The Isle of Unrest Part 35

De Va.s.selot was looking through a pair of marine gla.s.ses across the hills to where the Perucca rock jutted out of the mountain side.

"No; I hate it. But I am glad to come back," he said.

"Monsieur will be welcomed by his people. It is a great power, the voice of the people." For the captain was a Republican.

"It is the bleating of sheep, mon capitaine," returned de Va.s.selot, with a laugh.

They stood side by side in silence while the steamer crept steadily forward into the shallow bay. Already a boat had left the town wall, and was sailing out leisurely on the evening breeze towards them. It came alongside. De Va.s.selot gave some last instructions to the captain, said farewell, and left the s.h.i.+p. It was a soldier's breeze, and the boat ran free. In a few minutes de Va.s.selot stepped ash.o.r.e. The abbe was waiting for him at the steps. It was almost dark, but de Va.s.selot could see the priest's black eyes flas.h.i.+ng with some new excitement. De Va.s.selot held out his hand, but Susini made a movement, of which the new-comer recognized the significance in his quick way. He took a step forward, and they embraced after the manner of the French.

"Voila!" said the abbe, "we are friends at last."

"I have always known that you were mine," answered Lory.

"Good. And now I have bad news for you. A friend's privilege, Monsieur le Comte."

"Ah," said Lory, looking sharply at him.

"Your father. I have found him and lost him again. I found him where I knew he would be, in the macquis, living the life that they live there, with perfect tranquillity. Jean was with him. By some means or other Jean got wind of a proposed investigation of the chateau. The Peruccas people have been stirred up lately; but that is a long story which I cannot tell you now. At all events, they quitted the chateau a few hours before the house was mysteriously burnt down. To-day I received a message from Jean.

Your father left their camp before daybreak to-day. All night he had been restless. He was in a panic that the Peruccas are seeking him. He is no longer responsible, mon ami; his mind is gone. From his muttered talk of the last few days, they conclude that he is making his way south to Bonifacio, in order to cross the straits from there to Sardinia. He is on foot, alone, and deranged. There is my news."

"And Jean?" asked de Va.s.selot, curtly; for he was quick in decision and in action.

"Jean has but half recovered from an accident. The small bone of his leg was broken by a fall. He is following on the back of an old horse which cannot trot, the only one he could procure. I have ready for you a good horse. You have but to follow the track over the mountains due south--you know the stars, you, who are a cavalry officer--until you join the Corte road at Ponte Alle Leccia, then there is but the one road to Bocognano.

If you overtake your poor father, you have but to detain him until Jean comes up. You may trust Jean to bring him safely back to the yacht here as arranged. But you must be at Bastia at the Hotel Clement at ten o'clock on Wednesday morning. That is absolutely necessary. You understand--life or death, you must be there. I and a woman, who is clever enough, are mixing a salad for some one at Bastia on Wednesday morning, and it is you who are the vinegar."

"Where is the horse?" asked Lory.

"It is a few paces away. Come, I will show you."

"Ah!" cried Lory, whose voice had a ring of excitement in it that always came when action was imminent. "But I cannot go at that pace. It is not only Jean who has but one leg. Your arm--thank you. Now we can go."

And he limped by the side of Susini through the dark alleys of St.

Florent. The horse was waiting for them beneath an archway which de Va.s.selot remembered. It was the entry to the stable where he had left his horse on the occasion of his first arrival in Corsica.

"Aha!" he said, with a sort of glee as he settled himself in the saddle.

"It is good to be across a horse again. Pity you are a priest; you might come with me. It will be a fine night for a ride. What a pity you are a priest! You were not meant for one, you know."

"I am as the good G.o.d made me, and a little worse," returned Susini.

"That is your road."

And so they parted. Lory rode on, happy in that he was called upon to act without too much thought. For those who think most, laugh least. De Va.s.selot's life had been empty enough until the outbreak of the war, and now it was full to overflowing. And though France had fallen, and he himself, it would appear, must be a pauper; though his father must inevitably be a living sorrow, which one who tasted it has told us is worse than a dead one; though Denise would have nothing to say to him,--yet he was happier than he had ever been. He was wise enough not to sift his happiness. He had never spoken of it to others. It is wise not to confide one's happiness to another; he may pull it to pieces in his endeavour to find out how it is made.

The onlooker may only guess at the inner parts of another's life; but at times one may catch a glimpse of the light that another sees. And it is, therefore, to be safely presumed that Lory de Va.s.selot found a certain happiness in the unswerving execution of his duty. Not only as a soldier, but as a man, he rejoiced in a strict sense of duty, which, in sober earnest, is one of the best gifts that a man may possess. He had not inherited it from father or mother. He had not acquired it at St. Cyr.

He had merely received it at second-hand from Mademoiselle Brun, at third-hand from that fat old General Lange who fell at Solferino. For the schoolgirl in the Rue du Cherche-Midi was quite right when she had pounced upon Mademoiselle Brun's secret, which, however, lay safely dead and buried on that battlefield. And Mademoiselle Brun had taught, had shaped Henri de Melide; and Henri de Melide had always been Lory de Va.s.selot's best friend. So the thin silver thread of good had been woven through the web of more lives than the little woman ever dreamt. Who shall say what good or what evil the meanest of us may thus accomplish?

De Va.s.selot never thought of these things. He was content to go straight ahead without looking down those side paths into which so many immature thinkers stray. He had fought at Sedan, had thrown his life with no n.i.g.g.ard hand into the balance. When wounded he had cunningly escaped the attentions of the official field hospitals. He might easily have sent in his name to Prussian head-quarters as that of a wounded officer begging to be released on _parole_. But he cherished the idea of living to fight another day. Denise, with word and glance, and, more potent still, with silence, had tempted him a hundred times to abandon the idea of further service to France. "She does not understand," he concluded; and he threw Denise into the balance. She made it clear to him that he must choose between her and France. Without hesitation he threw his happiness into the balance. For this Corsican--this dapper sportsman of the Bois de Boulogne and Longchamps--was, after all, that creation of which the world has need to be most proud--a man.

Duty had been his guiding light, though he himself would have laughed the gayest denial to such an accusation. Duty had brought him to Corsica.

And--for there is no human happiness that is not spiced by duty--he had the hope of seeing Denise.

He rode up the valley of the Guadelle blithely enough, despite the fact that his leg pained him and his left arm ached abominably. Of course, he would find his father--he knew that; and the peace and quiet of some rural home in France would restore the wandering reason. And all was for the best in the best possible world! For Lory was a Frenchman, and into the French nature there has a.s.suredly filtered some of the light of that sunny land.

At more than one turn of the road he looked up towards Perucca. Once he saw a light in one of the windows of the old house. Slowly he climbed to the level of the tableland; and Denise, sitting at the open window, heard the sound of his horse's feet, and wondered who might be abroad at that hour. He glanced at the ruined chapel that towers above the Chateau de Va.s.selot on its rocky promontory, and peered curiously down into the black valley, where the charred remains of his ancestral home are to be found to this day. Murato was asleep--a silent group of stone-roofed houses, one of which, however, had seen the birth of a man notorious enough in his day--Fieschi, the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin of Louis Philippe.

Every village in this island has, it would seem, the odour of blood.

The road now mounted steadily, and presently led through the rocky defile where Susini had turned back on a similar errand scarce a week earlier.

The rider now emerged into the open, and made his careful way along the face of a mountain. The chill air bespoke a great alt.i.tude, which was confirmed by that waiting, throbbing silence which is of the summits.

Far down on the right, across rolling ranges of lower hills, a steady pin-point of light twinkled like a star. It was the lighthouse of Punta-Revellata, by Calvi, twenty miles away.

The night was clear and dark. A few clouds lay on the horizon to the south, and all the dome of heaven was a glittering field of stars. De Va.s.selot's horse was small and wiry--part Arab, part mountain pony--and attended to his own affairs with the careful and surprising intelligence possessed by horses, mules, and donkeys that are born and bred to mountain roads. After Murato the track had descended sharply, only to mount again to the heights dividing the watersheds of the Bevinco and the Golo. And now de Va.s.selot could hear the Golo roaring in its rocky bed in the valley below. He knew that he was safe now, for he had merely to follow the river till it led him to the high-road at Ponte Alle Leccia.

The country here was more fertile, and the track led through the thickest macquis. The subtle scent of flowering bushes filled the air with a cool, soft flavour, almost to be tasted on the lips, of arbutus, myrtle, cistus, oleander, tamarisk, and a score of flowering heaths. The silence here was broken incessantly by the stirring of the birds, which swarm in these berry-bearing coppices.

The track crossed the narrow, flat valley, where, a hundred years earlier, had been fought the last great fight that finally subjugated Corsica to France. Here de Va.s.selot pa.s.sed through some patches of cultivated ground--rare enough in this fertile land--noted the shadowy shape of a couple of houses, and suddenly found himself on the high-road.

He had spared his horse hitherto, but now urged the willing beast to a better pace. This took the form of an uneven, fatiguing trot, which, however, made good account of the kilometres, and de Va.s.selot noted mechanically the recurrence of the little square stones every five or six minutes.

It was during that darkest hour which precedes the dawn that he skirted the old capital, Corte, straggling up the hillside to the towering citadel standing out grey and solemn against its background of great mountains. The rider could now see dimly a snow-clad height here and there. Halfway between Corte and Vivario, where the road climbs through bare heights, he paused, and then hurried on again. He had heard in this desert stillness the beat of a horse's feet on the road in front of him.

He was not mistaken, for when he drew up to listen a second time there was no sound. The rider had stopped, and was waiting for him. The outline of his form could be seen against the starry sky at a turn in the road further up the mountain-side.

"Is that you, Jean?" cried Lory.

"Yes," answered the voice of the man who rarely spoke.

The two horses exchanged a low, gurgled greeting.

"Are we on the right road? What is the next village?" asked Lory.

"The next is a town--Vivario. We are on the right road. At Vivario turn to the right, where the road divides. He is going that way, through Bocognano and Bastelica to Sartene and Bonifacio. I have heard of him many times, from one and the other."

From one and the other! De Va.s.selot half turned in his saddle to glance back at the road over which he had travelled. He had seen and heard no one all through the night.

"He procured a horse at Corte last evening," continued Jean. "It seems a good one. What is yours?"

"I have not seen mine," answered de Va.s.selot; "I can only feel him. But I think there are thirty kilometres in him yet." As he spoke he had his hand in his pocket. "Here," he said. "Take some money. Get a better horse at Vivario and follow me. It will be daylight in an hour. Tell me again the names of the places on the road."

"Vivario, Bocognano, Bastelica, Cauro, Sartene, Bonifacio," repeated Jean, like a lesson.

"Vivario, Bocognano, Bastelica, Cauro, Sartene," muttered de Va.s.selot, as he rode on.

He was in the great forest of Vizzavona when the day broke, and he saw through the giant pines the rosy tints of sunrise on the summit of Monte D'Oro, from whence at dawn may be seen the coast-line of Italy and France and, like dots upon a map, all the islets of the sea. Still he met no one--had seen no living being but Jean since quitting St. Florent at the other extremity of the island.

It was freezingly cold at the summit of the pa.s.s where the road traverses a cleft in the mountain-range, and de Va.s.selot felt that weariness which comes to men, however strong, just before the dawn ends a sleepless night. The horse, as he had told Jean, was still fresh enough, and gained new energy as the air grew lighter. The mountain town of Bocognano lies below the road, and the scent of burning pinewood told that the peasants were astir. Here de Va.s.selot quitted the highway, and took a side-road to Bastelica. As he came round the slope of Monte Mezzo, the sun climbed up into the open sky, and flooded the broad valley of the Prunelli with light. De Va.s.selot had been crossing watersheds all night, climbing out of one valley only to descend into another, crossing river after river with a monotony only varied by the various dangers of the bridges. The valley of the Prunelli seemed no different from others until he looked across it, and perceived his road mounting on the opposite slope. A single horseman was riding southward at a good pace. It was his father at last.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE END OF THE JOURNEY.