Barbarians

"Oh, Steek! Steek!" she sobbed. "Oh, mon ami, Steek!"

She began to cry bitterly. Smith picked her up in his arms.

"What you need is sleep," he said very gently.

But she shook her head: she had business to transact on her knees that night—business with the Mother of God that would take all night long—and many, many other sleepless nights; and many candles.

She put her left arm around Smith's neck and hid her tear-wet face on his shoulder. And, as he bore her out of the high tower and descended the unlighted, interminable stairs of stone, he heard her weeping against his breast and softly asking intercession in behalf of a dead young man who had tried to be to her a "Kamerad"—as he understood it—including the entire gamut, from amorous beast to fiend.

There was a single candle lighted in the bar of the White Doe. On the "zinc," side by side, like birds on a rail, sat the two muleteers. In each big, sunburnt fist was an empty glass; their spurred feet dangled; they leaned forward where they sat, hunched up over their knees, heads slightly turned, as though intently listening. A haze of cigarette smoke dimmed the candle flame.

The drone of an aëroplane high in the midnight sky came to them at intervals. At last the sound died away under the far stars.

By the smoky candle flame Kid Glenn unfolded and once more read the letter that kept them there:

—I ought to get to Sainte Lesse somewhere around midnight. Don't say a word to Maryette.

    Jack.

Sticky Smith, reading over his shoulder, slowly rolled another cigarette.

"When Jack comes," he drawled, "it's a-goin' to he'p a lot. That Maryette girl's plumb done in."

"Sure she's done in," nodded Kid Glenn. "Wouldn't it do in anybody to shoot up a young man an' then see him step off the top of a skyscraper?"

Smith admitted that he himself had felt "kind er squeamish." He added: "Gawd, how he spread when he hit them flags! You didn't look at him, did you, Kid?"

"Naw. Say, d'ya think Maryette has gone to bed?"

"I dunno. When we left her up there in her room, I turned and took a peek to see she was comfy, but she was down onto both knees before that china virgin on the niche over her bed."

"She oughter be in bed. You gotta sleep off a thing like that, or you feel punk next day," remarked Glenn, meditatively twirling the last drops of eau-de-vie around in his tumbler. Then he swallowed them and smacked his lips. "She'll come around all O. K. when she sees Jack," he added.

"Goin' to let him wake her up?"

"Can you see us stoppin' him? He'd kick the pants off us–"

"Sh-h-h!" motioned Smith; "there's a automobile! By gum! It's stopped!–"

The two muleteers set their glasses on the bar, slid to the floor, and marched, clanking, into the covered way that led to the street. Smith undid the bolts. A young man stood outside in the starlight.

"Well, Jack Burley, you old son of a gun!" drawled Glenn. "Gawd! You look fit for a dead one!"

"We ain't told her!" whispered Smith. "She an' us done in a Fritz this evening, an' it sorter turned Maryette's stomach–"

"Not that she ain't well," explained Glenn hastily; "only a girl feels different. Stick an' me, we just took a few drinks, but Maryette, soon as she got home, she just flopped down on her knees and asked that china virgin of hers to go easy on that there Fritz–"

They had conducted Burley to the bar; both their arms were draped around his shoulders; both talked to him at the same time.

"This here Fritz," began Glenn—but Burley freed himself from their embrace.

"Where's Maryette?" he demanded.

Smith jerked a silent thumb toward the ceiling.

"In bed?"

"Or prayin'."

Burley flushed, hesitated.

"G'wan up, anyway," said Glenn. "I reckon it'll do her a heap o' good to lamp you, you old son of a gun!"

Burley turned, went up the short flight of stairs to her closed door. There was candle-light shining through the transom. He knocked with a trembling hand. There was no answer. He knocked again; heard her uncertain step; stepped back as her door opened.

The girl, a drooping figure in her night robe, stood listlessly on the threshold. Which of the muleteers it was who had come to her door she did not notice. She said:

"I am very tired. Death is a dreadful thing. I can't put it from my mind. I am trying to pray–"

She lifted her weary eyes and found herself looking into the face of her own lover. She turned very white, lovely eyes dilated.

"Is—is it thou, Djack?"

"C'est moi, ma ploo belle!"

She melted into his tightening arms with a faint cry. Very high overhead, under the lustrous stars, an aëroplane droned its uncharted way across a blood-soaked world.