The Isle of Unrest Part 31

"An empty house," he muttered, "does not set itself on fire. Who has done this? and why?"

For he knew every drift and current of feeling amid his turbulent flock, and the burning of the chateau of Va.s.selot seemed to serve no purpose, and to satisfy no revenge. There was some influence at work which the Abbe Susini did not understand.

He understood well enough that a hundred grievances--a hundred unsatisfied vengeances--had suddenly been awakened by the events of the last months. The grip of France was for a moment relaxed, and all Corsica arose from its sullen sleep, not in organized revolt, but in the desire to satisfy personal quarrels--to break in one way or another the law which had made itself so dreaded. The burning of the Chateau de Va.s.selot might be the result of some such feeling; but the abbe thought otherwise.

He went to Perucca, where all seemed quiet, though he did not actually ring the great bell and speak to the widow Andrei.

A few hours later, after nightfall, he set off on foot by the road that leads to the Lancone Defile. But he did not turn to the left at the cross-roads. He went straight on instead, by the track which ultimately leads to Corte, in the middle of the island, and amidst the high mountains. This is one of the loneliest spots in all the lonely island, where men may wander for days and never see a human being. The macquis is thin here, and not considered a desirable residence. In fact, the mildest malefactor may have a whole mountain to himself without any demonstration of violence whatever.

This was not the abbe's destination. He was going farther, where the ordinary traveller would fare worse, and hurried along without looking to the left or right. A half-moon was peeping through an occasional rift in those heavy clouds which precede the autumn rains in these lat.i.tudes, and gather with such astonis.h.i.+ng slowness and deliberation. It was not a dark night, and the air was still. The abbe had mounted considerably since leaving the cross-roads. His path now entered a valley between two mountains. On either side rose a sharp slope, broken, and rendered somewhat inaccessible by boulders, which had at one time been spilled down the mountain-side by some great upheaval, and now seemed poised in patient expectance of the next disturbance.

Suddenly the priest stopped, and stood rooted. A faint sound, inaudible to a townsman's ear, made him turn sharply to the right, and face the broken ground. A stone no bigger than a hazel nut had been dislodged somewhere above him, and now rolled down to his feet. The dead silence of the mountains closed over him again. There was, of course, no one in sight.

"It is Susini of Olmeta," he said, speaking quietly, as if he were in a room.

There was a moment's pause, and then a man rose from behind a rock, and came silently on bare feet down to the pathway. His approach was heralded by a scent which would have roused any sporting dog to frenzy. This man was within measurable distance of the beasts of the forests. As he came into the moonlight it was perceivable that he was hatless, and that his tangled hair and beard were streaked with white. His face was apparently black, and so were his hands. He had obviously not washed himself for years.

"You here," said the abbe, recognizing one who had for years and years been spoken of as a sort of phantom, living in the summits--the life of an animal--alone.

The other nodded.

"Then you have heard that the gendarmes are being drafted into the army, and sent to France?"

The man nodded again. He had done so long without speech that he had no doubt come to recognize its uselessness in the majority of human happenings. The abbe felt in his pocket, and gave the man a packet of tobacco. The Corsicans, unlike nearly all other races of the Mediterranean, are smokers of wooden pipes.

"Thanks," said the man, in an odd, soft voice, speaking for the first time.

"I am going up into the mountains," said the abbe, slowly, knowing no doubt that men who have lived long with Nature are slow to understand words, "to seek an old man who has recently gone there. He is travelling with a man called Jean, who has the evil eye."

"The Count de Va.s.selot," said the outlaw, quietly. He touched his forehead with one finger and made a vague wandering gesture of the hand.

"I have seen him. You go the wrong way. He is down there, near the entrance to the Lancone Defile with others."

He paused and looked round him with the slow and distant glance which any may perceive in the eyes of a caged wild beast.

"They are all down from the mountains," he said.

Even the Abbe Susini glanced uneasily over his shoulder. These still, stony valleys were peopled by the noiseless, predatory Ishmaels of the macquis. They were, it is true, not numerous at this time, but those who had escaped the clutch of the imperial law were necessarily the most cunning and desperate.

"Buon," he said, turning to retrace his steps. "I shall go down to the Lancone Defile. G.o.d be with you, my friend."

The man gave a queer laugh. He evidently thought that the abbe expected too much.

The abbe walked until midnight, and then being tired he found a quiet spot between two great rocks, and lying down slept there until morning.

In the leather saddle-bag which formed his pillow he had bread and some meat, which he ate as he walked on towards the Lancone Defile. Once, soon after daylight, he paused to listen, and the sound that had faintly reached him was repeated. It was the warning whistle of the steamer, the old _Perseverance_, entering Bastia harbour ten miles away. He was still in the shade of the great heights that lay between him and the Eastern coast, and hurried while the day was cool. Then the sun leapt up behind the hazy summits above Biguglia. The abbe looked at his huge silver watch. It was nearly eight o'clock. When he was near to the entrance of the defile he stood in the middle of the road and gave, in his high clear voice, the cry of the goat-herd calling his flock. He gave it twice, and then repeated it. If there were any in the macquis within a mile of him they could not fail to see him as he stood on the dusty road in the sunlight.

He was not disappointed. In a few minutes the closely-set arbutus bushes above the road were pushed aside and a boy came out--an evil-faced youth with a loose mouth.

"It is Jean of the Evil Eye who has sent me," he said glibly, with an eye on the abbe's hands in case there should be a knife. "He is up there with a broken leg. He has with him the old man."

"The old man?" repeated the abbe, interrogatively.

"Yes, he who is foolish."

"Show me the way," said Susini. "You need not look at my hands; I have nothing in them."

They climbed the steep slope that overhung the road, forcing their way through the thick brushwood, stumbling over the chaos of stones. Quite suddenly they came upon a group of men sitting round a smouldering fire where a tin coffee-pot stood amid the ashes. One man had his leg roughly tied up in sticks. It was Jean of the Evil Eye, who looked hard at the Abbe Susini, and then turning, indicated with a nod the Count de Va.s.selot who sat leaning against a tree. The count recognized Susini and nodded vaguely. His face, once bleached by long confinement, was burnt to a deep red; his eyes were quite irresponsible.

"He is worse," said Jean, without lowering his voice. "Sometimes I can only keep him here by force. He thinks the whole island is looking for him--he never sleeps."

Jean was interrupted by the evil-faced boy, who had risen, and was peering down towards the gates of the defile.

"There is a carriage on the road," he said.

They all listened. There were three other men whom the abbe knew by sight and reputation. One by one they rose to their feet and slowly c.o.c.ked their old-fas.h.i.+oned single-barrelled guns.

"It is the carriage from Olmeta--must be going to Perucca," reported the boy.

And at the word Perucca, the count scrambled to his feet, only to be dragged back by Jean. The old man's eyes were alight with fear and hatred. He was grasping Jean's gun. The abbe rose and peered down through the bushes. Then he turned sharply and wrenched Jean's firearm from the count's hands.

"They are friends of mine," he said. "The man who shoots will be shot by me."

All turned and looked at him. They knew the abbe and the gun. And while they looked, Denise and Mademoiselle Brun drove past in safety.

CHAPTER XXIII.

AN UNDERSTANDING.

"Keep cool, and you command everybody."

When France realized that Napoleon III had fallen, she turned and rent his memory. No dog, it appears, may have his day, but some cur must needs yelp at his heels. Indeed (and this applies to literary fame as to emperors), it is a sure sign that a man is climbing high if the little dogs bark below.

And the little dogs and the curs remembered now the many slights cast upon them. France had been betrayed--was ruined. The twenty most prosperous years of her history were forgotten. There was a rush of patriots to Paris, and another rush of the chicken-hearted to the coast and the frontier.

The Baron de Melide telegraphed to the baroness to quit Frejus and go to Italy. And the baroness telegraphed a refusal to do so.

Lory de Va.s.selot fretted as much as one of his buoyant nature could fret under this forced inactivity. The suns.h.i.+ne, the beautiful surroundings, and the presence of friends, made him forget France at times, and think only of the present. And Denise absorbed his thoughts of the present and the future. She was a constant puzzle to him. There seemed to be two Denise Langes: one who was gay with that deep note of wisdom in her gaiety, which only French women compa.s.s, with odd touches of tenderness and little traits of almost maternal solicitude, which betrayed themselves at such moments as the wounded man attempted to do something which his crippled condition or his weakness prevented him from accomplis.h.i.+ng. The other Denise was clear-eyed, logical, almost cold, who resented any mention of Corsica or of the war. Indeed, de Va.s.selot had seen her face harden at some laughing reference made by him to his approaching recovery. He was quick enough to perceive that she was endeavouring to shut out of her life all but the present, which was unusual; for most pin their faith on the future until they are quite old, and their future must necessarily be a phantom.

"I do not understand you, mademoiselle," he said, one day, on one of the rare occasions when she had allowed herself to be left alone with him.

"You are brave, and yet you are a coward!"

And the resentment in her eyes took him by surprise. He did not know, perhaps, that the wisest men never see more than they are intended to see.

"Pray do not try," she answered. "The effort might delay your recovery and your return to the army."