The Secret of Sarek, Maurice Leblanc [the ebook reader .txt] 📗

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 manuscript.

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

“François, my dearly-beloved son⁠—for I may call you so, may I not?⁠—François, 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 passionate affection and with the persistent hope that he would soon see her again.

“We shall see her again, François,” Stéphane 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 Véronique, 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, François. 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.

Véronique 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 nobody 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? Stéphane and he are sure to come back.”

The hours that went by were full of soothing quiet. Véronique 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 Stéphane Maroux. Come along.”

All’s Well was only waiting for Véronique’s permission. He dashed off in the direction of the grassy sward that led to the dolmen; and he stopped half way. Véronique 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 Véronique.

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 passage like the entrance to a rabbit-warren. All’s Well slipped in, disappeared and then returned in search of Véronique, who had to go back to the Priory and fetch a billhook 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 tiptoe 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. Véronique 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 passages, both quite dark. The island appeared to be riddled in this way with invisible communications; and Véronique 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