THE DEMOISELLE D'YS
"Mais je croy que je Suis descendu on puiz Tenebreux onquel disoit Heraclytus estre Verete cachee."
"There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which Iknow not:
"The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; theway of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid."
I
The utter desolation of the scene began to have its effect; I sat down toface the situation and, if possible, recall to mind some landmark whichmight aid me in extricating myself from my present position. If I couldonly find the ocean again all would be clear, for I knew one could seethe island of Groix from the cliffs.
I laid down my gun, and kneeling behind a rock lighted a pipe. Then Ilooked at my watch. It was nearly four o'clock. I might have wandered farfrom Kerselec since daybreak.
Standing the day before on the cliffs below Kerselec with Goulven,looking out over the sombre moors among which I had now lost my way,these downs had appeared to me level as a meadow, stretching to thehorizon, and although I knew how deceptive is distance, I could notrealize that what from Kerselec seemed to be mere grassy hollows weregreat valleys covered with gorse and heather, and what looked likescattered boulders were in reality enormous cliffs of granite.
"It's a bad place for a stranger," old Goulven had said: "you'd bettertake a guide;" and I had replied, "I shall not lose myself." Now I knewthat I had lost myself, as I sat there smoking, with the sea-wind blowingin my face. On every side stretched the moorland, covered with floweringgorse and heath and granite boulders. There was not a tree in sight, muchless a house. After a while, I picked up the gun, and turning my back onthe sun tramped on again.
There was little use in following any of the brawling streams which everynow and then crossed my path, for, instead of flowing into the sea, theyran inland to reedy pools in the hollows of the moors. I had followedseveral, but they all led me to swamps or silent little ponds from whichthe snipe rose peeping and wheeled away in an ecstasy of fright I beganto feel fatigued, and the gun galled my shoulder in spite of the doublepads. The sun sank lower and lower, shining level across yellow gorse andthe moorland pools.
As I walked my own gigantic shadow led me on, seeming to lengthen atevery step. The gorse scraped against my leggings, crackled beneath myfeet, showering the brown earth with blossoms, and the brake bowed andbillowed along my path. From tufts of heath rabbits scurried away throughthe bracken, and among the swamp grass I heard the wild duck's drowsyquack. Once a fox stole across my path, and again, as I stooped to drinkat a hurrying rill, a heron flapped heavily from the reeds beside me. Iturned to look at the sun. It seemed to touch the edges of the plain.When at last I decided that it was useless to go on, and that I must makeup my mind to spend at least one night on the moors, I threw myself downthoroughly fagged out. The evening sunlight slanted warm across my body,but the sea-winds began to rise, and I felt a chill strike through mefrom my wet shooting-boots. High overhead gulls were wheeling and tossinglike bits of white paper; from some distant marsh a solitary curlewcalled. Little by little the sun sank into the plain, and the zenithflushed with the after-glow. I watched the sky change from palest gold topink and then to smouldering fire. Clouds of midges danced above me, andhigh in the calm air a bat dipped and soared. My eyelids began to droop.Then as I shook off the drowsiness a sudden crash among the brackenroused me. I raised my eyes. A great bird hung quivering in the air abovemy face. For an instant I stared, incapable of motion; then somethingleaped past me in the ferns and the bird rose, wheeled, and pitchedheadlong into the brake.
I was on my feet in an instant peering through the gorse. There came thesound of a struggle from a bunch of heather close by, and then all wasquiet. I stepped forward, my gun poised, but when I came to the heatherthe gun fell under my arm again, and I stood motionless in silentastonishment A dead hare lay on the ground, and on the hare stood amagnificent falcon, one talon buried in the creature's neck, the otherplanted firmly on its limp flank. But what astonished me, was not themere sight of a falcon sitting upon its prey. I had seen that more thanonce. It was that the falcon was fitted with a sort of leash about bothtalons, and from the leash hung a round bit of metal like a sleigh-bell.The bird turned its fierce yellow eyes on me, and then stooped and struckits curved beak into the quarry. At the same instant hurried stepssounded among the heather, and a girl sprang into the covert in front.Without a glance at me she walked up to the falcon, and passing hergloved hand under its breast, raised it from the quarry. Then she deftlyslipped a small hood over the bird's head, and holding it out on hergauntlet, stooped and picked up the hare.
She passed a cord about the animal's legs and fastened the end of thethong to her girdle. Then she started to retrace her steps through thecovert As she passed me I raised my cap and she acknowledged my presencewith a scarcely perceptible inclination. I had been so astonished, solost in admiration of the scene before my eyes, that it had not occurredto me that here was my salvation. But as she moved away I recollectedthat unless I wanted to sleep on a windy moor that night I had betterrecover my speech without delay. At my first word she hesitated, and as Istepped before her I thought a look of fear came into her beautiful eyes.But as I humbly explained my unpleasant plight, her face flushed and shelooked at me in wonder.
"Surely you did not come from Kerselec!" she repeated.
Her sweet voice had no trace of the Breton accent nor of any accent whichI knew, and yet there was something in it I seemed to have heard before,something quaint and indefinable, like the theme of an old song.
I explained that I was an American, unacquainted with Finistere, shootingthere for my own amusement.
"An American," she repeated in the same quaint musical tones. "I havenever before seen an American."
For a moment she stood silent, then looking at me she said. "If youshould walk all night you could not reach Kerselec now, even if you had aguide."
This was pleasant news.
"But," I began, "if I could only find a peasant's hut where I might getsomething to eat, and shelter."
The falcon on her wrist fluttered and shook its head. The girl smoothedits glossy back and glanced at me.
"Look around," she said gently. "Can you see the end of these moors?Look, north, south, east, west. Can you see anything but moorland andbracken?"
"No," I said.
"The moor is wild and desolate. It is easy to enter, but sometimes theywho enter never leave it. There are no peasants' huts here."
"Well," I said, "if you will tell me in which direction Kerselec lies,to-morrow it will take me no longer to go back than it has to come."
She looked at me again with an expression almost like pity.
"Ah," she said, "to come is easy and takes hours; to go is different--andmay take centuries."
I stared at her in amazement but decided that I had misunderstood her.Then before I had time to speak she drew a whistle from her belt andsounded it.
"Sit down and rest," she said to me; "you have come a long distance andare tired."
She gathered up her pleated skirts and motioning me to follow picked herdainty way through the gorse to a flat rock among the ferns.
"They will be here directly," she said, and taking a seat at one end ofthe rock invited me to sit down on the other edge. The after-glow wasbeginning to fade in the sky and a single star twinkled faintly throughthe rosy haze. A long wavering triangle of water-fowl drifted southwardover our heads, and from the swamps around plover were calling.
"They are very beautiful--these moors," she said quietly.
"Beautiful, but cruel to strangers," I answered.
"Beautiful and cruel," she repeated dreamily, "beautiful and cruel."
"Like a woman," I said stupidly.
"Oh," she cried with a little catch in her breath, and looked at me. Herdark eyes met mine, and I thought she seemed angry or frightened.
"Like a woman," she repeated under her breath, "Ho
w cruel to say so!"Then after a pause, as though speaking aloud to herself, "How cruel forhim to say that!"
I don't know what sort of an apology I offered for my inane, thoughharmless speech, but I know that she seemed so troubled about it that Ibegan to think I had said something very dreadful without knowing it, andremembered with horror the pitfalls and snares which the French languagesets for foreigners. While I was trying to imagine what I might havesaid, a sound of voices came across the moor, and the girl rose to herfeet.
"No," she said, with a trace of a smile on her pale face, "I will notaccept your apologies, monsieur, but I must prove you wrong, and thatshall be my revenge. Look. Here come Hastur and Raoul."
Two men loomed up in the twilight. One had a sack across his shouldersand the other carried a hoop before him as a waiter carries a tray. Thehoop was fastened with straps to his shoulders, and around the edge ofthe circlet sat three hooded falcons fitted with tinkling bells. The girlstepped up to the falconer, and with a quick turn of her wristtransferred her falcon to the hoop, where it quickly sidled off andnestled among its mates, who shook their hooded heads and ruffled theirfeathers till the belled jesses tinkled again. The other man steppedforward and bowing respectfully took up the hare and dropped it into thegame-sack.
"These are my piqueurs," said the girl, turning to me with a gentledignity. "Raoul is a good fauconnier, and I shall some day make him grandveneur. Hastur is incomparable."
The two silent men saluted me respectfully.
"Did I not tell you, monsieur, that I should prove you wrong?" shecontinued. "This, then, is my revenge, that you do me the courtesy ofaccepting food and shelter at my own house."
Before I could answer she spoke to the falconers, who started instantlyacross the heath, and with a gracious gesture to me she followed. I don'tknow whether I made her understand how profoundly grateful I felt, butshe seemed pleased to listen, as we walked over the dewy heather.
"Are you not very tired?" she asked.
I had clean forgotten my fatigue in her presence, and I told her so.
"Don't you think your gallantry is a little old-fashioned?" she said; andwhen I looked confused and humbled, she added quietly, "Oh, I like it, Ilike everything old-fashioned, and it is delightful to hear you say suchpretty things."
The moorland around us was very still now under its ghostly sheet ofmist. The plovers had ceased their calling; the crickets and all thelittle creatures of the fields were silent as we passed, yet it seemed tome as if I could hear them beginning again far behind us. Well inadvance, the two tall falconers strode across the heather, and the faintjingling of the hawks' bells came to our ears in distant murmuringchimes.
Suddenly a splendid hound dashed out of the mist in front, followed byanother and another until half-a-dozen or more were bounding and leapingaround the girl beside me. She caressed and quieted them with her glovedhand, speaking to them in quaint terms which I remembered to have seen inold French manuscripts.
Then the falcons on the circlet borne by the falconer ahead began to beattheir wings and scream, and from somewhere out of sight the notes of ahunting-horn floated across the moor. The hounds sprang away before usand vanished in the twilight, the falcons flapped and squealed upon theirperch, and the girl, taking up the song of the horn, began to hum. Clearand mellow her voice sounded in the night air.
"Chasseur, chasseur, chassez encore, Quittez Rosette et Jeanneton, Tonton, tonton, tontaine, tonton, Ou, pour, rabattre, des l'aurore, Que les Amours soient de planton, Tonton, tontaine, tonton."
As I listened to her lovely voice a grey mass which rapidly grew moredistinct loomed up in front, and the horn rang out joyously through thetumult of the hounds and falcons. A torch glimmered at a gate, a lightstreamed through an opening door, and we stepped upon a wooden bridgewhich trembled under our feet and rose creaking and straining behind usas we passed over the moat and into a small stone court, walled on everyside. From an open doorway a man came and, bending in salutation,presented a cup to the girl beside me. She took the cup and touched itwith her lips, then lowering it turned to me and said in a low voice, "Ibid you welcome."
At that moment one of the falconers came with another cup, but beforehanding it to me, presented it to the girl, who tasted it. The falconermade a gesture to receive it, but she hesitated a moment, and then,stepping forward, offered me the cup with her own hands. I felt this tobe an act of extraordinary graciousness, but hardly knew what wasexpected of me, and did not raise it to my lips at once. The girl flushedcrimson. I saw that I must act quickly.
"Mademoiselle," I faltered, "a stranger whom you have saved from dangershe may never realize empties this cup to the gentlest and loveliesthostess of France."
"In His name," she murmured, crossing herself as I drained the cup. Thenstepping into the doorway she turned to me with a pretty gesture and,taking my hand in hers, led me into the house, saying again and again:"You are very welcome, indeed you are welcome to the Chateau d'Ys."