CHAPTER III
VORSKI'S SON

Véronique smiled as she sat to starboard on a packing-case, with her face turned towards Honorine. Her smile was anxious still and undefined, full of reticence and flickering as a sunbeam that tries to pierce the last clouds of the storm; but it was nevertheless a happy smile.

And happiness seemed the right expression for that wonderful face, stamped with dignity and with that particular modesty which gives to some women, whether stricken by excessive misfortune or preserved by love, the habit of gravity, combined with an absence of all feminine affectation.

Her black hair, touched with grey at the temples, was knotted very low down on the neck. She had the dead-white complexion of a southerner and very light blue eyes, of which the white seemed almost of the same colour, pale as a winter sky. She was tall, with broad shoulders and a well-shaped bust.

Her musical and somewhat masculine voice became light and cheerful when she spoke of the son whom she had found again. And Véronique could speak of nothing else. In vain the Breton woman tried to speak of the problems that harassed her and kept on interrupting Véronique:

"Look here, there are two things which I cannot understand. Who laid the trail with the clues that brought you from Le Faouet to the exact spot where I always land? It almost makes one believe that someone had been from Le Faouet to the Isle of Sarek. And, on the other hand, how did old Maguennoc come to leave the island? Was it of his own free will? Or was it his dead body that they carried? If so, how?"

"Is it worth troubling about?" Véronique objected.

"Certainly it is. Just think! Besides me, who once a fortnight go either to Beg-Meil or Pont-l'Abbé in my motor-boat for provisions, there are only two fishing-boats, which always go much higher up the coast, to Audierne, where they sell their catch. Then how did Maguennoc get across? Then again, did he commit suicide? But, if so, how did his body disappear?"

But Véronique protested:

"Please don't! It doesn't matter for the moment. It'll all be cleared up. Tell me about François. You were saying that he came to Sarek."

Honorine yielded to Véronique's entreaties:

"He arrived in poor Maguennoc's arms, a few days after he was taken from you. Maguennoc, who had been taught his lesson by your father, said that a strange lady had entrusted him with the child; and he had it nursed by his daughter, who has since died. I was away, in a situation with a Paris family. When I came home again, François had grown into a fine little fellow, running about the moors and cliffs. It was then that I took service with your father, who had settled in Sarek. When Maguennoc's daughter died, we took the child to live with us."

"But under what name?"

"François, just François. M. d'Hergemont was known as Monsieur Antoine. François called him grandfather. No one ever made any remark upon it."

"And his character?" asked Véronique, with some anxiety.

"Oh, as far as that's concerned, he's a blessing!" replied Honorine. "Nothing of his father about him.. nor of his grandfather either, as M. d'Hergemont himself admits. A gentle, lovable, most willing child. Never a sign of anger; always good-tempered. That's what got over his grandfather and made M. d'Hergemont come round to you again, because his grandson reminded him so of the daughter he had cast off. 'He's the very image of his mother,' he used to say. 'Véronique was gentle and affectionate like him, with the same fond and coaxing ways.' And then he began his search for you, with me to help him; for he had come to confide in me."

Véronique beamed with delight. Her son was like her! Her son was bright and kind-hearted!

"But does he know about me?" she said. "Does he know that I'm alive?"

"I should think he did! M. d'Hergemont tried to keep it from him at first. But I soon told him everything."

"Everything?"

"No. He believes that his father is dead and that, after the shipwreck in which he, I mean François, and M. d'Hergemont disappeared, you became a nun and have been lost sight of since. And he is so eager for news, each time I come back from one of my trips! He too is so full of hope! Oh, you can take my word for it, he adores his mother! And he's always singing that song you heard just now, which his grandfather taught him."

"My François, my own little François!"

"Ah, yes, he loves you! There's Mother Honorine. But you're mother, just that. And he's in a great hurry to grow up and finish his schooling, so that he may go and look for you."

"His schooling? Does he have lessons?"

"Yes, with his grandfather and, since two years ago, with such a nice fellow that I brought back from Paris, Stéphane Maroux, a wounded soldier covered with medals and restored to health after an internal operation. François dotes on him."

The boat was running quickly over the smooth sea, in which it ploughed a furrow of silvery foam. The clouds had dispersed on the horizon. The evening boded fair and calm.

"More, tell me more!" said Véronique, listening greedily. "What does my boy wear?"

"Knickerbockers and short socks, with his calves bare; a thick flannel shirt with gilt buttons; and a flat knitted cap, like his big friend, M. Stéphane; only his is red and suits him to perfection."

"Has he any friends besides M. Maroux?"

"All the growing lads of the island, formerly. But with the exception of three or four ship's boys, all the rest have left the island with their mothers, now that their fathers are at the war, and are working on the mainland, at Concarneau or Lorient, leaving the old people at Sarek by themselves. We are not more than thirty on the island now."

"Whom does he play with? Whom does he go about with?"

"Oh, as for that, he has the best of companions!"

"Really? Who is it?"

"A little dog that Maguennoc gave him."

"A dog?"

"Yes; and the funniest dog you ever saw: an ugly ridiculous-looking thing, a cross between a poodle and a fox-terrier, but so comical and amusing! Oh, there's no one like Master All's Well!"

"All's Well?"

"That's what François calls him; and you couldn't have a better name for him. He always looks happy and glad to be alive. He's independent, too, and he disappears for hours and even days at a time; but he's always there when he's wanted, if you're feeling sad, or if things aren't going as you might like them to. All's Well hates to see any one crying or scolding or quarrelling. The moment you cry, or pretend to cry, he comes and squats on his haunches in front of you, sits up, shuts one eye, half-opens the other and looks so exactly as if he was laughing that you begin to laugh yourself. 'That's right, old chap,' says François, 'you're quite right: all's well. There's nothing to take on about, is there?' And, when you're consoled, All's Well just trots away. His task is done."

Véronique laughed and cried in one breath. Then she was silent for a long time, feeling more and more gloomy and overcome by a despair which overwhelmed all her gladness. She thought of all the happiness that she had missed during the fourteen years of her childless motherhood, wearing her mourning for a son who was alive. All the cares that a mother lavishes upon the little creature new-born into the world, all the pride that she feels at seeing him grow and hearing him speak, all that delights a mother and uplifts her and makes her heart overflow with daily renewed affection: all this she had never known.

"We are half-way across," said Honorine.

They were running in sight of the Glenans Islands. On their right, the headland of Penmarch, whose coast-line they were following at a distance of fifteen miles, marked a darker line which was not always differentiated from the horizon.

And Véronique thought of her sad past, of her mother, whom she hardly remembered, of her childhood spent with a selfish, disagreeable father, of her marriage, ah, above all of her marriage! She recalled her first meetings with Vorski, when she was only seventeen. How frightened she had been from the very beginning of that strange and unusual man, whom she dreaded while she submitted to his influence, as one does at that age submit to the influence of anything mysterious and incomprehensible!

Next came the hateful day of the abduction and the other days, more hateful still, that followed, the weeks during which he had kept her imprisoned, threatening her and dominating her with all his evil strength, and the promise of marriage which he had forced from her, a pledge against which all the girl's instincts and all her will revolted, but to which it seemed to her that she was bound to agree after so great a scandal and also because her father was giving his consent.

Her brain rebelled against the memories of her years of married life. Never that! Not even in the worst hours, when the nightmares of the past haunt one like spectres, never did she consent to revive, in the innermost recesses of her mind, that degrading past, with its mortifications, wounds and betrayals, and the disgraceful life led by her husband, who, shamelessly, with cynical pride, gradually revealed himself as the man he was, drinking, cheating at cards, robbing his boon companions, a swindler and blackmailer, giving his wife the impression, which she still retained and which made her shudder, of a sort of evil genius, cruel and unbalanced.

"Have done with dreams, Madame Véronique," said Honorine.

"It's not so much dreams and memories as remorse," she replied.

"Remorse, Madame Véronique? You, whose life has been one long martyrdom?"

"A martyrdom that was a punishment."

"But all that is over and done with, Madame Véronique, seeing that you are going to meet your son and your father again. Come, come, you must think of nothing but being happy."

"Happy? Can I be happy again?"

"I should think so! You'll soon see!.. Look, there's Sarek."

Honorine took from a locker under her seat a large shell which she used as a trumpet, after the manner of the mariners of old, and, putting her lips to the mouthpiece and puffing out her cheeks, she blew a few powerful notes, which filled the air with a sound not unlike the lowing of an ox.

Véronique gave her a questioning look.

"It's him I'm calling," said Honorine.

"François? You're calling François?"

"Yes, it's the same every time I come back. He comes scrambling from the top of the cliffs where we live and runs down to the jetty."

"So I shall see him?" exclaimed Véronique, turning very pale.

"You will see him. Fold your veil double, so that he may not know you from your photographs. I'll speak to you as I would to a stranger who has come to look at Sarek."

They could see the island distinctly, but the foot of the cliffs was hidden by a multitude of reefs.

"Ah, yes, there's no lack of rocks! They swarm like a shoal of herring!" cried Honorine, who had been obliged to switch off the motor and was using two short paddles. "You know how calm the sea was just now. It's never calm here."

Thousands and thousands of little waves were dashing and clashing against one another and waging an incessant and implacable war upon the rocks. The boat seemed to be passing through the backwater of a torrent. Nowhere was a strip of blue or green sea visible amid the bubbling foam. There was nothing but white froth, whipped up by the indefatigable swirl of the forces which desperately assailed the pointed teeth of the reefs.

"And it's like that all round the island," said Honorine, "so much so that you may say that Sarek isn't accessible except in a small boat. Ah, the Huns could never have established a submarine base on our island! To make quite sure and remove all doubts, some officers came over from Lorient, two years ago, because of a few caves on the west, which can only be entered at low tide. It was waste of time. There was nothing doing here. Just think, it's like a sprinkle of rocks all around; and pointed rocks at that, which get at you treacherously from underneath. And, though these are the most dangerous, perhaps it is the others that are most to be feared, the big ones which you see and have got their name and their history from all sorts of crimes and shipwrecks. Oh, as to those!."

Her voice grew hollow. With a hesitating hand, which seemed afraid of the half-completed gesture, she pointed to some reefs which stood up in powerful masses of different shapes, crouching animals, crenellated keeps, colossal needles, sphynx-heads, jagged pyramids, all in black granite stained with red, as though soaked in blood.

And she whispered:

"Oh, as to those, they have been guarding the island for centuries and centuries, but like wild beasts that only care for doing harm and killing. They.. they.. no, it's better never to speak about them or even think of them. They are the thirty wild beasts. Yes, thirty, Madame Véronique, there are thirty of them.."

She made the sign of the cross and continued, more calmly:

"There are thirty of them. Your father says that Sarek is called the island of the thirty coffins because the people instinctively ended in this case by confusing the two words écueils and cercueils.¹ Perhaps.. It's very likely.. But, all the same, they are thirty real coffins, Madame Véronique; and, if we could open them, we should be sure to find them full of bones and bones and bones. M. d'Hergemont himself says that Sarek comes from the word Sarcophagus, which, according to him, is the learned way of saying coffin. Besides, there's more than that.."

Honorine broke off, as though she wanted to think of something else, and, pointing to a reef of rocks, said:

"Look, Madame Véronique, past that big one right in our way there, you will see, through an opening, our little harbour and, on the quay, François in his red cap."

Véronique had been listening absent-mindedly to Honorine's explanations. She leant her body farther out of the boat, in order to catch sight the sooner of her son, while the Breton woman, once more a victim to her obsession, continued, in spite of herself:

"There's more than that. The Isle of Sarek – and that is why your father came to live here – contains a collection of dolmens which have nothing remarkable about them, but which are peculiar for one reason, that they are all nearly alike. Well, how many of them do you think there are? Thirty! Thirty, like the principal reefs. And those thirty are distributed round the islands, on the cliffs, exactly opposite the thirty reefs; and each of them bears the same name as the reef that corresponds to it: Dol-er-H'roeck, Dol-Kerlitu and so on. What do you say to that?"

She had uttered these names in the same timid voice in which she spoke of all these things, as if she feared to be heard by the things themselves, to which she was attributing a formidable and sacred life.

"What do you say to that, Madame Véronique? Oh, there's plenty of mystery about it all; and, once more, it's better to hold one's tongue! I'll tell you about it when we've left here, right away from the island, and when your little François is in your arms, between your father and you."

Véronique sat silent, gazing into space at the spot to which Honorine had pointed. With her back turned to her companion and her two hands gripping the gunwale, she stared distractedly before her. It was there, through that narrow opening, that she was to see her child, long lost and now found; and she did not want to waste a single second after the moment when she would be able to catch sight of him.

They reached the rock. One of Honorine's paddles grazed its side. They skirted and came to the end of it.

"Oh," said Véronique, sorrowfully, "he is not there!"

"François not there? Impossible!" cried Honorine.

She in her turn saw, three or four hundred yards in front of them, the few big rocks on the beach which served as a jetty. Three women, a little girl and some old seafaring men were waiting for the boat, but no boy, no red cap.

"That's strange," said Honorine, in a low voice. "It's the first time that he's failed to answer my call."

"Perhaps he's ill?" Véronique suggested.

"No, François is never ill."

"What then?"

"I don't know."

"But aren't you afraid?" asked Véronique, who was already becoming frightened.

"For him, no.. but for your father. Maguennoc said that I oughtn't to leave him. It's he who is threatened."

"But François is there to defend him; and so is M. Maroux, his tutor. Come, answer me: what do you imagine?"

After a moment's pause, Honorine shrugged her shoulders.