He went about his affair with the theoretical roebuck in silence, picking up one of his pistols, loosening his knife in its sheath; then, without the usual smile or gesture for her, he started off noiselessly over the moss.
And the girl, supporting herself on one arm, her fingers buried in the moss, looked after him while her flushed face cooled.
McKay moved down stream with pistol lifted, scanning the hard-wood ridges on either hand. For even the reddest of roe deer, in the woods, seem to be amazingly invisible unless they move.
The stream dashed through shadow and sun-spot, splashing a sparkling way straight into the wilderness of Les Errues; and along its fern-fringed banks strode McKay with swift, light steps. His eyes, now sharpened by the fight for life--which life had begun to be revealed to him in all its protean aspects, searched the dappled, demi-light ahead, fiercely seeking to pierce any disguise that protective colouration might afford his quarry.
Silver, russet, green and gold, and with the myriad fulvous nuances that the forest undertones lend to its ensembles, these were the patterned tints that met his eye on every side in the subdued gradations of woodland light.
But nothing out of key, nothing either in tone, colour, or shape, betrayed the discreet and searched for discord in the vague and lovely harmony;--no spiked head tossed in sudden fright; no chestnut flank turned too redly in the dim ensemble, no delicate feet in motion disturbed the solemn immobility of tree-trunk and rock. Only the fern fronds quivered where spray rained across them; and the only sounds that stirred were the crystalline clash of icy rapids and the high whisper of the leaves in Les Errues.
And, as he stood motionless, every sense and instinct on edge, his eyes encountered something out of key with this lovely, sombre masterpiece of G.o.d. Instantly a still shock responded to the mechanical signal sent to his eyes; the engine of the brain was racing; he stood as immobile as a tree.
Yes, there on the left something was amiss,--something indistinct in the dusk of heavy foliage--something, the shape of which was not in harmony with the suave design about him woven of its Creator.
After a long while he walked slowly toward it.
There was much more of it than he had seen. Its consequences, too, were visible above him where broken branches hung still tufted with bronze leaves which no new buds would ever push from their dead clasp of the sapless stems. And all around him yearling seedlings had pushed up through the charred wreckage. Even where fire had tried to obtain a foothold, and had been withstood by barriers of green and living sap, in burnt s.p.a.ces where bits of twisted metal lay, tender shoots had pushed out in that eternal promise of resurrection which becomes a fable only upon a printed page.
McKay"s business was with the dead. The weather-faded husk lay there amid dry leaves promising some day to harmonise with the scheme of things.
Mice had cleaned the bony cage under the uniform of a British aviator. Mice gnaw the shed antlers of deer. And other bones.
The pockets were full of papers. McKay read some of them. Afterward he took from the bones of the hand two rings, a wrist-watch, a whistle which still hung by a short chain and a round object attached to a metal ring like a sleigh-bell.
There was a hollow just beyond, made once in time of flood by some ancient mountain torrent long dry, and no longer to be feared.
The human wreckage barely held together, but it was light; and McKay covered it with a foot of deep green moss, and made a cairn above it out of glacial stones from the watercourse. And on the huge beech that tented it he cut a cross with his trench-knife, making the incision deep, so that it glimmered like ivory against the silvery bark of the great tree. Under this sacred symbol he carved:
"SIR W. BLINT, BART."
Below this he cut a deep, white oblong in the bark, and with a coal from the burned airplane he wrote:
"THIS IS THE BEGINNING, NOT THE END. THIS ENGLISHMAN STILL CARRIES ON!"
He stood at salute for a full minute. Then turned, dropped to his knees, and began another thorough search among the debris and dead leaves.
"h.e.l.lo, Yellow-hair!"
She had been watching his approach from where she was seated balanced on the stream"s edge, with both legs in the water to the knees.
He came up and dropped down beside her on the moss.
"A dead airman in Les Errues," he said quietly, "a Britisher. I put away what remained of him. The Huns may dig him up: some animals do such things."
"Where did you find him, Kay?" she asked quietly.
"A quarter of a mile down-stream. He lay on the west slope. He had fallen clear, but there was not much left of his machine."
"How long has he lain there in this forest?"
"A year--to judge. Also the last entry in his diary bears this out.
They got him through the head, and his belt gave way or was not fastened.--Anyway he came down stone dead and quite clear of his machine. His name was Blint--Sir W. Blint, Bart.... Lie back on the moss and let your bruised feet hang in the pool.... Here--this way--rest that yellow head of yours against my knees. ... Are you snug?"
"Yes."
"Hold out your hands. These were his trinkets."
The girl cupped her hands to receive the rings, watch, the gold whistle in its little gem-set chains, and the sleigh-bell on its bracelet.
She examined them one by one in silence while McKay ran through the pages of the notebook--discoloured pages all warped and stained in their leather binding but written in pencil with print-like distinction.
"Sir W. Blint," murmured McKay, still busy with the notebook. "Can"t find what W. stood for."
"That"s all there is--just his name and military rank as an aviator: I left the disk where it hung."
The girl placed the trinkets on the moss beside her and looked up into McKay"s face.
Both knew they were thinking of the same thing. They wore no disks.
Would anybody do for them what McKay had done for the late Sir W.
Blint?
McKay bent a little closer over her and looked down into her face.
That any living creature should touch this woman in death seemed to him almost more terrible than her dying. It was terror of that which sometimes haunted him; no other form of fear.
What she read in his eyes is not clear--was not quite clear to her, perhaps. She said under her breath:
"You must not fear for me, Kay.... Nothing can really touch me now."
He did not understand what she meant by this immunity--gathering some vague idea that she had spoken in the spiritual sense. And he was only partly right. For when a girl is beginning to give her soul to a man, the process is not wholly spiritual.
As he looked down at her in silence he saw her gaze shift and her eyes fix themselves on something above the tree-tops overhead.
"There"s that eagle again," she said, "wheeling up there in the blue."
He looked up; then he turned his sun-dazzled eyes on the pages of the little notebook which he held open in both hands.
"It"s amusing reading," he said. "The late Sir W. Blint seems to have been something of a naturalist. Wherever he was stationed the lives of the birds, animals, insects and plants interested him. ...
Everywhere one comes across his pencilled queries and comments concerning such things; here he discovers a moth unfamiliar to him, there a bird he does not recognise. He was a quaint chap--"
McKay"s voice ceased but his eyes still followed the pencilled lines of the late Sir W. Blint. And Evelyn Erith, resting her yellow head against his knees, looked up at him.
"For example," resumed McKay, and read aloud from the diary:
"Five days" leave. Blighty. All top hole at home. Walked with Constance in the park.
Pair of thrushes in the spinney. Rookery full. Usual b.u.t.terflies in unusual numbers. Toward twilight several sphinx moths visited the privet. No net at hand so did not identify any. Pheasants in bad shape. n.o.body to keep them down. Must arrange drives while I"m away.
Late at night a barn owl in the chapel belfrey. Saw him and heard him. Constance nervous; omens and that sort, I fancy; but no funk.