JOURNEY'S END.
“The offender never pardons.”
De Vasselot returned to the Baroness de Mélide's pretty drawing-room, and
there, after the manner of his countrymen, made himself agreeable in that
vivacious manner which earns the contempt of all honest and, if one may
say so, thick-headed Englishmen. He laughed with one, and with another
almost wept. Indeed, to see him sympathize with an elderly countess whose
dog was grievously ill, one could only conclude that he too had placed
all his affections upon a canine life.
He outstayed the others, and then, holding out his hand to the baroness,
said curtly--
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye! What do you mean?”
“I am going to Corsica,” he explained airily.
“But where did you get that idea, mon ami?”
“It came. A few moments ago, I made up my mind.” And, with a gesture, he
described the arrival of the idea, apparently from heaven, upon his head,
and then a sideward jerk of the arm seemed to indicate the sudden and
irrevocable making up of his own mind.
“But what for?” cried the lady. “You were not even born there. Your
father died thirty years ago--you will not even find his tomb. Your dear
mother left the place in horror, just before you were born. Besides, you
promised her that you would never return to Corsica--and she who has been
dead only five years! Is it filial, I ask you, my cousin? Is it filial?”
“Such a promise, of course, only held good during her lifetime,” answered
Lory. “Since there is no one left behind to be anxious on my account, it
is assuredly no one's affair whether I go or stay.”
“And now you are asking me to say it will break my heart if you go,” said
the baroness, with a gay glance of her brown eyes; “and you may ask--and
ask!”
She shook hands as she spoke.
“Go, ingratitude!” she said. “But tell me, what will bring you back?”
“War,” he answered, with a laugh, pausing for a moment on the threshold.
And three days later Lory de Vasselot stood on the deck of a small
trading steamer that rolled sideways into Calvi Bay, on the shoulder, as
it were, of one of those March mistrals which serve as the last kick of
the dying winter. De Vasselot had taken the first steamer he could find
at Marseilles, with a fine disregard for personal comfort, which was part
of his military training and parcel of his sporting instincts. He was,
like many islanders, a good sailor, for, strange as it may seem, a man
may inherit from his forefathers not only a taste for the sea, but a
stout heart to face its grievous sickness.
There are few finer sights than Calvi Bay when the heavens are clear and
the great mountains of the interior tower above the bare coast-hills. But
now the clouds hung low over the island, and the shape of the heights was
only suggested by a deeper shadow in the grey mist. The little town
nestling on a promontory looked gloomy and deserted with its small square
houses and medieval fortress--Calvi the faithful, that fought so bravely
for the Genoese masters whose mark lies in every angle of its square
stronghold; Calvi, where, if (as seems likely) the local historian is to
be believed, the greatest of all sailors was born, within a day's ride of
that other sordid little town where the greatest of all soldiers first
saw the light. Assuredly Corsica has done its duty--has played its part
in the world's history--with Christopher Columbus and Napoleon as leading
actors.
De Vasselot landed in a small boat, carrying his own simple luggage. He
had not been very sociable on the trading steamer; had dined with the
captain, and now bade him farewell without an exchange of names. There is
a small inn on the wharf facing the anchorage and the wave-washed steps
where the fishing-boats lie. Here the traveller had a better lunch than
the exterior of the house would appear to promise, and found it easy
enough to keep his own counsel; for he was now in Corsica, where silence
is not only golden, but speech is apt to be fatal.
“I am going to St. Florent,” he said to the woman who had waited on him.
“Can I have a carriage or a horse? I am indifferent which.”
“You can have a horse,” was the reply, “and leave it at Rutali's at St.
Florent when you have done with it. The price is ten francs. There are
parts of the road impassable for a carriage in this wind.”
De Vasselot replied by handing her ten francs, and asked no further
questions. If you wish to answer no questions, ask none.
The horse presently appeared, a little thin beast, all wires, carrying
its head too high, boring impatiently--masterful, intractable.
“He wants riding,” said the man who led him to the door, half sailor,
half stableman, who made fast de Vasselot's portmanteau to the front of
the high Spanish saddle with a piece of tarry rope and simple nautical
knots.
He nodded curtly, with an upward jerk of the head, as Lory climbed into
the saddle and rode away; for there is nothing so difficult to conceal as
horsemanship.
“A soldier,” muttered the stable-man. “A gendarme, as likely as not.”
De Vasselot did not ask the way, but trusted to Fortune, who as usual
favoured him who left her a free hand. There is but one street in Calvi,
but one way out of the town, and a cross-road leading north and south.
Lory turned to the north. He had a map in his pocket, which he knew
almost by heart; for he was an officer of the finest cavalry in the
world, and knew his business as well as any. And it is the business of
the individual trooper to find his way in an unknown country. That a
couple of hours' hard riding brought him to his own lands, de Vasselot
knew not nor heeded, for he was aware that he could establish his rights
only by force of martial law, and with a miniature army at his back; for
civil law here is paralyzed by a cloud of false witnesses, while equity
is administered by a jury which is under the influence of the two
strongest of human motives, greed and fear.
At times the solitary rider mounted into the clouds that hung low upon
the hills, shutting in the valleys beneath their grey canopy, and again
descended to deep gorges; where brown water churned in narrow places. And
at all times he was alone. For the Government has built roads through
these rocky places, but it has not yet succeeded in making traffic upon
them.
With the quickness of his race de Vasselot noted everything--the trend of
the watersheds, the colour of the water, the prevailing wind as indicated
by the growth of the trees--a hundred petty details of Nature which would
escape any but a trained comprehension, or that wonderful eye with which
some men are born, who cannot but be gipsies all their lives, whether
fate has made them rich or poor; who cannot live in towns, but must
breathe the air of open heaven, and deal by sea or land with the wondrous
works of God.
It was growing dusk when de Vasselot crossed the bridge that spans the
Aliso--his own river, that ran through and all around his own land--and
urged his tired horse along the level causeway built across the old
river-bed into the town of St. Florent. The field-workers were returning
from vineyard and olive grove, but appeared to take little heed of him as
he trotted past them on the dusty road. These were no heavy, agricultural
boors, of the earth earthy, but lithe, dark-eyed men and women, who
tilled the ground grudgingly, because they had no choice between that and
starvation. Their lack of curiosity arose, not from stupidity, but from a
sort of pride which is only seen in Spain and certain South American
States. The proudest man is he who is sufficient for himself.
A single inquiry enabled de Vasselot to find the house of Rutali; for St.
Florent is a small place, with Ichabod written large on its crumbling
houses. It was a house like another--that is to say, the ground floor was
a stable, while the family lived above in an atmosphere of its own and
the stable drainage.
The traveller gave Rutali a small coin, which was coldly accepted--for a
Corsican never refuses money like a Spaniard, but accepts it grudgingly,
mindful of the insult--and left St. Florent by the road that he had come,
on foot, humbly carrying his own portmanteau. Thus Lory de Vasselot, went
through his paternal acres with a map. His intention was to catch a
glimpse of the Chateau de Vasselot, and walk on to the village of Olmeta,
and there beg bed and board from his faithful correspondent, the Abbé
Susini.
He followed the causeway across the marsh to the mouth of the river, and
here turned to the left, leaving the _route nationale_ to Calvi on the
right. That which he now followed was the narrower _route
departementale_, which borders the course of the stream Guadelle, a
tributary to the Aliso. The valley is flat here--a mere level of river
deposit, damp in winter, but dry and sandy in the autumn. Here are
cornfields and vineyards all in one, with olives and almonds growing amid
the wheat--a promised land of milk and honey. There are no walls, but
great hedges of aloe and prickly pear serve as a sterner landmark. At the
side of the road are here and there a few crosses--the silent witnesses
that stand on either side of every Corsican road--marking the spot where
such and such a one met his death, or was found dead by his friends.
Above, perched on the slope that rises abruptly on the left-hand side of
the road, the village of Oletta looks out over the plain towards St.
Florent and the sea--a few brown houses of dusky stone, with roofs of
stone; a square-towered church, built just where the cultivation ceases
and the rocks and the macquis begin.
De Vasselot quitted the road where it begins sharply to ascend, and took
the narrow path that follows the course of the river, winding through the
olive groves around the great rock that forms a shoulder of Monte Torre,
and breaks off abruptly in a sheer cliff. He looked upward with a
soldier's eye at this spot, designed by nature as the site of a fort
which could command the whole valley and the roads to Corte and Calvi.
Far above, amid chestnut trees and some giant pines, De Vasselot could
see the roof and the chimneys of a house--it was the Casa Perucca.
Presently he was so immediately below it that he could see it no longer
as he followed the path, winding as the river wound through the narrow
flat valley.
Suddenly he came out of the defile into a vast open country, spread out
like a fan upon a gentle slope rising to the height of the Col St.
Stefano, where the Bastia road comes through the Lancone defile--the road
by which Colonel Gilbert had ridden to the Casa Perucca not so very long
before. At the base of the fan runs the Aliso, without haste, bordered on
either bank by oleanders growing like rushes. Halfway down the slope is a
lump of land which looks like, and probably is, a piece of the mountain
cast off by some subterranean disturbance, and gently rolled down into
the valley. It stands alone, and on its summit, three hundred feet above
the plain, are the square-built walls of what was once a castle.
Lory stood for a moment and looked at this prospect, now pink and hazy in
the reflected light of the western sky. He knew that he was looking at
the Chateau de Vasselot.
Within the crumbling walls, built on the sheer edge of the rock, stood,
amid a disorderly thicket of bamboo and feathery pepper and deep copper
beech, a square stone house with smokeless chimneys, and, so far as was
visible, every shutter shut. The owner of it and all these lands, the
bearer of the name that was written here upon the map, walked slowly out
into the open country. He turned once and looked back at the towering
cliff behind him, the rocky peninsula where the Casa Perucca stood amidst
its great trees, and hid the village of Olmeta, perched on the mountain
side behind it.
The short winter twilight was almost gone before de Vasselot reached the
base of the mound of half-shattered rock upon which the chateau had been
built. The wall that had once been the outer battlement of the old
stronghold was so fallen into disrepair that he anticipated no difficulty
in finding a gap through which to pass within the enclosure where the
house was hidden; but he walked right round and found no such breach.
Where the wall of rock proved vulnerable, the masonry, by some curious
chance, was invariably sound.
It had not been de Vasselot's intention to disturb the old gardener, who,
he understood, was left in charge of the crumbling house, but to return
the next day with the Abbé Susini. But he was tired, and having failed to
gain an entrance, was put out and angry, when at length he found himself
near the great door built in the solid wall on the north-west side of the
ruin. A rusty bell-chain was slowly swinging in the wind, which was
freshening again at sunset, as the mistral nearly always does when it is
dying. With some difficulty he succeeded in swinging the heavy bell
suspended inside the door, so that it gave two curt clangs as of a rusty
tongue against moss-grown metal.
After some time the door was opened by a grey-haired man in his
shirt-sleeves. He wore a huge black felt hat, and the baggy corduroy
trousers of a deep brown, which are almost universal in this country. He
held the door half open and peered out. Then he slowly opened it and
stood back.
“Good God!” he whispered. “Good God!”
De Vasselot stepped over the threshold with one quick glance at the
single-barrelled gun in the man's hand.
“I am--” he began.
“Yes,” interrupted the other, breathlessly. “Straight on; the door is
open.”
Half puzzled, Lory de Vasselot advanced towards the house alone; for the
peasant was long in closing the door and readjusting chain and bolts. The
shutters of the house were all closed, but the door, as he had said, was
open. The place was neatly enough kept, and the house stood on a lawn of
that brilliant green turf which is only seen in parts of England, in
Ireland, and in Corsica.
De Vasselot went into the house, which was all dark by reason of the
closed shutters. There was a large room, opposite to the front door,
dimly indicated by the daylight behind him. He went into it, and was
going straight to one of the windows to throw back the shutters, when a
sharp click brought him round on his heels as if he had been shot. In a
far corner of the room, in a dark doorway, stood a shadow. The click was
that of a trigger.
Quick as thought de Vasselot ran to the window, snatched at the opening,
opened it, threw back the shutter, and was round again with bright and
flashing eyes facing the doorway. A man stood there watching him--a man
of his own build, slight and quick, with close upright hair like his own,
but it was white; with a neat upturned moustache like his own, but it was
white; with a small quick face like his own, but it was bleached. The
eyes that flashed back were dark like his own.
“You are a de Vasselot,” said this man, quickly.
“Are you Lory de Vasselot?”
“Yes.”
“Then I am your father.”
“Yes,” said Lory, slowly; “there is no mistaking it.”