Bastia soon bored Hugh. It’s streets seemed gloomy and sordid, its people sunk in tradition. There was nothing to do. The first morning he wandered up and down buying the numerous brands of local cigarettes. In the afternoon he craved a cup of tea, but it seemed to be unknown. Finally at a big café he found a brew which tasted like tisane. A single gulp sufficed.
At his hotel the food was very bad. The place was run on casual lines by a family of Corsicans, swarthy, hairy, oily, with a suavity that signified nothing. At his special request they procured him butter, but it looked so much like axle-grease that he did not have the courage to discover what it tasted like. At dinner he had a ragout of very young lamb that tasted quite good, until the smallness of the bones suggested to him that the lamb had been still-born, then he ate no more.
In his overwhelming loneliness he thought that he would write to Margot. He went to the so-called salon, dipped a rusted pen hopefully into a dusty ink-bottle. Alas! it was dry. Discouraged, he rose and sought the streets again. A few cheap cinemas were open, the bills displaying cowboy pictures,—strong, silent, wooden-faced men and romping, sunny-haired heroines. The streets were badly lighted and suggested nocturnal adventure; but the frequent display of the vendetta knife in the shop windows was an incentive towards virtue. He found a big, dingy café, and, ordering a liqueur, fell to sampling one after another the various brands of cigarettes he had purchased. He was abysmally bored. Bastia was the finest place in the world, he decided, to pass through without stopping.
Then he went home to his hotel. Sitting on his bed in the candlelight, he read his little guide-book. Suddenly he had an idea. He was fit, foot-loose, free,—why not walk across the island? Yes, that was it. He would tramp from Bastia to Agaccio.
2.
Next morning he bought a small, cheap valise and packed in it the few clothes he needed, also his sketching materials, as he might want to make some colour notes on the way. He planned to take about a fortnight to the trip, jogging along easily, studying the people, perhaps fishing a little, and generally enjoying himself.
This cheerful prospect reconciled him to another day in Bastia. He made the acquaintance of a tourist party that were stopping at his hotel. They were nearly all women, and their great subject of conversation was not the beauties of the island but Food,—the feasts that awaited them of fresh trout, black-birds and passionate pink wine.
“Ah! you are English!” said a vivacious French girl to Hugh. “There are so many English in Corsica, very aristocratic English. They have been coming here for years, and seem to think they have discovered the place. They rather resent us ordinary tourists. There is another Englishman in the hotel. Perhaps you have seen him. He has the room next to yours. Or he may be an American, he is so tall and clean-shaven, and he wears those funny big round tortoise-shell spectacles. They make people look like owls, I think. Do you know him? I ask because he seems so quiet, so retiring. I am quite curious about him.”
“No, I haven’t seen him. But then I haven’t been near my room all day. If I see him I’ll speak to him, and allay your curiosity about him.”
That evening he passed the tall man in the gloom of the corridor. Hugh was about to accost him when the man brushed past him and disappeared hurriedly into his room.