The Isle of Unrest

by Henry Seton Merriman

  CHAPTER XVII.

  WITHOUT DRUM OR TRUMPET.

  “We do squint each through his loophole, And then dream broad heaven Is but the patch we see.”

  It was almost dark when the abbé’s carriage reached the valley, and thedriver paused to light the two stable-lanterns tied with string to thedilapidated lamp-brackets. The abbé was impatient, and fidgeted in hisseat. He was at heart an autocrat, and hated to be defied even by oneover whom he could not pretend to have control. He snapped his finger andthumb as he thought of Denise.

  “She puzzles me,” he muttered. “What does she want? Bon Dieu, what doesshe want?”

  Then he spoke angrily to the driver, whose movements were slow andclumsy.

  “At all events my task is easier here,” he consoled himself by saying asthe carriage approached the château, “now that I am rid of these women.”

  At last they reached the foot of the slope leading up to the half-ruinedhouse, which loomed against the evening sky immediately above them; andthe driver pulled up his restive horses with an air significant ofarrival.

  “Right up to the château,” cried the Abbé from beneath the hood.

  But the man made no movement, and sat on the box muttering to himself.

  “What!” cried the abbé, who had caught some words. “Jean has the evileye! What of Jean’s evil eye? Here, I will give you my rosary to putround your coward’s neck. No! Then down you get, my friend. You can waithere till we come back.”

  As he spoke he leapt out, and, climbing into the box, pushed the driverunceremoniously from his seat, snatching the reins and whip from hishands.

  “He!” he cried. “Allons, my little ones!”

  And with whip and voice he urged the horses up the slope at a canter,while the carriage swayed across from one great tree to another. Theyreached the summit in safety, and the priest pulled the horses up at thegreat door--the first carriage to disturb the quiet of that spot fornearly a generation. He twisted the reins round the whip-socket, andclambering down rang the great bell. It answered to his imperious summonsby the hollow clang that betrays an empty house. No one came. He stoodwithout, drumming with his fist on the doorpost. Then he turned tolisten. Some one was approaching from the darkness of the trees. But itwas only the driver following sullenly on foot.

  “Here!” said the priest, recognizing him. “Go to your horses!”

  As he spoke he was already untying one of the stable-lanterns that swungat the lamp-bracket. His eyes gleamed beneath the brim of his broad hat.He was quick and anxious.

  “Wait here till I come back,” he said; and, keeping close to the wall, hedisappeared among the low bushes.

  There was another way in by a door half hidden among the ivy, which Jeanused for his mysterious comings and goings, and of which the abbé had akey. He had brought it with him to-night by a lucky chance. He had topush aside the ivy which hung from the walls in great ropes, and onlyfound the keyhole after a hurried search. But the lock was in good order.Jean, it appeared, was a careful man.

  Susini hurried through a long passage to the little round room where theCount de Vasselot had lived so long. He stopped with his nose in the air,and sniffed aloud. The atmosphere was heavy with the smell of staletobacco, and yet there could be detected the sweeter odour of smokescarcely cold. The room must have been inhabited only a few hours ago.The abbé opened the window, and the smell of carnations swept in like thebreath of another world. He returned to the room, and, opening hislantern, lighted a candle that stood on the mantelpiece. He looked round.Sundry small articles in daily use--the count’s pipe, his old brasstobacco-box: a few such things that a man lives with, and puts in hispocket when he goes away--were missing.

  “Buon Diou! Buon Diou! Buon Diou--gone!” muttered the priest, lapsinginto his native dialect. He looked around him with keen eyes--at theblackened walls, at the carpet worn into holes. “That Jean must haveknown something that I do not know. All the same, I shall look throughthe house.”

  He blew out the candle, and taking the lantern quitted the room. Hesearched the whole house--passing from empty room to empty room. Thereception-rooms were huge and sparingly furnished with those thin-leggedchairs and ancient card-tables which recall the days of Letitia Ramolinoand that easy-going Charles Buonaparte, who brought into the world thegreatest captain that armies have ever seen. The bedrooms were small: allalike smelt of mouldering age. In one room the abbé stopped and raisedhis inquiring nose; the room had been inhabited by a woman--years andyears ago.

  He searched the house from top to bottom, and there was no one in it. Theabbé had failed in the two missions confided to him by Lory, and he wasone to whom failure was peculiarly bitter. With respect to the two women,he had perhaps scarcely expected to succeed, for he had lived fifty yearsin the world, and his calling had brought him into daily contact withthat salutary chastening of the spirit which must assuredly be the lot ofa man who seeks to enforce his will upon women. But his failure to findthe old Count de Vasselot was a more serious matter.

  He returned slowly to the carriage, and told the driver to return toOlmeta.

  “I have changed my plans,” he said, still mindful of the secret he hadreceived with other pastoral charges from his predecessor. “Jean is notin the château, so I shall not go to St. Florent to-night.”

  He leant forward, and looked up at the old castle outlined against thesky. A breeze was springing up with the suddenness of all atmosphericchanges in these latitudes, and the old trees creaked and groaned, whilethe leaves had already that rustling brittleness of sound that betokensthe approach of autumn.

  As they crossed the broad valley the wind increased, sweeping up thecourse of the Aliso in wild gusts. It was blowing a gale before thehorses fell to a quick walk up the hill; and Mademoiselle Brun’s smallfigure, planted in the middle of the road, was the first indication thatthe driver had of the presence of the two women, though the widow Andrei,who accompanied them and carried their travelling-bags, had alreadycalled out more than once.

  “The Abbé Susini?” cried Mademoiselle Brun, in curt interrogation.

  In reply, the driver pointed to the inside of the carriage with thehandle of his whip.

  “You are alone?” said mademoiselle, in surprise.

  The light of the lantern shone brightly on her, and on the dimmer form ofDenise, silent and angry in the background; for Denise had allowed herinclination to triumph over her pride, which conquest usually leaves asore heart behind it.

  “But, yes!” answered the abbé; alighting quickly enough.

  He guessed instantly that Denise had changed her mind, and was indiscreetenough to put his thoughts into words.

  “So mademoiselle has thought better of it?” he said; and got no answerfor his pains.

  Both Mademoiselle Brun and Denise were looking curiously at the interiorof the carriage from which the priest emerged, leaving it, as they noted,empty.

  “There is yet time to go to St. Florent?” inquired the elder woman.

  The priest grabbed at his hat as a squall swept up the road, whirling thedust high above their heads.

  “Whether we shall get on board is another matter,” he muttered by way ofanswer. “Come, get into the carriage; we have no time to lose. It will bea bad night at sea.”

  “Then, for my sins I shall be sea-sick,” said Mademoiselle Brun,imperturbably.

  She took her bag from the hand of the widow Andrei, and would have itnowhere but on her lap, where she held it during the rapid drive, sittingbolt upright, staring straight in front of her into the face of the abbé.

  No one spoke, for each had thoughts sufficient to occupy the moment.Susini perhaps had the narrowest vein of reflection upon which to draw,and therefore fidgeted in his seat and muttered to himself, for hismental range was limited to Olmeta and the Château de Vasselot.Mademoiselle Brun was thinking of France--of her great past and her dim,uncertain future. While Denise sat stiller and more silent than either,for her thoughts were at once as w
ide as the whole world, and as narrowas the human heart.

  At a turn in the road she looked up, and saw the sharp outline of theCasa Perucca, black and sombre against a sky now lighted by a risingmoon, necked and broken by heavy clouds, with deep lurking shadows andmountains of snowy whiteness. In the Casa Perucca she had learnt whatlife means, and no man or woman ever forgets the place where that lessonhas been acquired.

  “I shall come back,” she whispered, looking up at the great rock with itsgiant pines and the two square chimneys half hidden in the foliage.

  And the Abbé Susini, seeing a movement of her lips, glanced curiously ather. He was still wondering what she wanted. “Mon Dieu,” he wasreflecting a second time, “what _does_ she want?”

  He stopped the carriage outside the town of St. Florent at the end of thelong causeway built across the marsh, where the wind swept now from theopen bay with a salt flavour to it. He alighted, and took Denise’s bag,rightly concluding that Mademoiselle Brun would prefer to carry her own.

  “Follow me,” he said, taking a delight in being as curt as MademoiselleBrun herself, and in denying them the explanations they were too proud todemand.

  They walked abreast through the narrow street dimly lighted by a singlelamp swinging on a gibbet at the corner, turned sharp to the left, andfound themselves suddenly at the water’s edge. A few boats bumped lazilyat some steps where the water lapped. It was blowing hard out in the bay,but this corner was protected by a half-ruined house built on aprojecting rock.

  The priest looked round.

  “Hé! là-bas!” he called out, in a guarded voice. But he received noanswer.

  “Wait here,” he said to the two women. “I will fetch him from the café.” And he disappeared.

  Denise and mademoiselle stood in silence listening to the lapping of thewater and the slow, muffled bumping of the boats until the abbé returned,followed by a man who slouched along on bare feet.

  “Yes,” he was saying, “the yacht was there at sunset. I saw her myselflying just outside the point. But it is folly to try and reach herto-night; wait till the morning, Monsieur l’Abbé.”

  “And find her gone,” answered the priest. “No, no; we embark to-night, myfriend. If these ladies are willing, surely a St. Florent man will nothold back?”

  “But you have not told these ladies of the danger. The wind is blowingright into the bay; we cannot tack out against it. It will take me twohours to row out single-handed with some one baling out the whole time.”

  “But I will pull an oar with you,” answered Susini. “Come, show us whichis your boat. Mademoiselle Brun will bale out, and the young lady willsteer. We shall be quite a family party.”

  There was no denying a man who took matters into his own hands soenergetically.

  “You can pull an oar?” inquired the boatman, doubtfully.

  “I was born at Bonifacio, my friend. Come, I will take the bow oar if youwill find me an oilskin coat. It will not be too dry up in the bowsto-night.”

  And, like most masterful people--right or wrong--the abbé had his way,even to the humble office assigned to Mademoiselle Brun.

  “You will need to remove your glove and bare your arm,” explained theboatman, handing her an old tin mug. “But you will not find the watercold. It is always warmer at night. Thus the good God remembers poorfishermen. The seas will come over the bows when we round this corner;they will rise up and hit the abbé in the back, which is his affair; thenthey will wash aft into this well, and from that you must bale it out allthe time. When the seas come in, you need not be alarmed, nor will it benecessary to cry out.”

  “Such instructions, my friend,” said the priest, scrambling into hisoilskin coat, “are unnecessary to mademoiselle, who is a woman ofdiscernment.”

  “But I try not to be,” snapped Mademoiselle Brun. She knew which womenare most popular with men.

  “As for you, mademoiselle,” said the boatman to Denise, “keep the boatpointed at the waves, and as each one comes to you, cut it as you wouldcut a cream cheese. She will jerk and pull at you, but you must not beafraid of her; and remember that the highest wave may be cut.”

  “That young lady is not afraid of much,” muttered the abbé, settling tohis oar.

  They pulled slowly out to the end of the rocky promontory, upon which aruined house still stands, and shot suddenly out into a howling wind. Thefirst wave climbed leisurely over the weather-bow, and slopped aft to theladies’ feet; the second rose up, and smote the abbé in the back.

  “Cut them, mademoiselle; cut them!” shouted the boatman.

  And at intervals during that wild journey he repeated the words,unceremoniously spitting the salt water from his lips. The abbé, bendinghis back to the work and the waves, gave a short laugh from time totime, that had a ring in it to make Mademoiselle Brun suddenly like theman--the fighting ring of exaltation which adapts itself to any voice andany tongue. For nearly an hour they rowed in silence, while mademoisellebaled the water out, and Denise steered with steady eyes piercing thedarkness.

  “We are quite close to it,” she said at length; for she had long beensteering towards a light that flickered feebly across the broken water.

  In a few moments they were alongside, and, amidst confused shouting oforders, the two ladies were half lifted, half dragged on board. The abbéfollowed them.

  “A word with you,” he said, taking Mademoiselle Brun unceremoniously bythe arm, and leading her apart. “You will be met by friends on yourarrival at St. Raphael to-morrow. And when you are free to do so, willyou do me a favour?”

  “Yes.”

  “Find Lory de Vasselot, wherever he may be.”

  “Yes,” answered Mademoiselle Brun.

  “And tell him that I went to the Chateau de Vasselot and found it empty.”

  Mademoiselle reflected for some moments.

  “Yes; I will do that,” she said at length.

  “Thank you.”

  The abbé stared hard at her beneath his dripping hat for a moment, andthen, turning abruptly, moved towards the gangway, where his boat lay incomparatively smooth water at the lee-side of the yacht. Denise wasspeaking to a man who seemed to be the captain.

  Mademoiselle Brun followed the abbé.

  “By the way--” she said.

  Susini stopped, and looked into her face, dimly lighted by the moon,which peeped at times through riven clouds.

  “Whom should you have found in the château?” she asked.

  “Ah! that I will not tell you.”

  Mademoiselle Brun gave a short laugh.

  “Then I shall find out. Trust a woman to find out a secret.”

  The abbé was already over the bulwark, so that only his dark faceappeared above, with the water running off it. His eyes gleamed in themoonlight.

  “And a priest to keep one,” he answered. And he leapt down into the boat.