The Isle of Unrest Part 11

With many turns the great road climbs round the face of the mountain, and soon leaving Bastia behind, takes a southern trend, and suddenly commands from a height a matchless view of the Lake of Biguglia and the little hillside village where a Corsican parliament once sat, which was once, indeed, the capital of this war-torn island. For every village can boast of a battle, and the rocky earth has run with the blood of almost every European nation, as well as that of Turk and Moor. Beyond the lake, and stretching away into a blue haze where sea and land melt into one, lies the great salt marsh where the first Greek colony was located, where the ruins of Mariana remain to this day.

Soon the road mounts above the level of the semi-tropical vegetation, and pa.s.ses along the face of bare and stony heights, where the pines are small and the macquis no higher than a man's head.

Denise, tired with so long a drive at a snail's pace, jumped from the carriage.

"I will walk up this hill," she cried to the driver, who had never turned in his seat or spoken a word to them.

"Then keep close to the carriage," he answered.

"Why?"

But he only indicated the macquis with his whip, and made no further answer. Mademoiselle Brun said nothing, but presently, when the driver paused to rest the horses, she descended from the carriage and walked with Denise.

It was nearly midday when they at last reached the summit of the pa.s.s.

The heavy clouds, which had been long hanging over the mountains that border the great plain of Biguglia, had rolled northward before a hot and oppressive breeze, and the sun was now hidden. The carriage descended at a rapid trot, and once the man got down and silently examined his brakes.

The road was a sort of cornice cut on the bare mountain side, and a stumble or the slipping of a brake-block would inevitably send the carriage rolling into the valley below.

Denise sat upright, and looked quickly, with eager movements of the head, from side to side. Soon they reached the region of the upper pines, which are small, and presently pa.s.sed a piece of virgin forest--of those great pines which have no like in Europe.

"Look!" said Denise, gazing up at the great trees with a sort of gasp of excitement.

But mademoiselle had only eyes for the road in front. Before long they pa.s.sed into the region of chestnuts, and soon saw the first habitation they had seen for two hours. For this is one of the most thinly peopled lands of Europe, and four great nations of the Continent have at one time or other done their best to exterminate this untameable race. Then a few more houses and a smaller road branching off to the left from the highway. The carriage swung round into this, which led straight to a wall built right across it. The driver pulled up, and, turning, brought the horses to a standstill at a door built in the solid wall. With his whip he indicated a bell-chain, rusty and worn, that swung in the breeze.

There was n.o.body to be seen. The clouds had closed down over the mountains. Even the tops of the great pines were hidden in a thin mist.

Denise got down and rang the bell. After a long pause the door was opened by a woman in black, with a black silk handkerchief over her head, who looked gravely at them.

"I am Denise Lange," said the girl.

"And I," said the woman, stepping back to admit them, "am the widow of Pietro Andrei, who was shot at Olmeta."

And Denise Lange entered her own door followed by Mademoiselle Brun.

CHAPTER X.

THUS FAR.

"There are some occasions on which a man must sell half his secret in order to conceal the rest."

"There is some one moving among the oleanders down by the river," said the count, coming quickly into the room where Lory de Va.s.selot was sitting, one morning some days after his unexpected arrival at the chateau.

The old man was cool enough, but he closed the window that led to the small terrace where he cultivated his carnations, with that haste which indicates a recognition of undeniable danger, coupled with no feeling of fear.

"I know every branch in the valley," he said, "every twig, every leaf, every shadow. There is some one there."

Lory rose, and laid aside the pen with which he was writing for an extended leave of absence. In four days these two had, as one of them had predicted, grown accustomed to each other. And the line between custom and necessity is a fine drawn one.

"Show me," he said, going towards the window.

"Ah!" murmured the count, jerking his head. "You will hardly perceive it unless you are a hunter--or the hunted."

Lory glanced at his father. a.s.suredly the sleeping mind was beginning to rouse itself.

"It is nothing but the stirring of a leaf here, the movement of a branch there, which are unusual and unnatural."

As he spoke, he opened the window with that slow caution which had become habitual to his every thought and action.

"There," he said, pointing with a steady hand; "to the left of that almond tree which is still in bloom. Watch those willows which have come there since the wall fell away, and the terrace slipped into the flooded river twenty-one years this spring. You will see the branches move.

There--there! You see. It is a man, and he comes too slowly to have an honest purpose."

"I see," said Lory. "Is that land ours?"

The count gave an odd little laugh.

"You can see nothing from this window that is not ours," he answered.

"As much as any other man's," he added, after a pause. For the conviction still holds good in some Corsican minds that the mountains are common property.

"He is coming slowly, but not very cautiously," said Lory. "Not like a man who thinks that he may be watched from here. He probably is taking no heed of these windows, for he thinks the place is deserted."

"It is more probable," replied the count, "that he is coming here to ascertain that fact. What the abbe has heard, another may hear, though he would not learn it from the abbe. If you want a secret kept, tell it to a priest, and of all priests, the Abbe Susini. Some one has heard that you are here in Corsica, and is creeping up to the castle to find out."

"And I will go and find him out. Two can play at that game in the bushes," said Lory, with a laugh.

"If you go, take a gun; one can never tell how a game may turn."

"Yes; I will take a gun if you wish it." And Lory went towards the door.

"No," he said, pausing in answer to a gesture made by his father, "not that one. It is of too old a make."

And he went out of the room, leaving his father holding in his hand the gun with which he had shot Andrei Perucca thirty years before. He stood looking at the closed door with dim, reflective eyes. Then he looked at the gun, which he set slowly back in its corner.

"It seems," he said to himself, "that I am of too old a make also."

He went to the window, and, opening it cautiously, stood looking down into the valley. There he perceived that, though two may play at the same game, it is usually given to one to play it better than the other. For he who was climbing up the hill might be followed by a careful eye, by the chance displacement of a twig, the bending of a bough; while Lory, creeping down into the valley, remained quite invisible, even to his father, upon whose memory every shadow was imprinted.

"Aha!" laughed the old man, under his breath. "One sees that the boy is a Corsican. And," he added, after a pause, "one would almost say that the other is not."

In which the count's trained eye--trained as only is the vision of the hunted--was by no means deceived. For Lory, who was far down in the valley, had already caught sight of a braided sleeve, and, a moment later, recognized Colonel Gilbert. The colonel not only failed to perceive him, but was in nowise looking for him. He appeared to be entirely absorbed, first in the examination of the ground beneath his feet, and then in the contemplation of the rising land. In his hand he seemed to be carrying a note-book, and, so far as the watcher could see, consulted from time to time a compa.s.s.

"He is only engaged in his trade," said Lory to himself, with a laugh; and, going out into the open, he sat down on a rock with the gun across his knee and waited.

Thus it happened that Colonel Gilbert, working his way up through the bushes, note-book in hand, looked up and saw, within a few yards of him, the owner of the land upon which they stood, whom he had every reason to believe to be in Paris.

His ruddy face was of a deeper red as he slipped his note-book within his tunic and came forward, holding out his hand. But his smile was as ready and good-natured as ever.