"La journee sera dure, Mais elle se pa.s.sera."
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 Va.s.selot had gained on his father when they emerged from the wood.
Lory had called to his father once or twice, rea.s.suring 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 pa.s.sed 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 Va.s.selot 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 Va.s.selot had been unable to relieve him of his burden all through the night. Lame and disabled, he could not mount or dismount without a.s.sistance. 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 Va.s.selot 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 pa.s.sed 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 Va.s.selot 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 Va.s.selot 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 Va.s.selot 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 Va.s.selot. 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 Va.s.selot 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 Abbe 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 Va.s.selot 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 chateau," he said; "but we have outwitted them."
De Va.s.selot turned the clumsy parcel in his hand.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It is the papers of Va.s.selot and Perucca--your t.i.tle-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 Va.s.selots?"
"I believe it, monsieur le comte."
They fell to talking of the past, and of the count. Then de Va.s.selot 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 abbe says it, it is important," he said.
"But it is easily done," protested de Va.s.selot, 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 Cafe 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 pa.s.sed 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 Casablanda"s boat." Answered Jean, who was already changing de Va.s.selot"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 Va.s.selot 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 Va.s.selot 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 Va.s.selot only fully realized the magic of his own name when he at length found the man, Casabianda--a scoundrel whose personal appearance must a.s.suredly 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, pa.s.sage through the air without opposition, for it is the air that urges. Afloat, Casabianda was a silent man. His seafaring was of a surrept.i.tious nature, perhaps. For companion, he had one with no roof to his mouth, whose speech was incomprehensible--an excellent thing in law-breakers.
De Va.s.selot 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 Va.s.selot 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 ash.o.r.e to conduct Lory to the Hotel Clement. Casabianda, himself, would not land. The place reeked, he said, of the gendarmerie, and was offensive to his nostrils.
Clement 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 Va.s.selot was still explaining with much volubility, and a wealth of gesture, that the man he sought wore a tonsure, when Clement himself, affable and supremely indifferent to the scantiness of his own attire, appeared.
"Take the gentleman to number eleven," he commanded; "the Abbe 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 abbe 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 Va.s.selot, with a laugh. He liked a quick man.
Without speaking, he unb.u.t.toned his tunic and threw his bundle of papers on the abbe"s counterpane.
"Voila!" he said. "I suppose that is what you want for your salad."