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Barbarians, a fiction by Robert W. Chambers |
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Chapter 17. Friendship |
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_ CHAPTER XVII. FRIENDSHIP She tried once more to lift the big, warm, flexible body, exerting all her slender strength. It was useless. It was like attempting to lift the earth. The weight of the body frightened her. Again she sank down among the ferns under the great oak tree; once more she took his blood-smeared head on her lap, smoothing the bright, wet hair; and her tears fell slowly upon his upturned face. "My friend," she stammered, "--my kind, droll friend.... The first friend I ever had----" The gun thunder beyond Nivelle had ceased; an intense stillness reigned in the forest; only a leaf moved here and there on the aspens. A few forest flies whirled about her, but as yet no ominous green flies came--none of those jewelled harbingers of death which appear with horrible promptness and as though by magic from nowhere when anything dies in the open world. Her donkey, still attached to the little gaily painted market cart, had wandered on up the sandy lane, feeding at random along the fern-bordered thickets which walled in the Nivelle byroad on either side. Presently her ear caught a slight sound; something stirred somewhere in the woods behind her. After an interval of terrible stillness there came a distant crashing of footsteps among dead leaves and underbrush. Horror of the Hun still possessed her; the victim of Prussian ferocity still lay across her knees. She dared not take the chance that friendly ears might hear her call for aid--dared not raise her voice in appeal lest she awaken something monstrous, unclean, inconceivable--the unseen thing which she could hear at intervals prowling there among dead leaves in the demi-light of the woods. Suddenly her heart leaped with fright; a man stepped cautiously out of the woods into the road; another, dressed in leather, with dry blood caked on his face, followed. The first comer, a French gendarme, had already caught sight of the donkey and market cart; had turned around instinctively to look for their owner. Now he discovered her seated there among the ferns under the oak tree. "In the name of God," he growled, "what's that child doing there!" The airman in leather followed him across the road to the oak; the girl looked up at them out of dark, tear-marred eyes that seemed dazed. "Well, little one!" rumbled the big, red-faced gendarme. "What's your name?--you who sit here all alone at the wood's edge with a dead man across your knees?" She made an effort to find her voice--to control it. "I am Maryette Courtray, bell-mistress of Sainte Lesse," she answered, trembling. "And--this young man?" "They shot him--the Prussians, monsieur." "My poor child! Was he your lover, then?" Her tear-filled eyes widened: "Oh, no," she said naively; "it is sadder than that. He was my friend." The big gendarme scratched his chin; then, with an odd glance at the young airman who stood beside him: "To lose a friend is indeed sadder than to lose a lover. What was your friend's name, little one?" She pressed her hand to her forehead in an effort to search among her partly paralyzed thoughts: "Djack.... That is his name.... He was the first real friend I ever had." The airman said: "He is one of my countrymen--an American muleteer, Jack Burley--in charge at Sainte Lesse." At the sound of the young man's name pronounced in English the girl began to cry. The big gendarme bent over and patted her cheek. "_Allons_," he growled; "courage! little mistress of the bells! Let us place your friend in your pretty market cart and leave this accursed place, in God's name!" He straightened up and looked over his shoulder. "For the Boches are in Nivelle woods," he added, with an oath, "and we ought to be on our way to Sainte Lesse, if we are to arrive there at all. _Allons_, comrade, take him by the head!" So the wounded airman bent over and took the body by the shoulders; the gendarme lifted the feet; the little bell-mistress followed, holding to one of the sagging arms, as though fearing that these strangers might take away from her this dead man who had been so much more to her than a mere lover. When they laid him in the market cart she released his sleeve with a sob. Still crying, she climbed to the seat of the cart and gathered up the reins. Behind her, flat on the floor of the cart, the airman and the gendarme had seated themselves, with the young man's body between them. They were opening his tunic and shirt now and were whispering together, and wiping away blood from the naked shoulders and chest. "He's still warm, but there's no pulse," whispered the airman. "He's dead enough, I guess, but I'd rather hear a surgeon say so." The gendarme rose, stepped across to the seat, took the reins gently from the girl. "Weep peacefully, little one," he said; "it does one good. Tears are the tisane which strengthens the soul." "Ye-es.... But I am remembering that--that I was not very k-kind to him," she sobbed. "It hurts--_here_--" She pressed a slim hand over her breast. "_Allons!_ Friends quarrel. God understands. Thy friend back there--he also understands now." "Oh, I hope he does!... He spoke to me so tenderly--yet so gaily. He was even laughing at me when they shot him. He was so kind--and droll--" She sobbed anew, clasping her hands and pressing them against her quivering mouth to check her grief. "Was it an execution, then?" demanded the gendarme in his growling voice. "They said he must be a franc-tireur to wear such a uniform----" "Ah, the scoundrels! Ah, the assassins! And so they murdered him there under the tree?" "Ah, God! Yes! I seem to see him standing there now--his grey, kind eyes--and no thought of fear--just a droll smile--the way he had with me--" whispered the girl, "the way--_his_ way--with me----" "Child," said the gendarme, pityingly, "it _was_ love!" But she shook her head, surprised, the tears still running down her tanned cheeks: "Monsieur, it was more serious than love; it was friendship." _ |
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