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THE ISLE OF UNREST


By Henry Seton Merriman



TO LUCASTA


GOING TO THE WARS

               Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind
               That from the nunnery
               Of thy chaste breast, and quiet mind,
               To war and arms I fly.

               True: a new mistress now I chase,
               The first foe in the field;
               And with a stronger faith embrace
               A sword, a horse, a shield.

               Yet this inconstancy is such
               As you too shall adore;
               I could not love thee, dear, so much
               Lov'd I not honour more.

               RICHARD LOVELACE.



CONTENTS


CHAPTER

       I. THE MOVING FINGER
      II. CHEZ CLÉMENT
     III. A BY-PATH
      IV. A TOSS-UP
       V. IN THE RUE DU CHERCHE-MIDI
      VI. NEIGHBOURS
     VII. JOURNEY'S END
    VIII.  AT VASSELOT
      IX. THE PROMISED LAND
       X. THUS FAR
      XI. BY SURPRISE
     XII. A SUMMONS
    XIII. WAR
     XIV. GOSSIP
      XV. WAR
     XVI. A MASTERFUL MAN
    XVII. WITHOUT DRUM OR TRUMPET
   XVIII. A WOMAN OF ACTION
     XIX. THE SEARCH
      XX. WOUNDED
     XXI. FOR FRANCE
    XXII. IN THE MACQUIS
   XXIII. AN UNDERSTANDING
    XXIV. “CE QUE FEMME VEUT”
      XXV. ON THE GREAT ROAD
    XXVI. THE END OF THE JOURNEY
   XXVII. THE ABBÉ'S SALAD
  XXVIII. GOLD
    XXIX. A BALANCED ACCOUNT
     XXX. THE BEGINNING AND THE END




THE ISLE OF UNREST




CHAPTER I.


THE MOVING FINGER.

     “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
     Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit
     Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
     Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”


The afternoon sun was lowering towards a heavy bank of clouds hanging
still and sullen over the Mediterranean. A mistral was blowing. The last
yellow rays shone fiercely upon the towering coast of Corsica, and the
windows of the village of Olmeta glittered like gold.

There are two Olmetas in Corsica, both in the north, both on the west
coast, both perched high like an eagle's nest, both looking down upon
those lashed waters of the Mediterranean, which are not the waters that
poets sing of, for they are as often white as they are blue; they are
seldom glassy except in the height of summer and sailors tell that they
are as treacherous as any waters of the earth. Neither aneroid nor
weather-wisdom may, as a matter of fact, tell when a mistral will arise,
how it will blow, how veer, how drop and rise, and drop again. For it
will blow one day beneath a cloudless sky, lashing the whole sea white
like milk, and blow harder to-morrow under racing clouds.

The great chestnut trees in and around Olmeta groaned and strained in the
grip of their lifelong foe. The small door, the tiny windows, of every
house were rigorously closed. The whole place had a wind-swept air
despite the heavy foliage. Even the roads, and notably the broad “Place,”
had been swept clean and dustless. And in the middle of the “Place,”
between the fountain and the church steps, a man lay dead upon his face.

It is as well to state here, once for all, that we are dealing with
Olmeta-di-Tuda, and not that other Olmeta--the virtuous, di Capocorso, in
fact, which would shudder at the thought of a dead man lying on its
“Place,” before the windows of the very Mairie, under the shadow of the
church. For Cap Corse is the good boy of Corsica, where men think
sorrowfully of the wilder communes to the south, and raise their eyebrows
at the very mention of Corte and Sartene--where, at all events, the women
have for husbands, men--and not degenerate Pisan vine-snippers.

It was not so long ago either. For the man might have been alive to-day,
though he would have been old and bent no doubt; for he was a thick-set
man, and must have been strong. He had, indeed, carried his lead up from
the road that runs by the Guadelle river. Was he not to be traced all the
way up the short cut through the olive terraces by one bloody footprint
at regular intervals? You could track his passage across the “Place,”
 towards the fountain of which he had fallen short like a poisoned rat
that tries to reach water and fails.

He lay quite alone, still grasping the gun which he had never laid aside
since boyhood. No one went to him; no one had attempted to help him. He
lay as he had fallen, with a thin stream of blood running slowly from one
trouser-leg. For this was Corsican work--that is to say, dirty work--from
behind a rock, in the back, at close range, without warning or mercy, as
honest men would be ashamed to shoot the merest beast of the forest. It
was as likely as not a charge of buck-shot low down in the body, leaving
the rest to hemorrhage or gangrene.

All Olmeta knew of it, and every man took care that it should be no
business of his. Several had approached, pipe in mouth, and looked at the
dead man without comment; but all had gone away again, idly,
indifferently. For in this the most beautiful of the islands, human life
is held cheaper than in any land of Europe.

Some one, it was understood, had gone to tell the gendarmes down at St.
Florent. There was no need to send and tell his wife--half a dozen women
were racing through the olive groves to get the first taste of that.
Perhaps some one had gone towards Oletta to meet the Abbé Susini, whose
business in a measure this must be.

The sun suddenly dipped behind the heavy bank of clouds and the mountains
darkened. Although it lies in the very centre of the Mediterranean,
Corsica is a gloomy land, and the summits of her high mountains are more
often covered than clear. It is a land of silence and brooding quiet. The
women are seldom gay; the men, in their heavy clothes of dark corduroy,
have little to say for themselves. Some of them were standing now in the
shadow of the great trees, smoking their pipes in silence, and looking
with a studied indifference at nothing. Each was prepared to swear before
a jury at the Bastia assizes that he knew nothing of the “accident,” as
it is here called, to Pietro Andrei, and had not seen him crawl up to
Olmeta to die. Indeed, Pietro Andrei's death seemed to be nobody's
business, though we are told that not so much as a sparrow may fall
unheeded.

The Abbé Susini was coming now--a little fiery man, with the walk of one
who was slightly bow-legged, though his cassock naturally concealed this
defect. He was small and not too broad, with a narrow face and clean,
straight features--something of the Spaniard, something of the Greek,
nothing Italian, nothing French. In a word, this was a Corsican, which is
to say that he was different from any other European race, and would, as
sure as there is corn in Egypt, be overbearing, masterful, impossible. He
was, of course, clean shaven, as brown as old oak, with little flashing
black eyes. His cassock was a good one, and his hat, though dusty,
shapely and new. But his whole bearing threw, as it were, into the
observer's face the suggestion that the habit does not make the priest.

He came forward without undue haste, and displayed little surprise and no
horror.

“Quite like old times,” he said to himself, remembering the days of Louis
Philippe. He knelt down beside the dead man, and perhaps the attitude
reminded him of his calling; for he fell to praying, and made the gesture
of the cross over Andrei's head. Then suddenly he leapt to his feet, and
shook his lean fist out towards the valley and St. Florent, as if he knew
whence this trouble came.

“Provided they would keep their work in their own commune,” he cried,
“instead of bringing disgrace on a parish that has not had the gendarmes
this--this--”

“Three days,” added one of the bystanders, who had drawn near. And he
said it with a certain pride, as of one well pleased to belong to a
virtuous community.

But the priest was not listening. He had already turned aside in his
quick, jerky way; for he was a comparatively young man. He was looking
through the olives towards the south.

“It is the women,” he said, and his face suddenly hardened. He was
impulsive, it appeared--quick to feel for others, fiery in his anger,
hasty in his judgment.

From the direction in which he and the bystanders looked, came the hum of
many voices, and the high, incessant shrieks of one who seemed demented.
Presently a confused procession appeared from the direction of the south,
hurrying through the narrow street now called the Rue Carnot. It was
headed by a woman, who led a little child, running and stumbling as he
ran. At her heels a number of women hurried, confusedly shouting,
moaning, and wailing. The men stood waiting for them in dead silence--a
characteristic scene. The leading woman seemed to be superior to her
neighbours, for she wore a black silk handkerchief on her head instead of
a white or  cotton. It is almost a mantilla, and marks as clear a
social distinction in Corsica as does that head-dress in Spain. She
dragged at the child, and scarce turned her head when he fell and
scrambled as best he could to his feet. He laughed and crowed with
delight, remembering last year's carnival with that startling,
photographic memory of early childhood which never forgets.

At every few steps the woman gave a shriek as if she were suffering some
intermittent agony which caught her at regular intervals. At the sight of
the crowd she gave a quick cry of despair, and ran forward, leaving her
child sprawling on the road. She knelt by the dead man's side with shriek
after shriek, and seemed to lose all control over herself, for she gave
way to those strange gestures of despair of which many read in novels and
a few in the Scriptures, and which come by instinct to those who have no
reading at all. She dragged the handkerchief from her head, and threw it
over her face. She beat her breast. She beat the very ground with her
clenched hands. Her little boy, having gathered his belongings together
and dusted his cotton frock, now came forward, and stood watching her
with his fingers at his mouth. He took it to be a game which he did not
understand; as indeed it was--the game of life.

The priest scratched his chin with his forefinger, which was probably a
habit with him when puzzled, and stood looking down out of the corner of
his eyes at the ground.

It was he, however, who moved first, and, stooping, loosed the clenched
fingers round the gun. It was a double-barrelled gun, at full cock, and
every man in the little crowd assembled carried one like it. To this day,
if one meets a man, even in the streets of Corte or Ajaccio, who carries
no gun, it may be presumed that it is only because he pins greater faith
on a revolver.

Neither hammer had fallen, and the abbé gave a little nod. It was, it
seemed, the usual thing to make quite sure before shooting, so that there
might be no unnecessary waste of powder or risk of reprisal. The woman
looked at the gun, too, and knew the meaning of the raised hammers.

She leapt to her feet, and looked round at the sullen faces.

“And some of you know who did it,” she said; “and you will help the
murderer when he goes to the macquis, and take him food, and tell him
when the gendarmes are hunting him.”

She waved her hand fiercely towards the mountains, which loomed, range
behind range, dark and forbidding to the south, towards Calvi and Corte.
But the men only shrugged their shoulders; for the forest and the
mountain brushwood were no longer the refuge they used to be in this the
last year of the iron rule of Napoleon III, who, whether he possessed or
not the Corsican blood that his foes deny him, knew, at all events, how
to rule Corsica better than any man before or since.

“No, no,” said the priest, soothingly. “Those days are gone. He will be
taken, and justice will be done.”

But he spoke without conviction, almost as if he had no faith in this
vaunted regeneration of a people whose history is a story of endless
strife--as if he could see with a prophetic eye thirty years into the
future, down to the present day, when the last state of that land is
worse than the first.

“Justice!” cried the woman. “There is no justice in Corsica! What had
Pietro done that he should lie there? Only his duty--only that for which
he was paid. He was the Perucca's agent, and because he made the idlers
pay their rent, they threatened him. Because he put up fences, they
raised their guns to him. Because he stopped their thieving and their
lawlessness, they shoot him. He drove their cattle from the fields
because they were Perucca's fields, and he was paid to watch his master's
interests. But Perucca they dare not touch, because his clan is large,
and would hunt the murderer down. If he was caught, the Peruccas would
make sure of the jury--ay! And of the judge at Bastia--but Pietro is not
of Corsica; he has no friends and no clan, so justice is not for him.”

She knelt down again as she spoke and laid her hand on her dead husband's
back, but she made no attempt to move him. For although Pietro Andrei was
an Italian, his wife was Corsican--a woman of Bonifacio, that grim town
on a rock so often besieged and never yet taken by a fair fight. She had
been brought up in, as it were, an atmosphere of conventional
lawlessness, and knew that it is well not to touch a dead man till the
gendarmes have seen him, but to send a child or an old woman to the
gendarmerie, and then to stand aloof and know nothing; and feign
stupidity; so that the officials, when they arrive, may find the whole
village at work in the fields or sitting in their homes, while the dead,
who can tell no tales, has suddenly few friends and no enemies.

Then Andrei's widow rose slowly to her feet. Her face was composed now
and set. She arranged the black silk handkerchief on her head, and set
her dress in order. She was suddenly calm and quiet. “But see,” she said,
looking round into eyes that failed to meet her own, “in this country
each man must execute his own justice. It has always been so, and it will
be so, so long as there are any Corsicans left. And if there is no man
left, then the women must do it.”

She tied her apron tighter, as if about to undertake some hard domestic
duty, and brushed the dust from her black dress.

“Come here,” she said, turning to the child, and lapsing into the soft
dialect of the south and east--“come here, thou child of Pietro Andrei.”

The child came forward. He was probably two years old, and understood
nothing that was passing.

“See here, you of Olmeta,” she said composedly; and, stooping down, she
dipped her finger in the pool of blood that had collected in the dust.
“See here--and here.”

As she spoke she hastily smeared the blood over the child's face and
dragged him away from the priest, who had stepped forward.

“No, no,” he protested. “Those times are past.”

“Past!” said the woman, with a flash of fury. “All the country knows that
your own mother did it to you at Sartene, where you come from.”

The abbé made no answer, but, taking the child by the arm, dragged him
gently away from his mother. With his other hand he sought in his pocket
for a handkerchief. But he was a lone man, without a housekeeper, and the
handkerchief was missing. The child looked from one to the other,
laughing uncertainly, with his grimly decorated face.

Then the priest stooped, and with the skirt of his cassock wiped the
child's face.

“There,” he said to the woman, “take him home, for I hear the gendarmes
coming.”

Indeed, the trotting of horses and the clank of the long swinging sabres
could be heard on the road below the village, and one by one the
onlookers dropped away, leaving the Abbé Susini alone at the foot of the
church steps.




CHAPTER II.


CHEZ CLÉMENT.


     “Comme on est heureux quand on sait ce qu'on veut!”


It was the dinner hour at the Hotel Clément at Bastia; and the event was
of greater importance than the outward appearance of the house would
seem to promise. For there is no promise at all about the house on the
left-hand side of Bastia's one street, the Boulevard du Palais, which
bears, as its only sign, a battered lamp with the word “Clément” printed
across it. The ground floor is merely a rope and hemp warehouse. A small
Corsican donkey, no bigger than a Newfoundland dog, lives in the
basement, and passes many of his waking hours in what may be termed the
entrance hall of the hotel, appearing to consider himself in some sort a
concierge. The upper floors of the huge Genoese house are let out in
large or small apartments to mysterious families, of which the younger
members are always to be met carrying jugs carefully up and down the
greasy, common staircase.

The first floor is the Hotel Clément, or, to be more correct, one is
“chez Clément” on the first floor.

“You stay with Clément,” will be the natural remark of any on board the
Marseilles or Leghorn steamer, on being told that the traveller
disembarks at Bastia.

“We shall meet to-night chez Clément,” the officers say to each other on
leaving the parade ground at four o'clock.

“Déjeuner chez Clément,” is the usual ending to a notice of a marriage,
or a first communion, in the _Petit Bastiais_, that greatest of all
foolscap-size journals.

It is comforting to reflect, in these times of hurried changes, that the
traveller to Bastia may still find himself chez Clément--may still have
to kick at the closed door of the first-floor flat, and find that door
opened by Clément himself, always affable, always gentlemanly, with the
same crumbs strewed carelessly down the same waistcoat, or, if it is
evening time, in his spotless cook's dress. One may be sure of the same
grave welcome, and the easy transition from grave to gay, the smiling,
grand manner of conducting the guest to one of those vague and darksome
bedrooms, where the jug and the basin never match, where the floor is of
red tiles, with a piece of uncertain carpet sliding hither and thither,
with the shutters always shut, and the mustiness of the middle ages
hanging heavy in the air. For Bastia has not changed, and never will. And
it is not only to be fervently hoped, but seems likely, that Clément will
never grow old, and never die, but continue to live and demonstrate the
startling fact that one may be born and live all one's life in a remote,
forgotten town, and still be a man of the world.

The soup had been served precisely at six, and the four artillery
officers were already seated at the square table near the fireplace,
which was and is still exclusively the artillery table. The other
_habitués_ were in their places at one or other of the half-dozen tables
that fill the room--two gentlemen from the Prefecture, a civil engineer
of the projected railway to Corte, a commercial traveller of the old
school, and, at the corner table, farthest from the door, Colonel Gilbert
of the Engineers. A clever man this, who had seen service in the Crimea,
and had invariably distinguished himself whenever the opportunity
occurred; but he was one of those who await, and do not seek
opportunities. Perhaps he had enemies, or, what is worse, no friends; for
at the age of forty he found himself appointed to Bastia, one of the
waste places of the War Office, where an inferior man would have done
better.

Colonel Gilbert was a handsome man, with a fair moustache, a high
forehead, surmounted by thin, receding, smooth hair, and good-natured,
idle eyes. He lunched and dined chez Clément always, and was frankly,
good naturedly bored at Bastia. He hated Corsica, had no sympathy with
the Corsican, and was a Northern Frenchman to the tips of his long white
fingers.

“Your Bastia, my good Clément,” he said to the host, who invariably came
to the dining-room with the roast and solicited the opinion of each guest
upon the dinner in a few tactful, easy words--“your Bastia is a sad
place.”

This evening Colonel Gilbert was in a less talkative mood than usual, and
exchanged only a nod with his artillery colleagues as he passed to his
own small table. He opened his newspaper, and became interested in it at
once. It was several days old, and had come by way of Nice and Ajaccio
from Paris. All France was at this time eager for news, and every
Frenchman studied the journal of his choice with that uneasiness which
seems to foreshadow in men's hearts the approach of any great event. For
this was the spring of 1870, when France, under the hitherto iron rule of
her adventurer emperor, suddenly began to plunge and rear, while the
nations stood around her wondering who should receive the first kick. The
emperor was ill; the cheaper journals were already talking of his
funeral. He was uneasy and restless, turning those dull eyes hither
and thither over Europe--a man of inscrutable face and deep hidden
plans--perhaps the greatest adventurer who ever sat a throne. Condemned
by a French Court of Peers in 1840 to imprisonment for life, he went to
Ham with the quiet question, “But how long does perpetuity last in
France?” And eight years later he was absolute master of the country.

Corsica in particular was watching events, for Corsica was cowed. She had
come under the rule of this despot, and for the first time in her history
had found her master. Instead of being numbered by hundreds, as they were
before and are again now at the end of the century, the outlaws hiding in
the mountains scarce exceeded a score. The elections were conducted more
honestly than had ever been before, and the Continental newspapers spoke
hopefully of the dawn of civilization showing itself among a people who
have ever been lawless, have ever loved war better than peace.

“But it is a false dawn,” said the Abbé Susini of Olmeta, himself an
insatiable reader of newspapers, a keen and ardent politician. Like the
majority of Corsicans, he was a staunch Bonapartist, and held that the
founder of that marvellous dynasty was the greatest man to walk this
earth since the days of direct Divine inspiration.

It was only because Napoleon III was a Bonaparte that Corsica endured his
tyranny; perhaps, indeed, tyranny and an iron rule suited better than
equity or tolerance a people descended from the most ancient of the
fighting races, speaking a tongue wherein occur expressions of hate and
strife that are Tuscan, Sicilian, Greek, Spanish, and Arabic.

Now that the emperor's hand was losing its grip on the helm, there were
many in Corsica keenly alive to the fact that any disturbance in France
would probably lead to anarchy in the turbulent island. There were even
some who saw a hidden motive in the appointment of Colonel Gilbert as
engineer officer to a fortified place that had no need of his services.

Gilbert himself probably knew that his appointment had been made in
pursuance of the emperor's policy of road and rail. For Corsica was to be
opened up by a railway, and would have none of it. And though to-day the
railway from Bastia to Ajaccio is at last open, the station at Corte
remains a fortified place with a loopholed wall around it.

But Colonel Gilbert kept his own counsel. He sat, indeed, on the board of
the struggling railway--a gift of the French Government to a department
which has never paid its way, has always been an open wound. But he never
spoke there, and listened to the fierce speeches of the local members
with his idle, easy smile. He seemed to stand aloof from his new
neighbours and their insular interests. He was, it appeared, a cultured
man, and perhaps found none in this wild island who could understand his
thoughts. His attitude towards his surroundings was, in a word, the usual
indifferent attitude of the Frenchman in exile, reading only French
newspapers, fixing his attention only on France, and awaiting with such
patience as he could command the moment to return thither.

“Any news?” asked one of the artillery officers--a sub-lieutenant
recently attached to his battery, a penniless possessor of an historic
name, who perhaps had dreams of carving his way through to the front
again.

The colonel shrugged his shoulders.

“You may have the papers afterwards,” he said; for it was not wise to
discuss any news in a public place at that time. “See you at the Réunion,
no doubt.”

And he did not speak again except to Clément, who came round to take the
opinion of each guest upon the fare provided.

“Passable,” said the colonel--“passable, my good Clément. But do you
know, I could send you to prison for providing this excellent leveret at
this time of year. Are there no game laws, my friend?”

But Clement only laughed and spread out his hands, for Corsica chooses to
ignore the game laws. And the colonel, having finished his coffee,
buckled on his sword, and went out into the twilight streets of what was
once the capital of Corsica. Bastia, indeed, has, like the majority of
men and women, its history written on its face. On the high land above
the old port stands the citadel, just as the Genoese merchant-adventurers
planned it five hundred years ago. Beneath the citadel, and clustered
round the port, is the little old Genoese town, no bigger than a village,
which served for two hundred and fifty years as capital to an island in
constant war, against which it had always to defend itself.

It would seem that some hundred years ago, just before the island became
nominally a French possession, Bastia, for some reason or another, took
it into its municipal head to grow, and it ran as it were all down the
hill to that which is now the new harbour. It built two broad streets of
tall Genoese houses, of which one somehow missed fire, and became a slum,
while the other, with its great houses but half inhabited, is to-day the
Boulevard du Palais, where fashionable Bastia promenades itself--when
it is too windy, as it almost always is, to walk on the Place St.
Nicholas--where all the shops are, and where the modern European
necessities of daily life are not to be bought for love or money.

There are, however, two excellent knife-shops in the Boulevard du Palais,
where every description of stiletto may be purchased, where, indeed, the
enterprising may buy a knife which will not only go shrewdly into a foe,
but come right out on the other side--in front, that is to say, for no
true Corsican is so foolish as to stab anywhere but in the back--and,
protruding thus, will display some pleasing legend, such as “Vendetta,”
 or “I serve my master,” or “Viva Corsica,” roughly engraved on the long
blade. There is a macaroni warehouse. There are two of those mysterious
Mediterranean provision warehouses, with some ancient dried sausages
hanging in the window, and either doorpost flanked by a tub of sardines,
highly, and yet, it would seem, insufficiently, cured. There is a tiny
book-shop displaying a choice of religious pamphlets and a fly-blown
copy of a treatise on viniculture. And finally, an ironmonger will sell
you anything but a bath, while he thrives on a lively trade in
percussion-caps and gunpowder.

Colonel Gilbert did not pause to look at these bewildering shop-windows,
for the simple reason that he knew every article there displayed.

He was, it will be remembered, a leisurely Frenchman, than whom there are
few human beings of a more easily aroused attention. Any small street
incident sufficed to make him pause. He had the air of one waiting for a
train, who knows that it will not come for hours yet. He strolled down
the boulevard, smoking a cigarette, and presently turned to the right,
emerging with head raised to meet the sea-breeze upon that deserted
promenade, the Place St. Nicholas.

Here he paused, and stood with his head slightly inclined to one side--an
attitude usually considered to be indicative of the artistic temperament,
and admired the prospect. The “Place” was deserted, and in the middle the
great statue of Napoleon stood staring blankly across the sea towards
Elba. There is, whether the artist intended it or not, a look of stony
amazement on this marble face as it gazes at the island of Elba lying
pink and hazy a few miles across that rippled sea; for on this side of
Corsica there is more peace than in the open waters of the Gulf of Lyons.

“Surely,” that look seems to say, “the world could never expect that puny
island to hold me.”

Colonel Gilbert stood and looked dreamily across the sea. It was plain to
the most incompetent observer that the statue represented one class of
men--those who make their opportunities; while Gilbert, with his high and
slightly receding forehead, his lazy eyes and good-natured mouth, was a
fair type of that other class which may take advantage of opportunities
that offer themselves. The majority of men have not even the pluck to do
that, which makes it easy for mediocre people to get on in this world.

Colonel Gilbert turned on his heel and walked slowly back to the Reunion
des Officiers--the military club which stands on the Place St. Nicholas
immediately behind the statue of Napoleon--a not too lively place of
entertainment, with a billiard-room, a reading-room, and half a dozen
iron tables and chairs on the pavement in front of the house. Here the
colonel seated himself, called for a liqueur, and sat watching a clear
moon rise from the sea beyond the Islet of Capraja.

It was the month of February, and the southern spring was already in the
air. The twilight is short in these latitudes, and it was now nearly
night. In Corsica, as in Spain, the coolest hour is between sunset and
nightfall. With complete darkness there comes a warm air from the ground.
This was now beginning to make itself felt; but Gilbert had not only the
pavement, but the whole Place St. Nicholas to himself. There are two
reasons why Corsicans do not walk abroad at night--the risk of a chill
and the risk of meeting one's enemy.

Colonel Gilbert gave no thought to these matters, but sat with crossed
legs and one spurred heel thrown out, contentedly waiting as if for that
train which he must assuredly catch, or for that opportunity, perhaps,
which was so long in coming that he no longer seemed to look for it. And
while he sat there a man came clanking from the town--a tired man, with
heavy feet and the iron heels of the labourer. He passed Colonel Gilbert,
and then, seeming to have recognized him by the light of the moon,
paused, and came back.

“Monsieur le colonel,” he said, without raising his hand to his hat, as a
Frenchman would have done.

“Yes,” replied the colonel's pleasant voice, with no ring of recognition
in it.

“It is Mattei--the driver of the St. Florent diligence,” explained the
man, who, indeed, carried his badge of office, a long whip.

“Of course; but I recognized you almost at once,” said the colonel, with
that friendliness which is so noticeable in the Republic to-day.

“You have seen me on the road often enough,” said the man, “and I have
seen you, Monsieur le Colonel, riding over to the Casa Perucca.”

“Of course.”

“You know Perucca's agent, Pietro Andrei?”

“Yes.”

“He was shot in the back on the Olmeta road this afternoon.”

Colonel Gilbert gave a slight start.

“Is that so?” he said at length, quietly, after a pause.

“Yes,” said the diligence-driver; and without further comment he walked
on, keeping well in the middle of the road, as it is wise to do when one
has enemies.




CHAPTER III.


A BY-PATH.

     “L'intrigue c'est tromper son homme;
     L'habileté c'est faire qu'il se trompe lui-même.”


For an idle-minded man, Colonel Gilbert was early astir the next morning,
and rode out of the town soon after sunrise, following the Vescovato
road, and chatting pleasantly enough with the workers already on foot and
in saddle on their way to the great plain of Biguglia, where men may
labour all day, though, if they spend so much as one night there, must
surely die. For the eastern coast of Corsica consists of a series of
level plains where malarial fever is as rife as in any African swamp, and
the traveller may ride through a fertile land where eucalyptus and palm
grow amid the vineyards, and yet no human being may live after sunset.
The labourer goes forth to his work in the morning accompanied by his
dog, carrying the ubiquitous double-barrelled gun at full cock, and
returns in the evening to his mountain village, where, at all events, he
may breathe God's air without fear.

The colonel turned to the right a few miles out, following the road which
leads straight to that mountain wall which divides all Corsica into the
“near” and the “far” side--into two peoples, speaking a different
dialect, following slightly different customs, and only finding
themselves united in the presence of a common foe. The road mounts
steadily, and this February morning had broken grey and cloudy, so that
the colonel found himself in the mists that hang over these mountains
during the spring months, long before he reached the narrow entrance to
the grim and soundless Lancone Defile. The heavy clouds had nestled down
the mountains, covering them like a huge thickness of wet cotton-wool.
The road, which is little more than a mule-path, is cut in the face of
the rock, and, far below, the river runs musically down to Lake Biguglia.
The colonel rode alone, though he could perceive another traveller on the
winding road in front of him--a peasant in dark clothes, with a huge felt
hat, astride on a little active Corsican horse--sure of foot, quick and
nervous, as fiery as the men of this strange land.

The defile is narrow, and the sun rarely warms the river that runs
through the depths where the foot of man can never have trodden since God
fashioned this earth. Colonel Gilbert, it would appear, was accustomed to
solitude. Perhaps he had known it so well during his sojourn in this
island of silence and loneliness, that he had fallen a victim to its
dangerous charms, and being indolent by nature, had discovered that it is
less trouble to be alone than to cultivate the society of man. The
Lancone Defile has to this day an evil name. It is not wise to pass
through it alone, for some have entered one end never to emerge at the
other. Colonel Gilbert pressed his heavy charger, and gained rapidly on
the horseman in front of him. When he was within two hundred yards of
him, at the highest part of the pass and through the narrow defile, he
sought in the inner pocket of his tunic--for in those days French
officers possessed no other clothes than their uniform--and produced a
letter. He examined it, crumpled it between his fingers, and rubbed it
across his dusty knee so that it looked old and travel-stained at once.
Then, with the letter in his hand, he put spurs to his horse and galloped
after the horseman in front of him. The man turned almost at once in his
saddle, as if care rode behind him there.

“Hi! mon ami,” cried the colonel, holding the letter high above his head.
“You have, I imagine, dropped this letter?” he added, as he approached
the other, who now awaited him.

“Where? No; but I have dropped no letter. Where was it? On the road?”

“Down there,” answered the colonel, pointing back with his whip, and
handing over the letter with a final air as if it were no affair of his.

“Perucca,” read the man, slowly, in the manner of one having small
dealings with pens and paper, “Mattei Perucca--at Olmeta.”

“Ah,” said the colonel, lighting a cigarette. He had apparently not
troubled to read the address on the envelope.

In such a thinly populated country as Corsica, faces are of higher import
than in crowded cities, where types are mingled and individuality soon
fades. The colonel had already recognized this man as of Olmeta--one of
those, perhaps, who had stood smoking on the “Place” there when Pietro
Andrei crawled towards the fountain and failed to reach it.

“I am going to Olmeta,” said the man, “and you also, perhaps.”

“No; I am exercising my horse, as you see. I shall turn to the left at
the cross-roads, and go towards Murato. I may come round by Olmeta
later--if I lose my way.”

The man smiled grimly. In Corsica men rarely laugh.

“You will not do that. You know this country too well for that. You are
the officer connected with the railway. I have seen you looking through
your instruments at the earth, in the mountains, in the rocks, and down
in the plains--everywhere.”

“It is my work,” answered the colonel, tapping with his whip the gold
lace on his sleeve. “One must do what one is ordered.”

The other shrugged his shoulders, not seeming to think that necessary.
They rode on in silence, which was only broken from time to time by the
colonel, who asked harmless questions as to the names of the mountain
summits now appearing through the riven clouds, or the course of the
rivers, or the ownership of the wild and rocky land. At the cross-roads
they parted.

“I am returning to Olmeta,” said the peasant, as they neared the
sign-post, “and will send that letter up to the Casa Perucca by one of my
children. I wonder”--he paused, and, taking the letter from his jacket
pocket, turned it curiously in his hand--“I wonder what is in it?”

The colonel shrugged his shoulders and turned his horse's head. It was,
it appeared, no business of his to inquire what the letter contained, or
to care whether it be delivered or not. Indeed, he appeared to have
forgotten all about it.

“Good day, my friend--good day,” he said absent-mindedly.

And an hour later he rode up to the Casa Perucca, having approached that
ancient house by a winding path from the valley below, instead of by the
high-road from the Col San Stefano to Olmeta, which runs past its very
gate. The Casa Perucca is rather singularly situated, and commands one of
the most wonderful views in this wild land of unrivalled prospects. The
high-road curves round the lower <DW72> of the mountains as round the base
of a sugar-loaf, and is cut at times out of the sheer rock, while a
little lower it is begirt by huge trees. It forms as it were a cornice,
perched three thousand feet above the valley, over which it commands a
view of mountain and bay and inlet, but never a house, never a church,
and the farthest point is beyond Calvi, thirty miles away. There is but
one spur--a vast buttress of fertile land thrown against the mountain, as
a buttress may be thrown against a church tower.

The Casa Perucca is built upon this spur of land, and the Perucca
estate--that is to say, the land attached to the Casa (for property is
held in small tenures in Corsica)--is all that lies outside the road. In
the middle ages the position would have been unrivalled, for it could be
attacked from one side only, and doubtless the Genoese Bank of St. George
must have had bitter reckonings with some dead and forgotten rebel, who
had his stronghold where the Casa now stands. The present house is
Italian in appearance--a long, low, verandahed house, built in two parts,
as if it had at one time been two houses, and only connected later by a
round tower, now painted a darker colour than the adjacent buildings.
There are occasional country houses like it to be found in Tuscany,
notably on the heights behind Fiesole.

The wall defining the peninsula is ten feet high, and is built actually
on the roadside, so that the Casa Perucca, with its great wooden gate,
turns a very cold shoulder upon its poor neighbours. It is, as a matter
of fact, the best house north of Calvi, and the site of it one of the
oldest. Its only rival is the Chateau de Vasselot, which stands deserted
down in the valley a few miles to the south, nearer to the sea, and
farther out of the world, for no high-road passes near it.

Beneath the Casa Perucca, on the northern <DW72> of the shoulder, the
ground falls away rapidly in a series of stony chutes, and to the south
and west there are evidences of the land having once been laid out in
terraces in the distant days when Corsicans were content to till the most
fertile soil in Europe--always excepting the Island of Majorca--but now
in the wane of the third empire, when every Corsican of any worth had
found employment in France, there were none to grow vines or cultivate
the olive. There is a short cut up from the valley from the mouldering
Chateau de Vasselot, which is practicable for a trained horse. And
Colonel Gilbert must have known this, for he had described a circle in
the wooded valley in order to gain it. He must also have been to the Casa
Perucca many times before, for he rang the bell suspended outside the
door built in the thickness of the southern wall, where a horseman would
not have expected to gain admittance. This door was, however, constructed
without steps on its inner side, for Corsica has this in common with
Spain, that no man walks where he can ride, so that steps are rarely
built where a gradual <DW72> will prove more convenient.

There was something suggestive of a siege in the way in which the door
was cautiously opened, and a man-servant peeped forth.

“Ah!” he said, with relief, “it is the Colonel Gilbert. Yes; monsieur may
see him, but no one else. Ah! But he is furious, I can tell you. He is in
the verandah--like a wild beast. I will take monsieur's horse.”

Colonel Gilbert went through the palms and bamboos and orange-trees
alone, towards the house; and there, walking up and down, and stopping
every moment to glance towards the door, of which the bell still sounded,
he perceived a large, stout man, clad in light tweed, wearing an old
straw hat and carrying a thick stick.

“Ah!” cried Perucca, “so you have heard the news. And you have come, I
hope, to apologize for your miserable France. It is thus that you govern
Corsica, with a Civil Service made up of a parcel of old women and young
counter-jumpers! I have no patience with your prefectures and your young
men with flowing neck-ties and kid gloves. Are we a girls' school to be
governed thus? And you--such great soldiers! Yes, I will admit that the
French are great soldiers, but you do not know how to rule Corsica. A
tight hand, colonel. Holy name of thunder!” And he stamped his foot with
a decisiveness that made the verandah tremble.

The colonel laughed pleasantly.

“They want some men of your type,” he said.

“Ah!” cried Perucca, “I would rule them, for they are cowards; they are
afraid of me. Do you know, they had the impertinence to send one of their
threatening letters to poor Andrei before they shot him. They sent him a
sheet of paper with a cross drawn on it. Then I knew he was done for.
They do not send that _pour rire_.”

He stopped short, and gave a jerk of the head. There was somewhere in his
fierce old heart a cord that vibrated to the touch of these rude mountain
customs; for the man was a Corsican of long descent and pure blood. Of
such the fighting nations have made good soldiers in the past, and even
Rome could not make them slaves.

“Or you could do it,” went on Perucca, with a shrewd nod, looking at him
beneath shaggy brows. “The velvet glove--eh? That would surprise them,
for they have never felt the touch of one. You, with your laugh and idle
ways, and behind them the perception--the perception of the devil--or a
woman.”

The colonel had drawn forward a basket chair, and was leaning back in it
with crossed legs, and one foot swinging.

“I? Heaven forbid! No, my friend; I require too little. It is only the
discontented who get on in the world. But, mind you, I would not mind
trying on a small scale. I have often thought I should like to buy a
little property on this side of the island, and cultivate it as they do
up in Cap Corse. It would be an amusement for my exile, and one could
perhaps make the butter for one's bread--green Chartreuse instead of
yellow--eh?”

He paused, and seeing that the other made no reply, continued in the same
careless strain.

“If you or one of the other proprietors on this side of the mountains
would sell--perhaps.”

But Perucca shook his head resolutely.

“No; we should not do that. You, who have had to do with the railway,
must know that. We will let our land go to rack and ruin, we will starve
it and not cultivate it, we will let the terraces fall away after the
rains, we will live miserably on the finest soil in Europe--we may
starve, but we won't sell.”

Gilbert did not seem to be listening very intently. He was watching the
young bamboos now bursting into their feathery new green, as they waved
to and fro against the blue sky. His head was slightly inclined to one
side, his eyes were contemplative.

“It is a pity,” he said, after a pause, “that Andrei did not have a
better knowledge of the insular character. He need not have been in
Olmeta churchyard now.”

“It is a pity,” rapped out Perucca, with an emphatic stick on the wooden
floor, “that Andrei was so gentle with them. He drove the cattle off the
land. I should have driven them into my own sheds, and told the owners to
come and take them. He was too easy-going, too mild in his manners. Look
at me--they don't send me their threatening letters. You do not find any
crosses chalked on my door--eh?”

And indeed, as he stood there, with his square shoulders, his erect
bearing and fiery, dark eyes, Mattei Perucca seemed worthy of the name of
his untamed ancestors, and was not a man to be trifled with.

“Eh--what?” he asked of the servant who had approached timorously,
bearing a letter on a tray. “For me? Something about Andrei, from those
fools of gendarmes, no doubt.”

And he tore open the envelope which Colonel Gilbert had handed to the
peasant a couple of hours earlier in the Lancone Defile. He fixed his
eye-glasses upon his nose, clumsily, with one hand, and then unfolded the
letter. It was merely a sheet of blank paper, with a cross drawn upon it.

His face suddenly blazed red with anger. His eyes glared at the paper
through the glasses placed crookedly upon his nose.

“Holy name!” he cried. “Look at this--this to _me_! The dogs!”

The colonel looked at the paper with a shrug of the shoulders.

“You will have to sell,” he suggested lightly; and glancing up at
Perucca's face, saw something there that made him leap to his feet.
“Hulloa! Here,” he said quickly--“sit down.”

And as he forced Perucca into the chair, his hands were already at the
old man's collar. And in five minutes, in the presence of Colonel Gilbert
and two old servants, Mattei Perucca died.




CHAPTER IV.


A TOSS-UP.

     “One can be but what one is born.”


If any one had asked the Count Lory de Vasselot who and what he was, he
would probably have answered that he was a member of the English Jockey
Club. For he held that that distinction conferred greater honour upon him
than the accident of his birth, which enabled him to claim for
grandfather the first Count de Vasselot, one of Murat's aides-de-camp, a
brilliant, dashing cavalry officer, a boyhood's friend of the great
Napoleon. Lory de Vasselot was, moreover, a cavalry officer himself, but
had not taken part in any of the enterprises of an emperor who held that
to govern Frenchmen it is necessary to provide them with a war every four
years.

“Bon Dieu!” he told his friends, “I did not sleep for two nights after I
was elected to that great club.”

Lory de Vasselot, moreover, did his best to live up to his position. He
never, for instance, had his clothes made in Paris. His very gloves came
from a little shop in Newmarket, where only the seamiest and clumsiest of
hand-coverings are provided, and horn buttons are a _sine qua non_.

To desire to be mistaken for an Englishman is a sure sign that you belong
to the very best Parisian set, and Lory de Vasselot's position was an
enviable one, for so long as he kept his hat on and stood quite still and
did not speak, he might easily have been some one connected with the
British turf. It must, of course, be understood that the similitude of de
Vasselot's desire was only an outward one. We all think that every other
nation would fain be English, but as all other countries have a like
pitying contempt for us, there is perhaps no harm done. And it is to be
presumed that if some candid friend were to tell de Vasselot that the
moment he uncovered his hair, or opened his lips, or made a single
movement, he was hopelessly and unmistakably French from top to toe, he
would not have been sorely distressed.

It will be remembered that the Third Napoleon--the last of that strange
dynasty--raised himself to the Imperial throne--made himself, indeed, the
most powerful monarch in Europe--by statecraft, and not by power of
sword. With the magic of his name he touched the heart of the most
impetuous people in the world, and upon the uncertain, and, as it is
whispered, not always honest suffrage of the plebiscite, climbed to the
unstable height of despotism. For years he ruled France with a sort of
careless cynicism, and it was only when his health failed that his hand
began to relax its grip. In the scramble for place and power, the
grandson of the first Count de Vasselot might easily have gained a prize,
but Lory seemed to have no ambition in that direction. Perhaps he had no
taste for ministry or bureau, nor cared to cultivate the subtle knowledge
of court and cabinet, which meant so much at this time. His tastes were
rather those of the camp; and, failing war, he had turned his thoughts to
sport. He had hunted in England and fished in Norway. In the winter of
1869, he went to Africa for big game, and, returning in the early weeks
of March, found France and his dear Paris gayer, more insouciant, more
brilliant than ever.

For the empire had never seemed more secure than it did at this moment,
had never stood higher in the eyes of the world, had never boasted so
lavish a court. Paris was at her best, and Lory de Vasselot exclaimed
aloud, after the manner of his countrymen, at the sight of the young buds
and spring flowers around the Lac in the Bois de Boulogne, as he rode
there this fresh morning.

He had only arrived in Paris the night before, and, dining at the Cercle
Militaire, had accepted the loan of a horse.

“One will at all events see one's friends in the wood,” he said. But
riding there in an ultra-English suit of cords at the fashionable hour,
he found that he had somehow missed the fashion. The alleys, which had
been popular a year ago, were now deserted; for there is nothing so
fickle as social taste, and the riders were all at the other side of the
Route de Longchamps.

Lory turned his horse's head in that direction, and was riding leisurely,
when he heard an authoritative voice apparently directed towards himself.
He was in one of the narrow _allées_, “reserved for cavaliers,” and,
turning, perceived that the soft sandy gravel had prevented his hearing
the approach of other riders--a man and a woman. And the woman's horse
was beyond control. It was a little, fiery Arab, leaping high in the air
at each stride, and timing a nasty forward jerk of the head at the worst
moment for its rider's comfort.

There was no time to do anything but touch his own trained charger with
the spur and gallop ahead. He turned in his saddle. The Arab was gaining
on him, and gradually leaving behind the heavy horse and weighty rider
who were giving chase. The woman, with a set white face, was jerking at
the bridle with her left hand in an odd, mechanical, feeble way, while
with her right, she held to the pommel of her saddle. But she was swaying
forward in an unmistakable manner. She was only half conscious, and in a
moment must fall.

Lory glanced behind her, and saw a stout built man, with a fair moustache
and a sunburnt face, riding his great horse in the stirrups like a
jockey, his face alight with that sudden excitement which sometimes
blazes in light blue eyes. He made a quick gesture, which said as plainly
as words--“You must act, and quickly; I can do nothing.”

And the three thundered on. The rides in the Bois de Boulogne are all
bordered on either side by thick trees. If Lory de Vasselot pulled
across, he would send the maddened Arab into the forest, where the first
low branch must of a necessity batter in its rider's head. He rode on,
gradually edging across to what in France is the wrong side of the road.

“Hold on, madame; hold on,” he said, in a quick low voice.

But the woman did not seem to hear him. She had dropped the bridle now,
and the Arab had thrown it forward over its head.

Then Lory gradually reined in. The woman was reeling in the saddle as the
Arab thundered alongside. The wind blew back the long habit, and showed
her foot to be firmly in the stirrup.

“Stirrup, madame!” shouted Lory, as if she were miles away. “Mon Dieu,
your stirrup!”

But she only looked ahead with glazed eyes.

Then, edging nearer with a delicate spur, de Vasselot shook off his own
right stirrup, and, leaning down, lifted the fainting woman with his
right arm clean out of the saddle. He rested her weight upon his thigh,
and, feeling cautiously with his foot, found her stirrup and kicked it
free. He pulled up slowly, and, drawing aside, allowed the lady's
companion to pass him at a steady gallop after the Arab.

The lady was now in a dead faint, her dark red hair hanging like a rope
across de Vasselot's arm. She was, fortunately, not a big woman; for it
was no easy position to find one's self in, on the top, thus, of a large
horse with a senseless burden and no help in sight. He managed, however,
to dismount, and rather breathlessly carried the lady to the shade of the
trees, where he laid her with her head on a mound of rising turf, and,
lifting aside her hair, saw her face for the first time.

“Ah! That dear baroness!” he exclaimed; and, turning, he found himself
bowing rather stiffly to the gentleman, who had now returned, leading the
runaway horse. He was not, it may be mentioned, the baron.

While the two men were thus regarding each other in a polite silence, the
baroness opened a pair of remarkably bright brown eyes, at first with
wonder, and then with understanding, and finally with wonder again when
they lighted on de Vasselot.

“Lory!” she cried. “But where have you fallen from?”

“It must have been from heaven, baroness,” he replied, “for I assuredly
came at the right moment.”

He stood looking down at her--a lithe, neat, rather small-made man. Then
he turned to attend to his horse. The baroness was already busy with her
hair. She rose to her feet and smoothed her habit.

“Ah, good!” she laughed. “There is no harm done. But you saved my life,
my dear Lory. One cannot have two opinions as to that. If it were not
that the colonel is watching us, I should embrace you. But I have not
introduced you. This is Colonel Gilbert--my dear and good cousin, Lory de
Vasselot. The colonel is from Bastia, by the way, and the Count de
Vasselot pretends to be a Corsican. I mention it because it is only
friendly to tell you that you have something more than the weather and my
gratitude in common.”

She laughed as she spoke; then became suddenly grave, and sat down again
with her hand to her eyes.

“And I am going to faint,” she added, with ghastly lips that tried to
smile, “and nobody but you two men.”

“It is the reaction,” said Colonel Gilbert, in his soothing way. But he
exchanged a quick glance with de Vasselot. “It will pass, baroness.”

“It is well to remember at such a moment that one is a sportswoman,”
 suggested de Vasselot.

“And that one has de Vasselot blood in one's veins, you mean. You may as
well say it.” She rose as she spoke, and looked from one to the other
with a brave laugh. “Bring me that horse,” she said.

De Vasselot conveyed by one inimitable gesture that he admired her
spirit, but refused to obey her. Colonel Gilbert smiled contemplatively,
He was of a different school--of that school of Frenchmen which owes its
existence to Napoleon III.--impassive, almost taciturn--more British than
the typical Briton. De Vasselot, on the contrary, was quick and
vivacious. His fine-cut face and dark eyes expressed a hundred things
that his tongue had no time to put into words. He was hard and brown and
sunburnt, which at once made him manly despite his slight frame.

“Ah,” he cried, with a gay laugh, “that is better. But seriously, you
know, you should have a patent stirrup--”

He broke off, described the patent stirrup in three gestures, how it
opened and released the foot. He showed the rider falling, the horse
galloping away, the released lady-rider rising to her feet and satisfying
herself that no bones were broken--all in three more gestures.

“Voilà!” he said; “I shall send you one.”

“And you as poor--as poor,” said the baroness, whose husband was of the
new nobility, which is based, as all the world knows, on solid
manufacture. “My friend, you cannot afford it.”

“I cannot afford to lose _you_” he said, with a sudden gravity, and with
eyes which, to the uninitiated, would undoubtedly have conveyed the
impression that she was the whole world to him. “Besides,” he added, as
an after-thought, “it is only sixteen francs.”

The baroness threw up her gay brown eyes.

“Just Heaven,” she exclaimed, “what it is to be able to inspire such
affection--to be valued at sixteen francs!”

Then--for she was as quick and changeable as himself--she turned, and
touched his arm with her thickly-gloved hand.

“Seriously, my cousin, I cannot thank you, and you, Colonel Gilbert, for
your promptness and your skill. And as to my stupid husband, you know, he
has no words; when I tell him, he will only grunt behind his great
moustache, and he will never thank you, and will never forget. Never!
Remember that.” And with a wave of the riding-whip, which was attached to
her wrist, she described eternity.

De Vasselot turned with a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders, and busied
himself with the girths of his saddle. At the touch and the sight of the
buckles, his eyes became grave and earnest. And it is not only Frenchmen
who cherish this cult of the horse, making false gods of saddle and
bridle, and a sacred temple of the harness-room. Very seriously de
Vasselot shifted the side-saddle from the Arab to his own large and
gentle horse--a wise old charger with a Roman nose, who never wasted his
mettle in park tricks, but served honestly the Government that paid his
forage.

The Baroness de Mélide watched the transaction in respectful silence, for
she too took _le sport_ very seriously, and had attended a course of
lectures at a riding-school on the art of keeping and using harness. Her
colour was now returning--that brilliant, delicate colour which so often
accompanies dark red hair--and she gave a little sigh of resignation.

Colonel Gilbert looked at her, but said nothing. He seemed to admire her,
in the same contemplative way that he had admired the moon rising behind
the island of Capraja from the Place St. Nicholas in Bastia.

De Vasselot noted the sigh, and glanced sharply at her over the shoulder
of the big charger.

“Of what are you thinking?” he said.

“Of the millennium, mon ami”

“The millennium?”

“Yes,” she answered, gathering the bridle; “when women shall perhaps be
allowed to be natural. Our mothers played at being afraid--we play at
being courageous.”

As she spoke she placed a neat foot in Colonel Gilbert's hand, who lifted
her without effort to the saddle. De Vasselot mounted the Arab, and they
rode slowly homewards by way of the Avenue de Longchamps, through the
Porte Dauphine, and up that which is now the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne,
which was quiet enough at this time of day. The baroness was inclined to
be silent. She had been more shaken than she cared to confess to two
soldiers. Colonel Gilbert probably saw this, for he began to make
conversation with de Vasselot.

“You do not come to Corsica,” he said.

“I have never been there--shall never go there,” answered de Vasselot.
“Tell me--is it not a terrible place? The end of the world, I am told. My
mother”--he broke off with a gesture of the utmost despair. “She is
dead!” he interpolated--“always told me that it was the most terrible
place in the world. At my father's death, more than thirty years ago, she
quitted Corsica, and came to live in Paris, where I was born, and where,
if God is good, I shall die.”

“My cousin, you talk too much of death,” put in the baroness, seriously.

“As between soldiers, baroness,” replied de Vasselot, gaily. “It is our
trade. You know the island well, colonel?”

“No, I cannot say that. But I know the Chateau de Vasselot.”

“Now, that is interesting; and I who scarcely know the address! Near
Calvi, is it not? A waste of rocks, and behind each rock at least one
bandit--so my dear mother assured me.”

“It might be cultivated,” answered Colonel Gilbert, indifferently. “It
might be made to yield a small return. I have often thought so. I have
even thought of whiling away my exile by attempting some such scheme. I
once contemplated buying a piece of land on that coast to try. Perhaps
you would sell?”

“Sell!” laughed de Vasselot. “No; I am not such a scoundrel as that. I
would toss you for it, my dear colonel; I would toss you for it, if you
like.”

And as they turned out of the avenue into one of the palatial streets
that run towards the Avenue Victor Hugo, he made the gesture of throwing
a coin into the air.




CHAPTER V.


IN THE RUE DU CHERCHE-MIDI.

  “Il ne faut jamais se laisser trop voir, même à ceux qui nous aiment.”


It was not very definitely known what Mademoiselle Brun taught in the
School of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in the Rue du Cherche-Midi in
Paris. For it is to be feared that Mademoiselle Brun knew nothing except
the world; and it is precisely that form of knowledge which is least
cultivated in a convent school.

“She has had a romance,” whispered her bright-eyed charges, and lapsed
into suppressed giggles at the mere mention of such a word in connection
with a little woman dressed in rusty black, with thin grey hair, a thin
grey face, and a yellow neck.

It would seem, however, that there is a point where even a
mother-superior must come down, as it were, into the market-place and
meet the world. That point is where the convent purse rattles thinly and
the mother-superior must face hunger. It had, in fact, been intimated to
the conductors of the School of the Sisterhood of the Sacred Heart by the
ladies of the quarter of St. Germain, that the convent teaching taught
too little of one world and too much of another. And the mother-superior,
being a sensible woman, agreed to engage a certain number of teachers
from the outer world. Mademoiselle Brun was vaguely entitled an
instructress, while Mademoiselle Denise Lange bore the proud title of
mathematical mistress.

Mademoiselle Brun, with her compressed mouth, her wrinkled face, and her
cold hazel eyes, accepted the situation, as we have to accept most
situations in this world, merely because there is no choice.

“What can you teach?” asked the soft-eyed mother-superior.

“Anything,” replied Mademoiselle Brun, with a direct gaze, which somehow
cowed the nun.

“She has had a romance,” whispered some wag of fourteen, when
Mademoiselle Brun first appeared in the schoolroom; and that became the
accepted legend regarding her.

“What are you saying of me?” she asked one day, when her rather sudden
appearance caused silence at a moment when silence was not compulsory.

“That you once had a romance, mademoiselle,” answered some daring girl.

“Ah!”

And perhaps the dusky wrinkles lapsed into gentler lines, for some one
had the audacity to touch mademoiselle's hand with a birdlike tap of one
finger.

“And you must tell it to us.”

For there were no nuns present, and mademoiselle was suspected of having
a fine contempt for the most stringent of the convent laws.

“No.”

“But why not, mademoiselle?”

“Because the real romances are never told,” replied Mademoiselle Brun.

But that was only her way, perhaps, of concealing the fact that there was
nothing to tell. She spoke in a low voice, for her class shared the long
schoolroom this afternoon with the mathematical class. The room did not
lend itself to description, for it had bare walls and two long windows
looking down disconsolately upon a courtyard, where a grey cat sunned
herself in the daytime and bewailed her lot at night. Who, indeed, would
be a convent cat?

At the far end of the long room Mademoiselle Denise Lange was
superintending, with an earnest face, the studies of five young ladies.
It was only necessary to look at the respective heads of the pupils to
conclude that these young persons were engaged in mathematical problems,
for there is nothing so discomposing to the hair as arithmetic.
Mademoiselle Lange herself seemed no more capable of steering a course
through a double equation than her pupils, for she was young and pretty,
with laughing lips and fair hair, now somewhat ruffled by her
calculations. When, however, she looked up, it might have been perceived
that her glance was clear and penetrating.

There was no more popular person in the Convent of the Sacred Heart than
Denise Lange, and in no walk of life is personal attractiveness so
much appreciated as in a girls' school. It is only later in life that
_ces demoiselles_ begin to find that their neighbour's beauty is
but skin-deep. The nuns--“fond fools,” Mademoiselle Brun called
them--concluded that because Denise was pretty she must be good. The
girls loved Denise with a wild and exceedingly ephemeral affection,
because she was little more than a girl herself, and was, like
themselves, liable to moments of deep arithmetical despondency.
Mademoiselle Brun admitted that she was fond of Denise because she was
her second cousin, and that was all.

When worldly mammas, essentially of the second empire, who perhaps had
doubts respecting a purely conventional education, made inquiries on this
subject, the mother-superior, feeling very wicked and worldly, usually
made mention of the mathematical mistress, Denise Lange, daughter of the
great and good general who was killed at Solferino. And no other word of
identification was needed. For some keen-witted artist had painted a
great salon picture of, not a young paladin, but a fat old soldier,
eighteen stone, on his huge charger, with shaking red cheeks and blazing
eyes, standing in his stirrups, bursting out of his tight tunic, and
roaring to his _enfants_ to follow him to their death.

It was after the battle of Solferino that Mademoiselle Brun had come into
Denise Lange's life, taking her from her convent school to live in a dull
little apartment in the Rue des Saints Pères, educating her, dressing
her, caring for her with a grim affection which never wasted itself in
words. How she pinched and saved, and taught herself that she might teach
others; how she triumphantly made both ends meet,--are secrets which,
like Mademoiselle Brun's romance, she would not tell. For French women
are not only cleverer and more capable than French men, but they are
cleverer and more capable than any other women in the world. History,
moreover, will prove this; for nearly all the great women that the world
has seen have been produced by France.

Denise and Mademoiselle Brun still lived in the dull little apartment
in the Rue des Saints Pères--that narrow street which runs southward
from the Quai Voltaire to the Boulevard St. Germain, where the cheap
frame-makers, the artists' colourmen, and the dealers in old prints have
their shops. To the convent school, the old woman and the young girl,
walking daily through the streets to their work, brought with them that
breath of worldliness which the advance of civilization seemed to render
desirable to the curriculum of a girls' school.

“It must be heavenly, mademoiselle, to walk in the streets quite alone,”
 said one of Mademoiselle Brun's pupils to her one day.

“It is,” was the reply; “especially near the gutter.”

But this afternoon there was no conversation, for the literature class
knew that Mademoiselle Brun was in a contrary humour.

“She is looking at that dear Denise with discontented eyes. She is in a
shocking temper,” had been the whispered warning from mouth to mouth.

And in truth Mademoiselle Brun constantly glanced down the length of the
schoolroom to where Denise was sitting. But a seeing eye could well
perceive that it was not with Denise, but with the schoolroom, that the
little old woman was discontented. Perhaps she had at times a cruel
thought that the Rue des Saints Pères, emphasized as it were by the Rue
du Cherche-Midi, was hardly gay for a young life. Perhaps the soft touch
of spring that was in the March air stirred up restless longings in the
soul of this little grey town-mouse.

And while she was watching Denise, the cross-grained old nun who acted as
concierge to this quiet house came into the room, and handed Denise a
long blue envelope.

“It is addressed in a man's handwriting,” she said warningly.

“Then let us by all means send for the tongs,” answered Denise, taking
the letter with a mock air of alarm.

But she looked at it curiously, and glanced towards Mademoiselle Brun
before she opened it. It was, perhaps, characteristic of the little old
schoolmistress to show no interest whatever. And yet to her it probably
seemed an age before Denise came towards her, carrying the letter in her
outstretched hand.

“At first,” said the girl, “I thought it was a joke--a trick of one of
the girls. But it is serious enough. It is a romance inside a blue
envelope--that is all.”

She gave a joyous laugh, and threw the letter down on Mademoiselle Brun's
knees.

“It is my father's cousin, Mattei Perucca, who has died suddenly, and has
left me an estate in Corsica,” she continued, impatiently opening the
letter, which Mademoiselle Brun fingered with pessimistic distrust. “See
here! that is the address of my estate in Corsica, where I shall invite
you to stay with me--I, who stand before you in my old black alpaca, and
would borrow a hairpin if you can spare it.”

Her hands were busy with her hair as she spoke; and she seemed to touch
life and its entanglements as lightly. Mademoiselle Brun, however, read
the letter very gravely. For she was a wise old Frenchwoman, who knew
that it is only bad news which may safely be accepted as true.

The letter, which was accompanied by an enclosure, was from a
Marseilles solicitor, and began by inquiring as to the identity of
Mademoiselle Denise Lange, instructress at the convent school in the Rue
du Cherche-Midi, with the daughter of the late General Lange, who met his
death on the field of Solferino. It then proceeded to explain that Denise
Lange had inherited the property known as the Perucca property, in the
commune of Calvi, in the Island of Corsica. Followed a schedule of the
said property, which included the historic château, known as the Casa
Perucca. The solicitor concluded with a word for himself, after the
manner of his kind, and clearly demonstrated that no other lawyer was so
capable as he to arrange the affairs of Mademoiselle Denise Lange.

“Jean Jacques Moreau,” read Mademoiselle Brun, with some scorn, the
signature of the Marseilles notary. “An imbecile, your Jean Jacques--an
imbecile, like his great and mischievous namesake. He does not say of
what malady your second cousin died, or what income the property will
yield--if any.”

“But we can ask him those particulars.”

“And pay for each answer,” retorted Mademoiselle Brun, folding the letter
reflectively.

She was remembering that a few minutes earlier she had been thinking that
their present existence was too narrow for Denise; and now, in the
twinkling of an eye, life seemed to be opening out and spreading with a
rapidity which only the thoughts of youth could follow and the energy of
spring keep pace with.

“Then we will go to Marseilles and ask the questions ourselves, and then
he cannot charge for each answer, for I know he could never keep count.”

But Mademoiselle Brun only looked grave, and would not rise to Denise's
lighter humour. It almost seemed, indeed, as if she were afraid--she who
had never known fear through all the years of pinch and struggle, who had
faced a world that had no use for her, that would not buy the poor
services she had to sell. For to know the worst is always a relief, and
to exchange it for something better is like exchanging an old coat for a
new one.

“And in the mean time--” said Mademoiselle Brun, turning sharply upon her
pupils, who had taken the opportunity of abandoning French literature.

“In the mean time,” said Denise, turning reluctantly away--“in the mean
time, I am filling a vat of so many cubic metres, from a well so many
metres deep, with a pail containing four litres, and of course the pail
has a leak in it, and the well becomes deeper as one draws from it, and
the Casa Perucca is, I suppose, a dream.”

She went back to her work, and in a few moments was quite absorbed in it.
And it was Mademoiselle Brun who could not settle to her French
literature, nor compose her thoughts at all. For change is the natural
desire of youth, and the belief that it must be for the better, part and
parcel of the astounding optimism of that state of life.

A few minutes later Denise remembered the enclosure--a letter in a thick
white envelope, which was still lying on her desk. She opened it.

“MADEMOISELLE” (the letter ran),

“I think I have the pleasure of addressing the daughter of an old
comrade-in-arms, and this must be my excuse for at once approaching my
object. I hear by accident that you have inherited from the late Mattei
Perucca his small property near Olmeta in Corsica. I knew Mattei Perucca,
and the property you inherit is not unknown to one who has had official
dealings with landowners in Corsica. I tell you frankly that it would be
impossible, in the present disturbed state of the island, for you to live
at Olmeta, and I ask you as frankly whether you are disposed to sell me
your small estate. I have long cherished the scheme of buying a small
parcel of land in Corsica for the purpose of showing the natives that
agriculture may be made profitable in so fertile an island, by dint of
industry and a firm and unswerving honesty. The Perucca property would
suit my purpose. You may be doing a good action in handing over your
tenants to one who understands the Corsican nature. I, in addition to
relieving the monotony of my present exile at Bastia, may perhaps be
inaugurating a happier state of affairs in this most unfortunate country.

“Awaiting your answer, I am, mademoiselle,

“Your obedient servant,

“LOUIS GILBERT (Colonel).”

The school bell rang as Denise finished reading the letter. The class was
over.

“We shall descend into the well again to-morrow,” she said, closing her
books.

The girls trooped out into the forlorn courtyard, leaving Mademoiselle
Brun and Denise alone in the schoolroom. Mademoiselle Brun read the
second letter with a silent concentration. She glanced up when she had
finished it.

“Of course you will sell,” she said.

Denise was looking out of the tall closed windows at the few yards of sky
that were visible above the roofs. Some fleecy clouds were speeding
across the clear ether.

“No,” she answered slowly; “I think I shall go to Corsica. Tell me,” she
added, after a pause--“I suppose I have Corsican blood in my veins?”

“I suppose so,” admitted Mademoiselle Brun, reluctantly.




CHAPTER VI.


NEIGHBOURS.

     “Chaque homme a trois caractères: celui qu'il a, celui qu'il
     montre, et celui qu'il croit avoir.”


By one of the strokes of good fortune which come but once to the most
ardent student of fashion, the Baroness de Mélide had taken up horsiness
at the very beginning of that estimable craze. It was, therefore, in mere
sequence to this pursuit that she fixed her abode on the south side of
the Champs Elysées, and within a stone's throw of the Avenue du Bois de
Boulogne, before the world found out that it was quite impossible to live
elsewhere. It is so difficult, in truth, to foretell the course of
fashion, that one cannot help wondering why the modern soothsayers, who
eke out what appears to be a miserable existence in the smaller streets
of the Faubourg St. Honoré and in the neighbourhood of Bond Street, do
not turn their second-sight to the contemplation of the future of streets
and districts, instead of telling the curious a number of vague facts
respecting their past and vaguer prophecies as to the future.

If, for instance, Cagliostro had foretold that to-day the Chausée
d'Antin would be deserted; that the faubourg would have completely ousted
the Rue St. Honoré; that the Avenue de la Grande Armée should be,
fashionably speaking, dead after a short and brilliant life; and that
the little streets of the Faubourg St. Germain should be all that is most
_chic_--what fortunes might have been made! Indeed, no one in a trance
or in his right mind can tell to-day why it is right to walk on the
right-hand side of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Boulevard des
Capucines, and heinously wrong to walk on the left; while, on the
contrary, no self-respecting Parisian would allow himself to be seen on
the right-hand pavement of the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Indeed, these
things are a mystery, and the wise seek only to obey, and not to ask the
reason why.

It would be difficult to lay before the English reader the precise social
position of the Baroness de Mélide. For there are wheels within wheels,
or, more properly perhaps, shades within shades, in the social world of
Paris, which are quite unsuspected on this side of the Channel. Indeed,
our ignorance of social France is only surpassed by the French ignorance
of social England. The Baroness de Mélide was rich, however, and the
rich, as we all know, have nothing to fear in this world. As a matter of
fact, Monsieur de Mélide dated his nobility from Napoleon's creation, and
madame's grandfather was of the Emigration. By conviction, they belonged
to the Anglophile school, and theirs was one of the prettiest little
houses between the Avenue Victor Hugo and the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne,
which is more important than ancestors.

It was to this miniature palace that Mademoiselle Brun and Denise were
bidden, to the new function of afternoon tea, the day after the receipt
of the lawyer's letter. Madame de Mélide would take no denial.

“I have already heard of Denise's good fortune; and from whom do you
think?” she wrote. “From my dear good cousin, Lory de Vasselot, who is,
if you will believe it, a Corsican neighbour--the Vasselot and Perucca
estates actually adjoin. Both, I need hardly tell you, bristle with
bandits, and are quite impossible. But I have quite decided that Lory
shall marry Denise. Come, therefore, without fail. I need not tell you to
see that Denise looks pretty. The good God has seen to that for you. And
as for Lory, he is an angel. I cannot think why I did not marry him
myself--except that he did not ask me. And then there is my stupid, whom
nobody else would have, and who now sends his dear love to his oldest
friend.--Your devoted JANE.”

The Baroness de Mélide was called Jeanne, but she had enthusiastically
changed that name for its English version at the period when England was,
as it were, first discovered by social France.

When Mademoiselle Brun and Denise arrived, they found the baroness
beautifully dressed as usual, and very French, for the empress was at
this time the leader of the world's women, as the emperor--that clever
_parvenu_--was undoubtedly the first monarch in Europe. It behoves not a
masculine pen to attempt a description of Madame de Mélide's costume,
which, moreover, was of a bygone mode, and nothing is so unsightly in
death as a deceased fashion.

“How good of you to come!” she cried, embracing both ladies in turn, with
a fervour which certainly seemed to imply that she had no other friends
on earth.

In truth, she had, for the moment, none so dear; for there are certain
warm hearts that are happy in always loving, not the highest, but the
nearest.

“Let me see, now,” she added, vigorously dragging forward chairs. “I
asked some one to meet you--some one I particularly wanted you to become
acquainted with, but I cannot remember who it is.” As she spoke she
consulted a little red morocco betting-book.

“Lory!” she cried, after a short search. “Yes, of course it was Lory de
Vasselot--my cousin. And--will you believe it?--he saved my life the
other day, all in a moment! Yes! I saw death, quite close, before my
eyes. Ugh! And I, who am so wicked! You do not know what it is to be
wicked and to know it, Denise--you who are so young. But that dear
Mademoiselle Brun, she knows.”

“Thank you,” said mademoiselle.

“And Lory saved me, ah! so cleverly. There is no better horseman in the
army, they say. Yes; he will certainly come this afternoon, unless there
is a race at Longchamps. Now, is there a race, I wonder?”

“For the moment,” said Mademoiselle Brun, very gravely, “I cannot tell
you.”

“She is laughing at me,” cried the baroness, shaking a vivacious
forefinger at Mademoiselle Brun. “But I do not mind; we cannot all be
wise--eh?”

“And what a dull world for the rest of us if you were,” said Mademoiselle
Brun; and Lory de Vasselot, coming into the room at this moment, was met
by her sour smile.

“Ah!” cried the baroness, “here he is. I present you, my dear Lory, to
Mademoiselle Brun, a terrible friend of mine, and to Mademoiselle Lange,
who, as you know, has just inherited the other half of Corsica.”

“My congratulations,” answered Lory, shaking hands with Denise in the
English fashion. “An inheritance is so nice when it is quite new.”

“And figure to yourself that this dear child has no notion how it has all
come about! She only knows the bare fact that some one is dead, and she
has gained--well, a white elephant, one may suppose.”

De Vasselot's quick face suddenly turned grave.

“Ah,” he said, “then I can tell you how it has all come about. Though I
confess at once that I have never been to Corsica, and have never found
myself a halfpenny the richer for owning land there.”

He paused for a moment, and glanced at Mademoiselle Brun.

“Unless,” he interpolated, “such personal matters will bore
mademoiselle.”

“But mademoiselle is the good angel of Mademoiselle Lange, my dear, dull
Lory,” explained the baroness; and the object of the elucidation looked
at him more keenly than so trifling an incident would seem to warrant.

“You will not be betraying secrets to the first-comer,” she said.

Still de Vasselot seemed to hesitate, as if choosing his words.

“And,” he said at length, “they shot your cousin's agent in the back,
almost in the streets of Olmeta, and Mattei Perucca himself died
suddenly, presumably from apoplexy, brought on by a great anger at
receiving a letter threatening his life--that is how it has come about,
mademoiselle.”

He broke off short, with a quick gesture and a flash of his eyes, usually
so pleasant and smiling.

“I have that from a reliable source,” he went on, after a pause, during
which Mademoiselle Brun looked steadily at Denise and said nothing.

“Gracious heavens!” exclaimed the baroness, in a whisper; and for once
was silenced.

“A faithful correspondent on the island,” explained de Vasselot. “Though
why he is faithful I cannot tell you. Some family legend, perhaps--I
cannot tell. It is the Abbé Susini of Olmeta who has told me this. He it
was who told me of your--well, I can only call it your misfortune,
mademoiselle. For there is assuredly a curse upon Corsica as there is
upon Ireland. It cannot govern itself, and no other can govern it. The
Napoleons have been the only men to make anything of the island, but a
man who is driving a pair of horses down the Champs Elysées cannot give
much thought to his little dog that runs behind. And it is in the
Bonaparte blood to drive, not only a pair, but a four-in-hand in the
thickest traffic of the world. The Abbé Susini tells me that when the
emperor's hand was firm, Corsica was almost orderly, justice was almost
administered, banditism was for the moment made to feel the hand of the
law, and the authorities could count the number of outlaws evading their
grip in the mountains. But since the emperor's illness has taken a
dangerous turn things have gone back again. Corsica is, it seems, a
weather-glass by which one may tell the state of the political weather in
France; and now it is disturbed, mademoiselle.”

He had become graver as he spoke, and now found himself addressing Denise
almost as if she were a man. There is as much difference in listeners as
there is in talkers. And Lory de Vasselot, who belonged to the new school
of Frenchmen--the open-air, the vigorous, the sportsmanlike--found his
interlocutor listening with clear eyes fixed frankly on his face.
Intelligence betrays itself in listening more than in talking, and de
Vasselot, with characteristic and an eminently national intuition,
perceived that this girl from a covent school in the Rue du Cherche-Midi
was not a person to whom to address drawing-room generalities, and those
insults to the feminine comprehension which a bygone generation called
compliments.

“But a woman need surely have nothing to fear,” said Denise, who had the
habit of carrying her head rather high, and now spoke as if this implied
more than a mere trick of deportment.

“A woman! You are not going to Corsica, mademoiselle?”

“But I am,” she answered.

De Vasselot turned thoughtfully, and brought forward a chair. He sat down
and gravely contemplated Mademoiselle Brun, whose attitude--upright in a
low chair, with crossed hands and a compressed mouth--betrayed nothing. A
Frenchman is not nearly so artificial as the shallow British observer has
been pleased to conclude. He is, in fact, much more a child of nature
than either an Englishman or a German. Lory de Vasselot's expression said
as plainly as words to Mademoiselle Brun--

“And what have _you_ been about?”

It was so obvious that Mademoiselle Brun, almost imperceptibly, shrugged
one shoulder. She was powerless, it appeared.

“But, if you will permit me to say so,” said Lory, sitting down and
drawing near to Denise in his earnestness, “that is impossible. I will
not trouble you with details, but it is an impossibility. I understand
that Mattei Perucca and his agent were the two strongest men in the
northern district, and they only attempted to hold their own, nothing
more. With the result that you know.”

“But there are many ways of attempting to hold one's own,” persisted
Denise; and she shook her head with a wisdom which only belongs to youth.

De Vasselot spread out his hands in utter despair. The end of the world,
it seemed, was at hand. And Denise only laughed.

“And when I have regulated my own affairs, I will undertake the
management of your estate at a high salary,” she said.

“There is only one thing to do,” said Lory, gravely, “and I have done it
myself. I have abandoned the idea of ever receiving a halfpenny of rent.
I have allowed the land to go out of cultivation. The vine-terraces are
falling, the olive trees are dying for want of cultivation. A few
peasants graze their cattle in my garden, I understand. The house itself
is only saved from falling down by the fact that it is strongly built of
stone. I would sell for a mere song, if I could find a serious offer of
that trifle; but nobody buys land in Corsica--for the peasants recognize
no title deeds and respect no rights of ownership. I had indeed an offer
the other day, but it was undoubtedly a joke, and I treated it as such.”

“Denise also has had an offer to buy the Perucca property,” said
Mademoiselle Brun.

“Yes,” said Denise, seeing his surprise. “And you would advise me to
accept it?”

“If it is a serious one, most decidedly.”

“It is serious enough,” answered Denise. “It is from a Colonel Gilbert,
an officer stationed at Bastia.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed; and at that moment another caller entered the room,
and he rose with eager politeness.

So it happened that Mademoiselle Brun could not see his face, and was
left wondering what the exclamation meant.

Several other callers now appeared--persons of the Baroness de Mélide's
own world, who had a hundred society tricks, and bowed or shook hands
according to the latest mode. This was not Mademoiselle Brun's world, and
she was not interested to hear the latest gossip from that hotbed of
scandal, the Tuileries, nor did the ever-changing face of the political
world command her attention. She therefore rose, and stiffly took her
leave. De Vasselot accompanied them to the hall.

Denise paused in the entrance, and turned to him.

“Seriously,” she said, “do you advise me to accept this offer to sell
Perucca?”

“I scarcely feel authorized to give you any advice upon the subject,”
 answered Lory, reluctantly. “Though, after all, we are neighbours.”

“Then--”

“Then, I should say not, mademoiselle. At all events, do nothing in
haste. And, if I may ask it, will you communicate with me before you
finally decide?”

They had come in an open cab, which was waiting on the shady side of the
street.

“A young man who changes his mind very quickly,” commented Mademoiselle
Brun, as they drove away.




CHAPTER VII.


JOURNEY'S END.

     “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 the _route nationale_ to Calvi on the
right. That which he now followed was the narrower _route
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 <DW72> 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 <DW72> 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 <DW72> 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.”




CHAPTER VIII.


AT VASSELOT.

     “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 accumulated _débris_ of 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 the _débris_ of 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.




CHAPTER IX.


THE PROMISED LAND.

     “I do not ask that flowers should always spring beneath my
     feet.”


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 old _Persévérance._ 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, the _Persévérance_ had 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 the _Persévérance._ 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 the _Persévérance_ to 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 a _pré salé_ with 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 the _Persévérance._ 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, _képi_ in 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 the _Persévérance_, 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.




CHAPTER X.


THUS FAR.

     “There are some occasions on which a man must sell half his
     secret in order to conceal the rest.”


“There is some one moving among the oleanders down by the river,” said
the count, coming quickly into the room where Lory de Vasselot was
sitting, one morning some days after his unexpected arrival at the
château.

The old man was cool enough, but he closed the window that led to the
small terrace where he cultivated his carnations, with that haste which
indicates a recognition of undeniable danger, coupled with no feeling of
fear.

“I know every branch in the valley,” he said, “every twig, every leaf,
every shadow. There is some one there.”

Lory rose, and laid aside the pen with which he was writing for an
extended leave of absence. In four days these two had, as one of them had
predicted, grown accustomed to each other. And the line between custom
and necessity is a fine drawn one.

“Show me,” he said, going towards the window.

“Ah!” murmured the count, jerking his head. “You will hardly perceive it
unless you are a hunter--or the hunted.”

Lory glanced at his father. Assuredly the sleeping mind was beginning to
rouse itself.

“It is nothing but the stirring of a leaf here, the movement of a branch
there, which are unusual and unnatural.”

As he spoke, he opened the window with that slow caution which had become
habitual to his every thought and action.

“There,” he said, pointing with a steady hand; “to the left of that
almond tree which is still in bloom. Watch those willows which have come
there since the wall fell away, and the terrace slipped into the flooded
river twenty-one years this spring. You will see the branches move.
There--there! You see. It is a man, and he comes too slowly to have an
honest purpose.”

“I see,” said Lory. “Is that land ours?”

The count gave an odd little laugh.

“You can see nothing from this window that is not ours,” he answered.
“As much as any other man's,” he added, after a pause. For the conviction
still holds good in some Corsican minds that the mountains are common
property.

“He is coming slowly, but not very cautiously,” said Lory. “Not like a
man who thinks that he may be watched from here. He probably is taking no
heed of these windows, for he thinks the place is deserted.”

“It is more probable,” replied the count, “that he is coming here to
ascertain that fact. What the abbé has heard, another may hear, though he
would not learn it from the abbé. If you want a secret kept, tell it to a
priest, and of all priests, the Abbé Susini. Some one has heard that you
are here in Corsica, and is creeping up to the castle to find out.”

“And I will go and find him out. Two can play at that game in the
bushes,” said Lory, with a laugh.

“If you go, take a gun; one can never tell how a game may turn.”

“Yes; I will take a gun if you wish it.” And Lory went towards the door.
“No,” he said, pausing in answer to a gesture made by his father, “not
that one. It is of too old a make.”

And he went out of the room, leaving his father holding in his hand the
gun with which he had shot Andrei Perucca thirty years before. He stood
looking at the closed door with dim, reflective eyes. Then he looked at
the gun, which he set slowly back in its corner.

“It seems,” he said to himself, “that I am of too old a make also.”

He went to the window, and, opening it cautiously, stood looking down
into the valley. There he perceived that, though two may play at the same
game, it is usually given to one to play it better than the other. For he
who was climbing up the hill might be followed by a careful eye, by the
chance displacement of a twig, the bending of a bough; while Lory,
creeping down into the valley, remained quite invisible, even to his
father, upon whose memory every shadow was imprinted.

“Aha!” laughed the old man, under his breath. “One sees that the boy is a
Corsican. And,” he added, after a pause, “one would almost say that the
other is not.”

In which the count's trained eye--trained as only is the vision of the
hunted--was by no means deceived. For Lory, who was far down in the
valley, had already caught sight of a braided sleeve, and, a moment
later, recognized Colonel Gilbert. The colonel not only failed to
perceive him, but was in nowise looking for him. He appeared to be
entirely absorbed, first in the examination of the ground beneath his
feet, and then in the contemplation of the rising land. In his hand he
seemed to be carrying a note-book, and, so far as the watcher could see,
consulted from time to time a compass.

“He is only engaged in his trade,” said Lory to himself, with a laugh;
and, going out into the open, he sat down on a rock with the gun across
his knee and waited.

Thus it happened that Colonel Gilbert, working his way up through the
bushes, note-book in hand, looked up and saw, within a few yards of him,
the owner of the land upon which they stood, whom he had every reason to
believe to be in Paris.

His ruddy face was of a deeper red as he slipped his note-book within his
tunic and came forward, holding out his hand. But his smile was as ready
and good-natured as ever.

“Well met!” he said. “You find me, count, taking a professional and
business-like survey of the laud that you promised to sell me.”

“You are welcome to take the survey,” answered Lory, taking the
outstretched, cordial hand, “but I must ask you to let me keep the land.
I did not take your offer seriously.”

“It was intended seriously, I assure you.”

“Then it was my mistake,” answered Lory, quite pleasantly.

He tapped himself vigorously on the chest, and made a gesture indicating
that at a word from the colonel he was ready to lay violent hands upon
himself for having been so foolish. The colonel laughed, and shrugged his
shoulders as if the matter were but a small one. The pitiless
Mediterranean, almost African, sun poured down on them, and one of those
short spells of absolute calm, which are characteristic of these
latitudes, made it unbearably hot. The colonel took off his cap, and,
sitting down in quite a friendly way near de Vasselot on a rock,
proceeded to mop his high forehead, pressing back the thin smooth hair
which was touched here and there with grey.

“You have come here at the wrong time,” he said. “The heats have begun.
One longs for the cool breezes of Paris or of Normandy.”

And he paused, giving Lory an opportunity of explaining why he had come
at this time, which opportunity was promptly neglected.

“At all events, count,” said the colonel, replacing his cap and lighting
a cigarette, “I did not deceive you as to the nature of the land which I
wished to buy. It is a desert, as you see. And yet I cannot help thinking
that something might be made of this land.”

He sat and gazed lazily in front of him. Presently, leaving his cigarette
to smoulder, he began to buzz through his teeth, in the bucolic manner,
an air of Offenbach. He was, in a word, entirely agricultural, and
consequently slow of speech.

“Yes, count,” he said, with conviction, after a long pause; “there is
only one drawback to Corsica.”

“Ah?”

“The Corsicans,” said the colonel, gravely. “You do not know them as I
do; for I suppose you have only been here a few days?”

De Vasselot's quick eyes glanced for a moment at the colonel's face, but
no reply was made to the supposition. Then the colonel fell to his
guileless Offenbach again. There is nothing so innocent as the meditative
rendering of a well-known tune. A popular air is that which echoes in
empty heads.

Colonel Gilbert glanced sideways at his companion. He had not thought
that this was a silent man. Nature was singularly at fault in her
mouldings if this slightly made, dark-eyed Frenchman was habitually
taciturn. And the colonel was vaguely uneasy.

“My horse,” he said, “is up at Olmeta. I took a walk round by the river.
It is my business to answer innumerable questions from the Ministry of
the Interior. Railway projects are still in the air, you understand. I
must know my Corsica. Besides, as I tell you, I thought I was on my own
land.”

“I am sorry that I cannot hold to my joke, for it was nothing else, as
you know.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” acquiesced the colonel. “And in the mean time, it
is a great pleasure to see you here, as well as a surprise. I need hardly
tell you that your presence here is quite unknown to your neighbours. We
have little to talk about at this end of the island now that the
Administration is centred more than ever at Ajaccio; and were it known in
the district that you are at Vasselot, you may be sure I should have
heard of it at the café or at the hotel where I dine.”

“Yes. I came without drum or trumpet.”

“You are wise.”

The remark was made so significantly that Lory could not ignore it even
if such a course had recommended itself to one of his quick and impulsive
nature.

“What do you mean, colonel?”

Gilbert made a little gesture of the hand that held the half-burnt
cigarette. He deprecated, it would appear, having been drawn to talk on
so serious a topic.

“Well, I speak as one Frenchman to another, as one soldier to another. If
the emperor does not die, he will declare war against Germany. There is
the situation in a nutshell, is it not? And do you think the army can
afford to lose one man at the present time, especially a man who has made
good use of such small opportunities of distinction as the fates have
offered him? And, so far as I have been able to follow the intricacies of
the parochial politics, your life is not worth two sous in this country,
my dear count. There, I have spoken. A word to the wise, is it not?”

He rose, and threw away his cigarette with a nod and a smile.

“And now I must be returning. You will allow me to pass up that small
pathway that leads past the chateau. Some day I should, above all things,
like to see the chateau. I am interested in old houses, I tell you
frankly.”

“I will walk part of the way with you,” answered Lory, with a stiffness
which was entirely due to a sense of self-reproach. For it was his
instinct to be hospitable and open-handed and friendly. And Lory would
have liked to ask the colonel then and there to come to the chateau.

“By the way,” said the colonel, as they climbed the hill together, “I did
not, of course, mean to suggest that you should sell me the old house
which bears your name--only a piece of land, a few hectares on this
south-west <DW72>, that I may amuse myself with agriculture, as I told
you. Perhaps some day you may reconsider your decision?”

He waited for a reply to this suggestion, or an invitation in response to
the hint that he was interested in the old house. But neither came.

“I am much obliged to you for your warning as to the unpopularity of my
name in this district,” said Lory, rather laboriously changing the
subject. “I had, of course, heard something of the same sort before; but
I do not attach much importance to local tradition, do you?”

The colonel paused for a few minutes. He had the leisurely conversational
manner of an old man.

“These people have undergone a change,” he said at length, “since their
final subjugation by ourselves--exactly a hundred years ago, by the way.
They were a turbulent, fighting, obstinate people. Those qualities--good
enough in times of war--go bad in times of peace. They are a lawless,
idle, dishonest people now. Their grand fighting qualities have run to
seed in municipal disagreements and electioneering squabbles. And, worst
of all, we have grafted on them our French thrift, which has run to
greed. There is not a man in the district who would shoot you, count,
from any idea of the vendetta, but there are a hundred who would do it
for a thousand-franc note, or in order to prevent you taking back the
property which he has stolen from you. That is how it stands. And that is
why Pietro Andrei came to grief at Olmeta.”

“And Mattei Perucca?” asked Lory, thereby causing the colonel to trip
suddenly over a stone.

“Oh, Perucca,” he answered, “that was different. He died a more or less
natural death. He was a very stout man, and on receiving a letter, gave
way to such ungovernable rage that he fell in a fit. True, it was a
threatening letter; but such are common enough in this country. It may
have been a joke or may have had some comparatively harmless object. None
could have foreseen such a result.”

They were now near the chateau, and the colonel rather suddenly shook
hands and went away.

“I am always to be found at Bastia, and am always at your service,” he
said, waving a farewell with his whip.

Lory found the door of the chateau ajar, and Jean watching behind it. His
father, however, seemed to have forgotten upon what mission he had gone
forth, and was sitting placidly in the little room, lighted by a
skylight, where they always lived. The sight of Lory reminded him,
however.

“Who was it?” he asked, without showing a very keen interest.

“It was a man called Gilbert,” answered Lory, “whom I have met in Paris.
An engineer. He is stationed at Bastia, and is connected with the railway
scheme. A man I should like to like, and yet--He ought to be a good
fellow. He has every qualification, and yet--”

Lory did not finish the sentence, but stood reflectively looking at his
father.

“He has more than once offered to buy Vasselot,” he said, watching for
the effect.

“You must never sell Vasselot,” replied the old man. He did not seem to
conceive it possible that there should be any temptation to do so.

“I do not quite understand Colonel Gilbert,” continued Lory. “He has also
offered to buy Perucca; but there I think he has to deal with a clever
woman.”




CHAPTER XI.


BY SURPRISE.

     “C'est ce qu'on ne dit pas qui explique ce qu'on dit.”


From the Rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris to the Casa Perucca in Corsica is
as complete a change as even the heart of woman may desire. For the Rue
du Cherche-Midi is probably the noisiest corner of that noisy Paris that
lies south of the Seine; and the Casa Perucca is one of the few quiet
corners of Europe where the madding crowd is non-existent, and that
crowning effort of philanthropic folly, the statute holiday, has yet to
penetrate.

“Yes,” said Mademoiselle Brun, one morning, after she and Denise had
passed two months in what she was pleased to term exile--“yes; it is
peaceful. Give me war,” she added grimly, after a pause.

They were standing on the terrace that looked down over the great valley
of Vasselot. There was not a house in sight except the crumbling chateau.
The month was June, and the river, which could be heard in winter, was
now little more than a trickling stream. A faint breeze stirred the young
leaves of the copper-beech, which is a silent tree by nature, and did not
so much as whisper now. There are few birds in Corsica, for the natives
are great sportsmen, and will shoot, sitting, anything from a man to a
sparrow in season and out.

“Listen,” said Mademoiselle Brun, holding up one steady, yellow finger;
but the silence was such as will make itself felt. “And the neighbours do
not call much,” added mademoiselle, in completion of her own thoughts.

Denise laughed. She had been up early, for they were almost alone in the
Casa Perucca now. The servants who had obeyed Mattei Perucca in fear and
trembling, had refused to obey Denise, who, with much spirit, had
dismissed them one and all. An old man remained, who was generally
considered to be half-witted; and Maria Andrei, the widow of Pietro, who
was shot at Olmeta. Denise superintended the small farm.

“That cheery Maria,” said Mademoiselle Brun, “she is our only resource,
and reminds me of a cheap funeral.”

“There is the colonel,” said Denise. “You forget him.”

“Yes; there is the colonel, who is so kind to us.”

And Mademoiselle Brun slowly contemplated the whole landscape, taking in
Denise, as it were, in passing.

“And there is our little friend,” she added, “down in the valley there
who does not call.”

“Why do you call him little?” asked Denise, looking down at the Chateau
de Vasselot. “He is not little.”

“He is not so large as the colonel,” explained mademoiselle.

“I wonder why he does not call?” said Denise, presently, looking down
into the valley, as if she could perhaps see the explanation there.

“It has something to do with the social geography of the district,” said
mademoiselle, “which we do not understand. The Cheap Funeral alone knows
it. Half of the country she colours red, the other half black.
Theoretically, we hate a number of persons who reciprocate the feeling
heartily. Practically, we do not know of their existence. I imagine the
Count de Vasselot hates us on the same principle.”

“But we are not going to be dictated to by a number of ignorant
peasants,” cried Denise, angrily.

“I rather fancy we are.”

Denise was standing by the low wall, with her head thrown back. She was
naturally energetic, and had the carriage that usually goes with that
quality.

“Are you sure he is there?” she asked, still looking down at the château.

“No, I am not. I have only Maria's word for it.”

“Then I am going to the village of Olmeta to find out,” said Denise.

And mademoiselle followed her to the house without comment. Indeed, she
seemed willing enough to do that which they had been warned not to do.

On the road that skirts the hill and turns amid groves of chestnut trees,
they met two men, loitering along with no business in hand, who scowled
at them and made no salutation.

“They may scowl beneath their great hats,” said Denise; “I am not afraid
of them.” And she walked on with her chin well up.

Below them, on the left, the terraces of vine and olive were weed-grown
and neglected; for Denise had found no one to work on her land, and the
soil here is damp and warm, favouring a rapid growth.

Colonel Gilbert had been unable to help them in this matter. His
official position necessarily prevented his taking an active part in any
local differences. There were Luccans, he said, to be hired at Bastia,
hard-working men and skilled vine-dressers, but they would not come to a
commune where such active hostility existed, and to induce them to do so
would inevitably lead to bloodshed.

The Abbé Susini had called, and told a similar tale in more guarded
language. Finding the ladies good Catholics, he pleaded for and abused
his poor in one breath, and then returned half the money that Denise gave
him.

“As likely as not you will be given credit for the whole in heaven,
mademoiselle, but I will only take part of it,” he said.

“A masterful man,” commented Mademoiselle Brun, when he was gone.

But the abbé had suggested no solution to Denise's difficulties. The
estate seemed to be drifting naturally into the hands of the only man who
wanted it, and, after all, had offered a good price for it.

“I will find out from the Abbé Susini or the mayor whether the Count de
Vasselot is really here,” Denise said, as they approached the village.
“And if he is, we will go and see him. We cannot go on like this. He says
do not sell, and then he does not come near us. He must give his reasons.
Why should I take his advice?”

“Why, indeed?” said Mademoiselle Brun, to whom the question was not quite
a new one.

She knew that though Denise would rebel against de Vasselot's advice, she
would continue to follow it.

“It seems to be luncheon-time,” said Denise, when they reached the
village. “The place is deserted. It must be their _déjeuner_.”

“It may be,” responded mademoiselle, with her manlike curtness of speech.

They went into the church, which was empty, and stayed but a few minutes
there, for Mademoiselle Brun was as short in her speech with God as with
men. When they came out to the market-place, that also was deserted,
which was singular, because the villagers in Corsica spend nearly the
whole day on the market-place, talking politics and whispering a hundred
intrigues of parochial policy; for here a municipal councillor is a great
man, and usually a great scoundrel, selling his favour and his vote,
trafficking for power, and misappropriating the public funds. Not only
was the market-place empty, but some of the house-doors were closed. The
door of a small shop was even shut from within as they approached, and
surreptitiously barred. Mademoiselle Brun noticed it, and Denise did not
pretend to ignore it.

“One would say that we had an infectious complaint,” she said, with a
short laugh.

They went to the house of the Abbé Susini. Even this door was shut.

“The abbé is out,” said the old woman, who came in answer to their
summons, and she closed the door again with more speed than politeness.

Denise did not need to ask which was the mayor's house, for a board, with
the word “Mairie” painted upon it (appropriately enough a movable board),
was affixed to a house nearly opposite to the church. As they walked
towards it, a stone, thrown from the far corner of the Place, under the
trees, narrowly missed Denise, and rolled at her feet. Mademoiselle Brun
walked on, but Denise swung round on her heel. There was no one to be
seen, so she had to follow Mademoiselle Brun, after all, in silence. She
was rather pale, but it was anger that lighted her eyes, and not fear.

Almost immediately a volley of stones followed, and a laugh rang out from
beneath the trees. And, strange to say, it was the laugh that at last
frightened Denise, and not the stones; for it was a cruel laugh--the
laugh of a brutal fool, such as one may still hear in a few European
countries when boys are torturing dumb animals.

“Let us hurry,” said Denise, hastily. “Let us get to the Mairie.”

“Where we shall find the biggest scoundrel of them all, no doubt,” added
mademoiselle, who was alert and cool.

But before they reached the Mairie the stones had ceased, and they both
turned at the sound of a horse's feet. It was Colonel Gilbert riding
hastily into the Place. He saw the stones lying there and the two women
standing alone in the sunlight. He looked towards the trees, and then
round at the closed houses. With a shrug of the shoulders, he rode
towards Denise and dismounted.

“Mademoiselle”, he said, “they have been frightening you.”

“Yes”, she answered. “They are not men, but brutes.”

The colonel, who was always gentle in manner, made a deprecatory gesture
with the great riding-whip that he invariably carried.

“You must remember”, he said, “that they are but half civilized. You know
their history--they have been conquered by all the greedy nations in
succession, and they have never known peace from the time that history
began until a hundred years ago. They are barbarians, mademoiselle, and
barbarians always distrust a new-comer.”

“But why do they hate me?”

“Because they do not know you, mademoiselle,” replied the colonel, with
perhaps a second meaning in his blue eyes.

And, after a pause, he explained further.

“Because they do not understand you. They belong to one of the strongest
clans in Corsica, and it is the ambition of every one to belong to a
strong clan. But the Peruccas are in danger of falling into dissension
and disorder, for they have no head. You are the head, mademoiselle. And
the work they expect of you is not work for such hands as yours.”

And again Colonel Gilbert looked at Denise slowly and thoughtfully. She
did not perceive the glance, for she was standing with her head half
turned towards the trees.

“Ah!” he said, noting the direction of her glance, “they will throw no
more stones, mademoiselle. You need have no anxiety. They fear a uniform
as much as they hate it.”

“And if you had not come at that moment?”

“Ah!” said the colonel, gravely; and that was all. “At any rate, I am
glad I came,” he added, in a lighter tone, after a pause. “You were going
to the Mairie, mesdemoiselles, when I arrived. Take my advice, and do not
go there. Go to the abbé if you like--as a man, not as a priest--and come
to me whenever you desire a service, but to no one else in Corsica.”

Denise turned as if she were going to make an exception to this sweeping
restriction, but she checked herself and said nothing. And all the while
Mademoiselle Brun stood by in silence, a little, patient, bent woman,
with compressed lips, and those steady hazel eyes that see so much and
betray so little.

“The abbé is not at home,” continued the colonel. “I saw him many miles
from here not long ago; and although he is quick on his legs--none
quicker--He cannot be here yet. If you are going towards the Casa
Perucca, you will perhaps allow me to accompany you”.

He led the way as he spoke, leading loosely by the bridle the horse which
followed him, and nuzzled thoughtfully at his shoulder. The colonel was,
it appeared, one whose gentle ways endeared him to animals.

It was glaringly hot, and when they reached the Casa Perucca, Denise
asked the colonel to come in and rest. It was, moreover, luncheon-time,
and in a thinly populated country the great distances between neighbours
are conducive to an easier hospitality than that which exists in closer
quarters. The colonel naturally stayed to luncheon.

He was kind and affable, and had a hundred little scraps of gossip such
as exiles love. He made no mention of his offer to buy Perucca,
remembered only the fact that he was a gentleman accepting frankly a
lady's frank hospitality, and if the conversation turned to local
matters, he gracefully guided it elsewhere.

Immediately after luncheon he rose from the table, refusing even to wait
for coffee.

“I have my duties,” he explained. “The War Office is, for reasons known
to itself, moving troops, and I have gradually crept up the ladder at
Bastia, till I am nearly at the top there.”

Denise went with him to the stable to see that his horse had been cared
for.

“They have only left me the decrepit and the half-witted,” she said, “but
I am not beaten yet.”

Colonel Gilbert fetched the horse himself and tightened the girths. They
walked together towards the great gate of solid wood which fitted into
the high wall so closely that none could peep through so much as a crack.
At the door the colonel lingered, leaning against his great horse and
stroking its shoulder thoughtfully with a gloved finger.

“Mademoiselle,” he said at length.

“Yes,” answered Denise, looking at him so honestly in the face that he
had to turn away.

“I want to ask you,” he said slowly, “to marry me.”

Denise looked at him in utter astonishment, her face suddenly red, her
eyes half afraid.

“I do not understand you,” she said.

“And yet it is simple enough,” answered the colonel, who himself was
embarrassed and ill at ease. “I ask you to marry me. You think I am too
old--” He paused, seeking his words. “I am not forty yet, and, at all
events, I am not making the mistake usually made by very young men. I do
not imagine that I love you--I know it.”

They stood for a minute in silence; then the colonel spoke again.

“Of what are you thinking, mademoiselle?”

“That it is hard to lose the only friend we have in Corsica.”

“You need not do that,” replied the colonel. “I do not even ask you to
answer now.”

“Oh, I can answer at once.”

Colonel Gilbert bit his lip, and looked at the ground in silence.

“Then I am too old?” he said at length.

“I do not know whether it is that or not,” answered Denise; and neither
spoke while the colonel mounted and rode slowly away. Denise closed the
door quite softly behind him.




CHAPTER XII.


A SUMMONS.

     “One stern tyrannic thought that made
     All other thoughts its slave.”


All round the Mediterranean Sea there dwell people who understand the art
of doing nothing. They do it unblushingly, peaceably, and of a set
purpose. Moreover, their forefathers must have been addicted to a similar
philosophy; for there is no Mediterranean town or village without its
promenade or lounging-place, where the trees have grown quite large, and
the shade is quite deep, and the wooden or stone seats are shiny with
use. Here those whom the French call “worth-nothings” congregate
peacefully and happily, to look at the sea and contemplate life from that
reflective and calm standpoint which is only to be enjoyed by the man who
has nothing to lose. To begin at Valentia, one will find these human
weeds almost Oriental in their apathy. Farther north, at Barcelona, they
are given to fitful lapses into activity before the heat of the day. At
Marseilles they are almost energetic, and are even known to take the
trouble of asking the passer for alms. But eastward, beyond Toulon, they
understand their business better, and do not even trouble to talk among
themselves. The French worth-nothing is, in a word, worth less than any
of his brothers--much less than the Italian, who is quite easily roused
to a display of temper and a rusty knife--and more nearly approaches the
supreme calm of the Moor, who, across the Mediterranean, will sit all day
and stare at nothing with any man in the world. And between these dreamy
coasts there lie half a dozen islands which, strange to say, are islands
of unrest. In Majorca every man works from morn till eve. In Minorca they
do the same, and quarrel after nightfall. In Iviza they quarrel all day.
In Corsica they do nothing, restlessly; while Sardinia, as all the world
knows, is a hotbed of active discontent.

At Ajaccio there are half a dozen idlers on the Place Bonaparte, who sit
under the trees against the wall; but they never sit there long, and do
not know their business. At St. Florent, in the north of the island,
which has a western aspect--the best for idling--there are but two real,
unadulterated knights of industry, who sit on the low wall of that which
is called the New Quay, and conscientiously do nothing from morning till
night.

“Of course I know him,” one was saying to the other. “Do I not remember
his father, and are not all the de Vasselots cut with the same knife? I
tell you there was a moon, and I saw him get off his horse, just here at
the very door of Rutali's stable, and unstrap his sack, which he carried
himself, and set off towards Olmeta.”

The speaker lapsed into silence, and Colonel Gilbert, who had lunched,
and was now sitting at the open window of the little inn, which has
neither sign nor license, leant farther forward. For the word “Olmeta”
 never failed to bring a light of energy and enterprise into his quiet
eyes.

The inn has its entrance in the main street of St. Florent, and only the
back windows look out upon the quay and across the bay. It was at one of
these windows that Colonel Gilbert was enjoying a cigarette and a cup of
coffee, and the loafers on the quay were unaware of his presence there.
And for the sixth time at least, the story of Lory de Vasselot's arrival
at St. Florent and departure for Olmeta was told and patiently heard. Has
not one of the great students of human nature said that the _canaille_ of
all nations are much alike? And the dull or idle of intellect assuredly
resemble each other in the patience with which they will listen to or
tell the same story over and over again.

The colonel heard the tale, listlessly gazing across the bay with dreamy
eyes, and only gave the talker his full attention when more ancient
history was touched upon.

“Yes,” said the idler; “and I remember his father when he was just at
that age--as like this one as one sheep is like another. Nor have I
forgotten the story which few remember now.”

He pressed down the tobacco into his wooden pipe--for they are
pipe-smokers in a cigarette latitude--and waited cunningly for curiosity
to grow. His companion showed no sign, though the colonel set his empty
coffee-cup noiselessly aside and leant his elbow on the window-sill.

The speaker jerked his thumb in the direction of Olmeta over his left
shoulder far up on the mountainside.

“That story was buried with Perucca,” he said, after a long pause.
“Perhaps the Abbé Susini knows it. Who can tell what a priest knows?
There were two Peruccas once--fine, big men--and neither married. The
other--Andrei Perucca--who has been in hell these thirty years, made
sheep's eyes, they told me, at de Vasselot's young wife. She was French,
and willing enough, no doubt. She was dull, down there in that great
chateau; and when a woman is dull she must either go to church or to the
devil. She cannot content herself with tobacco or the drink, like a man.
De Vasselot heard of it. He was a quiet man, and he waited. One day he
began to carry a gun, like you and me--a bad example, eh? Then Andrei
Perucca was seen to carry a gun also. And, of course, in time they
met--up there on the road from Pruneta to Murato. The clouds were down,
and the gregale was blowing cold and showery. It is when the gregale
blows that the clouds seem to whisper as they crowd through the narrow
places up among the peaks, and there was no other sound while these two
men crept round each other among the rocks, like two cats upon a roof. De
Vasselot was quicker and smaller, and as agile as a goat, and Andrei
Perucca lost him altogether. He was a fool. He went to look for him. As
if any one in his senses would go to look for a Corsican in the rocks!
That is how the gendarmes get killed. At length Andrei Perucca raised his
head over a big stone, and looked right into the muzzle of de Vasselot's
gun. The next minute there was no head upon Perucca's shoulders.”

The narrator paused, and relighted his pipe with a foul-smelling sulphur
match.

“Yes,” he said reflectively; “they are fine men, the de Vasselots.”

He tapped himself on the chest with the stem of his pipe, and made a
gesture towards the mountains and the sky, as if calling upon the gods to
hear him.

“I am all for the de Vasselots--I,” he said.

Colonel Gilbert leant out of the window, and quietly took stock of this
valuable adherent.

“At that time,” continued the speaker, “we had at Bastia a young prefect
who took himself seriously. He was going to reform the world. They
decided to arrest the Count de Vasselot, though they had not a scrap of
evidence, and the clan was strong in those days, stronger than the
Peruccas are to-day. But they never caught him. They disappeared bag and
baggage--went to Paris, I understand; and they say the count died there,
or was perhaps killed by the Peruccas, who grew strong under Mattei, so
that in a few years it would have been impossible for a de Vasselot to
show his face in this country. Then Mattei Perucca died, and was hardly
in his grave before this man came. I tell you, I saw him myself, a de
Vasselot, with his father's quick way of turning his head, of sitting in
the saddle lightly like a Spaniard or a Corsican. That was in the spring,
and it is now July--three months ago. And he has never been seen or heard
of since. But he is here, I tell you; he is here in the island. As likely
as not he is in the old chateau down there in the valley. No honest man
has set his foot across the threshold since the de Vasselots left it
thirty years ago--only Jean is there, who has the evil eye. But there are
plenty of Perucca's people up at Olmeta who would risk Jean's eye, and
break down the doors of the chateau at a word from the Casa Perucca. But
the girl there who is the head of the clan will not say the word. She
does not understand that she is powerful if she would only go to work in
the right way, and help her people. Instead of that, she quarrels with
them over such small matters as the right of grazing or of cutting wood.
She will make the place too hot for her--” He broke off suddenly. “What
is that?” he said, turning on the wall, which was polished smooth by
constant friction.

He turned to the north and listened, looking in the direction of Cap
Corse, from whence the Bastia road comes winding down the mountain
<DW72>s.

“I hear nothing,” said his companion.

“Then you are deaf. It is the diligence half an hour before its time, and
the driver of it is shouting as he comes--shouting to the people on the
road. It seems that there is news--”

But Colonel Gilbert heard no more, for he had seized his sword, and was
already halfway down the stone stairs. It appeared that he expected news,
and when the diligence drew up in the narrow street, he was there
awaiting it, amid a buzzing crowd, which had inexplicably assembled in
the twinkling of an eye. Yes; there was assuredly news, for the diligence
came in at a gallop though there was no one on it but the driver. He
shouted incoherently, and waved his whip above his head. Then, quite
suddenly, perceiving Colonel Gilbert, he snapped his lips together, threw
aside the reins, and leapt to the ground.

“Mon colonel,” he said, “a word with you.”

And they went apart into a doorway. Three words sufficed to tell all that
the diligence driver knew, and a minute later the colonel hurried towards
the stable of the inn, where his horse stood ready. He rode away at a
sharp trot, not towards Bastia, but down the valley of Vasselot. Although
it was evident that he was pressed for time, the colonel did not hurry
his horse, but rather relieved it when he could by dismounting, at every
sharp ascent, and riding where possible in the deep shade of the chestnut
trees. He turned aside from the main road that climbs laboriously to
Oletta and Olmeta, and followed the river-path. In order to gain time he
presently left the path, and made a short cut across the open land,
glancing up at the Casa Perucca as he did so. For he was trespassing.

He was riding leisurely enough when his horse stumbled, and, in
recovering itself, clumsily kicked a great stone with such force that he
shattered it to a hundred pieces, and then stood on three legs, awkwardly
swinging his hoof in a way that horses have when the bone has been
jarred. In a moment the colonel dismounted, and felt the injured leg
carefully.

“My friend,” he said kindly, “you are a fool. What are you doing? Name of
a dog”--he paused, and collecting the pieces of broken quartz, threw them
away into the brush--“name of a dog, what are you doing?”

With an odd laugh Colonel Gilbert climbed into the saddle again, and
although he looked carefully up at the Casa Perucca, he failed to see
Mademoiselle Brun's grey face amid the grey shadows of an olive tree. The
horse limped at first, but presently forgot his grievance against the big
stone that had lain in his path. The colonel laughed to himself in a
singular way more than once at the seemingly trivial accident, and on
regaining the path, turned in his saddle to look again at the spot where
it had occurred.

On nearing the chateau he urged his horse to a better pace, and reached
the great door at a sharp trot. He rang the bell without dismounting, and
leisurely quitted the saddle. But the summons was not immediately
answered. He jerked at the chain again, and rattled on the door with the
handle of his riding whip. At length the bolts were withdrawn, and the
heavy door opened sufficiently to admit a glance of that evil eye which
the peasants did not care to face.

Before speaking the colonel made a step forward, so that his foot must
necessarily prevent the closing of the door.

“The Count de Vasselot,” said he.

“Take away your foot,” replied Jean.

The colonel noted with a good-natured surprise the position of his stout
riding-boot, and withdrew it.

“The Count de Vasselot,” he repeated. “You need not trouble, my friend,
to tell any lies or to look at me with your evil eye. I know the count is
here, for I saw him in Paris just before he came, and I spoke to him at
this very door a few weeks ago. He knows me, and I think you know me too,
my friend. Tell your master I have news from France. He will see me.”

Jean unceremoniously closed the door, and the colonel, who was moving
away towards his horse, turned sharply on his heel when he heard the
bolts being surreptitiously pushed back again.

“Ah!” he said, and he stood outside the door with his hand at his
moustache, reflectively following Jean's movements, “they are singularly
careful to keep me out, these people.”

He had not long to wait, however, for presently Lory came, stepping
quickly over the high threshold and closing the door behind him. But
Gilbert was taller than de Vasselot, and could see over his head. He
looked right through the house into the little garden on the terrace, and
saw someone there who was not Jean. And the light of surprise was still
in his eyes as he shook hands with Lory de Vasselot.

“You have news for me?” inquired de Vasselot.

“News for every Frenchman.”

“Ah!”

“Yes. The emperor has declared war against Germany.”

“War!” echoed Lory, with a sudden laugh.

“Yes; and your regiment is the first on the list.”

“I know, I know!” cried de Vasselot, his eyes alight with excitement.
“But this is good news that you tell me. How can I thank you for coming?
I must get home--I mean to France--at once. But this is great news!” He
seized the colonel's hand and shook it. “Great news, mon colonel--great
news!”

“Good news for you, for you are going. But I shall be left behind as
usual. Yes; it is good news for you.”

“And for France,” cried Lory, with both hands outspread, as if to
indicate the glory that was awaiting them.

“For France,” said the colonel, gravely, “it cannot fail to be bad. But
we must not think of that now.”

“We shall never think of it,” answered Lory. “This is Monday; there is a
boat for Marseilles to-night. I leave Bastia to-night, colonel.”

“And I must get back there,” said the colonel, holding out his hand.

He rode thoughtfully back by the shortest route through the Lancone
Defile, and, as he approached Bastia, from the heights behind the town he
saw the steamer that would convey Lory to France coming northward from
Bonifacio.

“Yes,” he said; “he will leave Bastia to-night; and assuredly the good
God, or the devil, helps me at every turn of this affair.”




CHAPTER XIII.


WAR.

     “Since all that I can ever do for thee
     Is to do nothing, may'st thou never see,
     Never divine, the all that nothing costeth me!”


It is for kings to declare war, for nations to fight and pay. Napoleon
III declared war against Russia, and France fought side by side with
England in the Crimea, not because the gayest and most tragic of nations
had aught to gain, but to ensure an upstart emperor a place among the
monarchs of Europe. And that strange alliance was merely one move in a
long game played by a consummate intriguer--a game which began
disastrously at Boulogne and ended disastrously at Sedan, and yet was the
most daring and brilliant feat of European statesmanship that has been
carried out since the adventurer's great uncle went to St. Helena.

But no one knows why in July, 1870, Napoleon III declared war against
Germany. The secret of the greatest war of modern times lies buried in
the Imperial mausoleum at Frognal.

There is a sort of surprise which is caused by the sudden arrival of the
long expected, and Germany experienced it in that hot midsummer, for
there seemed to be no reason why war should break out at the moment.
Shortly before, the Spanish Government had offered the crown to the
hereditary Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, and France, ever ready to see
a grievance, found herself suited. But the hereditary prince declined
that throne, and the incident seemed about to close. Then quite suddenly
France made a demand, with reference to any possible recurrence of the
same question, which Germany could not be expected to grant. It was an
odd demand to make, and in a flash of thought the great German chancellor
saw that this meant war. Perhaps he had been waiting for it. At all
events, he was prepared for it, as were the silent soldier, von Roon, and
the gentle tactician, von Moltke. These gentlemen were away for a
holiday, but they returned, and, as history tells, had merely to fill in
a few dates on already prepared documents.

If France was not ready she thought herself so, and was at all events
willing. Nay, she was so eager that she shouted when she should have held
her tongue. And who shall say what the schemer of the Tuileries thought
of it all behind that pleasant smile, those dull and sphinx-like eyes? He
had always believed in his star, had always known that he was destined to
be great; and now perhaps he knew that his star was waning--that the
greatness was past. He made his preparations quietly. He was never a
flustered man, this nephew of the greatest genius the world has seen. Did
he not sit three months later in front of a cottage at Donchery and
impassively smoke cigarette after cigarette while waiting for Otto von
Bismarck? He was a fatalist.

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on.”

And it must be remembered to his credit that he asked no man's pity--a
request as foolish to make for a fallen emperor as for the ordinary man
who has, for instance, married in haste, and is given the leisure of a
whole lifetime in which to repent. For the human heart is incapable of
bestowing unadulterated pity: there must be some contempt in it. If the
fall of Napoleon III was great, let it be remembered that few place
themselves by their own exertions in a position to fall at all.

The declaration of war was, on the whole, acclaimed in France; for
Frenchmen are, above all men, soldiers. Does not the whole world use
French terms in the technicalities of warfare? The majority received the
news as Lory de Vasselot received it. For a time he could only think that
this was a great and glorious moment in his life. He hurried in to tell
his father, but the count failed to rise to the occasion.

“War!” he said. “Yes; there have been many in my time. They have not
affected me--or my carnations.”

“And I go to it to-night,” announced Lory, watching his father with eyes
suddenly grave and anxious.

“Ah!” said the count, and made no farther comment.

Then, without pausing to consider his own motives, Lory hurried up to the
Casa Perucca to tell the ladies there his great news. He must, it seemed,
tell somebody, and he knew no one else within reach, except perhaps the
Abbé Susini, who did not pretend to be a Frenchman.

“Is it peace?” asked Mademoiselle Brun, who, having seen him climbing the
steep <DW72> in the glaring sunshine, was waiting for him by the open
side-door when he arrived there.

He took her withered hand, and bowed over it as gallantly as if it had
been soft and young.

“What do you mean?” he asked, looking at her curiously.

“Well, it seems that the Casa Perucca and the Château de Vasselot are not
on visiting terms. We only call on each other with a gun.”

“It is odd that you should have asked me that,” said Lory, “for it is not
peace, but war.”

And as he looked at her, her face hardened, her steady eyes wavered for
once.

“Ah!” she said, her hands dropping sharply against her dingy black dress
in a gesture of despair. “Again!”

“Yes, mademoiselle,” answered Lory, gently; for he had a quick intuition,
and knew at a glance that war must have hurt this woman at one time of
her life.

She stood for a moment tapping the ground with her foot, looking
reflectively across the valley.

“Assuredly,” she said, “Frenchwomen must be the bravest women in the
world, or else there would never be a light heart in the whole country.
Come, let us go in and tell Denise. It is Germany, I suppose?”

“Yes, mademoiselle. They have long wanted it, and we are obliging them at
last. You look grave. It is not bad news I bring you, but good.”

“Women like soldiers, but they hate war,” said mademoiselle, and walked
on slowly in silence.

After a pause, she turned and looked at him as if she were going to ask
him a question, but checked herself.

“I almost did a foolish thing,” she explained, seeing his glance of
surprise. “I was going to ask you if you were going?”

“Ah, yes, I am going,” he answered, with a laugh and a keen glance of
excitement. “War is a necessary evil, mademoiselle, and assists
promotion. Why should you hate it?”

“Because we cannot interfere in it,” replied Mademoiselle Brun, with a
snap of the lips. “We shall find Denise in the garden to the north of the
house, picking green beans, Monsieur le Comte,” continued Mademoiselle
Brun, with a glance in his direction.

“Then I shall have time to help with the beans before I go to the war,”
 answered Lory; and they walked on in silence.

The garden was but half cultivated--a luxuriant thicket of fruit and
weed, of trailing vine and wild clematis. The air of it was heavy with a
hundred scents, and, in the shade, was cool, and of a mossy odour rarely
found in Southern seas.

They did not see Denise at first, and then suddenly she emerged at the
other end of the weed-grown path where they stood. Lory hurried forward,
hat in hand, and perceived that Denise made a movement, as if to go back
into the shadow, which was immediately restrained.

Mademoiselle Brun did not follow Lory, but turned back towards the house.

“If they must quarrel,” she said to herself, “they may do it without my
assistance.”

And Denise seemed, indeed, ready to fall out with her neighbour, for she
came towards him with heightened colour and a flash of annoyance in her
eyes.

“I am sorry they put you to the trouble of coming out here,” she said.

“Why, mademoiselle? Because I find you picking green beans?”

“No; not that. But one has one's pride. This is my garden. I keep it!
Look at it!” And she waved her hand with a gesture of contempt.

De Vasselot looked gravely round him. Then, after a pause, he made a
movement of the deepest despair.

“Yes, mademoiselle,” he said, with a great sigh, “it is a wilderness.”

“And now you are laughing at me.”

“I, mademoiselle?” And he faced her tragic eyes.

“You think I am a woman.”

De Vasselot spread out his hands in deprecation, as if, this time, she
had hit the mark.

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“I mean you think we are only capable of wearing pretty clothes and
listening to pretty speeches, and that anything else is beyond our grasp
altogether.”

“Nothing in the world, mademoiselle, is beyond your grasp, except”--he
paused, and looked round him--“except a spade, perhaps, and that is what
this garden wants.”

They were very grave about it, and sat down on a rough seat built by
Mattei Perucca, who had come there in the hot weather.

“Then what is to be done?” said Denise, simply.

For the French--the most intellectually subtle people of the world--have
a certain odd simplicity which seems to have survived all the changes and
chances of monarchy, republic, and empire.

“I do not quite know. Have you not a man?”

“I have nobody, except a decrepit old man, who is half an imbecile,” said
Denise, with a short laugh. “I get my provisions surreptitiously by the
hand of Madame Andrei. No one else comes near the Casa. We are in a state
of siege. I dare not go into Olmeta; but I am holding on because you
advised me not to sell.”

“I, mademoiselle?”

“Yes; in Paris. Have you forgotten?”

“No,” answered Lory, slowly--“no; I have not forgotten. But no one takes
my advice--indeed, no one asks it--except about a horse. They think I
know about a horse.” And Lory smiled to himself at the thought of his
proud position.

“But you surely meant what you said?” asked Denise.

“Oh yes. But you honour me too much by taking my opinion thus seriously
without question, mademoiselle.”

Denise was looking at him with her clear, searching eyes, rather veiled
by a suggestion of disappointment.

“I thought--I thought you seemed so decided, so sure of your own
opinion,” she said doubtfully.

De Vasselot was silent for a moment, then he turned to her quickly,
impulsively, confidentially.

“Listen,” he said. “I will tell you the truth. I said 'Don't sell.' I say
'Don't sell' still. And I have not a shred of reason for doing so.
There!”

Denise was not a person who was easily led. She laughed at the stern,
strong Mademoiselle Brun to her face, and treated her opinion with a gay
contempt. She had never yet been led.

“No,” she said, and seemed ready to dispense with reasons. “You will not
sell, yourself?” she said, after a pause.

“No; I cannot sell,” he said quickly; and she remembered his answer long
afterwards.

After a pause he explained farther.

“I tell you frankly,” he said earnestly, for he was always either very
earnest or very gay--“I tell you frankly, when we both received an offer
to buy, I thought there must be some reason why the places are worth
buying, but I have found none.”

He paused, and, looking round, remembered that this also was his, and did
not belong to Denise at all, who claimed it, and held it with such a high
hand.

“As Corsica at present stands, Perucca and Vasselot are valueless,
mademoiselle, I claim the honour of being in the same boat with you. And
if the empire falls--_bonjour la paix!_”

And he sketched a grand upheaval with a wave of his two hands in the air.

“But why should the empire fall?” asked Denise, sharply.

“Ah, but I have the head of a sparrow!” cried Lory, and he smote himself
grievously on the forehead. “I forgot to tell you the very thing that I
came to tell you. Which is odd, for until I came into this garden I could
think of nothing else. I was ready to shout it to the trees. War has been
declared, mademoiselle.”

“War!” said Denise; and she drew in one whistling breath through her
teeth, as one may who has been burnt by contact with heated metal, and
sat looking straight in front of her. “When do you go, Monsieur le
Comte?” she asked, in a steady voice, after a moment.

“To-night.”

He rose, and stood before her, looking at the tangled garden with a
frown.

“Ah!” he said, with a sudden laugh, “if the emperor had only consulted
me, he would not have done it just yet. I want to go, of course, for I am
a soldier. But I do not want to go now. I should have liked to see things
more settled, here in Olmeta. If the empire falls, mademoiselle, you must
return to France; remember that. I should have liked to have offered you
my poor assistance; but I cannot--I must go. There are others, however.
There is Mademoiselle Brun, with a man's heart in that little body. And
there is the Abbé Susini. Yes; you can trust him as you can trust a
little English fighting terrier. Tell him----No; I will tell him. He is a
Vasselot, mademoiselle, but I shall make him a Perucca.”

He held out his hand gaily to say good-bye.

“And--stay! Will you write to me if you want me, mademoiselle? I may be
able to get to you.”

Denise did not answer for a moment. Then she looked him straight in the
eyes, as was her wont with men and women alike.

“Yes,” she said.

A few minutes later, Mademoiselle Brun came into the garden. She looked
round but saw no one. Approaching the spot where she had left Denise, she
found the basket with a few beans in it, and Denise's gloves lying there.
She knew that Lory had gone, but still she could see Denise nowhere.
There were a hundred places in the garden where any who did not wish to
be discovered could find concealment.

Mademoiselle Brun took up the basket and continued to pick the French
beans.

“My poor child! my poor child!” she muttered twice, with a hard face.




CHAPTER XIV.


GOSSIP.

     “Cupid is a casuist,
      A mystic, and a cabalist.
      Can your lurking thought surprise,
      And interpret your device?”


That which has been taken by the sword must be held by the sword. In
Corsica the blade is sheathed, but it has never yet been laid aside. The
quick events of July thrust this sheathed weapon into the hand of Colonel
Gilbert, who, as he himself had predicted, was left behind in the general
exodus.

“If you are placed in command at Bastia, how many, or how few men will
suffice?” asked the civil authority, who was laid on the shelf by the
outbreak of war.

And Colonel Gilbert named what appeared to be an absurd minimum.

“We must think of every event; things may go badly, the fortune of war
may turn against us.”

“Still I can do it,” answered the colonel.

“The empire may fall, and then Corsica will blaze up like tow.”

“Still I can do it,” repeated the colonel.

It is the natural instinct of man to strike while his blood is up, and
the national spirit on either side of the Rhine was all for immediate
action. The leaders themselves were anxious to begin, so that they might
finish before the winter. So the preparations were pushed forward in
Germany with a methodical haste, a sane and deliberate foresight. In
France it was more a question of sentiment--the invincibility of French
arms, the heroism of French soldiers, the Napoleonic legend. But while
these abstract aids to warfare may make a good individual soldier of that
untidy little man in the red trousers, who has, in his time, overrun all
Europe, it will not move great armies or organize a successful campaign.
For the French soldier must have some one to fight for--some one towering
man in whom he trusts, who can turn to good account some of the best
fighting material the human race has yet produced. And Napoleon III was
not such a man.

It is almost certain that he counted on receiving assistance from Austria
or Italy, and when this was withheld, the disease-stricken, suffering man
must assuredly have realized that his star was sinking. He had made the
mistake of putting off this great war too long. He should have fought it
years earlier, before the Prussians had made sure of those steady,
grumbling Bavarians, who bore the brunt of all the fighting, before his
own hand was faltering at the helm, and the face of God was turned away
from the Napoleonic dynasty.

The emperor was no tactician, but he knew the human heart. He knew that
at any cost France must lead off with a victory, not only for the sake of
the little man in the red trousers, but to impress watching Europe, and
perhaps snatch an ally from among the hesitating powers. And the result
was Saarbrück. The news of it filtered through to Colonel Gilbert, who
was now quartered in the grey, picturesque Watrin barracks at Bastia,
which jut out between the old harbour and the plain of Biguglia. The
colonel did not believe half of it. It is always safe to subtract from
good news. But he sat down at once and wrote to Denise Lange. He had not
seen her, had not communicated with her, since he had asked her to marry
him, and she had refused. He was old enough to be her father. He had
asked her to marry him because she would not sell Perucca, and he wanted
that estate; which was not the right motive, but it is the usual one with
men who are past the foolishness of youth--that foolishness which is
better than all the wisdom of the ages.

From having had nothing to do, Colonel Gilbert found himself thrown into
a whirl of work, or what would have been a whirl with a man less calm and
placid. Very much at ease, in white linen clothes, he sat in his room in
the bastion, and transacted the affairs of his command with a leisurely
good nature which showed his complete grasp of the situation.

With regard to Denise, this middle-aged, cynical Frenchman grasped the
situation also. He was slowly and surely falling in love with her. And
she herself had given him the first push down that facile descent when
she had refused to be his wife.

“Mademoiselle,” he wrote, “to quarrel is, I suppose, in the air of
Corsica, and when we parted at your gate some time ago, I am afraid I
left you harbouring a feeling of resentment against me. At this time, and
in the adverse days that I foresee must inevitably be in store for
France, none can afford to part with friends who by any means can
preserve them. In our respective positions, you and I must rise above
small differences of opinion; and I place myself unreservedly at your
service. I write to tell you that I have this morning good news from
France. We have won a small victory at Saarbrück. So far, so good. But,
in case of a reverse, there is only too much reason to fear that internal
disturbances will arise in France, and consequently in this unfortunate
island. It is, therefore, my duty to urge upon you the necessity of
quitting Perucca without delay. If you will not consent to leave the
island, come at all events into Bastia, where, at a few minutes' notice,
I shall be able to place you in a position of safety. I trust I am not
one who is given to exaggerating danger. Ask Mademoiselle Brun, who has
known me since, as a young man, I had the privilege of serving under your
father, a general who had the gift of drawing out from those about him
such few soldierly qualities as they might possess.”

Denise received this letter by post the next morning, and, after reading
it twice, handed it to Mademoiselle Brun, who was much too wise a woman
to ask for an explanation of those parts of it which she did not
comprehend. Indeed, she was manlike enough to pass on with an unimpaired
understanding to the second part of the letter, whereas most women would
have been so consumed by curiosity as to be unable to give more than half
their mind to the colonel's further news.

“And--?” inquired mademoiselle--a Frenchwoman's way of asking a thousand
questions in one. Mademoiselle Brun knew all the conversational tricks
that serve to economize words.

“It is all based upon supposition,” said the erstwhile mathematical
instructress of the school in the Rue du Cherche-Midi. “It will be time
enough to arrive at a decision when the reverse comes. The Count de
Vasselot or the Abbé Susini will, no doubt, warn us in time.”

“Ah!” said Mademoiselle Brun.

“But, if you like, I will write to the Count de Vasselot,” said Denise,
in the voice of one making a concession.

Mademoiselle Brun thought deeply before replying. It is so easy to take a
wrong turning at the cross-roads of life, and assuredly Denise stood at a
_carrefour_ now.

“Yes,” said mademoiselle at length; “it would be well to do that.”

And Denise went away to write the letter that Lory had asked for in case
she wanted him. She did not show it to Mademoiselle Brun, but went out
and posted it herself in the little square box, painted white, affixed to
the white wall on the high-road, and just within sight of Olmeta. When
she returned she went into the garden again, where she spent so great a
part of these hot days that her face was burnt to a healthy brown, which
was in keeping with her fearless eyes and carriage. Mademoiselle Brun, on
the other hand, spent most of her days indoors, divining perhaps that
Denise had of late fallen into an unconscious love of solitude.

Denise returned to the house at luncheon-time, entered by the window, and
caught Mademoiselle Brun hastily shutting an atlas.

“I was wondering,” she said, “where Saarbrück might be, and whether any
one we know had time to get there before the battle.”

“Yes.”

“But Colonel Gilbert will tell us.”

“Colonel Gilbert?” inquired Denise, turning rather sharply.

“Yes. I think he will come to-day or to-morrow.”

And Mademoiselle Brun was right. In the full heat of the afternoon the
great bell at the gate gave forth a single summons; for the colonel was
always gentle in his ways.

“I made an opportunity,” he said, “to escape from the barracks this hot
day.”

But he looked cool enough, and greeted Denise with his usual leisurely,
friendly bow. His manner conveyed, better than any words, that she need
feel no uneasiness on his account, and could treat him literally at his
word, as a friend.

“In order to tell you, with all reserve, the good news,” he continued.

“With all reserve!” echoed Mademoiselle Brun.

“Good news in a French newspaper, Mademoiselle--” And he finished with a
gesture eloquent of the deepest distrust.

“I was wondering,” said Mademoiselle Brun, speaking slowly, and in a
manner that demanded for the time the colonel's undivided attention,
“whether our friend the Count de Vasselot could have been at Saarbrück.”

“The Count de Vasselot,” said Colonel Gilbert, with an air of friendly
surprise. “Has he quitted his beloved château? He is so attached to that
old house, you know.”

“He has joined his regiment,” replied Mademoiselle Brun, upon whom the
burden of the conversation fell; for Denise had gone to the open window,
and was closing the shutters against the sun.

“Ah! Then I can tell you that he was not at Saarbrück. The count's
regiment is not in that part of the country. I was forgetting that he was
a soldier. He is, by the way, your nearest neighbour.”

The colonel rose as he spoke, and went to the window--not to that where
Denise was standing, but to the other, of which the sun-blinds were only
half closed.

“You can, of course, see the château from here?” he said musingly.

“Yes,” answered Mademoiselle Brun, with an uneasy glance.

What was Colonel Gilbert going to say?

He stood for a moment looking down into the valley, while Denise and
Mademoiselle Brun waited.

“And you have perceived nothing that would seem to confirm the gossip
current regarding your--enemy?” he asked, with a good-natured,
deprecatory laugh.

“What gossip?” asked mademoiselle, bluntly.

The colonel shrugged his shoulders without looking round.

“Oh,” he answered, “one does not believe all one hears. Besides, there
are many who think that in such a remote spot as Corsica, it is not
necessary to observe the ordinary--what shall I say?--etiquette of
society.”

He laughed uneasily, and spread out his hands as if, for his part, he
would rather dismiss the subject. But Mademoiselle Brun could be frankly
feminine at times.

“What is the gossip to which you refer?” she asked again.

“Oh, I do not believe a word of it--though I, myself, have seen. Well,
mademoiselle--you will excuse my frankness?--they say there is some one
in the château--some one whom the count wishes to conceal, you
understand.”

“Ah!” said mademoiselle, indifferently.

Denise said nothing. She was looking out of the window with a face as
hard as the face of Mademoiselle Brun. She looked at her watch, seemed to
make a quick mental calculation, and then turned and spoke to Colonel
Gilbert with steady, smiling eyes.

“You have not told us your war news yet,” she said.

So he told them what he knew, which, as a matter of fact, did not amount
to much. Then he took his leave, and rode home in the cool of the
evening--a solitary, brooding man, who had missed his way somehow early
on the road of life, and lacked perhaps the strength of mind to go back
and try again.

Denise said good-bye to him in the same friendly spirit which he had
inaugurated. She was standing with her back to the window from which she
had looked down on to the château of Vasselot while Colonel Gilbert
related his idle gossip respecting that house. And Mademoiselle Brun, who
remembered such trifles, noted that she never looked out of that window
again, but avoided it as one would avoid a cupboard where there is a
skeleton.

Denise, who consulted her watch again so soon as the colonel had left,
wrote another letter, which she addressed in an open envelope to the
postmaster at Marseilles, and enclosed a number of stamps. She went out
on to the high-road, and waited there in the shade of the trees for the
diligence, which would pass at four o'clock on its way to Bastia.

The driver of the diligence, like many who are on the road and have but a
passing glimpse of many men and many things, was a good-natured man, and
willingly charged himself with Denise's commission. For that which she
had enclosed was not a letter, but a telegram to be despatched from
Marseilles on the arrival of the mail steamer there. It was addressed to
Lory de Vasselot at the Cercle Militaire in Paris, and contained the
words--

“Please return unopened the letter posted to-day.”




CHAPTER XV.


WAR.

     “When half-gods go,
     The gods arrive.”


“Then,” said the Baroness de Mélide, “I shall go down to St. Germain en
Pré, and say my prayers.” And she rang the bell for her carriage.

On all great occasions in life, the Baroness de Mélide had taken her
overburdened heart in a carriage and pair to St. Germain en Pré. For she
had always had a carriage and pair for the mere ringing of a bell ever
since her girlhood, when the Baron de Mélide had, with much assistance
from her, laid his name and fortune at her feet. When she had helped him
to ask her to be his wife, she had ordered the carriage thus, as she was
ordering it now in the month of August, 1870, on being told by her
husband that the battle of Wörth had been fought and lost, and that Lory
de Vasselot was safe.

“The Madeleine is nearer,” suggested the baron, a large man, with a
vacant face which concealed a very mine of common sense, “and you could
give me a lift as far as the club.”

“The Madeleine is all very well for a wedding or a funeral or a great
public festivity of any sort,” said the baroness, with a harmless, light
manner of talking of grave subjects which is a closed book to the
ordinary stolid British mind; “but when one has a prayer, there is
nowhere like St. Germain en Pré, which is old and simple and dirty, so
that one feels like a poor woman. I shall put on an old dress.”

She looked at her husband with a capable nod, as if to convey the
comforting assurance that he could leave this matter entirely to her.

“Yes,” said the baron; “do as you will.”

Which permission the world was pleased to consider superfluous in the
present marital case.

“It is,” he said, “the occasion for a prayer; and say a word for France.
And Lory is safe--one of very, very few survivors. Remember that in your
prayers, ma mie, and remember me.”

“I will see about it,” answered the baroness. “If I have time, I will
perhaps put in a word for one who is assuredly a great stupid--no name
mentioned, you understand.”

So the Baroness de Mélide went to the gloomy old church of her choice,
and sent up an incoherent prayer, such as were arising from all over
France at this time. On returning by the Boulevard St. Germain, she met a
friend, a woman whose husband had fallen at Weissembourg, who gave her
more news from the front. The streets were crowded and yet idle. The men
stood apart in groups, talking in a low voice: the women stood apart and
watched them--for it is only in times of peace that the women manage
France.

The baroness went home, nervous, ill at ease. She hardly noticed that
the door was held open by a maid-servant. The men had all gone out for
news--some to enroll themselves in the National Guard. She went up to the
drawing-room, and there, seated at her writing-table with his back turned
towards her, was Lory de Vasselot. All the brightness had gone from his
uniform. He turned as she entered the room.

“Mon Dieu!” she said, “what is it?”

“What is what?” he answered gravely.

“Why, your face,” said the baroness. “Look--look at it!” She took him by
the arm, and turned him towards a mirror, half hidden in hot-house
flowers. “Look!” she cried again. “Mon Dieu! it is a tragedy, your face.
What is it?”

Lory shrugged his shoulders.

“I was at Wörth,” he explained, “two days ago. I suppose Wörth will be
written for life in the face of every Frenchman who was there. They were
three to one. They are three to one wherever we turn.”

He sat down again at the writing-table, and the baroness stood behind
him.

“And this is war,” she said, tapping slowly on the carpet with her foot.

She laid her hand on his shoulder, and, noting a quick movement of
withdrawal, glanced down.

“Ach!” she exclaimed, in a whisper, as she drew back.

The shoulder and sleeve of his tunic were stained a deep brown. The gold
lace was green in places and sticky. In an odd silence she unbuttoned her
glove, and laid it quietly aside.

“It seems, mon ami, that we have only been playing at life up to now,”
 she said, after a pause.

And Lory did not answer her. He had several letters lying before him, and
had taken up his pen again.

“What brings you to Paris?” asked the baroness, suddenly.

“The emperor,” he answered. “It is a queer story, and I can tell you part
of it. After Wörth, I was given a staff appointment--and why? Because my
occupation was gone; I had no men left.” With a quick gesture he
described the utter annihilation of his troop. “And I was sent into Metz
with despatches. While I was still there--judge of my surprise!--the
emperor sent for me. You know him. He was sitting at a table, and looked
a big man. Afterwards, when he stood up, I saw he was small. He bowed as
I entered the room--for he is polite even to the meanest private of a
line regiment--and as he bowed he winced. Even that movement gave him
pain. And then he smiled, with an effort. 'Monsieur de Vasselot,' he
said; and I bowed. 'A Corsican,' he went on. 'Yes, sire.' Then he took up
a pen, and examined it. He wanted something to look at, though he might
safely have looked at me. He could look any man in the face at any time,
for his eyes tell no tales. They are dull and veiled; you know them, for
you have spoken to him often.”

“Yes; and I have seen the great snake at the Jardin d'Acclimatation,”
 answered the Baroness de Mélide, quietly.

“Then,” continued Lory, “still looking at the pen, he spoke slowly as if
he had thought it all out before I entered the room. 'When my uncle fell
upon evil times he naturally turned to his fellow-countrymen.' 'Yes,
sire.' 'I do not know you, Monsieur de Vasselot, but I know your name. I
am going to trust you entirely. I want you to go to Paris for me.'”

“And that is all you are going to tell me?” said the baroness.

“That is all I can tell you. Whatever he may be, he is more than a brave
man--he is a stoic. I arrived an hour ago, and went to the club for my
letters, but I did not dare to go in, because it is evident that I am
from the front. Look at my clothes. That is why I come here and present
myself before you as I am. I must beg your hospitality for a few hours
and the run of your writing-table.”

The baroness nodded her head repeatedly as she looked at him. It was not
only from his gold-laced uniform that the brightness had gone, but from
himself. His manner was abrupt. He was almost stern. This, again, was
war.

“You know that now, as always, our house is yours,” she said quietly; for
it is not all light hearts that have nothing in them.

Then, being a practical Frenchwoman--and there is no more practical being
in the world--she rang for luncheon.

“One sees,” she said, “that you are hungry. One must eat though empires
fall.”

“Ah!” said Lory, turning sharply to look at her. “You talk like that in
Paris, do you?”

“In the streets, my cousin, they speak plainer language than that. But
Henri will tell you what they are saying on the pavement. I have sent for
him to the club to come home to luncheon. He forgives me much, that poor
man, but he would never forgive me if I did not tell him that you were in
Paris.”

“Thank you,” answered Lory. “I shall be glad to see him. There are things
which he ought to know, which I cannot tell you.”

“You think I am not discreet,” said the baroness, slowly drawing the pins
from her smart hat.

Lory looked up at her with a laugh, which was perhaps what she wanted,
for there is no cunning like the cunning of a woman who seeks to charm a
man from one humour to another. And when the baroness had first seen
Lory, she thought that his heart was broken--by Wörth.

“You are beautiful, but not discreet,” he answered.

“That is the worst of men,” she said reflectively, as she laid her hat
aside--“they always want an impossible combination.”

She looked back at him over her shoulder and laughed, for she saw that
she was gaining her point. The quiet of this luxurious house, her own
personality, the subtle domesticity of her action in taking off her hat
in his presence--all these were soothing a mind rasped and torn by battle
and defeat. But there was something yet which she had not grasped, and
she knew it. She glanced at the letters on the table before him. As if
the thought were transmitted across the room to him, Lory took up an open
telegram, and read it with a puzzled face. He half turned towards her as
if about to speak, but closed his lips again.

“Yes,” said the baroness, lightly. “What is it?”

“It is,” he explained, after a pause, “that I have had so little to do
with women.”

“Except me, mon cousin,” said the baroness, coming nearer to the
writing-table.

“Except you, ma cousine,” he answered, turning in his chair and taking
her hand.

He glanced up at her with eyes that would appear to the ordinary British
mind to express a passionate devotion, eminently French and thrilling and
terrible, but which really reflected only a very honest and brotherly
affection. For a Frenchman never hates or loves as much as he thinks he
does.

“Well,” said the baroness, practically, “what is it?”

“At the club,” explained Lory, “I found a letter and a telegram from
Corsica.”

“Both from Denise?” asked the baroness, rather bluntly.

“Both from Mademoiselle Lange. See how things hinge upon a trifling
chance--how much, we cannot tell! I happened to open the telegram first,
and it told me to return the letter unopened.”

As he spoke he handed her the grey sheet upon which were pasted the
narrow blue paper ribbons bearing the text. The baroness read the message
slowly and carefully. She glanced over the paper, down at his head, with
a little wise smile full of contempt for his limited male understanding.

“And the letter?” she inquired.

He showed her a sealed envelope addressed by himself to Denise at
Perucca. She took it up and turned it over slowly. It was stamped and
ready for the post. She then threw it down with a short laugh.

“I was thinking,” she explained, “of the difference between men and
women. A woman would have filled a cup with boiling water and laid that
letter upon it. It is quite easy. Why, we were taught it at the convent
school! You could have opened the letter and read it, and then closed it
again and returned it. By that simple subterfuge you would have known the
contents, and would still have had the credit for doing as you were told.
And I think three women out of five would have done it, and the whole
five would have wanted to do it. Ah! you may laugh. You do not know what
wretches we are compared to men--compared especially to some few of them;
to a Baron Henri de Mélide or a Count de Vasselot--who are honourable
men, my cousin.”

She touched him lightly on the shoulder with one finger, and then turned
away to look with thoughtful eyes out of the window.

“I wonder what is in that letter,” said Lory, returning to his pen.

The baroness turned on her heel and looked at him with her contemptuous
smile again.

“Oh,” she said carelessly, “she was probably in a difficulty, which
solved itself after the letter was posted. Or she was afraid of
something, and found that her fears were unnecessary. That is all, no
doubt.”

There is, it appears, an _esprit de sexe_ which prevents women from
giving each other away.

“So you merely placed the letter in an envelope and are returning it,
thus, without comment?” inquired the baroness.

“Yes,” answered Lory, who was writing a letter now.

And his cousin stood looking at him with an amused and yet tender smile
in her gay eyes. She remained silent until he had finished.

“There,” he said, taking an envelope and addressing it hurriedly, “that
is done. It is to the Abbé Susini at Olmeta; and it contains some of
those things, my cousin, that I cannot tell you.”

“Do you think I care,” said the baroness, “for your stupid politics? Do
you think any woman cares for politics who has found some stupid man to
care for her? There is _my_ stupid in the street--on his new horse.”

In a moment Lory was at the window.

“A new horse,” he said earnestly. “I did not know that. Why did you not
tell me?”

“We were talking of empires,” replied the baroness. “By the way,” she
added, in after-thought, “is our good friend Colonel Gilbert in Corsica?”

“Yes--he is at Bastia.”

“Ah,” said the baroness, looking reflectively at Denise's telegram, which
she still held in her hand, “I thought he was.”

Then that placid man, the Baron Henri de Mélide, came into the room, and
shook hands in the then novel English fashion, looking at his lifelong
friend with a dull and apathetic eye.

“From the frontier?” he inquired.

Lory laughed curtly. He had returned from that Last Frontier, where each
one of us shall inevitably be asked “Si monsieur a quelque chose à
déclarer?”

“I shall give you ten minutes for your secrets, and then luncheon will be
ready,” said the baroness, quitting the room.

And Lory told his friend those things which were not for a woman's
hearing.

At luncheon both men were suspiciously cheerful; and, doubtless, their
companion read them like open books. Immediately after coffee Lory took
his leave.

“I leave Paris to-night,” he said, with his old cheerfulness. “This war
is not over yet. We have not the shadow of a chance of winning, but we
shall perhaps be able to show the world that France can still fight.”

Which prophecy assuredly came true.




CHAPTER XVI.


A MASTERFUL MAN.

     “Tous les raisonnements des hommes ne valent pas un
     sentiment d'une femme.”


It would seem that Lory de Vasselot had played the part of a stormy
petrel when he visited Paris, for that calm Frenchman, the Baron de
Mélide, packed his wife off to Provence the same night, and the letter
that Lory wrote to the Abbé Susini, reaching Olmeta three days later,
aroused its recipient from a contemplative perusal of the _Petit
Bastiais_ as if it had been a bomb-shell.

The abbé threw aside his newspaper and cigarette. He was essentially a
man of action. He had been on his feet all day, hurrying hither and
thither over his widespread parish, interfering in this man's business
and that woman's quarrels with that hastiness which usually characterizes
the doings of such as pride themselves upon their capability for action
and contempt for mere passive thought. It was now evening, and a blessed
cool air was stealing down from the mountains. Successive days of
unbroken sunshine had burnt all the western side of the island, had
almost dried up the Aliso, which crept, a mere rivulet in its stormy bed,
towards St. Florent and the sea.

Susini went to-the window of his little room and opened the wooden
shutters. His house is next to the church at Olmeta and faces north-west;
so that in the summer the evening sun glares across the valley into its
windows. He was no great scholar, and had but a poor record in the
archives of the college at Corte. Lory de Vasselot had written in a
hurry, and the letter was a long one. Susini read it once, and was
turning it to read again, when, glancing out of the window, he saw Denise
cross the Place, and go into the church.

“Ah!” he said aloud, “that will save me a long walk.”

Then he read the letter again, with curt nods of the head from time to
time, as if Lory were making points or giving minute instructions. He
folded the letter, placed it in the pocket of his cassock, and gave
himself a smart tap on the chest, as if to indicate that this was the
moment and himself the man. He was brisk and full of self-confidence,
managing, interfering, commanding, as all true Corsicans are. He took his
hat, hardly paused to blow the dust off it, and hurried out into the
sunlit Place. He went rather slowly up the church steps, however, for he
was afraid of Denise. Her youth, and something spring-like and mystic in
her being, disturbed him, made him uneasy and shy; which was perhaps his
reason for drawing aside the heavy leather curtain and going into the
church, instead of waiting for her outside. He preferred to meet her on
his own ground--in the chill air, heavy with the odour of stale incense,
and in the dim light of that place where he laid down, in blunt language,
his own dim reading of God's law.

He stood just within the curtain, looking at Denise, who was praying on
one of the low chairs a few yards away from him; and he was betrayed into
a characteristic impatience when she remained longer on her knees than he
(as a man) deemed necessary at that moment. He showed his impatience by
shuffling with his feet, and still Denise took no notice.

The abbé, by chance or instinct, slipped his hand within his cassock, and
drew out the letter which he had just received. The rustle of the thin
paper brought Denise to her feet in a moment, facing him.

“The French mail has arrived,” said the priest.

“Yes,” replied Denise, quickly, looking down at his hands.

They were alone in the church which, as a matter of fact, was never very
well attended; and the abbé, who had not that respect for God or man
which finds expression in a lowered voice, spoke in his natural tones.

“And I have news which affects you, mademoiselle.”

“I suppose that any news of France must do that,” replied Denise, with
some spirit.

“Of course--of course,” said the abbé, rubbing his chin with his
forefinger, and making a rasping sound on that shaven surface.

He reflected in silence for a moment, and Denise made, in her turn, a
hasty movement of impatience. She had only met the abbé once or twice;
and all that she knew of him was the fact that he had an imperious way
with him which aroused a spirit of opposition in herself.

“Well, Monsieur l'Abbé,” she said, “what is it?”

“It is that Mademoiselle Brun and yourself will have but two hours to
prepare for your departure from the Casa Perucca,” he answered. And he
drew out a large silver watch, which he consulted with the quiet air of a
commander.

Denise glanced at him with some surprise, and then smiled.

“By whose orders, Monsieur l'Abbe?” she inquired with a dangerous
gentleness.

Then the priest realized that she meant fight, and all his combativeness
leapt, as it were, to meet hers. His eyes flashed in the gloom of the
twilit church.

“I, mademoiselle,” he said, with that humility which is nought but an
aggravated form of pride. He tapped himself on the chest with such
emphasis that a cloud of dust flew out of his cassock, and he blew
defiance at her through it. “I--who speak, take the liberty of making
this suggestion. I, the Abbé Susini--and your humble servant.”

Which was not true: for he was no man's servant, and only offered to
heaven a half-defiant allegiance. Denise wanted to know the contents of
the letter he held crushed within his fingers; so she restrained an
impulse to answer him hastily, and merely laughed. The priest thought
that he had gained his point.

“I can give you two hours,” he said, “in which to make your preparations.
At seven o'clock I shall arrive at the Casa Perucca with a carriage, in
which to conduct Mademoiselle Brun and yourself to St. Florent, where a
yacht is awaiting you.”

Denise bit her lip impatiently, and watched the thin brown fingers that
were clenched round the letter.

“Then what is your news from France?” she asked. “From whence is your
letter--from the front?”

“It is from Paris,” answered the abbé, unfolding the paper carelessly;
and Denise would not have been human had she resisted the temptation to
try and decipher it.

“And--?”

“And,” continued the abbé, shrugging his shoulders, “I have nothing to
add, mademoiselle. You must quit Perucca before the morning. The news is
bad, I tell you frankly. The empire is tottering to its fall, and the
news that I have in secret will be known all over Corsica to-morrow. Who
knows? the island may flare up like a heap of bracken, and no one bearing
a French name, or known to have French sympathies, will be safe. You know
how you yourself are regarded in Olmeta. It is foolhardy to venture here
this evening.”

Denise shrugged her shoulders. She had plenty of spirit, and, at all
events, that courage which refuses to admit the existence of danger.
Perhaps she was not thinking of danger, or of herself, at all.

“Then the Count Lory de Vasselot has ordered us out of Corsica?” she
asked.

“Mademoiselle, we are wasting time,” answered the priest, folding the
letter and replacing it in his pocket. “A yacht is awaiting you off St.
Florent. All is organized--”

“By the Count Lory de Vasselot?”

The abbé stamped his foot impatiently.

“Bon Dieu, mademoiselle!” he cried, “you will make me lose my temper. The
yacht, I tell you, is at the entrance of the bay, and by to-morrow
morning it will be halfway to France. You cannot stay here. You must make
your choice between returning to France and going into the Watrin
barracks at Bastia. Colonel Gilbert will, I fancy, know how to make you
obey him. And all Corsica is in the hands of Colonel Gilbert--though no
one but Colonel Gilbert knows that.”

He spoke rapidly, thrusting forward his dark, eager face, forgetting all
his shyness, glaring defiance into her quiet eyes.

“There, mademoiselle--and now your answer?”

“Would it not be well if the Count Lory de Vasselot attended to his own
affairs at the Château de Vasselot, and the interests he has there?”
 replied Denise, turning away from his persistent eyes.

And the abbé's face dropped as if she had shot him.

“Good!” he said, after a moment's hesitation. “I wash my hands of you.
You refuse to go?”

“Yes,” answered Denise, going towards the door with a high head, and, it
is possible, an aching heart. For the two often go together.

And the abbé, a man little given to the concealment of his feelings,
shook his fist at the leather curtain as it fell into place behind her.

“Ah--these women!” he said aloud. “A secret that is thirty years old!”

Denise hurried down the steps and away from the village. She knew that
the postman, having passed through Olmeta, must now be on the high-road
on his way to Perucca, and she felt sure that he must have in his bag the
letter of which she had followed, in imagination, the progress during the
last three days.

“Now it is in the train from Paris to Marseilles; now it is on board the
Persévérance, steaming across the Gulf of Lyons,” had been her thought
night and morning. “Now it is at Bastia,” she had imagined on waking at
dawn that day. And at length she had it now, in thought, close to her on
the Olmeta road in front of her.

At a turn of the road she caught sight of the postman, trudging along
beneath the heavy chestnut trees. Then at length she overtook him, and he
stopped to open the bag slung across his shoulder. He was a silent man,
who saluted her awkwardly, and handed her several letters and a
newspaper. With another salutation he walked on, leaving Denise standing
by the low wall of the road alone. There was only one letter for her. She
turned it over and examined the seal: a bare sword with a gay French
motto beneath it--the device of the Vasselots.

She opened the envelope after a long pause. It contained nothing but her
own travel-stained letter, of which the seal had not been broken. And, as
she thoughtfully examined both envelopes, there glistened in her eyes
that light which it is vouchsafed to a few men to see, and which is the
nearest approach to the light of heaven that ever illumines this poor
earth. For love has, among others, this peculiarity: that it may live in
the same heart with a great anger, and seems to gain only strength from
the proximity.

Denise replaced the two letters in her pocket and walked on. A carriage
passed her, and she received a curt bow and salutation from the Abbé
Susini who was in it. The carriage turned to the right at the crossroads,
and rattled down the hill in the direction of Vasselot. Denise's head
went an inch higher at the sight of it.

“I met the Abbé Susini at Olmeta,” she said to Mademoiselle Brun, a few
minutes later in the great bare drawing-room of the Casa Perucca. “And he
transmitted the Count de Vasselot's command that we should leave the Casa
Perucca to-night for France. I suggested that the order should be given
to the Château de Vasselot instead of the Casa Perucca, and the abbé took
me at my word. He has gone to the Château de Vasselot now in a carriage.”

Mademoiselle Brun, who was busy with her work near the window, laid aside
her needle and looked at Denise. She had a faculty of instantly going, as
it were, to the essential part of a question and tearing the heart out of
it: which faculty is, with all respect, more a masculine than a feminine
quality. She ignored the side-issues and pounced, as it were, upon the
central thread--the reason that Lory de Vasselot had had for sending such
an order. She rose and tore open the newspaper, glanced at the war-news,
and laid it aside. Then she opened a letter addressed to herself. It was
on superlatively thick paper and bore a coronet in one corner.

“My Dear” (it ran),

“This much I have learnt from two men who will tell me nothing--France is
lost. The Holy Virgin help us!

“Your devoted

“Jane De Mélide.”

Mademoiselle Brun turned away to the window, and stood there with her
back to Denise for some moments. At length she came back, and the girl
saw something in the grey and wizened face which stirred her heart, she
knew not why; for all great thoughts and high qualities have power to
illumine the humblest countenance.

“You may stay here if you like,” said Mademoiselle Brun, “but I am going
back to France to-night.”

“What do you mean?”

For reply Mademoiselle Brun handed her the Baroness de Mélide's letter.

“Yes,” said Denise, when she had read the note. “But I do not
understand.”

“No. Because you never knew your father--the bravest man God ever
created. But some other man will teach you some day.”

“Teach me what?” asked Denise, looking with wonder at the little woman.
“Of what are you thinking?”

“Of that of which Lory de Vasselot, and Henri de Mélide, and Jane, and
all good Frenchmen and Frenchwomen are thinking at this moment--of
France, and only France,” said Mademoiselle Brun; and out of her
mouse-like eyes there shone, at that moment, the soul of a man--and of a
brave man.

Her lips quivered for a moment, before she shut them with a snap. Perhaps
Denise wanted to be persuaded to return to France. Perhaps the blood that
ran in her veins was stirred by the spirit of Mademoiselle Brun, whose
arguments were short and sharp, as became a woman much given to economy
in words. At all events, the girl listened in silence while mademoiselle
explained that even two women might, in some minute degree, help France
at this moment. For patriotism, like courage, is infectious; and it is a
poor heart that hurries to abandon a sinking ship.

It thus came about that, soon after sunset, Mademoiselle Brun and Denise
hurried down to the cross-roads to intercept the carriage, of which they
could perceive the lights slowly approaching across the dark valley of
Vasselot.




CHAPTER XVII.


WITHOUT DRUM OR TRUMPET.

     “We do squint each through his loophole,
     And then dream broad heaven
     Is but the patch we see.”


It was almost dark when the abbé's carriage reached the valley, and the
driver paused to light the two stable-lanterns tied with string to the
dilapidated lamp-brackets. The abbé was impatient, and fidgeted in his
seat. He was at heart an autocrat, and hated to be defied even by one
over whom he could not pretend to have control. He snapped his finger and
thumb as he thought of Denise.

“She puzzles me,” he muttered. “What does she want? Bon Dieu, what does
she want?”

Then he spoke angrily to the driver, whose movements were slow and
clumsy.

“At all events my task is easier here,” he consoled himself by saying as
the carriage approached the château, “now that I am rid of these women.”

At last they reached the foot of the <DW72> leading up to the half-ruined
house, which loomed against the evening sky immediately above them; and
the driver pulled up his restive horses with an air significant of
arrival.

“Right up to the château,” cried the Abbé from beneath the hood.

But the man made no movement, and sat on the box muttering to himself.

“What!” cried the abbé, who had caught some words. “Jean has the evil
eye! What of Jean's evil eye? Here, I will give you my rosary to put
round your coward's neck. No! Then down you get, my friend. You can wait
here till we come back.”

As he spoke he leapt out, and, climbing into the box, pushed the driver
unceremoniously from his seat, snatching the reins and whip from his
hands.

“He!” he cried. “Allons, my little ones!”

And with whip and voice he urged the horses up the <DW72> at a canter,
while the carriage swayed across from one great tree to another. They
reached the summit in safety, and the priest pulled the horses up at the
great door--the first carriage to disturb the quiet of that spot for
nearly a generation. He twisted the reins round the whip-socket, and
clambering down rang the great bell. It answered to his imperious summons
by the hollow clang that betrays an empty house. No one came. He stood
without, drumming with his fist on the doorpost. Then he turned to
listen. Some one was approaching from the darkness of the trees. But it
was only the driver following sullenly on foot.

“Here!” said the priest, recognizing him. “Go to your horses!”

As he spoke he was already untying one of the stable-lanterns that swung
at the lamp-bracket. His eyes gleamed beneath the brim of his broad hat.
He was quick and anxious.

“Wait here till I come back,” he said; and, keeping close to the wall, he
disappeared among the low bushes.

There was another way in by a door half hidden among the ivy, which Jean
used for his mysterious comings and goings, and of which the abbé had a
key. He had brought it with him to-night by a lucky chance. He had to
push aside the ivy which hung from the walls in great ropes, and only
found the keyhole after a hurried search. But the lock was in good order.
Jean, it appeared, was a careful man.

Susini hurried through a long passage to the little round room where the
Count de Vasselot had lived so long. He stopped with his nose in the air,
and sniffed aloud. The atmosphere was heavy with the smell of stale
tobacco, and yet there could be detected the sweeter odour of smoke
scarcely cold. The room must have been inhabited only a few hours ago.
The abbé opened the window, and the smell of carnations swept in like the
breath of another world. He returned to the room, and, opening his
lantern, lighted a candle that stood on the mantelpiece. He looked round.
Sundry small articles in daily use--the count's pipe, his old brass
tobacco-box: a few such things that a man lives with, and puts in his
pocket when he goes away--were missing.

“Buon Diou! Buon Diou! Buon Diou--gone!” muttered the priest, lapsing
into his native dialect. He looked around him with keen eyes--at the
blackened walls, at the carpet worn into holes. “That Jean must have
known something that I do not know. All the same, I shall look through
the house.”

He blew out the candle, and taking the lantern quitted the room. He
searched the whole house--passing from empty room to empty room. The
reception-rooms were huge and sparingly furnished with those thin-legged
chairs and ancient card-tables which recall the days of Letitia Ramolino
and that easy-going Charles Buonaparte, who brought into the world the
greatest captain that armies have ever seen. The bedrooms were small: all
alike smelt of mouldering age. In one room the abbé stopped and raised
his inquiring nose; the room had been inhabited by a woman--years and
years ago.

He searched the house from top to bottom, and there was no one in it. The
abbé had failed in the two missions confided to him by Lory, and he was
one to whom failure was peculiarly bitter. With respect to the two women,
he had perhaps scarcely expected to succeed, for he had lived fifty years
in the world, and his calling had brought him into daily contact with
that salutary chastening of the spirit which must assuredly be the lot of
a man who seeks to enforce his will upon women. But his failure to find
the old Count de Vasselot was a more serious matter.

He returned slowly to the carriage, and told the driver to return to
Olmeta.

“I have changed my plans,” he said, still mindful of the secret he had
received with other pastoral charges from his predecessor. “Jean is not
in the château, so I shall not go to St. Florent to-night.”

He leant forward, and looked up at the old castle outlined against the
sky. A breeze was springing up with the suddenness of all atmospheric
changes in these latitudes, and the old trees creaked and groaned, while
the leaves had already that rustling brittleness of sound that betokens
the approach of autumn.

As they crossed the broad valley the wind increased, sweeping up the
course of the Aliso in wild gusts. It was blowing a gale before the
horses fell to a quick walk up the hill; and Mademoiselle Brun's small
figure, planted in the middle of the road, was the first indication that
the driver had of the presence of the two women, though the widow Andrei,
who accompanied them and carried their travelling-bags, had already
called out more than once.

“The Abbé Susini?” cried Mademoiselle Brun, in curt interrogation.

In reply, the driver pointed to the inside of the carriage with the
handle of his whip.

“You are alone?” said mademoiselle, in surprise.

The light of the lantern shone brightly on her, and on the dimmer form of
Denise, silent and angry in the background; for Denise had allowed her
inclination to triumph over her pride, which conquest usually leaves a
sore heart behind it.

“But, yes!” answered the abbé; alighting quickly enough.

He guessed instantly that Denise had changed her mind, and was indiscreet
enough to put his thoughts into words.

“So mademoiselle has thought better of it?” he said; and got no answer
for his pains.

Both Mademoiselle Brun and Denise were looking curiously at the interior
of the carriage from which the priest emerged, leaving it, as they noted,
empty.

“There is yet time to go to St. Florent?” inquired the elder woman.

The priest grabbed at his hat as a squall swept up the road, whirling the
dust high above their heads.

“Whether we shall get on board is another matter,” he muttered by way of
answer. “Come, get into the carriage; we have no time to lose. It will be
a bad night at sea.”

“Then, for my sins I shall be sea-sick,” said Mademoiselle Brun,
imperturbably.

She took her bag from the hand of the widow Andrei, and would have it
nowhere but on her lap, where she held it during the rapid drive, sitting
bolt upright, staring straight in front of her into the face of the abbé.

No one spoke, for each had thoughts sufficient to occupy the moment.
Susini perhaps had the narrowest vein of reflection upon which to draw,
and therefore fidgeted in his seat and muttered to himself, for his
mental range was limited to Olmeta and the Château de Vasselot.
Mademoiselle Brun was thinking of France--of her great past and her dim,
uncertain future. While Denise sat stiller and more silent than either,
for her thoughts were at once as wide as the whole world, and as narrow
as the human heart.

At a turn in the road she looked up, and saw the sharp outline of the
Casa Perucca, black and sombre against a sky now lighted by a rising
moon, necked and broken by heavy clouds, with deep lurking shadows and
mountains of snowy whiteness. In the Casa Perucca she had learnt what
life means, and no man or woman ever forgets the place where that lesson
has been acquired.

“I shall come back,” she whispered, looking up at the great rock with its
giant pines and the two square chimneys half hidden in the foliage.

And the Abbé Susini, seeing a movement of her lips, glanced curiously at
her. He was still wondering what she wanted. “Mon Dieu,” he was
reflecting a second time, “what _does_ she want?”

He stopped the carriage outside the town of St. Florent at the end of the
long causeway built across the marsh, where the wind swept now from the
open bay with a salt flavour to it. He alighted, and took Denise's bag,
rightly concluding that Mademoiselle Brun would prefer to carry her own.

“Follow me,” he said, taking a delight in being as curt as Mademoiselle
Brun herself, and in denying them the explanations they were too proud to
demand.

They walked abreast through the narrow street dimly lighted by a single
lamp swinging on a gibbet at the corner, turned sharp to the left, and
found themselves suddenly at the water's edge. A few boats bumped lazily
at some steps where the water lapped. It was blowing hard out in the bay,
but this corner was protected by a half-ruined house built on a
projecting rock.

The priest looked round.

“Hé! là-bas!” he called out, in a guarded voice. But he received no
answer.

“Wait here,” he said to the two women. “I will fetch him from the café.”
 And he disappeared.

Denise and mademoiselle stood in silence listening to the lapping of the
water and the slow, muffled bumping of the boats until the abbé returned,
followed by a man who slouched along on bare feet.

“Yes,” he was saying, “the yacht was there at sunset. I saw her myself
lying just outside the point. But it is folly to try and reach her
to-night; wait till the morning, Monsieur l'Abbé.”

“And find her gone,” answered the priest. “No, no; we embark to-night, my
friend. If these ladies are willing, surely a St. Florent man will not
hold back?”

“But you have not told these ladies of the danger. The wind is blowing
right into the bay; we cannot tack out against it. It will take me two
hours to row out single-handed with some one baling out the whole time.”

“But I will pull an oar with you,” answered Susini. “Come, show us which
is your boat. Mademoiselle Brun will bale out, and the young lady will
steer. We shall be quite a family party.”

There was no denying a man who took matters into his own hands so
energetically.

“You can pull an oar?” inquired the boatman, doubtfully.

“I was born at Bonifacio, my friend. Come, I will take the bow oar if you
will find me an oilskin coat. It will not be too dry up in the bows
to-night.”

And, like most masterful people--right or wrong--the abbé had his way,
even to the humble office assigned to Mademoiselle Brun.

“You will need to remove your glove and bare your arm,” explained the
boatman, handing her an old tin mug. “But you will not find the water
cold. It is always warmer at night. Thus the good God remembers poor
fishermen. The seas will come over the bows when we round this corner;
they will rise up and hit the abbé in the back, which is his affair; then
they will wash aft into this well, and from that you must bale it out all
the time. When the seas come in, you need not be alarmed, nor will it be
necessary to cry out.”

“Such instructions, my friend,” said the priest, scrambling into his
oilskin coat, “are unnecessary to mademoiselle, who is a woman of
discernment.”

“But I try not to be,” snapped Mademoiselle Brun. She knew which women
are most popular with men.

“As for you, mademoiselle,” said the boatman to Denise, “keep the boat
pointed at the waves, and as each one comes to you, cut it as you would
cut a cream cheese. She will jerk and pull at you, but you must not be
afraid of her; and remember that the highest wave may be cut.”

“That young lady is not afraid of much,” muttered the abbé, settling to
his oar.

They pulled slowly out to the end of the rocky promontory, upon which a
ruined house still stands, and shot suddenly out into a howling wind. The
first wave climbed leisurely over the weather-bow, and slopped aft to the
ladies' feet; the second rose up, and smote the abbé in the back.

“Cut them, mademoiselle; cut them!” shouted the boatman.

And at intervals during that wild journey he repeated the words,
unceremoniously spitting the salt water from his lips. The abbé, bending
his back to the work and the waves, gave a short laugh from time to
time, that had a ring in it to make Mademoiselle Brun suddenly like the
man--the fighting ring of exaltation which adapts itself to any voice and
any tongue. For nearly an hour they rowed in silence, while mademoiselle
baled the water out, and Denise steered with steady eyes piercing the
darkness.

“We are quite close to it,” she said at length; for she had long been
steering towards a light that flickered feebly across the broken water.

In a few moments they were alongside, and, amidst confused shouting of
orders, the two ladies were half lifted, half dragged on board. The abbé
followed them.

“A word with you,” he said, taking Mademoiselle Brun unceremoniously by
the arm, and leading her apart. “You will be met by friends on your
arrival at St. Raphael to-morrow. And when you are free to do so, will
you do me a favour?”

“Yes.”

“Find Lory de Vasselot, wherever he may be.”

“Yes,” answered Mademoiselle Brun.

“And tell him that I went to the Chateau de Vasselot and found it empty.”

Mademoiselle reflected for some moments.

“Yes; I will do that,” she said at length.

“Thank you.”

The abbé stared hard at her beneath his dripping hat for a moment, and
then, turning abruptly, moved towards the gangway, where his boat lay in
comparatively smooth water at the lee-side of the yacht. Denise was
speaking to a man who seemed to be the captain.

Mademoiselle Brun followed the abbé.

“By the way--” she said.

Susini stopped, and looked into her face, dimly lighted by the moon,
which peeped at times through riven clouds.

“Whom should you have found in the château?” she asked.

“Ah! that I will not tell you.”

Mademoiselle Brun gave a short laugh.

“Then I shall find out. Trust a woman to find out a secret.”

The abbé was already over the bulwark, so that only his dark face
appeared above, with the water running off it. His eyes gleamed in the
moonlight.

“And a priest to keep one,” he answered. And he leapt down into the boat.




CHAPTER XVIII.


A WOMAN OF ACTION.

     “Love ... gives to every power a double power
     Above their functions and their offices.”


“Ah!” said Mademoiselle Brun, as she stepped on deck the next morning.
And the contrast between the gloomy departure from Corsica and the sunny
return to France was strong enough, without further comment from this
woman of few words.

The yacht was approaching the little harbour of St. Raphael at half speed
on a sea as blue and still as the Mediterranean of any poet's dream. The
freshness of morning was in the air--the freshness of Provence, where the
days are hot and the nights cool, and there are no mists between the one
and the other. Almost straight ahead, the little town of Fréjus (where
another Corsican landed to set men by the ears) stood up in sharp outline
against the dark pinewoods of Valescure, with the thin wood-smoke curling
up from a hundred chimneys. To the left, the flat lands of Les Arcs half
hid the distant heights of Toulon; and, to the right, headland after
headland led the eye almost to the frontier of Italy along the finest
coast-line in the world. Every shade of blue was on sky or sea or
mountain, while the deep morning shadows were transparent and almost
luminous. From the pinewoods a scent of resin swept seaward, mingled with
the subtle odour of the tropic foliage near the shore. The sky was
cloudless. This was indeed the smiling land of France.

Denise, who had followed mademoiselle on deck, stood still and drank it
all in; for such sights and scents have a deep eloquence for the young,
which older hearts can only touch from the outside, vaguely and
intangibly, like the memory of a perfume.

Denise had slept well, and Mademoiselle Brun said she had slept enough
for an old woman. A cheery little stewardess had brought them coffee soon
after daylight, and had answered a few curt questions put to her by
Mademoiselle Brun.

“Yes; the yacht was the yacht of the Baron de Mélide, and the
_bête-noire_, by the same token, of madame, who hated the sea.”

And madame was at the château near Fréjus, where Monsieur le Baron had
installed her on the outbreak of the war, and would assuredly be on the
pier at St. Raphael to meet them. And God only knew where Monsieur le
Baron was. He had gone, it was said, to the war in some civil capacity.

As they stood on deck, Denise soon perceived the little pier where there
were, even at this early hour, a few of those indefatigable Mediterranean
Waltons who fish and fish and catch nothing, all through the sunny day.
Presently Mademoiselle Brun caught sight of a small dot of colour which
seemed to move spasmodically up and down.

“I see the parasol,” she said, “of Jane de Mélide. What good friends we
have!”

And presently they were near enough to wave a handkerchief in answer to
the Baroness de Mélide's vigorous salutations. The yacht crept round the
pier-head, and was soon made fast to a small white buoy. While a boat was
being lowered, the baroness, in a gay Parisian dress, walked impatiently
backwards and forwards, waved her parasol, and called out incoherent
remarks, which Mademoiselle Brun answered by a curt gesture of the hand.

“My poor friend!” exclaimed the baroness, as she embraced Mademoiselle
Brun. “My dear Denise, you are a brave woman. I have heard all about
you.”

And her quick, dancing eyes took in at a glance that Denise had come
against her will, and Mademoiselle Brun had brought her. Of which Denise
was ignorant, for the sunshine and brightness of the scene affected her
and made her happy.

“Surely,” she said, as they walked the length of the pier together, “the
bad news has been exaggerated. The war will soon be over and we shall be
happy again.”

“Do not talk of it,” cried the baroness. “It is a horror. I saw Lory,
after Wörth, and that was enough war for me. And, figure to yourself!--I
am all alone in this great house. It is a charity to come and stay with
me. Lory has gone to the front. My husband, who said he loved me--where
is he? Bonjour, and he is gone. He leaves me without a regret. And I, who
cry my eyes out; or would cry them out if I were a fool--such as
mademoiselle thinks me. Ah! I do not know what has come to all the men.”

“But I do,” said mademoiselle, who had seen war before.

And the baroness, looking at that still face, laughed her gay little
inconsequent laugh.

A carriage was waiting for them in the shade of the trees on the
market-place, its smart horses and men forming a strong contrast to the
untidy town and slip-shod idlers. As usual, a game of bowls was in
progress, and absorbed all the attention of the local intelligence.

“We have half an hour through the pine trees,” said the baroness,
settling herself energetically on the cushions. “And, do you know, I am
thankful to see you. I thought you would be prevented coming.”

She glanced at Denise as she spoke, and with a suddenly grave face, leant
forward, and whispered--

“The news is bad--the news is bad. All this has been organized by Lory
and my husband, who told me, in so many words, that they must have us
where they can find us at a moment's notice. In case--ah, mon Dieu! I do
not know what is going to happen to us all.”

“Then are we to be moved about, like ornaments, from one safe place to
another?” asked Denise, with a laugh which was not wholly spontaneous.

“I have never been treated as an ornament yet,” put in Mademoiselle Brun,
“and it is perhaps rather late to begin now.”

Denise looked at her inquiringly.

“Yes,” said the little woman, quietly. “I am going to the war--if Jane
will take care of you while I am away.”

“And why should not I go too?” asked Denise.

“Because you are too young and too pretty, my dear--since you ask a plain
question,” replied the baroness, impulsively. Then she turned towards
mademoiselle. “You know,” she said, “that my precious stupid is
organizing a field hospital.”

“I thought he would find something to do,” answered mademoiselle, curtly.

“Yes,” said the baroness, slowly, “yes--because when he was a boy he had
for governess a certain little woman whose teaching was deeds, not words.
And he is paying for it himself. And we shall all be ruined.”

She spread out her rich dress, lay back in her luxurious carriage, and
smiled on Mademoiselle Brun with something that was not mirth at the back
of her brown eyes.

“I shall go to him,” said mademoiselle. And the baroness made no reply
for some moments.

“Do you know what he said?” she asked. “He said we shall want women--old
ones. I know one old woman who will come!”

Mademoiselle was buttoning her cotton gloves and did not seem to hear.

“It was, of course, Lory,” went on the baroness, “who encouraged him and
told him how to go about it. And then he went back to the front to fight.
Mon Dieu! he can fight--that Lory!”

“Where is he?” asked mademoiselle. And the baroness spread out her gloved
hands.

“At the front--I cannot tell you more.”

And mademoiselle did not speak again. She was essentially a woman of her
word. She had undertaken to find Lory and give him that odd, inexplicable
message from the abbé. She had not undertaken much in her narrow life;
but she had usually accomplished, in a quiet, mouse-like way, that to
which she set her hand. And now, as she drove through the smiling
country, with which it was almost impossible to associate the idea of
war, she was planning how she could get to the front and work there under
the Baron de Mélide, and find Lory de Vasselot.

“They are somewhere near a little place called Sedan,” said the baroness.

And Mademoiselle Brun set out that same day for the little place called
Sedan; then known vaguely as a fortress on the Belgian frontier, and now
for ever written in every Frenchman's heart as the scene of one of those
stupendous catastrophes to which France seems liable, and from which she
alone has the power of recovery. For, whatever the history of the French
may be, it has never been dull reading, and she has shown the whole world
that one may carry a brave and a light heart out of the deepest tragedy.

By day and night Mademoiselle Brun, sitting upright in a dark corner of a
second-class carriage, made her way northward across France. No one
questioned her, and she asked no one's help. A silent little old woman
assuredly attracts less attention to her comings and goings than any
other human being. And on the third day mademoiselle actually reached
Chalons, which many a more important traveller might at this time have
failed to do. She found the town in confusion, the civilians bewildered,
the soldiers sullen. No one knew what an hour might bring forth. It was
not even known who was in command. The emperor was somewhere near, but no
one knew where. General officers were seeking their army-corps. Private
soldiers were wandering in the streets seeking food and quarters. The
railway station was blocked with stores which had been hastily discharged
from trucks wanted elsewhere. And it was no one's business to distribute
the stores.

Mademoiselle Brun wandered from shop to shop, gathering a hundred rumours
but no information. “The emperor is dying--Macmahon is wounded,” a
butcher told her, as he mechanically sharpened his knife at her approach,
though he had not as much as a bone in his shop to sell her.

She stopped a cuirassier riding a lame horse, his own leg hastily
bandaged with a piece of  calico.

“What regiment?” she asked.

“I have no regiment. There is nothing left. You see in me the colonel,
and the majors, and the captains. I am the regiment,” he answered with a
laugh that made mademoiselle bite her steady lip.

“Where are you going?”

“I don't know. Can you give me a little money?”

“I can give you a franc. I have not too much myself. Where have you come
from?”

“I don't know. None of us knew where we were.”

He thanked her, observed that he was very hungry, and rode on. She found
a night's lodging at a seed-chandler's who had no seeds to sell.

“They will not need them this year,” he said. “The Prussians are riding
over the corn.”

The next morning the indomitable little woman went on her way towards
Sedan in a forage-cart which was going to the front. She told the
corporal in charge that she was attached to the Baron de Mélide's field
hospital and must get to her work.

“You will not like it when you get there, my brave lady,” said the man,
good-humouredly, making room for her.

“I shall like it better than doing nothing here,” she replied.

And so they set forth through the country heavy with harvest. It was the
second of September. The corn was ripe, the leaves were already turning;
for it had been a dry summer, and since April hardly any rain had fallen.

It was getting late in the afternoon when they met a man in a dog-cart
driving at a great pace. He pulled up when he saw them. His face was the
colour of lead, his eyes were startlingly bloodshot.

“This parishioner has been badly scared,” muttered the soldier who was
driving Mademoiselle Brun.

“Where are you going?” asked the stranger in a high, thin voice.

“To Sedan.”

“Then turn back,” he cried; “Sedan is no place for a woman. It is a hell
on earth. I saw it all, mon Dieu. I saw it all. I was at Bazeilles. I saw
the children thrown into the windows of the burning houses. I saw the
Bavarians shoot our women in the streets. I saw the troops rush into
Sedan like rabbits into their holes, and then the Prussians bombarded
the town. They had six hundred guns all round the town, and they fired
upon that little place which was packed full like a sheep-pen. It is not
war--it is butchery. What is the good God doing? What is He thinking of?”

And the man, who had the pasty face of a clerk or a commercial traveller,
raised his whip to heaven in a gesture of fierce anger. Mademoiselle Brun
looked at him with measuring eyes. He was almost a man at that moment.
But perhaps her standard of manhood was too high.

“And is Sedan taken?” she asked quietly.

“Sedan is taken. Macmahon is wounded. The emperor is prisoner, and the
whole French army has surrendered. Ninety thousand men. The Prussians had
two hundred and forty thousand men. Ah! That emperor--that scoundrel!”

Mademoiselle Brun looked at him coldly, but without surprise. She had
dealt with Frenchmen all her life, and probably expected that the fallen
should be reviled--an unfortunate characteristic in an otherwise great
national spirit.

“And the cavalry?” she asked.

“Ah!” cried the man, and again his dull eye flashed. “The cavalry were
splendid. They tried to cut their way out. They passed through the
Prussian cavalry and actually faced the infantry, but the fire was
terrible. No man ever saw or heard anything like it. The cuirassiers were
mown down like corn. The cavalry exists no longer, madame, but its name
is immortal.”

There was nothing poetic about Mademoiselle Brun, who listened rather
coldly.

“And you,” she asked, “what are you? you are assuredly a Frenchman?”

“Yes--I am a Frenchman.”

“And yet your back is turned,” said Mademoiselle Brun, “towards the
Prussians.”

“I am a writer,” explained the man--“a journalist. It is my duty to go to
some safe place and write of all that I have seen.”

“Ah!” said Mademoiselle Brun. “Let us, my friend,” she said, turning to
her companion on the forage-cart, “proceed towards Sedan. We are
fortunately not in the position of monsieur.”




CHAPTER XIX.


THE SEARCH.

     “Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop
     Than 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 hookdwink. 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.




CHAPTER XX.


WOUNDED.


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.




CHAPTER XXI.


FOR FRANCE.

     “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.




CHAPTER XXII.


IN THE MACQUIS

     “Before man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.”


The Abbé Susini had no money, but he was a charitable man in a hasty
and impulsive way. Even the very poor may be charitable: they can think
kindly of the rich. It was not the rich of whom the abbé had a friendly
thought, but the foolish and the stubborn. For this fiery little
priest knew more of the unwritten history of the macquis than any in
Corsica--infinitely more than those whose business it was.

It is the custom at Ajaccio, and in a smaller way at Bastia, to ignore
the darker side of Corsican politics, and the French officials are
content with the endeavour to get through their term of office with a
whole skin. It is not, as in other islands of the Mediterranean, the
gospel of “mañana” which holds good here, but rather the gospel of “So I
found it--it will last my time.” So, from the préfet to the humblest
gendarme, they come, they serve, and they go back rejoicing to France.
They strike when absolutely forced to do so, but they commit the most
fatal of all administrative errors--they strike gently.

The faults are not all on one side; for the islanders are at once
turbulent and sullen. There are many who “keep the country,” as the local
saying is, and wander year after year in the mountain fastnesses, far
above road or pathway, beyond the feeble reach of the law, rather than
pay a trifling fine or bend their pride to face a week's imprisonment.

In the macquis, as in better society, there are grades of evil. Some
are hiding from their own pride, others are evading a lifelong sentence,
while many know that if the gendarme sees them he will shoot at
sight--running, standing, sleeping, as a keeper kills vermin. Only a few
months ago, on a road over which many tourists must have travelled, a
young man of twenty-three was “destroyed” (the official term) by the
gendarmes who wanted him for eleven murders. It is commonly asserted that
these bandits are not dangerous, that they have no grievance against
travellers. A starving man has a grievance against the whole world, and a
condemned fratricide is not likely to pick and choose his next victim if
tempted by a little money and the chance of escape therewith from the
island.

It is, moreover, usual for a man to take to the macquis the moment that
he finds himself involved in some trouble, or, it may be, merely under
suspicion. From his retreat in the mountains he enters into negotiations
with his lawyer, with the local magistrate, with his witnesses, even with
the police. He distrusts justice itself, and only gives himself up or
faces the tribunal when he has made sure of acquittal or such a sentence
as his pride may swallow. Which details of justice as understood in a
province of France at the beginning of the century may be read at the
Assize terms in those great newspapers, _Le Petit Bastiais_ or _Le Paoli
Pascal_, by any who have a halfpenny to spend on literature.

It would appear easy enough to exterminate the bandits as one would
exterminate wolves or other large game; but in such a country as Corsica,
almost devoid of roads, thinly populated, heavily wooded, the expense
would be greater than the administration is prepared to incur. It would
mean putting an army into the field, prepared and equipped for a long
campaign which might ultimately reach the dignity of a civil war. The
bandits are not worth it. The whole country is not worth exploiting.
Corsica is a small open wound on the great back of France, carefully
concealed and only tended spasmodically from time to time at such periods
as the health of the whole frame is sufficiently good to permit of
serious attention being given to so small a sore. And such times, as the
wondering world knows, are few and far between in the history of France.

The law-abiding natives, or such natives as the law has not found out,
regard the denizens of the macquis with a tender pity not unmixed with
respect. As often as not the bandit is a man with a real grievance, and
the poor have a soft place in their hearts for a man with a grievance.
And all Corsicans are poor. So all are for the bandits, and every man's
hand is secretly or openly against the gendarme. Even in enmity, there is
a certain sense of honour among these naïve people. A man will shoot his
foe in the back, but he will not betray him to the gendarme. Among a
primitive people a man commands respect who has had the courage to take
the law into his own hands. Amidst a subject population, he who rebels is
not without honour.

It was among these and such as these that the Abbé Susini sought from
time to time his lost sheep. He took a certain pleasure in donning the
peasant clothes that his father had worn, and in going to the mountains
as his forefathers had doubtless done before him. For every man worthy of
the name has lurking in his being a remnant of the barbarian which makes
him revolt occasionally against the life of the city and the crowded
struggle of the streets, which sends him out to the waste places of the
world where God's air is at all events untainted, where he may return to
the primitive way of living, to kill and gather with his own hands that
which must satisfy his own hunger.

The abbé had never known a very highly refined state of civilization. The
barbarian was not buried very deep. To him the voice of the wind through
the trees, the roar of the river, the fine, free air of the mountains had
a charm which he could not put into words. He hungered for them as the
exile hungers for the sight of his own home. The air of houses choked
him, as sooner or later it seems to choke sailors and wanderers who have
known what it is to be in the open all night, sleeping or waking beneath
the stars, not by accident as an adventure, but by habit. Then the abbé
would disappear for days together from Olmeta, and vanish into that
mystic, silent, prowling world of the macquis. The sights he saw there,
the men he met there, were among those things which the villagers said
the abbé knew, but of which he never spoke.

During the stirring events of August and September the priest at Olmeta,
and Colonel Gilbert at Bastia, watched each, in his individual way, the
effect of the news upon a very sensitive populace. The abbé stood on the
high-road one night within a stone's throw of Perucca, and, looking down
into the great valley, watched the flickering flames consume all that
remained of the old Château de Vasselot. Colonel Gilbert, in his little
rooms in the bastion at Bastia, knew almost as soon that the château was
burning, and only evinced his usual easy-going surprise. The colonel
always seemed to be wondering that any should have the energy to do
active wrong; for virtue is more often passive, and therefore less
trouble.

The abbé was puzzled.

“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 <DW72>, 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.

The other nodded.

“Then you have heard that the gendarmes are being drafted into the army,
and sent to France?”

The man nodded again. He had done so long without speech that he had no
doubt come to recognize its uselessness in the majority of human
happenings. The abbé felt in his pocket, and gave the man a packet of
tobacco. The Corsicans, unlike nearly all other races of the
Mediterranean, are smokers of wooden pipes.

“Thanks,” said the man, in an odd, soft voice, speaking for the first
time.

“I am going up into the mountains,” said the abbé, slowly, knowing no
doubt that men who have lived long with Nature are slow to understand
words, “to seek an old man who has recently gone there. He is travelling
with a man called Jean, who has the evil eye.”

“The Count de Vasselot,” said the outlaw, quietly. He touched his
forehead with one finger and made a vague wandering gesture of the hand.
“I have seen him. You go the wrong way. He is down there, near the
entrance to the Lancone Defile with others.”

He paused and looked round him with the slow and distant glance which any
may perceive in the eyes of a caged wild beast.

“They are all down from the mountains,” he said.

Even the Abbé Susini glanced uneasily over his shoulder. These still,
stony valleys were peopled by the noiseless, predatory Ishmaels of the
macquis. They were, it is true, not numerous at this time, but those who
had escaped the clutch of the imperial law were necessarily the most
cunning and desperate.

“Buon,” he said, turning to retrace his steps. “I shall go down to the
Lancone Defile. God be with you, my friend.”

The man gave a queer laugh. He evidently thought that the abbé expected
too much.

The abbé walked until midnight, and then being tired he found a quiet
spot between two great rocks, and lying down slept there until morning.
In the leather saddle-bag which formed his pillow he had bread and some
meat, which he ate as he walked on towards the Lancone Defile. Once, soon
after daylight, he paused to listen, and the sound that had faintly
reached him was repeated. It was the warning whistle of the steamer, the
old _Persévérance_, entering Bastia harbour ten miles away. He was still
in the shade of the great heights that lay between him and the Eastern
coast, and hurried while the day was cool. Then the sun leapt up behind
the hazy summits above Biguglia. The abbé looked at his huge silver
watch. It was nearly eight o'clock. When he was near to the entrance of
the defile he stood in the middle of the road and gave, in his high clear
voice, the cry of the goat-herd calling his flock. He gave it twice, and
then repeated it. If there were any in the macquis within a mile of him
they could not fail to see him as he stood on the dusty road in the
sunlight.

He was not disappointed. In a few minutes the closely-set arbutus bushes
above the road were pushed aside and a boy came out--an evil-faced youth
with a loose mouth.

“It is Jean of the Evil Eye who has sent me,” he said glibly, with an eye
on the abbé's hands in case there should be a knife. “He is up there with
a broken leg. He has with him the old man.”

“The old man?” repeated the abbé, interrogatively.

“Yes, he who is foolish.”

“Show me the way,” said Susini. “You need not look at my hands; I have
nothing in them.”

They climbed the steep <DW72> that overhung the road, forcing their way
through the thick brushwood, stumbling over the chaos of stones. Quite
suddenly they came upon a group of men sitting round a smouldering fire
where a tin coffee-pot stood amid the ashes. One man had his leg roughly
tied up in sticks. It was Jean of the Evil Eye, who looked hard at the
Abbé Susini, and then turning, indicated with a nod the Count de Vasselot
who sat leaning against a tree. The count recognized Susini and nodded
vaguely. His face, once bleached by long confinement, was burnt to a deep
red; his eyes were quite irresponsible.

“He is worse,” said Jean, without lowering his voice. “Sometimes I can
only keep him here by force. He thinks the whole island is looking for
him--he never sleeps.”

Jean was interrupted by the evil-faced boy, who had risen, and was
peering down towards the gates of the defile.

“There is a carriage on the road,” he said.

They all listened. There were three other men whom the abbé knew by sight
and reputation. One by one they rose to their feet and slowly cocked
their old-fashioned single-barrelled guns.

“It is the carriage from Olmeta--must be going to Perucca,” reported the
boy.

And at the word Perucca, the count scrambled to his feet, only to be
dragged back by Jean. The old man's eyes were alight with fear and
hatred. He was grasping Jean's gun. The abbé rose and peered down through
the bushes. Then he turned sharply and wrenched Jean's firearm from the
count's hands.

“They are friends of mine,” he said. “The man who shoots will be shot by
me.”

All turned and looked at him. They knew the abbé and the gun. And while
they looked, Denise and Mademoiselle Brun drove past in safety.




CHAPTER XXIII.


AN UNDERSTANDING.

     “Keep cool, and you command everybody.”


When France realized that Napoleon III had fallen, she turned and rent
his memory. No dog, it appears, may have his day, but some cur must needs
yelp at his heels. Indeed (and this applies to literary fame as to
emperors), it is a sure sign that a man is climbing high if the little
dogs bark below.

And the little dogs and the curs remembered now the many slights cast
upon them. France had been betrayed--was ruined. The twenty most
prosperous years of her history were forgotten. There was a rush of
patriots to Paris, and another rush of the chicken-hearted to the coast
and the frontier.

The Baron de Mélide telegraphed to the baroness to quit Fréjus and go to
Italy. And the baroness telegraphed a refusal to do so.

Lory de Vasselot fretted as much as one of his buoyant nature could fret
under this forced inactivity. The sunshine, the beautiful surroundings,
and the presence of friends, made him forget France at times, and think
only of the present. And Denise absorbed his thoughts of the present and
the future. She was a constant puzzle to him. There seemed to be two
Denise Langes: one who was gay with that deep note of wisdom in her
gaiety, which only French women compass, with odd touches of tenderness
and little traits of almost maternal solicitude, which betrayed
themselves at such moments as the wounded man attempted to do something
which his crippled condition or his weakness prevented him from
accomplishing. The other Denise was clear-eyed, logical, almost cold, who
resented any mention of Corsica or of the war. Indeed, de Vasselot had
seen her face harden at some laughing reference made by him to his
approaching recovery. He was quick enough to perceive that she was
endeavouring to shut out of her life all but the present, which was
unusual; for most pin their faith on the future until they are quite old,
and their future must necessarily be a phantom.

“I do not understand you, mademoiselle,” he said, one day, on one of the
rare occasions when she had allowed herself to be left alone with him.
“You are brave, and yet you are a coward!”

And the resentment in her eyes took him by surprise. He did not know,
perhaps, that the wisest men never see more than they are intended to
see.

“Pray do not try,” she answered. “The effort might delay your recovery
and your return to the army.”

She laughed, and presently left him. It is one thing to face the future,
and another to sit quietly awaiting its approach. The majority of people
spoil their lives by going out to meet the future, deliberately
converting into a reality that which was only a dread. They call it
knowing the worst.

The next morning Mademoiselle Brun, with a composed face and blinking
eyes, mentioned casually to Lory that she and Denise were going back to
Corsica.

“But why?” cried Lory; “but why, my dear demoiselle?”

“I do not know,” answered Mademoiselle Brun, smoothing her gloves. “It
will, at all events, show the world that we are not afraid.”

De Vasselot looked at her non-committing face and held his peace. There
was more in this than a man's philosophy might dream of.

“When do you go?” he asked after a pause.

“To-night, from Nice,” was the answer.

And, as has been noted, Denise and mademoiselle arrived at Bastia in the
early morning, and drove to the Casa Perucca, in the face of more than
one rifle-barrel. Mademoiselle Brun never asked questions, and, if she
knew why Denise had returned to Perucca so suddenly, she had not acquired
the knowledge from the girl herself, but had, behind her beady eyes, put
two and two together with that accuracy of which women have the monopoly.
She meekly set to work to make the Casa Perucca comfortable, and took up
her horticultural labours where she had dropped them.

“One misses the Château de Vasselot,” she said one morning, standing by
the open window that gave so wide a view of the valley.

“Yes,” answered Denise; and that was all.

Mademoiselle went into the garden with her leather gloves and a small
basket. The odd thing about her gardening was, that it was on such a
minute scale that the result was never visible to the ordinary eye.
Denise had, it appeared, given up gardening. Mademoiselle Brun did not
know how she occupied herself at this time. She seemed to do nothing, and
preferred to do it alone. Returning to the house at midday, mademoiselle
went into the drawing-room, and there found Denise and Colonel Gilbert
seated at the table with some papers, and a map spread out before them.

Both looked up with a guilty air, and Denise flushed suddenly, while the
colonel bit his lip. Immediately he recovered himself, and rising, shook
hands with the new-comer.

“I heard that you had returned,” he said, “and hastened to pay my
respects.”

“We were looking at the plans,” added Denise, hurriedly. “I have agreed
to sell Perucca to Colonel Gilbert--as you have always wished me to do.”

“Yes; I have always wished you do it,” returned Mademoiselle Brun,
slowly. She was very cool and collected, and in that had the advantage
over her companions. “Has the colonel the money in his pocket?” she asked
with a dry smile. “Is it to be settled this afternoon?”

She glanced from one to the other. If love is blind, he certainly tampers
with the sight of those who have had dealings with him. Denise was only
thinking of Perucca. She had not perceived that Colonel Gilbert was
honestly in love with her. But Mademoiselle Brun saw it. She was
wondering--if this thing had come to Gilbert twenty years earlier--what
manner of man it might have made of him. It was a good love. Mademoiselle
saw that quite clearly. For a dishonest man may at any moment be tripped
up by an honest passion. Which is one of those practical jokes of Fate
that break men's hearts.

“You know as well as I do,” said Colonel Gilbert, with more earnestness
than he had ever shown, “that the sooner you and mademoiselle are out of
the island the better.”

“Bah!” laughed mademoiselle. “With you at Bastia to watch over us, mon
colonel! Besides, we Peruccas are invincible just now. Have we not burnt
down the Château de Vasselot?”

Gilbert winced. Mademoiselle wondered why.

“I want it settled as soon as possible,” put in Denise, turning to the
papers. “There is no need of delay.”

“None,” acquiesced mademoiselle. She wanted to sell Perucca and be done
with it, and with the island. She was a woman of iron nerve, but the
gloom and loneliness of Corsica had not left her at ease. There was a
haunting air of disaster that seemed to brood over the whole land, with
its miles and miles of untenanted mountains, its malarial plains, and
deserted sea-board. “None,” she repeated. “But such transactions are not
to be carried through, in a woman's drawing-room, by two women and a
soldier.”

She looked from one to the other. She did not know why one wanted to buy
and the other to sell. She only knew that her own inclination was to give
them every assistance, and to give it even against her better judgment.
It could only be, after all, the question of a little more or a little
less profit, and she, who had never had any money, knew that the
possession of it never makes a woman one whit the happier.

“Then,” said the colonel with his easy laugh--for he was inimitable in
the graceful art of yielding--“Then, let us appoint a day to sign the
necessary agreements in the office of the notary at Bastia. I tell you
frankly I want to get you out of the island.”

The colonel stayed to lunch, and, whether by accident or intention, made
a better impression than he had ever made before. He was intelligent,
easy, full of information and _o rara avis!_ proved himself to be a man
without conceit. He never complained of his ill-fortune in life, but his
individuality thrust the fact into every mind, that this was a man
destined for distinction who had missed it. He seemed to be riding
through life for a fall, and rode with his chin up, gay and _debonnaire_.

Mademoiselle Brun felt relieved by the thought that the end of Corsica,
and this impossible Casa Perucca, was in sight. She was gay as a little
grey mouse may be gay at some domestic festival. She sent the widow to
the cellar, and the occasion was duly celebrated in a bottle of Mattei
Perucca's old wine.

With coffee came the question of fixing a date for the signature of the
deed of sale at the notary's office at Bastia. And instantly the mouse
skipped, as it were, into a retired corner of the conversation and
crouched silent, watching with bright eyes.

“I should like it to be done soon,” said the colonel, who, at the
suggestion of his hostess, had lighted a cigarette. He seemed more
himself with a cigarette between his fingers to contemplate with a dreamy
eye, to turn and twist in reflective idleness. “You will understand that
my future movements are uncertain if, as now seems possible, the war is
not over.”

“But surely it is over,” put in Denise, quickly.

The colonel shrugged his shoulders.

“Who can tell? We are in the hands of a few journalists and lawyers,
mademoiselle. If the men of words say 'Resist,' we others are ready. I
have applied to be relieved of my command here, since they are going to
fortify Paris. Shall we say next week?”

“To-day is Thursday--shall we say Monday?” replied Denise.

“Make it Wednesday,” suggested Mademoiselle Brun from her silent corner.

And after some discussion Wednesday was finally selected. Mademoiselle
Brun had no particular reason why it should be Wednesday, in preference
to Monday, and, unlike most people in such circumstances, advanced none.

“We shall require witnesses,” she said as the colonel took his leave. “I
shall be able to find two to testify to the signature of Denise.”

The colonel had apparently forgotten this necessity. He thanked her and
departed.

“And on Wednesday,” he said, “I shall in reality have the money in my
pocket.”

During the afternoon mademoiselle announced her intention of walking to
Olmeta. It would be advisable to secure the Abbé Susini as a witness, she
said. He was a busy man, and a journey to Bastia would of necessity take
up his whole day. Denise did not offer to accompany her, so she set out
alone at a quick pace, learnt, no doubt, in the Rue des Saints Pères.

“They will not shoot at an old woman,” she said, and never looked aside.

The priest's housekeeper received her coldly. Yes the abbé was at home,
she said, holding the door ajar with scant hospitality. Mademoiselle
pushed it open and went into the narrow passage. She had not too much
respect for a priest, and none whatever for a priest's housekeeper, who
kept a house so badly. She looked at the dirty floor, and with a subtle
feminine irony, sought the mat which was lying in the road outside the
house. She folded her hands at her waist, and still grasping her cheap
cotton umbrella, waited to be announced.

The Abbé Susini received her in his little bare study, where a few
newspapers, half a dozen ancient volumes of theology and a life of
Napoleon the Great, represented literature. He bowed silently and drew
forward his own horsehair armchair. Mademoiselle Brun sat down, and
crossed her hands upon the hilt of her umbrella like a soldier at rest
under arms. She waited until the housekeeper had closed the door and
shuffled away to her own quarters. Then she looked the resolute little
abbé straight in the eyes.

“Let us understand each other,” she said.

“Bon Dieu! upon what point, mademoiselle?”

Mademoiselle was still looking at him. She perceived that there were some
points upon which the priest did not desire to be understood. She held up
one finger in its neutral- cotton glove, and shook it slowly from
side to side.

“None of your theology,” she said; “I come to you as a man--the only man
I think in this island at present.”

“At present?”

“Yes, the other is in France, recovering from his wounds.”

“Ah!” said the abbé, glancing shrewdly into her face. “You also have
perceived that he is a man--that. But there is our good Colonel Gilbert.
You forget him.”

“He would have made a good priest,” said mademoiselle, bluntly, and the
abbé laughed aloud.

“Ah! but you amuse me, mademoiselle. You amuse me enormously.” And he
leant back to laugh at his ease.

“Yes, I came on purpose to amuse you. I came to tell you that Denise
Lange has sold Perucca to Colonel Gilbert.”

“Sacred name of--thunder,” he muttered, the mirth wiped away from his
face as if with a cloth. He sat bolt upright, glaring at her, his
restless foot tapping on the floor.

“Ah, you women!” he ejaculated after a pause.

“Ah, you priests!” returned Mademoiselle Brun, composedly.

“And you did not stop it,” he said, looking at her with undisguised
contempt.

“I have no control. I used to have a little; now I have none.”

She finished with a gesture, describing the action of a leaf blown before
the wind.

“But I have put off the signing of the papers until Wednesday,” she
continued. “I have undertaken to provide two witnesses, yourself if you
will consent, the other--I thought we might get the other from Fréjus
between now and Wednesday. A boat from St. Florent to-night could surely,
with this wind, reach St. Raphael to-morrow.”

The abbé was looking at her with manifest approval.

“Clever,” he said--“clever.”

Mademoiselle Brun rose to go as abruptly as she had come.

“Personally,” she said, “I shall be glad to be rid of Perucca for
ever--but I fancied there are reasons.”

“Yes,” said the priest, slowly, “there are reasons.”

“Oh! I ask no questions,” she snapped out at him with her hand on the
door. On the threshold she paused. “All the same,” she said, “I do ask a
question. Why does Colonel Gilbert want to buy?”

The priest threw up his hands in angry bewilderment.

“That is it!” he cried. “I wish I knew.”

“Then find out,” said mademoiselle, “between now and Wednesday.”

And with a curt nod she left him.




CHAPTER XXIV.


CE QUE FEMME VEUT.

     “All nature is but art, unknown to thee!
     All chance, direction which thou canst not see.”


It rained all night with a semi-tropical enthusiasm. The autumn rains are
looked for in these latitudes at certain dates, and if by chance they
fail, the whole winter will be disturbed and broken. With sunrise,
however, the clouds broke on the western side of the island, and from the
summit of the great Perucca rock the blue and distant sea was visible
through the grey confusion of mist and cloud. The autumn had been a dry
one, so the whole mountain-side was clothed in shades of red and brown,
rising from the scarlet of the blackberry leaves to the deep amber of the
bare rock, where all vegetation ceased. The distant peeps of the valley
of Vasselot glowed blue and purple, the sea was a bright cobalt, and
through the broken clouds the sun cast shafts of yellow gold and
shimmering silver. The whole effect was dazzling, and such as dim
Northern eyes can scarce imagine.

Mademoiselle Brun, who had just risen from the table where she and Denise
had had their early breakfast of coffee and bread, was standing by the
window that opened upon the verandah where old Mattei Perucca had passed
so many hours of his life.

“One should build on this spot,” she began, “a convalescent home for
atheists.”

She broke off, and staggered back. The room, the verandah, the whole
world it seemed, was shaking and vibrating like a rickety steam-engine.
For a moment the human senses were paralyzed by a deafening roar and
rattle. Mademoiselle Brun turned to Denise, and for a time they clung to
each other; and then Denise, whose strong young arms half lifted her
companion from the ground, gained the open window. She held there for a
moment, and then staggered across the verandah and down the steps,
dragging mademoiselle with her.

There was no question of speech, of thought, of understanding. They
merely stood, holding to each other, and watching the house. Then a
sudden silence closed over the world, and all was still. Denise turned
and looked down into the valley, smiling beneath them in its brilliant
colouring. Her hand was at her throat as if she were choking.
Mademoiselle, shaking in every limb, turned and sat down on a garden
seat. Denise would not sit, but stood shaking and swaying like a reed in
a mistral. And yet each in her way was as brave a woman as could be found
even in their own country.

Mademoiselle Brun leant forward, and held her head between her two hands,
while she stared at the ground between her feet. At last speech caine to
her, but not her natural voice.

“I suppose,” she said, passing her little shrivelled hand across her
eyes, “that it was an earthquake.”

“No,” said Denise. “Look!” And she pointed with a shaking finger down
towards the river.

A great piece of the mountain-side, comprising half a dozen vine
terraces, a few olive terraces, and a patch of pinewood, had fallen
bodily down into the river-bed, leaving the <DW72> a bare and scarified
mass of rock and red soil. The little Guadelle river, a tributary of the
Aliso, was completely dammed. Perucca was the poorer by the complete
disappearance of one of its sunniest <DW72>s, but the house stood unhurt.

“No more will fall,” said Denise presently. “See; there is the bare
rock.”

Mademoiselle rose, and came slowly towards Denise. They were recovering
from their terror now. For at all events, the cause of it lay before
them, and lacked the dread uncertainty of an earthquake. Mademoiselle
gave an odd laugh.

“It is the boundary-line between Perucca and Vasselot,” she said, “that
has fallen into the valley.”

Denise was thinking the same thought, and made no answer. The footpath
from the château up to the Casa by which Gilbert had come on the day of
Mattei Perucca's death, by which he had also ridden to the château one
day, was completely obliterated. Where it had crept along the face of the
<DW72>, there now rose a bare red rock. There was no longer a short cut
from the one house to the other. It made Perucca all the more
inaccessible.

“Curious,” whispered Mademoiselle Brun to herself, as she turned towards
the house. She went indoors to get a hat, for the autumn sun was now
glaring down upon them.

When she came out again, Denise was sitting looking thoughtfully down
into the valley where had once stood the old château, now gone, to which
had led this pathway, now wiped off the face of the earth.

“There is assuredly,” she said, without looking round, “a curse upon this
country.”

Which Seneca had thought eighteen hundred years before, and which the
history of the islands steadily confirms.

Mademoiselle was drawing on her gloves, and carried her umbrella.

“I am going down the pathway to look at it all,” she said.

There was nothing to be done. When Nature takes things into her own
hands, men can only stand by and look. Denise was perhaps more shaken
than the smaller, tougher woman. She made no attempt to accompany
mademoiselle, but sat in the shade of a mimosa tree, and watched her
descend into the valley, now appearing, now hidden, in the brushwood.

Mademoiselle Brun made her way to the spot where the pathway was suddenly
cut short by the avalanche of rock and rubble and soil. It happened to be
the exact spot where Colonel Gilbert's heavy horse had stumbled months
before, where the footpath crossed the bed of a small mountain torrent. A
few loosened stones had come bowling down the <DW72>, set free by the
landslip. These had fallen on to the pathway, and there shattered
themselves into a thousand pieces. Mademoiselle stood among the _débris_.
She looked down in order to make sure of her foothold, and something
caught her eye. She knelt down eagerly, and then, looking up, glanced
round surreptitiously like a thief. She could not see the Casa Perucca.
She was alone on this solitary mountain-side. Slowly she collected the
_débris_ of the broken rock, which was mixed with a red powdery soil.

“Ciel!” she whispered, “Ciel! what fools we have all been!”

She rose from her knees with one clasped handful of rubble. Slowly and
thoughtfully she climbed the hill again. On the terrace, where she
arrived hot and tired, the widow Andrei met her. The woman had been to
the village on an errand, and had returned during mademoiselle's absence.

“The Abbé Susini awaits you in the library,” she said. “He asked for you
and not for mademoiselle, who has gone to her own garden.”

Mademoiselle hurried into the library. The arrival of the abbé at this
moment seemed providential, though the explanation of it was simple
enough.

“I came,” he said, looking at her keenly, “on a fool's errand. I came to
ask whether the ladies were afraid.”

Mademoiselle gave a chilly smile.

“The ladies were not afraid, Monsieur l'Abbé,” she said. “They were
terrified--since you ask.”

She went to a side-table and brought a newspaper; for even in her
excitement she was scrupulously tidy. She laid it on the table in front
of the abbé, rather awkwardly with her left hand, and then, holding her
right over the newspaper, she suddenly opened it, and let fall a little
heap of stones and soil. Some of the stones had a singular rounded
appearance.

The abbé treated her movements with the kindly interest offered at the
shrine of childhood or imbecility. It was evident that he supposed that
the landslip had unhinged Mademoiselle Brun's reason.

“What is that?” he asked soothingly, contemplating the mineral trophy.

“I think,” answered mademoiselle, “that it is the explanation.”

“The explanation of what, if one may inquire?”

“Of your precious colonel,” said mademoiselle. “That is gold, Monsieur
L'Abbé. I have seen similar dirt in a museum in Paris.” She took up one
of the pebbles. “Scrape it with your knife,” she said, handing it to him.

The abbé obeyed her, and volunteered on his own account to bite it. He
handed it back to her with the marks of his teeth on it, and one side of
it scraped clean showing pure gold. Then he walked pensively to the
window, where he stood with his back turned to her in deep thought for
some minutes. At length he turned on his heel and looked at her.

“It began,” he said, holding up one finger and shaking it slowly from
side to side, which seemed to indicate that his hearer must be silent for
a while, “long ago. I see it now.”

“Part of it,” corrected mademoiselle, inexorably.

“He must have discovered it two years ago when he first surveyed this
country for the proposed railway. I see now why that man from St. Florent
shot Pietro Andrei on the high-road. Pietro Andrei was in the way, and a
little subtle revival of a forgotten vendetta secured his removal. I see
now whence came the anonymous letter intended to frighten Mattei Perucca
away from here. It frightened him into the next world.”

“And I see now,” interrupted the refractory listener, “why Denise
received an offer for the estate before she had become possessed of it,
and an offer of marriage before we had been here a month. But he tripped
and fell then,” she concluded grimly.

“And all for money,” said the abbé, contemptuously.

“Wait,” said mademoiselle--“wait till you have yourself been tempted. So
many fall. It must be greater than we think, that temptation. You and I
perhaps have never had it.”

“No,” replied the abbé, simply. “There has never been more than a
sou in my poor-box at the church. I see now,” continued Susini, “who
has been stirring up this old strife between the Peruccas and the
Vasselots--offering, as he was, to buy from one and the other
alternately. This _dirt_, mademoiselle, must lie on both estates.”

“It lies between the two.”

The priest was deep in thought, rubbing his stubbly chin with two
fingers.

“I see so much now,” he said at length, “which I never understood
before.”

He turned towards the window, and looked down at the rocky <DW72> with a
new interest.

“There must be a great quantity of it,” he said reflectively. “He has
walked over so many obstacles to get to it, with his pleasant laugh.”

“He has walked over his own heart,” said mademoiselle, persistently
contemplating the question from the woman's point of view.

The priest moved impatiently.

“I was thinking of men's lives,” he said. Then he turned and faced her
with a sudden gleam in his eye. “There is one thing yet unexplained--the
burning of the Château de Vasselot. An empty house does not ignite
itself. Explain me that.”

Mademoiselle shrugged her shoulders.

“That still remains to be explained,” she said. “In the mean time we must
act.”

“I know that--I know that,” he cried. “I have acted! I am acting! De
Vasselot arrives in Corsica to-morrow night. A letter from him crossed
the message I sent to him by a special boat from St. Florent last night.”

“What brings him here?”

The abbé turned and looked at her with scorn.

“Bah!” he cried. “You know as well as I. It is the eyes of Mademoiselle
Denise.”

He took his hat and went towards the door.

“On Wednesday morning, if you do not see me before, at the office of the
notary, in the Boulevard du Palais at Bastia,” he said. “Where there will
be a pretty salad for Mister the Colonel, prepared for him by a woman and
a priest--eh! Both your witnesses shall be there, mademoiselle--both.”

He broke off with a laugh and an upward jerk of the head.

“Ah! but he is a pretty scoundrel, your colonel.”

“He is not my colonel,” returned Mademoiselle Brun. “Besides, even he has
his good points. He is brave, and he is capable of an honest affection.”

The priest gave a scornful laugh.

“Ah! you women,” he cried. “You think that excuses everything. You do not
know that if it is worth anything it should make a man better instead of
worse. Otherwise it is not worth a snap of my finger--your honest
affection.”

And he came back into the room on purpose to snap his finger, in his rude
way, quite close to Mademoiselle Brun's parchment face.




CHAPTER XXV.


ON THE GREAT ROAD.

     “Look in my face; my name is Might-Have-Been.
     I am also called No More, Too Late, Farewell,”


“This,” said the captain of the Jane, the Baron de Mélide's yacht, “is
the bay of St. Florent. We anchor a little further in.”

“Yes,” answered Lory, who stood on the bridge beside the sailor, “I know
it. I am glad to see it again--to smell the smell of Corsica again.”

“Monsieur le Comte is attached to his native country?” suggested the
captain, consulting the chart which he held folded in his hand.

De Vasselot was looking through a pair of marine glasses across the hills
to where the Perucca rock jutted out of the mountain side.

“No; I hate it. But I am glad to come back,” he said.

“Monsieur will be welcomed by his people. It is a great power, the voice
of the people.” For the captain was a Republican.

“It is the bleating of sheep, mon capitaine,” returned de Vasselot, with
a laugh.

They stood side by side in silence while the steamer crept steadily
forward into the shallow bay. Already a boat had left the town wall, and
was sailing out leisurely on the evening breeze towards them. It came
alongside. De Vasselot gave some last instructions to the captain, said
farewell, and left the ship. It was a soldier's breeze, and the boat ran
free. In a few minutes de Vasselot stepped ashore. The abbé was waiting
for him at the steps. It was almost dark, but de Vasselot could see the
priest's black eyes flashing with some new excitement. De Vasselot held
out his hand, but Susini made a movement, of which the new-comer
recognized the significance in his quick way. He took a step forward, and
they embraced after the manner of the French.

“Voilà!” said the abbé, “we are friends at last.”

“I have always known that you were mine,” answered Lory.

“Good. And now I have bad news for you. A friend's privilege, Monsieur le
Comte.”

“Ah,” said Lory, looking sharply at him.

“Your father. I have found him and lost him again. I found him where I
knew he would be, in the macquis, living the life that they live there,
with perfect tranquillity. Jean was with him. By some means or other Jean
got wind of a proposed investigation of the château. The Peruccas people
have been stirred up lately; but that is a long story which I cannot tell
you now. At all events, they quitted the château a few hours before the
house was mysteriously burnt down. To-day I received a message from Jean.
Your father left their camp before daybreak to-day. All night he had been
restless. He was in a panic that the Peruccas are seeking him. He is no
longer responsible, mon ami; his mind is gone. From his muttered talk of
the last few days, they conclude that he is making his way south to
Bonifacio, in order to cross the straits from there to Sardinia. He is on
foot, alone, and deranged. There is my news.”

“And Jean?” asked de Vasselot, curtly; for he was quick in decision and
in action.

“Jean has but half recovered from an accident. The small bone of his leg
was broken by a fall. He is following on the back of an old horse which
cannot trot, the only one he could procure. I have ready for you a good
horse. You have but to follow the track over the mountains due south--you
know the stars, you, who are a cavalry officer--until you join the Corte
road at Ponte Alle Leccia, then there is but the one road to Bocognano.
If you overtake your poor father, you have but to detain him until Jean
comes up. You may trust Jean to bring him safely back to the yacht here
as arranged. But you must be at Bastia at the Hotel Clément at ten
o'clock on Wednesday morning. That is absolutely necessary. You
understand--life or death, you must be there. I and a woman, who is
clever enough, are mixing a salad for some one at Bastia on Wednesday
morning, and it is you who are the vinegar.”

“Where is the horse?” asked Lory.

“It is a few paces away. Come, I will show you.”

“Ah!” cried Lory, whose voice had a ring of excitement in it that always
came when action was imminent. “But I cannot go at that pace. It is not
only Jean who has but one leg. Your arm--thank you. Now we can go.”

And he limped by the side of Susini through the dark alleys of St.
Florent. The horse was waiting for them beneath an archway which de
Vasselot remembered. It was the entry to the stable where he had left his
horse on the occasion of his first arrival in Corsica.

“Aha!” he said, with a sort of glee as he settled himself in the saddle.
“It is good to be across a horse again. Pity you are a priest; you might
come with me. It will be a fine night for a ride. What a pity you are a
priest! You were not meant for one, you know.”

“I am as the good God made me, and a little worse,” returned Susini.
“That is your road.”

And so they parted. Lory rode on, happy in that he was called upon to
act without too much thought. For those who think most, laugh least. De
Vasselot's life had been empty enough until the outbreak of the war,
and now it was full to overflowing. And though France had fallen, and he
himself, it would appear, must be a pauper; though his father must
inevitably be a living sorrow, which one who tasted it has told us is
worse than a dead one; though Denise would have nothing to say to
him,--yet he was happier than he had ever been. He was wise enough not to
sift his happiness. He had never spoken of it to others. It is wise not
to confide one's happiness to another; he may pull it to pieces in his
endeavour to find out how it is made.

The onlooker may only guess at the inner parts of another's life; but at
times one may catch a glimpse of the light that another sees. And it is,
therefore, to be safely presumed that Lory de Vasselot found a certain
happiness in the unswerving execution of his duty. Not only as a soldier,
but as a man, he rejoiced in a strict sense of duty, which, in sober
earnest, is one of the best gifts that a man may possess. He had not
inherited it from father or mother. He had not acquired it at St. Cyr.
He had merely received it at second-hand from Mademoiselle Brun, at
third-hand from that fat old General Lange who fell at Solferino. For the
schoolgirl in the Rue du Cherche-Midi was quite right when she had
pounced upon Mademoiselle Brun's secret, which, however, lay safely dead
and buried on that battlefield. And Mademoiselle Brun had taught, had
shaped Henri de Mélide; and Henri de Mélide had always been Lory de
Vasselot's best friend. So the thin silver thread of good had been woven
through the web of more lives than the little woman ever dreamt. Who
shall say what good or what evil the meanest of us may thus accomplish?

De Vasselot never thought of these things. He was content to go straight
ahead without looking down those side paths into which so many immature
thinkers stray. He had fought at Sedan, had thrown his life with no
niggard hand into the balance. When wounded he had cunningly escaped the
attentions of the official field hospitals. He might easily have sent in
his name to Prussian head-quarters as that of a wounded officer begging
to be released on _parole_. But he cherished the idea of living to fight
another day. Denise, with word and glance, and, more potent still, with
silence, had tempted him a hundred times to abandon the idea of further
service to France. “She does not understand,” he concluded; and he threw
Denise into the balance. She made it clear to him that he must choose
between her and France. Without hesitation he threw his happiness into
the balance. For this Corsican--this dapper sportsman of the Bois de
Boulogne and Longchamps--was, after all, that creation of which the world
has need to be most proud--a man.

Duty had been his guiding light, though he himself would have laughed the
gayest denial to such an accusation. Duty had brought him to Corsica.
And--for there is no human happiness that is not spiced by duty--he had
the hope of seeing Denise.

He rode up the valley of the Guadelle blithely enough, despite the fact
that his leg pained him and his left arm ached abominably. Of course, he
would find his father--he knew that; and the peace and quiet of some
rural home in France would restore the wandering reason. And all was for
the best in the best possible world! For Lory was a Frenchman, and into
the French nature there has assuredly filtered some of the light of that
sunny land.

At more than one turn of the road he looked up towards Perucca. Once he
saw a light in one of the windows of the old house. Slowly he climbed to
the level of the tableland; and Denise, sitting at the open window, heard
the sound of his horse's feet, and wondered who might be abroad at that
hour. He glanced at the ruined chapel that towers above the Château de
Vasselot on its rocky promontory, and peered curiously down into the
black valley, where the charred remains of his ancestral home are to be
found to this day. Murato was asleep--a silent group of stone-roofed
houses, one of which, however, had seen the birth of a man notorious
enough in his day--Fieschi, the would-be assassin of Louis Philippe.
Every village in this island has, it would seem, the odour of blood.

The road now mounted steadily, and presently led through the rocky defile
where Susini had turned back on a similar errand scarce a week earlier.
The rider now emerged into the open, and made his careful way along the
face of a mountain. The chill air bespoke a great altitude, which was
confirmed by that waiting, throbbing silence which is of the summits.
Far down on the right, across rolling ranges of lower hills, a steady
pin-point of light twinkled like a star. It was the lighthouse of
Punta-Revellata, by Calvi, twenty miles away.

The night was clear and dark. A few clouds lay on the horizon to the
south, and all the dome of heaven was a glittering field of stars. De
Vasselot's horse was small and wiry--part Arab, part mountain pony--and
attended to his own affairs with the careful and surprising intelligence
possessed by horses, mules, and donkeys that are born and bred to
mountain roads. After Murato the track had descended sharply, only to
mount again to the heights dividing the watersheds of the Bevinco and the
Golo. And now de Vasselot could hear the Golo roaring in its rocky bed in
the valley below. He knew that he was safe now, for he had merely to
follow the river till it led him to the high-road at Ponte Alle Leccia.
The country here was more fertile, and the track led through the thickest
macquis. The subtle scent of flowering bushes filled the air with a cool,
soft flavour, almost to be tasted on the lips, of arbutus, myrtle,
cistus, oleander, tamarisk, and a score of flowering heaths. The silence
here was broken incessantly by the stirring of the birds, which swarm in
these berry-bearing coppices.

The track crossed the narrow, flat valley, where, a hundred years
earlier, had been fought the last great fight that finally subjugated
Corsica to France. Here de Vasselot passed through some patches of
cultivated ground--rare enough in this fertile land--noted the shadowy
shape of a couple of houses, and suddenly found himself on the high-road.
He had spared his horse hitherto, but now urged the willing beast to a
better pace. This took the form of an uneven, fatiguing trot, which,
however, made good account of the kilometres, and de Vasselot noted
mechanically the recurrence of the little square stones every five or six
minutes.

It was during that darkest hour which precedes the dawn that he skirted
the old capital, Corte, straggling up the hillside to the towering
citadel standing out grey and solemn against its background of great
mountains. The rider could now see dimly a snow-clad height here and
there. Halfway between Corte and Vivario, where the road climbs through
bare heights, he paused, and then hurried on again. He had heard in this
desert stillness the beat of a horse's feet on the road in front of him.
He was not mistaken, for when he drew up to listen a second time there
was no sound. The rider had stopped, and was waiting for him. The outline
of his form could be seen against the starry sky at a turn in the road
further up the mountain-side.

“Is that you, Jean?” cried Lory.

“Yes,” answered the voice of the man who rarely spoke.

The two horses exchanged a low, gurgled greeting.

“Are we on the right road? What is the next village?” asked Lory.

“The next is a town--Vivario. We are on the right road. At Vivario turn
to the right, where the road divides. He is going that way, through
Bocognano and Bastelica to Sartene and Bonifacio. I have heard of him
many times, from one and the other.”

From one and the other! De Vasselot half turned in his saddle to glance
back at the road over which he had travelled. He had seen and heard no
one all through the night.

“He procured a horse at Corte last evening,” continued Jean. “It seems a
good one. What is yours?”

“I have not seen mine,” answered de Vasselot; “I can only feel him. But I
think there are thirty kilometres in him yet.” As he spoke he had his
hand in his pocket. “Here,” he said. “Take some money. Get a better horse
at Vivario and follow me. It will be daylight in an hour. Tell me again
the names of the places on the road.”

“Vivario, Bocognano, Bastelica, Cauro, Sartene, Bonifacio,” repeated
Jean, like a lesson.

“Vivario, Bocognano, Bastelica, Cauro, Sartene,” muttered de Vasselot, as
he rode on.

He was in the great forest of Vizzavona when the day broke, and he saw
through the giant pines the rosy tints of sunrise on the summit of Monte
D'Oro, from whence at dawn may be seen the coast-line of Italy and France
and, like dots upon a map, all the islets of the sea. Still he met no
one--had seen no living being but Jean since quitting St. Florent at the
other extremity of the island.

It was freezingly cold at the summit of the pass where the road traverses
a cleft in the mountain-range, and de Vasselot felt that weariness which
comes to men, however strong, just before the dawn ends a sleepless
night. The horse, as he had told Jean, was still fresh enough, and gained
new energy as the air grew lighter. The mountain town of Bocognano lies
below the road, and the scent of burning pinewood told that the peasants
were astir. Here de Vasselot quitted the highway, and took a side-road to
Bastelica. As he came round the <DW72> of Monte Mezzo, the sun climbed up
into the open sky, and flooded the broad valley of the Prunelli with
light. De Vasselot had been crossing watersheds all night, climbing out
of one valley only to descend into another, crossing river after river
with a monotony only varied by the various dangers of the bridges. The
valley of the Prunelli seemed no different from others until he looked
across it, and perceived his road mounting on the opposite <DW72>. A
single horseman was riding southward at a good pace. It was his father at
last.




CHAPTER XXVI.


THE END OF THE JOURNEY.

     “La journée sera dure,
     Mais elle se passera.”


At the sight of the horseman on the road in front of him, those instincts
of the chase which must inevitably be found in all manly hearts, were
suddenly aroused, and Lory surprised his willing horse by using the
spurs, of which the animal had hitherto been happily ignorant.

At the same time he made a mistake. He gave an eager shout, quite
forgetting that the count had never seen him in uniform, and would
inevitably perceive the glint of his accoutrements in the sunlight. The
instinct of the macquis was doubtless strong upon the fugitive, There are
certain habits of thought acquired in a brief period of outlawry, which
years of respectability can never efface. The count, who had lived in
secrecy more than half his life, took fright at the sight of a sword, and
down the quiet valley of the Prunelli father and son galloped one after
the other--a wild and uncanny chase.

With the cunning of the hunted, the count left the road by the first
opening he saw--a path leading into a pine-wood; but over this rough
ground the trained soldier was equal to the native-born. The track only
led to the open road again at a higher level, and de Vasselot had gained
on his father when they emerged from the wood.

Lory had called to his father once or twice, reassuring him, but without
effect. The old count sat low in his saddle and urged his horse with a
mechanical jerk of the heels. Thus they passed through the village of
Bastelica--a place with an evil name. It was early still, and but few
were astir, for the peasants of the South are idle. In Corsica, moreover,
the sight of a flying man always sends others into hiding. No man wishes
to see him, though all sympathies are with him, and the pursuer is
avoided as if he bore the plague.

In Bastelica there were none but closed doors and windows. A few children
playing in the road instinctively ran to their homes, where their mothers
drew them hurriedly indoors. The Bastelicans would have nought to do with
the law or the law-breaker. It was the sullen indifference of the
crushed, but the unconquered.

Down into the valley, across another river--the southern branch of the
Prunelli--and up again. Cauro was above them--a straggling village with
one large square house and a little church--Cauro, the stepping-stone
between civilization and those wild districts about Sartene where the law
has never yet penetrated. Lory de Vasselot had gained a little on the
downward incline. He could now see that his father's clothes were
mud-stained and torn, that his long white hair was ill-kempt. But the
pursuer's horse was tired; for de Vasselot had been unable to relieve him
of his burden all through the night. Lame and disabled, he could not
mount or dismount without assistance. On the upward <DW72>, where the road
climbs through a rocky gorge, the fugitive gained ground. Out on the open
road again, within sight of Cauro, the count's horse showed signs of
distress, but gained visibly. The count was unsteady in the saddle,
riding heedlessly. In an instant de Vasselot saw the danger. His father
was dropping with fatigue, and might at any moment fall from the saddle.

“Stop,” he cried, “or I will shoot your horse!”

The count took no notice. Perhaps he did not hear. The road now mounted
in a zigzag. The fugitive was already at the angle. In a few moments he
would be back again at a higher level. Lory knew he could never overtake
the fresher horse. There was but one chance--the chance perhaps of two
shots as his father passed along the road above him. Should the gendarmes
of Cauro, where there is a strong station, see this fugitive, so
evidently from the macquis, with all the signs of outlawry upon him, they
would fire upon him without hesitation. Also he might at any moment fall
from the saddle and be dragged by the stirrup.

De Vasselot drew across the road to the outer edge of it, from whence he
could command a better view of the upper <DW72>. The count came on at a
steady trot. He looked down with eyes that had no reason in them and yet
no fear. He saw the barrel of the revolver, polished by long use in an
inner pocket, and looked fearlessly into it. Lory fired and missed. His
father threw back his head and laughed. His white hair fluttered in the
wind. There was time for another shot. Lory took a longer aim,
remembering to fire low, and horse and rider suddenly dropped behind the
low wall of the upper road. De Vasselot rode on.

“It was the horse--it must have been the horse,” he said to himself, with
misgiving in his heart. He turned the corner at a gallop. On the road in
front, the horse was struggling to rise, but the count lay quite still in
the dust. Lory dismounted as well as he could. Mechanically he tied the
two horses together, then turned towards his father. With his uninjured
hand he took the old man by the shoulder and raised him. The dishevelled
white head fell to one side with a jerk that was unmistakable. The count
was dead. And Lory de Vasselot found himself face to face with that
question which so many have with them all through life: the question
whether at a certain point in the crooked road of life he took the wrong
or right turning.

Death itself had no particular terror for de Vasselot. It was his trade,
and it is easier to become familiar with death than with suffering. He
dragged his father to the side of the road where a great chestnut tree
cast a shadow still, though its leaves were falling. Then he looked round
him. There was no one in sight. He knew, moreover, that he was in a
country where the report of firearms repels rather than attracts
attention. It occurred to him at that moment that his father's horse had
risen to its feet--a fact which had suggested nothing to his mind when he
had tied the two bridles together. He examined the animal carefully.
There was no blood upon it; no wound. The dust was rubbed away from the
knees. The horse had crossed its legs and fallen as it started at the
second report of his pistol.

Lory turned and stooped over his father. Here again, was no blood--only
the evidence of a broken neck. Still, though indirectly, Lory de Vasselot
had killed his father. It was well for him that he was a soldier--taught
by experience to give their true value to the strange chances of life and
death. Moreover, he was a Frenchman--gay in life and reckless of its
end.

He sat down by the side of the road and remembered the Abbé Susini's
words: “Life or death, you must be at Bastia on Wednesday morning.”

Mechanically, he drew his watch from within his tunic, which was white
with dust. The watch had run down. And when Jean arrived a few minutes
later, he found Lory de Vasselot sitting in the shade of the great
chestnut tree, by the side of his dead father, sleepily winding up his
watch.

“I fired at the horse to lame it--it crossed its legs and fell, throwing
him against the wall,” he said, shortly.

Jean lifted his master, noted the swinging head, and laid him gently down
again.

“Heaven soon takes those who are useless,” he said.

Then he slipped his hand within the old man's jacket. The inner pockets
were stuffed full of papers, which Jean carefully withdrew. Some were
tied together with pink tape, long since faded to a dull grey. He made
one packet of them all and handed it to Lory.

“It was for those that they burnt the château,” he said; “but we have
outwitted them.”

De Vasselot turned the clumsy parcel in his hand.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It is the papers of Vasselot and Perucca--your title-deeds.”

Lory laid the papers on the bank beside him.

“In your pocket,” corrected Jean, gruffly. “That is the place for them.”

And while Lory was securing the packet inside his tunic, the unusually
silent man spoke again.

“It is Fate who has handed them to you,” he said.

“Then you think that Fate has time to think of the affairs of the
Vasselots?”

“I believe it, monsieur le comte.”

They fell to talking of the past, and of the count. Then de Vasselot told
his companion that he must be in Bastia in less than twenty-four hours,
and Jean, whose gloomy face was drawn and pinched by past hardships, and
a present desire for sleep, was alert in a moment.

“When the abbé says it, it is important,” he said.

“But it is easily done,” protested de Vasselot, who like many men of
action had a certain contempt for those crises in life which are but
matters of words. Which is a mistake; for as the world progresses it
grows more verbose, and for one moment of action, there are in men's
lives to-day a million words.

“It is to be done,” answered Jean, “but not easily. You must ride to
Porto Vecchio and there find a man called Casabianda. You will find him
on the quay or in the Café Amis. Tell him your name, and that you must be
at Bastia by daybreak. He has a good boat.”

Lory rose to his feet. There was a light in his tired eyes, and he sighed
as he passed his hand across them, for the thought of further action was
like wine to him.

“But I must sleep, Jean, I must sleep,” he said, lightly.

“You can do that in Cassabianda's boat.” Answered Jean, who was already
changing de Vasselot's good saddle to the back of his own fresher horse.

Jean had to lift his master into the saddle, which office the wiry Susini
had performed for him at St. Florent fourteen hours earlier. There is a
good inn at Cauro where de Vasselot procured a cup of coffee and some
bread without dismounting. Jean had given him a list of names, and the
route to Porto Vecchio was not a difficult one, though it led through a
deserted country. By midday, de Vasselot caught sight of the Eastern sea;
by three o'clock he saw the great gulf of Porto Vecchio, and before
sunset he rode, half-asleep, into the ancient town with its crumbling
walls and ill-paved streets. He had ridden in safety through one of the
waste places of this province of France--a canton wherein a few years ago
a well-known bandit had forbidden the postal service, and that postal
service was not--and he knew enough to be aware that the mysterious
messengers of the macquis had cleared the way before him. But de Vasselot
only fully realized the magic of his own name when he at length found the
man, Casabianda--a scoundrel whose personal appearance must assuredly
have condemned him without further evidence in any court of justice
except a Corsican court--who bowed before him as before a king, and laid
violent hands upon his wife and daughter a few minutes later because the
domestic linen chest failed to rise to the height of a clean table cloth.

The hospitality of Casabianda outlasted the sun. He had the virtues of
his primitive race, and that appreciation of a guest which urges the
entertainer to give not only the best that he has, but the best that he
can borrow or steal.

“There is no breeze,” said this Porto Vecchian, jovially; “it will come
with the night. In waiting, this is wine of Balagna.”

And he drank perdition to the Peruccas.

With nightfall they set sail; the great lateen swinging lazily under the
pressure of those light airs that flit to and fro over the islands at
evening and sunrise. All the arts of civilization have as yet failed to
approach the easiest of all modes of progression and conveyance--sailing
on a light breeze. For here is speed without friction, passage through
the air without opposition, for it is the air that urges. Afloat,
Casabianda was a silent man. His seafaring was of a surreptitious nature,
perhaps. For companion, he had one with no roof to his mouth, whose
speech was incomprehensible--an excellent thing in law-breakers.

De Vasselot was soon asleep, and slept all through that quiet night. He
awoke to find the dawn spreading its pearly light over the sea. The great
plain of Biguglia lay to the left under a soft blanket of mist, as deadly
they say, as any African miasma, above which the distant mountains raised
summits already tinged with rose. Ahead and close at hand, the old town
of Bastia jutted out into the sea, the bluff Genoese bastion concealing
the harbour from view. De Vasselot had never been to Bastia, which
Casabianda described as a great and bewildering city, where the unwary
might soon lose himself. The man of incomprehensible speech was,
therefore, sent ashore to conduct Lory to the Hotel Clément. Casabianda,
himself, would not land. The place reeked, he said, of the gendarmerie,
and was offensive to his nostrils.

Clément had not opened his hospitable door. The street door, of course,
always stood open, and the donkey that lived in the entrance-hall was
astir. Lory dismissed his guide, and after ringing a bell which tinkled
rather disappointingly just within the door, sat down patiently on the
stairs to wait. At length the ancient chambermaid (who is no servant, but
just a woman, in the strictly domestic sense of that fashionable word)
reluctantly opened the door. French and Italian were alike
incomprehensible to this lady, and de Vasselot was still explaining with
much volubility, and a wealth of gesture, that the man he sought wore a
tonsure, when Clément himself, affable and supremely indifferent to the
scantiness of his own attire, appeared.

“Take the gentleman to number eleven,” he commanded; “the Abbé Susini
expects him.”

The last statement appeared to be made with that breadth of veracity
which is the special privilege of hotel-keepers all the world over; for
the abbé was asleep when Lory entered his apartment. He awoke, however,
with a characteristic haste, and his first conscious movement was
suggestive of a readiness to defend himself against attack.

“Ah!” he cried, with a laugh, “it is you. You see me asleep.”

“Asleep, but ready,” answered de Vasselot, with a laugh. He liked a quick
man.

Without speaking, he unbuttoned his tunic and threw his bundle of papers
on the abbé's counterpane.

“Voilà!” he said. “I suppose that is what you want for your salad.”

“It is what Jean and I have been trying to get these three months,”
 answered the priest.

He sat up in bed, and from that difficult position, did the honours of
his apartment with an unassailable dignity.

“Sit down,” he said, “and I will tell you a very long story. Not that
chair--those are my clothes, my best soutane for this occasion--the
other. That is well.”




CHAPTER XXVII.


THE ABBÉ'S SALAD.

     “He either fears his fate too much,
     Or his deserts are small,
     That dares not put it to the touch
     To gain or lose it all.”


“And mademoiselle's witnesses?” inquired the notary, when he had
accommodated the ladies with chairs.

“Will arrive at ten o'clock,” answered Mademoiselle Brun, with a glance
at the notary's clock.

It was three minutes to ten. The notary was a young man, with smooth hair
brushed straight back from a high forehead. He was one of those men who
look clever, which, in some respects, is better than being clever. For a
man who really has brains usually perceives his own limitations, while he
who looks clever, and is not, has that boundless faith in himself which
serves to carry men very far in a world which is too lazy to get up and
kick impertinence as it passes.

The room had that atmosphere of mixed stuffiness and cigarette smoke
which the traveller may sample in any French post-office. It is also the
official air of a court of justice or a public bureau of any sort in
France. There was a blank space on the wall, where a portrait of the
emperor had lately hung. The notary would fill it by-and-by with a
president or a king, or any face of any man who was for the moment in
authority. Behind him, on the wall, was suspended a photograph of an
elderly lady--his mother. It established confidence in the hearts of
female clients, and reminded persons with daughters that this rising
lawyer had as yet no wife.

The notary's bow to Mademoiselle Brun when she was seated was
condescending, which betrayed the small fact that he was not so clever as
he looked. To Denise he endeavoured to convey in one graceful inclination
from the waist the deep regard of a legal adviser, struggling nobly to
keep in bounds the overwhelming admiration of a man of heart and (out of
office hours) of spirit. Gilbert, who had already exchanged greetings
with the ladies, was leaning against the window, playing idly with the
blind-cord. The notary's office was on the third floor. The colonel could
not, therefore, see the pavement without leaning out, and the window was
shut. Mademoiselle Brun noted this as she sat with crossed hands. She
also remembered that the Hotel Clément was on the same side of the
Boulevard du Palais as the house in which she found herself.

The notary had intended to be affable, but he dimly perceived that Denise
was what he tersely called in his own mind _grande dame_, and was wise
enough to busy himself with his papers in silence. He also suspected that
Colonel Gilbert was a friend of these ladies, but he did not care to take
advantage of his privilege in the presence of a fourth person, which left
an unpleasant flavour on the palate of the smooth-haired lawyer. He
glanced involuntarily at the blank space on the wall, and thought of the
Republic.

“I have prepared a deed of sale,” he said, in a formal voice, “which is
as binding on both sides as if the full purchase-money had been exchanged
for the title-deeds. All that will remain to be done after the present
signature will be the usual legal formalities between notaries.
Mademoiselle has but to sign here.” And he indicated a blank space on the
document.

Mademoiselle Brun was looking at the timepiece on the notary's wall. The
town clocks were striking the hour. A knock at the door made the notary
turn, with his quill pen still indicating the space for Denise's
signature. It was the dingy clerk who sat in a sort of cage in the outer
office. After opening the door he stood aside, and Susini came in with
glittering eyes and a defiant chin. There was a pause, and Lory de
Vasselot limped into the room after him. He was smiling and pleasant as
he always was; even, his friends said, on the battlefield.

He looked at Denise, met her eyes for a moment and turned to bow with
grave politeness to Gilbert. It was, oddly enough, the colonel who
brought forward a chair for the wounded man.

“Sit down,” he said curtly.

“These are my witnesses, Monsieur le Notaire,” said Mademoiselle Brun.

The abbé was rubbing his thin, brown hands together, and contemplating
the notary's table as a greedy man might contemplate a laden board. The
notary himself was looking from one to the other. There was something in
the atmosphere which he did not understand. It was, perhaps, the presence
in the room of a cleverer head than his own, and he did not know upon
whose shoulders to locate it. Denise, whose nature was frank and
straightforward, was looking at Lory--looking him reflectively up and
down--as a mother might look at a son of whose health she refrains from
asking. Mademoiselle was gazing at the blank space on the wall, and the
colonel was looking at mademoiselle with an odd smile.

He was standing in the embrasure of the window, and at this moment
glanced at his watch. The notary looked at him inquiringly; for his
attitude seemed to indicate that he expected some one else. And at this
moment the music of a military band burst upon their ears. The colonel
looked over his shoulder down into the street. He had his watch in his
hand. De Vasselot rose instantly and went to the window. He stood beside
the colonel, and those in the notary's office could see that they were
talking quickly and gravely together, though the music drowned their
voices. Behind them, on the notary's table, lay their differences; in
front lay that which bound them together with the strongest ties between
man and man--their honour and the honour of France. The music died away,
followed by the diminishing sound of steady feet. All in the room were
silent for a few moments, until the two soldiers turned from the window
and came towards the table.

Then the notary spoke:--

“Mademoiselle has but to sign here,” he repeated.

He indicated the exact spot, dipped the pen in the ink, and handed it to
Denise. She took the pen and half turned towards Lory, as if she knew
that he would be the next to speak and wished him to understand once and
for all that he would speak in vain.

“Mademoiselle cannot sign there,” he said.

Denise dipped the pen into the ink again, but she did not sign.

“Why not?” she asked without looking round, her hand still resting on the
paper.

“Because,” answered Lory, addressing her directly, “Perucca is not yours
to sell. It is mine.”

Denise turned and looked straight at Colonel Gilbert. She had never been
quite sure of him. He had never appeared to her to be quite in earnest.
His face showed no surprise now. He had known this all along, and did not
even take the trouble to feign astonishment. The notary gave a polite,
incredulous, legal laugh.

“That is an old story, Monsieur le Comte.”

At which point Susini so far forgot himself as to make use of a rude
local method of showing contempt in pretending to spit upon the notary's
floor.

“It is as old as you please,” answered Lory, half turning towards
Gilbert, who in his turn made a gesture in the direction of the notary,
as if to say that the lawyer had received his instructions and knew how
to act.

“Of course,” said the notary in a judicial voice, “we are aware that the
conveyance of the Perucca estate by the late Count de Vasselot to the
late Mattei Perucca lacked formality; many conveyances in Corsica lacked
formality in the beginning of the century. In many cases possession is
the only title-deed. We can point to a possession lasting over many
years, which carries the more weight from the fact that the late count
and his neighbour Monsieur Perucca were notoriously on bad terms. If the
count had been able, he would no doubt have evicted from Perucca a
neighbour so unsympathetic.”

“You seem,” said de Vasselot, quickly, “to be prepared for my objection.”

The notary spread out his hands in a gesture that conveyed assent.

“And if I had not come?”

“I regret to say, Monsieur le Comte, that your presence here bears little
upon the transaction in hand. You are only a witness. Mademoiselle will
no doubt complete the document now.”

And the notary again handed Denise a pen.

“Hardly upon a title-deed which consists of possession only.”

“Pardon me, but you have even less,” said the notary. “If I may remind
you of it, you have probably no title-deeds to Vasselot itself since the
burning of the château.”

“There you are wrong,” answered Lory, quietly. And the abbé snapped both
fingers and thumbs in a double-barrelled _feu de joie_.

“The count may have possessed title-deeds before his death, thirty years
ago,” said the notary, with that polite patience in argument which the
certain winner alone can compass.

Then the colonel's quiet voice broke into the conversation. His manner
was politely indifferent, and seemed to plead for peace at any cost.

“I should much like to be done with these formalities,” he said--“if I
may be allowed to suggest a little promptitude. The troops are moving, as
you have heard. In an hour's time I sail for Marseilles with these men.
Let us finish with the signatures.”

“Let us, on the contrary, delay signing until the war is over,” suggested
Lory.

“You cannot bring your father to life again, monsieur, and you cannot
manufacture title-deeds. Your father, the notary tells us, has been dead
thirty years, and the Château de Vasselot has been burnt with all the
papers in it. You have no case at all.”

Lory was unbuttoning his tunic, awkwardly with one hand.

“But the notary is wrong,” he said. “The Château de Vasselot was burnt,
it is true, but here are the title-deeds. My father did not die thirty
years ago, but yesterday morning, in my arms.”

Gilbert smiled gently. His innate politeness obviously forbade him to
laugh at this absurd story.

“Then where has he been all these years?” he inquired with a
good-humoured patience.

“In the Château de Vasselot.”

There was a dead silence for a moment, broken at length by a movement on
the part of Mademoiselle Brun. In her abrupt way she struck herself on
the forehead as a fool.

“Yes,” testified Susini, brusquely, “that is where he has been.”

Denise remembered ever afterwards, that Lory did not look at her at this
moment of his complete justification. It was now, and only for a moment,
that Colonel Gilbert lost his steady imperturbability. From the time that
Lory de Vasselot entered the room he had known that he had inevitably
failed. From that instant the only question in his mind had been that of
how much his enemies knew. It could not be chance that brought de
Vasselot, and the Abbé Susini, and Mademoiselle Brun together to meet him
at that time. He had been out-manoeuvred by some one of the three, and he
shrewdly suspected by whom. There was nothing to do but face it--and he
faced it with a calm audacity. He simply ignored mademoiselle's blinking
glance. He met de Vasselot's quick eyes without fear, and smiled coolly
in the abbé's fiery face. But when Denise turned and looked at him with
direct and honest eyes, his own wavered, and for a brief instant he saw
himself as Denise saw him--the bitterest moment of his life. The esteem
of the many is nothing compared to the esteem of one.

In a moment he recovered himself and turned towards Lory with his lazy
smile.

“Even to a romance there must be some motive,” he said. “One naturally
wonders why your father should allow his enemy to keep possession of a
house and estate which were not his, and why he himself should remain
concealed in the Château de Vasselot.”

“That is the affair of my father. There was that between him and Mattei
Perucca, which neither you nor I, monsieur, have any business to
investigate. There are the title-deeds. You have a certain right to look
at them. You are therefore at liberty to satisfy yourself that you cannot
buy the Perucca estate from Mademoiselle Lange, because it does not
belong to Mademoiselle Lange, and never has belonged to her! A fact of
which you may have been aware.”

“You seem to know much.”

“I know more than you suspect,” answered de Vasselot. “I know, for
instance, your reason for desiring to buy land on the western <DW72> of
Monte Torre.”

“Ah?”

By way of reply, de Vasselot laid upon the table in front of Colonel
Gilbert, the nugget no larger than a pigeon's egg, that Mademoiselle Brun
had found in the _débris_ of the landslip. The colonel looked at it, and
gave a short laugh. He was too indolent a man to feel an acute curiosity.
But there were many questions he would have liked to ask at that moment.
He knew that de Vasselot was only the spokesman of another who
deliberately remained in the background. Lory had not found the gold, he
had not pieced together with the patience of a clocksmith the wheels
within wheels that Colonel Gilbert had constructed through the careful
years. The whole story had been handed to him whom it most concerned,
complete in itself like a barrister's brief, and de Vasselot was not
setting it forth with much skill, but bluntly, simply and generously like
a soldier.

“Surely I have said enough,” were his next words, and it is possible that
the colonel and Mademoiselle Brun alone understood the full meaning of
the words.

“Yes, monsieur,” said Gilbert at length, “I think you have.”

And he moved towards the door in an odd, sidelong way. He had taken only
three steps, when he swung round on his heel with a sharp exclamation.
The Abbé Susini, with blazing eyes--half mad with rage--had flown at him
like a terrier.

“Ah!” said the colonel, catching him by the two wrists, and holding him
at arm's length with steady northern nerve and muscle. “I know you
Corsicans too well to turn my back to one.”

He threw the abbé back, so that the little man fell heavily against the
table; Susini recovered himself with the litheness of a wild animal, but
when he flew at the closed door again it was Denise who stood in front of
it.




CHAPTER XXVIII.


GOLD.

     “I do believe yourself against yourself,
     And will henceforward rather die than doubt.”


All eyes were now turned on the notary, who was hurriedly looking through
the papers thrown down before him by Lory.

“They have passed through my hands before, when I was a youth, in
connection with a boundary dispute,” he said, as if to explain his
apparent hastiness. “They are all here--they are correct, monsieur.”

He was a very quick man, and folding the papers as he spoke, he tied them
together with the faded pink tape which had been fingered by three
generations of Vasselots. He laid the packet on the table close to Lory's
hand. Then he glanced at Denise and fell into thought, arranging in his
mind that which he had to say to her.

“It is one of those cases, mademoiselle,” he said at length, “common
enough in Corsica, where a verbal agreement has never been confirmed in
writing. Men who have been friends, become enemies so easily in this
country. I cannot tell you upon what terms Mattei Perucca lived in the
Casa. No one can tell you that. All that we know is that we have no
title-deeds--and that monsieur has them. The Casa may be yours, but you
cannot prove it. Such a case tried in a law court in Corsica would go in
favour of the litigant who possessed the greater number of friends in the
locality. It would go in your favour if it could be tried here. But it
would need to go to France. And there we could only look for justice, and
justice is on the side of monsieur.”

He apologized, as it were, for justice, of which he made himself the
representative in that room. Then he turned towards de Vasselot.

“Monsieur is well within his rights--” he said, significantly, “--if he
insist on them.”

“I insist on them,” replied Lory, who was proud of Denise's pride.

And Denise laughed.

The notary turned and looked curiously at her.

“Mademoiselle is able to be amused.”

“I was thinking of the Rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris,” she said, and the
explanation left the lawyer more puzzled than before. She took up her
gloves and drew them on.

“Then I am rendered penniless, monsieur?” she asked the notary.

“By me,” answered Lory. And even the notary was silent. It is hard to
silence a man who lives by his tongue. But there were here, it seemed,
understandings and misunderstandings which the lawyer failed to
comprehend.

The Abbé Susini had crossed the room and was whispering something
hurriedly to Mademoiselle Brun, who acquiesced curtly and rather angrily.
She had the air of the man at the wheel, to whom one must not speak. For
she was endeavouring rather nervously to steer two high-sailed vessels
through those shoals and quicksands that must be passed by all who set
out in quest of love.

Then the abbé turned impulsively to Lory.

“Mademoiselle must be told about the gold--she must be told,” he said.

“I had forgotten the gold,” answered Lory, quite truthfully.

“You have forgotten everything, except the eyes of mademoiselle,” the
abbé muttered to himself as he went back to his place near the window. De
Vasselot took up the packet of papers and began to untie the tape
awkwardly with his one able hand. He was so slow that Mademoiselle Brun
leant forward and assisted him. Denise bit her lip and pushed a chair
towards him with her foot. He sat down and unfolded a map  and
drawn in queer angles. This he laid upon the table, and, by a gesture,
called Mademoiselle Brun and Denise to look at it. The abbé took a pencil
from the notary's table, and after studying the map for a moment he drew
a careful circle in the centre of it, embracing portions of the various
colours and of the two estates described respectively as Perucca and
Vasselot.

“That,” he said to Lory, “is the probable radius of it so far as the
expert could tell me on his examination of the ground yesterday.”

Lory turned to Denise.

“You must think us all mad--at our games of cross-purposes,” he said. “It
appears that there is gold in the two estates--and gold has accounted for
most human madnesses. Where the abbé has drawn this line there lies the
gold--beyond the dreams of avarice, mademoiselle. And Colonel Gilbert was
the only man who knew it. So you understand Gilbert, at all events.”

“You did not know it when I asked your advice in Paris?”

“I learnt it two hours ago from the Abbé Susini; so I hastened here to
claim the whole of it,” answered Lory, with a laugh.

But Denise was grave.

“But you knew that Perucca was never mine,” she persisted.

“Yes, I knew that, but then Perucca was valueless. So soon as I knew its
value, I reclaimed it.”

“I warn Monsieur de Vasselot that such frankness is imprudent; he may
regret it,” put in the notary with a solemn face. And Denise gave him a
glance of withering pity. The poor man, it seemed, was quite at sea.

“Thank you,” laughed de Vasselot. “I only judge myself as the world will
judge me. You were very rich, mademoiselle, and I have made you very
poor.”

Denise glanced at him, and said nothing. And de Vasselot's breath came
rather quickly.

“But the Casa Perucca is at your disposal so long as you may choose
to live there,” he continued. “My father is to be buried at Olmeta
to-morrow, but I cannot even remain to attend the funeral. So I need not
assure you that I do not want the Casa Perucca for myself.”

“Where are you going?” asked Denise, bluntly.

“Back to France. I have heard news that makes it necessary for me to
return. Gambetta has escaped from Paris in a balloon, and is organizing
affairs at Tours. We may yet make a defence.”

“You?” said Mademoiselle Brun. Into the one word she threw, or attempted
to throw, a world of contempt, as she looked him up and down, with his
arm in a sling, and his wounded leg bent awkwardly to one side; but her
eyes glittered. This was a man after her own heart.

“One has one's head left, mademoiselle,” answered Lory. Then he turned to
the window, and held up one hand. “Listen!” he added.

It was the music of a second regiment marching down the Boulevard du
Palais, towards the port, and, as it approached, it was rendered almost
inaudible by the shouts of the men themselves, and of the crowd that
cheered them. De Vasselot went to the window and opened it, his face
twitching, and his eyes shining with excitement.

“Listen to them,” he said. “Listen to them. Ah! but it is good to hear
them.”

Instinctively the others followed him, and stood grouped in the open
window, looking down into the street. The band was now passing, clanging
out the Marseillaise, and the fickle people cheered the new tricolour, as
it fluttered in the wind. Some one looked up, and perceived de Vasselot's
uniform.

“Come, mon capitaine,” he cried; “you are coming with us?”

Lory laughed, and shouted back--“Yes--I am coming.”

“See,” cried a sergeant, who was gathering recruits as he went--“see!
there is one who has fought, and is going to fight again! Vive la France,
mes enfants! Who comes? Who comes?”

And the soldiers, looking up, gave a cheer for the wounded man who was to
lead them. They passed on, followed by a troup of young men and boys,
half of whom ultimately stepped on board the steamer at the last moment,
and went across the sea to fight for France.

De Vasselot turned away from the window, and went towards the table,
where the papers lay in confusion. The abbé took them up, and began to
arrange them in order.

“And the estate and the gold?” he said; “who manages that, since you are
going to fight?”

“You,” replied de Vasselot, “since you cannot fight. There is no one but
you in Corsica who can manage it. There is none but you to understand
these people.”

“All the world knows who manages half of Corsica,” put in Mademoiselle
Brun, looking fiercely at the abbé. But the abbé only stamped his foot
impatiently.

“Woman's gossip,” he muttered, as he shook the papers together. “Yes; I
will manage your estate if you like. And if there is gold in the land, I
will tear it out. And there is gold. The amiable colonel is not the man
to have made a mistake on that point. I shall like the work. It will be
an occupation. It will serve to fill one's life.”

“Your life is not empty,” said mademoiselle.

The abbé turned and looked at her, his glittering eyes meeting her
twinkling glance.

“It is a priest's life,” he said. “Come,” he added, turning to the
lawyer--“come, Mr. the Notary, into your other room, and write me out a
form of authority for the Count de Vasselot to sign. We have had enough
of verbal agreements on this estate.”

And, taking the notary by the arm, he went to the door. On the threshold
he turned, and looked at Mademoiselle Brun.

“A priest's life,” he said, “or an old woman's. It is the same thing.”

And Lory was left alone with mademoiselle and Denise. The window was
still open, and from the port the sound of the military music reached
their ears faintly. Mademoiselle rose, and went to the window, where
she stood looking out. Her eyes were dim as she looked across the
sordid street, but her lips were firm, and the hands that rested on the
window-sill quite steady. She had played consistently a strong and
careful game. Was she going to win or lose? She held that, next to being
a soldier, it is good to be a soldier's wife and the mother of fighting
men. And when she thought of the Rue du Cherche-Midi, she was not able to
be amused, as the notary had said of Denise.

There was a short silence in the notary's office. De Vasselot was
fingering the hilt of his long cavalry sword reflectively. After a moment
he glanced across at Denise. He was placed as it were between her and the
sword. And it was to the sword that he gave his allegiance.

“You see,” he said, in a low voice, “I must go.”

“Yes, you must go,” she answered. She held her lip for a moment between
her teeth. Then she looked steadily at him. “Go!” she said.

He rose from his chair and looked towards Mademoiselle Bran's back. At
the rattle of his scabbard against the chair, mademoiselle turned.

“There is a horse waiting in the street below,” she said--“the great
horse that Colonel Gilbert rides. It is waiting for you, I suppose.”

“I suppose so,” said Lory, who went to the window and looked curiously
down. Gilbert was certainly an odd man. He had left in anger, and had
left his horse for Lory to ride. He waited a moment, and then held out
his hand to Mademoiselle Brun. All three seemed to move and speak under a
sort of oppression. It was one of those moments that impress themselves
indelibly on the memory--a moment when words are suddenly useless--when
the memory of an attitude and of a silence remains all through life.

“Good-bye, mademoiselle,” said Lory, with a sudden cheerfulness; “we
shall meet in France next time.”

Mademoiselle Brun held out her shrinking little hand.

“Yes, in France,” she answered.

To Denise, Lory said nothing. He merely shook hands with her. Then he
walked towards the door, haltingly. He used his sword like a walking
stick, with his one able hand. Denise had to open the door for him. He
was on the threshold, when Mademoiselle Brun stopped him.

“Monsieur de Vasselot,” she said, “when the soldiers went past, you and
Colonel Gilbert spoke together hurriedly; I saw you. You are not going to
fight--you two?”

“Yes, mademoiselle, we are going to fight--the Prussians. We are friends
while we have a common enemy. When there is no enemy--who knows? He has
received a great appointment in France, and has offered me a post under
him. And I have accepted it.”




CHAPTER XXIX.


A BALANCED ACCOUNT.

     “Let the end try the man.”


Bad news, it is said, travels fast. But in France good news travels
faster, and it is the evil tidings that lag behind. It is part of a
Frenchman's happy nature to believe that which he wishes to be true. And
although the news travelled rapidly, that Gambetta--that spirit of an
unquenchable hope--had escaped from Paris with full power to conduct the
war from Tours, the notification that the army of de la Motterouge had
melted away before the advance of von der Tann, did not reach Lory de
Vasselot until he passed to the north of Marseilles with his handful of
men.

That a general, so stricken in years as de la Motterouge, should have
been chosen for the command of the first army of the Loire, spoke
eloquently enough of the straits in which France found herself at this
time. For this was the only army of the Government of National Defence,
the _debris_ of Sedan, the hope of France. General de la Motterouge had
fought in the Crimea: “Peu de feu et beaucoup de bayonette” had been his
maxim then. But the Crimea was fifteen years earlier, and de la
Motterouge was now an old man. Before the superior numbers and the
perfectly drilled and equipped army of von der Tann, what could he do but
retreat?

Thus, on their arrival in France, Colonel Gilbert and Lory de Vasselot
were greeted with the news that Orleans had fallen into the hands of the
enemy. It was the same story of incompetence pitted against perfect
organization--order and discipline meeting and vanquishing ill-considered
bravery. All the world knows now that France should have capitulated
after Sedan. But the world knows also that Paris need never have fallen,
could France only have produced one mediocre military genius in this her
moment of need. The capital was indeed surrounded, cut off from all the
world; but the surrounding line was so thin that good generalship from
within could have pierced it, and there was an eager army of brave men
waiting to join issue from the Loire.

It was to this army of the Loire that Colonel Gilbert and de Vasselot
were accredited. And it was an amateur army. It came from every part of
France, and in its dress it ran to the picturesque. Franctireurs de
Cannes rubbed shoulders with Mobiles from the far northern departments.
Spahis and Zouaves from Africa bivouacked with fair-haired men whose
native tongue was German. There were soldiers who had followed the drum
all their lives, and there were soldiers who did not know how to load
their chassepots. There were veteran non-commissioned officers hurriedly
drilling embryo priests; and young gentlemen from St. Cyr trying to form
in line grey-headed peasants who wore sabots. There were fancy soldiers
and picturesque fighters, who joined a regiment because its costume
appealed to their conception of patriotism. And if a man prefers to fight
for his country in the sombrero and cloak of a comic-opera brigand, what
boots it so long as he fights well? It must be remembered, moreover, that
it is quite as painful to die under a sombrero as under a plainer
covering. A man who wears such clothes sees the picturesque side of life,
and may therefore hold existence as dear as more practical persons who
take little heed of their appearance. For when the time came these
gentlemen fought well enough, and ruined their picturesque get-up with
their own blood. And if they shouted very loud in the café, they shouted,
Heaven knows, as loud on the battle-field, when they faced those hated,
deadly, steady Bavarians, and died shouting.

Of such material was the army of the Loire; and when Chanzy came to them
from North Africa--that Punjaub of this stricken India from whence the
strong men came when they were wanted--when Chanzy came to lead them,
they commanded the respect of all the world. For these were men fighting
a losing fight, without hope of victory, for the honour of France. They
fought with a deadly valour against superior numbers behind
entrenchments; they endeavoured to turn the Germans out of insignificant
villages after allowing them time to fortify the position. They fought in
the open against an invisible enemy superior in numbers, superior in
artillery, and here and there they gained a pitiful little hard-earned
advantage.

De Vasselot, still unable to go to the front, was put to train these men
in a little quiet town on the Loire, where he lodged with a shoemaker,
and worked harder than any man in that sunny place had ever worked
before. It was his business to gather together such men as could sit a
horse, and teach them to be cavalry soldiers. But first of all he taught
them that the horse was an animal possessing possibilities far beyond
their most optimistic conception of that sagacious but foolish quadruped.
He taught them a hundred tricks of heel and wrist, by which a man may
convey to a horse that which he wishes him to do. He made the horse and
the man understand each other, and when they did this he sent them to the
front.

In the meantime France fed herself upon false news and magnified small
successes into great victories. Gambetta made many eloquent speeches, and
issued fiery manifestoes to the soldiers; but speeches and manifestoes do
not win battles. Paris hoped all things of the army of the Loire, and the
army of the Loire expected a successful sortie from Paris. And those men
of iron, Bismarck, Moltke, and the emperor, sat at Versailles and waited.
While they waited the winter came.

De Vasselot, who had daily attempted to use his wounded limbs, at length
found himself fit for active service, and got permission to join the
army. Gilbert was no longer a colonel. He was a general now, and
commanded a division which had already made its mark upon that man of
misfortune--von der Tann, a great soldier with no luck.

One frosty morning de Vasselot rode out of the little town upon the Loire
at the head of a handful of his newly trained men. He was going to take
up his appointment: for he held the command of the whole of the cavalry
of General Gilbert's division. These were days of quick promotion, of
comet-like reputations and of great careers cut short. De Vasselot had
written to Jane de Mélide the previous night, telling her of his
movements in the immediate future, of his promotion, of his hopes. One
hope which he did not mention was that Denise might be at Fréjus, and
would see the letter. Indeed, it was written to Denise, though it was
addressed to the Baronne de Mélide.

Then he went blithely enough out to fight. For he was quite a simple
person, as many soldiers and many horse-lovers are. He was also that
which is vaguely called a sportsman, and was ready to take a legitimate
risk not only cheerfully, but with joy.

“It is my only chance of making her care for me,” he said to himself. He
may have been right or wrong. There is a wisdom which is the exclusive
possession of the simple. And Lory may have known that it is wiser to
store up in a woman's mind memories that will bear honour and respect in
the future, than to make appeal to her vanity in the present. For the
love that is won by vanity is itself vanity.

He said he was fighting for France, but it was also for Denise that he
fought. France and Denise had got inextricably mixed in his mind, and
both spelt honour. His only method of making Denise love him was to make
himself worthy of her--an odd, old-fashioned theory of action, and the
only one that enables two people to love each other all their lives.

In this spirit he joined the army of the Loire before his wounds had
healed. He did not know that Denise loved him already, that she had with
a woman's instinct divined in him the spirit, quite apart from the
opportunity, to do great things. And most men have to content themselves
with being loved for this spirit and not for the performance which,
somehow, is so seldom accomplished.

And that which kept them apart was for their further happiness; it was
even for the happiness of Denise in case Lory never came back to her. For
the majority of people get what they want before they have learnt to
desire. It is only the lives of the few which are taken in hand and so
fashioned that there is a waiting and an attainment at last.

Lory and Denise were exploring roads which few are called upon to
tread--dark roads with mud and stones and many turnings, and each has a
separate road to tread and must find the way alone. But if Fate is kind
they may meet at the end without having gone astray, or, which is rarer,
without being spattered by the mud. For those mud-stains will never rub
off and never be forgotten. Which is a hard saying, but a true one.

Lory had left Denise without any explanation of these things. He had
never thought of sparing her by the simple method of neglecting his
obvious duty. In his mind she was the best of God's creations--a woman
strong to endure. That was sufficient for him; and he turned his
attention to his horses and his men. He never saw the background to his
own life. It is usually the onlooker who sees that, just as a critic sees
more in a picture than the painter ever put there.

Lory hardly knew of these questions himself. He only half thought of
them, and Denise, far away in Provence, thought the other half. Which is
love.

Lory took part in the fighting after Orleans and risked his life freely,
as he ever did when opportunity offered. He was more than an officer, he
was a leader. And it is better to show the way than to point it out.
Although his orders came from General Gilbert, he had never met his
commanding officer since quitting the little sunny town on the Loire
where he had recovered from his wounds. It was only after Chateaudun and
after the Coulmiers that they met, and it was only in a small affair
after all, the attempted recapture of a village taken and hurriedly
fortified by the Germans. It was a night-attack. The army of the Loire
was rather fond of night-fighting; for the night equalizes matters
between discipline and mere bravery. Also, if your troops are bad, they
may as well be beaten in the dark as in the daylight. The survivors come
away with a better heart. Also, discipline is robbed of half its strength
by the absence of daylight.

Cavalry, it is known, are no good at night; for horses are nervous and
will whinny to friend or foe when silence is imperative. And yet Lory
received orders to take part in this night-attack. Stranger things than
that were ordered and carried out in the campaign on the Loire. All the
rules of warfare were outraged, and those warriors who win and lose
battles on paper cannot explain many battles that were lost and won
during that winter.

There was a moon, and the ground was thinly covered with snow. It was
horribly cold when the men turned out and silently rode to the spot
indicated in the orders. These were quite clear, and they meant death. De
Vasselot had practically to lead a forlorn hope. A fellow-officer laughed
when the instructions were read to him.

“The general must be an enemy of yours,” he said. And the thought had not
occurred to Lory before.

“No,” he replied, “he is a sportsman.”

“It is poor sport for us,” muttered the officer, riding away.

But Lory was right. For when the moment came and he was waiting with his
troopers behind a farm building, a scout rode in to say that
reinforcements were coming. As these rode across the open in the
moonlight, it was apparent that they were not numerous; for cavalry was
scarce since Eeichshofen. They were led by a man on a big horse, who was
comfortably muffled up in a great fur-coat.

“De Vasselot,” he said in a pleasant voice, as Lory went forward to meet
him. “De Vasselot, I have brought a few more to help you. We must make a
great splash on this side, while the real attack is on the other. We must
show them the way--you and I.” And Gilbert laughed quietly.

It was not the moment for greetings. Lory gave a few hurried orders in a
low voice, and the new-comers fell into line. They were scarcely in place
when the signal was given. A moment later they were galloping across the
open towards the village--a sight to lift any heart above the thought of
death.

Then the fire opened--a flash of flame like fork-lightning running along
the ground--a crashing volley which mowed the assailants like a scythe.
Lory and Gilbert were both down, side by side. Lory, active as a cat, was
on his legs in a moment and leapt away from the flying heels of his
wounded horse. A second volley blazed into the night, and Lory dropped a
second time. He moved a little, and cursed his luck. With difficulty he
raised himself on his elbow.

“Gilbert,” he said, “Gilbert.”

He dragged himself towards the general, who was lying on his back.

“Gilbert,” he said, with his mouth close to the other's ear, “we should
have been friends, you know, all the same, but the luck was against us.
It is not for one to judge the other. Do you hear? Do you hear?”

Gilbert lay quite still, staring at the moon with his easy, contemplative
smile. His right arm was raised and his great sabre held aloft to show
the way, as he had promised, now pointed silently to heaven.

Lory raised himself again, the blood running down his sleeve over his
right hand.

“Gilbert,” he repeated, “do you understand?” Then he fell unconscious
across the general's breast.




CHAPTER XXX.


THE BEGINNING AND THE END.

     “I gave--no matter what I gave--I win.”


The careful student will find in the back numbers of the _Deutsche
Rundschau_, that excellent family magazine, the experiences of a German
military doctor with the army of General von der Tann. The story is one
touched by that deep and occasionally maudlin spirit of sentimentality
which finds a home in hearts that beat for the Fatherland. Its most
thrilling page is the description of the finding, by the narrator, of the
body of a general officer during a sharp night engagement, across which
body was lying a wounded cavalry colonel, who had evidently devoted
himself to the defence of his comrade in arms.

The reminiscent doctor makes good use of such compound words as
“brother-love” and “though-superior-in-rank-yet-comrade-in-arms-
and-companions-in-death-affectionate,” which linguistic facility enables
the German writer to build up as he progresses in his narration words of
a phenomenal calibre, and bowl the reader over, so to speak, at a long
range. He finishes by mentioning that the general was named Gilbert, a
man of colossal engineering skill, while the wounded officer was the
Count Lory de Vasselot, grandson of one of Napoleon's most dashing
cavalry leaders. The doctor finishes right there, as the Americans say,
and quite forgets to note the fact that he himself picked up de Vasselot
under a spitting cross-fire, carried him into his own field hospital and
there tended him. Which omission proves that to find a brave and kind
heart it is not necessary to consider what outer uniform may cover, or
guttural tongue distinguish, the inner man.

Lory was shot in two places again, and the doctors who attended him
laughed when they saw the old wounds hardly yet healed. He would be lame
for years, they said, perhaps for life. He had a bullet in his right
shoulder and another had shattered his ankle. Neither was dangerous, but
his fighting days were done, at all events for this campaign.

“You will not fight against us again,” said the doctor, with a smile on
his broad Saxon features, and in execrable French, which was not improved
by the scissors that he held between his lips.

“Not in this war, perhaps,” answered the patient, hopefully.

Again the tide of war moved on; and, daily, the cold increased. But its
chill was nothing to that cold, slow death of hope that numbed all
France. For it became momentarily more apparent that those at the head of
affairs were incompetent--that the man upon whom hope had been placed was
nothing but a talker, a man of words, an orator, a wind-bag. France, who
has usually led the way in the world's progress, had entered upon that
period of words--that Age of Talk--in which she still labours, and which
must inevitably be the ruin of all her greatness.

For two weeks Lory lay in the improvised German field hospital in that
remote village, and made the astounding progress towards recovery which
is the happy privilege of the light-hearted. It is said among soldiers
that a foe is no longer a foe when he is down, and de Vasselot found
himself among friends.

The German doctor wrote a letter for him.

“It will be good practice for my French,” said the artless Teuton, quite
frankly. And the letter was sent, but never reached its destination. Lory
could learn no news, however. In war there are, not two, but three sides
to a question. Each combatant has one, and Truth has the third, which she
often locks up for ever in her quiet breast.

At last, one morning quite early, a horseman dismounted at the door of
the house in the village street, where the hospital flag hung lazily in
the still, frosty air “It is a civilian,” said an attendant, in
astonishment, so rare was the sight of a plain coat at this time. There
followed a conversation in muffled voices in the entrance hall; not a
French conversation in many tones of voice--but a quiet Teutonic talk as
between Germans and Englishmen. Then the door opened, and a man came into
the room, removing a fur coat as he came. He was a tall, impassive man,
well dressed, wearing a tweed suit and a single eye-glass. He might have
been an Englishman. He was, however, the Baron de Mélide, and his manner
had that repose which belongs to the new aristocracy of France and to the
shreds that remain, here and there, of the old.

“Left my ambulance to subordinates,” he explained as he shook Lory's
hand. “Humanity is an excellent quality, but one's friends come first. It
has taken me some time to find you. Have procured your parole for you.
You are quite useless, they say,”--the baron eyed Lory with a calm and
experienced glance as he spoke--“so they release you on parole. They are
not generous, but they have an enormous common sense.”

The doctor, who understood French, laughed good-naturedly, and the baron
twisted his waxed moustache and looked slightly uncomfortable. He was
conscious of having said the wrong thing as usual.

And all the while de Vasselot was talking and laughing, and commenting on
his friend's appearance and clothes, and goodness of heart--all in a
breath, as was his manner. Also he found time to ask a hundred questions
which the stupid would take at least a week to answer, but his answer to
each would be the right one.

It was during the great cold of the early days of January, that the
baron and Lory turned their backs on that bitter valley of the Loire.
They had a cross-journey to Lyons, and there joined a main line train, in
which they fell asleep to awake in the brilliant sunshine, amid the cool
grey-greens, the bare rocks and dark cypresses of the south. After
Marseilles the journey became tedious again.

“Heavens!” cried Lory, impatiently, “what a delay! Why need they stop at
this little station at all?”

The baron made no reply just then. The train travelled five miles while
he stared thoughtfully at the grey hills. It was six months since he had
seen the vivacious lady who was supposed by this one-eyed world to rule
him.

“After all,” he said at length, “Fréjus is a little station.”

For the baron was a philosopher.

When at last they reached the quiet tree-grown station, where even to
this day so few trains stop, and so insignificant a business is
transacted, they found the Baroness de Mélide on the platform awaiting
them. She was in black, as were all Frenchwomen at this time. She gave an
odd little laugh at the sight of her husband, and immediately held her
lip between her teeth, as if she were afraid that her laugh might change
to something else.

“Ah!” she said, “how hungry you both look--and yet you must have lunched
at Toulon.”

She looked curiously from one drawn face to the other as the baron helped
Lory to descend.

“Hungry,” she repeated with a reflective nod. “Perhaps your precious
France does not satisfy.”

And as she led the way to the carriage there was a gleam, almost fierce,
of triumph in her eyes.

The arrival at the château was uneventful. Mademoiselle Brun said no word
at all; but stood a little aside with folded hands and watched. Denise,
young and slim in her black dress, shook hands and said that she was
afraid the travellers must be tired after their long journey.

“Why should Denise think that I was tired?” the baron inquired later, as
he was opening his letters in the study.

“Mon ami,” replied the baroness, “she did not think you were tired, and
did not care whether you were or not.”

Lory had the same room assigned to him that opened on to the verandah
where heliotrope and roses and Bougainvilliers contended for the mastery.
Outside his windows were placed the same table and long chair, and beside
the last the other chair where Denise had sat--which had been placed
there by Fate. The butler was, it appeared, a man of few ideas. He had
arranged everything as before.

After his early coffee Lory went to the verandah and lay down by that
empty chair. It was a brilliant morning, with a light keen air which has
not its equal all the world over. The sun was powerful enough to draw the
scent from the pinewoods, and the sea-breeze swept it up towards the
mountains. Lory waited alone in the verandah all the morning. After
luncheon the baron assisted him back to his long chair, and all the party
came there and drank coffee. Coffee was one of Mademoiselle Brun's
solaces in life. “It makes existence bearable,” she said--“if it is hot
enough.” But she finished her cup quickly and went away. The baron was
full of business. He received a score of letters during the day. At any
moment the preliminaries of peace might now be signed. He had not even
time for a cigarette. The baroness sat for some minutes looking at Lory,
endeavouring to make him meet her shrewd eyes; but he was looking out
over the plain of Les Arcs. Denise had not sat down, but was standing
rather restlessly at the edge of the verandah near the heliotrope which
clambered up the supports. She had picked a piece of the delicate flower
and was idly smelling it.

At last the baroness rose and walked away without any explanation at all.
After a few minutes, which passed slowly in silence, Denise turned and
came slowly towards Lory. The chair had never been occupied. She sat down
and looked away from him. Her face, still delicately sunburnt, was
flushed. Then she turned, and her eyes as they met his were stricken with
fear.

“I did not understand,” she said. And she must have been referring to
their conversation in that same spot months before. She was either
profoundly ignorant of the world or profoundly indifferent to it. She
ought, of course, to have made some safe remark about the weather. She
ought to have distrusted Lory. But he seemed to know her meaning without
any difficulty.

“I think a great many people never understand, mademoiselle.”

“It has taken me a long time--nearly four months,” said Denise,
reflectively. “But I understood quite suddenly at Bastia--when the
soldiers passed the notary's office. I understood then what life is and
what it is meant to be.”

Lory looked up at her for a moment,

“That is because you are nearer heaven than I am,” he said.

“But it was you who taught me, not heaven,” said Denise. “You said--well,
you remember what you said, perhaps--and then immediately after you
denied me the first thing I asked you. You knew what was right, and I did
not. You have always known what was right, and have always done it. I see
that now as I look back. So I have learnt my lesson, you see.” She
concluded with a grave smile. Life is full of gravity, but love is the
gravest part of it.

“Not from me,” persisted Lory.

“Yes, from you. Suppose you had done what I asked you. Suppose you had
not gone to the war again, what would have become of our lives?”

“Perhaps,” suggested Lory, “we have both to learn from each other.
Perhaps it is a long lesson and will take all our lives. I think we are
only beginning it. And perhaps I opened the book when I told you that I
loved you, here in the verandah!”

Denise turned and looked at him with a smile full of pity, and touched
with that contempt which women sometimes bestow upon men for
understanding so little of life.

“Mon Dieu!” she said, “I loved you long before that.”

The sun was setting behind the distant Esterelles--those low and lonesome
mountains clad from foot to summit in pine--when Mademoiselle Brun came
out into the garden. She had to pass across the verandah, and
instinctively turned to look towards that end of it where de Vasselot had
come a second time to lie in the sun and heal his wounds--a man who had
fought a good fight.

Denise was holding out a spray of heliotrope towards Lory and he had
taken, not the flower, but her hand: and thus without a word and
unconsciously they told their whole story to mademoiselle.

The little old woman walked on without showing that she had seen and
understood. She was not an expansive person.

She sat down at the corner of the lowest terrace and with blinking eyes
stared across the great plain of Les Arcs, where north and south meet,
where the palm tree and the pine grow side by side, towards the
Esterelles and the setting sun. The sky was clear, but for a few little
puffs of cloud low down towards the west, like a flock of sheep ready to
go home, waiting for the gate to open.

Mademoiselle's thin lips were moving as if she were whispering to the God
whom she served with such a remarkable paucity of words. It may have been
that she was muttering a sort of grim _Nunc Dimittis_--she who had seen
so many wars. “Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.”







End of Project Gutenberg's The Isle of Unrest, by Henry Seton Merriman

*** 