"No, no."
"Then let's be quick."
Honorine, with her assistance, put the bag and the provisions on board. Then, suddenly standing in front of Veronique, she said:
"You're quite sure, are you, that the woman on the cross, as she was shown in the drawing, was yourself?"
"Absolutely. Besides, there were my initials above the head."
"That's a strange thing," muttered Honorine, "and it's enough to frighten anybody."
"Why should it be? It must have been someone who used to know me and who amused himself by… It's merely a coincidence, a chance fancy reviving the past."
"Oh, it's not the past that's worrying me! It's the future."
[Pg 39]"The future?"
"Remember the prophecy."
"I don't understand."
"Yes, yes, the prophecy made about you to Vorski."
"Ah, you know?"
"I know. And it is so horrible to think of that drawing and of other much more dreadful things which you don't know of."
Veronique burst out laughing:
"What! Is that why you hesitate to take me with you, for, after all, that's what we're concerned with?"
"Don't laugh. People don't laugh when they see the flames of hell before them."
Honorine crossed herself, closing her eyes as she spoke. Then she continued:
"Of course… you scoff at me… you think I'm a superstitious Breton woman, who believes in ghosts and jack-o'-lanterns. I don't say you're altogether wrong. But there, there! There are some truths that blind one. You can talk it over with Maguennoc, if you get on the right side of him."
"Maguennoc?"
"One of the four sailors. He's an old friend of your boy's. He too helped to bring him up. Maguennoc knows more about it than the most learned men, more than your father. And yet…"
"What?"
"And yet Maguennoc tried to tempt fate and to get past what men are allowed to know."
"What did he do?"
[Pg 40]"He tried to touch with his hand-you understand, with his own hand: he confessed it to me himself-the very heart of the mystery."
"Well?" said Veronique, impressed in spite of herself.
"Well, his hand was burnt by the flames. He showed me a hideous sore: I saw it with my eyes, something like the sore of a cancer; and he suffered to that degree…"
"Yes?"
"That it forced him to take a hatchet in his left hand and cut off his right hand himself."
Veronique was dumbfounded. She remembered the corpse at Le Faouet and she stammered:
"His right hand? You say that Maguennoc cut off his right hand?"
"With a hatchet, ten days ago, two days before I left… I dressed the wound myself… Why do you ask?"
"Because," said Veronique, in a husky voice, "because the dead man, the old man whom I found in the deserted cabin and who afterwards disappeared, had lately lost his right hand."
Honorine gave a start. She still wore the sort of scared expression and betrayed the emotional disturbance which contrasted with her usually calm attitude. And she rapped out:
"Are you sure? Yes, yes, you're right, it was he, Maguennoc… He had long white hair, hadn't he? And a spreading beard?… Oh, how abominable!"
She restrained herself and looked around her, frightened at having spoken so loud. She once more[Pg 41] made the sign of the cross and said, slowly, almost under her breath:
"He was the first of those who have got to die… he told me so himself… and old Maguennoc had eyes that read the book of the future as easily as the book of the past. He could see clearly where another saw nothing at all. 'The first victim will be myself, Ma'me Honorine. And, when the servant has gone, in a few days it will be the master's turn.'"
"And the master was…?" asked Veronique, in a whisper.
Honorine drew herself up and clenched her fists violently:
"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 Veronique, 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 to-day, in a few hours."
Veronique gave a short laugh:
"In a few hours! Woman, you must be mad! Here am I, after mourning my son for fourteen[Pg 42] 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 Veronique'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.
[Pg 43]
CHAPTER III
Veronique 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 Veronique could speak of nothing else. In vain the Breton woman tried to speak of the problems that harassed her and kept on interrupting Veronique:
"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[Pg 44] 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?" Veronique objected.
"Certainly it is. Just think! Besides me, who once a fortnight go either to Beg-Meil or Pont-l'Abbe in my motor-boat 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 Veronique protested:
"Please don't! It doesn't matter for the moment. It'll all be cleared up. Tell me about Francois. You were saying that he came to Sarek…"
Honorine yielded to Veronique'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, Francois 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."