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The airman seemed astonished for an instant, then a quick smile broke out on his ruddy features: "I say, this is lucky! Fancy finding an Englishman here! wherever this place may be." He laughed. "Of course I know I’m ’somewhere in France,’ as the censor has it, but I’m hanged if I know where!" "Come in and shut the door," said Wayland, reassured. Marie-Josephine closed the door.
"We Marie-Josephine and I have always kept my father’s old canvases and colours everything of his.... I’ll be glad to give them to a British soldier.... They’re about all I have that was his except that oak chair you sit on." He rose on his crutches, spoke briefly in Breton to Marie-Josephine, then limped slowly away to his room.
"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."
Oh, little son of Marie-Josephine! I told thee I warned thee of the stranger in Finistère!... Marie holy intercede!... All all are born to grief in Finistère!..." The incredible rumour that German airmen were in Brittany first came from Plouharnel in Morbihan; then from Bannalec, where an old Icelander had notified the Brigadier of the local Gendarmerie. But the Icelander was very drunk.
Marie-Josephine, on her low chair by the hearth, sat listening to every word as though she had understood. The expression in her faded eyes varied constantly; solicitude, perplexity, vague uneasiness, a recurrent glimmer of suspicion were succeeded always by wistful tenderness when her gaze returned to Wayland and rested on his youthful face and figure with a pride forever new.
So my father went out in his little American catboat, all alone.... Marie-Josephine saw his sail off Eryx Rocks ... for a few moments ... and saw it no more." The airman, still devouring his bread and meat, nodded in silence. "That is how it happened," said Wayland. "The French authorities notified me. There was a little money and this hut, and Marie-Josephine.
"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.
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.
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."
"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."
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