"No, but it can be widened by removing the little stones round it."
"Capital. You will find in Maguennoc's workshop a bamboo ladder, with iron hooks to it, which you can easily bring with you to-morrow morning. Next, take some provisions and some rugs and leave them in a thicket at the entrance to the tunnel."
"What for, darling?"
"You'll see. I have a plan. Good-bye, mother. Have a good night's rest and pick up your strength. We may have a hard day before us."
Veronique followed her son's advice. The next morning, full of hope, she once more took the road to the cell. This time, All's Well, reverting to his instincts of independence, did not come with her.
"Keep quite still, mother," said Francois, in so low a whisper that she could scarcely hear him. "I am very closely watched; and I think there's some one walking up and down in the passage. However, my work is nearly done; the stones are all loosened. I shall have finished in two hours. Have you the ladder?"
"Yes."
"Remove the stones from the window… that will save time… for really I am frightened about Stephane… And be sure not to make a noise…"
Veronique moved away.
The window was not much more than three feet from the floor: and the small stones, as she had supposed, were kept in place only by their own[Pg 142] weight and the way in which they were arranged. The opening which she thus contrived to make was very wide; and she easily passed the ladder which she had brought with her through and secured it by its iron hooks to the lower ledge.
She was some hundred feet or so above the sea, which lay all white before her, guarded by the thousand reefs of Sarek. But she could not see the foot of the cliff, for there was under the window a slight projection of granite which jutted forward and on which the ladder rested instead of hanging perpendicularly.
"That will help Francois," she thought.
Nevertheless, the danger of the undertaking seemed great; and she wondered whether she herself ought not to take the risk, instead of her son, all the more so as Francois might be mistaken, as Stephane's cell was perhaps not there at all and as perhaps there was no means of entering it by a similar opening. If so, what a waste of time! And what a useless danger for the boy to run!
At that moment she felt so great a need of self-devotion, so intense a wish to prove her love for him by direct action, that she formed her resolution without pausing to reflect, even as one performs immediately a duty which there is no question of not performing. Nothing deterred her: neither her inspection of the ladder, whose hooks were not wide enough to grip the whole thickness of the ledge, nor the sight of the precipice, which gave an impression that everything was about to fall away from under her. She had to act; and she acted.
Pinning up her skirt, she stepped across the wall,[Pg 143] turned round, supported herself on the ledge, groped with her foot in space and found one of the rungs. Her whole body was trembling. Her heart was beating furiously, like the clapper of a bell. Nevertheless she had the mad courage to catch hold of the two uprights and go down.
It did not take long. She knew that there were twenty rungs in all. She counted them. When she reached the twentieth, she looked to the left and murmured, with unspeakable joy:
"Oh, Francois… my darling!"
She had seen, three feet away at most, a recess, a hollow which appeared to be the entrance to a cavity cut in the rock itself.
"Stephane… Stephane," she called, but in so faint a voice that Stephane Maroux, if he were there, could not hear her.
She hesitated a few seconds, but her legs were giving way and she no longer had the strength either to climb up again or to remain hanging where she was. Taking advantage of a few irregularities in the rock and thus shifting the ladder, at the risk of unhooking it, she succeeded, by a sort of miracle of which she was quite aware, in catching hold of a flint which projected from the granite and setting foot in the cave. Then, with fierce energy, she made one supreme effort and, recovering her balance with a jerk, she entered.
She at once saw some one, fastened with cords, lying on a truss of straw.
The cave was small and not very deep, especially in the upper portion, which pointed towards the sky rather than the sea and which must have looked,[Pg 144] from a distance, like a mere fold in the cliff. There was no projection to bound it at the edge. The light entered freely.
Veronique went nearer. The man did not move. He was asleep.
She bent over him; though she did not recognize him for certain, it seemed to her that a memory was emerging from that dim past in which all the faces of our childhood gradually fade away. This one was surely not unknown to her: a gentle visage, with regular features, fair hair flung well back, a broad, white forehead and a slightly feminine countenance, which reminded Veronique of the charming face of a convent friend who had died before the war.
She deftly unfastened the bonds with which the wrists were fastened together.
The man, without waking immediately, stretched his arms, as though submitting himself to a familiar operation, not effected for the first time, which did not necessarily interfere with his sleep. Presumably he was released like this at intervals, perhaps in order to eat and at night, for he ended by muttering:
"So early?… But I'm not hungry… and it's still light!"
This last reflection astonished the man himself. He opened his eyes and at once sat up where he lay, so that he might see the person who was standing in front of him, no doubt for the first time in broad daylight.
He was not greatly surprised, for the reason that the reality could not have been manifest to him at once. He probably thought that he was the sport[Pg 145] of a dream or an hallucination; and he said, in an undertone:
"Veronique… Veronique…"
She felt a little embarrassed by his gaze, but finished releasing his bonds; and, when he distinctly felt her hand on his own hands and on his imprisoned limbs, he understood the wonderful event which her presence implied and he said, in a faltering voice:
"You! You!… Can it be?… Oh, speak just one word, just one!… Can it possibly be you?" He continued, almost to himself, "Yes, it is she… it is certainly she… She is here!" And, anxiously, aloud, "You… at night… on the other nights… it wasn't you who came then? It was another woman, wasn't it? An enemy?… Oh, forgive me for asking you!… It's because… because I don't understand… How did you come here?"
"I came this way," she said, pointing to the sea.
"Oh," he said, "how wonderful!"
He stared at her with dazed eyes, as he might have stared at some vision descended from Heaven; and the circumstances were so unusual that he did not think of suppressing the eagerness of his gaze.
She repeated, utterly confused:
"Yes, this way… Francois suggested it."
"I did not mention him," he said, "because, with you here, I felt sure that he was free."
"Not yet," she said, "but he will be in an hour."
A long pause ensued. She interrupted it to conceal her agitation:
"He will be free… You shall see him… But we must not frighten him: there are things which he doesn't know."
[Pg 146]She perceived that he was listening not to the words uttered but to the voice that uttered them and that this voice seemed to plunge him into a sort of ecstasy, for he was silent and smiled. She thereupon smiled too and questioned him, thus obliging him to answer:
"You called me by my name at once. So you knew me? I also seem to… Yes, you remind me of a friend of mine who died."
"Madeleine Ferrand?"
"Yes, Madeleine Ferrand."
"Perhaps I also remind you of her brother, a shy schoolboy who used often to visit the parlour at the convent and who used to look at you from a distance."