THE END OF THE JOURNEY.
“La journée sera dure,
Mais elle se passera.”
At the sight of the horseman on the road in front of him, those instincts
of the chase which must inevitably be found in all manly hearts, were
suddenly aroused, and Lory surprised his willing horse by using the
spurs, of which the animal had hitherto been happily ignorant.
At the same time he made a mistake. He gave an eager shout, quite
forgetting that the count had never seen him in uniform, and would
inevitably perceive the glint of his accoutrements in the sunlight. The
instinct of the macquis was doubtless strong upon the fugitive, There are
certain habits of thought acquired in a brief period of outlawry, which
years of respectability can never efface. The count, who had lived in
secrecy more than half his life, took fright at the sight of a sword, and
down the quiet valley of the Prunelli father and son galloped one after
the other--a wild and uncanny chase.
With the cunning of the hunted, the count left the road by the first
opening he saw--a path leading into a pine-wood; but over this rough
ground the trained soldier was equal to the native-born. The track only
led to the open road again at a higher level, and de Vasselot had gained
on his father when they emerged from the wood.
Lory had called to his father once or twice, reassuring him, but without
effect. The old count sat low in his saddle and urged his horse with a
mechanical jerk of the heels. Thus they passed through the village of
Bastelica--a place with an evil name. It was early still, and but few
were astir, for the peasants of the South are idle. In Corsica, moreover,
the sight of a flying man always sends others into hiding. No man wishes
to see him, though all sympathies are with him, and the pursuer is
avoided as if he bore the plague.
In Bastelica there were none but closed doors and windows. A few children
playing in the road instinctively ran to their homes, where their mothers
drew them hurriedly indoors. The Bastelicans would have nought to do with
the law or the law-breaker. It was the sullen indifference of the
crushed, but the unconquered.
Down into the valley, across another river--the southern branch of the
Prunelli--and up again. Cauro was above them--a straggling village with
one large square house and a little church--Cauro, the stepping-stone
between civilization and those wild districts about Sartene where the law
has never yet penetrated. Lory de Vasselot had gained a little on the
downward incline. He could now see that his father's clothes were
mud-stained and torn, that his long white hair was ill-kempt. But the
pursuer's horse was tired; for de Vasselot had been unable to relieve him
of his burden all through the night. Lame and disabled, he could not
mount or dismount without assistance. On the upward slope, where the road
climbs through a rocky gorge, the fugitive gained ground. Out on the open
road again, within sight of Cauro, the count's horse showed signs of
distress, but gained visibly. The count was unsteady in the saddle,
riding heedlessly. In an instant de Vasselot saw the danger. His father
was dropping with fatigue, and might at any moment fall from the saddle.
“Stop,” he cried, “or I will shoot your horse!”
The count took no notice. Perhaps he did not hear. The road now mounted
in a zigzag. The fugitive was already at the angle. In a few moments he
would be back again at a higher level. Lory knew he could never overtake
the fresher horse. There was but one chance--the chance perhaps of two
shots as his father passed along the road above him. Should the gendarmes
of Cauro, where there is a strong station, see this fugitive, so
evidently from the macquis, with all the signs of outlawry upon him, they
would fire upon him without hesitation. Also he might at any moment fall
from the saddle and be dragged by the stirrup.
De Vasselot drew across the road to the outer edge of it, from whence he
could command a better view of the upper slope. The count came on at a
steady trot. He looked down with eyes that had no reason in them and yet
no fear. He saw the barrel of the revolver, polished by long use in an
inner pocket, and looked fearlessly into it. Lory fired and missed. His
father threw back his head and laughed. His white hair fluttered in the
wind. There was time for another shot. Lory took a longer aim,
remembering to fire low, and horse and rider suddenly dropped behind the
low wall of the upper road. De Vasselot rode on.
“It was the horse--it must have been the horse,” he said to himself, with
misgiving in his heart. He turned the corner at a gallop. On the road in
front, the horse was struggling to rise, but the count lay quite still in
the dust. Lory dismounted as well as he could. Mechanically he tied the
two horses together, then turned towards his father. With his uninjured
hand he took the old man by the shoulder and raised him. The dishevelled
white head fell to one side with a jerk that was unmistakable. The count
was dead. And Lory de Vasselot found himself face to face with that
question which so many have with them all through life: the question
whether at a certain point in the crooked road of life he took the wrong
or right turning.
Death itself had no particular terror for de Vasselot. It was his trade,
and it is easier to become familiar with death than with suffering. He
dragged his father to the side of the road where a great chestnut tree
cast a shadow still, though its leaves were falling. Then he looked round
him. There was no one in sight. He knew, moreover, that he was in a
country where the report of firearms repels rather than attracts
attention. It occurred to him at that moment that his father's horse had
risen to its feet--a fact which had suggested nothing to his mind when he
had tied the two bridles together. He examined the animal carefully.
There was no blood upon it; no wound. The dust was rubbed away from the
knees. The horse had crossed its legs and fallen as it started at the
second report of his pistol.
Lory turned and stooped over his father. Here again, was no blood--only
the evidence of a broken neck. Still, though indirectly, Lory de Vasselot
had killed his father. It was well for him that he was a soldier--taught
by experience to give their true value to the strange chances of life and
death. Moreover, he was a Frenchman--gay in life and reckless of its
end.
He sat down by the side of the road and remembered the Abbé Susini's
words: “Life or death, you must be at Bastia on Wednesday morning.”
Mechanically, he drew his watch from within his tunic, which was white
with dust. The watch had run down. And when Jean arrived a few minutes
later, he found Lory de Vasselot sitting in the shade of the great
chestnut tree, by the side of his dead father, sleepily winding up his
watch.
“I fired at the horse to lame it--it crossed its legs and fell, throwing
him against the wall,” he said, shortly.
Jean lifted his master, noted the swinging head, and laid him gently down
again.
“Heaven soon takes those who are useless,” he said.
Then he slipped his hand within the old man's jacket. The inner pockets
were stuffed full of papers, which Jean carefully withdrew. Some were
tied together with pink tape, long since faded to a dull grey. He made
one packet of them all and handed it to Lory.
“It was for those that they burnt the château,” he said; “but we have
outwitted them.”
De Vasselot turned the clumsy parcel in his hand.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It is the papers of Vasselot and Perucca--your title-deeds.”
Lory laid the papers on the bank beside him.
“In your pocket,” corrected Jean, gruffly. “That is the place for them.”
And while Lory was securing the packet inside his tunic, the unusually
silent man spoke again.
“It is Fate who has handed them to you,” he said.
“Then you think that Fate has time to think of the affairs of the
Vasselots?”
“I believe it, monsieur le comte.”
They fell to talking of the past, and of the count. Then de Vasselot told
his companion that he must be in Bastia in less than twenty-four hours,
and Jean, whose gloomy face was drawn and pinched by past hardships, and
a present desire for sleep, was alert in a moment.
“When the abbé says it, it is important,” he said.
“But it is easily done,” protested de Vasselot, who like many men of
action had a certain contempt for those crises in life which are but
matters of words. Which is a mistake; for as the world progresses it
grows more verbose, and for one moment of action, there are in men's
lives to-day a million words.
“It is to be done,” answered Jean, “but not easily. You must ride to
Porto Vecchio and there find a man called Casabianda. You will find him
on the quay or in the Café Amis. Tell him your name, and that you must be
at Bastia by daybreak. He has a good boat.”
Lory rose to his feet. There was a light in his tired eyes, and he sighed
as he passed his hand across them, for the thought of further action was
like wine to him.
“But I must sleep, Jean, I must sleep,” he said, lightly.
“You can do that in Cassabianda's boat.” Answered Jean, who was already
changing de Vasselot's good saddle to the back of his own fresher horse.
Jean had to lift his master into the saddle, which office the wiry Susini
had performed for him at St. Florent fourteen hours earlier. There is a
good inn at Cauro where de Vasselot procured a cup of coffee and some
bread without dismounting. Jean had given him a list of names, and the
route to Porto Vecchio was not a difficult one, though it led through a
deserted country. By midday, de Vasselot caught sight of the Eastern sea;
by three o'clock he saw the great gulf of Porto Vecchio, and before
sunset he rode, half-asleep, into the ancient town with its crumbling
walls and ill-paved streets. He had ridden in safety through one of the
waste places of this province of France--a canton wherein a few years ago
a well-known bandit had forbidden the postal service, and that postal
service was not--and he knew enough to be aware that the mysterious
messengers of the macquis had cleared the way before him. But de Vasselot
only fully realized the magic of his own name when he at length found the
man, Casabianda--a scoundrel whose personal appearance must assuredly
have condemned him without further evidence in any court of justice
except a Corsican court--who bowed before him as before a king, and laid
violent hands upon his wife and daughter a few minutes later because the
domestic linen chest failed to rise to the height of a clean table cloth.
The hospitality of Casabianda outlasted the sun. He had the virtues of
his primitive race, and that appreciation of a guest which urges the
entertainer to give not only the best that he has, but the best that he
can borrow or steal.
“There is no breeze,” said this Porto Vecchian, jovially; “it will come
with the night. In waiting, this is wine of Balagna.”
And he drank perdition to the Peruccas.
With nightfall they set sail; the great lateen swinging lazily under the
pressure of those light airs that flit to and fro over the islands at
evening and sunrise. All the arts of civilization have as yet failed to
approach the easiest of all modes of progression and conveyance--sailing
on a light breeze. For here is speed without friction, passage through
the air without opposition, for it is the air that urges. Afloat,
Casabianda was a silent man. His seafaring was of a surreptitious nature,
perhaps. For companion, he had one with no roof to his mouth, whose
speech was incomprehensible--an excellent thing in law-breakers.
De Vasselot was soon asleep, and slept all through that quiet night. He
awoke to find the dawn spreading its pearly light over the sea. The great
plain of Biguglia lay to the left under a soft blanket of mist, as deadly
they say, as any African miasma, above which the distant mountains raised
summits already tinged with rose. Ahead and close at hand, the old town
of Bastia jutted out into the sea, the bluff Genoese bastion concealing
the harbour from view. De Vasselot had never been to Bastia, which
Casabianda described as a great and bewildering city, where the unwary
might soon lose himself. The man of incomprehensible speech was,
therefore, sent ashore to conduct Lory to the Hotel Clément. Casabianda,
himself, would not land. The place reeked, he said, of the gendarmerie,
and was offensive to his nostrils.
Clément had not opened his hospitable door. The street door, of course,
always stood open, and the donkey that lived in the entrance-hall was
astir. Lory dismissed his guide, and after ringing a bell which tinkled
rather disappointingly just within the door, sat down patiently on the
stairs to wait. At length the ancient chambermaid (who is no servant, but
just a woman, in the strictly domestic sense of that fashionable word)
reluctantly opened the door. French and Italian were alike
incomprehensible to this lady, and de Vasselot was still explaining with
much volubility, and a wealth of gesture, that the man he sought wore a
tonsure, when Clément himself, affable and supremely indifferent to the
scantiness of his own attire, appeared.
“Take the gentleman to number eleven,” he commanded; “the Abbé Susini
expects him.”
The last statement appeared to be made with that breadth of veracity
which is the special privilege of hotel-keepers all the world over; for
the abbé was asleep when Lory entered his apartment. He awoke, however,
with a characteristic haste, and his first conscious movement was
suggestive of a readiness to defend himself against attack.
“Ah!” he cried, with a laugh, “it is you. You see me asleep.”
“Asleep, but ready,” answered de Vasselot, with a laugh. He liked a quick
man.
Without speaking, he unbuttoned his tunic and threw his bundle of papers
on the abbé's counterpane.
“Voilà!” he said. “I suppose that is what you want for your salad.”
“It is what Jean and I have been trying to get these three months,”
answered the priest.
He sat up in bed, and from that difficult position, did the honours of
his apartment with an unassailable dignity.
“Sit down,” he said, “and I will tell you a very long story. Not that
chair--those are my clothes, my best soutane for this occasion--the
other. That is well.”