The Isle of Unrest

by Henry Seton Merriman

“An empty house,” he muttered, “does not set itself on fire. Who has done this? and why?”

For he knew every drift and current of feeling amid his turbulent flock, and the burning of the château of Vasselot seemed to serve no purpose, and to satisfy no revenge. There was some influence at work which the Abbé Susini did not understand.

He understood well enough that a hundred grievances—a hundred unsatisfied vengeances—had suddenly been awakened by the events of the last months. The grip of France was for a moment relaxed, and all Corsica arose from its sullen sleep, not in organized revolt, but in the desire to satisfy personal quarrels—to break in one way or another the law which had made itself so dreaded. The burning of the Château de Vasselot might be the result of some such feeling; but the abbé thought otherwise.

He went to Perucca, where all seemed quiet, though he did not actually ring the great bell and speak to the widow Andrei.

A few hours later, after nightfall, he set off on foot by the road that leads to the Lancone Defile. But he did not turn to the left at the cross-roads. He went straight on instead, by the track which ultimately leads to Corte, in the middle of the island, and amidst the high mountains. This is one of the loneliest spots in all the lonely island, where men may wander for days and never see a human being. The macquis is thin here, and not considered a desirable residence. In fact, the mildest malefactor may have a whole mountain to himself without any demonstration of violence whatever.

This was not the abbé's destination. He was going farther, where the ordinary traveller would fare worse, and hurried along without looking to the left or right. A half-moon was peeping through an occasional rift in those heavy clouds which precede the autumn rains in these latitudes, and gather with such astonishing slowness and deliberation. It was not a dark night, and the air was still. The abbé had mounted considerably since leaving the cross-roads. His path now entered a valley between two mountains. On either side rose a sharp slope, broken, and rendered somewhat inaccessible by boulders, which had at one time been spilled down the mountain-side by some great upheaval, and now seemed poised in patient expectance of the next disturbance.

Suddenly the priest stopped, and stood rooted. A faint sound, inaudible to a townsman's ear, made him turn sharply to the right, and face the broken ground. A stone no bigger than a hazel nut had been dislodged somewhere above him, and now rolled down to his feet. The dead silence of the mountains closed over him again. There was, of course, no one in sight.

“It is Susini of Olmeta,” he said, speaking quietly, as if he were in a room.

There was a moment's pause, and then a man rose from behind a rock, and came silently on bare feet down to the pathway. His approach was heralded by a scent which would have roused any sporting dog to frenzy. This man was within measurable distance of the beasts of the forests. As he came into the moonlight it was perceivable that he was hatless, and that his tangled hair and beard were streaked with white. His face was apparently black, and so were his hands. He had obviously not washed himself for years.

“You here,” said the abbé, recognizing one who had for years and years been spoken of as a sort of phantom, living in the summits—the life of an animal—alone.