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 bandoulière 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 aëroplane 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 aëroplane come to earth in safety? Where? In the Forest of Laïs? 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 Laïs 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 aëroplane, 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 Laïs 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 Finistère, where all are born to grief."
CHAPTER VII
THE AIRMAN