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Barbarians, a fiction by Robert W. Chambers |
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Chapter 6. In Finistere |
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_ CHAPTER VI. IN FINISTERE It was a dirty trick that they played Stent and Brown--the three Mysterious Sisters, Fate, Chance, and Destiny. But they're always billed for any performance, be it vaudeville or tragedy; and there's no use hissing them off: they'll dog you from the stage entrance if they take a fancy to you. They dogged Wayland from the dock at Calais, where the mule transport landed, all the way to Paris, then on a slow train to Quimperle, and then, by stagecoach, to that little lost house on the moors, where ties held him most closely--where all he cared for in this world was gathered under a humble roof. In spite of his lameness he went duck-shooting the week after his arrival. It was rather forcing his convalescence, but he believed it would accelerate it to go about in the open air, as though there were nothing the matter with his shattered leg. So he hobbled down to the point he knew so well. He had longed for the sea off Eryx. It thundered at his feet. And, now, all around him through clamorous obscurity a watery light glimmered; it edged the low-driven clouds hurrying in from the sea; it outlined the long point of rocks thrust southward into the smoking smother. The din of the surf filled his ears; through flying patches of mist he caught glimpses of rollers bursting white against the reef; heard duller detonations along unseen sands, and shattering reports where heavy waves exploded among basalt rocks. His lean face of an invalid glistened with spray; salt water dripped from cap and coat, spangled the brown barrels of his fowling-piece, and ran down the varnished supports of both crutches where he leaned on them, braced forward against an ever-rising wind. At moments he seemed to catch glimpses of darker specks dotting the heaving flank of some huge wave. But it was not until the wild ducks rose through the phantom light and came whirring in from the sea that his gun, poked stiffly skyward, flashed in the pallid void. And then, sometimes, he hobbled back after the dead quarry while it still drove headlong inland, slanting earthward before the gale. Once, amid the endless thundering, in the turbulent desolation around him, through the roar of wind in his ears, he seemed to catch deadened sounds resembling distant seaward cannonading--_real_ cannonading--as though individual shots, dully distinct, dominated for a few moments the unbroken uproar of surf and gale. He listened, straining his ears, alert, intent upon the sounds he ought to recognize--the sounds he knew so well. Only the ceaseless pounding of the sea assailed his ears. Three wild duck, widgeon, came speeding through the fog; he breasted the wind, balanced heavily on both crutches and one leg, and shoved his gun upward. At the same instant the mist in front and overhead became noisy with wild fowl, rising in one great, panic-stricken, clamoring cloud. He hesitated; a muffled, thudding sound came to him over the unseen sea, growing louder, nearer, dominating the gale, increasing to a rattling clatter. Suddenly a great cloudy shape loomed up through the whirling mist ahead--an enormous shadow in the fog--a gigantic spectre rushing inland on vast and ghostly pinions. As the man shrank on his crutches, looking up, the aeroplane swept past overhead--a wounded, wavering, unsteady, unbalanced thing, its right aileron dangling, half stripped, and almost mangled to a skeleton. Already it was slanting lower toward the forest like a hard-hit duck, wing-crippled, fighting desperately for flight-power to the very end. Then the inland mist engulfed it. And after it hobbled Wayland, painfully, two brace of dead ducks and his slung fowling piece bobbing on his back, his rubber-shod crutches groping and probing among drenched rocks and gullies full of kelp, his left leg in splints hanging heavily. He could not go fast; he could not go very far. Further inland, foggy gorse gave place to broom and blighted bracken, all wet, sagging with rain. Then he crossed a swale of brown reeds and tussock set with little pools of water, opaque and grey in the rain. Where the outer moors narrowed he turned westward; then a strip of low, thorn-clad cliff confronted him, up which he toiled along a V-shaped cleft choked with ferns. The spectral forest of Laeis lay just beyond, its wind-tortured branches tossing under a leaden sky. East and west lonely moors stretched away into the depths of the mist; southward spread the sea; to the north lay the wide woods of Laeis, equally deserted now in this sad and empty land. He hobbled to the edge of the forest and stood knee deep in discoloured ferns, listening. The sombre beech-woods spread thick on either hand, a wilderness of crossed limbs and meshed branches to which still clung great clots of dull brown leaves. He listened, peering into sinister, grey depths. In the uncertain light nothing stirred except the clashing branches overhead; there was no sound except the wind's flowing roar and the ghostly noise of his own voice, hallooing through the solitude--a voice in the misty void that seemed to carry less sound than the straining cry of a sleeper in his dreams. If the aeroplane had landed, there was no sign here. How far had it struggled on, sheering the tree-tops, before it fell?--if indeed it had fallen somewhere in the wood's grey depths? As long as he had sufficient strength he prowled along the forest, entering it here and there, calling, listening, searching the foggy corridors of trees. The rotting brake crackled underfoot; the tree tops clashed and creaked above him. At last, having only enough strength left to take him home, he turned away, limping through the blotched and broken ferns, his crippled leg hanging stiffly in its splints, his gun and the dead ducks bobbing on his back. The trodden way was soggy with little pools full of drenched grasses and dead leaves; but at length came rising ground, and the blue-green, glimmering wastes of gorse stretching away before him through the curtained fog. A sheep path ran through; and after a little while a few trees loomed shadowy in the mist, and a low stone house took shape, whitewashed, flanked by barn, pigpen, and a stack of rotting seaweed. A few wet hens wandered aimlessly by the doorstep; a tiny bed of white clove-pinks and tall white phlox exhaled a homely welcome as the lame man hobbled up the steps, pulled the leather latchstring, and entered. In the kitchen an old Breton woman, chopping herbs, looked up at him out of aged eyes, shaking her head under its white coiffe. "It is nearly noon," she said. "You have been out since dawn. Was it wise, for a convalescent, Monsieur Jacques?" "Very wise, Marie-Josephine. Because the more exercise I take the sooner I shall be able to go back." "It is too soon to go out in such weather." "Ducks fly inland only in such weather," he retorted, smiling. "And we like roast widgeon, you and I, Marie-Josephine." And all the while her aged blue eyes were fixed on him, and over her withered cheeks the soft bloom came and faded--that pretty colour which Breton women usually retain until the end. "Thou knowest, Monsieur Jacques," she said, with a curiously quaint mingling of familiarity and respect, "that I do not counsel caution because I love thee and dread for thee again the trenches. But with thy leg hanging there like the broken wing of a _vanneau_----" He replied good humouredly: "Thou dost not know the Legion, Marie-Josephine. Every day in our trenches we break a comrade into pieces and glue him together again, just to make him tougher. Broken bones, once mended, are stronger than before." He was looking down at her where she sat by the hearth, slicing vegetables and herbs, but watching him all the while out of her lovely, faded eyes. "I understand, Monsieur Jacques, that you are like your father--God knows he was hardy and without fear--to the last"--she dropped her head--"Mary, glorious--intercede--" she muttered over her bowl of herbs. Wayland, resting on his crutches, unslung his ducks, laid them on the table, smoothed their beautiful heads and breasts, then slipped the soaking _bandouliere_ of his gun from his shoulder and placed the dripping piece against the chimney corner. "After I have scrubbed myself," he said, "and have put on dry clothes, I shall come to luncheon; and I shall have something very strange to tell you, Marie-Josephine." He limped away into one of the two remaining rooms--the other was hers--and closed his door. Marie-Josephine continued to prepare the soup. There was an egg for him, too; and a slice of cold pork and a _brioche_ and a jug of cider. In his room Wayland was whistling "Tipperary." Now and again, pausing in her work, she turned her eyes to his closed door--wonderful eyes that became miracles of tenderness as she listened. He came out, presently, dressed in his odd, ill-fitting uniform of the Legion, tunic unbuttoned, collarless of shirt, his bright, thick hair, now of decent length, in boyish disorder. Delicious odours of soup and of Breton cider greeted him; he seated himself; Marie-Josephine waited on him, hovered over him, tucked a sack of feathers under his maimed leg, placed his crutches in the corner beside the gun. Still eating, leisurely, he began: "Marie-Josephine--a strange thing has happened on Quesnel Moors which troubles me.... Listen attentively. It was while waiting for ducks on the Eryx Rocks, that once I thought I heard through the roar of wind and sea the sound of a far cannonading. But I said to myself that it was only the imagination of a haunted mind; that in my ears still thundered the cannonade of Lens." "Was it nevertheless true?" She had turned around from the fire where her own soup simmered in the kettle. As she spoke again she rose and came to the table. He said: "It must have been cannon that I heard. Because, not long afterward, out of the fog came a great aeroplane rushing inland from the sea--flying swiftly above me--right over me!--and staggering like a wounded duck--it had one aileron broken--and sheered away into the fog, northward, Marie-Josephine." Her work-worn hands, tightly clenched, rested now on the table and she leaned there, looking down at him. "Was it an enemy--this airship, Jacques?" "In the mist flying and the ragged clouds I could not tell. It might have been English. It must have been, I think--coming as it came from the sea. But I am troubled, Marie-Josephine. Were the guns at sea an enemy's guns? Did the aeroplane come to earth in safety? Where? In the Forest of Lais? I found no trace of it." She said, tremulous perhaps from standing too long motionless and intent: "Is it possible that the Boches would come into these solitary moors, where there are no people any more, only the creatures of the Lais woods, and the curlew and the lapwings which pass at evening?" He ate thoughtfully and in silence for a while; then: "They go, usually--the Boches--where there is plunder--murder to be done.... Spying to be done.... God knows what purpose animates the Huns.... After all, Lorient is not so far away.... Yet it surely must have been an English aeroplane, beaten off by some enemy ship--a submarine perhaps. God send that the rocks of the Isle des Chouans take care of her--with their teeth!" He drank his cider--a sip or two only--then, setting aside the glass: "I went from the Rocks of Eryx to Lais Woods. I called as loudly as I could; the wind whirled my voice back into my throat.... I am not yet very strong.... "Then I went into the wood as far as my strength permitted. I heard and saw nothing, Marie-Josephine." "Would they be dead?" she asked. "They were planing to earth. I don't know how much control they had, whether they could steer--choose a landing place. There are plenty of safe places on these moors." "If their airship is crippled, what can they do, these English flying men, out there on the moors in the rain and wind? When the coast guard passes we must tell him." "After lunch I shall go out again as far as my strength allows.... If the rain would cease and the mist lift, one might see something--be of some use, perhaps----" "Ought you to go, Monsieur Jacques?" "Could I fail to try to find them--Englishmen--and perhaps injured? Surely I should go, Marie-Josephine." "The coast guard----" "He passed the Eryx Rocks at daylight. He is at Sainte-Ylva now. Tonight, when I see his comrade's lantern, I shall stop him and report. But in the meanwhile I must go out and search." "Spare thyself--for the trenches, Jacques. Remain indoors today." She began to unpin the coiffe which she always wore ceremoniously at meals when he was present. He smiled: "Thou knowest I must go, Marie-Josephine." "And if thou come upon them in the forest and they are Huns?" He laughed: "They are English, I tell thee, Marie-Josephine!" She nodded; under her breath, staring at the rain-lashed window: "Like thy father, thou must go forth," she muttered; "go always where thy spirit calls. And once _he_ went. And came no more. And God help us all in Finistere, where all are born to grief." _ |
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