The Scarecrow and Other Stories Part 30

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 G.o.d! it can't--"

Her fingers were pressed into her ears. She did not want to hear the rest. She knew it.

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 pa.s.sing and the faint, 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 moment 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."

"Ah--yes, Madame."

"Is that all, now? You're certain that you've 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 heavily 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 astonishment.

"Madame?"

The great lady's ringed fingers spread out, pale and taut at her sides.

The jewels of the rings showed in dark, glistening stains against the white of her skin.

"What you've just told me--all of it. I don't see 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 pencil 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."