The boy stopped. Then, after a moment, in a much lower voice:
"Did you come with some one?" he asked. "Is there anybody behind the wall?"
The dog gave a dull bark. Then there was a long pause, during which Francois also must have been listening.
Veronique's emotion was so great that it seemed[Pg 130] to her that Francois must hear the beating of her heart.
He whispered:
"Is that you, Honorine?"
There was a fresh pause; and he continued:
"Yes, I'm sure it's you… I can hear you breathing… Why don't you answer?"
Veronique was carried away by a sudden impulse. Certain gleams of light had flashed upon her mind since she had understood that Stephane was a prisoner, no doubt like Francois, therefore a victim of the enemy; and all sorts of vague suppositions flitted through her brain. Besides, how could she resist the appeal of that voice? Her son was asking her a question… her son!
"Francois… Francois!" she stammered.
"Ah," he said, "there's an answer! I knew it! Is it you, Honorine?"
"No, Francois," she said.
"Then who is it?"
"A friend of Honorine's."
"I don't know you, do I?"
"No… but I am your friend."
He hesitated. Was he on his guard?
"Why didn't Honorine come with you?"
Veronique was not prepared for this question, but she at once realized that, if the involuntary suppositions that were forcing themselves upon her were correct, the boy must not yet be told the truth.
She therefore said:
"Honorine came back from her journey, but has gone away again."
"Gone to look for me?"
"That's it, that's it," she said, quickly. "She[Pg 131] thought that you had been carried away from Sarek and your tutor with you."
"But grandfather?"
"He's gone too: so have all the inhabitants of the island."
"Ah! The old story of the coffins and the crosses, I suppose?"
"Just so. They thought that your disappearance meant the beginning of the disasters; and their fear made them take to flight."
"But you, madame?"
"I have known Honorine for a long time. I came from Paris with her to take a holiday at Sarek. I have no reason to go away. All these superstitions have no terrors for me."
The child was silent. The improbability and inadequacy of the replies must have been apparent to him: and his suspicions increased in consequence. He confessed as much, frankly:
"Listen, madame, there's something I must tell you. It's ten days since I was imprisoned in this cell. During the first part of that time, I saw and heard nobody. But, since the day before yesterday, every morning a little wicket opens in the middle of my door and a woman's hand comes through and gives a fresh supply of water. A woman's hand… so… you see?"
"So you want to know if that woman is myself?"
"Yes, I am obliged to ask you."
"Would you recognize that woman's hand?"
"Yes, it is lean and bony, with a yellow arm."
"Here's mine," said Veronique. "It can pass where All's Well did."
[Pg 132]She pulled up her sleeve; and by flexing her bare arm she easily passed it through.
"Oh," said Francois, at once, "that's not the hand I saw!"
And he added, in a lower voice:
"How pretty this one is!"
Suddenly Veronique felt him take it in his own with a quick movement; and he exclaimed:
"Oh, it can't be true, it can't be true!"
He had turned her hand over and was separating the fingers so as to uncover the palm entirely. And he whispered:
"The scar!… It's there!… The white scar!…"
Then Veronique became greatly agitated. She remembered Stephane Maroux's diary and certain details set down by him which Francois must have heard. One of these details was this scar, which recalled an old and rather serious injury.
She felt the boy's lips pressed to her hand, first gently and then with passionate ardour and a great flow of tears, and heard him stammering:
"Oh, mother, mother darling!… My dear, dear mother!…"
[Pg 133]
CHAPTER VII
Long the mother and son remained thus, kneeling against the wall that divided them, yet as close together as though they were able to see each other with their frenzied eyes and to mingle their tears and kisses. They spoke both at once, asking each other questions and answering them at random. They were in a transport of delight. The life of each flowed over into the other's life and became swallowed up in it. No power on earth could now dissolve their union or break the bonds of love and confidence which unite mothers and sons.
"Yes, All's Well, old man," said Francois, "you may sit up as much and as long as you like. We are really crying this time… and you will be the first to get tired, for one doesn't mind shedding such tears as these, does one, mother?"
As for Veronique, her mind retained not a vestige of the terrible visions which had dismayed it. Her son a murderer, her son killing and massacring people: she no longer admitted any of that. She did not even admit the excuse of madness. Everything would be explained in some other way which she was not even in a hurry to understand. She thought only of her son. He was there. His eyes saw her through the wall. His heart beat against hers. He lived; and he was the same gentle, affectionate,[Pg 134] pure and charming child that her maternal dreams had pictured.
"My son, my son!" she kept on repeating, as though she could not utter those marvellous words often enough. "My son, it's you, it's you! I believed you dead, a thousand times dead, more dead than it is possible to be… And you are alive! And you are here! And I am touching you! O Heaven, can it be true! I have a son… and my son is alive!…"
And he, on his side, took up the refrain with the same passionate fervour:
"Mother! Mother! I have waited for you so long!… To me you were not dead, but it was so sad to be a child and to have no mother… to see the years go by and to waste them in waiting for you."
For an hour they talked at random, of the past, of the present, of a hundred subjects which at first appeared to them the most interesting things in the world and which they forthwith dropped to ask each other more questions and to try to know each other a little better and to enter more deeply into the secret of their lives and the privacy of their souls.
It was Francois who first attempted to impart some little method to their conversation:
"Listen, mother; we have so much to say to each other that we must give up trying to say it all to-day and even for days and days. Let us speak now of what is essential and in the fewest possible words, for we have perhaps not much time before us."
"What do you mean?" said Veronique, instantly alarmed. "I have no intention of leaving you!"
"But, mother, if we are not to leave each other,[Pg 135] we must first be united. Now there are many obstacles to be overcome, even if it were only the wall that separates us. Besides, I am very closely watched; and I may be obliged at any moment to send you away, as I do All's Well, at the first sound of footsteps approaching."
"Watched by whom?"
"By those who fell upon Stephane and me on the day when we discovered the entrance to these caves, under the heath on the table-land, the Black Heath."
"Did you see them?"
"No, it was too dark."
"But who are they? Who are those enemies?"
"I don't know."
"You suspect, of course?"
"The Druids?" he said, laughing. "The people of old of whom the legends speak? Rather not! Ghosts? Not that either. They were just simply creatures of to-day, creatures of flesh and blood."