The Secret of Sarek Part 21

On the first page was her own portrait, her photograph as a girl, with her signature in full and the inscription:

"To my friend Stephane."

"I don't understand, I don't understand," she murmured. "I remember the photograph: I must have been sixteen. But how did I come to give it to him? I must have known him!"

Eager to learn more, she read the next page, a sort of preface worded as follows:

"Veronique, I wish to lead my life under your eyes. In undertaking the education of your son, of that son whom I ought to loathe, because he is the son of another, but whom I love because he is your son, my intention is that my life shall be in full harmony with the secret feeling that has swayed it so long.

One day, I have no doubt, you will resume your place as Francois' mother. On that day you will be proud of him. I shall have effaced all that may survive in him of his father and I shall have exalted all the fine and n.o.ble qualities which he inherits from you. The aim is great enough for me to devote myself to it body and soul. I do so with gladness. Your smile shall be my reward."

Veronique's heart was flooded with a singular emotion. Her life was lit with a calmer radiance; and this new mystery, which she was unable to fathom any more than the others, was at least, like that of Maguennoc's flowers, gentle and comforting.

As she continued to turn the pages, she followed her son's education from day to day. She beheld the pupil's progress and the master's methods. The pupil was engaging, intelligent, studious, zealous loving, sensitive, impulsive and at the same time thoughtful. The master was affectionate, patient and borne up by some profound feeling which showed through every line of the ma.n.u.script.

And, little by little, there was a growing enthusiasm in the daily confession, which expressed itself in terms less and less restrained:

"Francois, my dearly-beloved son--for I may call you so, may I not?--Francois, your mother lives once again in you. Your eyes are pure and limpid as hers. Your soul is grave and simple as her soul. You are unacquainted with evil; and one might almost say that you are unacquainted with good, so closely is it blended with your beautiful nature."

Some of the child's exercises were copied into the book, exercises in which he spoke of his mother with pa.s.sionate affection and with the persistent hope that he would soon see her again.

"We shall see her again, Francois," Stephane added, "and you will then understand better what beauty means and light and the charm of life and the delight of beholding and admiring."

Next came anecdotes about Veronique, minor details which she herself did not remember or which she thought that she alone knew:

"One day, at the Tuileries--she was only sixteen--a circle was formed round her . . . by people who looked at her and wondered at her loveliness. Her girl friends laughed, happy at seeing her admired . . . .

"Open her right hand, Francois. You will see a long, white scar in the middle of the palm. When she was quite a little girl, she ran the point of an iron railing into her hand . . . ."

But the last pages were not written for the boy and had certainly not been read by him. The writer's love was no longer disguised beneath admiring phrases. It displayed itself without reserve, ardent, exalted, suffering, quivering with hope, though always respectful.

Veronique closed the book. She could read no more.

"Yes, I confess, All's Well," she said to the dog, who was already sitting up, "my eyes are wet with tears. Devoid of feminine weaknesses as I am, I will tell you what I would say to n.o.body else: that really touches me. Yes, I must try to recall the unknown features of the man who loves me like this . . . some friend of my childhood whose affection I never suspected and whose name has not left even a trace in my memory."

She drew the dog to her:

"Two kind hearts, are they not, All's Well? Neither the master nor the pupil is capable of the crimes which I saw them commit. If they are the accomplices of our enemies here, they are so in spite of themselves and without knowing it. I cannot believe in philtres and incantations and plants which deprive you of your reason. But, all the same, there is something, isn't there, you dear little dog? The boy who planted veronicas round the Calvary of Flowers and who wrote, 'Mother's flowers,' is not guilty, is he? And Honorine was right, when she spoke of a fit of madness, and he will come back to look for me, won't he?

Stephane and he are sure to come back."

The hours that went by were full of soothing quiet. Veronique was no longer lonely. The present had no terrors for her; and she had faith in the future.

Next morning, she said to All's Well, whom she had locked up to prevent his running away:

"Will you take me there now my man? Where? Why, to the friend, of course, who sent provisions to Stephane Maroux. Come along."

All's Well was only waiting for Veronique's permission. He dashed off in the direction of the gra.s.sy sward that led to the dolmen; and he stopped half way. Veronique came up with him. He turned to the right and took a path which brought them to a huddle of ruins near the edge of the cliffs. Then he stopped again.

"Is it here?" asked Veronique.

The dog lay down flat. In front of him, at the foot of two blocks of stones leaning against each other and covered with the same growth of ivy, was a tangle of brambles with under it a little pa.s.sage like the entrance to a rabbit-warren. All's Well slipped in, disappeared and then returned in search of Veronique, who had to go back to the Priory and fetch a bill-hook to cut down the brambles.

She managed in half an hour to uncover the top step of a staircase, which she descended, feeling her way and preceded by All's Well, and which took her to a long tunnel, cut in the body of the rock and lighted on the left by little openings. She raised herself on tip-toe and saw that these openings overlooked the sea.

She walked on the level for ten minutes and then went down some more steps. The tunnel grew narrower. The openings, which all looked towards the sky, no doubt so as not to be seen from below, now gave light from both the right and the left. Veronique began to understand how All's Well was able to communicate with the other part of the island. The tunnel followed the narrow strip of cliff which joined the Priory estate to Sarek. The waves lapped the rocks on either side.

They next climbed by steps under the knoll of the Great Oak. Two tunnels opened at the top. All's Well chose the one on the left, which continued to skirt the sea.

Then on the right there were two more pa.s.sages, both quite dark. The island appeared to be riddled in this way with invisible communications; and Veronique felt something clutch at her heart as she reflected that she was making for the part which the sisters Archignat had described as the enemy's subterranean domains, under the Black Heath.

All's Well trotted in front of her, turning round from time to time to see if she was following.

"Yes, yes, dear, I'm coming," she whispered, "and I am not a bit afraid: I am sure that you are leading me to a friend . . . a friend who has taken shelter down here. But why has he not left his shelter? Why did you not show him the way?"

The pa.s.sage had been chipped smooth throughout, with a rounded ceiling and a very dry granite floor, which was amply ventilated by the openings. There was not a mark, not a scratch of any kind on the walls.

Sometimes the point of a black flint projected.

"Is it here?" asked Veronique, when All's Well stopped.

The tunnel went no farther and widened into a chamber into which the light filtered more thinly through a narrower window.

All's Well seemed undecided. He listened, with his ears p.r.i.c.ked up, standing on his hind-legs and resting his fore-paws against the end wall of the tunnel.

Veronique noticed that the wall, at this spot, was not formed throughout its length of the bare granite but consisted of an acc.u.mulation of stones of unequal size set in cement. The work evidently belonged to a different, doubtless more recent period.

A regular part.i.tion-wall had been built, closing the underground pa.s.sage, which was probably continued on the other side.

She repeated:

"It's here, isn't it?"

But she said nothing more. She had heard the stifled sound of a voice.

She went up to the wall and presently gave a start. The voice was raised higher. The sounds became more distinct. Some one, a child, was singing, and she caught the words:

"And the mother said, Rocking her child abed:

'Weep not. If you do, The Virgin Mary weeps with you.'"

Veronique murmured:

"The song . . . the song . . ."

It was the same that Honorine had hummed at Beg-Meil. Who could be singing it now? A child, imprisoned in the island? A boy friend of Francois'?

And the voice went on:

"'Babes that laugh and sing Smiles to the Blessed Virgin bring.