The Isle of Unrest Part 23

The priest looked round.

"He! la-bas!" he called out, in a guarded voice. But he received no answer.

"Wait here," he said to the two women. "I will fetch him from the cafe."

And he disappeared.

Denise and mademoiselle stood in silence listening to the lapping of the water and the slow, m.u.f.fled b.u.mping of the boats until the abbe returned, followed by a man who slouched along on bare feet.

"Yes," he was saying, "the yacht was there at sunset. I saw her myself lying just outside the point. But it is folly to try and reach her to-night; wait till the morning, Monsieur l'Abbe."

"And find her gone," answered the priest. "No, no; we embark to-night, my friend. If these ladies are willing, surely a St. Florent man will not hold back?"

"But you have not told these ladies of the danger. The wind is blowing right into the bay; we cannot tack out against it. It will take me two hours to row out single-handed with some one baling out the whole time."

"But I will pull an oar with you," answered Susini. "Come, show us which is your boat. Mademoiselle Brun will bale out, and the young lady will steer. We shall be quite a family party."

There was no denying a man who took matters into his own hands so energetically.

"You can pull an oar?" inquired the boatman, doubtfully.

"I was born at Bonifacio, my friend. Come, I will take the bow oar if you will find me an oilskin coat. It will not be too dry up in the bows to-night."

And, like most masterful people--right or wrong--the abbe had his way, even to the humble office a.s.signed to Mademoiselle Brun.

"You will need to remove your glove and bare your arm," explained the boatman, handing her an old tin mug. "But you will not find the water cold. It is always warmer at night. Thus the good G.o.d remembers poor fishermen. The seas will come over the bows when we round this corner; they will rise up and hit the abbe in the back, which is his affair; then they will wash aft into this well, and from that you must bale it out all the time. When the seas come in, you need not be alarmed, nor will it be necessary to cry out."

"Such instructions, my friend," said the priest, scrambling into his oilskin coat, "are unnecessary to mademoiselle, who is a woman of discernment."

"But I try not to be," snapped Mademoiselle Brun. She knew which women are most popular with men.

"As for you, mademoiselle," said the boatman to Denise, "keep the boat pointed at the waves, and as each one comes to you, cut it as you would cut a cream cheese. She will jerk and pull at you, but you must not be afraid of her; and remember that the highest wave may be cut."

"That young lady is not afraid of much," muttered the abbe, settling to his oar.

They pulled slowly out to the end of the rocky promontory, upon which a ruined house still stands, and shot suddenly out into a howling wind. The first wave climbed leisurely over the weather-bow, and slopped aft to the ladies' feet; the second rose up, and smote the abbe in the back.

"Cut them, mademoiselle; cut them!" shouted the boatman.

And at intervals during that wild journey he repeated the words, unceremoniously spitting the salt water from his lips. The abbe, bending his back to the work and the waves, gave a short laugh from time to time, that had a ring in it to make Mademoiselle Brun suddenly like the man--the fighting ring of exaltation which adapts itself to any voice and any tongue. For nearly an hour they rowed in silence, while mademoiselle baled the water out, and Denise steered with steady eyes piercing the darkness.

"We are quite close to it," she said at length; for she had long been steering towards a light that flickered feebly across the broken water.

In a few moments they were alongside, and, amidst confused shouting of orders, the two ladies were half lifted, half dragged on board. The abbe followed them.

"A word with you," he said, taking Mademoiselle Brun unceremoniously by the arm, and leading her apart. "You will be met by friends on your arrival at St. Raphael to-morrow. And when you are free to do so, will you do me a favour?"

"Yes."

"Find Lory de Va.s.selot, wherever he may be."

"Yes," answered Mademoiselle Brun.

"And tell him that I went to the Chateau de Va.s.selot and found it empty."

Mademoiselle reflected for some moments.

"Yes; I will do that," she said at length.

"Thank you."

The abbe stared hard at her beneath his dripping hat for a moment, and then, turning abruptly, moved towards the gangway, where his boat lay in comparatively smooth water at the lee-side of the yacht. Denise was speaking to a man who seemed to be the captain.

Mademoiselle Brun followed the abbe.

"By the way--" she said.

Susini stopped, and looked into her face, dimly lighted by the moon, which peeped at times through riven clouds.

"Whom should you have found in the chateau?" she asked.

"Ah! that I will not tell you."

Mademoiselle Brun gave a short laugh.

"Then I shall find out. Trust a woman to find out a secret."

The abbe was already over the bulwark, so that only his dark face appeared above, with the water running off it. His eyes gleamed in the moonlight.

"And a priest to keep one," he answered. And he leapt down into the boat.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A WOMAN OF ACTION.

"Love ... gives to every power a double power Above their functions and their offices."

"Ah!" said Mademoiselle Brun, as she stepped on deck the next morning.

And the contrast between the gloomy departure from Corsica and the sunny return to France was strong enough, without further comment from this woman of few words.

The yacht was approaching the little harbour of St. Raphael at half speed on a sea as blue and still as the Mediterranean of any poet's dream. The freshness of morning was in the air--the freshness of Provence, where the days are hot and the nights cool, and there are no mists between the one and the other. Almost straight ahead, the little town of Frejus (where another Corsican landed to set men by the ears) stood up in sharp outline against the dark pinewoods of Valescure, with the thin wood-smoke curling up from a hundred chimneys. To the left, the flat lands of Les Arcs half hid the distant heights of Toulon; and, to the right, headland after headland led the eye almost to the frontier of Italy along the finest coast-line in the world. Every shade of blue was on sky or sea or mountain, while the deep morning shadows were transparent and almost luminous. From the pinewoods a scent of resin swept seaward, mingled with the subtle odour of the tropic foliage near the sh.o.r.e. The sky was cloudless. This was indeed the smiling land of France.

Denise, who had followed mademoiselle on deck, stood still and drank it all in; for such sights and scents have a deep eloquence for the young, which older hearts can only touch from the outside, vaguely and intangibly, like the memory of a perfume.