“Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoopThan when we soar.”
There were many who thought the war was over that rainy morning after the fall of Sedan. For events were made to follow each other quickly by those three sleepless men who moved kings and emperors and armies at their will. Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon must have slept but little—if they closed their eyes at all—between the evening of the first and the morning of the third day of September. For human foresight must have its limits, and the German leaders could hardly have dreamt, in their most optimistic moments, of the triumph that awaited them. Bismarck could hardly have foreseen that he should have to provide for an imperial prisoner. Moltke's marvellous plans of campaign could scarcely have embraced the details necessary to the immediate disposal of ninety thousand prisoners of war, with many guns and horses and much ammunition.
It was but twenty-four hours after he had left Sedan to seek, and seek in vain, the King of Prussia, that the third Napoleon—the modern man of destiny who had climbed so high and fallen so very low—set out on his journey to the Palace of Wilhelmshöhe, never to set foot on French soil again. For he was to seek a home, and finally a grave, in England, where his bones will lie till that day when France shall think fit to deposit them by those of the founder of the adventurous dynasty.
Among those who stood in the muddy street of Donchéry that morning, and watched in silence the departure of the simple carriage, was Mademoiselle Brun, whose stern eyes rested for a moment on the sphinx-like face, met for an instant the dull and extinct gaze of the man who had twisted all France round his little finger.
When the cavalcade had passed by, she turned away and walked towards Sedan. The road was crowded with troops, coming and going almost in silence. Long strings of baggage-carts splashed past. Here and there an ambulance waggon of lighter build was allowed a quicker passage. Messengers rode, or hurried on foot, one way and the other; but few spoke, and a hush seemed to hang over all. There was no cheering this morning—even that was done. The rain splashed pitilessly down on these men who had won a great victory, who now hurried hither and thither, afraid of they knew not what, cowering beneath the silence of Heaven.
Mademoiselle was stopped outside the gates of Sedan.
“You can go no further!” said an under-officer of a Bavarian regiment in passable French, the first to question the coming or going of this insignificant and self-possessed woman.
“But I can stay here?” returned mademoiselle in German. In teaching, she had learnt—which is more than many teachers do.
“Yes, you can stay here,” laughed the German.
And she stayed there patiently for hours in the rain and mud. It was afternoon before her reward came. No one heeded her, as, standing on an overturned gun-carriage, beneath her shabby umbrella, she watched the first detachment of nearly ten thousand Frenchmen march out of the fortress to their captivity in Germany.
“No cavalry?” she said to a bystander when the last detachment had gone.
“There is no cavalry left, ma bonne dame,” replied the old man to whom she had spoken.
“No cavalry left! And Lory de Vasselot was a cuirassier. And Denise loved Lory.” Mademoiselle Brun knew that, though perhaps Denise herself was scarcely aware of it. In these three thoughts mademoiselle told the whole history of Sedan as it affected her. Solferino had, for her, narrowed down to one man, fat and old at that, riding at the head of his troops on a great horse specially chosen to carry bulk. The victory that was to mar one empire and make another, years after Solferino, was summed up in three thoughts by the woman who had the courage to live frankly in her own small woman's world, who was ready to fight—as resolutely as any fought at Sedan—for Denise. She turned and went down that historic road, showing now, as ever, a steady and courageous face to the world, though all who spoke to her stabbed her with the words, “There is no cavalry left—no cavalry left, ma bonne dame.”
She hovered about Donchéry and Sedan, and the ruins of Bazeilles, for some days, and made sure that Lory de Vasselot had not gone, a prisoner, to Germany. The confusion in the French camp was greater than any had anticipated, and no reliable records of any sort were obtainable. Mademoiselle could not even ascertain whether Lory had fought at Sedan; but she shrewdly guessed that the mad attempt to cut a way through the German lines was such as would recommend itself to his heart. She haunted, therefore, the heights of Bazeilles, seeking among the dead one who wore the cuirassier uniform. She found, God knows, enough, but not Lory de Vasselot.
All this while she never wrote to Fréjus, judging, with a deadly common sense, that no news is better than bad news. Day by day she continued her self-imposed task, on the slippery hill-sides and in the muddy valleys, until at last she passed for a peasant-woman, so bedraggled was her dress, so lined and weather-beaten her face. Her hair grew white in those days, her face greyer. She had not even enough to eat. She lay down and slept whenever she could find a roof to cover her. And always, night and day, she carried with her the burthen of that bad news of which she would not seek to relieve herself by the usual human method of telling it to another.
And one day she wandered into a church ten miles on the French side of Sedan, intending perhaps to tell her bad news to One who will always listen. But she found that this was no longer a house of prayer, for the dead and dying were lying in rows on the floor. As she entered, a tall man, coming quickly out, almost knocked her down. His arms were full of cooking utensils. He was in his shirt-sleeves: blood-stained, smoke-grimed, unshaven and unwashed. He turned to apologize, and began explaining that this was no place for a woman; but he stopped short. It was the millionaire Baron de Mélide.
Mademoiselle Brun sat suddenly down on a bench near the door. She did not look at him. Indeed, she purposely looked away and bit her lip with her little fierce teeth because it would quiver. In a moment she had recovered herself.
“I have come to help you,” she said.
“God knows, we want you,” replied the baron—a phlegmatic man, who, nevertheless, saw the quivering lip, and turned away hastily. For he knew that mademoiselle would never forgive herself, or him, if she broke down now.
“Here,” he said, with a clumsy gaiety, “will you wash these plates and dishes? You will find the pump in the curé's garden. We have nurses and doctors, but we have no one to wash up. And it is I who do it. This is my hospital. I have borrowed the building from the good God.”
Mademoiselle was naturally a secretive woman. She could even be silent about her neighbours' affairs. Susini had been guided by a quick intuition, characteristic of his race, when he had confided in this Frenchwoman. She had been some hours in the baron's hospital before she even mentioned Lory's name.
“And the Count de Vasselot?” she inquired, in her usual curt form of interrogation, as they were taking a hurried and unceremonious meal in the vestry by the light of an altar candle.
The baron shook his head and gulped down his food.
“No news?” inquired Mademoiselle Brun.
“None.”
They continued to eat for some minutes in silence.
“Was he at Sedan?” asked mademoiselle, at length.
“Yes,” replied the baron, gravely. And then they continued their meal in silence by the light of the flickering candle.
“Have you any one looking for him?” asked mademoiselle, as she rose from the table and began to clear it.
“I have sent two of my men to do so,” replied the baron, who was by nature no more expansive than his old governess. And for some days there was no mention of de Vasselot between them.
Mademoiselle found plenty of work to do besides the menial labours of which she had relieved the man who deemed himself fit for nothing more complicated than washing dishes and providing funds. She wrote letters for the wounded, and also for the dead. She had a way of looking at those who groaned unnecessarily and out of idle self-pity, which was conducive to silence, and therefore to the comfort of others. She smoothed no pillows and proffered no soft words of sympathy. But it was she who found out that the curé had a piano. She it was who took two hospital attendants to the priest's humble house and brought the instrument away. She had it placed inside the altar rails, and fought the curé afterwards in the vestry as to the heinousness of the proceeding.
“You will not play secular airs?” pleaded the old man.
“All that there is of the most secular,” replied she, inexorably. “And the recording angels will, no doubt, enter it to my account—and not yours, monsieur le curé”.
So Mademoiselle Brun played to the wounded all through the long afternoons until her fingers grew stiff. And the doctors said that she saved more than one fretting life. She was not a great musician, but she had a soothing, old-fashioned touch. She only played such ancient airs as she could remember. And the more she played the more she remembered. It seemed to come back to her—each day a little more. Which was odd, for the music was, as she had promised the curé, secular enough, and could not, therefore, have been inspired by her sacred surroundings within the altar rails. Though, after all, it may have been that those who recorded this sacrilege against Mademoiselle Brun, not only made a cross-entry on the credit side, but helped her memory to recall that forgotten music.
Thus the days slipped by, and little news filtered through to the quiet Ardennes village. The tide of war had rolled on. The Germans, it was said, were already halfway to Paris. And from Paris itself the tidings were well-nigh incredible. One thing alone was certain; the Bonaparte dynasty was at an end and the mighty schemes of an ambitious woman had crumbled like ashes within her hands. All the plotting of the Regency had fallen to pieces with the fall of the greatest schemer of them all, whom the Paris government fatuously attempted to hoodwink. Napoleon the Third was indeed a clever man, since his own wife never knew how clever he was. So France was now a howling Republic—a Republic being a community wherein every man is not only equal to, but better than his neighbour, and may therefore shout his loudest.
No great battles followed Sedan. France had but one army left, and that was shut up in Metz, under the command of another of the Paris plotters who was a bad general and not even a good conspirator.
Poor France had again fallen into bad hands. It seemed the end of all things. And yet for Mademoiselle Brun, who loved France as well as any, all these troubles were one day dispersed by a single note of a man's voice. She was at the piano, it being afternoon, and was so used to the shuffling of the bearer's feet that she no longer turned to look when one was carried in and another, a dead one perhaps, was carried out.
She heard a laugh, however, that made her music suddenly mute. It was Lory de Vasselot who was laughing, as they carried him into the little church. He was explaining to the baron that he had heard of his hospital, and had caused himself to be carried thither as soon as he could be moved from the cottage, where he had been cared for by some peasants.
The laugh was silenced, however, at the sight of Mademoiselle Brun.
“You here, mademoiselle?” he said. “Alone, I hope,” he added, wincing as the bearers set him down.
“Yes, I am alone. Denise is safe at Fréjus with Jane de Mélide.”
“Ah!”
“And your wounds?” said Mademoiselle Brun.
“A sabre-cut on the right shoulder, a bullet through the left leg—voilà tout. I was in Sedan, and we tried to get out. That is all I know, mademoiselle.”
Mademoiselle stood over him with her hands crossed at her waist, looking down at him with compressed lips.
“Not dangerous?” she inquired, glancing at his bandages, which indeed were numerous enough.
“I shall be in the saddle again in three weeks, they tell me. If the war only lasts—” He gave an odd, eager laugh. “If the war only lasts—”
Then he suddenly turned white and lost consciousness.
That night mademoiselle wrote to Denise at Fréjus, breaking at last her long silence. That she gave the barest facts, may be safely concluded. Neither did she volunteer a thought or a conclusion. She was as discreet as she was secretive. There are some secrets which are infinitely safer in a woman's custody than in a man's. You may tell a man in confidence the amount of your income, and it will go no further; but in affairs of the heart, and not of the pocket, a woman is safer. Indeed, you may tell a woman your heart's secret, provided she keeps it where she keeps her own. And Mademoiselle Brun had only one thought night and day: the happiness of Denise. That, and a single memory—the secret, perhaps, which was such a standing joke at the school in the Rue du Cherche-Midi—made up the whole life of this obscure woman.
Two days later she gave Lory Susini's message; and de Vasselot sent for the surgeon.
“I am going,” he said. “Patch me up for a journey.”
The surgeon had dealt so freely with life and death that he only shrugged his shoulders.
“You cannot go alone,” he said—“a man with one arm and one leg.”
Mademoiselle looked from one to the other. She was willing enough that Lory should undertake this journey, for he must needs pass through Provence to get to Corsica. She did not attempt to lead events, but was content to follow and steer them from time to time.
“I am going to the south of France,” she said. “The baron needs me no longer since the hospital is to be moved to Paris. I can conduct Monsieur de Vasselot—a part of the way, at all events.”
And the rest arranged itself. Five days later Lory de Vasselot was lifted from the railway carriage to the Baroness de Mélide's victoria at Frejus station.
“Madame's son is, no doubt, from Sedan?” said the courteous station-master, who personally attended to the wounded man.
“He is from Sedan—but he is not my son. I never had one,” replied mademoiselle with composure.
She was tired, for she had hardly slept since Lory came under her care. She sat open-eyed, with that knowledge which is given to so few—the knowledge of the gradual completion of a set purpose.
They had travelled all night, and it was not yet midday when mademoiselle first saw, and pointed out to Lory, the white turret of the chateau among the pines.
The baroness was on the steps to greet them. Like many persons of a gay exterior, she had a kind heart and a quick sympathy. She often did, and said, the right thing, when cleverer people found themselves at fault. She laughed when she saw Lory lying full length across her smart carriage—laughed, despite his white cheeks and the grey weariness of mademoiselle's face. She seemed part of the sunshine and the brisk resinous air.
“Ah, my cousin,” she cried, “it does the eyes good to see you! I should like to carry you up these steps.”
“In three weeks,” answered de Vasselot, “I will carry you down.”
“His room is on the ground floor,” said the baroness to mademoiselle, in an aside. “You are tired, my dear—I see it. Your room is the same as before; you must lie down this afternoon. I will take care of Lory, and Denise will—but, where is Denise? I thought she was behind me.”
She paused to guide the men who were carrying de Vasselot through the broad doorway.
“Denise!” she cried without looking round, “Denise! where are you?”
Then turning, she saw Denise coming slowly down the stairs. Her face was whiter than Mademoiselle Brun's. Her eyes, clear and clever, were fixed on Lory's face as if seeking something there. There was an odd silence for a moment—such as the superstitious say, is caused by the passage of an angel among human beings—even the men carrying Lory seemed to tread softly. It was he who broke the spell.
“Ah, mademoiselle!” he said gaily, “the fortune of war, you see!”
“But it might have been so much worse,” said the baroness in a whisper to Mademoiselle Brun. “Bon Dieu, it might have been so much worse!”
And at luncheon they were gay enough. For a national calamity is, after all, secondary to a family calamity. Only de Vasselot and Mademoiselle Brun had been close to war, and it was no new thing to them. Theirs was, moreover, that sudden gaiety which comes from re-action. The contrast of their present surroundings to that little hospital in a church within cannon-sound of Sedan—the quiet of this country house, the baroness, Denise herself young and grave—were sufficient to chase away the horror of the past weeks.
It was the baroness who kept the conversation alert, asking a hundred questions, and, as often as not, disbelieving the answers.
“And you assure me,” she said for the hundredth time, “that my poor husband is well. That he does not miss me, I cannot of course believe with the best will in the world, though Mademoiselle Brun assert it with her gravest air. Now, tell me, how does he spend his day?”
“Mostly in washing up dishes,” replied mademoiselle, looking severely at the baron's butler, whose hand happened to shake at that moment as he offered a plate. “But he is not good at it. He was ignorant of the properties of soda until I informed him.”
“But there is no glory in that,” protested the baroness. “It was only because he assured me that he would not run into danger, and would inevitably be made a grand commander of the Legion of Honour, that he was allowed to go. I do not see the glory in washing up dishes, my friends, I tell you frankly.”
“No; but it is there,” said mademoiselle.
After luncheon Lory, using his crutches, made his way laboriously to the verandah that ran the length of the southern face of the house. It was all hung with creepers, and shaded from the sun by a dense curtain of foliage. Here heliotrope grew like a vine on a trellis against the wall, and semi-tropical flowers bloomed in a bewildering confusion. A little fountain trickled sleepily near at hand, in the mossy basin of which a talkative family of frogs had their habitation.
Half asleep in a long chair, de Vasselot was already coming under the influence of this most healing air in the world, when the rustle of a skirt made him turn.
“It is only I, my poor Lory,” said the baroness, looking down at him with an odd smile. “You turned so quickly. Is there anything you want—anything in my power to give you, I mean?”
“I am afraid you have parted with that already.”
“To that—scullery-man, you mean. Yes, perhaps you are too late. It is so wise to ask too late, mon cousin.”
She laughed gaily, and turned away towards the house. Then she stopped suddenly and came back to him.
“Seriously,” she said, looking down at him with a grave face—“seriously. My prayers should always be for any woman who became your wife—you, and your soldiering. Ciel! it would kill any woman who really cared—”
She broke off and contemplated him as he lay at full length.
“And she might care—a little—that poor woman.”
“She would have to care for France as well,” said de Vasselot, momentarily grave at the thought of his country.
“I know,” said the baroness, with a wise shake of the head. “Mon ami, I know all about that.”
“I have some new newspapers from Paris,” she added, going towards the house. “I will send them to you.”
And it was Denise who brought the newspapers. She handed them to him in silence. Their eyes met for an instant, and both alike had that questioning look which had shone in Denise's eyes as she came downstairs. They seemed to know each other now better than they had done when they last parted at the Casa Perucca.
There was a chair near to his, and Denise sat down there as if it had been placed on purpose—as perhaps it had—by Fate. They were silent for a few moments, gathering perhaps the threads that connected one with the other. For absence does not always break such threads, and sometimes strengthens them. Then Lory spoke without looking at her.
“You received the letter?” he said.
“Which letter?” she asked hurriedly; and then closed her lips and slowly changed colour.
There was only one letter, of course. There could be no other. For it had never been suggested that Lory should write to her.
“Yes; I received it,” she answered. “Thank you.”
“Will you answer one question?” asked Lory.
“If it is a fair one,” she answered with a laugh.
“And who is to decide whether it is a fair one or not?”
“Oh! I will do that,” replied Denise with decision.
She knew the weakness of her position, and was prepared to defend it. Her eyes were shining, and the colour had not faded from her cheeks yet. Lory held his lip between his teeth as he looked at her. She waited for the question, without meeting his eyes, with a baffling little smile tilting the corners of her lips.
“Well,” she said, after a pause, “I suppose you have decided not to ask it?”
“I have decided to draw conclusions instead, mademoiselle.”
“Ah!”
“What does 'Ah!' mean?”
“It means that you will draw them wrong,” she answered; and yet the tone of her voice seemed to suggest that she would rather like to hear the conclusions.
“One may conclude then, simply, that you changed your mind after you wrote, and claimed a woman's privilege.”
“Yes—”
“That you were good enough to trust me to send the letter back unopened; and yet you would not trust me with the contents. One may conclude that it is, therefore, also a woman's privilege to be of two minds at the same time.”
“If she likes,” answered Denise. To which wise men know that there is no answer.
De Vasselot made a tragic gesture with his one available hand, and cast his eyes upwards in a mute appeal to the gods. He sighed heavily, and the expression of his face seemed to indicate a hopeless despair.
“What is the matter?” she asked, with a solicitude which was perhaps slightly exaggerated.
“What is one to understand? I ask you that?” said Lory, turning towards her almost fiercely.
“What do you want to understand, monsieur?” asked Denise, quietly.
“Mon Dieu—you!”
“Me!”
“Yes. I cannot understand you at all. You ask my advice, and then you act contrary to it. You write me a letter, and you forbid me to open it. Ah! I was a fool to send that letter back. I have often thought so since—”
Denise was looking gravely at him with an expression in her eyes which made him stop, and laugh, and contradict himself suddenly.
“You are quite right, mademoiselle, I was not a fool to send it back. It was the only thing I could do; and yet I almost thought, just now, that you were not glad that I had done so.”
“Then you thought quite wrong,” said Denise, sharply, with a gleam of anger in her eyes. “You think that it is only I who am difficult to understand. You are no easier. They say in Balagna that, if you liked, you could be a sort of king in Northern Corsica, and I am quite sure you have the manners of one.”
“Thank you, mademoiselle,” he said with a laugh.
“Oh—I do not mean the agreeable side of the character. I meant that you are rather given to ordering people about. You send an incompetent and stupid little priest to take us by the hand, and lead us out of the Casa Perucca like two school-children, without so much as a word of explanation.”
“But I had not your permission to write to you.”
Denise laughed gaily.
“So far as that goes you had not my permission to order me out of my own house; to send a steamer to St. Florent to fetch me; to treat me as if I were a regiment, in a word—and yet you did it, monsieur.”
Lory sat up in his desire to defend himself, winced and lay down again.
“I fancy it is your Corsican blood,” said Denise, reflectively. She rose and re-arranged a very sporting dustcloth which the baroness had laid across the wounded man's legs, and which his movement had cast to one side. “However, it remains for me to thank you,” she said, and did not sit down again.
“It may have been badly done, mademoiselle,” he said earnestly, “but I still think that it was the wisest thing to do.”
“And still you give me no reasons,” she said without turning to look at him. She was standing at the edge of the verandah, looking thoughtfully out at the matchless view. For the house stood above the pines which lay like a dusky green carpet between it and the Mediterranean. “And I am not going to ask you for them,” she added with an odd little smile, not devoid of that deep wisdom with which it is to be presumed women are born; for they have it when it is most useful to them, and at an age when their masculine contemporaries are singularly ignorant of human nature.
“I am going,” she said after a pause. “Jane told me that I must not tire you.”
“Then stay,” he said. “It is only when you are not there that I find it tiring.”
She did not answer, and did not move until a servant came noiselessly from the house and approached Lory.
“It is a man,” he said, “who will not be denied, and says he must speak to Monsieur le Comte. He is from Corsica.”
Denise turned, and her face was quite changed. She had until that moment forgotten Corsica.
“Lov'd I not honour more.”
The servant retired to bring the new arrival to the verandah. Denise followed him, and, after a few paces, returned to Lory.
“If it is one of my people,” she said, “I should like to see him before he goes.”
The man who followed the servant to the verandah a minute later had a dark, clean-shaven face, all drawn into fine lines and innumerable minute wrinkles. Such lines mean starvation; but in this case they told a tale of the past, for the dark eyes had no hungry look. They looked hunted—that was all. The glitter of starvation had left them. He glanced uneasily around, took off his hat and bowed curtly to Lory. The hat and the clothes were new. Then he turned and looked at the servant, who lingered, with a haughty stare which must have been particularly offensive to that respectable Parisian menial. For the Corsicans are bad servants, and despise good servitude in others. When the footman had gone, the new-comer turned to Lory, and said, in a low voice—
“I saw you at Toulon. I have not seen many faces in my life—for I have spent most of it in the macquis—so I remember those I have once met. I knew the Count de Vasselot when he was a young man, and he was what you are now. You are a de Vasselot.”
“Yes,” answered Lory.
“I thought so. That is why I followed you from Toulon—spending my last sou to do so.”
He stopped. His two hands were in the pockets of his dark corduroy trousers, and he jerked them out with a sudden movement, bringing the empty pockets to view.
“Voilà!” he said, “and I want to go to the war. So I came to you.”
“Good,” said Lory, looking him up and down. “You look tough, mon ami.”
“I am,” answered the Corsican. “Ten years of macquis, winter and summer—for one thing or another—do not make a man soft. I was told—the Abbé Susini told me—that France wants every man she can get, so I thought I would try a little fighting.”
“Good,” said Lory again. “You will find it very good fun.”
The man gave a twisted grin. He had forgotten how to laugh. He drew forward the chair that Denise had just quitted, and sat down close to Lory in quite a friendly way, for there is a bond that draws fighting men and roaming men together despite accidental differences of station.
“One sees,” he said, “that you are a de Vasselot. And I belong to the de Vasselots—! Whenever I have got into trouble it has been on that side.”
He looked round to make sure that none could overhear.
“It was I who shot that Italian dog, Pietro Andrei,” he mentioned in confidence, “on the road below Olmeta—but that was a personal matter.”
“Ah!” said Lory, who had heard the story of Andrei's death on the market-place at Olmeta, and the stern determination of his widow to avenge it.
“Yes—I was starving, and Andrei had money on him. In the old days it was easy enough to get food in the macquis. One could come down into the villages at night. But now it is different. It is a hard life there now, and one may easily die of starvation. There are many who, like Pietro Andrei, are friendly with the gendarmes.”
He finished with a gesture of supreme disgust, as if friendship with a gendarme were the basest of crimes.
“When did you see the Abbé Susini?” asked Lory, “and where—if you can tell me that?”
“I saw him in the macquis. He often goes up into the mountains alone, dressed like one of us. He is a queer man, that abbé. He says that he sometimes thinks it well to care for the wanderers from his flock—a jest, you see.”
And the man gave his crooked grin again.
“It was above Asco, in the high mountains near Cinto,” he continued, “and about a week ago. It was he who gave me money, and told me to come and fight for France. He was arranging for others to do the same.”
“The abbé is a practical man,” said Lory.
“Yes—and he told me news of Olmeta,” said the man, glancing sideways at his companion.
“What news?”
“You have no doubt heard it—of Vasselot.”
“I have heard nothing, my friend, but cannon. I am from Sedan to-day.”
The man seemed to hesitate. He turned uneasily in his chair, glanced this way and that among the trees—a habit acquired in the macquis, no doubt. He took off his hat and passed his hand pensively over his hair. Then he turned to Lory.
“There is no longer a Château de Vasselot—it is gone—burnt to the ground, mon brave monsieur.”
“Who burnt it?” asked de Vasselot.
“Who knows?” replied the man. “The Peruccas, no doubt. They have a woman to lead them now!”
The man finished with a short laugh, which was unpleasant to the ear.
Lory thought of the woman who was leading the Peruccas now, who had quitted the chair in which her accuser now sat, a few minutes earlier, and smiled.
“Have you a cigarette?” asked the Corsican, bluntly.
“Yes—but I cannot offer it to you. It is in my right-hand pocket, and my right arm is disabled.”
“An arm and a leg, eh?” said the man, seeking in the pocket indicated by Lory, for the neat silver cigarette-case, which he handled with a sort of grand air—this gentleman of the mountain side. “You will smoke also?”
And with his own brown fingers he was kind enough to place a cigarette between de Vasselot's lips. The tobacco-smoke seemed to make him feel still more at home with the head of his clan. For he sat down again and began the conversation in quite a familiar way.
“Who is this Colonel Gilbert of Bastia, who mixes himself up in affairs?” he inquired.
“What affairs, my friend?”
“Well, the affairs of others, it would appear. We hear strange stories in the macquis—and things that one would never expect to reach the mountains. They say that Colonel Gilbert busies himself in stirring up the Peruccas and the de Vasselots against each other—an affair that has slept these thirty years.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, and you should know it, you who are the chief of the de Vasselots, and have this woman to deal with; the women are always the worst. The château, they say, was burnt down, and the women disappeared from the Casa Perucca in the same week. The Casa Perucca is empty now, and the Château de Vasselot is gone—at Olmeta they are bored enough, I can tell you.”
“They have nothing to quarrel about,” suggested Lory.
“Nothing,” replied the Corsican, quite gravely.
“And the château was empty when they burnt it?” inquired Lory.
“Yes; it has been empty since I was a boy. I remember it when I went to St. Florent to school, and it was then that I used to see your father, the count. He was powerful in those days—before the Peruccas began to get strong. But they overrun that country now, which is no doubt the reason why you have never been there.”
“Pardon me—I was there when the war broke out two months ago.”
“Ah! We never heard that in the macquis, though the Abbé Susini must have known it. He knows so much that he does not tell—that abbé.”
“Which makes him the strong man he is, mon ami.”
“You are right—you are right,” said the Corsican, rising energetically. “But I am wasting your time with my talk, and tiring you as well, no doubt.”
“Wait a minute,” replied Lory, touching the bell that stood on a table by his side. “I will give you a letter to a friend of mine, commanding a regiment in Paris.”
The servant brought the necessary materials, and Lory prepared awkwardly to write. His arm was still weak, but he could use his hand without pain. While he was writing, the man sat watching him, and at last muttered an exclamation of wonderment.
“It is a marvel how you resemble the count,” he said, “as I remember him thirty years ago, when I was a boy. And do you know, monsieur, I saw an old man the other day for a moment, in passing on the road, above Asco, who brought my heart into my throat. If he had not been dead this score of years it might have been your father—not as I remember him, but as the years would have made him. I was hidden in the trees at the side of the road, and he passed by on foot. He had the air of going into the macquis. But I do not know who he was.”
“When was that?” asked de Vasselot, pausing with his pen on the paper.
“That must have been a month ago.”
“And you never saw or heard of him again?”
“No,” answered the man.
Lory continued to write, his arm moving laboriously on the paper.
“I must have a name—of some sort,” he said, “to give my friend, the commandant.”
“Ah! I cannot give you my own. Jean Florent—since I came from St. Florent—that will do.”
De Vasselot wrote the name, folded and addressed the letter.
“There”, he said, “and I wish you good luck. Good luck in war-time may mean gold lace on your sleeve in a few months. I shall join you as soon as I can throw my leg across a horse. Will two hundred francs serve you to reach Paris?”
“Give me one hundred. I am no beggar.”
He took the letter and the bank note, shook hands, and went away as abruptly as he came. The man was a murderer, with probably more than one life to account for; and yet he carried his crimes with a certain dignity, and had, at all events, that grand manner which comes from the habit of facing life fearlessly with the odds against.
Lory sat up and watched him. He rang the bell.
“See that man off the premises,” he said to the servant, “and then beg Mademoiselle Lange to be good enough to return here.”
Denise kept him waiting a long time, and then came with reluctant steps. The mention of Corsica seemed to have changed her humour. She sat down, nevertheless, in the chair, placed there by Fate.
“You sent for me,” she said, rather curtly.
“Because I could not come myself,” he answered. “I did not want you to see that man. Or rather, I did not want him to see you. He is not one of your people—quite the contrary.”
And de Vasselot laughed with significance.
“One of yours?” she suggested.
“So it appears, though I was not aware of the honour. He described you as 'that woman.'”
Denise laughed lightly, and threw back her head.
“He may describe me as he likes. Did he bring you news?”
And Denise turned away as she spoke, with that air of indifference which so often covers a keen desire for information, if it is a woman who seeks it.
“Yes,” answered Lory, turning, as she turned, to look at her. He looked at her whenever opportunity offered. The cheek half turned from him was a little sunburnt, the colour of a peach that has ripened in the open under a Southern sun, for Denise loved the air. Perhaps he had only spoken the truth when he said that her absence made him tired. There are many in the world who have to fight against that weariness all their lives. At last, as if with an effort, Denise turned, and met his glance for a moment.
“Bad news,” she said; “I can see that.”
“Yes. It is bad enough.”
“Of your estates?” inquired Denise.
“No. I never cared for the estate; I do not care for it now.”
“Then it is of ... some one?”
Lory did not answer at once.
“I shall have to go back to Corsica,” he said at length, “as soon as I can move—in a few days.”
Denise glanced at him with angry eyes.
“I was told that story,” she said, “but did not believe it.”
De Vasselot turned and looked at her, but could not see her averted face. His eyes were suddenly fierce. He was a fighter—of a fighting stock—and he instantly perceived that he was called upon at this moment to fight for the happiness of his whole life. He put out his hand and deliberately took hold of the skirt of her dress. She should not run away at all events. He twisted the soft material round his half-disabled fingers.
“What story?” he asked quietly.
Denise's eyes flashed, and then suddenly grew gentle. She did not quite know whether she was furious or afraid.
“That there was some one in the Château de Vasselot to whom—whom you loved.”
“It is you that I love, mademoiselle,” he answered sharply, with a ring in his voice, which came as a surprise to both of them, and which she never forgot all her life. “No. Do not go. You are pulling on my injured arm and I shall not let go.”
Denise sat still, silent and at bay.
“Then who was in the château?” she asked at last.
“I cannot tell you.”
“If it is as you say—about me—and—I ask you not to go to Corsica?”
“I must go.”
“Why?” asked Denise, with a dangerous quiet in her voice.
“I cannot tell you.”
“Then you expect a great deal.”
De Vasselot slowly untwined his fingers and drew in his arm.
“True,” he said reflectively. “I must ask nothing or too much. I asked more than you can give, mademoiselle.”
A faint smile flickered across Denise's eyes. Who was he, to say how much a woman can give? She was free to go now, but did not move.
“With Corsica and—” she paused and glanced at his helpless attitude in the long chair,—“and the war, your life is surely sufficiently occupied as it is,” she said coldly.
“But these evil times will pass. The war will cease, and then one may think of being happy. So long as there is war, I must of course fight—fight—fight, while there is a France to fight for.”
Denise laughed.
“That is your scheme of life?” she asked bitterly.
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
She rose and turned angrily away.
“Then it is France you care for—if it is no one in Corsica. France—nothing and nobody—but France.”
And she left him.