“The offender never pardons.”
De Vasselot returned to the Baroness de Mélide's pretty drawing-room, and there, after the manner of his countrymen, made himself agreeable in that vivacious manner which earns the contempt of all honest and, if one may say so, thick-headed Englishmen. He laughed with one, and with another almost wept. Indeed, to see him sympathize with an elderly countess whose dog was grievously ill, one could only conclude that he too had placed all his affections upon a canine life.
He outstayed the others, and then, holding out his hand to the baroness, said curtly—
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye! What do you mean?”
“I am going to Corsica,” he explained airily.
“But where did you get that idea, mon ami?”
“It came. A few moments ago, I made up my mind.” And, with a gesture, he described the arrival of the idea, apparently from heaven, upon his head, and then a sideward jerk of the arm seemed to indicate the sudden and irrevocable making up of his own mind.
“But what for?” cried the lady. “You were not even born there. Your father died thirty years ago—you will not even find his tomb. Your dear mother left the place in horror, just before you were born. Besides, you promised her that you would never return to Corsica—and she who has been dead only five years! Is it filial, I ask you, my cousin? Is it filial?”
“Such a promise, of course, only held good during her lifetime,” answered Lory. “Since there is no one left behind to be anxious on my account, it is assuredly no one's affair whether I go or stay.”
“And now you are asking me to say it will break my heart if you go,” said the baroness, with a gay glance of her brown eyes; “and you may ask—and ask!”
She shook hands as she spoke.
“Go, ingratitude!” she said. “But tell me, what will bring you back?”
“War,” he answered, with a laugh, pausing for a moment on the threshold.
And three days later Lory de Vasselot stood on the deck of a small trading steamer that rolled sideways into Calvi Bay, on the shoulder, as it were, of one of those March mistrals which serve as the last kick of the dying winter. De Vasselot had taken the first steamer he could find at Marseilles, with a fine disregard for personal comfort, which was part of his military training and parcel of his sporting instincts. He was, like many islanders, a good sailor, for, strange as it may seem, a man may inherit from his forefathers not only a taste for the sea, but a stout heart to face its grievous sickness.
There are few finer sights than Calvi Bay when the heavens are clear and the great mountains of the interior tower above the bare coast-hills. But now the clouds hung low over the island, and the shape of the heights was only suggested by a deeper shadow in the grey mist. The little town nestling on a promontory looked gloomy and deserted with its small square houses and medieval fortress—Calvi the faithful, that fought so bravely for the Genoese masters whose mark lies in every angle of its square stronghold; Calvi, where, if (as seems likely) the local historian is to be believed, the greatest of all sailors was born, within a day's ride of that other sordid little town where the greatest of all soldiers first saw the light. Assuredly Corsica has done its duty—has played its part in the world's history—with Christopher Columbus and Napoleon as leading actors.
De Vasselot landed in a small boat, carrying his own simple luggage. He had not been very sociable on the trading steamer; had dined with the captain, and now bade him farewell without an exchange of names. There is a small inn on the wharf facing the anchorage and the wave-washed steps where the fishing-boats lie. Here the traveller had a better lunch than the exterior of the house would appear to promise, and found it easy enough to keep his own counsel; for he was now in Corsica, where silence is not only golden, but speech is apt to be fatal.
“I am going to St. Florent,” he said to the woman who had waited on him. “Can I have a carriage or a horse? I am indifferent which.”
“You can have a horse,” was the reply, “and leave it at Rutali's at St. Florent when you have done with it. The price is ten francs. There are parts of the road impassable for a carriage in this wind.”
De Vasselot replied by handing her ten francs, and asked no further questions. If you wish to answer no questions, ask none.
The horse presently appeared, a little thin beast, all wires, carrying its head too high, boring impatiently—masterful, intractable.
“He wants riding,” said the man who led him to the door, half sailor, half stableman, who made fast de Vasselot's portmanteau to the front of the high Spanish saddle with a piece of tarry rope and simple nautical knots.
He nodded curtly, with an upward jerk of the head, as Lory climbed into the saddle and rode away; for there is nothing so difficult to conceal as horsemanship.
“A soldier,” muttered the stable-man. “A gendarme, as likely as not.”
De Vasselot did not ask the way, but trusted to Fortune, who as usual favoured him who left her a free hand. There is but one street in Calvi, but one way out of the town, and a cross-road leading north and south. Lory turned to the north. He had a map in his pocket, which he knew almost by heart; for he was an officer of the finest cavalry in the world, and knew his business as well as any. And it is the business of the individual trooper to find his way in an unknown country. That a couple of hours' hard riding brought him to his own lands, de Vasselot knew not nor heeded, for he was aware that he could establish his rights only by force of martial law, and with a miniature army at his back; for civil law here is paralyzed by a cloud of false witnesses, while equity is administered by a jury which is under the influence of the two strongest of human motives, greed and fear.
At times the solitary rider mounted into the clouds that hung low upon the hills, shutting in the valleys beneath their grey canopy, and again descended to deep gorges; where brown water churned in narrow places. And at all times he was alone. For the Government has built roads through these rocky places, but it has not yet succeeded in making traffic upon them.
With the quickness of his race de Vasselot noted everything—the trend of the watersheds, the colour of the water, the prevailing wind as indicated by the growth of the trees—a hundred petty details of Nature which would escape any but a trained comprehension, or that wonderful eye with which some men are born, who cannot but be gipsies all their lives, whether fate has made them rich or poor; who cannot live in towns, but must breathe the air of open heaven, and deal by sea or land with the wondrous works of God.
It was growing dusk when de Vasselot crossed the bridge that spans the Aliso—his own river, that ran through and all around his own land—and urged his tired horse along the level causeway built across the old river-bed into the town of St. Florent. The field-workers were returning from vineyard and olive grove, but appeared to take little heed of him as he trotted past them on the dusty road. These were no heavy, agricultural boors, of the earth earthy, but lithe, dark-eyed men and women, who tilled the ground grudgingly, because they had no choice between that and starvation. Their lack of curiosity arose, not from stupidity, but from a sort of pride which is only seen in Spain and certain South American States. The proudest man is he who is sufficient for himself.
A single inquiry enabled de Vasselot to find the house of Rutali; for St. Florent is a small place, with Ichabod written large on its crumbling houses. It was a house like another—that is to say, the ground floor was a stable, while the family lived above in an atmosphere of its own and the stable drainage.
The traveller gave Rutali a small coin, which was coldly accepted—for a Corsican never refuses money like a Spaniard, but accepts it grudgingly, mindful of the insult—and left St. Florent by the road that he had come, on foot, humbly carrying his own portmanteau. Thus Lory de Vasselot, went through his paternal acres with a map. His intention was to catch a glimpse of the Chateau de Vasselot, and walk on to the village of Olmeta, and there beg bed and board from his faithful correspondent, the Abbé Susini.
He followed the causeway across the marsh to the mouth of the river, and here turned to the left, leaving theroute nationaleto Calvi on the right. That which he now followed was the narrowerroute departementale, which borders the course of the stream Guadelle, a tributary to the Aliso. The valley is flat here—a mere level of river deposit, damp in winter, but dry and sandy in the autumn. Here are cornfields and vineyards all in one, with olives and almonds growing amid the wheat—a promised land of milk and honey. There are no walls, but great hedges of aloe and prickly pear serve as a sterner landmark. At the side of the road are here and there a few crosses—the silent witnesses that stand on either side of every Corsican road—marking the spot where such and such a one met his death, or was found dead by his friends.
Above, perched on the slope that rises abruptly on the left-hand side of the road, the village of Oletta looks out over the plain towards St. Florent and the sea—a few brown houses of dusky stone, with roofs of stone; a square-towered church, built just where the cultivation ceases and the rocks and the macquis begin.
De Vasselot quitted the road where it begins sharply to ascend, and took the narrow path that follows the course of the river, winding through the olive groves around the great rock that forms a shoulder of Monte Torre, and breaks off abruptly in a sheer cliff. He looked upward with a soldier's eye at this spot, designed by nature as the site of a fort which could command the whole valley and the roads to Corte and Calvi. Far above, amid chestnut trees and some giant pines, De Vasselot could see the roof and the chimneys of a house—it was the Casa Perucca. Presently he was so immediately below it that he could see it no longer as he followed the path, winding as the river wound through the narrow flat valley.
Suddenly he came out of the defile into a vast open country, spread out like a fan upon a gentle slope rising to the height of the Col St. Stefano, where the Bastia road comes through the Lancone defile—the road by which Colonel Gilbert had ridden to the Casa Perucca not so very long before. At the base of the fan runs the Aliso, without haste, bordered on either bank by oleanders growing like rushes. Halfway down the slope is a lump of land which looks like, and probably is, a piece of the mountain cast off by some subterranean disturbance, and gently rolled down into the valley. It stands alone, and on its summit, three hundred feet above the plain, are the square-built walls of what was once a castle.
Lory stood for a moment and looked at this prospect, now pink and hazy in the reflected light of the western sky. He knew that he was looking at the Chateau de Vasselot.
Within the crumbling walls, built on the sheer edge of the rock, stood, amid a disorderly thicket of bamboo and feathery pepper and deep copper beech, a square stone house with smokeless chimneys, and, so far as was visible, every shutter shut. The owner of it and all these lands, the bearer of the name that was written here upon the map, walked slowly out into the open country. He turned once and looked back at the towering cliff behind him, the rocky peninsula where the Casa Perucca stood amidst its great trees, and hid the village of Olmeta, perched on the mountain side behind it.
The short winter twilight was almost gone before de Vasselot reached the base of the mound of half-shattered rock upon which the chateau had been built. The wall that had once been the outer battlement of the old stronghold was so fallen into disrepair that he anticipated no difficulty in finding a gap through which to pass within the enclosure where the house was hidden; but he walked right round and found no such breach. Where the wall of rock proved vulnerable, the masonry, by some curious chance, was invariably sound.
It had not been de Vasselot's intention to disturb the old gardener, who, he understood, was left in charge of the crumbling house, but to return the next day with the Abbé Susini. But he was tired, and having failed to gain an entrance, was put out and angry, when at length he found himself near the great door built in the solid wall on the north-west side of the ruin. A rusty bell-chain was slowly swinging in the wind, which was freshening again at sunset, as the mistral nearly always does when it is dying. With some difficulty he succeeded in swinging the heavy bell suspended inside the door, so that it gave two curt clangs as of a rusty tongue against moss-grown metal.
After some time the door was opened by a grey-haired man in his shirt-sleeves. He wore a huge black felt hat, and the baggy corduroy trousers of a deep brown, which are almost universal in this country. He held the door half open and peered out. Then he slowly opened it and stood back.
“Good God!” he whispered. “Good God!”
De Vasselot stepped over the threshold with one quick glance at the single-barrelled gun in the man's hand.
“I am—” he began.
“Yes,” interrupted the other, breathlessly. “Straight on; the door is open.”
Half puzzled, Lory de Vasselot advanced towards the house alone; for the peasant was long in closing the door and readjusting chain and bolts. The shutters of the house were all closed, but the door, as he had said, was open. The place was neatly enough kept, and the house stood on a lawn of that brilliant green turf which is only seen in parts of England, in Ireland, and in Corsica.
De Vasselot went into the house, which was all dark by reason of the closed shutters. There was a large room, opposite to the front door, dimly indicated by the daylight behind him. He went into it, and was going straight to one of the windows to throw back the shutters, when a sharp click brought him round on his heels as if he had been shot. In a far corner of the room, in a dark doorway, stood a shadow. The click was that of a trigger.
Quick as thought de Vasselot ran to the window, snatched at the opening, opened it, threw back the shutter, and was round again with bright and flashing eyes facing the doorway. A man stood there watching him—a man of his own build, slight and quick, with close upright hair like his own, but it was white; with a neat upturned moustache like his own, but it was white; with a small quick face like his own, but it was bleached. The eyes that flashed back were dark like his own.
“You are a de Vasselot,” said this man, quickly.
“Are you Lory de Vasselot?”
“Yes.”
“Then I am your father.”
“Yes,” said Lory, slowly; “there is no mistaking it.”
“The life unlived, the deed undone, the tear unshed ...not judging those, who judges right?”
It was the father who spoke first.
“Shut that shutter, my friend,” he said. “It has not been opened for thirty years.”
He had an odd habit of jerking his head upwards and sideways with raised eyebrows. It would appear that a trick of thus deploring some unavoidable misfortune had crystallized itself, as it were, into a habit by long use. And the old man rarely spoke now without this upward jerk.
Lory closed the shutter and followed his father into an adjoining room—a small, round apartment lighted by a skylight and impregnated with tobacco-smoke. The carpet was worn into holes in several places, and the boards beneath were polished by the passage of smooth soles. Lory glanced at his father's feet, which were encased in carpet slippers several sizes too large for him, bought at a guess in the village shop.
Here again the two men stood and looked at each other. And again it was the father who broke the silence.
“My son,” he said, half to himself; “and a soldier. Your mother was a bad woman, mon ami. And I have lived thirty years in this room,” he concluded simply.
“Name of God!” exclaimed Lory. “And what have you done all this time?”
“Carnations,” replied the old man, gravely. “There is still daylight. Come; I will show you. Yes; carnations.”
As he spoke he turned and opened the door behind him. It led out to a small terrace no larger than a verandah, and every inch of earth was occupied by the pale green of carnation-spikes. Some were budding, some in bloom. But there was not a flower among them at which a modern gardener would not have laughed aloud. And there were tears in Lory de Vasselot's eyes as he looked at them.
The father stood, jerking his head and looking at his son, waiting his verdict.
“Yes,” was the son's reply at last; “yes—very pretty.”
“But to-night you cannot see them,” said the old man, earnestly. “To-morrow morning—we shall get up early, eh?”
“Yes,” said Lory, slowly; and they went back into the little windowless room.
“We will get up early,” said the count, “to see the pinks. This cursed mistral beats them to pieces, but I have no other place to grow them. It is the only spot that is not overlooked by Perucca.”
He spoke slowly and indifferently, as if his spirit had been bleached, like his face, by long confinement. He had lost his grip of the world and of human interests. As he looked at his son, his black eyes had a sort of irresponsible vagueness in their glance.
“Tell me,” said Lory, gently, at length, as if he were speaking to a child; “why have you done this?”
“Then you did not know that I was alive?” inquired his father in return, with an uncanny, quiet laugh, as he sat down.
“No.”
“No; no one knows that—no one but the Abbé Susini and Jean there. You saw Jean as you came in. He recognized you or he would not have let you in; for he is quick with his gun. He shot a man seven years ago—one of Perucca's men, of course, who was creeping up through the tamarisk trees. I do not know what he came seeking, but he got more from Jean than he looked for. Jean was a boy when your mother went to France, and he was left in charge of the château. For they all thought that I had gone to France with your mother, and perhaps the police searched France for me; I do not know. There is a warrant out against me still, though the paper it is written on must be yellow enough after thirty years.”
As he spoke he carefully drew up his trousers, which were of corduroy, like Jean's; indeed, the Count de Vasselot was dressed like a peasant—but no rustic dress could conceal the tale told by the small energetic head, the clean-cut features. It was obvious that his thoughts were more concerned in his immediate environments—in the care, for instance, to preserve his trousers from bagging at the knee—than he was in the past. He had the curious, slow touch and contemplative manner of the prisoner.
“Yes; Jean was a boy when he first came here, and now he is a grey-haired man, as you see. He picks the olives and earns a little by selling them. Besides, I provided myself with money long ago, before—before I died. I thought I might live long, and I have, for thirty years, like a tree.”
Which was nearly true, for his life must have been somewhere midway between the human and the vegetable.
“But why, my God!” cried Lory, impatiently, “why have you done it?”
“Why?” echoed the count, in his calm and suppressed way. “Why? Because I am a Corsican, and am not to be frightened into leaving the country by a parcel of Peruccas. They are no better than the Luccans you see working in the road, and the miserable Pisans who come in the winter to build the terraces. They are no Corsicans, but come from Pisa.”
“But if they thought you were dead, what satisfaction could there be in living on here?”
But the count only looked at his son in silence. He did not seem to follow the hasty argument. He had the placid air of a child or a very old man, who will not argue.
“Besides, Mattei Perucca is dead.”
“So they say. So Jean tells me. I have not seen the abbé lately. He does not dare to come more often than once in three months—four times a year. Mattei Perucca dead!” He shook his head with the odd, upward jerk and the weary smile. “I should like to see his carcass,” he said.
Then, after a pause, he went back to his original train of thought.
“We are different,” he said. “We are Corsicans. It was only when the Bonapartes changed their name to a French one that your great-grandfather Gallicized ours. We are not to be frightened away by the Peruccas.”
“But since he is dead—” said Lory, with an effort to be patient.
He was beginning to realize now that it was all real and not a dream, that this was the Château de Vasselot, and this was his father—this little, vague, quiet man, who seemed to exist and speak as if he were only half alive.
“He may be,” was the answer; “but that will make no difference, since for one adherent that we have the Peruccas have twenty. There are a thousand men between Cap Corse and Balagna who, if I went outside this door and was recognized, would shoot me like a rat.”
“But why?”
“Because they are of Perucca's clan, my friend,” replied the count, with a shrug of the shoulder.
“But still I ask why?” persisted Lory.
And the count spread out his thin white hands with a gesture of patient indifference.
“Well, of course I shot Andrei Perucca—the brother—thirty years ago. We all know that. That is ancient history.”
Lory looked at the little white-haired, placid man, and said no word. It was perhaps the wisest thing to do. When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
“But he has had his revenge—that Mattei Perucca,” said the count at length, in a tone of careless reminiscence—“by living in that house all these years, and, so they tell me, by making a small fortune out of the vines. The house is not his, the land is not his. They are mine. Only he and I knew it, and to prove it I should have to come to life. Besides, what is land in this country, unless you till it with a spade in one hand and a gun in the other?”
Lory de Vasselot leant forward in his chair.
“But now is the time to act,” he said. “I can act if you will not. I can make use of the law.” “The law,” answered his father, calmly. “Do you think that you could get a jury in Bastia to give you a verdict? Do you think you could find a witness who would dare to appear in your favour? No, my friend. There is no law in this country, except that;” and he pointed to a gun in the corner of the room, an old-fashioned muzzle-loader, with which he had had the law of Andrei Perucca thirty years before.
“But now that there is no Perucca left the clan will cease to exist,” said Lory.
“Not at all,” replied the father. “The inheritor of the estate, whoever it is, will become the head of the clan, and things will be as they were before. They tell me it is a woman named Denise Lange.”
Lory gave a start. He had forgotten Denise Lange, and all that world of Paris fad and fashion.
“And the women are always the worst,” concluded his father.
They sat in silence for some moments. And then the count spoke again in his odd, detached way, as if he were contemplating his environments from afar.
“There was a man in Sartene who had an enemy. He was a shoemaker, and could therefore work at his trade indoors. He never crossed his threshold for sixteen years. One day they told him his enemy was dead, that the funeral was for the same afternoon. It passed his door, and when it had gone by, he stepped out, after sixteen, years, to watch it, and—Paff! He twisted himself round as he writhed on the ground, and there was his enemy, laughing, with the smoke still at the muzzle. The funeral was a trick. No; I shall not believe that Mattei Perucca is dead until the Abbé Susini tells me that he has seen the body. Not that it would make any difference. I should not go outside the door. I am accustomed to this life now.”
He sat with his hands idly crossed on his knee, and looked at nothing in particular. Nothing could arouse him now from his apathy, except perhaps the culture of carnations—certainly not the arrival of the son whom he had never seen. He had that air of waiting without expectancy which is assuredly the dungeon mark, and a moral mourning worn for dead Hope.
Lory contemplated him as a strange old man who interested him despite himself. There was pity, but nothing filial in his feelings. For filial love only grows out of propinquity and a firm respect which must keep pace with the growing demands of a daily increasing comprehension.
“Why did you come?” asked the count, suddenly.
It seemed as if his mind lay hidden under the accumulateddébrisof the years, as the old château perhaps lay hidden beneath that smooth turf which only grows over ruins.
“I do not know,” answered Lory, thoughtfully. Then he turned in his quick way, and looked at his father with a smile. “Perhaps it was the good God who put the idea into my head, for it came quite suddenly. We shall grow accustomed to each other, and then we may find perhaps that it was a good thing that I came.”
The count looked at him with rather a puzzled air, as if he did not quite understand.
“Yes,” he said at length—“yes; perhaps so. I thought it likely that you would come. Do you mean to stay?”
“I do not know. I have not thought yet. I have had no time to think. I only know I am hungry. Perhaps Jean will get me something to eat.”
“I have not dined yet,” said the count, simply. “Yes; we will dine.”
He rose, and, going to the door, called Jean, who came, and a whispered consultation ensued. From out of thedébrisof his mind the count seemed to have unearthed the fact that he was a gentleman, and as such was called upon to exercise an unsparing hospitality. He rather impeded than helped the taciturn man, who seemed to be gardener and servant all in one, and who now prepared the table, setting thereon linen and glass and silver of some value. There was excellent wine, and over the simple meal the father and son, in a jerky, explosive way, made merry. For Lory was at heart a Frenchman, and the French know, better than any, how near together tears and laughter must ever be, and have less difficulty in snatching a smile from sad environments than other men.
It was only as he finally cleared the table that Jean broke his habitual silence.
“The moon is up,” he said to the count, and that was all.
The old man rose at once, and went to a window, which had hitherto been shuttered and barred.
“I sometimes look out,” he said, “when there is a moon.”
With odd, slow movements he opened the shutter and window, and, turning, invited Lory by a jerk of the head to come and look. The moon, which must have been at the full, was behind the château, and therefore invisible. Before them, in a framework of giant pines that have no match in Europe, lay a panorama of rolling plain and gleaming river. Far away towards Calvi and the south, range after range of rugged mountain melted into a distance, where the snow-clad summits of Cinto and Grosso stood majestically against the sky. The clouds had vanished. It was almost twilight under the southern moon. To the right the sea lay shimmering.
“I did not know that there was anything like it in Europe,” said Lory, after a long pause.
“There is nothing like it,” answered his father, gravely, “in the world.”
Father and son were still standing at the open window, when Jean came hurriedly into the room.
“It is the abbé,” he said, and went out again. The count stepped down from the raised window recess, and turned up the lamp, which he had lowered. Lory paused to close the shutter, and as he did so the Abbé Susini came into the room without looking towards the window, which was near the door by which he entered, without, therefore, seeing Lory. He hurried into the room, and stopped dead, facing the count. He threw out one finger, and pointed at his interlocutor as he spoke, in his quick dramatic way.
“I have just seen a man from Calvi. One landed there this morning whom he recognized. It could only have been your son. If one recognizes him, another may. Is the boy mad to return thus—”
He broke off, and made a step nearer, peering into the count's face.
“You know something. I see it in your face. You know where he is.”
“He is there,” said the count, pointing over the priest's shoulder.
“Then God bless him,” said the Abbé Susini, turning on his heel.
“I do not ask that flowers should always spring beneath myfeet.”
Colonel Gilbert was not one of those visionaries who think that the lot of the individual man is to be bettered by a change from, say, an empire to a republic. Indeed, the late transformation from a republic to an empire had made no difference to him, for he was neither a friend nor a foe of the emperor. He had nothing in common with those soldiers of the Second Empire who had won their spurs in the Tuileries, and owed promotion to a woman's favouritism. He was, in a word, too good a soldier to be a good courtier; and politics represented for him, as they do for most wise men, an after-breakfast interest, and an edifying study of the careers of a certain number of persons who mean to make themselves a name in the easiest arena that is open to ambition.
The colonel read the newspapers because there was little else to do in Bastia, and the local gossip “on tap,” as it were, at the cafés and the “Réunion des Officiers,” had but a limited interest for him. He was, however, at heart a gossip, and rode or walked through the streets of Bastia with that leisurely air which seems to invite the passer-by to stop and exchange something more than a formal salutation.
The days, indeed, were long enough; for his service often got the colonel out of bed at dawn, and his work was frequently done before civilians were awake. It thus happened that Colonel Gilbert was riding along the coast-road from Brando to Bastia one morning before the sun had risen very high above the heights of Elba. The day was so clear that not only were the rocky islands of Gorgona and Capraja and Monte Cristo visible, but also the mysterious flat Pianosa, so rarely seen, so capricious and singular in its comings and goings that it fades from sight before the very eyes, and in clear weather seems to lie like a raft on the still water.
The colonel was contemplating the scene with a leisurely, artistic eye, when some instinct made him turn his head and look over his shoulder towards the north.
“Ah!” he muttered, with a nod of satisfaction.
A steamer was slowly pounding down towards Bastia. It was the Marseilles boat—the oldPersévérance.And for Colonel Gilbert she was sure to bring news from France, possibly some one with whom to while away an hour or so in talk. He rode more leisurely now, and the steamer passed him. By the time he reached the dried-fruit factory on the northern outskirt of the town, thePersévérancehad rounded the pier-head, and was gently edging alongside the quay. By the time he reached the harbour she was moored, and her captain enjoying a morning cigar on the wharf.
Of course Colonel Gilbert knew the captain of thePersévérance.Was he not friendly with the driver of the St. Florent diligence? All who brought news from the outside world were the friends of this idle soldier.
“Good morning, captain,” he cried. “What news of France?”
The captain was a jovial man, with unkempt hair and a smoke-grimed face.
“News, colonel,” he answered. “It is not quite ready yet. The emperor is always brewing it in the Tuileries, but it is not ripe for the public palate yet.”
“Ah!”
“And in the mean time,” said the captain, testing with his foot the tautness of the hawser that moored thePersévéranceto the quay—“in the mean time they are busy at Cherbourg and Toulon. As to the army, you probably know that better than I, mon colonel.”
And he finished with his jovial laugh. Then he jerked his thumb in the direction of the steamer.
“Your newspapers are, no doubt, in the mail-bags,” he said. “We had a good passage, and are a full ship. Of passengers I have two—and ladies. One, by the way, is the heiress of Mattei Perucca over at Olmeta, whom you doubtless knew.”
The colonel turned, and looked towards the steamer with some interest.
“Is that so?” he said reflectively.
“Yes; a pinched old maid in a black dress. None will marry her for her acres. It will be apré saléwith a vengeance. I caught a glimpse of her as we came out of harbour. I did not see the other, who is young—her niece, I understand. There she is, coming on deck now—the heiress, I mean. She will not look her best after a night at sea.”
And, with a jerk of the head, he indicated a black-clad form on the deck of thePersévérance.It happened to be Mademoiselle Brun, who, as a matter of fact, looked no different after a night at sea to what she had looked in the drawing-room of the Baroness de Mélide. She was too old or too tough to take her colour from her environments. She was standing with her back towards the quay, talking to the steward, and did not, therefore, see the colonel until the clank of his spurred heel on the deck made her turn sharply.
“You, mademoiselle!” exclaimed the colonel, on seeing her face as he stood,képiin hand, staring at her in astonishment.
“Yes; I am the ogre chosen by Fate to watch over Denise Lange,” she answered, holding out her withered hand.
“But this is indeed a pleasure,” said the colonel, with his ready smile. “I came by a mere accident to offer my services, as any Frenchman would, to ladies arriving at such a place as Bastia, as a friend, moreover, of Mattei Perucca, and never expected to see a face I knew. It is years, mademoiselle, since we met—since before the war—before Solferino.”
“Yes,” said Mademoiselle Brun; “since before Solferino.”
And she glanced suspiciously at him, as if she had something to hide. A chance word often is the “open sesame” to that cupboard where we keep our cherished skeleton. Colonel Gilbert saw the quick glance, and misconstrued it.
“I wrote a letter some time ago,” he said, “to Mademoiselle Lange, making her an offer for her property, little dreaming that I had so old a friend as yourself at hand, as one may say, to introduce us to each other.”
“No,” said Mademoiselle Brun.
“And I was surprised to receive a refusal.”
“Yes,” said Mademoiselle Brun, looking across the harbour towards the old town.
“There are not many buyers of land in Corsica,” he explained, half indifferently, “and there are plenty of other plots which would serve my purpose. However, I will not buy elsewhere until you and Mademoiselle Lange have had an opportunity of seeing Perucca—that is certain. No; it is only friendly to keep my offer open.”
He was standing with his face turned towards the deck-house and the saloon stairway, and tapped his boot idly with his whip. There was something expectant and almost anxious in his demeanour. Mademoiselle Brun was looking at his face, and he was perhaps not aware that it changed at this moment.
“Yes,” she said, without looking round; “that is my niece. You find her pretty?”
“Present me,” answered the colonel, turning to hook his sword to his belt.
Denise came hurriedly across the deck, her eyes bright with anticipation and happiness. This was a better life than that of the Rue du Cherche-Midi, and the stir and bustle of the sailors, already at work on the cargo, were contagious. She noticed that Mademoiselle Brun was speaking to an officer, but was more interested in the carriage, which, in accordance with an order sent by the captain, was at this moment rattling across the stones towards the steamer.
“This,” said Mademoiselle Brun, “is Colonel Gilbert, whose letter you answered a few weeks ago.”
“Ah, yes,” said Denise, returning his bow, and looking at him with frank eyes. “Thank you very much, monsieur, but we are going to live at Perucca ourselves.”
“By all means,” laughed the colonel, “try it, mademoiselle; try it. It is an impossibility, I tell you frankly. And Corsica is not a country in which to attempt impossibilities. See here! I perceive you have your carriage ready, and the sailors are now carrying your baggage ashore. You are going to drive to Perucca. Good! Now, as you pass along the road, you will perceive on either side quite a number of small crosses, simply planted at the roadside—some of iron, some of wood, some with a name, some with initials. They are to be found all over Corsica, at the side of every road. Those are people, mademoiselle, who have attempted impossibilities in this country and have failed—at the very spot where the cross is planted. You understand? I speak as a soldier to a soldier's daughter.”
He looked at her, and nodded slowly and gravely with compressed lips.
“Rest assured that we shall not attempt impossibilities,” replied Denise, gaily. “We only ask to be left alone to feed our poultry and attend to our garden. I am told that the house and servants are as my father's cousin left them, and we are expected to-day.”
“And you, colonel, shall be our protector,” added Mademoiselle Brun, with one of her straight looks.
The colonel laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and accompanied them to the carriage which awaited them.
“If one only knew whether you approve or disapprove of these hair-brained proceedings,” he took an opportunity of saying to Mademoiselle Brun, when Denise was out of earshot.
“If I only knew myself,” she replied coldly.
They climbed into the high, old-fashioned carriage, and drove through the new Boulevard du Palais, upward to the hills above the town. And if they observed the small crosses on either side of the road, marking the spot where some poor wight had come to what is here called an accidental death, they took care to make no mention of it. For Denise persisted in seeing everything in that rose light which illumines the world when we are young. She had even a good word to say for thePersévérance, which vessel had assuredly need of such, and said that the captain was a good French sailor, despite his grimy face.
“This,” she cried, “is better than your stuffy schoolroom!”
And she stood up in the carriage to inhale the breeze that hummed through the macquis from the cool mountain-tops. There is no air like that which comes as through a filter made of a hundred scented trees—a subtle mingling of their clean woody odours.
“Look!” she added, pointing down to the sea, which looked calm from this great height. “Look at that queer flat island there. That is Pianosa. And there is Elba. Elba! Cannot the magic of that word rouse you? But no, you have no Corsican blood in you; and you sit there with your uncompromising old face and your black bonnet a little bit on one side, if I may mention it”—and she proceeded to put Mademoiselle Brun's bonnet straight—“you, who are always in mourning for something—I don't know what,” she added half reflectively, as she sat down again.
The road to St. Florent mounts in a semi-circle behind Bastia through orange-groves and vineyards, and the tiny private burial-grounds so dear to Corsican families of position. These, indeed, are a proud people, for they are too good to await the last day in the company of their humbler brethren, but must needs have a small garden and a hideous little mausoleum of their own, with a fine view and easy access to the highroad.
With many turns the great road climbs round the face of the mountain, and soon leaving Bastia behind, takes a southern trend, and suddenly commands from a height a matchless view of the Lake of Biguglia and the little hillside village where a Corsican parliament once sat, which was once, indeed, the capital of this war-torn island. For every village can boast of a battle, and the rocky earth has run with the blood of almost every European nation, as well as that of Turk and Moor. Beyond the lake, and stretching away into a blue haze where sea and land melt into one, lies the great salt marsh where the first Greek colony was located, where the ruins of Mariana remain to this day.
Soon the road mounts above the level of the semi-tropical vegetation, and passes along the face of bare and stony heights, where the pines are small and the macquis no higher than a man's head.
Denise, tired with so long a drive at a snail's pace, jumped from the carriage.
“I will walk up this hill,” she cried to the driver, who had never turned in his seat or spoken a word to them.
“Then keep close to the carriage,” he answered.
“Why?”
But he only indicated the macquis with his whip, and made no further answer. Mademoiselle Brun said nothing, but presently, when the driver paused to rest the horses, she descended from the carriage and walked with Denise.
It was nearly midday when they at last reached the summit of the pass. The heavy clouds, which had been long hanging over the mountains that border the great plain of Biguglia, had rolled northward before a hot and oppressive breeze, and the sun was now hidden. The carriage descended at a rapid trot, and once the man got down and silently examined his brakes. The road was a sort of cornice cut on the bare mountain side, and a stumble or the slipping of a brake-block would inevitably send the carriage rolling into the valley below.
Denise sat upright, and looked quickly, with eager movements of the head, from side to side. Soon they reached the region of the upper pines, which are small, and presently passed a piece of virgin forest—of those great pines which have no like in Europe.
“Look!” said Denise, gazing up at the great trees with a sort of gasp of excitement.
But mademoiselle had only eyes for the road in front. Before long they passed into the region of chestnuts, and soon saw the first habitation they had seen for two hours. For this is one of the most thinly peopled lands of Europe, and four great nations of the Continent have at one time or other done their best to exterminate this untameable race. Then a few more houses and a smaller road branching off to the left from the highway. The carriage swung round into this, which led straight to a wall built right across it. The driver pulled up, and, turning, brought the horses to a standstill at a door built in the solid wall. With his whip he indicated a bell-chain, rusty and worn, that swung in the breeze.
There was nobody to be seen. The clouds had closed down over the mountains. Even the tops of the great pines were hidden in a thin mist.
Denise got down and rang the bell. After a long pause the door was opened by a woman in black, with a black silk handkerchief over her head, who looked gravely at them.
“I am Denise Lange,” said the girl.
“And I,” said the woman, stepping back to admit them, “am the widow of Pietro Andrei, who was shot at Olmeta.”
And Denise Lange entered her own door followed by Mademoiselle Brun.