoulders jerking.
"How can I tell you ? I do not think
you understand. I do not even know if it is what
I think it is. I cannot reason it out to myself. The
power of reasoning has left me. I had no other
knowledge than my reasoning. I do not know.
Now, I do not know where I am or what I
am:"
The maddened urge of Kurz s words struck him.
"You re here, old Otto;" he said it reassuringly.
"Here with me. In my room. In England. You re
with me, Otto!"
"Yes with you." And then beneath his breath
he whispered: "Where are you ?"
He caught the smothered insistence of that last
sentence. He smiled, forcing his lips to smile.
"Standing right in front of you, old man. Wait
ing for you to say what you came to "
Kurz interrupted him.
"I had to come. I felt that I must come. I
came, Charlie. I got myself here, Charlie."
"Quite right, Otto."
"I want you to know first that I thought of you.
That I was, as you say you were, afraid I might in
some way injure you. I want to tell you that first."
"Good old sentimental Otto!"
"Sentimental? Ach! I am not sentimental.
MUTTER SCHWEGEL 33
But I do not think you can understand how much you
were to me back there at the university. I do not
think you yourself knew how much you joyed in
things. How happy your kind of thought made
you."
He laughed.
"I always managed to have a rather corking time
of it," he admitted.
"You loved everything so," Kurz went on. "At
night when we talked it was you who believed in
what you said. It was you who saw so clearly how
^vell all things of life were meant. It was always
I who questioned."
"But, I say, old Otto, your mind was so quick;
so brilliant. You could pick flaws where I never
knew they existed."
"It was you who had so much of faith, Charlie."
"How we did talk;" he said it to himself. "Talk
and talk until old Mutter Schwegel, who was so keen
for us, grew tired of listening and came and turned
out the lamp."
"And how you spoke ever of your beliefs," Kurz s
voice was hoarse. "It was so easy for you to know.
You never questioned. You believed. It ended
there, with your belief. You were so near to what
you thought. It was a part of you. I I stood
away from all things and from myself. I would
tell you that the mind should reason. I stayed out
side with my criticism, while you ach, Charlie!
How you did know!"
"And how you laughed at me for that!"
34 THE SCARECROW
"But now, I do not laugh!" Kurz protested with
wearied eagerness. "Now I come to you. I ask
you if you know those things now?"
"What things, Otto?"
"The things of life. The things of death."
"I know what I always knew," he said slowly.
"I know that life is meant to live fully and un-
derstandingly and that death is meant to live on;
fully and understandingly."
4 And you do understand now?"
"I understand that always."
"You would not be afraid?"
"Of what?"
"Of death?"
"No."
He stared out of the window.
The dense, opaque shadows pressing down on
the garden. The shadows hanging loose and thick
on the high, boxwood hedges. The dark, smooth,
night sky.
And suddenly a faint tremor ran through him
from head to foot. He pressed his face close to
the glass. His hands went up screening a small
space for his eyes.
In the still block of shadows, in the black mass
of them, he had seen something; something had
moved against the quiet clumping shadows.
"I say," he whispered. "There s some one com
ing up through the garden."
"Yes yes."
They were silent for a long time.
MUTTER SCHWEGEL 35
Once he looked at Kurz huddled in the arm
chair; his face white and drawn; his eyes staring
before him.
He thought he heard footsteps coming softly
up the stairs; footsteps that came lightly and hesi
tated and then came on again.
"Charlie!" Kurz stammered. "Charlie !"
He felt that some one was standing in the open
doorway.
He turned.
His eyes took in the well known figure. The
sweet face with its red cheeks and its framing white
hair. The short body. The blue eyes that were
fixed on him.
"Mutter Schwegel!" He shouted.
Kurz leaped to his feet.
"What!"
He started for the door.
"Mutter Schwegel, who would have thought of
your coming here. It has been a long time. I say!
But I am glad."
"Stop !" Kurz s voice thundered behind him.
He wheeled to look at Kurz.
Kurz s eyes were riveted on the woman standing
in the doorway.
"Aren t you glad to see Mutter Schwegel?" He
asked. "When we ve been talking of her all night?"
Kurz was muttering to himself.
"Mutter Schwegel ;" Kurz mumbled. "Mut
ter Schwegel I It is that I wanted to
tell you about Mutter Schwegel. It is as
36 THE SCARECROW
I thought. It is ach ! it is then that
way with us !
He felt that the woman was coming into the
room.
He turned and looked at her.
"Mutter Schwegel is dead;" Kurz stam
mered.
He saw that the old woman smiled.
"She is dead. Dead !" Kurz mumbled.
He smiled back at her.
"Dead ;" Kurz s voice droned shaking.
He saw the old woman go to the table.
He and Kurz watched her take the lamp up in
her hands. He and Kurz saw her fingers fumbling
at the wick. Kurz s quivering face stood out in
the lamplight. The old woman was smiling
quietly.
They saw her try to put out the light.
The lamp still burned.
"Mutter Schwegel is dead !" Kurz s voice
quavered; and then it screamed. "Dead ," he
shrieked ; "we are all of us dead !"
That uncertain feeling came over him. And sud
denly it went quite from him.
HAUNTED
HAUNTED
HE lived quite alone in the stone built shanty
perched on the highest pinnacle of the great
sun bleached chalk cliffs. All about him, as far as
the eye could reach, lay the flat, salt marshes with
their dank, yellowed grasses. Against the inland
horizon three, gaunt, thin-foliaged trees reared
themselves from the monotonously even soil. Over
head the cloud splotched blue gray sky, and below
him the changing, motion pulled, current swirling
depths of the blue green sea. And at all times of
the day and the night, the wild whirring of the sea
gulls wings and the uncanny inhuman piercing sound
of their shrieking.
He had lived there since that day when the fish
erman had pulled him half drowned out of the sea.
He could never remember where he had come from,
or what had happened. All that he ever knew was
that far out by the nets in the early morning they
had come upon him and had brought him in to shore.
Naturally, the fishermen had questioned him; but
his vagueness, his absolute lack of belief that he
had ever been anything before they had snatched
him from the waters, had frightened them so that
since that day they had left him severely alone. Fish
ing folk have strange, superstitious ideas about cer-
39
40 THE SCARECROW
tain things. He had borne the full weight of their
credulous awe. Perhaps because he, himself,
thought as they thought. That he was something
come from the sea, and of the sea, and always be
longing to the sea.
He had built himself the stone shanty upon the
highest pinnacle of those waste grown chalk cliffs;
and he had stayed on and on, year in and year out,
close there to the sea.
In winter for a livelihood he made baskets from
the reeds he had picked in the swamps about him.
In the summer he sold the vegetables he grew in
the tiny truck garden behind his house. Somehow
he managed to eke out a living.
The fishing folk in the small village at the foot
of the cliffs saw him come and go along their nar
row streets, morose and taciturn. He never spoke
to any of them unless he had to. They in their
turn avoided him with their habitual superstitious
uneasiness. He went to and fro between his shanty
and the village store when the need arose. The rest
of the time he sat in front of his iron bolted door
staring and staring down at the sea.
Daybreak and noon. Evening and night he sat
there.
When the sky above was tinged with the first
streaking colors of the dawn he watched the ghostly
gray expanse of the ocean. When the sun was high
in the heavens he looked steadily at the light-flecked
spotted swells of the waves. When the shadows
began to creep up from the earth he stared at the
HAUNTED 41
greater blackness that swam in glistening undulat
ing darkness to him from across the water. And
at night his eyes strained through the fitful gloom
at the pitchy, turbulent sea.
It was like that in all kinds of weather. The
spring tides, with their quick changes from calm to
storm, and the slender silver crescent of the new
moon hanging just above the horizon. The long
summer laziness of the green ocean with its later
gigantic flame-red moons and the wide yellow streak
of phosphorescent light that streamed in moving rip
ples to him; the chill, lashing spray in autumn. The
foam-covered seething breadth of it in winter when
the blackness of the low night skies and the dark
ness of the high tides were as one menacing roaring
turmoil churning itself into white spumed frenzy.
It always held him.
He was a man of one idea: The sea. He was a
man who drew his life from one source: The sea.
It had taken his body and had tried to drown it; the
sea had for that short time caught and gripped his
soul. The slimy, wet touch of it was seared into
him.
It fascinated him; it kept him near it so that
he could not have gotten away from it, had he had
the courage to want to get away. It kept him
there as though he belonged to it; as though it
knew he belonged to it; and knew that he knew it.
And always and ever the sea haunted him.
The fishing men coming home late at night across
the water had grown used to steering their course
42 THE SCARECROW
by the unreal light that trickled out to them from
the shanty on the top of the cliffs. And in the dawn
when they pushed their smacks off from the long,
hard beach to sail out to the nets, they knew that
from the high precipices above them the man was
watching.
And outwardly they laughed at him; even when
in their hearts they feared the thing they thought
he was.
They could not understand him. They, who
made their living from the sea, could not understand
how he could be content to live the way he was liv
ing. They could not have known that he would in
finitely rather have died than to have taken one
thing from out the sea from which he had already
filched his soul.
His enslavement by it had made him understand it
a lot better than they understood it.
And so he lived the stupid, hypnotized life of one
who is held so enchained and cowed that he could
not think for himself, or of himself. Until that day
when he first met Sally.
It was a sunny day late in the autumn that he stood
in front of the weather beaten wooden hut of the
village store, his arms filled with baskets. And as
he stood there, Sally Walsh came from the store and
out into the street.
She had seen the man a hundred times but she had
never seen him so close. She stopped short and
stared quite frankly at the bigness of him; at the
heavily matted hair clinging so damply to his fore-
HAUNTED 43
head; and at the white face so strange to her beside
the sun-burned faces she had always seen. It was
when, quite suddenly, he looked at her and she saw
the odd blue green sea colored eyes of him, that she
started to hurry on.
She had gotten half way down the street when he
overtook her.
"D you want anything of me?" He asked it,
his blue green eyes going quickly over her slight
form, her small face, and resting for a second curi
ously upon her masses of coiled golden hair.
I_? why no."
"You sure?"
"Sure."
She went on her way again and he stood there
watching her go; then he turned abruptly and
walked slowly back to the store.
It was not so long after that when he met her for
the second time.
She was on her knees in the yard in front of her
father s house mending the tar-covered fishing nets
with quick deft fingers. He stopped at the gate.
Feeling the intensity of his blue green eyes upon her,
she looked up and saw him.
She got to her feet.
"It s a nice morning."
She spoke to him first.
"Yes"; he said,
"You live up there?" She pointed a bare browned
arm up toward the sun bleached chalk cliffs. "By
yourself?"
44 THE SCARECROW
"Yes,"
"You ain t got a boat?"
"No."
"They say you don t ever fish. Why don t you,
Mister?"
"I I ain t the one to fish."
"Want to help me with these here nets?"
"I I can t do that."
"It ain t hard, Mister."
"I_can tdoit."
"Come on in; I ll show you how."
He opened the gate and went into the yard and
then he stood there just looking down at her.
"I wouldn t touch no net "
Her brows drew together in a puzzled frown.
"You mean you don t like fishing?"
Somehow he did not want her to know.
"I ain t the one to take no sea-thing
away from the sea."
"Oh;" she said, not understanding.
They were silent a moment.
"You sell baskets ?" She asked him.
"D you want one?"
"Mebbe. Got a medium-sized one?"
"Got a lot."
"Mebbe I could use one."
"I d like mighty well to to give you one, little
girl"
"Why, I ain t a little girl, Mister. I I thought
I d mebbe buy "
He interrupted her.
1 1 AUNTED 45
"You ll not buy one off of me. I ll bring you one
; if you like."
"A medium-sized one."
"I ll bring it to you ; to-morrow."
Thanks."
"Good-by, little girl."
u Good-by, Mister."
At the end of the street he turned to look back.
She was on her knees working at her mending of
the nets again. She looked very small kneeling there
on the hard brown earth with the straggling lines of
squat weather darkened shanties trailing behind her
out onto the edge of the yellow sanded beach, and
the clear unbroken blue of the autumn skies above.
She glanced up and then she waved her hand at him.
He went slowly along the narrow pathway that
wound through the sharp crevices of the chalk cliffs
to the back of his own stone built shanty.
That night he stood staring out at the sea. The
moon was on the wane. It hung very low in the sky
so that the red-gold streak of it seemed to dip into
the water. A cold northeast wind lashed over the
waves. Dark swollen purplish clouds raced together
in an angry mass. The sea itself was black but for
the tossing gigantic waves with their dead white
crests of spraying foam. The pounding of them on
the beach below him vibrated in his ears. The sea
gulls were flying heavily close to the earth; their in
human, piercing shrieking filling the air.
The little girl had spoken to him.
He turned from the sea then. He went into his
46 THE SCARECROW
shanty. He bolted the great iron bolts of the door
and braced himself against it as if he were shutting
something out; something that he feared; some
thing that was certain to come after him. He
crouched there shivering and shuddering. The
pounding of the sea was in his ears. The wind that
came from the ocean whistled and wailed shrilly
around and around the house. He leaned there ;
his back to the door; his hands pressing stiff fingered
against it; his lips moving, mumbling dumbly. His
eyes, the color of the sea, stared blindly before him.
The rumbling roar of the rising tide; the thundering
boom of it. And in the sudden lull of the wind the
hiss of the seething spray.
The sea was angry.
He thought with a kind of paralyzing terror that
it was angry with him. It was calling to him.
The lashing of the big waves demanded him. The
sonorous drumming of it. He had never before de
nied its call. The persistent thudding of it there at
the base of the chalk cliffs. It was insisting that he
belonged to it. The inhuman piercing shrieks of the
circling sea-gulls mocked him. They knew that he
belonged to the sea. How could he even think of
that golden haired little girl who had spoken to
him
The sea was angry.
He tore at the iron bolts and flinging the door
wide open he rushed out to the edge of the chalk
cliffs. And as he stood there the clouds dwindled
in a vaporous haze away from the skies. The thin
HAUNTED 47
red-gold line of the waning moon grew brighter.
The sea lay foam flecked and calm beneath the dark
heavens. And at the base of the chalk cliffs the
water lapped and lapped with a strange insidious
sound.
And the next day he sat there in front of his
shanty, his reeds in his hands, his fingers busy with
his basket weaving; making big baskets and small
baskets; and his eyes, blue green and strained, were
fixed on the tranquil blue green of the water below
him.
For two days he sat there in front of his iron
bolted door that now swung wide open on its rusty
hinges.
The third day he stood upon the edge of the
precipice.
It was a gray fog drenched day. The mist
dripped all about him. The opaque veil of it shut
out everything in wet obliteration. He stood quite
still knowing that beneath its dank dribbling thick
ness, the sea churned wildly in its rising tide.
And standing there motionless he heard a voice
calling through the quiet denseness of the fog. A
voice coming from a distance and muffled by the
mist. He started. It was her voice calling to him
from the narrow pathway that wound up the chalk
cliffs to the back of his shanty.
"Mister oh, Mister."
He reached his hand out in front of him trying to
break the saturating cover of the fog. He went
stumbling unseeingly toward the rear of the house.
48 THE SCARECROW
"Mister oh, Mister."
The rear of the shanty. His feet sank down into
the turned soil of the truck garden. He stood still.
"Here."
"Mister;" the voice of her was nearer. "Where
are you ?"
He could not see in front of him. He felt that
she was close.
"Here; little girl."
He saw the faint outline of her shadow then
through the obliterating denseness of the mist.
"Some fog; ain t it, Mister?"
"Stay where you are. There s the precipice."
"I ain t afraid of no precipice."
"Stay where you are !"
He could hear the dripping of the mist over the
window ledges. And then he thought he heard,
smothered by the weight of the fog, the pounding of
the sea.
"You surprised to see me? But you ain t able
to see me. Are you?"
"No."
"You ain t surprised?"
Down there at the base of the chalk cliffs the sea
was still; waiting.
"You shouldn t have come."
"Why you don t mean; you ain t trying to tell
me ? you don t want me here ?"
Great beads of moisture trickled down across his
eyes.
HAUNTED 49
"Little girl ; I just said you shouldn t have
come. Not up here in this kind of weather."
"Oh, the weather!" She laughed. "I ain t the
one to mind the weather, Mister."
Again he reached his hand out in front of him in
an effort to rend the suffocating thickness of the fog.
His fingers touched her arm and closed over it.
From below him came the repeated warning roar
of the waves.
"Can you find your way home by yourself lit
tle girl?"
"I ain t going home, Mister; not yet. I came up
here to get that basket you said you had for me; you
know, the medium sized one."
"I ll give it to you now."
Her hand caught at his hand that lay on her arm,
Her fingers fastened themselves around his and held
tightly. He had never felt anything like that. The
touch of them was cool and fresh, like sea weed that
had just drifted in from the sea.
And then from far off across the water came the
shrill, piercing shriek of a gull.
He felt her start.
"That s only a sea-gull, little girl."
"I know, Mister. But don t it sound strange; al
most as if it were the sea itself; calling for some
thing."
For a second he could not speak.
"Why ;" his voice was hoarse, "Why d you say
that?"
50 THE SCARECROW
"I don t know. Sometimes I get to feeling
mighty queer about that water out there."
"You mean ; why you ain t afraid of it, little
girl, are you?"
"Afraid? There ain t nothing that I m afraid
of, Mister. Why, I d go anywhere and not be
afraid"
He repeated her words very slowly to himself.
"You d go anywhere i and not be
afraid"
He thought then that the fog was lifting. A
sickly, yellowish glow filtered through the heavy
grayness. He could see her more distinctly.
"There s only one thing about the sea, Mister,
that d scare me, and that s "
She broke off abruptly.
"What, little girl?"
"Why, Mister; why, I can t hardly say it. But
there s Pa and there s my brother, Will. If any
thing ever happened ; if the sea ever did any
thing to Pa or Will, why I guess, Mister, I d just
die."
"Don t !" He said quickly. "Don t you talk like
that."
For a second they were silent.
The sun was breaking through the dwindling
thickness of the mist. He could see it lifting in a
faint gray line, uncovering the reach of the flat salt
marshes with their dnnk yellowed grasses; a thin
silver net of it hung for a second between the sky
and the earth, and was gone.
HAUNTED 51
From the base of the chalk cliffs came the sound
of the sea lapping and lapping with insistent cunning.
She dropped his hand and she stood there looking
up to him, scanning his white face with those child
like eyes of hers.
"You live up here because of the sea, Mister?"
"Yes."
"You ever feel the sea s something alive, like
you and me?"
"You feel that too ?"
"Yes," she said slowly, "and I knew you felt it,
because the first time I saw you why you re some
how something like the sea."
His hands clinched at his sides. His breath came
in quick rasping gasps.
"I ll get your basket," he muttered.
He rushed into his one room shanty and caught
Xip the basket nearest to him and went out again to
her.
She took the basket from him in silence. She
slipped the handle of it on to her arm. Her hands
rubbed against each other; the fingers of them twin
ing and intertwining.
"I ll be going now, Mister."
"Yes."
"I ve got to be getting home before Pa and Will
go out to the nets."
"Good-by, little girl."
"Good-by, Mister; and thanks."
He stood there and watched her go from the back
of his stone built shanty down the narrow winding
52 THE SCARECROW
path that lay along the sun bleached chalk cliffs.
She went quickly and lightly down the steep incline,
her small slender figure in its blue print dress, with
the sun bringing out the burnished glints in her
golden hair. His eyes strained after her. In a short
while he lost her from sight.
He went back to his basket making then.
And as he sat there, his fingers weaving and bend
ing the supple reeds, mechanically working them into
shape, he tried to shut out all thought of her; to feel
as though she had never come to him; to rivet his at
tention upon the insistent pounding of the sea that
hurled itself again and again at the base of the
chalk cliffs ; calling and calling to him.
After a while the early deep blue dusk of the
twilight came.
He got stiffly to his feet.
The long moving shadows were quivering in fan
tastic purpled patterns on the ground about him.
Great daubs of them clung in the crevices of the
chalk cliffs. A mat of shadows crept over the flat
salt marshes and through the dank yellowed grasses.
There was a sudden chill in the wind that came to
him from off the water. A flock of screeching sea
gulls wildly beating their wings, rose from the cliffs
and whirred out toward the open sea, the uncanny
piercing sound of their shrieking coming deafeningly
back to him.
He stood there staring at the ocean, his head well
back; his nostrils dilated; his blue green eyes
strangely wide.
HAUNTED 5 ;>
Far in the distance against the graying horizon
he could see the choppy white capped waves racing
over the smooth dark water. Even as he looked the
sea began to rise in great swollen billows. The wind
too was rising. He could hear the distant cry of it.
His heart began to thump wildly. He knew what
was going to happen; just as he always knew. He
could feel what the sea was going to do.
He stood there undecided.
A quick picture came to him of the storm.
He had seen it all before. He had stood there on
the chalk cliffs and watched it all: Watched the
shattered broken logs; the swirling sucking water.
The sea had held him under its spell; had compelled
him to witness its maddened, infuriated stalking of
its prey.
Her people were out there. Her Pa and her
Will. Why had she told him that? Why had she
said if anything ever happened to them she would
die? Why?
He could just make out the stiff sticks of the nets
reaching thin and dark from the surface of the gray
water against the lighter gray skies; and the boats
rowing toward them. The boats with the fishermen.
He could see the slender patches of them rising and
falling with the waves, going slowly to the nets. He
could distinguish the small, dark shadows of the
men, rowing. They had pulled him out of the sea
in that early morning; he who was something come
from the sea, and of the sea; and always belonging
to the sea.
54 THE SCARECROW
To betray the sea
The waves were racing in to the shore. The
thumping, deafening boom of them there at the base
of the chalk cliffs below him.
He tried to tear his eyes away from it. It held
him as it ever held him. It kept him there as though
he belonged to it. As though it knew he belonged to
it; and knew that he knew it. A strange uneasiness
arose within him. Even before he was conscious
of it, he felt that the sea had sensed it. Its insistent
angry pounding threatened him.
She had said that she would die.
Below him the swirling, churning sea.
He turned then and went very slowly down the
narrow, winding path that led along the sun
bleached chalk cliffs. Through the deep blue dusk
of the evening he went, and the gray blotched reach
of the flat salt marshes with their dank yellowed
grasses lay all about him; and overhead the cloud
spotted, moving gray of the sky, and beneath him
the raging sea that called to him; and called.
He never stopped until he came to the weather
darkened shanty where she lived.
He paused then at the gate.
A lighted lamp was in one of the windows on the
ground floor. The soft glow of it streamed in a
long ladder of light out to him in the darkness.
He opened the gate and went haltingly across the
yard, and after a moment s hesitation he knocked at
the door.
At the far end of the street the sea thudded over
HAUNTED 55
the yellow sanded beach; the pale stretch of it com
ing out of the grayness in a long white line.
She answered his knock.
The light from the lamp swept through the open
doorway.
Something in his face terrified her; something
that she had never before seen in those blue green
eyes, the color of the sea.
"What is it? What s happened?"
He stood there just looking down at her.
"Oh, Mister, tell me; please what is it?"
Her two hands went up to her throat and caught
tightly at her neck.
"There s a storm "
She looked out into the quiet, darkening evening.
"A storm?"
"There s a bad storm ; coming."
He could hardly say the words.
She stared up at him ; her childlike eyes were very
wide.
"Will it be soon ?"
He never took his blue green eyes from off her
face.
"It s coming quick."
"They re out Pa and Will."
He said it very quietly then.
"That s why I m here."
"How can we get them back?"
"Oh, little girl;" he muttered. "Little girl"
"How, Mister; how?"
"I ll get a boat/
56 THE SCARECROW
"There s Sam Wilkins smack down there at
the wharf. We could take that."
"Then I ll go after them."
They went from the door together down the
street and out onto the back patch of the wharf.
Through the grayness they could see the boat rock
ing on the water at the farther end. The wail of
the rising wind; the pounding of the sea; and close
to them the muffled, bumping sound of the smack
thrown again and again at the long wooden piles
of the wharf.
For a second they stood quite still.
"I m going," he said.
Her arms went suddenly up around his neck.
Her lips brushed across his. He felt her body
shivering. He caught and held her to him ; and then
he let her go and went quickly to the end of the
wharf and pulled the boat alongside and stepped
into it.
He looked up at her standing there against the
gray sky. He could see the white patches of her
face and her hands and the pale mass of her hair
that the wind had loosened. And down through the
draggling grayness he distinctly saw her childlike
eyes searching for his.
Before he could stop her she was in the boat.
"Get back."
"I m going."
"Quick get back."
"I m going with you."
"You can t ; you don t know."
HAUNTED 57
"I m not afraid. Honest I m not."
u You don t know what it means!"
"I mnot afraid."
"Little girl I ain t going if you go."
"You ve got to go."
He repeated her words.
"I ve got to go."
"If you don t take me with you;" he had never
heard her voice like that "I ll come out myself.
You can t leave me you can t!"
The rain began then. Great drops of it fell into
his face. The whining of the wind was terrific.
"You don t know what it means."
"I do know; oh, God, I do."
He caught up his oars then.
He rowed with all his strength. The whole thing
was so strange to him. Her going. Their being
out on the water. The rowing.
The waves rose in tremendous black swells all
about them. The rain and the spray drenched them.
The wind rocked the small boat. The whistling
wail of it; the lowering cloud sprawled pitchy sky.
He pulled in silence until they came to the nets.
She stood up in the boat and called; again and
again her voice rose into the wind.
"Sit down!" He told her.
A distant shout answered her.
He bent to his oars then till he came to the
cluster of smacks on the other side of the nets.
"Pa ;" she cried.
"Sally ! What you doing here ?"
58 THE SCARECROW
"Pa ; there s a storm."
"I can see that."
"Pa come on back to shore."
"You get on back, Sally. It ll blow over."
She turned to him then.
"You tell him;" she said it desperately. "You
tell him."
He waited until he got just alongside of the fishing
smack.
"It s going to be a bad one."
He said it slowly.
He thought then that the angry swirling of the
sea became more infuriated; that the swell of the
waves was greater. Far in the distance he heard
the inhuman, piercing shriek of the sea-gulls.
"Who s that there, Sally?"
"It s me."
He saw that both of the men in the smack leaned
toward him.
"What?"
"It sit s me."
"You!"
"Go on back, Pa; Will, make him go on back.
Get the others to go; please Pa; please."
For answer he heard the man s shout to the other
boats about the nets.
"Storm lads ; make for shore."
He saw a moment s hesitation in that cluster of
fishing smacks and then one by one he watched them
pull away from the nets and row toward the beach.
HAUNTED 59
He reached out his hand and caught hold of the
other boat s gunwale.
"Make the little girl go back with you."
"Come on, Sally. Hop across there. Pa ll help
you."
"We ll follow you, Pa."
"All right."
"Tell the little girl to go with you!"
"With me?"
"Tell her!"
"You go on, Pa. We ll come right after you."
He felt the boat at his side give a quick lurch.
His hand slipped into the water. He could feel the
sea pulling at it. His own smack rocked perilously
for a second. And then he saw the girl s father and
brother rowing toward the beach.
"What what d you do that for?"
She did not answer him.
A wave broke over the bow of his boat.
In the darkness he could see her crawling on her
hands and knees along the bottom of the smack to
him. He reached down and caught her up in his
arms.
"Will they get back safe?" She whispered it.
"Yes."
"Sure?"
"They re there now."
And then the storm broke. The lightning flashed
in zigzagging, blindly flares across the dark of the
sky. The thunder rumbled in clattering crescendo.
The sea tore and swirled and sucked. Wave after
60 THE SCARECROW
wave broke over the small boat. She rocked and
pitched and swivelled. The oars were washed away.
The rain and the wind stung them with their fury.
The spray cut into their faces. From far off came
the uncanny, inhuman, piercing sound of the sea
gulls shrieking.
He knew then that the time had come.
He held her very close to him.
He had filched his soul from the sea. He who
was something come from the sea, and of the sea;
and always belonging to the sea.
He had betrayed the sea.
"Little girl."
"I m not afraid."
"Little girl."
"I couldn t stay on without you. I always knew
always that some time you d go back."
"You re not scared?"
"Just hold me tight."
The foam covered seething breadth of the water
churning itself into white spumed frenzy. The
dark, lowering skies. The black deep pull of the
sea.
"Tighter"
FLOWERS
FLOWERS
THE night wind brought him the smell of
flowers.
For a moment he fought against the smothering
oppression of the thing he hated; for a second the
same struggle against its stifling weight.
His eyes closed with the brows above them drawn
and tight. His teeth caught savagely at his lower
lip, gnawing at it until the blood came. His hands,
the fingers wide spread, the veins purple and stand
ing out, moved slowly and tensely to his throat.
How he dreaded it! How he abominated the
thing! How he loathed the subtle, insidious fra
grance ! How he abhorred flowers flowers !
With a tremendous, forcing effort he opened his
eyes.
The same garden. The same sweeping reach of
flowers. Flowers as far as he could see. Gigantic
blossoming clumps of rhododendron. Slender, frag
ile lilies of the valley showing white and faint on
the deep green leaves. Violets somewhere. He got
the sickeningly sweet scent of them. Early roses
growing riotously. He detested the perfume of
roses.
Overhead the darkening sky that held in the west
the thin gray crescent of the coming moon.
64 THE SCARECROW
And all through the garden the first dull blue
shadows of evening. Shadows that blurred around
the shapes of flowers; shadows that spread over
the flowers, smearing out the spotting color of them
until they were a gloom-splotched, ghostly mass.
Shadows that brought out in all its pungent power
the assailing, suffocating smell of the flowers.
He stood there waiting.
He could feel his heartbeats throbbing in his
temples. His breath came in long racking gasps.
His one thought was to breathe regularly. One
two He tried to think of something other than his
breathing. The intangible odor of the flowers
choked him with their stealthy cunning.
It was always like this at first. He had always to
contend silently and with all his strength against this
illusive, abominated thing poured out to him by the
flowers.
His strangling intaking of breath. One two
Never in all his life had he been without his hor
ror of flowers; never until now had he known why
he hated them. Lately he had begun to wonder if
they hated him.
It would be better when she came.
They were her flowers. Her flowers that took
all her time; all her thoughts; all her caring and
affection. Her flowers that grew all about her.
Her flowers that held her away from him. He
hated her flowers.
One. Two.
It would be quite all right when she was there.
FLOWERS 65
Her flowers would not harm her.
And then he heard the soft, uneven rustling of her
skirts.
He looked up to see her walking toward him
down the long lane of her flowers. Through the
drenching grayness he could see that she wore the
same light dress that made her tall and clung to her
in folds so that her figure seemed to bend. He could
distinguish the heavy shadowy mass of her un
covered hair. Her eyes, set far apart and dark,
fixed themselves on him. A quick light flooded into
them. In the dusk he saw that her hands were
clasped together and that they were filled with lilies.
"Throw them away," he said when she stood be
side him.
"They re so pretty," she told him, staring down
at the lilies. "You ll let me keep these; just this
once?"
"Throw them away," he repeated. "I can t
stand the sight of them. You know that. Why
must you go on picking the things and picking
them?"
She shrugged her shoulders. Her eyes left his
face.
"I love them," she said simply.
"Love?" He laughed. "How can you love
flowers?"
"Oh, but I can."
"Well, I can t !" He had been wanting her to know
that for a long while.
"Why not?" She asked him.
66 THE SCARECROW
He could not bring himself to tell her why not.
"Throw them away!"
She let the lilies sift through her fingers one by
one. And then the last fell to the ground.
"Are you satisfied?"
"No," he said. "What good does it do, anyway?
The next time it ll be the same again. It always is."
She reached out a hand and touched his arm.
"But I never know when you re coming. If I
knew I wouldn t be picking flowers. I can t help
having them in my hands when you come, if I don t
know, can I?"
"It isn t that."
He covered her hand lying on his arm with his
hand.
"What is it, then?"
She pulled her fingers from under his and drew
away a bit.
He made up his mind to try and tell her.
"It s the flowers. I should have told you long
ago. Even at the beginning when we first When
I first came here, I "
She interrupted him.
"When was that? How long ago?"
"How can I tell? Ages ago."
"It does seem;" she said it slowly. "It does
seem as if you had always come here. I can t re
member the time when you didn t come. It s
strange, isn t it? Because, you know, there was a
time when you weren t here. That was when I be
gan with the flowers."
FLOWERS 67
"I wish you d never begun," he muttered.
"That s what I ve got to say to you. I hate flowers.
I ve always hated them ! I never quite knew why till
I came here and found you loving them so much.
You never think of anything, or talk of anything
but your flowers. If you must know, that s why I
hate them!"
"How silly of you!"
He thought she smiled.
"It s not," he said. "There s nothing silly about
it. I d like to have you think of other things.
There re plenty of other things. I want you to
think of them. I want "
He broke off abruptly.
"What do you want?"
"I I want you I can t say it!"
For a little while they were silent. It grew
darker. The shadows that lay along the ground
moved upward through the bushes of rhododendron.
He watched the fantastic mesh of them shifting
there. The gray of the crescent moon grew faintly
yellow. His eyes roved over the shadow splashed
reach of flowers. The heavy odor of them sickened
him.
"If only you d try to like them!" She said it
wistfully.
"It s no use. I couldn t."
"If you worked among them the way I work,
perhaps you could."
"I tell you I couldn t!"
"But they re so lovely." Her hand went out and
68 THE SCARECROW
touched a rose. "It s taken me years to perfect this
one. You can t see in this light. But during the
day ; why don t you ever come here during the
day?"
"I don t know," he told her quite truthfully.
"During the day," she went on, "you ought
to see it. It s yellow; almost gold. And its center
That s quite, quite pink with the very middle bit al
most scarlet. I love this rose."
He thought then that he could smell the par
ticular fragrance of the one rose permeating subtly
through the odor of all those other flowers. She
loved that yellow and gold and scarlet rose.
"Good heavens," he said, "do stop telling me
how much you love your flowers!"
"If you were with them all the time "
He did not let her finish.
"That s all you do, isn t it? Just care for your
flowers all day long?"
"Why, yes." She was surprised. "Of course it s
all I do. It s all I care about doing. It takes every
minute of my time. You know that, don t you?"
"Yes, I know it." His tone was gruff.
"Then why do you always talk about it like this?"
She asked him. "I ve done it for years. Ever since
I can remember. It s hard work, but I like doing it.
I don t think you know how alone I ve always been.
I m afraid you don t realize that. Not really, any
way. I ve just never had anything to care about un
til I started in with the flowers. I don t know if I
ought to tell you "
FLOWERS 69
She stopped speaking quite suddenly.
"What?"
"I don t think you d like to know what I was go
ing to say."
"Tell me," he insisted.
"Well." She spoke slowly. "Sometimes I feel
as though It s so hard to say. But sometimes
I feel as if the flowers know how much I care and
and as if they care too."
"Why d you say that?"
"I don t quite know. Only they re living things;
they are, aren t they?"
"I suppose they are; but that s no reason for you
to encourage yourself in all those queer ideas about
them."
"Queer ideas?"
"You know the sort of thing I mean."
"I don t. What sort?"
He thought then that her voice had a hurt sound
drifting through it.
"Loving them. For one thing."
"But what can I do? What else have I to love?
I ve just told you how much alone I am. All the
time, really. The flowers are the only things I have.
I ve just told you that."
He waited a second.
"You have me," he said.
u You? But you hardly ever come. I m so lone
some. You can t know what that means. I am
lonely. And you Why, sometimes I think you re,
not real. Not even real "
70 THE SCARECROW
"Don t ! For God s sake don t say that 1"
"I can t help it! I tell you, I can t. It s all right
now. It s always all right when you re here. But
after you go Nothing is real to me; nothing but
the flowers. And you don t want me to care for
them. You keep saying you hate them. They re
all I ve got. Won t you can t you see that?"
"But if Ii come here to stay ?"
"To stay? 11
"Would you want me here?"
He saw her hands move upward until they lay in
two white spots on her breast.
"Want you? If only you knew "
He waited a moment before he said it.
"And you could love me?"
"I ve always loved you."
She spoke in a whisper.
"I ll find a way." He told her. "There must be
a way."
"But how? How?"
"I don t know. I never thought about it before.
I never knew you cared. I thought it was just the
flowers. Nothing but the flowers. I hate the
flowers. The feel of them the sight of them
the smell of them. I couldn t ever come here with
out being suffocated. I was jealous of them; fear
fully jealous."
"And I thought." Her voice was low. "I
thought that because I feel they love
me ; because I love them ; somehow they
brought you here."
FLOWERS 71
"And when I come "
"When?"
Her voice itself trailed to a whisper.
"I will come to you! I will!"
"How can you find me ?"
"Somehow I will!"
"If only you could. I am lonely. Terribly
lonely. If it would be soon."
"It must be soon."
"I ll wait for you always. But if you are
real you ll come soon. It s lonely wait
ing. And I don t even know if you are.
I don t even know."
The Reverend William Cruthers started from his
chair.
Some one had banged the window closed. Some
one had lit the lamp on the center table. Its yellow
light trickled through the room and over the scant
old fashioned furniture and crept upwards across
the booklined walls.
The room was stuffy and close. The smell of
flowers had gone.
"Billy!"
He turned to see his sister rushing across the
room to him. He stooped a bit and caught her in
his arms.
"Why, Gina. I didn t know. Why didn t you
write and tell me? Who brought you up from the
station?"
The girl kissed him hastily and enthusiastically on
either cheek.
72 THE SCARECROW
*A nice welcome home!" She laughed breath
lessly. "I was just about to make a graceful and
silent exit."
"But, Gina, I didn t know."
u Of course you didn t know. You couldn t. I
wouldn t write. I wanted to surprise you. Aren t
you surprised, Billy?"
"Awfully," he conceded.
"Awfully?"
Her brows puckered.
"Very much so, I mean."
"You never do know just what you do mean. Do
you, William?"
"Naturally, I do."
"It wouldn t be natural for you if you did."
The girl slid away from him and went and
perched herself comfortably on the arm of the chair
in which he had been sitting. Her hands were
busy with her hatpins and her eyes that peered up
at him were filled with laughter.
"How did you get up from the station, Gina?"
"Oh, such a lovely way, Billy! And so very ener
getic for me. I walked. Now, what do you know
about that?"
He frowned a bit.
"Very good for you, I don t doubt." He said it
stiffly. "After all the motoring you must have done
with those friends of yours!"
She had gotten her hat off. She sat dangling it
by the brim. The lamplight streaked over her hair.
"Now, don t be nasty, William. And whatever
FLOWERS 73
you do, don t speak to me as if I were a congrega
tion. The Trents are perfectly lovely people, even
if they are terribly rich and not very Christian. And
and Georgie Trent is a sweet boy; and," she
added it hastily. "Wood Mills is a duck of a
place!"
He thrust his hands into his coat pockets.
"I never said it wasn t, Gina."
She paid no attention to him. Her legs were
crossed. Her one foot was swinging to and fro.
Her eyes were fixed speculatively on the foot.
"And you ought to be very glad to have me here
again. Suppose I d listened to Georgie and married
him right off, instead of coming back here. A nice
fix you d have been in. You know perfectly well no
one in all the world does for you as nicely as I do.
You know that, don t you?"
He smiled down at her.
"To be sure I do."
"As a matter of fact," she went on. "When I
came in here you were half, if not altogether, asleep
in this chair."
"I wasn t asleep, Gina."
"Oh, that s what you always say. But I banged
in and you didn t hear me. I lighted the lamp and
you didn t seem particularly conscious of it. And
the window. The window was wide open. I closed
that for you. The wind was bringing in just yards
of those flower smells you hate so."
"Was it, Gina?"
"Huh huh."
74 THE SCARECROW
"You smelled them, then?"
His tone was strangely quiet.
"Of course I did. Come and sit here, Billy."
She wiggled herself into a more comfortable posi
tion on the arm of the chair. "And tell your
onliest sister how much you love her."
He went and sat beside her in the chair. He put
his arm about her waist.
"You re a dear child, Gina."
"I know it!" She snuggled close to him. "And
I ve had the most divine time, Billy. Wood Mills
is a glorious place. There wasn t an awful lot to
do; but whatever we did was great fun."
"You d have a good time anywhere, little sister."
"Would I?"
Her eyes wavered about the room a bit hungrily.
Something in her voice pulled his eyes up to her
face.
"Gina, what is it?"
"Nothing, Billy."
She felt his fingers tighten at her side.
"Aren t you happy here, Gina?"
"Of course I am, Billy!" Her head was thrown
back so that the long line of her throat showed in its
firm molded whiteness. "Only, Billy, I want I
don t think I even know what I want. Only just
sometimes I feel it. A want that perhaps isn t
even mine. It s for something; well, for some
thing that doesn t feel here."
He stroked her hand.
"It s lonesome for you, Gina."
FLOWERS 75
"No, it isn t that. It s just; oh, I guess it s just
that I worry about you."
"Me, Gina?"
"Yes, Billy. Sometimes you look so so starved.
That s what makes me think it s your want I feel ;
yours that you want very much and and Billy,
that you can t get hold of."
"No, Gina! No!"
She pressed her cheek against his.
"Oh, Billy." She spoke quickly. "There was one
place out there at Wood Mills. You wouldn t have
liked it. But it was too wonderful!"
He drew a deep breath of relief at the sudden
change in her voice.
"What was it, Gina? Why wouldn t I have liked
it?"
She fidgeted a bit.
"Why? Oh because."
"Because what, Gina?"
"It was just one big estate, Billy. A girl owns it.
She s an orphan. She s very beautiful. She lives
there all by herself except for a couple of old serv
ants. Claire Trent and I saw her once or twice
when we rode through the place. Claire says she s
sort of queer. She doesn t bother about people.
She doesn t like them, Claire says. She spends all
her time around the place."
"That sounds very strenuous, Gina."
"Oh, it isn t, Billy. It s lovely. The estate is."
"I ve heard the places there are pretty."
"Pretty! But this one, Billy;" in her enthusiasm
76 THE SCARECROW
she leaned eagerly forward. "You couldn t imagine
it! There are miles and miles. And the whole
thing; Claire says the whole year round; it s just
one big mass of flowers."
In spite of himself he pulled his arm away from
the girl s waist.
"Oh, is it?"
"Billy, I know you don t like flowers. But this !
You ve never seen anything like this!"
"There re probably lots and lots of places like
it, little sister."
"Oh, no!" Her tone was vehement. "There
couldn t be. Not such a garden! All rhododen
drons and lilies of the valley ; is anything wrong,
Billy?"
"Nothing. Those flowers grow in all gardens at
this time of the year."
She stared into his blanched face and her brows
drew together in a puzzled frown.
"Not like this, Billy. Really. I ve never seen
such rhododendrons or such lilies. And the violets
and roses!"
He got to his feet suddenly.
"What?" He asked hoarsely. "What flowers
did you say?"
"Why, rhododendrons and lilies, and lilies.
What is it, Billy?"
"Go on, Gina. Go on!"
"Billy!"
"Lilies of the valley and violets, Gina "
"And roses;" she finished mechanically.
FLOWERS 77
"What kind of roses, Gina?"
The puzzled frown left her face.
"Glorious roses, Billy." She was enthusiastic
again. "There ve never been roses like these.
Why, there s one kind of a rose. It s known all over
now. It took her years and years to grow it."
"What sort of a rose, Gina? What sort did you
say?"
"I didn t say, Billy. I don t even know the name
of it. But it s a yellow rose; almost gold. And its
center is pink and and scarlet."
For a moment they were silent.
"Did you see this this woman, Gina often?"
"Oh, once or twice, Billy."
"When, Gina?"
"In the evenings; each time."
"Where was she, Gina?"
"Why, how strange you are, Billy."
"Where, Gina? Tell me, d you hear tell me
where?"
"In her garden, Billy. What s there to get so
excited about?"
He fought for his control then.
"I d like to know, Gina where you saw her and
and"
The girl interrupted him.
"I saw her in the evenings in her garden. She
used to walk down well it looked like a long
lane of flowers. To be exact, Billy, it was always in
the evening and kind of gray. So I couldn t see very
78 THE SCARECROW
much except that she wore a light clingy sort of
dress."
She stopped for a second.
"Yes, Gina?"
His voice was more quiet now.
"I told you she was a bit queer, didn t I?"
"Queer? God! she was lonesome Gina!"
"Yes," the girl caught at his last words. "I ll bet
she was lonesome. Any one would be, living like
that. That s what makes her queer I guess. I saw
her both times with my own eyes come down the
garden with her hands full of flowers. Both times
I saw her stand quite still. And then Claire and I
would see her drop her flowers to the ground. That
was the funny part. She didn t throw them away.
It wasn t that, you know."
"No, Gina."
"She d, well, she d drop them. One by one. As
if"
"As if what, Gina?"
"Oh, as if she were being made to do it."
He went to his knees then. He buried his head
in the girl s lap.
She leaned anxiously forward, her hand smoothing
his hair.
"Billy Billy, dear aren t you well? Billy, tell
me."
He could not bring himself to speak.
"Billy, is this what you do when I come home to
you? Shame on you, Billy! Why why, Billy,
aren t you glad to have me here? Say, aren t you?"
FLOWERS 79
"Thank God!" He whispered. Thank God!"
He got to his feet then.
The girl rose from her chair and clung to him.
"I ve never seen you like this, Billy."
"Listen, Gina;" his voice was low. "When you
go upstairs to take off your things, pack my grip,
little sister. I m going away."
"Away, Billy?"
"Yes, Gina."
"But where, Billy?"
"To a place where I ve wanted to go for a very
Hng long time, little sister."
"But, Billy"
"Will you do that for me? Now, Gina? I I
want to leave."
"When, Billy?"
"As soon as I can, Gina. It must be
soon."
The girl went out of the room very quietly.
He crossed over to the window and threw it open.
Darkness as far as he could see. Darkness in
which were smudged lighter things without shape.
Somewhere in the distance the feathery ends of
branches brushed their leaves to and fro against the
sky.
He knew that the wind was stirring.
He looked up at the heavens. Gray and dark
save where the thin crescent moon held its haunting
yellow light that was slurred over by drifting clouds
and then held again.
He could see the wind driving the clouds.
8o THE SCARECROW
The swish of the wind out there going through
those smudged lighter things without shape.
He leaned far over the sill.
And suddenly the night wind brought him the
smell of flowers.
Gradually the odor of the flowers blending subtly
and faint at first, grew more distinct; heavier.
He stood there smiling.
Flowers
Her flowers
"I m coming;" he whispered. "I m coming
to you now dear "
THE SHADOW
THE SHADOW
HE was colossally vain.
He lived with his wife Ellen, in the small
house on Peach Tree Road.
There was nothing pretentious about the house;
there were any number of similar houses along the
line of Peach Tree Road. For that matter the
house was the kind planted innumerable times in the
numerous suburbs of the large city. Still, it was
his house. His own. That meant a lot to him when
ever he thought of it; and he thought of it often
enough. He liked to feel the thing actually belonged
to him. It emphasized his being to himself.
The house was a two-storied affair built of wood
and white washed. A green mansard roof came
down over the small green shuttered upper windows.
On the lower floor the windows were somewhat
larger with the same solid wooden green shutters.
A gravel path led up to the front door. Two droop
ing willow trees stood on either side of the wicker
gate.
Before the time when his aunt had died and had
left him the house he had not been particularly suc
cessful. At the age of forty-one he had found him
self a hard-working journalist and nothing more.
He had had no ambition to ever be anything else.
83
84 THE SCARECROW
He was at all times so utterly confident that the
work he was doing was quite right; chiefly because
it was the work that he was doing. No man had a
more unbounded faith in himself. At that time he
had not been conscious of his lack of success. Now,
of course, he looked back on it all as a period of de
velopment; something which had prepared him for
this that was even then destined to come.
He told himself that in this small house, away
from the surrounding clatter and nuisances of the
city, he had found time to write; to be himself; to
really express what he knew himself to be.
He had become tremendously well known in that
space of six years. No one ever doubted the genius
of Jasper Wald. He wrote as a man writes who is
actually inspired. His books were read with interest
and surprisingly favorable comment. There was
something different; something singularly appealing
in all of Jasper Wald s works.
At that time his conceit was inordinate. It ex
tended to a sort of personal, physical vanity. In
itself that was grotesque. There was absolutely
nothing attractive in the loosely jointed, stoop-
shouldered body of him; or for that matter in the
narrow head covered with sparse blond gray hair.
The eyes of him were of rather a washed blue
and bulged a bit from out their sockets; the nose
was a singularly squat affair, at the same time too
long. The mouth was unpleasantly small with lips
so colorless and thin that the line of it was like
some weird mark. Yet he was vain of his appear-
THE SHADOW 85
ance. But then his egoism was the keynote of his
entire being.
Some people could not forgive it in him; even
when they acknowledged him as a writer and praised
his work. The man in literature was spoken of as a
mystic, a poet, a possessor of subtlety that was close
to genius. In actual life, Jasper Wald was an out
and out materialist.
As for his wife, Ellen:
She was rather a tall woman; thin but not un
graceful. Her features were good, very regular,
still somewhat nondescript. All but her eyes. Her
eyes were strange; green in color, and so heavily
lidded that one could rarely see the expression of
them. Then, too, she had an odd manner of moving.
There never seemed to be any effort or any abrupt
ness in whatever she did. Even her walk was sin
uous.
He had married her when they both were young.
Through his persistent habit of ignoring her she
had been dwarfed into a nonentity. To have looked
at the woman one would have said that hers was a
distinctive personality unbelievably suppressed. It
would not have been possible for any one living with
Jasper Wald to have asserted himself. Perhaps she
had learned that years before. Certainly his was
the character which predominated; domineered
through the encouragement of his own egoism.
Her attitude toward him was perpetually one of
self-effacement. She stood for his conceit in a pe
culiarly passive way. If it ever irritated her she
86 THE SCARECROW
gave no sign. And he kept right on with his semi-
indulgent manner of patronizing her stupidity.
That is, when he noticed her at all.
She was essential to him in so far as she supplied
all of his physical wants. Those in themselves were
of great importance to Jasper Wald. There was no
companionship between them. Jasper Wald could
never have indulged in companionship of any kind.
He had put himself far beyond that. To his way of
thinking he was a super being who had no need
whatever for the rest of man. He was all self-suf
ficient.
If there had ever been love between them in those
days when they had first come together they had
both of them completely lost sight of it. He in his
complacent conceit; she in her monotonous negation.
And as time went on, and as his work became
greater Jasper Wald grew even further away from
the sort of thing he wrote ; so that it was more than
ever difficult for those who knew him to disassociate
him from his writings. There was always the temp
tation to try to find some of his literary idealism in
himself; to find some of his prosaic realism in his
works.
On one occasion Delafield, his publisher, came to
him; to the house on Peach Tree Road. It was a
peculiarity of Jasper Wald s to persistently refuse
any request to leave his home. It was the one thing
about which he was superstitious. He had never by
word or thought attributed his success to anyone or
anything outside of himself. He had made his
THE SHADOW 87
name in this house and he would not leave it.
Delafield s visit came at a time just after Jasper
Wald s last book had been published.
Sitting in the square, simply furnished living room,
Delafield for all his enthusiasm for the author had
felt a certain inexplicable disgust.
"It s great, Wald; there s genius to it. We ll
have it run through its second edition a week after
we put it on the market."
"I don t doubt that;" Jasper Wald s tone was
matter-of-fact in his confidence. "Not for a mo
ment."
Delafield bit off the end of his cigar.
"When will your next one be ready?"
He asked it abruptly.
"Oh, I don t know," Jasper Wald had pulled
leisurely at his pipe. "Whenever I make up my
mind to it, I suppose. It s going to be the biggest
thing I ve tackled yet, Delafield."
"Well " Delafield got up to go. "It can t be too
soon. You ll have a barrel of money before you get
done. Genius doesn t usually pay that way, either.
But ;" he could not help himself. "You ve got
the knack of the thing. Heaven knows where you
get it; but it s the knowledge we all need that comes
from"
He broke off quite suddenly as Ellen Wald came
into the room.
"I didn t know;" she said uncertainly. "I thought
you were alone."
"My wife, Delafield." Jasper Wald made the in-
88 THE SCARECROW
troduction impatiently. "Ellen, this is Mr. Dela
field, who publishes my books."
She came toward them and held out her hand to
Delafield. He could not help but noticing her odd
manner of moving.
"Good evening," she said.
Delafield had not known that Jasper Wald was
married. It was almost impossible for him to im
agine anyone living with this man. He looked at
the woman curiously. He had the feeling that her
individuality had been stultified. It did not surprise
him. Jasper Wald could have accomplished that.
It would have been difficult to have matched him
with as flagrantly material a person as he himself
was. Only that sort of person would have stood a
chance with him. Any other would have had to fall
flat. She had fallen flat. Delafield knew that the
moment he looked at her.
"Why, I didn t know;" Delafield took her hand in
his. "You never told me, Wald, that you were mar
ried."
"Didn t I? No, of course not. But, about the
new book, Delafield."
Delafield dropped her hand. He had never felt
anything quite as inert as that hand. It impressed
the nondescript quality of her upon him even more
strongly than had her appearance.
"Your husband has promised me another book,
Mrs. Wald." He spoke slowly. He felt he had to
speak that way or she would not understand him.
"Your husband is a great author, Mrs. Wald."
THE SHADOW 89
"Yes."
"Why don t you say, genius, Delafield, and be
done with it? Why don t you make a clean breast
of it with genius?"
"I ve got to Be going."
Delafield felt a strange irritation. The man was
a fool. For what reason under the sun could this
woman with those half closed eyes let herself be
dominated by him? The two of them got on his
nerves.
"Won t you stay to dinner?"
Jasper Wald was obviously anxious for a chance
to speak of himself.
"Sorry, Wald. I ve got to be getting on."
Delafield still watched the woman. She stood
there quite silent.
"I thought you might have something to say about
that book of mine."
"No There s nothing more." Delafield started
for the door. "I ve just told you that it s full of the
sort of knowledge all of us are in need of. I can t
say more, you know. I suppose that knowledge is
what constitutes genius; but " He was staring
now full into those bulging blue eyes "Lord, man,
where, where d you get it from?"
Glancing at the woman, Delafield saw that she was
looking straight at him. Her eyes met his in a
way which he was completely at a loss to explain.
There was something eerie about it.
"Where does he get it?"
She repeated his question stupidly and once again
9 o THE SCARECROW
the heavy lids came down over those strange green
eyes, hiding all expression.
Jasper Wald drew in his breath.
"I write it," he said.
After that Delafield left them both severely alone.
The woman puzzled him. He could not tolerate
the man, Jasper Wald, and he could not for worlds
have the genius of Jasper Wald hurt or slighted in
any way. He knew how big it was. It often left
him breathless. But the man; he would have liked
to have hit him that day in the living room in the
house on Peach Tree Road; to have kicked him into
some sort of a realization as to what an utter little
rat he was.
And so, because of his physical make-up, people
stayed away from Jasper Wald. Not that he
avoided people; not that he wanted to live the life of
a recluse. He never made any attempt to conceal
his living from the general public. He was too
much of the egoist to attempt concealment of any
kind. So his life was known to any man, woman or
child who cared for the knowledge. His life of nar
row selfishness, of tranquil complacency; of colossal
conceit. And of genius.
He always wrote in the evenings, did Jasper
Wald. And often he would keep at his writing
well on into the morning.
He liked to sit there in the square, old-fashioned
living room with its wide window that gave out
upon Peach Tree Road.
When he had first moved into the house as an
THE SHADOW 91
obscure, hard-working journalist he had placed the
desk against the window ledge so that he could look
directly out of the window without moving. And he
had kept the desk there. He was just a bit insistent
about it. Then, too, he liked the blind up so that
he could stare out into the evening and at the house
opposite.
For all his impossible vanity there must have been
imbedded deep down in the small, hard soul of the
man some excessive, frantic hunger of self-recogni
tion by others. A potential desire to accomplish an
assertion of self that could in no way be denied; a
fundamental energy which had in some way made
possible the work, but which he could never admit
for fear that it might evade the importance of him
self.
The house opposite interested him tremendously.
Sitting there in an abstract fit of musing, he watched
it as one subconsciously watches a place that has
one s attention.
To all outward appearances the house across the
way was heavily boarded up and closed. It had
always been closed since the time that Jasper Wald
had come to live in Peach Tree Road. Yet every
evening in the window directly facing his he had
seen the shadow of a man moving to and fro; to and
fro, beyond the drawn blind. He would sit there
watching the dark, undefined shadow until he felt
that he had to work, and then the whole thing would
slip from his mind until the following evening when
he would again be at his desk.
92 THE SCARECROW
Strangely enough he had never mentioned the
presence of the shadow to anyone. There was
about it a certain mysterious unreality. That much
he, Jasper Wald, was capable of knowing. It was
the one thing outside of himself that gripped at his
intelligence.
During all those six years he had waited at his
desk each night for the coming of the shadow. And
when it came he had started to work. He never
explained the thing to himself. He never thought
he had to explain anything to his own understand
ing. Had he tried, he would have been utterly at a
loss for an explanation. So Jasper Wald had come
to look upon the shadow as a sign of luck; a super
stition-fostered thing that epitomized his genius to
himself.
Naturally it had not always been that way. The
first time that Jasper Wald had felt the shadow he
had experienced an uncanny sense of terror. That
had been before he had really seen it.
He had been standing there beside the window
just after he and Ellen had moved into their home,
looking out at the closed house opposite. He had
felt a queer oppression which he readily interpreted
as the vibration of his new environment. When
the thing had persisted he had become a bit
uneasy. The sense of oppression so utterly unknown
to him had changed to one which grew upon him; as
if he were being forced out of himself in some un
canny manner.
There was about it all a curious sensation of
THE SHADOW 93
remoteness of self and at the same time a weird
consciousness of the haunting permeation of some
thing invisible and dynamic.
He never thought back to that evening without a
positive horror. The whole thing was so completely
alien to him.
It had been with a great sense of relief that he
had, finally, been able to see and to rivet his at
tention upon the shadow there against the blind of
the house opposite. He had clinched his thought
onto it. And the other thing had left him; had
lessened in its maddening oppression.
That evening he had started to write. He had
felt that writing was a thing he had to do. It was
entirely because of his first fear that he kept the
knowledge of the shadow to himself.
Cock sure as he was of himself, thoroughly cer
tain of his genius, and inordinately vain of his suc
cess, there was one thing about it all that Jasper
Wald could not quite make out. Not for worlds
would he have admitted it. Still there was the one
thing. And the one thing was that Jasper Wald
could not understand the kind of thought behind
what he himself wrote.
It was late one summer evening that Jasper Wald
sat at his desk in the square living room; his pen was
in his hand; a pile of blank paper made a white
patch on the dark wood before him. His blue eyes
that bulged a bit looked out into the graying half
light. The green of the lawn was matted with dark
shadows. A mist of shadows were pressed into the
94 THE SCARECROW
faint lined leaves of the two drooping willow trees
on either side of the wicker gate. An unreal light
held in the sky.
His eyes were fixed on the one window of the
house opposite. With his pen in his hand, Jasper
Wald waited.
From somewhere in the house came the chimes of
a clock striking the half hour.
Starting from his chair, Jasper Wald went to the
side of the desk and leaned far out of the window.
A wave of heat came up to him from the earth.
His eyes stared intently at the window opposite.
The door behind him was thrown open. He
turned to see Ellen s tall, not ungraceful, figure
standing in the doorway. Her two hands grasped
the bowl of a lighted lamp.
"I don t need that."
Jasper Wald told it to her impatiently.
She came a step into the room.
"It s dark in here, Jasper."
"But I don t need any more light, Ellen. I don t
need it, I tell you!"
"It s dark in here, Jasper."
"All right, then; put the thing down, I can t
take up my time arguing with you. How can a
man write in a place like this, anyway? Have you
no consideration? Must I always be disturbed?
Have you no respect for genius?"
She came a step further toward the center of the
room.
"Genius, Jasper ?"
THE SHADOW 95
"My genius, Ellen. Mine."
He watched her cross the room with that odd, sin
uous moving of hers and place the lamp in the
center of his desk. And then he saw her go to a
chair within its light and, sitting down, pick up some
sewing which she had left there.
He went back and sat at his desk.
He had made up his mind that this new book of
his would be something big; something bigger than
he had ever done before. He wanted to write a
stupendous thing.
He caught up his pen and dipped it in the ink.
She startled him with a quick cough.
"Can t you be still?" He turned toward her.
"You know I can t write if I m bothered. You don t
have to sit in here if you re going to cough your head
off. There re plenty of other rooms in the house."
She half rose from her chair.
"D you want me to go?"
"Oh, sit there," he muttered irritably. "Only,
for heaven s sake be still !"
"Yes, Jasper."
All of his books had brought him fame; but this
one; this one would bring him fame with something
else. This book would be the great work that would
show to people the staggering power of one man s
mind; his mind.
His eyes that stared at the window of the house
opposite came back to .he pile of blank paper which
made a white patch on the dark wood before him.
96 THE SCARECROW
Without any definite idea he began to write. A
word. A sentence. A paragraph.
He tore the thing up without stopping to read it.
Ellen s dull-toned voice came to him through the
stillness of the room.
"Anything wrong, Jasper ?"
"Wrong? What should be wrong?"
"I don t know."
He began to write again.
He looked out of his window at the window of
the house opposite.
He went on with his writing till he had covered
the whole page. Again he tore the paper up and
threw it from him.
"I m going, Jasper."
He turned to see her standing in the center of the
room, her heavily lidded eyes fixed on the floor.
"I told you you could stay here!"
"I d best be going, Jasper."
"Sit down, over there; and do be still."
"I seem to bother you. You haven t started to
write. Is it because I m here, Jasper?"
"You!" He snorted contemptuously. "What ve
you got to do with it?"
"I don t know," she said quietly, and she went
back to her chair.
Again his eyes were fixed on that one window.
He leaned forward quickly. His hands gripped the
chair s arms on either side of him. His brows drew
down together above the bulging blue eyes.
THE SHADOW 97
Thrown on the clear blank of the window blind,
moving to and fro across it, went the shadow.
With a sharp sigh of relief Jasper Wald began to
write.
It was not until he had gotten far down the page
that he became suddenly conscious of Ellen stand
ing directly behind him.
He looked over at the window. The shadow was
still there.
"What is it? What d you want?"
The lamplight brought out her features, good
and very regular and still somewhat nondescript.
The lamplight showed her strange green eyes and
beneath the heavy lids the lamplight brought out
in a glinting streak the expression of the eyes
themselves.
"What made you do that, Jasper?"
"I m trying to write. You keep interrupting me.
What are you talking about? Made me do what?"
"Made you write, Jasper."
"Don t I always write?"
"Yes, Jasper. Always. All of a sudden ; like
that."
"Well, what of it?"
"What makes you do it, Jasper?"
"Oh, Lord, can t you leave me alone?"
"D you know what makes you do it, Jasper?"
"Of course I know."
"Well, what?"
"My it s my inspiration!"
"That comes"; she spoke slowly. "Every night
gS THE SCARECROW
when you look out of the window. That s how it
comes, Jasper."
"Look out of the window? Why shouldn t I
look out of the window?"
"What is it you see? Over there; in that house;
in that one window?"
He looked across the way at the shadow moving
to and fro against the window blind.
He started to his feet so suddenly that his chair
crashed to the floor behind him. Fie faced her
angrily.
"What under the sun s the matter with you?"
"Nothing."
"Then why can t you leave me alone?"
"I want to know, Jasper."
"You don t know what you want."
"Yes, Jasper; I want to know "
"Leave the room," he said furiously. "Leave
the room! I ve got to write!"
She started for the door.
"You ve got to write?" Her words came back
to him across the length of the room with a curious
insistence. "You ve got to write, Jasper?"
He waited until the door closed behind her and
then he went back to his desk.
What had she meant by that last question of
hers? Didn t she know that he had to write?
Didn t she realize that he had to write?
And this book of his; this book that was to be
the biggest thing that he had yet done.
"Ellen," he called. "Ellen!"
THE SHADOW 09
He heard her feet coming toward him along the
passageway.
She came back into the room as though nothing
had happened.
u Yes, Jasper?"
"What what did you mean by that, Ellen? By
what you just said?"
She faced him in the center of the room.
"I ve been wanting to tell you, Jasper."
"Well?"
Her hands hung quite quietly at her sides.
"I ve put up with you for a long time, Jasper.
I haven t said very much, you know."
"What?" He stuttered.
"Oh, yes," she went on evenly. "If it weren t for
your vanity you d have realized long ago what a
contemptible little man you really are."
He interrupted her.
"Ellen!"
His tone was astonished.
"You re so full of yourself that you can t see
anything else. You re so full of that genius ; of
yours "
"You don t have to speak of that ; you can
leave that out of it ; you ve nothing to do with
it ; with my genius."
"Your genius." She laughed then. "It s your
genius, Jasper, that has nothing to do with you!"
"Nothing to do with me ?"
"No, Jasper. I haven t been blind."
"Blind?"
ioo THE SCARECROW
"I ve seen, Jasper; sitting here night after night
in this room with you; Fve seen."
"What?"
"Over there ; in the house opposite."
"You mean"
"And you can t write without it, Jasper! You
couldn t write before and you can t write now with
out it. It isn t you. It isn t you who writes. It s
something something working through you. And
you call it your own. Jasper, you re a fool!"
"Ellen, how dare you !"
"Dare!"
She spoke the word disdainfully. He had never
in his whole life seen her this way; he had never
thought to see her like this ; but then, he had never
given Ellen much thought of any kind.
"It s you who re the fool." He was furious. "It s
I who ve always been the brains; if you could you d
have hampered me with your stupidity. But you
couldn t. I shut you quite outside. I nurtured my
own genius. If I d have left things to you, I d
have been down and out by now; and that s all
there is to it."
"No!" Her voice rang through the room. "I
won t let you say that, Jasper. I ll tell you the
truth now. And take it or leave it as you will. You
won t be able to get away from it. Not if I tell you
the truth, Jasper. There ll be no getting away from
it!"
"Truthr ; about what?"
"You and your genius. I wouldn t have told you
THE SHADOW roi
but it s no good going on like this. I thought there
was some hope for you; I couldn t think any human
being would be as self-satisfied, as disgustingly ma
terial as you are. Why, if you have a soul, but you
haven t, and I thought God, how I hoped!"
He started to speak. He could not find his voice.
She went on presently in that quiet, monotonous
voice which had been hers for so many years.
"You left me alone; I wouldn t have complained;
I wouldn t complain now if you had some excuse for
it. It all made me different. There s no use in tell
ing you how; you couldn t understand. But I got
to feeling things I d never felt before; and then I
saw things. And after a while I found I could bring
those things to me. And that night, the first night
we moved in here "
He interrupted her in spite of himself.
"What of that night? What?"
"That night when you were standing there at
the window I got down on my knees and prayed. I
brought something to you that night. And you
called the genius yours." She broke off and was
silent for a second. "I brought it to you because
I wanted you to be great. I thought with all that
energy of yours for writing that if it could work
through you, you d be big. But you were too small
for it! You tried to make it a thing of your own.
And I ve held on to it. For six years I ve kept it
here with you; and now it s going. I m letting it
go back again. You re too small; you can t ever be
anything but just you!"
102 THE SCARECROW
He walked over to his desk, and sank down into
the arm chair.
"I don t know what you re t a 1 k i n g
about."
"You do ! And if you don t, why do you look out
of the window there every night? Why d you wait
for it to come, before you start to write?"
His exclamation was involuntary.
"The shadow!"
"Yes. Its shadow ; from this room where I
kept it casting over there its shadow."
So that was what she meant. The superstition-
fostered thing that epitomized his genius to himself.
The shadow that he had come to look upon as a sign
of luck. But it was nonsense. It wasn t possible;
not such rot as that. It was his mind; the big
creative mind of him that wrote.
"Have you said all you re going to say?"
For a second her gaze met his and then the heavy
lids came down again over those strange green eyes,
hiding all expression.
"Yes, Jasper."
He looked out of the window. His eyes stared
through the night beyond the two shadowy, droop
ing willow trees on either side of the wicker gate
and over at the house opposite. He caught his
breath. The yellow light from the lamp on his
desk played across the clear blank of the window
blind across the way. The shadow had gone.
"Ellen" His voice was hoarse. "Ellen!"
"What is it?"
THE SHADOW 103
"It s not there, Ellen ; six years; now ; why,
Ellen"
She went and sat down in the chair beside the
desk.
"Yes."
"It isn t there! I tell you "
"I thought it could make no difference to you!"
"It was lucky Ellen."
"Oh, lucky, Jasper?"
He made an effort to pull himself together.
"It won t make any difference to me not to my
writing; not to my genius."
After the silence of a moment her voice came
to him in its low even measure.
"Then; write!"
"Of course." His tone was high pitched, hys
terical. "Naturally I ll write."
"Write, Jasper."
He caught up his pen and dipped it in the ink.
He drew the white pile of paper nearer to him.
"Jasper "
"How can I work if you don t stop talking? How
can I do anything? How can I write?"
"Are you writing Jasper? Are you ?"
He did not answer her.
"Because;" she went on very quietly. "It s gone
back, Jasper. It s gone now "
His pen went to and fro; to and fro across
the page. His figure was bent well over the desk.
Every now and again, without moving, his bulging
blue eyes would lift themselves to the clear blank
io 4 THE SCARECROW
blind of the window opposite and then they would
come back and fix themselves intently upon the white
page of paper which he was so busily covering with
stupid, meaningless little drawings.
THE EFFIGY
THE EFFIGY
MR. EVANS is upstairs in the library, ma am."
Genevieve Evans hurried through the hall
and up the steps. She pulled off her gloves as
she went. She rolled them into a hard, small ball
and tucked them automatically in her muff.
She had hoped that she would get there before
him. She had been thinking of that all during the
quick rush home. She would have liked to have had
a moment to pull herself together. After what she
had been through she wondered if she could keep
from going all to pieces. It could not be helped.
She did not even know if she cared a lot about it.
She was quite numbed. He was there ahead of her;
there in the library. Of all the rooms in the house
that he should have chosen the one so rarely used.
The room she hated.
At the door of the library she paused breathless.
For a second she thought the long dark room
empty.
Then she saw Ernest.
He was standing in one of the deep windows.
A short squat figure black against the dim yellow of
the velvet curtains. One hand held his cigarette;
the fingers of the other hand tapped unevenly on
the window glass.
107
io8 THE SCARECROW
She knew then that he must have seen her come
into the house.
"Ernest."
He turned.
"I ve been waiting for you," he told her with
studied indifference. "Where ve you been, Jenny?"
She took a step into the room.
"I m sorry, Ernest. I didn t know you d be home
so early."
"It s late. Where ve you been?"
She wondered why she should bother avoiding
answering his question.
"Oh out."
Her tone was vague.
"No," he scoffed. "I wouldn t have guessed it.
Really, I wouldn t!"
She loosened the fur from her neck and tossed it
onto the center table.
"Don t, Ernest."
"Don t what, Jenny?"
She sank down into the depths of the nearest
chair.
"Oh nothing." Her hands clinched themselves.
"Nothing."
He came and stood quite close to her. He
glanced quickly at her, puffing the while at his ciga
rette. She thought he looked wicked and pagan;
hideous and yellow behind the rising smoke. His
narrow eyes peered at her.
"Well, Jenny out with it, my girl. Where ve
you been?"
THE EFFIGY 109
She looked away from him. Her face was pale.
In the twilight shadowed room he had seen how
wide and strange her eyes were.
She made up her mind then that it was not worth
bothering about. She would tell him the truth. She
did not care how he took it.
"I ve been to see ; to see father "
She whispered the words. Her eyes wavered
back to his face.
"Good heavens!" He laughed harshly. "After
all you said?"
"Yes."
"Rather a joke, that."
"No. There wasn t anything funny about it."
"Well. Was the old man surprised?"
"No. He told me he knew I d come some
time."
"Wise old beggar, Daniel Drare!"
Her breath came quickly; unevenly.
"He s a devil, Ernest! That s what he is ;
he s"
He interrupted her.
"Not so fast, Jenny. You went there to see him,
you know."
"But, Ernest, I couldn t stand it any longer. I
simply couldn t "
He walked deliberately over to the screened fire
place and tossed his cigarette into it.
"Whyd yougotohim?"
"You know why I went."
"Why!"
no THE SCARECROW
She had felt right along that he must be made to
understand it. She could not see why he had not
known before.
"Oh, don t pretend any more. I m sick of it.
You know I m sick of it."
His brows drew together in an angry frown.
"Sick of what? Eh, Jenny?"
Her eyes crept away from his and went miserably
about the room. They took no note of the rare old
furniture; of the dark paneled walls; of the color
mellowed tapestries. She sat looking at it all
blindly. Then her eyes raised themselves a bit.
She found herself staring at the picture hung just
above the wood carved mantel. The famous pic
ture. The work of the great artist. The picture
before which she had stood and hated; and hated.
The picture which was the pride and portrait of her
father, Daniel Drare.
She got to her feet.
"I m sick of you ;" she said it quite calmly.
"And I m sick of him." She nodded her head
in the direction of the portrait. "I d do anything
to get away from both of you anything!"
He smiled.
"You ll not get away from me," he told her.
"You !" The one word was contemptuous.
"You don t really count."
"What d you mean?"
He still smiled.
"I mean what I say." Her voice was tired.
"You re nothing ; nothing but oh, a kind of a
THE EFFIGY in
henchman to him. That s all you are. Not that
he needs you. He doesn t need any one. He s too
unscrupulously powerful for that. He s never
needed any one. Not you. Nor me. He didn t
even need my mother. He broke her heart and let
her die because he didn t need her. I think you
know he s like that. You re no different where he s
concerned than the others."
"After all I m your husband!"
"That s the ghastly part of it. You my hus
band. You re only my husband because of him.
You knew that when I married you, didn t you?
You knew the lies he told me when he wanted me to
marry you. You never contradicted them. And I
was too silly, too young to know. I wanted to get
away from it all; and from him. I couldn t guess
that you d you think, Ernest, if it hadn t been for
those lies I d have married you? Do you?"
a Oh, I don t know. I usually get what I want,
Jenny."
"And why do you get it? Why?"
"Perhaps because I want it."
She laughed harshly.
"Because Daniel Drare gets it for you. Because
he s had everything all his life. Because he s be
hind you for the time being. That s why!"
"And what if it is?"
"My God!" She muttered. "I can t make you
understand. I can t even talk to either of you."
"You went to see him !"
"I went to him to tell him I couldn t stand it any
li 1 2 THE SCARECROW
longer. I begged him to help me; just this once
I told him I couldn t go on this way. I told him I
couldn t bear any more. I told him the truth; that
I dI d go mad."
" What did he say? Eh, Jenny?"
For a second her eyes closed.
"He laughed. Laughed"
"Of course!"
"There s no of course about it. I m serious.
Deadly serious."
"Don t be a fool, Jenny. If you ask me I d say
you were mighty well off. Your father gives you
everything you want. Your husband gives you
everything you want. There isn t a man in the
whole city who has more power than Daniel Drare.
Or more money for that matter. You ought to be
jolly well satisfied."
She waited a full moment before speaking.
"Maybe I m a fool, Ernest. Maybe I am. A
weak, helpless kind of a fool. But I m not happy,
Ernest. I can t go this kind of a life any more. It s
gotten unreal and horrible. And the kind of things
you do to make money; the kind of things you re
proud of. They prey on me, Ernest. There s noth
ing about all this that s clean. It s making me ill;
the rottenness of this sort of living. I m not happy.
Doesn t that mean anything to you?"
"Nonsense. You ve no reason for not being
happy. The trouble with you, Jenny, is that you ve
too lively an imagination."
"Oh, no, Ernest. I ve got to get away. Some-
THE EFFIGY 113
where anywhere. Just by myself. I don t love
you, Ernest. You don t really love me. It s only
because I m Daniel Drare s daughter that you mar
ried me. It was just his wealth and his power and
and his unscrupulous self that fascinated you."
u You don t know what you re saying."
"I do, I do, Ernest! You d like to be like him.
But you can t. You are like him in a lot of ways.
The little ways. But you re not big enough to be
really like him. Let me go, Ernest. Before it s too
late; let me go!"
He came and put a hand on her shoulder.
"I ll never let you go," he said.
"You must!" She whispered. "YouVe got to let
me. Just to get away from all this. I ve never
been away in all my life. He d never let me go
either."
Unconsciously her eyes went up to the picture.
The full, red face with the hard lines in it. The
thick, sensual lips. The small, cunning eyes that
laughed. The ponderous, heavy set of the figure.
The big, powerful hands.
His gaze followed after hers.
And very suddenly he left her side. He walked
over to the mantel.
"Funny," he muttered to himself. "Jolly strange
that!"
Her fingers clutched at her breast.
"Ernest ! What re you doing?"
"Can you see anything wrong here, Jenny?"
He was looking up at the portrait.
ii4 THE SCARECROW
"Wrong?" She said it beneath her breath.
"Wrong"
He reached up a hand. He drew his fingers
across the canvas.
"By Jove!" His voice was excited. "So it is.
Thought I wasn t crazy. When could it have hap
pened, eh? Ever notice this, Jenny?"
She could not take her eyes from his hand that
was going over and over the canvas along the arm
of the painted figure.
"Can t you see it, Jenny?"
"I I can t see anything."
She whispered it.
"Come over here ; where I am."
She hesitated.
"Ernest, what s the sense? How can you see in
this light anyway, how "
He did not let her finish.
"Come here!"
Slowly she went toward him.
"What is it, Ernest? What?"
"A crack?" His hand still worked across it.
"In the paint here along the arm. Or a cut, or
something. How under the sun could it have hap
pened? We ve got to have it fixed somehow.
Never heard of such a thing before. Old Daniel
Drare ll be as sore as a crab if ever he gets wind
of this. It d be like hurting him to touch this
portrait. He certainly does think the world of it!
How could it have happened; that s what I d like
to know,"
THE EFFIGY 115
"I I don t know what you re talking about I
|
"Here! Can t you sec it? It s as plain as the
nose on your face. Along the arm. It s a cut.
Right into the canvas. You can run your finger in
it. Give me your hand."
She shrank back from him.
"No no, Ernest."
He stared at her intently.
"You do look seedy. You d better go up and lie
down. I ve got to dress for dinner, anyway. We ll
have to have this fixed."
He started for the door.
She blocked his way.
"Will you let me go, Ernest?"
"Don t start that again."
"All right. I won t!"
"That s a sensible girl, Jenny. Even your father
had to laugh at you when you told him the way you
feel. It isn t natural. It s just nerves, I guess. You
could stick it out with Daniel Drare. You can stick
it out with me. Look here, Daniel Drare s a great
old fellow, but I m not as crude in some things as he
is; am I, Jenny?"
"You would be if you could." Her voice was
singsong. "You haven t his strength; that s all."
"I m not as crude as he is."
"You haven t his strength," she droned.
"I ve enough strength to keep you here; if that s
what you mean."
"No, it s not what I mean." A puzzled look crept
n6 THE SCARECROW
across her face. Her eyes were suddenly furtive.
"Maybe I don t know what I mean. But I don t
think it s you. I don t think you count. It s him.
It s Daniel Drare! He s behind it all. I don t
think I quite know what I ll do about it. I must do
something! I mustn t be angry!"
He stared at her.
"You d best come along if you re going to dress."
"I ll be up in a moment," she said.
When he was gone she went over to the window.
She stood there gazing out into the darkened
quiet side-street. She was. trembling in every limb.
Now and again she would half turn. Her eyes
would go slowly, warily toward the portrait hanging
there over the mantel and then they would hurry
away again.
She started nervously when the butler knocked at
the door.
"What is it, Williams?"
"Mr. Drare s housekeeper, ma am. She d like
to see you, ma am. I said I d ask."
"Show her in here, Williams."
The man left the room.
She walked over to the farther corner of the room
and switched on the lights.
She heard footsteps in the hall.
She stood quite still; waiting.
Footsteps Nearer
A middle-aged woman very plainly dressed was
in the doorway.
"Miss Genevieve "
THE EFFIGY 117
"Nannie I"
"Miss Genevieve. I wouldn t have come; only
I ve got to tell you."
"What, Nannie? Come and sit down, Nannie."
The woman came into the room. For a second
she paused, and then hurriedly she closed the door
behind her.
"No, Miss Genevieve. I ll not sit down.
Thank you. I can t be staying long. He might
want me. I wouldn t like him to know I was here."
The muscles on either side of Genevieve Evans
mouth pulled and twitched.
"So? You re frightened too, Nannie!"
She said the words to herself.
The woman heard her.
"That I am, Miss. And that I ve got good rea
son to be; the same as you, my poor Miss Gene
vieve."
"Yes, yes, Nannie. What was it you wanted?"
The woman stood quite rigid.
"You was there, Miss this afternoon?"
"Yes"
"Did you notice anything, Miss?"
She drew a deep breath.
"What d you mean, Nannie? Nannie, what?"
"It s him, Miss. It was last night "
The woman broke off.
"Yes, Nannie;" Genevieve Evans urged.
"I don t rightly know how to tell it to you, Miss.
It s hard to find the words to say it in. He d
kill me if he knew I come here and told you. But
n8 THE SCARECROW
you got to know. I can t keep it to myself. He s
been fierce of late. What with making so much
more money. And the drinking, Miss. And the
women. The women, they re there all hours, now."
"My mother s house! Genevieve Evans said it
uncertainly.
"Yes, Miss," the woman went on. "And it was
almost as bad when she lived."
"I know, Nannie. I ve always known!"
"But last night, Miss; after they d gone. I was
asleep, Miss Genevieve. It woke me. It was aw
ful. Plain horrid, Miss."
"What Nannie?"
"The scream, Miss A shriek of pain."
"No, no, Nannie!" Genevieve Evans inter
rupted wildly. "Don t say it! Don t!"
The woman looked at her wonderingly.
"Why, Miss Genevieve Poor, little lamb."
"Nannie, Nannie." She made a tremendous ef
fort to control herself. "What was it you were
going to say?"
"The scream, Miss. In the night. I rushed
down. I knocked at his door. He wouldn t let
me in. He was moaning, Miss. And cursing. And
moaning. He was swearing about a knife. I
listened, Miss at the keyhole. I was scared. He
kept cursing and moaning about a knife; about his
arm"
"Nannie"
She whispered the word beneath her breath.
"Yes, Miss. Cut in the arm. He would have it
THE EFFIGY 119
that way. And he wouldn t let me in. I waited for
houra. And this morning I went into his room my
self. He was in his shirt-sleeves. I pretended I
wanted the linen for the wash. I was looking for
blood, Miss. Not a drop did I find. Not a pin
prick stain. But I seen him bandaging his arm;
right in front of me he did it. And then I seen him
rip the bandage off."
"Nannie"
"It s his reason I fear for, Miss. He turns to me
and asks me if I can see the cut."
"Yes? Yes, Nannie?"
"He shows me his arm. And, Miss "
The woman stopped abruptly.
"Nannie what? What?"
Genevieve Evans hands had gone up to her
throat.
"There wasn t a scratch; not a scratch!"
"Oh" She breathed.
"And that s why I came here, Miss. To ask if
he d said anything of it to you. Or if if you d
noticed anything, Miss."
Genevieve Evans waited a full second before she
answered:
"No, Nannie. He wouldn t have told me. I
didn t notice anything. I wasn t there very long.
You see I only went to ask him to let me get away.
Out in the country by myself. I wanted the money
to go. He and and Mr. Evans never give me
money, Nannie. Just things all the things, I want.
Only I m tired of things. I don t quite know what to
120 THE SCARECROW
do. When I think about it I get very angry. I
was very angry. Last night I was very angry ! I ve
such funny ideas when I m angry, Nannie. I mustn t
get angry again. But I ve got to get away."
"I don t blame you, Miss Genevieve, for being
angry. You ve been an angel all your life ; all your
life pent up like like a saint with with
devils."
"You don t blame me Nannie ?"
"No, Lamb. Not your Nannie. Your Nannie
knows what it s been like for you. I know him,
Miss Genevieve. I know he didn t give you the
money."
"No, Nannie. He laughed at me. Laughed "
"He s a beast! That s what he is, Miss. He
should have give it to you. And him going away
himself. He was telling me only to-day. Into the
country."
"What?"
"Oh, Miss. I hate to say such things to you.
He s going with that black-haired woman; the
latest one, she is. He thinks she works too hard.
He s taking her off for a rest. Is anything the mat
ter? Aren t you well, darling?"
Genevieve Evans swayed dizzily for a second
her one hand reaching out blindly before her.
The woman came quickly and took the hand be
tween both of her hands and stroked it.
"Nannie, I m sick sick!"
"Nannie s darling ; Nannie s pet."
From somewhere in the house came the silvery,
THE EFFIGY 121
tinkling sound of a clock striking seven times.
"I ve got to go, Miss Genevieve, dear."
"All right, Nannie."
The woman drew a chair up and pushed her gently
into it.
"You ll not be telling him, Miss?"
"No, Nannie ; no "
The woman started for the door.
u Thank you, Miss Genevieve."
"Nannie ; you said he was taking her ; the
black-haired one ; away for a a rest? Away
into the country?"
With her hand on the door-knob the woman
turned.
"Yes. Why lamb!"
"Into the country." Genevieve Evans 1 voice was
lifeless. "Into the country where everything is quiet
and big ; and clean. You said that, Nannie?"
"I said the country, Miss Genevieve, dearie."
"Nannie Nannie ;" her eyes were staring
straight before her. "I want to go!"
"Lamb darling."
The woman stood undecided.
"But he wouldn t let me. He laughed at me.
Nannie, he laughed."
The woman made up her mind.
"Will Nannie stop with you a bit, Miss Genevieve,
dearie?"
"You said;" Genevieve Evans lifeless, monoton
ous voice went on; "you said you wouldn t blame
me for being angry. I get very angry, Nannie.
122 THE SCARECROW
Very angry. It brings all kinds of things to me
when I get angry. His kind of things. Rotten
things. And he s going to take her into the country;
where everything s clean; and he won t let me go.
God!"
"Will I stay, Miss Genevieve?"
"No, Nannie go! Go quickly! Go now!"
"Yes, Miss Genevieve. He ll be wanting to know
where I am."
"Go, Nannie!" She half rose from her chair.
The door closed quietly behind the woman. "Go !"
Genevieve Evans whispered. "He s going into
the country ; he s taking that woman. He
wouldn t let me. He wants to keep me here. Just
to feel his power ; his filthy power. He s not the
only one." She was muttering now. "He s not the
only one who can do things. Rotten dirty things!
His kind of things!"
She swayed to her feet. Her steps were short and
uncertain. Her whole body reeled. Her face
was blanched; drained of all color. Her fingers
trembled wide spread at her sides. She was quiver
ing from head to foot.
Only her eyes were steady; her eyes wide and
dilated that were riveted on the portrait hanging
there above the wood carved mantel.
She backed toward the door, her eyes glued to the
picture.
Her shaking fingers, fumbling behind her, found
the key and turned it.
Feeling her way with her hands, her distended
THE EFFIGY 123
eyes still fixed on that one thing, she got to the
center table.
It took her a while to pull open the drawer.
Her breath came raspingly; as if she had been
running.
The old Venetian dagger with the cracked jeweled
handle was between her fingers.
Very slowly now she went toward the fire-place.
The electric light flared over the colored gems
that studded the handle of the dagger, giving out
.small quick rays of blue and red and green.
"I m angry;" she whispered hoarsely. "I I m
very angry with you. YouVe no right ; no
right to ruin my life -and laugh! You did
laugh at me !"
Her eyes stared up at the full, red face with the
hard lines in it. Up at the thick, sensual lips. Up at
the cunning eyes. At the ponderous, heavy-set fig
ure. The powerful hands.
"Why don t you laugh now? You aren t
afraid are you? You aren t afraid of any
thing? Not of me are you Daniel Drare ?
YouVe done your best to keep m e u n -
der your power ; you stood behind Ern
est to keep me under your power. You re
not afraid of me ? Why don t you laugh
Daniel Drare?"
Her right hand that held the dagger raised itself.
"Laugh, Daniel Drare! Laugh!"
She stood there under the portrait. Her left
124 THE SCARECROW
hand went stiffly out feeling over the long cut in the
painted arm.
"Angry last night." She whispered; "And
s it hurt you. Daniel Drare I could hurt
you!"
For a second her eyes went up to the dagger held
there above her head ; the dagger with the thousand
colored gleams pointing from it.
She gave a quick choking laugh.
"I laugh at you Daniel Drare."
With all her strength she drove the dagger into
the heart of the canvas.
She staggered back to the center of the room.
There was a gaping rent in the portrait.
She laughed again; stupidly. Her laughter trailed
off and stopped.
She stood there waiting.
Once she thought some one paused outside the
door.
Her hands were up across her eyes.
Motionless she waited.
Suddenly she gave a quick start.
Out there in the hall a telephone had rung.
She heard her husband answer it.
Her one distinct thought was that he must have
been on his way out for dinner.
His unbelieving cry came to her.
"My God! it can t"
Her fingers were pressed into her ears. She did
not want to hear the rest. She knew it.
THE FAITH
THE FAITH
THE great lady fingered the pearls that circled
her throat.
"Quite true," she murmured, and a smile crept up
about the corners of her lips and lingered there.
"Really, surprisingly true."
The woman with the white hair and the heavily
lidded eyes bent a bit lower over her charts of stars
and constellations.
"This year" she went on in that low, undecided
voice of hers "this year Madame has had a big
sorrow. It was the loss to Madame of a young
man. He was tall and fair like Madame, but he
had not Madame s eyes. He had courage, Madame,
and a soft voice; always a soft voice. He went on,
this young one, with his courage. The son of
Madame died in the early Spring."
The great lady s hands dropped into her lap and
clinched there : the knuckles showing white and
round as her fingers strained against each other.
Her eyes stared hard at the cracked walls; up over
the low ceiling, toward the back of the small room
that was divided off from the kitchen by a loose-
hung plush curtain; out through the one window
which gave on to the street. She could just see the
heads of people who were passing and the faint,
127
128 THE SCARECROW
gray shadows of the late evening that were reaching
in dark spots up along the rough, white walls of the
house opposite. Her eyes came dazedly back to the
room and the chairs and the table before which
she sat. Two giant tears trickled down her cheeks.
The smile was wiped from off her mouth.
The woman with the white hair had waited.
"There is another here. He is perhaps a little
older than the one who died. He has not that one s
courage. He is very careful of all the small things;
like his clothes and his cigarettes and his affections.
The big things he has never known. His eyes are
like the eyes of Madame. Madame has this son in
the war now."
"No no!" The great lady leaned across the
table. "Don t tell me not that he I couldn t bear
it ! Not both of them !"
The woman with the white hair looked up quite
suddenly from her charts of stars and constellations.
A pitying quiver shook over her face.
"You need have no fear, Madame. He is not
ready. It is a wound. It is not a wound that gives
death."
The great lady fingered her pearls again.
"You you quite carried me away. For a mo
ment you startled me."
"I regret it, Madame. Perhaps I should not have
said anything."
"Of course you should have. I told you that
when I came in, didn t I? I said I wanted to hear
everything. Everything you could tell me."
THE FAITH 129
"Ah yes, Madame. 11
Is that all, now? You re certain that youVe not
forgotten anything?" And she pulled at her gold
mesh bag, which was studded with sapphires.
"It is everything, Madame. Unless, perhaps,
Madame has some question she would like to ask
of me?"
The great lady drew her money out and tossed
it on the table.
The woman with the white hair and those heav
ily lidded eyes did not touch it. The great lady got
to her feet and started to the door. Quite suddenly
she stopped.
"When " She made an effort to steady her
voice. "When will this thing ; this wound
come _?"
The woman with the white hair bent over the
charts again. And then she caught up a pencil and
made little signs on the yellow paper and drew a
triangle through them and across them at the points.
"The fourth day of the second month from now,
Madame."
The great lady came back to the table and stood
there looking down.
"How do you do it?"
The woman with the white hair stared up in as
tonishment.
"Madame?"
The great lady s ringed fingers spread out, pale
and taut at her sides. The jewels of the rings
130 THE SCARECROW
showed in dark, glistening stains against the white
of her skin.
"What you ve just told me all of it. I don t sec
how you know how you can know. It s true. I
can t understand how it can be true. But it is.
Every word of it."
The woman with the white hair fingered her pen
cil a bit wearily.
"But of course, Madame."
"I came here;" the great lady spoke hurriedly.
"I don t know why I came. Only I didn t think:
I wouldn t have believed it possible. I couldn t tell
you now why I came."
"There are many who come these days."
"These days?"
"People would know more than they know of
things they never thought of before, Madame
these days. They would follow a bit further after
the lives that have been broken off so suddenly.
They are impatient because they cannot see where
they have never before looked and so they come to
me because I have sat, staring into those places.
They will see all of them soon. They are going
on. further, because they must know. These days
they must know!"
The great lady stood quite still.
"You have a wonderful gift wonderful."
"It is not mine, Madame."
The great lady s eyes went about the room.
"I ll be going," she said. "It s quite late."
Her eyes took in the cheap poverty of the mended
THE FAITH 131
carpet and the paint-scratched walls and the dingy-
threaded, plush-covered chairs.
The woman with the white hair got to her feet.
"I know what you are thinking." Her voice was
low. "If I can do this for others, you think, why
should I not be able to do everything for myself?
If I can tell to others, what may I not tell to my
self? If I can give help to others, why can I not
give help to myself?"
The silk of the great lady s dress gave out a faint
rustle as she took a step back.
"No " She murmured uncertainly.
"It is not No. The woman s voice trembled.
"It is Yes. It is what was going through your
head going around and around and fearing to be
asked. But I will answer you. I will say that the
power is not mine. It is the power that is given to
me. It is not for myself. I do not want it for my
self. I shall never touch it for myself, because it is
meant for others. To help others and that is all."
"D you mean you can t see things for yourself?"
The great lady was curious.
"But of course I can see. It is that which, some
times " The woman with the white hair broke off
abruptly. "Do you know what it is to see and then
to be able to do nothing nothing? Not one
thing!"
"How can you?"
"I can, Madame, because that is what I am here
for. It is by being nothing myself that this thing
comes through me so that I can feel what other peo-
132 THE SCARECROW
pie are; what they are going to be. If I thought
only of me, I would be so full of myself 1 could not
think of anything else. It is from thinking a little
bit beyond that the power first came. And now
that I keep on thinking away from the nearest layer
of thought, it works through me. And I can help.
It is the wish of my life to help. It is what I am
here for. Placed in the field. They told it to me
the voices. Put in the field, by them."
The great lady shrugged her shoulders.
The woman with the white hair pulled herself
up very suddenly. There was a quick, convulsive
movement of her hands and for a short second her
eyes closed. She went to the table and caught the
money between her fingers and dragged it across the
red cover to her.
"I thank Madame."
The great lady walked slowly to the door.
"Good-by. Perhaps some day I ll be back."
"Perhaps Madame. Good-by."
The great lady went out of the room and closed
the door behind her. The sound of her high-heeled
footsteps tapped in sharp staccato down the uncar-
peted stairs, and died away into the stillness. The
long-drawn creak of rusty hinges and then the muf
fled thud of the front door swinging to. In the
street the soft diminishing whirr of a motor grew
fainter and was gone.
Silence.
The woman sank into a chair and buried her face
between her two shaking hands.
THE FAITH 133
Shadows crept up against the uncurtained win
dow and pressed, quivering, against the pane.
Shadows came into the room and stretched them
selves along the floor. Shadows reached up across
the wall and over the chairs and the table. Shadows
spread in a gray, moving mass over the still figure
of the woman.
A young girl came quickly and silently through
the curtain that partitioned the room off from the
kitchen.
"Mamas"
The woman did not move.
"I had not thought, Maman, that you were
alone."
The woman slowly drew her face from out be
tween her hands. She looked up uncertainly, her
eyes only half open.
"Leave me, Angele."
"But, Maman, supper is ready."
"Let it wait, Angele."
The girl came over to the table and put her hand
on the woman s shoulder.
"Was she then horrid, Maman?"
The woman sighed softly.
"It is not that, Angele. She was like the others.
They come because they are curious. Something,
perhaps, brings them here, but they do not know
that. They are only curious. They do not believe.
I tell them the truth. They are shocked for a little
moment. They do not believe, Angele."
"Pauvre petite Maman, you are tired."
134 THE SCARECROW
"Non, non, Angele."
"Will you have Jean see you tired, Maman?"
The woman stared up into the girl s small, white
face that was dimmed with shifting shadows. The
woman s heavily lidded eyes met the girl s wide,
dark eyes.
"Jean"
"He will be home to eat, Maman. Soon, now, he
will be home."
The woman passed her hands again and again
over her forehead and then she held them with the
tips of her fingers pressed tight to her temples.
"He is such a child, Angele."
"Shall we have supper now?"
"Angele"
"I will bring a light in here, Maman, and then
when Jean is back we will go in to supper."
"He is such a child, Angele."
"And never on time, Maman!"
The woman caught the girl s fingers between her
own.
"Answer me, Angele. Answer me!"
The girl looked down in surprise.
"But what, Maman?"
The woman s breath came quickly.
"He is a child. Say that he is a baby. He is all
that I have. You and he are all everything! Say,
Angele, that he is a child ! Only yesterday, you re
member, the long curls? The velvet suit? Surely
it was yesterday. Say, Angele, that he i$ still a
little one."
THE FAITH 135
The girl threw back her head and laughed. The
shadows lay like long, dark fingers on the white of
her throat.
"Of course. He is young too young even now
when they take the young. You have no need to
worry, Maman. Maman what is it?"
She had seen the sudden, far-away look in the
woman s eyes.
She had seen her head stretch forward, the chin
pointing, the mouth a little open.
"Maman "
The woman s hand reached out in a gesture com
manding silence.
u The voices," the woman whispered. "They
have been after me the whole day. The voices.
They keep coming and coming to me I
have not been able to think for the voices "
"Maman"
u You say yes. You are coming nearer nearer.
No I cannot see. But hear Mais, it is good
now! You speak distinctly. Of course I thank you
for speaking so beautifully. You say you want
want "
"Petite Maman, you will make yourself ill with
those old horoscopes and these voices. Petite
Maman, have you not done enough for one day?"
The woman paid no attention to her. She did not
seem to hear the girl. Her face was pale; there
were faint, bluish smudges about her mouth and
nostrils.
"You want I cannot cannot understand what
136 THE SCARECROW
you want. I m trying to understand. I m trying
hard! If you will tell it to me again. And slowly.
With patience. It is better now. So that is it?
More slowly, if you can. Of course. Is it that you
wish to know? Of course I shall give you
what you want. I always give you what you
want. I do my best for that. You want "
The woman s eyes were closed. She was breath
ing deeply. Her whole figure was tense. The girl
stood beside her, a puzzled, half incredulous look
coming into her face.
"I should look. It does no good to look.
I can never see Beyond the wood I should look
beyond. What wood? Now? Is it perhaps that
you mean gate? Swings to and fro? Now
you want ; this moment "
The door was flung wide open.
At the noise the woman slowly opened her eyes,
staring blindly before her.
"You want " She murmured.
A boy stood in the doorway. He was slight and
young. His face was small and rather like the girl s
face, and his dark eyes were set far apart like her
eyes. Through the gray of the massing shadows
gleamed the brass buttons of his uniform.
The girl sprang forward.
"Jean !"
"Martian." The boy came a step into the room.
"See, Maman!"
"Hush, Jean." The girl turned to gaze at the
THE FAITH 137
woman sitting there with that stony, frozen stare,
staying in her eyes.
"Maman, they have taken me at last!"
"Oh," for a second the girl forgot the woman.
"But I am proud of you!"
"Maman, I wear the uniform. They will let me
go now. I knew they would take me. Sooner or
later; I knew they would have to! Aren t you
glad?"
The girl remembered and interrupted him.
"Be still, Jean!"
The boy stood looking from one to the other, his
eyes straining through the gloom.
"Maman," he whispered.
The woman s voice came trailing softly to them.
They want "
"Maman;" the girl threw her arm protectingly
over the woman s shoulders. "Jean is here. See,
petite Maman; it is Jean. Your Jean."
The woman repeated the words in that gentle,
plaintive singsong.
"They want " and then she got to her feet.
"Jean! " Her voice rose shrilly crescendo. "It
was that! My Jean "
"Maman;" the boy came and stood beside her.
"You would not have me stay behind when they
need me? You will be glad to have me go. Come,
Maman, you must say that you are glad!"
"My little one"
"Say, Maman, that you are glad."
"So young, Jean."
138 THE SCARECROW
"But old enough to fight when they need me. Old
enough to fight for France !"
"My baby"
"You will not grieve, Maman."
She reached up and caught his face between her
two hands and drew it down and kissed him on the
mouth.
"Ah, Jean!"
"And say, how do I look?" He turned around
and around in front of them. "But, Angele, fetch
the lamp quickly. You cannot see in this dark. You
cannot see me."
The girl laughed a bit uncertainly, and then she
went quickly, rushing into the next room.
The woman gripped hold of the boy s hand. His
fingers grasped hers.
"Petite Maman."
"Mon Jean just a moment still so."
They stood there silent and very close to each
other, in the room crowded with moving, splotching
shadows. The girl came back through the curtain,
a lighted lamp between her two hands. The flicker
of it spread broadly into her eager, anxious face.
The glow of it trickled before her and widened
through the room. The shadows stuck to the walls
in the corners and rocked up against the ceiling, black
among the uneven streaks of yellow light.
"Now, Angele. Now, Maman. Put it there on
the table, Angele. No, hold it higher. Like that.
Keep your hands steady, Angele, or how can Maman
see? Such a miserable lamp ! Does not my uniform
THE FAITH 139
look magnificent? I am the real poilu, hein?
Something to be proud of, Maman?"
u The real poilu?" The girl questioned softly.
"The grandchild of the real poilu, maybe."
"She mocks me, Maman."
"Be quiet, Angele."
"I do not mock, Maman; but I will not have his
head turned. The poor little cabbage!"
"See, Maman. She will not stop. Tell her that
I fight for France."
For a moment the woman hesitated. They could
hear the deep breath she took.
"For France. And for something else, my little
son."
With great care the girl placed the lamp on the
table.
"Something else, Maman?"
"The thing for which France stands ; and con
quers."
He seized at her last word.
"Conquers? Of course she conquers. And I will
help! I will kill the Boches. Right and left. I
shall fight until France will win !"
A strange light had filtered into the woman s
heavily lidded eyes.
"Bravo!" The girl clapped her hands together.
"And shall we have our supper now, petite Maman,
and my little rabbit?"
"Maman when I have this uniform "
"Go, children. In a moment I will be with you."
140 THE SCARECROW
"Come, my cauliflower. Maman would be alone."
"Marxian "
"Jean I do not mean to tease. Let us go in to
supper. If I do not try to be pleasant I shall weep.
You would not have me weep, brother Jean? I
would wet the pretty shoulder of your uniform with
my tears. That would be a tragedy. So come along
to supper, my rascal."
Hand in hand the boy and the girl went through
the loose-hung, plush curtain into the kitchen.
The woman stood rigid beside the table.
"Help me," she whispered beneath her breath.
"You"
She stumbled to her knees. Her head was pressed
against the edge of the table. Her hands fumbled
over the top of it, the fingers widespread and catch
ing; clutching at whatever they touched.
From the kitchen came the sound of low voices. A
knife rattled clatteringly against a plate. Once the
girl laughed and her laughter snapped off in a half-
smothered sob.
The woman moaned a little.
"Just to watch over him. That s all I ask. You
across there, just to protect him "
Her hands went to her throat, the fingers tighten
ing.
"A sign," she implored. "Dieu that you
hear me!"
Her eyes stared about the room, peering frantic
ally from under their heavy lids.
THE FAITH 141
"Will you not help me?" She pleaded. "Dieu!
mon Dieu, will you not help me ?"
Her kneeling figure swayed a bit.
"You will not hear/ she whimpered. "You will
not hear "
For a moment longer she waited in the tense
silence. And then she rose stiffly to her feet. Her
eyes riveted themselves upon a little pool of yellow
light that lay in the center of the table under the
lamp. The palms of her hands struck noiselessly to
gether.
Very slowly, she went through the curtain and
into the kitchen.
It was a scrupulously clean room. A stove stood
in one corner. Against the wall hung a row of pots
and pans that caught the light from the swinging
lamp in brilliant, burnished patches.
Angele and Jean sat near to each other at the
center table. Their heads were close. Their cau
tious whispering stopped abruptly as she came to
ward them.
The woman sat down with the girl on one side of
her and the boy on the other. She was very silent.
There was only one thing she could have said. She
did not want to say it.
Mechanically she tried to eat. She watched her
hands moving upward from her plate with a sort of
dazed interest. It was only when she tried to swal
low that she realized how each mouthful of food
choked her.
The one question came to her lips again and again.
i 4 2 THE SCARECROW
At last she asked it.
"When do you go mon Jean?"
The boy gave a quick glance at his sister and his
eyes fixed themselves upon the table before him and
stayed there. She knew then what they had been
speaking of when she came into the room.
4 What difference does it make, petite Maman,
when I go?"
"But when, my son?"
"See, Angele, she is anxious to be rid of me ! She
cannot wait until I go. She insists upon knowing
even before we have finished this supper of ours."
"Maman;" the girl spoke hurriedly. "Let us
talk of that later."
"When?" She insisted.
"But, Maman, you have not touched your food.
Was it not good? And I thought you would so like
the p tit marmite."
"It is excellent, Angele."
"Then eat, Maman."
"It is that I am not hungry, Angele."
"So, the p tit marmite is not good, petite Maman.
If it were excellent, even though you have no hun
ger, you would eat and eat until there was not one
little bit left."
The woman took another spoonful.
"When?" She repeated.
The boy s dark eyes lifted and looked into hers.
"To-night, Maman."
Her figure straightened itself with a quick jerk.
"To-night?"
THE FAITH 143
"And what does it matter, petite Maman, when I
go? Surely to-night is as nice a time as any."
"As nice a time as any;" she echoed his words.
The three of them sat there silently.
The girl was the first to move.
"Ah, but it is hot in here." She pushed her chair
back from the table. "It is uncomfortable!"
The boy and the woman got to their feet.
"I ll pack, Maman. Not much, you know. Just
my shaving things and soap, and some underwear.
Angele will help me. I won t be long."
He went out of the kitchen door and down the nar
row passage way to his room. The girl hesitated
for a moment. Without a word she hurried after
him.
The woman crossed slowly into the next room.
For a second she stood beside the table, and then she
walked over to the window.
Outside the street was dark. No light trickled
through the blinds of the house opposite. No light
reached its brilliant electric flare into the sky. No
light from the tall lamp-post specked through the
gloom. In the dim shadow of the silent street she
could see the vague forms of people going to and
fro. Blurred figures moving in the darkness with
the echo of their footsteps trailing sharply behind
them.
She stood quite still. Once her hands crept up to
her mouth, the backs of them pressing against her
teeth.
"Maman."
144 THE SCARECROW
She wheeled about at the sound of Jean s voice.
He was standing just within the doorway, the girl
at his side. The woman stood there staring. The
girl crossed the room quickly and put her arm about
the woman s waist, drawing her close.
"Petite Maman "
"You go now Jean ?"
She said the words carefully and precisely with a
tremendous effort for control.
"But, yes, Maman!"
She leaned a little against the girl.
"Mon Jean, you will have courage ; great
courage my little one, you will be protected. You
will be protected!" She had said that in spite
of herself.
He came to her then and flung his arms about
her and kissed her on either cheek, and held her
tightly to him.
"Good-by, petite Maman."
"Good " She could not say it
"Good-by, Angele."
"My little rabbit I wish you luck. My cabbage
au revoir ;" and her lips brushed across his
mouth.
For a second he did not move. Then he went
across the room and out through the door.
He was gone.
The woman s eyes went to the window. The
silent, darkened street. The people there below her.
The somber, black lack of light.
"Maman;" the girl whispered.
THE FAITH 145
"They will watch over him," the woman muttered.
"They must watch out there. They do come
back into the world again to protect. They cannot
cannot leave them in all that horror alone."
"See, Maman." The girl s quivering face was
against the window-pane. "Maman, Jean waves
to you!"
Her eyes followed the pointing of the girl s finger.
"They must be here ," she murmured.
"Maman, wave to Jean!"
Her gaze rested on the dim, undefined figure of
the boy standing in the street with his hat in the
hand that was reached toward them above his head.
Mechanically she waved back.
The woman and the girl stood close.
"Oh petite maman;" she whispered piteously.
The woman s eyes dilated.
There, following after Jean; going through the
shadow-saturated street; moving unheeded among
the vague figures of the people going to and fro.
Something was there. Some scant movement like
a current too quiet to see. A shadow in the shadows
that her sight could not hold to. In the dark,
gloom-soaked street, staying close to her Jean, she
could feel something. Some one was there.
Her eyes strained with desperate intentness. Her
hands went up slowly across her heart.
The words that came to her lips were whispered:
"Dieu! Give me faith; faith not to disbe
lieve"
YELLOW
YELLOW
HE walked along the pavement with the long,
swinging stride he had so successfully aped
from the men about him. It had been one of the
first things upon which he had dwelt with the greatest
patience; one of the first upon which he had centered
his stolid concentration. He had carried his per
sistency to such a degree that he had even been
known to follow other men about measuring their
step to a nicety with those long, narrow eyes of his,
that seemed to see nothing, and yet penetrated into
the very soul of everything.
His classmates at the big college had at the be
ginning laughed at him; scoffing readily because of
the dogged manner in which he had persevered at
his desire to become thoroughly American. Now
after all his laborious painstaking, now that he had
carefully studied all their ways of talking, all their
distinctive mannerisms; now that he had gone even
beyond that with true Oriental perception, reaching
out with the cunning tentacles of his brain into the
minds of those about him, he knew they had begun
to treat him with the comradeship, the unthinking
fellow-feeling which they accorded each other.
He thoroughly realized that had they paused to
consider, had they in any way been made to feel that
M9
150 THE SCARECROW
he, a Chinaman, had consciously made up his mind
to become one of them, consistently mimicking them
day after day, that they would have resented him.
He knew that they could not have helped but think
it all hypocrisy. And yet he actually felt that it was
the one big thing of his life; that desire of his to
cast aside the benightment of dying China, for what
he considered the enlightment and virility of Amer
ica.
To be sure he recognized there was still a great
number of the men who distrusted him because of
his yellow face. He had made up his mind with the
slow deliberation that always characterized his un
swerving determination to win every one of them be
fore the end of his last year. He would show them
one and all that he was as good as they were; that
the traditions of the Chinaman which they so looked
down upon, upon which he himself looked down
upon, were not his traditions.
As he walked along he thought of these things;
thought of them carefully and concisely in English.
His narrow eyes became a trifle more narrow, and a
smile that held something of triumph in it came and
played about his flat, mobile mouth.
It had been raining hard. The wet streets
stretched in dark, reflecting coils under the corner
lamps. Overhead a black sky lowered threateningly;
pressing down upon the crouching, gray masses of
the close-built houses in sullen menace. Now and
again a swift moving train flung itself in thundering
YELLOW 151
derision across the elevated tracks; a long brightly
lit line streaking through the encircling gloom.
He could feel the mysterious throb of life all
about him. The unfathomed lure of the night, of
the few people that at so late an hour crept past him,
looming for a second in sudden distinctness at his
side, then fading phantom-like into the deep engulf
ing shadows of the dim street.
He was at a complete loss how to express to him
self the feeling of dread; a subtle feeling that some
how refused to be translated into the carefully ac
quired English of which he was so proud.
For a moment he doubted himself. Doubted that,
were he so thoroughly American, he could feel the
Oriental s subconscious recognition of the purpose
ful, sinister intent in the huddled mass of darkened
shop windows with their rain-dripping signs; in the
shining reptile scales of the asphalt underfoot; in the
pulsing intensity of the hot, torpid July atmosphere.
A street lamp flickered its uncertain light slug
gishly over the carefully groomed figure and across
the placid breath of the yellow face.
He paused a second as he saw a form come lurch
ing unsteadily out of the gloom ahead of him. It
came nearer and he could see that what had at first
appeared to be a dark, undefinable mass, pushed here
and there by unseen hands, was in reality a man
swaying drunkenly out of the shadows.
He watched the man curiously, with a little of
that contemptuous feeling an Oriental always holds
for any expression of excess. As the man stood be-
1 52 THE SCARECROW
fore him in the darkness, as he stumbled and seemed
about to fall, he put out his hand and caught him
by the elbow.
"Thank e;" the drunken eyes blinked blearily up
into his stolid impassive face. "It s fine to be saved
on a stormy night like this. It is "
"Don t mention it."
"It s a powerful dark night; it is."
"Les. That is so."
"And it s a damn long way home. Ain t it?"
"I do not know."
"By the saints ! And no more do I. Ain t you got
a dime on you, mister? You could be giving it to
me for car fare ; couldn t you now, mister?"
"Velee glad to let you have it."
He fished in his pocket. He drew out the coin
and placed it in the man s outstretched hand. He
watched the dirty fingers close eagerly over it. Sud
denly the bloodshot eyes wavered suspiciously
across his face. He saw the red flushed features
twitch convulsively.
"Holy Mother!" The drunkard muttered thickly.
"It s a heathen."
The dime slipped from between the inert fingers.
It tinkled down onto the pavement, rolling with a
little splash into a pool of water that lay a deep stain
in the crevice of the broken asphalt.
For a moment he wondered placidly at the injus
tice of it; wondered that he should be made to feel
the disgust of so revolting a thing as this drunkard.
He saw that the man had crossed himself with sud-
YELLOW 153
den fervor; he saw him shuffle uncertainly this way
and that, as though the feet refused to carry the
huge, bloated body. He stood watching the reeling
figure until its dark outline was absorbed into the in-
tenser darkness of a side street. The expression on
his face never changing, he walked on.
He knew he had no right to be out at that time of
the night; he knew he ought to be sitting at his desk
in his comfortable little room, working out the
studies which he had set himself. And yet he could
not make up his mind to turn back.
Something drew him on into the blackness of the
night; pulling him into it like a fated thing.
Now and then he found that the stride he had ac
quired from such grinding observation tired him.
Not for worlds would he have shortened his step to
that padding, sinuous motion so distinctly Chinese.
He had grown to hate all things Chinese. In the
short time in which he had been in New York he
had discarded with the utmost patience the traits
which are so persistently associated with the China
man. To be thought American; to have the free
dom, the quick appreciation of life that belongs to
the Occident, that hafl been the goal toward which
he had striven; the goal he prided himself he had al
most reached.
Suddenly he became aware of a hand on his arm.
In the dark he felt the pressure of bony fingers
against his flesh.
Looking down he saw that a woman had crept
154 THE SCARECROW
up from behind him; that she had put out her hand
in an effort to detain him.
It was in the center of a block. The thick black
ness that hung loosely, an opaque veil all about him,
was almost impenetrable. Yet as he looked at her
with his small, piercing eyes, he thought he saw her
lips moving in crimsoned stains splashed against
the whiteness of her face.
" What is it?" He asked.
He saw her raise her eyelids at his question. He
found himself gazing into her eyes; eyes that were
twin balls of fire left to burn in a place that had
been devastated by flames.
"It s hot; ain t it?"
He stood silent for a moment trying to realize
that the woman had every right to be there ; trying
to understand with an even greater endeavor that
she was in reality a flesh and blood woman, and not
some mysteriously incarnate soul crawling to his side
out of the sinister night.
"Les , it s velee hot."
Something in his tone caused her to start; caused
her to look around her as though she were afraid.
"I wouldn t have spoke," she stammered. "I
wouldn t have spoke only it s such a fierce night."
Then as he did not answer her immediately, her
voice rose querulously. "It s a fierce night; ain t it,
now?"
That was the word for which he had so vainly
searched throughout the vocabulary of his carefully
acquired English. The word the woman had given
YELLOW 155
him, that expressed the sullen menace of the night
about him.
"It is fie " He made an effort to accomplish
the refractory "r." "It is fierce."
The hand she had withdrawn from his arm was
reached out again. He could feel her fingers scrape
like the talons of a frightened bird around his wrist.
"You get it too, mister?"
"Get what?"
"The kind of feeling that makes you think some
thing is going to happen?" She drew the back of her
free hand across her mouth. "Ain t it making you
afraid?"
Somehow the woman s words aroused within him
a dread that was a prophecy. He made one at
tempt at holding to his acquired Americanism. The
Americanism which was slowly receding before the
stifled waves of Oriental foreboding, like a weak,
protesting thing that fears a hidden strength. For
he knew the foreboding was fate; and he knew toQ
that when fulfilled, it would be met with all the
stoicism of a Chinaman.
"You feel aflaid?"
The fingers about his wrist clattered bonily to
gether; then clinched themselves anew.
"Yes," she whispered. "I guess that s it. I guess
I m afraid."
For a moment he thought of the lateness of the
hour.
"I m velee solee," he said. "I m solee, but I
must be going."
156 THE SCARECROW
"You can t leave me;" she stuttered behind her
shut teeth. "You ain t got the heart to leave me all
alone on a night like this."
"You can go to your home ;" and he thought of the
drunkard who had gone to his home. Surely the
night sheltered strange creatures. "Les, you better
go on to your home."
She laughed.
He had never thought of one of his little Chinese
gods with their crooked faces laughing; but as he
heard her he knew that their mirth would sound like
that. Sound as though all the gladness had been
killed; choked out of it, leaving only the harsh echoes
that mocked and mocked.
"Gee, mister ; I ain t got no place to go."
"I m velee solee."
He said it again, not knowing what else to say.
Something in his evident sincerity aroused her to
protest.
"Oh, I know you thinks it queer for me to be
talking this way," she said. "I know you thinks it
funny for me to say I m afraid. And I ain t, ex
cepting " she added hastily, "on a night like this.
It kinder makes everything alive; everything that s
rotten bad. I ain t ashamed of the things I ve done.
I ain t scared of the dead things. It s the live ones
I m afraid of ; the dirty live things. They kinder
come at you in the dark." For an instant her body
trembled against his. "Then they goes past you all
creepy-like. Creeping on their bellies ; sliding,
like like slime."
YELLOW 157
"You don t know what you are saying," he in
terrupted.
"I know," she insisted. "I know! Some night
like this I ll be doing something awful; and they ll
be there." She pointed a shaking hand towards the
shadows. "They ll be there, wriggling to me quiet
|>
"Imagination," he said, and he smiled. In the
dark she could not have seen the smile, nor could she
have known that the lightness of his tone covered a
deep, malignant dread. "It is all imagination!"
"It ain t!" She spoke sullenFy. "I tell you, it s
real. It s horrible real!"
Her voice was frantic.
"Maybe it is," he conceded, and then, as she made
no answer, he asked: "You like to walk with me a
little?"
"Yes." Her head drooped as though she were
utterly discouraged. "It wouldn t be so bad as
sticking it out here alone."
He could not help but notice that she hesitated a
bit before the word alone. Undoubtedly she could
not get the thought of those things those live things
she so feared, out of her head. The things that
waited for her in the shadows.
They walked along the wet pavements to
gether.
An engine shrieked weirdly above them, like some
thing neither bird nor beast; like something inhu
man.
i 5 8 THE SCARECROW
Under a street lamp she glanced up at him cu
riously.
He heard her gasp. He looked down at her. He
saw her eyes widen in terror; he saw her pale, bare
hands creep uncertain, stumbling to her neck, as if
she were choking. He heard her voice rattling in
her throat.
"What is it?" He asked. "You are ill?"
He put his hand on her shoulder. He could feel
her shudder, as she writhed and twisted under his
touch.
"Let go of me." Her voice was hoarse. "Let
go of me, I say!"
For some unaccountable reason his fingers closed
all the more tightly on her shrinking flesh.
"Let me go; you damned Chink!"
She muttered the words under her breath.
He heard her.
He thought of the drunkard and he thought of
her.
Suddenly he felt quite furious; stilly, sinisterly
furious.
"I m Melican."
He said it stolidly. His narrow, black eyes were
unwavering on her.
She began to cry.
"Let me go," she whimpered. "I ain t done noth
ing to you. I couldn t have got on to your being a
Chink."
"What diffelence does that make?" He asked.
YELLOW 159
And then he reiterated with careful precision: "I
tell you I m a Melican."
Her words came to him in a gurgle of terror.
"I hate you. I hate all of your yellow faces and
them eyes! I hate them horrid, nasty eyes!"
He bent his head until his face almost touched
hers. His strong, angry fingers held her firmly by
either arm.
"It is not pletty, this face?"
She struggled, inane with fear. She fought, trying
to free herself, to tear away from the vise-like grip
of those awful hands; swaying like a tortured,
trapped creature against his strength. She could
feel the intensity, the calm scrutiny of his long, nar
row eyes upon her.
Suddenly something in his brain snapped.
He pushed her roughly from him.
He saw her fall to the pavement; he saw her
head strike the curb.
He stood there watching her as she lay, outlined
by the light colored material of her dress against
the wet blackness of the asphalt.
"What diffelence does it make if I am a China
man?"
He asked it as he bent over her. But she did not
answer. The question went out into the heavy still
ness, hanging there to be echoed deafeningly by a
thousand silent tongues.
Something in the sudden quiet of the way she lay
filled him with a tranquil joy. He knelt beside her,
He reached his hand over her heart,
160 THE SCARECROW
He got up slowly, deliberately.
He moved silently away, going with that padded,
sinuous motion, so distinctly Chinese.
With cunning stealth he went back the way he had
come, treading lightly; cautiously seeking the darkest
shadows.
He had gone some little distance when he heard
the regular beat of hurrying footsteps following
him.
He stood stolidly, still, awaiting whatever might
happen.
Overhead he saw a cluster of heavy, black clouds
sweeping across the sky, like eager, reaching hands
against a somber background.
It had begun to rain again. He could feel the
raindrops trickling gently down his upturned face.
He wondered, as the footsteps halted beside him,
if he should have run. His mind, working rapidly,
decided that any other man would have gotten away;
any other man but not a Chinaman.
A heavy hand fell across his shoulder.
"I ve got you, my boy!" A voice shouted in his
ear. "I seen you kneeling there beside her. You ll
be coming along with me !"
He turned to face the voice.
The wind that heralded the coming storm rustled
through the street, carrying with it a litter of filthy
castaway newspapers. Flurries of stinging sand-
sharp dust swirled above the pavement. A low
rumble of thunder bellowed overhead. Then the
rain came down in sudden lashing fury.
YELLOW 161
He had to raise his voice to make himself heard.
"I m velee glad," he said.
The bull s eye was flashed into his placid, narrow
eyes.
He could see the policeman s face behind the light;
see the surprise quivering on the red features.
In the darkness above the racket of the storm,
he heard the man s gasping mutter:
"Yellow by God! Yellow 1"
CHINA-CHING
CHINA-CHING *
racket was terrific. The yelping, the shrill
JL prolonged whines, the quick incessant bark
ing; and running in growling under-current, the
throaty, infuriated snarling.
The woman stood at the window gazing out into
the gathering twilight. Before her eyes stretched the
drab, flat fields; here and there a shadowy mass of
trees reached their feathery tips that were etched in
darkly against the graying skies. Directly before
her, beyond the unkept waste that might at one time
have been a garden, reared the high, wire walls of
the kennels. She could just make out the dim, unde
fined forms of the dogs running to and fro within
the narrow, confining space.
The swift, persistent movement of them fascinated
her. The ghostly shapes of them pattering sinuously
and silently along the ground; the dull scratching
thud of the claws and bodies that hurled themselves
again and again into the strong wire netting. The
impossibility of their escape throttled her. Their
futile attempts at freedom caused a powerful nausea
to creep over her. And there in the center of the
run she could distinguish, chained to the dog-house,
a pale blur in the fading light, the motionless
yellow mass of the chow, China-Ching.
* Published originally in The All Story Maya~inc.
165
1 66 THE SCARECROW
The shrill, prolonged whines, the quick, incessant
barking:
"Oh, my Gawd;" she muttered involuntarily.
u Oh, my Gawd!"
The man sitting in the middle of the room pulled
his pipe out of his mouth.
"What s that you say?"
She stood at the window, her eyes fixed steadfastly
on that one dumb dog among all those yelping, snarl
ing other dogs.
The man got up from his chair and came and
stood beside her. Unconsciously she shrank away
from his nearness.
"Ain t you used to that by now; ain t you?"
She turned toward him; all but her eyes. Her
eyes were still riveted out there upon the motionless
chow chained in the center of the run.
"It ain t the noise; that, that don t mean so
much, James. It ain t the noise."
"Then what s the matter, huh?"
She pointed a trembling forefinger at that yellow
mass tied to the dog-house.
"Him," she whispered. "He don t make no
racket, James."
The man peered over her shoulder.
"The chow?"
"Yes;" her voice was still. "China-Ching. He
don t make no racket, James."
"I d like to hear him," the man blustered. "I d
just like to hear one peep out of him; that s all."
She saw his coarse, hairy hand go to his hip pocket.
CHINA-CHING 167
She smiled bitterly. She knew the confidence he
felt when he touched the mother-of-pearl handle of
his pistol.
"You don t need that on him," she said. "He just
sits there and don t never move. He don t hardly
eat when you feeds him. He don t seem to have no
heart left for nothing. He ain t like the terrier what
had the distemper; he ain t like the greyhound
what had the hydrophobia, so awful bad."
"What d you mean?" The man muttered angrily.
"Ain t they had the hydrophobia; ain t they had
the distemper; ain t they?"
"You says they did, James."
"Ain t I the one to know? If I ain t been born
with dog-sense, would folks be giving me their muts
to care for?"
"You shot them pups, James."
"And what if I did?" He stormed. "They was
dangerous they was a menace to the community,
so they was. And see, here, you take it from me,
there ain t nothing more dangerous as a dog when
he gets took that there way. Why, I ve heard tell
of dogs what have torn men limb from limb." And
then he added in afterthought: "Men that ve been
kind to em, too."
Her laughter rang out shrilly, piercingly.
"Aw, James," she giggled hysterically. "Aw,
now, James "
"What s that?" His hand was on her hand. "See
here, you, ain t I kind to em?"
His touch sobered her quite suddenly.
1 68 THE SCARECROW
"Kind to em?"
She repeated his words vaguely as though not
fully conscious of their actual meaning.
The grip of his fingers tightened cruelly about her
arm.
"Ain t Ikindto em?"
"Oh, my Gawd," she whimpered. "Oh, my
Gawd, yes."
He went back to the center of the room and
lighted the lamp on the bare-boarded, pine-wood
table. Its light flickered in a sickly, yellow glow
over the straight-backed chairs, across the unpapered
walls, and dribbled feebly upwards to where the
heavy rafters of the ceiling were obliterated in a
smothering thickness of shadows.
"What re you standing there for? Pull down that
blind! Come here, I say!"
The faint, motionless form there beside the dog
house. The wooden, stiffened attitude of it. The
great mass of the chow s rigid body that was gradu
ally becoming absorbed into the gray shadow; that
was slowly losing its faint outline in the saturating,
blurring darkness.
She did as she was told ; hastily, nervously. And
then she came and stood beside the table. Try as
she would to prevent it her eyes kept on staring
through the curtained window.
Again she became conscious of the yelping, the
prolonged whines, the quick, incessant barking; and
running in growling under-current, the throaty, in
furiated snarling.
CHINA-CHING 169
"I can t stand it no more 1" she shrieked. "It s
too much, so it is! I just can t stand it no
more!"
He looked up at her, startled.
"What under the canopy s eating you?"
She sank into a chair. The palms of her hands
pounded against each other. In the lamplight her
face showed itself pale and drawn with the eyes pull
ing out of its deadened setness in live despair.
"You got to do something for me, James." Her
voice shook. "You simply got to do it. I ain t
never asked nothing from you before this. I ve been
a good wife to you. I ve stood for a lot, Gawd
knows I have. I ain t never made no complaint.
You got to do this for me, James."
"Got to, huh? Them s high words, my lady.
There ain t nothing what I got to do. You ain t
gone plum crazy, have you?"
"Crazy?" She muttered. "No, I ain t gone
crazy; not yet, I ain t. Only you got to do this for
me, James."
"What re you driving at, huh?"
She rose to her feet then. When she spoke her
tone was quite controlled.
"You got to let that chow-dog go."
The man sprang erect.
"What d you mean?"
"You got to let China-Ching go ! You
got to let him get away. You got to make that
China-Ching free."
He laughed. The laugh had no sound of mirth in
170 THE SCARECROW
it. The laugh was long and loud; but its loudness
could not cover the insidious evil of it.
"That s a good one," he shouted. "Let a dog go
of his own sweet will when some day I ll be getting
my price for him. That s the funniest thing I ve
heard in many a long day. Land s sakes ! You re
just full of wit, ain t you?"
"I ain t," she retorted sullenly.
But he paid no attention to her.
"I never would have thought it that s a cinch!
Say, it do seem I m learning all the time."
Her teeth came together with a sharp snap.
"Better be careful you don t learn too much,
about me."
She whispered it beneath her breath.
"Muttering, huh?" He leaned toward her over
the table. "I don t like no muttering. I ain t the
one to allow no muttering around me. Speak out
if you got something to say; and if you ain t,
why, then, shut up!"
The lamp threw its full light up into his face.
Not one muscle, not one wrinkle, but stood out
harshly above its crude flame. She drew back a
step.
"All right." She had been goaded into it. "I ll
speak up All right. That s what you wants, ain t
it? I ve stood for enough. I reckon I ve stood for
too much. You knows that. But you ain t thought
that maybe I knows it, have you? That makes a
difference, don t it? You knows the way you treats
me, only you ain t thought that I ever gives it n^
CHINA-CHING 171
thought; and I ain t, no, I ain t; not till you
brought that there China-Ching here. Not till
you brought China-Ching."
"What s that mut got to do between you and me?"
His eyes refused to meet her eyes that were ablaze
with a strange, inspired light.
"Everything. From the day I seen you bring him
here ; from the day I seen you beating him because
he snapped at you ; from the day you chained him
up to that dog-house to break his spirit ; from that
day it come over me what you done to me."
"You re crazy; plum crazy!"
"Oh, no, I ain t;" she went on in suppressed fury.
"I ve slaved for you when you was sober, and when
you was drunk. I ve stood your kicks and I ve stood
your dirty talk, and I ve stood for the way you treats
them there dogs. And d you know why I ve stood
for it, say, do you?"
His hands clenched at his sides. Their knuckles
showed white against the soiled dark skin.
"No and what s more "
She interrupted him.
"I ve stood for it all because I knowed that any
time Any time, mind you, I could clear out.
Whenever I likes I can get up and, go!"
"You wouldn t dare; you ain t got the nerve I"
"I have; I have, too."
"Where d you go, huh?"
"I d get away from you, all right."
"What dyou do?"
"That ain t of no account to you!"
172 THE SCARECROW
He watched her for a second between half-closed
lids. A cunning smile spread itself over his thick
lips. He walked to the door and threw it wide open.
"You can go if you likes; you can go, now! 5 *
Her hand went to her heart. The scant color in
her face left it. She took one hesitating step for
ward and then she stood quite still.
"If you lets the dog go -I stays."
Her words sounded muffled.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"The dog s my dog. I ain t able to see where
he comes in on all this."
"You can t see nothing; you don t want to see!
It s knowing too well what that pup s up against that
makes me want you to let him go. It s that I
don t want to have the heart took out of him; the
way you took the heart out of me, that makes me
want to have him set free."
He gave a noiseless chuckle.
"So I took the heart out of you, did I?"
She glared at him savagely.
"You knows you did!"
For a moment they were silent.
"Well?" He asked.
She saw him wave a hand toward the door.
"Aw, James, you can t be so cruel bad You can t.
The other dogs don t mind it ; they makes a noise
and they tears around. And then they eats and
drinks and late at nights they lies down and sleeps;
if there ain t no moon. But that China-Ching he
CHINA-CHING 173
ain t like them. Maybe he is savage; maybe
you re right to be afraid of him."
His whole figure was suddenly taut. His head
shrank into his shoulders.
"There ain t nothing I m afraid of; get that into
your head I ain t afraid of nothing And if you
wants to go, why, all I got to say is, you can
git!"
A stillness came between them, broken only by the
sounds from the kennels. The yelping, the shrill
prolonged whines, the quick, incessant barking; and
running in growling under-current, the throaty, in
furiated snarling.
He went to the table and took the lamp up in one
hand. He went over to the door and closed it with
a loud bang. Then he started toward the stairs.
"If you ain t able to bring yourself to leave me,"
the words came to her over his shoulder, "you can
come on up to bed."
Mechanically she followed him up the steps. Me
chanically she went through the process of undressing
and washing. Long after he had fallen asleep she
lay there wide awake watching the moonlight trickle
in quivering, golden spots across the floor; lay wide
awake listening to the eerie baying of the dogs.
She had had her chance of freedom and at the
last moment her courage had failed her. What she
had told him had been the absolute truth. She had
never realized what had happened to her, what a
stifled, smothered thing she had become, until that
i 7 4 THE SCARECROW
day when he had brought the chow-dog home to the
kennels.
She had married James when she was very young.
Their fathers* farms adjoined. It had been the ex
pected thing and she had gone through with it quite
as a matter of course. In those days he had been
somewhat ambitious. The country-folk around ad
mitted grudgingly that James Conover was a born
farmer. Then the old people, both their fathers and
his mother, had grown a bit older, and one by one
they had died. There had been nothing violent in
their deaths. Silent, narrow-minded, like most
country persons they had grown a. trifle more silent,
a trifle more bigoted, and then they were dead. It
had seemed to her that way at any rate. She had
become conscious all of a sudden that she was alone
with James. Strange that the consciousness should
have come to her after she had been alone with him
for three years; and then that she should only realize
she was alone in the world with him the first time he
came home drunk. After that he took to drinking
more and more, and finally he gave up farming. It
had been quite by accident that he took to boarding
dogs ; now and then buying one for a quick turn. He
liked the job. As far as she could see it gave him
more time to spend in the village saloon.
One thing she had never been able to understand.
In her heart she was certain that James was terrified
of the animals. She had seen him shoot a dog at
the slightest provocation. But until she had seen the
chow she had never bothered with the beasts. She
CHINA-CHING 175
had cooked their meals but she had not been allowed
to feed them. She had watched them from the out
side of the kennels but she had never gone in to
them. She had tolerated their racket because she
had never fully understood what lay in back of it
all. And then the chow came.
James had brought China-Ching home in the old
runabout; brought him to the kennels tied down in
a great basket. She had not paid much attention to
either man or dog. The first sight that she had of
the chow had been because of James. She had heard
his cursing and the crack of his huge whip. She had
gone out on the porch then and had seen the man
beating the dog with all his strength; the man swear
ing loudly and furiously and the chow silent. She
had never gotten over that spectacle. It was the first
time she had ever seen a dog maintain silence.
And then day after day she had watched China-
Ching, chained there and so strangely silent. Among
all those yapping, yipping dogs he alone had re
mained quiet. And the other animals had paid scant
attention to him after the first short while. Even
in their wild racing about the enclosure they had
given him a wide berth. There was something mag
nificent, something almost majestic in the chow s
aloofness. If it had not been for the dog s eyes she
would have thought him dumb; a fool. But the
eyes haunted her. Great liquid brown eyes, that
met hers with unutterable sadness; eyes that clutched
and held on to her with the depths of their sorrow.
She made up her mind after the first month that
176 THE SCARECROW
she must free the dog; that she must get him out of
the kennels somehow or other. She had never
thought of a direct appeal to James. If it had not
been for the way he had goaded her this evening she
would never have spoken as she did. Only she had
always known that it would not be in her power to
let the dog escape from the kennels without his
finding who had done it; without bearing the brunt
of his inevitable rage.
And after the first month she began almost un
consciously to associate herself with the chow, to
put herself in his place. As she commenced to un
derstand what his desires for freedom must be so
she first realized that those same desires were hers.
Only, as she phrased it to herself, she could stand it a
lot better than the chow. Dogs could not reason.
She could go on existing this way till the end of her
days; but she felt that if China-Ching could not be
freed that he would die. She could not bear the
thought of that. Whatever happened to the dog
would happen to that part of her which had come
into being when the dog had come.
The moonlight trickled further and further into
the room. The stream of it spilled itself wider and
wider along the shadow-specked floor.
She could hear the man s deep breathing, now and
then punctuated by a guttural snore. The eerie bay
ing of the dogs; and out there the one silent dog
ohained to the dog-house.
Not one moment longer could she endure it.
Very stealthily she got up and slipped on her
CHINA-CHING 177
skirt. Shoeless and stockingless she crept out into
the hall and down the stairs. Unbolting the front
door, she paused an instant to hear if she had been
detected. With strained ears she listened for those
harsh, long-drawn snores. But the house was very
still. She could not hear his breathing from where
she was. If only he would snore. She waited. The
sound came to her at last. She hurried out on to
the porch.
The dampness of the summer night was all about
her. Overhead the pale flecks of innumerable stars,
and the far, cold light of the waning moon. From
somewheres in the distance came the monotonous
droning of locusts. Against the dark clump of
bushes darted the quick, illusive glimmer of a will-o -
the-wisp.
She shivered as her feet struck the chill, wet grass.
And then very slowly she went toward the kennels.
Her eyes took no note of the dogs that lay on the
ground; of the little fox-terrier sniffing here and
there along the wall for rats; of the big police-dog,
and the massive English bull, reared on their
haunches, their muzzles lifted to the moon. She
only saw, chained to the dog-house, a pale blur
in the haunting, whitened light, the silent, yellow
mass of the chow, China-Ching. She knew that the
great, liquid brown eyes were fixed upon her; she
could feel them drawing her on. She went toward
him.
Very silently she went And as she went shr.
mumbled,
1 78 THE SCARECROW
"If they start a rumpus, the same racket, may
be, if he wakes he won t think nothing of it; that
is, if he ain t enough awake to know I ain t there
besides him. Maybe though, he won t wake; may
be they won t make no noise; maybe he won t
please, Gawd 1 only to get China-Ching, so that
he can feel free please, Gawd! so s China-Ching
don t have to stay so that I please Gawd! so s
I can set something free."
She suddenly became afraid to approach too si
lently. Afraid of the deafening uproar of a dog s
warning. Already the police-dog had stopped his
regular baying; already the little fox-terrier sniffed
the air through the wire netting, sensing some one
coming. If only she had thought to get them some
bones; if only she had a piece of meat; a dog-biscuit,
anything to throw to them to keep them quiet.
But she had not had time to think of that.
She began to whistle softly, and then a bit louder
as she realized that she had whistled the call of the
whip-poor-will. The police-dog got to his feet. She
could hear the sinister rumbling of his throaty snarl
ing. She saw the bull-dog waddling clumsily after
him. They stood there, their coats bristling, their
ears erect, their muzzles poked into the wire netting.
And then a quick bark from quite the other side of
the kennels.
She felt that numberless small eyes were peering
out at her with betraying cunning. It seemed to her
.that innumerable dogs were rising from the ground;
CHINA-CHING 179
were rushing to the walls; were tearing out of their
separate kennels.
She called then; called very low, in the hope that
they might know her voice.
"China-Ching ; oh, China-Ching."
She was face to face with it now. All through
the day she managed somehow to bear with it.
Hideous as it was, deafening so that she could not
hear, hated so that it made her physically ill. And
now in the dead of night it was let loose; with the
unlimited stillness of the night vibrating in grotesque,
yapping echo, with the cold light of the moon spot
ting uncanny over the kennels, she had it. The yelp
ing, the shrill, prolonged whines, the quick incessant
barking; and running in growling under-current, the
throaty, infuriated snarling.
She knew then that it was quite beyond hope that
James should not hear them. She had to hurry. She
began to run; and all the while she called in the
same low voice :
u China-Ching; I m coming to you. Oh China-
Ching"
She pulled back the stiff, iron bolts. It took all
her strength to do that. She opened the gate a bit,
and slipped in, pushing it to, behind her.
And then she was among them. Their noise in
creased in volume, pitched in a shriller note. The
sudden rush of them threw her off her feet. Some
of them leaped on her. She felt a sharp, stinging nip
in her wrist. In a second she was up again.
"Down!" She commanded. "Down!"
i So THE SCARECROW
She went toward the chow, pushing the other dogs
out of her way with both hands ; stumbling, stepping
over them as they crowded about her feet.
"Down!" She murmured breathless.
It was not until she got well within a couple of
strides of the chow that the other dogs dropped away
from her. It was the same thing that she had wit
nessed a hundred times from her window. The ani
mals had always given China-Ching a wide berth;
had always respected his magnificent, majestic aloof
ness. And as she reached him she fell to her knees.
"China-Ching;" she whispered brokenly. "China-
Ching!"
Her arms went around the dog s neck. Her hands
stroked the thick ruff at his throat. She felt a cold
nose on her cheek. A slow, deep sniffing; a second
later two heavy paws were on her shoulder, and a
warm, moist tongue curled again and again about
her ear.
In the moonlight she looked into his eyes. The
great, liquid brown eyes met hers with all their
unutterable sadness.
"D you want to go, China-Ching?" She mur
mured; "d you want to go and be free?"
Her fingers were working swiftly at his collar.
As it clanked to the ground she felt him stiffen rigidly
beneath her touch. She saw his ears go back flat
against his head; she saw his upper lip pulled so that
the long, sharp teeth showed glisteningly in the
huckle-berry, blue gums. She followed the set stare
CHINA-CHING 181
of his eyes, and what she saw sent a shiver down
her spine.
Coming across the waste that had once been a
garden, running stumblingly in the full path of the
moonlight, came James. And the other dogs had
seen him. She realized that when she heard the
growling, the snarling, the low, infuriated snorts.
She rushed back to the gate.
James saw her then.
"Get away," he shouted. "Get away from there !"
She threw the gate open and stood leaning against
it to keep it wide.
"China-Ching," she called; "come on, China-
Ching!"
But it was the other dogs that tore past her. First
one, then another, then two together, and then the
whole wild, panting pack of them.
"For Gawd s sake;" the man shrieked. "Get-
get " The words were lost in his breathless
choking.
The chow-dog was the last to go. For a second
he stood beside her. She bent over him. She was
afraid to touch him; afraid that at that moment
her hands might involuntarily hold him.
"Go on, China-Ching;" she urged frantically; "go
on!"
"Hey, you 1" The man stormed at the dogs.
"Here , here !" He whistled; "here, boy, here,
old fellow, come on; "
He suddenly stood still. He tried to make hi*
whistling persuasive. He was out of breath. When
1 82 THE SCARECROW
he saw that they would not come to him he ran
after them. They scattered pellmell before him.
She saw them disappearing in every direction. Some
of them slinking away with their tails between their
legs ; some of them crawling into the bushes on their
bellies; some of them rushing head-long, racing mad
ly into the night. Only the yellow mass of the chow-
dog went in even padded patter out toward the
road.
She waited there for James. She could not think.
She only waited.
And at last he came back.
"You " His voice was low; "you !"
The words were smothered in his anger.
She smiled then. She thought that she still could
hear the even, padded patter of the dog jogging to
his freedom.
"So you turned on me; you ! D you know
what s going to happen to you; d you dare to
think?"
Her voice was filled with a strange calm.
"I don t care, James; I don t care none. I set
China-Ching loose."
His face leered at her evilly in the moonlight.
"You ain t got no excuses; you don t even make
no excuses to me; huh?"
"No, James; no!"
Her tone was exultant.
The even, padded patter was still in her ears. It
seemed so near. She saw the man s raised fist. The
CHINA-CHING 183
coarse, bulging hammer of it. She felt that some
thing was behind her. She turned.
The chow stood there His ears back; his coat
bristling, the hairs standing on end in tremendous
bushiness; his fangs laid bare. There he crouched,
drawn together, ready to spring.
The man took a step toward her. Out of the cor
ner of her eyes she could see the huge taut fist.
"I wouldn t do that, James ;" she said quietly. . "I
just wouldn t!"
"You ll live to rue the day." The words came
hoarsely, gutturally. "I m going to beat you,
woman. I m going to beat you, damn good!"
"You ain t ;" she said. "Look, James !"
She pointed to the chow.
"Call him off;" the man shrieked. "D you want
him to kill me?"
She saw him trembling with fear, paralyzed with
terror so that his clenched hand still reached above
his head, shaking. She thought then of the pistol
he always carried with him. For the second time she
smiled. She saw him try to take a step backwards.
His knees almost gave way under him. The chow
wormed a bit nearer.
"Call him off; take him away. Damn you, speak
to him ! For Gawd s sake, do something; "
he whined.
She looked at the man, cowed; abjectly afraid.
She had nothing more to fear from him. He was
beaten. Her hand went out until it rested on the
dog s head.
1 84 THE SCARECROW
"It s all right, China-Ching. It s all right, now."
She felt the chow s great eyes fixed on her face;
she felt that he was waiting. "You can go on,
James; go on into the house!"
"What what d you mean?"
He stuttered.
Tm going," she said. "Me, and China-Ching.
I told you I d go when I was ready; but I wasn t
going alone. That s what you ain t understood,
James. Now we re both going. And you better be
meandering up to your house, or maybe China-
Ching he ll be getting tired of waiting."
Slowly the man turned; ponderously, his figure
huddled together, he started back stumbling along in
the full path of the moonlight.
She thought she saw his fingers fumbling to his
hip-pocket.
"Stop !" She called. "None of that, James. This
here s one time when that there gun don t work."
"I ain t got no gun." The mumbled words came
back to her indistinctly. "D you think if I d have
had"
"Stand where you are. And don t you make no
move from there. We ll be on our way, now."
He stood still.
"Come on, China-Ching."
She started toward the road, the dog at her heels.
Once as she went she turned to look at the emptied,
quiet kennels, at the moonlight drenched waste that
had once been a garden; at the huddled figure of the
man standing there so silently.
CHINA-CHING 185
u Good-by, James," she called.
Out in the road she paused to look up and down
the long, white stretch of it. The chow stopped at
her side. His great, liquid brown eyes were raised to
hers. She could feel his impatience to be off. Sud
denly he started.
Her feet followed those padded, pattering feet.
u Aw, China-Ching," she whispered, "aw, China-
Ching "
THE WOOD OF LIVING TREES
THE WOOD OF LIVING TREES
/JND I do hereby swear and take unto myself
^/JL right solemnly and in most sacred oath before
the Lord God to prove myself innocent of this most
awful and hideous crime, for the which, in the morn
ing, I do swing by the neck. I, Cedric of Hampden,
do swear to show with the righteous help of most
high God, that it is not I who beareth the blood guilt
of the mwther of the Lady Beatrix.
There is in this world a certain devilish influence
that worketh most evilly against the high Heavens
and the good in man, and the which doeth foully
with the flesh of man and bringeth the soul of him
unto the stinking depths of hell. I, Cedric of
Hampden, having scant knowledge of the meanings
of witchcraft, or of magic, either black or white,
have many times and oft felt the spell which lyeth so
infernally o er the Wood of Living Trees. I, who
loveth the Lady Beatrix, who did meet her death
the while she wandered within the confines of the
Wood of Living Trees, searching therein for the
Crucifix which she did lose from of her neck, do
accuse no one of the killing of her whom I loved.
Yet unto myself I do confess the knowledge of this
evil thing, the which I have assured myself hath
the power at all times to become incarnate.
189
1 90 THE SCARECROW
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 be
come incarnate.
In the morning I hang. God, the Father, Christ,
the Son, come unto me in purgatory that I may ful
fil my sacred oath and that the soul of her I love
may find peace within the seven golden gates of
Heaven.
At first there was not one of them who noticed it.
Strange that people who are forever entertaining
are so very apt to disregard the congeniality of their
guests. Perhaps they become calloused; probably
they grow tired of a ceaseless picking and choosing.
After a while they caught on to it. It was one of
those things that could not be avoided. Gregory
Manners never was the sort of chap to conceal his
feelings, and very evidently he had most decided
ones in regard to the Russian, Stephanof Andrey-
vitch.
He was much in vogue, was Andreyvitch. It was
considered rather a stunt to get him to come to one
of your dinners. He was tremendously in demand.
Not that Andreyvitch had ever done anything to
make himself famous. It was just the personality
of the man. Women would tell you that he was
fascinating, different. Of course there were some
of them, the stupid, fastidious ones, who took of-
THE WOOD OF LIVING TREES 191
fense at his looks. No one could ever say they were
in any way prepossessing. He was fairly well built,
extremely sinewy. His arms were noticeably long
and he had an odd fashion of always walking on the
balls of his feet. Add to that a rather narrow face,
a heavy nose, deep-set eyes, a bit too close together,
and a shock of reddish-brown hair, which grew over
his head and face in great abundance. Most men
would not pretend to understand him. He was at
all times courteous. Perhaps even too suavely po
lite for the Anglo-Saxon temperament. He aired
his views with a wonderful assurance; views that
had to do chiefly with aestheticism and a violent dis
regard of all conventional thought. When Andrey-
vitch spoke, one had the feeling that he feared to ex
press himself too well; that after all his wicked dis
belief in the things in which most men placed their
entire faith was something actually a part of him;
something which might even cause the amazing
heathenism of his talk to be somewhat subdued. And
when Stephanof Andreyvitch spoke, one could not
help but notice his teeth. Yellow, horridly decayed
things they were, with the two eye-teeth on either
side surprisingly pointed, like fangs.
Of course, in his way Gregory Manners was a
bit of a lion. It was that which undoubtedly made
them attribute his dislike of the Russian to jeal
ousy. At least at first. Afterwards they found
plenty of other reasons. Naturally one of them
was Kathleen. But that came much later on.
He had traveled all over the world, had Man-
1 92 THE SCARECROW
ners, and he wrote charmingly vague bits that one
read and then forgot. He took himself very seri
ously. He was one of those men who believe firmly
and basically that they are sent into this world with
a mission to perform. One could ynot actually tell
whether Manners really thought his writing to be
his life work. His best friends maintained that he
had not as yet found himself. But no one bothered
to ask him the question. His work was good; he
was a distinctly decent sort of chap, utterly British,
and he was above all else exceedingly interesting.
For the most part, people were really fond of Man
ners, and he fond of them.
The first time Andreyvitch and Manners were
introduced, Manners had the feeling that they had
met at some time before. He even asked the Rus
sian if it had not been in Moscow. When Andrey
vitch told him that he had never in his whole life
seen him, and that he positively regretted not hav
ing done so, Manners 1 attitude underwent a sudden
and unexpected change. He became silent, almost
morose. He kept away from Andreyvitch all eve
ning, and yet he stayed near enough to him to watch
his every move.
After that night Manners decided he hated An
dreyvitch; that he knew the man was a liar, an im
postor. Not at the time that he was in any way
jealous of the Russian; still there was a strange
familiar feeling there that he had felt at some other
time, and in connection with the same man. He
could have sworn he had known him before. It
THE WOOD OF LIVING TREES 193
was the only way then in which he could explain
the thing to himself with any degree of coherence.
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 sus
pect there was a great deal more to it than had ap
peared 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 be
cause 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
i 9 4 THE SCARECROW
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 min
ute. 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
THE WOOD OF LIVING TREES 195
for a fortnight or more, he suddenly made his ap
pearance 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, sway
ing 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 in
carnating stuff! Probably at most times more beast
than human but it could take on human guise
that s it that s "
196 THE SCARECROW
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 Greg
ory 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 peo
ple 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 be
cause 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 Man
ners, who had traveled the world over, fell quite
completely in love with her. And she She wor
shiped 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.
THE WOOD OF LIVING TREES 197
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 fur
ther than just that.
Manners had become uncannily quiet and un
cannily knowing.
They were all together in the hall when Man
ners, as usual, came in late. Mrs. Broughten-Hol-
lins and an ansemic 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 An-
dreyvitch, 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 an
nounce 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 car
ried well. "But there s no such thing. Can t you
realize that all this sickly sentimentality is nothing
i 9 8 THE SCARECROW
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 every
thing 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 signifi
cance. And although they could not have known
what Manners actually meant, they all of them rec
ognized 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
THE WOOD OF LIVING TRlu 199
to those watching him that he was cowed; terrify-
ingly cowed.
"Your humor," he shrugged his shoulders, en
deavoring to pass the thing off as flippantly as pos
sible; "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 recog
nize!
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 good
ness 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 Eng
lish 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. Andrey-
vitch!"
200 THE SCARECROW
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 fore
boding, 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 par
ticularly because of Andreyvitch and Manners. It,
was something that not one of them could have ex
plained 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 al
though unexpressed that was the general sentiment.
Not that Andreyvitch or Manners made the
THE \\OOD OF LIVING TREES 201
others uncomfortable. After Gregory s first out
burst, and now that they were under the same roof,
it rather seemed that the Russian avoided Manners.
And Manners He watched carefully every move
ment, every little turn or twist of Andneyvitch 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 at
tentions 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.
Til 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 gar
dener 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?"
202 THE SCARECROW
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, Greg
ory?"
"Of course not, Kathleen. What utter non
sense!"
"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 mur
mured.
"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
THE WOOD OF LIVING TREES 203
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 pas
sionately. "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 be
side him and presently he went on again.
"Have you ever felt you were going mad, Kath-
204 THE SCARECROW
leen? 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, Kath
leen/ 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 im
pulse to do the thing I had come into the world to
do! The one thing that stood out was the feel
ing 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 some
thing 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
THE WOOD OF LIVING TREES 205
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 for
est. 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, appal
ling significance of the Wood of Living Trees come
206 THE SCARECROW
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. Some
thing which lurked there beneath the trees some
thing which clung to the tall trunks of them some
thing 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 box-wood 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 determi
nation was to protect his eyes.
He knew then, he had always known, that the
wood was some live, evil thing the Wood of Liv-
THE WOOD OF LIVING TREES 207
ing 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 still-
r.ess 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.
208 THE SCARECROW
He had not gone far when he came upon Kath
leen.
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 be
come incarnate.
In the morning I hana. God, the Father, Christ t
THE WOOD OF LIVING TREES 209
the Son, come unto me in purgatory that I may ful
fill my sacred oath and that the soul of her I love
may find peace within the seven golden gates of
Heaven.
BEFORE THE DAWN
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, gab
bling their prayers. The ignorance of such idolatry!
Their prayers had not been proof against the ene-
213
2i 4 THE SCARECROW
mies 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 con
ceived the possibility of any human thing lurking so
dangerously near. He peered blindly through the
obscuring dark.
"Who s there?" He questioned, his fingers invol
untarily 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 ig
norant 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."
BEFORE THE DAWN 215
"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 in
wardly 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-commit
tal. 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
2i6 THE SCARECROW
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 any
thing but courteous. But then one never knew. And
anyway hadn t this man spoken to him in irreproach
able 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 be
fore 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, try
ing 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 as
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
BEFORE THE DAWN 217
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 droop
ing 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 pene
trate 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.
u Why do you ask?"
"Curiosity, my friend. I know of some good peo
ple there by name of Fornier. Perhaps they might
be friends of yours."
"Don t think I know them." He paused to col
lect 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 ran-*
sacked 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.
2i 8 THE SCARECROW
"One week ago it was splashed in blood Sol
diers too, in their way, are artists," was all he said.
"Then you re not a soldier? 1
"What made you think I was?"
"I don t know what you are," he answered truth
fully; 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 Former?"
"Mighty few folk left there now." The pic
ture 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 every
thing, as near as I can make out, excepting commit
BEFORE THE DAWN 219
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. Sacre, but there is nothing real about re
ligion to me!"
"You re right. 1 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 in
telligent 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
220 THE SCARECROW
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 go
ing 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. Be
neath his breath he cursed furiously. Never before
had he been guilty of such blatant stupidity. A sud
den anger welled within him against this man who
had caught him in his lie. Yet the man seemed harm
less 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
BEFORE THE DAWN 221
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 posi
tion.
"No use," he moaned. "I couldn t see through
222 THE SCARECROW
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 approach
ing 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."
BEFORE THE DAWN 223
"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
224 THE SCARECROW
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 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!"
"Sacre, it is like Them," the man said. "I d won
dered why the cross was bare. I m not one of your
BEFORE THE DAWN 225
b /lievers, but I can see how it would hurt a good
woman like you."
U 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
" vns fixed upon the other s face.
The black of the sky merged very gradually into
:. ^ ale, 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 whis
pered "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.
226 THE SCARECROW
"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 ? n
"Sacre! What you say is just." The wounded
man s eyes were raised to glance at the light-quiver
ing 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 sud
den 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 some
times 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
BEFORE THE DAWN 227
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. Quick
ly the officer bent o\ 7 er him, his hand on the shaking
shoulder, his breath coming and going in short, rasp
ing 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
THE STILLNESS
HE cringed in shuddering awe beneath the still
ness. 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 be
tween 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
231
232 THE SCARECROW
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 ; hu
man 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 drag
ging, 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 in
side 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
THE STILLNESS 233
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 over
whelming 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 hark-
ening for the sound that never came. His intensive
shivering waiting for it. And nothing but the still
ness. 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 with
out 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
234 THE SCARECROW
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 sun
light. Her foolish, stilly gliding played horridly on
his raw nerves. At all times she was a phantom ani
mal, stirring with the intangible motion of the si
lence. 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 sud
denly 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 ex
pected to see the thing that had lain that smother
ing, 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;
THE STILLNESS 235
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, al
ways 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 un
canny, 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 be
cause of the silence. He had felt that he would have
to get away from the noise and the tumultuous up
roar 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 devasted 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 un
thinkingly 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
236 THE SCARECROW
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 laugh
ing. 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 impos
sible 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
THE STILLNESS 237
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 still
ness was rushing down from the hills and gathering
to greater force about him.
And when he was quite finished with the clearing
away of his dishes he wouuld sit beside the table, the
mongrel in front of him, and he would think franti
cally of the relief of talking. His lips would begin
to quiver hideously; to move. That hoarse, inhuman
muttering that had no sound of voice in it would
start. And then he would see the dog s eyes, filled
with that horrid, beaten look, fixed on his mouth and
he would stop, gasping.
Once every little while old man Efferts would
come down to the shack in the valley.
He knew nothing of old man Efferts other than
that ever since he had come to live at the farm Ef
ferts had stopped in for an evening now and again.
At first he had resented old man Efferts coming.
Later when he had seen that Efferts would not in
terfere with him he had not minded so much. He
had become quite used to seeing the bent, huddled
figure of the man trailing down the hillside and
shambling into the room to sit there opposite to him
quite silent. Of late he had gone about fetching
the old man a glass of cider and a piece of bread.
238 THE SCARECROW
And they had sat facing each other, never talking;
just sitting rigidly with the dog on the floor between
them and the silence spilling itself in gigantic floods
all around them. And then old Efferts would light
his pipe and when he had finished it he would get
up and go out of the door. And after he had
watched old man Efferts go, with the feeling that he
might not be real, he would stumble up to his room
to lie in the narrow wooden bed trying to shut his
ears to the deafening silence about him; cringing
between his blankets as the swell of it heightened
insidiously.
He knew that the stillness had swamped itself into
old man Efferts. He could see the stamp of it in
the uncertain, stupefied face ; in the bewildered eyes
that had behind them something of the look that
stayed on in the dog s eyes ; in the thin-lipped mouth
that drooled at the corners; in the old man s still,
quiet way of moving, the unreal, phantom way in
which the gray mare moved. He did not know why
the old man should come to him to sit so dumbly op
posite him for a whole evening. He did not care.
He was long past caring.
There were times when he thought he might tell
old man Efferts of that thing which he had done
years ago and which had isolated him from his fel
lows. Not that he thought so much of it. He had
almost forgotten it. The stillness had made him for
get everything but itself; had pushed everything out
of his mind before its own spreading weight. But
he kept the thought of speaking to Efferts of what
THE STILLNESS 239
he had done in the back of his head. He knew how
his telling it to Efferts could not fail to act. He
knew that something would infallibly happen; that
the surprise of it could not help but penetrate the
thickness of Efferts silence. He always felt, sooth
ing himself with the thought of relief, that when
the power of the stillness became unbearable he
would shock old Efferts into talk. There were mo
ments when he hungered savagely to force old Ef
ferts out of his walling quiet. Moments when he
was starving for the comfort of human sound. His
voice and Efferts voice. Voices that would rise
above the stillness; voices that would penetrate cun
ningly through the quiet; voices that would speak
and answer each other.
He was sitting in the center of his lamp lit room.
He had had his supper and had cleared away the
dishes with his usual crafty carefulness. He had
lighted his pipe. He sat in the chair beside the table ;
his body quite rigid; his arms and legs stiffened to a
torturing quiet. The mongrel crouched at his feet.
There was something strange in the way the animal
lay; in its tightened muscles that pulled and twitched
as it breathed. Whenever he looked down his eyes
met the dog s eyes.
Outside the heavy shadows of the night crept
along the ground, pushed on by the rushing, rising
silence behind them. He knew that the stillness was
rolling down the slope of those long hills. He knew
that its awful quiet was gathering in the valley. He
knew that it was trickling horridly still into the low
240 THE SCARECROW
ceilinged room. He had the feeling for the thou
sandth time that the most minute noise was swal
lowed up in the stillness before it came into being.
He looked up then to see the door shoved warily
ajar. A wrinkled, ugly hand showed against the
dark wood in a lighter patch of brown. A coarse
booted foot came behind the swing of the door.
Standing against the black of the night he saw old
man Efferts.
He watched the old man come into the room.
He saw him pull up a chair, lifting it from off the
floor and setting it down opposite to him within the
pooling space of the yellow lamplight. He stared
at Efferts as he sank into the chair.
Old man Efferts took out his pipe and lit it.
He kept his eyes on Efferts as he had so often
done ; on the uncertain, stupefied face that was turned
to him; on the bewildered eyes that had something
behind them of the look that stayed on in the dog s
eyes; on the thin-lipped mouth that drooled at the
corners. /
He got up then and went on his toes to the door
and closed it softly. He felt that Efferts eyes were
on him; and the mongrel s eyes. He came back and
sat down in his chair.
They both smoked quietly.
He remembered the glass of cider and the piece of
bread.
He could not bring himself to move to-night.
He felt the suffocating weight of the stillness
crowding past him. It was expanding menacingly
THE STILLNESS 241
throughout the small room. It filled in all about
him.
Presently old man Efferts would finish his pipe
and would get up and shamble out of the door. He
would sit there and watch him go as he always
watched, wondering if perhaps old man Efferts was
not real. And then he would stumble up to bed and
lie awake and listen to the stillness that grew greater
and greater.
He wanted the relief from that silence; wanted
it desperately; passionately.
He remembered that if he told Efferts of that
thing that he had come so near forgetting in the
smothering quiet that he would have what he so
frantically wanted. Some human speech. Human
talk that would break the silence even for a little
while; the sound of human voices that would rise
and answer each other.
He glanced at the old man surreptitiously. He
tried to think what expression would come into
that stupid face with the bewildered eyes; he tried
to see the thin-lipped drooling mouth as it would
look with the lips of it startled into moving.
He sat very still.
Words formed themselves; lagging into his mind.
"I am going to tell "
He would start to say it to old man Efferts that
way.
He could not stand the stillness any longer.
Anything was better than the appalling agony
of the quiet.
242 THE SCARECROW
He made a little tentative movement with his thin,
shaking hands.
He felt that Efferts was staring at him.
The mongrel crouching at his feet moved
stealthily. He heard no sound from the animal s
moving. He knew it had gotten to its feet. He
saw it standing there between where he sat and
where Efferts sat.
He felt his lips begin to quiver.
"I am going to "
He got the words into his head again through the
menacing, waiting stillness.
He muttered something.
Old man Efferts leaned forward, his hand behind
his ear.
In a sudden blinding flash of knowledge he real
ized that old man Efferts was deaf.
He felt his mouth twisting around his face.
He tried then to shout.
His eyes avoided the mongrel s eyes that he knew
were filled with that uncanny, beaten look and were
fixed on his jerking, grimacing mouth.
All about him the ominous, malignant silence.
He tried again and again to speak. He could not
talk. Sweat stood out in great, glistening beads on
his forehead and dribbled blindingly into his wide,
distended eyes. His body shook with the stupendous
effort he was making. His tongue was swollen.
He could feel his throat tightening so that it hurt.
He could not get his words into that hoarse, inhu
man muttering that had no sound of voice in it,
THE STILLNESS 243
He kept on trying and trying to speak
He saw that old man Efferts had finished his pipe.
He watched him get out of his chair and go sham
bling across the room and through the door.
He sat there.
His hands went up to his working mouth. He
wanted to hide the hideous jerking of it.
His eyes met the mongrel s eyes.
The stillness grew appalling.
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