The diligence having drawn up opposite to this primitive hotel, one of the passengers got out with a bag in his hand, and the conducteur descended from his perch bearing a lantern. Then they entered the house, and as they did so the lantern went out, and we heard them go stumbling and groping their way in the dark upstairs to the first floor. Here there was a fastened door, which prevented a further advance, and a considerable amount of knocking, kicking, and bawling ensued, till some inmate was at last aroused to come and see what was wanted. Up to this moment the conducteur had appeared to consider himself as to some extent bound to look after the passenger whom his vehicle had conveyed there; but the instant his ears had assured him of the fact of there being a living person in the inn, he evidently felt that his duty in the matter was at an end, and all responsibility for the traveller henceforth transferred to the landlord. No sooner, therefore, were the first sounds audible of some one stirring within than the conducteur left his charge to take care of himself and came clattering downstairs and out into the road again, without troubling himself to wait for the inner door to be opened, in order to find out whether the new-comer could be accommodated, or whether, perhaps, the little hostelry might be already full—in which case the visitor would have had no option about passing the rest of the night in the street, unless he had preferred going on again in the diligence.
"Not much like English ideas of travelling and arriving at a hotel, is it?" whispered Kitty to me, with much truth.
As soon as the conducteur returned to the road, we stepped up to him, and Kitty asked if he would kindly tell us the name of this place, and also what was the destination of the diligence, as we were strangers who had got lost, and did not know where we were. He looked at us with no little surprise, and answered that our present situation was St. Marie Sicché, and that the diligence was on its way to Ajaccio.
This was a welcome piece of information. St. Marie Sicché was, it will be remembered, the village where we had slept on the first night of our driving-tour; consequently we were not in an altogether strange district, and knew that we were within three or four hours of Ajaccio, where the best part of our luggage was left, and where we were more at home than in any other part of the island. There could be no doubt that the best thing for us to do was to get there and make ourselves comfortable at the hotel as soon as possible; and then, when the telegraph offices should be open in the morning, we would find out where Mrs. Rollin was, and relieve her mind as to our safety. The only obstacle was that we had no money to pay for our conveyance to Ajaccio; for the penitenciers had carried off everything valuable that we possessed; and, therefore, unless we could get credit, we must evidently be involved in a good deal of bother and delay before we should be able to leave our present situation, or do anything that we wanted to do.
In this difficulty Kitty appealed to the conducteur, telling him that as we had been robbed, we were at that moment penniless; and asking him whether he would take us in his diligence to Ajaccio, and let us pay for our places after arriving there. She also told him the name of the hotel where our baggage was left, and assured him that we should have no difficulty in having our respectability guaranteed there. The man hesitated, hummed and hawed, looked suspiciously at us—muddy and untidy as we were—and did not seem much inclined to believe her story. But after some trouble, she persuaded him to consent to her request by promising to pay double the ordinary fare.
Having thus settled the matter satisfactorily with him, we anticipated no further difficulty, and were about to enter the interior of the vehicle—both coupé and banquette being full—when we were unexpectedly opposed by one of the passengers already established there. The conversation had roused him from his slumbers; and when Kitty attempted to get in, he started forward and protested energetically against our admission. It was a shame to take up any one else, he said, when he and his fellows were already "pressés comme des anchois"; they had been crowded to the very verge of possibility by the person who had just alighted; it was absurd to think of cramming us two individuals into the space that that one had occupied; he objected—he would complain to the authorities—it was disgraceful to treat travellers in that way. Another diligence was due in about ten or twelve hours, and we ought to wait, and take our chance of finding places in that.
The prospect of waiting at St. Marie Sicché for another ten or twelve hours was by no means to our mind, and we were alarmed to see that the conducteur seemed inclined to listen to the irate passenger. But Kitty showed herself equal to the emergency. Turning promptly to the conducteur, she whispered to him that she hardly supposed he was going to leave us for the benefit of any rival vehicle; and that as it was important to her to get to Ajaccio at once, she would give him treble the proper fare if he took us, instead of only double, as previously agreed. He was evidently quite alive to the fact that an extra high fare would give him the opportunity of pocketing a nice little profit, by only paying the diligence company a single fare and keeping the rest for himself; and her increased offer put an end to his hesitation about introducing us into the already full conveyance. Therefore he turned a deaf ear to the other man's expostulations—thoroughly well-founded though they were—proceeded to make room somehow or other, and finally stowed us away without heeding the discontented sleepy grunts and growls of the victims whom we had forced to compress themselves into an unnaturally small space. Then he shut us all in, climbed back to his place, and the journey was resumed.
The interior of a hot, crowded, stuffy diligence, packed closely with garlic-eating Corsicans clad in strong-smelling garments, would not generally be deemed a very inviting haven of repose. Yet it seemed so to us just then; for we were tired enough to find rest anywhere delicious, and were too full of joy at having escaped from serious danger to grumble at such trifling annoyances as mere discomfort and unpleasant odours.
A couple of hours' jolting brought us to Cauro, where the horses were changed; thence we continued our course to Ajaccio, which was reached soon after seven in the morning. Stiff and fatigued as we were, we should have been glad of a fiacre to take us from the diligence-bureau to the hotel; but no fiacre was to be had at that early hour, so we set off walking, accompanied (I need hardly say) by an envoy sent by the conducteur to find out whether the account we had given of ourselves was a true one.
As we were going up the street I saw a couple of smart-looking sailors coming towards us. The sight of them suddenly reminded me that there was a chance of Lord Clement's being still at Ajaccio, which possibility I had till then forgotten. If he were within reach, would Kitty turn willingly to him as a protector and counsellor, I wondered?