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

“I’ll defend him! I will!” she declared. “I’ll save him! Your father shall not be the second victim. No, no, I shall arrive in time! Let me go!”

“We are going together,” said Véronique, firmly.

“Please,” said Honorine, in a voice of entreaty, “please don’t be persistent. Let me have my way. I’ll bring your father and your son to you this very evening, before dinner.”

“But why?”

“The danger is too great, over there, for your father⁠ ⁠… and especially for you. Remember the four crosses! It’s over there that they are waiting.⁠ ⁠… Oh, you mustn’t go there!⁠ ⁠… The island is under a curse.”

“And my son?”

“You shall see him today, in a few hours.”

Véronique gave a short laugh:

“In a few hours! Woman, you must be mad! Here am I, after mourning my son for fourteen years, suddenly hearing that he’s alive; and you ask me to wait before I take him in my arms! Not one hour! I would rather risk death a thousand times than put off that moment.”

Honorine looked at her and seemed to realize that Véronique’s was one of those resolves against which it is useless to fight, for she did not insist. She crossed herself for the third time and said, simply:

“God’s will be done.”

They both took their seats among the parcels which encumbered the narrow space. Honorine switched on the current, seized the tiller and skilfully steered the boat through the rocks and sandbanks which rose level with the water.

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 motorboat 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 kindhearted!

“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,