"_Something_ is wrong somewhere in Finistere. That is evident to me. There have been too many rumours from too many sources. By sea and land they come--rumours of things half seen, half heard--glimpses of enemy aircraft, sea-craft. Yet their presence would appear to be an impossibility in the light of the military intelligence which we possess.
"But we have investigated every rumour; although I, personally, know of no report which has been confirmed. Nevertheless, these rumours persist; they come thicker and faster day by day. But this--" He hesitated, then smiled--"this seems rather different----"
"I know. I realize that I have invited ridicule----"
"Countess----"
"You are too considerate to say so.... And perhaps I have become nervous--imagining things. It might easily be so. Perhaps it is the sadness of the past year--the strangeness of it, and----"
She sighed unconsciously.
"It is lonely in the Wood of Aulnes," she said.
"Indeed it must be very lonely here," he returned in a low voice.
"Yes.... Aulnes Wood is--too remote for them to send our wounded here for their convalescence. I offered Aulnes. Then I offered myself, saying that I was ready to go anywhere if I might be of use. It seems there are already too many volunteers. They take only the trained in hospitals. I am untrained, and they have no leisure to teach ... n.o.body wanted me."
She turned and gazed dreamily at the forest.
"So there is nothing for me to do," she said, "except to remain here and sew for the hospitals." ... She looked out thoughtfully across the fern-grown _carrefour_: "Therefore I sew all day by the latticed window there--all day long, day after day--and when one is young and when there is n.o.body--nothing to look at except the curlew flying--nothing to hear except the _vanneaux_, and the clocks striking the hour----"
Her voice had altered subtly, but she lifted her proud little head and smiled, and her tone grew firm again:
"You see, Monsieur, I am truly becoming a trifle morbid. It is entirely physical; my heart is quite undaunted."
"You heart, Madame, is but a part of the great, undaunted heart of France."
"Yes ... therefore there could be no fear--no doubt of G.o.d.... Affairs go well with France, Monsieur?--may I ask without military impropriety?"
"France, as always, faces her destiny, Madame. And her destiny is victory and light."
"Surely ... I knew; only I had heard nothing for so long.... Thank you, Monsieur."
He said quietly: "The Light shall break. We must not doubt it, we English.
Nor can you doubt the ultimate end of this vast and h.e.l.lish Darkness which has been let loose upon the world to a.s.sail it. You shall live to see light, Madame--and I also shall see it--perhaps----"
She looked up at the young man, met his eyes, and looked elsewhere, gravely. A slight flush lingered on her cheeks.
On the doorstep of the house they paused. "Is it possible," she asked, "that an enemy aeroplane could land in the Aulnes etang?--L"etang aux Vanneaux?"
"In the etang?" he repeated, a little startled. "How large is it, this etang aux Vanneaux?"
"It is a lake. It is perhaps a mile long and three-quarters of a mile across. My old servant, Anne, had seen the werewolf in the reeds--like a man without a face--and only two great eyes--" She forced a pale smile.
"Of course, if it were anything she saw, it was a real man.... And, airmen dress that way.... I wondered----"
He stood looking at her absently, worrying his short mustache.
"One of the rumours we have heard," he began, "concerns a supposed invasion by a huge fleet of German battle-planes of enormous dimensions--a new biplane type which is steered from the bridge like an ocean steamer.
"It is supposed to be three or four times as large as their usual _Albatross_ type, with a vast cruising radius, immense capacity for lifting, and powerful enough to carry a great weight of armour, equipment, munitions, and a very large crew.
"And the most disturbing thing about it is that it is said to be as noiseless as a high-cla.s.s automobile."
"Has such an one been seen in Brittany?"
"Such a machine has been reported--many, many times--as though not one but hundreds were in Finistere. And, what is very disquieting to us--a report has arrived from a distant and totally independent source--from Sweden--that air-crafts of this general type have been secretly built in Germany by the hundreds."
After a moment"s silence she stepped into the house; he followed.
The great, bare, grey rooms were in keeping with the grey exterior; age had more than softened and coordinated the ancient furnishings, it had rendered them colourless, without accent, making the place empty and monotonous.
Her chair and workbasket stood by a latticed window; she seated herself and took up her sewing, watching him where he stood before the fireplace fussing over a little mantel clock--a gilt and ebony affair of the consulate, shaped like a lyre, the pendulum being also the clock itself and containing the works, bell and dial.
When he had adjusted it to his satisfaction he tested it. It still struck five. He continued to fuss over it for half an hour, testing it at intervals, but it always struck five times, and finally he gave up his attempts with a shrug of annoyance.
"_I_ can"t do anything with it," he admitted, smiling cheerfully across the room at her; "is there another clock on this floor?"
She directed him; he went into an adjoining room where, on the mantel, a modern enamelled clock was ticking busily. But after a little while he gave up his tinkering; he could do nothing with it; the bell persistently struck five. He returned to where she sat sewing, admitting failure with a perplexed and uneasy smile; and she rose and accompanied him through the house, where he tried, in turn, every one of the other clocks.
When, at length, he realized that he could accomplish nothing by altering their striking mechanism--that every clock in the house persisted in striking five times no matter where the hands were pointing, a sudden, odd, and inward rage possessed him to hurl the clocks at the wall and stamp the last vestiges of mechanism out of them.
As they returned together through the hushed and dusky house, he caught glimpses of faded and depressing tapestries; of vast, tarnished mirrors, through the dim depths of which their pa.s.sing figures moved like ghosts; of rusted stands of arms, and armoured lay figures where cobwebs clotted the slitted visors and the frail tatters of ancient faded banners drooped.
And he understood why any woman might believe in strange inexplicable things here in the haunting stillness of this house where splendour had turned to mould--where form had become effaced and colour dimmed; where only the shadowy film of texture still remained, and where even that was slowly yielding--under the attacks of Time"s relentless mercenaries, moth and dust and rust.
CHAPTER X
THE GHOULS
They dined by the latticed window; two candles lighted them; old Anne served them--old Anne of Faouette in her wide white coiffe and collarette, her velvet bodice and her _chaussons_ broidered with the rose.
Always she talked as she moved about with dish and salver--garrulous, deaf, and aged, and perhaps flushed with the gentle afterglow of that second infancy which comes before the night.
"_Ouidame!_ It is I, Anne Le Bihan, who tell you this, my pretty gentleman. I have lived through eighty years and I have seen life begin and end in the Woods of Aulnes--alas!--in the Woods and the House of Aulnes----"
"The red wine, Anne," said her mistress, gently.
"Madame the Countess is served.... These grapes grew when I was young, Monsieur--and the world was young, too, _mon Capitaine--helas!_--but the Woods of Aulnes were old, old as the headland yonder. Only the sea is older, _beau jeune homme_--only the sea is older--the sea which always was and will be."
"Madame," he said, turning toward the young girl beside him, "--to France!--I have the honour--" She touched her gla.s.s to his and they saluted France with the ancient wine of France--a sip, a faint smile, and silence through which their eyes still lingered for a moment.
"This year is yielding a bitter vintage," he said. "Light is lacking.
But--but there will be sun enough another year."