Malvina of Brittany | Page 6

trembling, uncertain steps, the groping hands, the
deathlike silence clinging like grave-clothes round about her.
From that night the fairy Malvina disappears from the book of the
chroniclers of the White Ladies of Brittany, from legend and from
folklore whatsoever. She does not appear again in history till the year
A.D. 1914.

II. HOW IT CAME ABOUT.

It was on an evening towards the end of June, 1914, that Flight
Commander Raffleton, temporarily attached to the French Squadron
then harboured at Brest, received instructions by wireless to return at
once to the British Air Service Headquarters at Farnborough, in
Hampshire. The night, thanks to a glorious full moon, would afford all
the light he required, and young Raffleton determined to set out at once.
He appears to have left the flying ground just outside the arsenal at
Brest about nine o'clock. A little beyond Huelgoat he began to
experience trouble with the carburettor. His idea at first was to push on
to Lannion, where he would be able to secure expert assistance; but
matters only getting worse, and noticing beneath him a convenient
stretch of level ground, he decided to descend and attend to it himself.
He alighted without difficulty and proceeded to investigate. The job
took him, unaided, longer than he had anticipated. It was a warm, close
night, with hardly a breath of wind, and when he had finished he was

feeling hot and tired. He had drawn on his helmet and was on the point
of stepping into his seat, when the beauty of the night suggested to him
that it would be pleasant, before starting off again, to stretch his legs
and cool himself a little. He lit a cigar and looked round about him.
The plateau on which he had alighted was a table-land standing high
above the surrounding country. It stretched around him, treeless,
houseless. There was nothing to break the lines of the horizon but a
group of gaunt grey stones, the remains, so he told himself, of some
ancient menhir, common enough to the lonely desert lands of Brittany.
In general the stones lie overthrown and scattered, but this particular
specimen had by some strange chance remained undisturbed through all
the centuries. Mildly interested, Flight Commander Raffleton strolled
leisurely towards it. The moon was at its zenith. How still the quiet
night must have been was impressed upon him by the fact that he
distinctly heard, and counted, the strokes of a church clock which must
have been at least six miles away. He remembers looking at his watch
and noting that there was a slight difference between his own and the
church time. He made it eight minutes past twelve. With the dying
away of the last vibrations of the distant bell the silence and the
solitude of the place seemed to return and settle down upon it with
increased insistence. While he was working it had not troubled him, but
beside the black shadows thrown by those hoary stones it had the effect
almost of a presence. It was with a sense of relief that he contemplated
returning to his machine and starting up his engine. It would whir and
buzz and give back to him a comfortable feeling of life and security. He
would walk round the stones just once and then be off. It was
wonderful how they had defied old Time. As they had been placed
there, quite possibly ten thousand years ago, so they still stood, the altar
of that vast, empty sky-roofed temple. And while he was gazing at
them, his cigar between his lips, struggling with a strange forgotten
impulse that was tugging at his knees, there came from the very heart
of the great grey stones the measured rise and fall of a soft, even
breathing.
Young Raffleton frankly confesses that his first impulse was to cut and
run. Only his soldier's training kept his feet firm on the heather. Of
course, the explanation was simple. Some animal had made the place
its nest. But then what animal was ever known to sleep so soundly as

not to be disturbed by human footsteps? If wounded, and so unable to
escape, it would not be breathing with that quiet, soft regularity,
contrasting so strangely with the stillness and the silence all round.
Possibly an owl's nest. Young owlets make that sort of noise--the
"snorers," so country people call them. Young Raffleton threw away
his cigar and went down upon his knees to grope among the shadows,
and, doing so, he touched something warm and soft and yielding.
But it wasn't an owl. He must have touched her very lightly, for even
then she did not wake. She lay there with her head upon her arm. And
now close to her, his eyes growing used