With all her strength she rejected her son’s image, even as she had always rejected Vorski’s. But the two images became mingled together, whirling around her and dancing before her eyes like those lights which, when we close our eyelids tightly, pass and pass again and multiply and blend into one. And it was always one and the same face, cruel, sardonic, hideously grinning.
She did not suffer, as a mother suffers when mourning the loss of a son. Her son had been dead these fourteen years; and the one who had come to life again, the one for whom all the wells of her maternal affection were ready to gush forth, had suddenly become a stranger and even worse: Vorski’s son! How indeed could she have suffered?
But ah, what a wound inflicted in the depths of her being! What an upheaval, like those cataclysms which shake the whole of a peaceful countryside! What a hellish spectacle! What a vision of madness and horror! What an ironical jest, a jest of the most hideous destiny! Her son killing her father at the moment when, after all these years of separation and sorrow, she was on the point of embracing them both and living with them in sweet and homely intimacy! Her son a murderer! Her son dispensing death and terror broadcast! Her son levelling that ruthless weapon, slaying with all his heart and soul and taking a perverse delight in it!
The motives which might explain these actions interested her not at all. Why had her son done these things? Why had his tutor, Stéphane Maroux, doubtless an accomplice, possibly an instigator, fled before the tragedy? These were questions which she did not seek to solve. She thought only of the frightful scene of carnage and death. And she asked herself if death was not for her the only refuge and the only ending.
“Madame Véronique,” whispered Honorine.
“What is it?” asked Véronique, roused from her stupor.
“Don’t you hear?”
“What?”
“A ring at the bell below. They must be bringing your luggage.”
She sprang to her feet.
“But what am I to say? How can I explain? … If I accuse that boy …”
“Not a word, please. Let me speak to them.”
“You’re very weak, my poor Honorine.”
“No, no, I’m feeling better.”
Véronique went downstairs, crossed a broad entrance-hall paved with black and white flags and drew the bolts of a great door.
It was, as they expected, one of the sailors:
“I knocked at the kitchen-door first,” said the man. “Isn’t Marie Le Goff there? And Madame Honorine?”
“Honorine is upstairs and would like to speak to you.”
The sailor looked at her, seemed impressed by this young woman, who looked so pale and serious, and followed her without a word.
Honorine was waiting on the first floor, standing in front of the open door:
“Ah, it’s you, Corréjou? … Now listen to me … and no silly talk, please.”
“What’s the matter, M’ame Honorine? Why, you’re wounded! What is it?”
She stepped aside from the doorway and, pointing to the two bodies under their winding-sheets, said simply:
“Monsieur Antoine and Marie Le Goff … both of them murdered.”
The man’s face became distorted. He stammered:
“Murdered … you don’t say so. … Why?”
“I don’t know; we arrived after it happened.”
“But … young François? … Monsieur Stéphane? …”
“Gone. … They must have been killed too.”
“But … but … Maguennoc?”
“Maguennoc? Why do you speak of Maguennoc?”
“I speak of Maguennoc, I speak of Maguennoc … because, if he’s alive … this is a very different business. Maguennoc always said that he would be the first. Maguennoc only says things of which he’s certain. Maguennoc understands these things thoroughly.”
Honorine reflected and then said:
“Maguennoc has been killed.”
This time Corréjou lost all his composure: and his features expressed that sort of insane terror which Véronique had repeatedly observed in Honorine. He made the sign of the cross and said, in a low whisper:
“Then … then … it’s happening, Ma’me Honorine? … Maguennoc said it would. … Only the other day, in my boat, he was saying, ‘It won’t be long now. … Everybody ought to get away.’ ”
And suddenly the sailor turned on his heel and made for the staircase.
“Stay where you are, Corréjou,” said Honorine, in a voice of command.
“We must get away. Maguennoc said so. Everybody has got to go.”
“Stay where you are,” Honorine repeated.
Corréjou stopped, undecidedly. And Honorine continued:
“We are agreed. We must go. We shall start tomorrow, towards the evening. But first we must attend to Monsieur Antoine and to Marie Le Goff. Look here, you go to the sisters Archignat and send them to keep watch by the dead. They are bad women, but they are used to doing that. Say that two of the three must come. Each of them shall have double the ordinary fee.”
“And after that, Ma’me Honorine?”
“You and all the old men will see to the coffins; and at daybreak we will bury the bodies in consecrated ground, in the cemetery of the chapel.”
“And after that, Ma’me Honorine?”
“After that, you will be free and the others too. You can pack up and be off.”
“But you, Ma’me Honorine?”
“I have the boat. That’s enough talking. Are we agreed?”
“Yes, we’re agreed. It means one more night to spend here. But I suppose that nothing fresh will happen between this and tomorrow? …”
“Why no, why no … Go, Corréjou. Hurry. And above all don’t tell the others that Maguennoc is dead … or we shall never keep them here.”
“That’s a promise, Ma’me Honorine.”
The man hastened away.
An hour later, two of the sisters Archignat appeared, two skinny, shrivelled old hags, looking like witches in their dirty, greasy caps with the black-velvet bows. Honorine was taken to her own room on the same floor, at the end of the left wing.
And the vigil of the dead began.
Véronique spent the first part of the night beside her father’s body and
