"Please, Honorine, please!"
"But look at them, look at them!"
The motor-boat was drifting forward down below, with the two marksmen at their posts, holding their guns ready for murder.
The survivors fled. Two of them hung back in the rear.
These two were aimed at. Their heads disappeared from view.
"But look at them!" Honorine said, explosively, in a hoarse voice. "They're hunting them down! They're killing them like game!… Oh, the poor people of Sarek!…"
Another shot. Another black speck vanished.
Veronique was writhing in despair. She shook[Pg 85] the rails of the balcony, as she might have shaken the bars of a cage in which she was imprisoned.
"Vorski! Vorski!" she groaned, stricken by the recollection of her husband. "He's Vorski's son!"
Suddenly she felt herself seized by the throat and saw, close to her own face, the distorted face of the Breton woman.
"He's your son!" spluttered Honorine. "Curse you! You are the monster's mother and you shall be punished for it!"
And she burst out laughing and stamping her feet, in an overpowering fit of hilarity.
"The cross, yes, the cross! You shall be crucified, with nails through your hands!… What a punishment, nails through your hands!"
She was mad.
Veronique released herself and tried to hold the other motionless: but Honorine, filled with malicious rage, threw her off, making her lose balance, and began to climb into the balcony.
She remained standing outside the window, lifting up her arms and once more shouting:
"Francois! Francois!"
The first floor was not so high on this side of the house, owing to the slope of the ground. Honorine jumped into the path below, crossed it, pushed her way through the shrubs that lined it and ran to the ridge of rocks which formed the cliff and overhung the sea.
She stopped for a moment, thrice called out the name of the child whom she had reared and flung herself headlong into the deep.
In the distance, the man-hunt drew to a finish.
[Pg 86]The heads sank one by one. The massacre was completed.
Then the motor-boat with Francois and Stephane on board fled towards the coast of Brittany, towards the beaches of Beg-Meil and Concarneau.
Veronique was left alone on Coffin Island.
[Pg 87]
CHAPTER V
Veronique was left alone on Coffin Island. Until the sun sank among the clouds that seemed, on the horizon, to rest upon the sea, she did not move, but sat huddled against the window, with her head buried in her two arms resting on the sill.
The dread reality passed through the darkness of her mind like pictures which she strove not to see, but which at times became so clearly defined that she imagined herself to be living through those atrocious scenes again.
Still she sought no explanation of all this and formed no theories as to all the motives which might have thrown a light upon the tragedy. She admitted the madness of Francois and of Stephane Maroux, being unable to suppose any other reasons for such actions as theirs. And, believing the two murderers to be mad, she did not even try to attribute to them any projects or definite wishes.
Moreover, Honorine's madness, of which she had, so to speak, observed the outbreak, impelled her to look upon all that had happened as provoked by a sort of mental upset to which all the people of Sarek had fallen victims. She herself at moments felt that her brain was reeling, that her ideas were fading away in a mist, that invisible ghosts were hovering around her.
[Pg 88]She dozed off into a sleep which was haunted by these images and in which she felt so wretched that she began to sob. Also it seemed to her that she could hear a slight noise which, in her benumbed wits, assumed a hostile significance. Enemies were approaching. She opened her eyes.
A couple of yards in front of her, sitting upon its haunches, was a queer animal, covered with long mud-coloured hair and holding its fore-paws folded like a pair of arms.
It was a dog; and she at once remembered Francois' dog, of which Honorine had spoken as a dear, devoted, comical creature. She even remembered his name, All's-Well.
As she uttered this name in an undertone, she felt an angry impulse and was almost driving away the animal endowed with such an ironical nickname. All's-Well! And she thought of all the victims of the horrible nightmare, of all the dead people of Sarek, of her murdered father, of Honorine killing herself, of Francois going mad. All's-Well, forsooth!
Meanwhile the dog did not stir. He was sitting up as Honorine had described, with his head a little on one side, one eye closed, the corners of his mouth drawn back to his ears and his arms crossed in front of him; and there was really something very like a smile flitting over his face.
Veronique now remembered: this was the manner in which All's-Well displayed his sympathy for those in trouble. All's-Well could not bear the sight of tears. When people wept, he sat up until they in their turn smiled and petted him.
[Pg 89]Veronique did not smile, but she pressed him against her and said:
"No, my poor dog, all's not well; on the contrary, all's as bad as it can be. No matter: we must live, mustn't we, and we mustn't go mad ourselves like the others?"
The necessities of life obliged her to act. She went down to the kitchen, found some food and gave the dog a good share of it. Then she went upstairs again.
Night had fallen. She opened, on the first floor, the door of a bedroom which at ordinary times must have been unoccupied. She was weighed down with an immense fatigue, caused by all the efforts and violent emotions which she had undergone. She fell asleep almost at once. All's Well lay awake at the foot of her bed.
Next morning she woke late, with a curious feeling of peace and security. It seemed to her that her present life was somehow connected with her calm and placid life at Besancon. The few days of horror which she had passed fell away from her like distant events whose return she had no need to fear. The men and women who had gone under in the great horror became to her mind almost like strangers whom one has met and does not expect to see again. Her heart ceased bleeding. Her sorrow for them did not reach the depths of her soul.
It was due to the unforeseen and undisturbed rest, the consoling solitude. And all this seemed to her so pleasant that, when a steamer came and anchored on the spot of the disaster, she made no signal. No doubt yesterday, from the mainland,[Pg 90] they had seen the flash of the explosions and heard the report of the shots. Veronique remained motionless.
She saw a boat put off from the steamer and supposed that they were going to land and explore the village. But not only did she dread an enquiry in which her son might be involved: she herself did not wish to be found, to be questioned, to have her name, her identity, her story discovered and to be brought back into the infernal circle from which she had escaped. She preferred to wait a week or two, to wait until chance brought within hailing-distance of the island some fishing-boat which could pick her up.
But no one came to the Priory. The steamer put off; and nothing disturbed her isolation.
And so she remained for three days. Fate seemed to have reconsidered its intention of making fresh assaults upon her. She was alone and her own mistress. All's Well, whose company had done her a world of good, disappeared.
The Priory domain occupied the whole end of the island, on the site of a Benedictine abbey, which had been abandoned in the fifteenth century and gradually fallen into ruin and decay.
The house, built in the eighteenth century by a wealthy Breton ship-owner out of the materials of the old abbey and the stones of the chapel, was in no way interesting either outside or in. Veronique, for that matter, did not dare to enter any of the rooms. The memory of her father and son checked her before the closed doors.