There is always a certain solemnity about a departure, even when the separation is only to be a short one. Orso and his sister were to start very early in the morning, and he had taken his leave of Miss Lydia the night before—for he had no hope that she would disturb her indolent habits on his account. Their farewells had been cold and grave. Since that conversation on the sea-shore, Miss Lydia had been afraid she had perhaps shown too strong an interest in Orso, and on the other hand, her jests, and more especially her careless tone, lay heavy on Orso’s heart. At one moment he had thought the young Englishwoman’s manner betrayed a budding feeling of affection, but now, put out of countenance by her jests, he told himself she only looked on him as a mere acquaintance, who would be soon forgotten. Great, therefore, was his surprise, next morning, when, as he sat at coffee with the colonel, he saw Miss Lydia come into the room, followed by his sister. She had risen at five o’clock, and for an Englishwoman, and especially for Miss Nevil, the effort was so great that it could not but give him some cause for vanity.
“I am so sorry you should have disturbed yourself so early,” said Orso. “No doubt my sister woke you up in spite of my injunctions, and you must hate us heartily! Perhaps you wish I was hanged already!”
“No,” said Miss Lydia, very low and in Italian, evidently so that her father might not hear her, “but you were somewhat sulky with me yesterday, because of my innocent jokes, and I would not have you carry away an unpleasant recollection of your humble servant. What terrible people you are, you Corsicans! Well, good-bye! We shall meet soon, I hope.”
And she held out her hand.
A sigh was the only answer Orso could find. Colomba came to his side, led him into a window, and spoke to him for a moment in an undertone, showing him something she held under her mezzaro.
“Mademoiselle,” said Orso to Miss Nevil, “my sister is anxious to give you a very odd present, but we Corsicans have not much to offer—except our affection—which time never wipes out. My sister tells me you have looked with some curiosity at this dagger. It is an ancient possession in our family. It probably hung, once upon a time, at the belt of one of those corporals, to whom I owe the honour of your acquaintance. Colomba thinks it so precious that she has asked my leave to give it to you, and I hardly know if I ought to grant it, for I am afraid you’ll laugh at us!”
“The dagger is beautiful,” said Miss Lydia. “But it is a family weapon, I can not accept it!”
“It’s not my father’s dagger,” exclaimed Colomba eagerly; “it was given to one of mother’s ancestors by King Theodore. If the signorina will accept it, she will give us great pleasure.”
“Come, Miss Lydia,” said Orso, “don’t scorn a king’s dagger!”
To a collector, relics of King Theodore are infinitely more precious than those of the most powerful of monarchs. The temptation was a strong one, and already Miss Lydia could see the effect the weapon would produce laid out on a lacquered table in her room at St. James’s Place.
“But,” said she, taking the dagger with the hesitating air of one who longs to accept, and casting one of her most delightful smiles on Colomba, “dear Signorina Colomba . . . I can not . . . I should not dare to let you depart thus, unarmed.”
“My brother is with me,” said Colomba proudly, “and we have the good gun your father has given us. Orso, have you put a bullet in it?”
Miss Nevil kept the dagger, and to avert the danger consequent on giving instruments that cut or pierce to a friend, Colomba insisted on receiving a soldo in payment.
A start had to be made at last. Yet once again Orso pressed Miss Nevil’s hand, Colomba kissed her, and then held up her rosy lips to the colonel, who was enchanted with this Corsican politeness. From the window of the drawing-room Miss Lydia watched the brother and sister mount their horses. Colomba’s eyes shone with a malignant joy which she had never remarked in them before. The sight of this tall strong creature, with her fanatical ideas of savage honour, pride written on her forehead, and curled in a sardonic smile upon her lips, carrying off the young man with his weapons, as though on some death-dealing errand, recalled Orso’s fears to her, and she fancied she beheld his evil genius dragging him to his ruin. Orso, who was already in the saddle, raised his head and caught sight of her. Either because he had guessed her thought, or desired to send her a last farewell, he took the Egyptian ring, which he had hung upon a ribbon, and carried it to his lips. Blushing, Miss Lydia stepped back from the window, then returning to it almost at once, she saw the two Corsicans cantering their little ponies rapidly toward the mountains. Half an hour later the colonel showed them to her, through his glasses, riding along the end of the bay, and she noticed that Orso constantly turned his head toward the town. At last he disappeared behind the marshes, the site of which is now filled by a flourishing nursery garden.
Miss Lydia glanced at herself in the glass, and thought she looked pale.
“What must that young man think of me,” said she, “and what did I think of him? And why did I think about him? . . . A travelling acquaintance! . . . What have I come to Corsica for? . . . Oh! I don’t care for him! . . . No! no! and besides the thing is impossible . . . And Colomba . . . Fancy me sister-in-law to a voceratrice, who wears a big dagger!”
And she noticed she was still holding King Theodore’s dagger in her hand. She tossed it on to her toilette table. “Colomba, in London, dancing at Almacks! . . . Good heavens! what a lion that would be, to show off! . . . Perhaps she’d make a great sensation! . . . He loves me, I’m certain of it! He is the hero of a novel, and I have interrupted his adventurous career. . . . But did he really long to avenge his father in true Corsican fashion? . . . He was something between a Conrad and a dandy . . . I’ve turned him into nothing but a dandy! . . . And a dandy with a Corsican tailor! . . .”
At this period this name was used in England for people
who were the fashion because they had something
extraordinary about them.
She threw herself on her bed, and tried to sleep—but that proved an impossibility, and I will not undertake to continue her soliloquy, during which she declared, more than a hundred times over, that Signor della Rebbia had not been, was not, and never should be, anything to her.
Meanwhile Orso was riding along beside his sister. At first the speed at which their horses moved prevented all conversation, but when the hills grew so steep that they were obliged to go at a foot’s pace, they began to exchange a few words about the friends from whom they had just parted. Colomba spoke with admiration of Miss Nevil’s beauty, of her golden hair, and charming ways. Then she asked whether the colonel was really as rich as he appeared, and whether Miss Lydia was his only child.
“She would be a good match,” said she. “Her father seems to have a great liking for you——”
And as Orso made no response, she added: “Our family was rich, in days gone by. It is still one of the most respected in the island. All these signori about us are bastards. The only noble blood left is in the families of the corporals, and as you know, Orso, your ancestors were the chief corporals in the island. You know our family came from beyond the hills, and it was the civil wars that forced us over to this side. If I were you, Orso, I shouldn’t hesitate—I should ask Colonel Nevil for his daughter’s hand.” Orso shrugged his shoulders. “With her fortune, you might buy the Falsetta woods, and the vineyards below ours. I would build a fine stone house, and add a story to the old tower in which Sambucuccio killed so many Moors in the days of Count Henry, il bel Missere.”
“Colomba, you’re talking nonsense,” said Orso, cantering forward.
“You are a man, Ors’ Anton’, and of course you know what you ought to do better than any woman. But I should very much like to know what objection that Englishman could have to the marriage. Are there any corporals in England?”
After a somewhat lengthy ride, spent in talking in this fashion, the brother and sister reached a little village, not far from Bocognano, where they halted to dine and sleep at a friend’s house. They were welcomed with a hospitality which must be experienced before it can be appreciated. The next morning, their host, who had stood godfather to a child to whom Madame della Rebbia had been godmother, accompanied them a league beyond his house.
“Do you see those woods and thickets?” said he to Orso, just as they were parting. “A man who had met with a misfortune might live there peacefully for ten years, and no gendarme or soldier would ever come to look for him. The woods run into the Vizzavona forest, and anybody who had friends at Bocognano or in the neighbourhood would want for nothing. That’s a good gun you have there. It must carry a long way. Blood of the Madonna! What calibre! You might kill better game than boars with it!”
Orso answered, coldly, that his gun was of English make, and carried “the lead” a long distance. The friends embraced, and took their different ways.
Our travellers were drawing quite close to Pietranera, when, at the entrance of a little gorge, through which they had to pass, they beheld seven or eight men, armed with guns, some sitting on stones, others lying on the grass, others standing up, and seemingly on the lookout. Their horses were grazing a little way off. Colomba looked at them for a moment, through a spy-glass which she took out of one of the large leathern pockets all Corsicans wear when on a journey.
“Those are our men!” she cried, with a well-pleased air. “Pieruccio had done his errand well!”
“What men?” inquired Orso.
“Our herdsmen,” she replied. “I sent Pieruccio off yesterday evening to call the good fellows together, so that they may attend you home. It would not do for you to enter Pietranera without an escort, and besides, you must know the Barricini are capable of anything!”
“Colomba,” said Orso, and his tone was severe, “I have asked you, over and over again, not to mention the Barricini and your groundless suspicions to me. I shall certainly not make myself ridiculous by riding home with all these loafers behind me, and I am very angry with you for having sent for them without telling me.”
“Brother, you have forgotten the ways of your own country. It is my business to protect you, when your own imprudence exposes you to danger. It was my duty to do what I have done.”
Just at that moment the herdsmen, who had caught sight of them, hastened to their horses, and galloped down the hill to meet them.
“Evvviva Ors’ Anton’!” shouted a brawny, white-bearded old fellow, wrapped, despite the heat, in a hooded cloak of Corsican cloth, thicker than the skins of his own goats. “The image of his father, only taller and stronger! What a splendid gun! There’ll be talk about that gun, Ors’ Anton’!”
“Evvviva Ors’ Anton’!” chorused the herdsmen. “We were sure you’d come back, at last!”
“Ah! Ors’ Anton’!” cried a tall fellow, with a skin tanned brick red. “How happy your father would be, if he were here to welcome you! The dear, good man! You would have seen him now, if he would have listened to me—if he would have let me settle Guidice’s business! . . . But he wouldn’t listen to me, poor fellow! He knows I was right, now!”
“Well, well!” said the old man. “Guidice will lose nothing by waiting.”
“Evvviva Ors’ Anton’!” And the reports of a dozen guns capped the plaudit.
Very much put out, Orso sat in the midst of the group of mounted men, all talking at once, and crowding round to shake hands with him. For some time he could not make himself heard. At last, with the air he put on when he used to reprimand the men of his company, or send one of them to the guard-room, he said:
“I thank you, friends, for the affection you show for me, and for that which you felt for my father! But I do not want advice from any of you, and you must not offer it. I know my own duty.”
“He’s right! He’s right!” cried the herdsmen. “You know you may reckon on us!”
“Yes, I do reckon on you. But at this moment I need no help, and no personal danger threatens me. Now face round at once, and be off with you to your goats. I know my way to Pietranera, and I want no guides.”
“Fear nothing, Ors’ Anton’,” said the old man. “They would never dare to show their noses to-day. The mouse runs back to its hole when the tom-cat comes out!”
“Tom-cat yourself, old gray-beard!” said Orso. “What’s your name?”
“What! don’t you remember me, Ors’ Anton’? I who have so often taken you up behind me on that biting mule of mine! You don’t remember Polo Griffo? I’m an honest fellow, though, and with the della Rebbia, body and soul. Say but the word, and when that big gun of yours speaks, this old musket of mine, as old as its master, shall not be dumb. Be sure of that, Ors’ Anton’!”
“Well, well! But be off with you now, in the devil’s name, and let us go on our way!”
At last the herdsmen departed, trotting rapidly off toward the village, but they stopped every here and there, at all the highest spots on the road, as though they were looking out for some hidden ambuscade, always keeping near enough to Orso and his sister to be able to come to their assistance if necessary. And old Polo Griffo said to his comrades:
“I understand him! I understand him! He’ll not say what he means to do, but he’ll do it! He’s the born image of his father. Ah! you may say you have no spite against any one, my boy! But you’ve made your vow to Saint Nega. Bravo! I wouldn’t give a fig for the mayor’s hide—there won’t be the makings of a wineskin in it before the month is out!”
This saint is not mentioned in the calendar. To make a
vow to Saint Nega means to deny everything deliberately.
Preceded by this troop of skirmishers, the last descendant of the della Rebbia entered the village, and proceeded to the old mansion of his forefathers, the corporals. The Rebbianites, who had long been leaderless, had gathered to welcome him, and those dwellers in the village who observed a neutral line of conduct all came to their doorsteps to see him pass by. The adherents of the Barricini remained inside their houses, and peeped out of the slits in their shutters.
The village of Pietranera is very irregularly built, like most Corsican villages—for indeed, to see a street, the traveller must betake himself to Cargese, which was built by Monsieur de Marboeuf. The houses, scattered irregularly about, without the least attempt at orderly arrangement, cover the top of a small plateau, or rather of a ridge of the mountain. Toward the centre of the village stands a great evergreen oak, and close beside it may be seen a granite trough, into which the water of a neighbouring spring is conveyed by a wooden pipe. This monument of public utility was constructed at the common expense of the della Rebbia and Barricini families. But the man who imagined this to be a sign of former friendship between the two families would be sorely mistaken. On the contrary, it is the outcome of their mutual jealousy. Once upon a time, Colonel della Rebbia sent a small sum of money to the Municipal Council of his commune to help to provide a fountain. The lawyer Barricini hastened to forward a similar gift, and to this generous strife Pietranera owes its water supply. Round about the evergreen oak and the fountain there is a clear space, known as “the Square,” on which the local idlers gather every night. Sometimes they play at cards, and once a year, in Carnival-time, they dance. At the two ends of the square stands two edifices, of greater height than breadth, built of a mixture of granite and schist. These are the Towers of the two opposing families, the Barricini and the della Rebbia. Their architecture is exactly alike, their height is similar, and it is quite evident that the rivalry of the two families has never been absolutely decided by any stroke of fortune in favor of either.
It may perhaps be well to explain what should be understood by this word, “Tower.” It is a square building, some forty feet in height, which in any other country would be simply described as a pigeon-house. A narrow entrance-door, eight feet above the level of the ground, is reached by a very steep flight of steps. Above the door is a window, in front of which runs a sort of balcony, the floor of which is pierced with openings, like a machicolation, through which the inhabitants may destroy an unwelcome visitor without any danger to themselves. Between the window and the door are two escutcheons, roughly carved. One of these bears what was originally a Genoese cross, now so battered that nobody but an antiquary could recognise it. On the other are chiselled the arms of the family to whom the Tower belongs. If the reader will complete this scheme of decoration by imagining several bullet marks on the escutcheons and on the window frames, he will have a fair idea of a Corsican mansion, dating from the middle ages. I had forgotten to add that the dwelling-house adjoins the tower, and is frequently connected with it by some interior passage.
The della Rebbia house and tower stand on the northern side of the square at Pietranera. The Barricini house and tower are on the southern side. Since the colonel’s wife had been buried, no member of either family had ever been seen on any side of the square, save that assigned by tacit agreement to its own party. Orso was about to ride past the mayor’s house when his sister checked him, and suggested his turning down a lane that would take them to their own dwelling without crossing the square at all.
“Why should we go out of our way?” said Orso. “Doesn’t the square belong to everybody?” and he rode on.
“Brave heart!” murmured Colomba. “. . . My father! you will be avenged!”
When they reached the square, Colomba put herself between her brother and the Barricini mansion, and her eyes never left her enemy’s windows. She noticed that they had been lately barricaded and provided with archere. Archere is the name given to narrow openings like loopholes, made between the big logs of wood used to close up the lower parts of the windows. When an onslaught is expected, this sort of barricade is used, and from behind the logs the attacked party can fire at its assailants with ease and safety.
“The cowards!” said Colomba. “Look, brother, they have begun to protect themselves! They have put up barricades! But some day or other they’ll have to come out.”
Orso’s presence on the southern side of the square made a great sensation at Pietranera, and was taken to be a proof of boldness savouring of temerity. It was subject of endless comment on the part of the neutrals, when they gathered around the evergreen oak, that night.
“It is a good thing,” they said, “that Barricini’s sons are not back yet, for they are not so patient as the lawyer, and very likely they would not have let their enemy set his foot on their ground without making him pay for his bravado.”
“Remember what I am telling you, neighbour,” said an old man, the village oracle. “I watched Colomba’s face to-day. She had some idea in her head. I smell powder in the air. Before long, butcher’s meat will be cheap in Pietranera!”
Orso had been parted from his father at so early an age that he had scarcely had time to know him. He had left Pietranera to pursue his studies at Pisa when he was only fifteen. Thence he had passed into the military school, and Ghilfuccio, meanwhile, was bearing the Imperial Eagles all over Europe. On the mainland, Orso only saw his father at rare intervals, and it was not until 1815 that he found himself in the regiment he commanded. But the colonel, who was an inflexible disciplinarian, treated his son just like any other sub-lieutenant—in other words, with great severity. Orso’s memories of him were of two kinds: He recollected him, at Pietranera, as the father who would trust him with his sword, and would let him fire off his gun when he came in from a shooting expedition, or who made him sit down, for the first time, tiny urchin as he was, at the family dinner-table. Then he remembered the Colonel della Rebbia who would put him under arrest for some blunder, and who never called him anything but Lieutenant della Rebbia.
“Lieutenant della Rebbia, you are not in your right place on parade. You will be confined to barracks three days.”
“Your skirmishers are five yards too far from your main body—five days in barracks.”
“It is five minutes past noon, and you are still in your forage-cap—a week in barracks.”
Only once, at Quatre-Bras, he had said to him, “Well done, Orso! But be cautious!”
But, after all, these later memories were not connected in his mind with Pietranera. The sight of the places so familiar to him in his childish days, of the furniture he had seen used by his mother, to whom he had been fondly attached, filled his soul with a host of tender and painful emotions. Then the gloomy future that lay before him, the vague anxiety he felt about his sister, and, above all other things, the thought that Miss Nevil was coming to his house, which now struck him as being so small, so poor, so unsuited to a person accustomed to luxury—the idea that she might possibly despise it—all these feelings made his brain a chaos, and filled him with a sense of deep discouragement.
At supper he sat in the great oaken chair, blackened with age, in which his father had always presided at the head of the family table, and he smiled when he saw that Colomba hesitated to sit down with him. But he was grateful to her for her silence during the meal, and for her speedy retirement afterward. For he felt he was too deeply moved to be able to resist the attack she was no doubt preparing to make upon him. Colomba, however, was dealing warily with him, and meant to give him time to collect himself. He sat for a long time motionless, with his head on his hand, thinking over the scenes of the last fortnight of his life. He saw, with alarm, how every one seemed to be watching what would be his behaviour to the Barricini. Already he began to perceive that the opinion of Pietranera was beginning to be the opinion of all the world to him. He would have to avenge himself, or be taken for a coward! But on whom was he to take vengeance? He could not believe the Barricini to be guilty of murder. They were his family enemies, certainly, but only the vulgar prejudice of his fellow-countrymen could accuse them of being murderers. Sometimes he would look at Miss Nevil’s talisman, and whisper the motto “Life is a battle!” over to himself. At last, in a resolute voice, he said, “I will win it!” Strong in that thought, he rose to his feet, took up the lamp, and was just going up to his room, when he heard a knock at the door of the house. It was a very unusual hour for any visitor to appear. Colomba instantly made her appearance, followed by the woman who acted as their servant.
“It’s nothing!” she said, hurrying to the door.
Yet before she opened it she inquired who knocked. A gentle voice answered, “It is I.”
Instantly the wooden bar across the door was withdrawn, and Colomba reappeared in the dining-room, followed by a little ragged, bare-footed girl of about ten years old, her head bound with a shabby kerchief, from which escaped long locks of hair, as black as the raven’s wing. The child was thin and pale, her skin was sunburnt, but her eyes shone with intelligence. When she saw Orso she stopped shyly, and courtesied to him, peasant fashion—then she said something in an undertone to Colomba, and gave her a freshly killed pheasant.
“Thanks, Chili,” said Colomba. “Thank your uncle for me. Is he well?”
“Very well, signorina, at your service. I couldn’t come sooner because he was late. I waited for him in the maquis for three hours.”
“And you’ve had no supper?”
“Why no, signorina! I’ve not had time.”
“You shall have some supper here. Has your uncle any bread left?”
“Very little, signorina. But what he is most short of is powder. Now the chestnuts are in, the only other thing he wants is powder.”
“I will give you a loaf for him, and some powder, too. Tell him to use it sparingly—it is very dear.”
“Colomba,” said Orso in French, “on whom are you bestowing your charity?”
“On a poor bandit belonging to this village,” replied Colomba in the same language. “This little girl is his niece.”
“It strikes me you might place your gifts better. Why should you send powder to a ruffian who will use it to commit crimes? But for the deplorable weakness every one here seems to have for the bandits, they would have disappeared out of Corsica long ago.”
“The worst men in our country are not those who are ‘in the country.’”
“Give them bread, if it so please you. But I will not have you supply them with ammunition.”
“Brother,” said Colomba, in a serious voice, “you are master here, and everything in this house belongs to you. But I warn you that I will give this little girl my mezzaro, so that she may sell it; rather than refuse powder to a bandit. Refuse to give him powder! I might just as well make him over to the gendarmes! What has he to protect him against them, except his cartridges?”
All this while the little girl was ravenously devouring a bit of bread, and carefully watching Colomba and her brother, turn about, trying to read the meaning of what they were saying in their eyes.
“And what has this bandit of yours done? What crime has driven him into the maquis?”
“Brandolaccio has not committed any crime,” exclaimed Colomba. “He killed Giovan’ Oppizo, who murdered his father while he was away serving in the army!”
Orso turned away his head, took up the lamp, and, without a word, departed to his bedroom. Then Colomba gave the child food and gunpowder, and went with her as far as the house-door, saying over and over again:
“Mind your uncle takes good care of Orso!”
It was long before Orso fell asleep, and as a consequence he woke late—late for a Corsican, at all events. When he left his bed, the first object that struck his gaze was the house of his enemies, and the archere with which they had furnished it. He went downstairs and asked for his sister.
“She is in the kitchen, melting bullets,” answered Saveria, the woman-servant.
So he could not take a step without being pursued by the image of war.
He found Colomba sitting on a stool, surrounded by freshly cast bullets, and cutting up strips of lead.
“What the devil are you doing?” inquired her brother.
“You had no bullets for the colonel’s gun,” she answered, in her soft voice. “I found I had a mould for that calibre, and you shall have four-and-twenty cartridges to-day, brother.”
“I don’t need them, thank God!”
“You mustn’t be taken at a disadvantage, Ors’ Anton’. You have forgotten your country, and the people who are about you.”
“If I had forgotten, you would soon have reminded me. Tell me, did not a big trunk arrive here some days ago?”
“Yes, brother. Shall I take it up to your room?”
“You take it up! Why, you’d never be strong enough even to lift it! . . . Is there no man about who can do it?”
“I’m not so weak as you think!” said Colomba, turning up her sleeves, and displaying a pair of round white arms, perfect in shape, but looking more than ordinarily strong. “Here, Saveria,” said she to the servant; “come and help me!”
She was already lifting the trunk alone, when Orso came hastily to her assistance.
“There is something for you in this trunk, my dear Colomba,” said he. “You must excuse the modesty of my gifts. A lieutenant on half-pay hasn’t a very well-lined purse!”
As he spoke, he opened the trunk, and took out of it a few gowns, a shawl, and some other things likely to be useful to a young girl.
“What beautiful things!” cried Colomba. “I’ll put them away at once, for fear they should be spoiled. I’ll keep them for my wedding,” she added, with a sad smile, “for I am in mourning now!”
And she kissed her brother’s hand.
“It looks affected, my dear sister, to wear your mourning for so long.”
“I have sworn an oath,” said Colomba resolutely, “I’ll not take off my mourning. . . .” And her eyes were riveted on the Barricini mansion.
“Until your wedding day?” said Orso, trying to avoid the end of her sentence.
“I shall never marry any man,” said Colomba, “unless he has done three things . . .” And her eyes still rested gloomily on the house of the enemy.
“You are so pretty, Colomba, that I wonder you are not married already! Come, you must tell me about your suitors. And besides, I’m sure to hear their serenades. They must be good ones to please a great voceratrice like you.”
“Who would seek the hand of a poor orphan girl? . . . And then, the man for whom I would change my mourning-dress will have to make the women over there put on mourning!”
“This is becoming a perfect mania,” said Orso to himself. But to avoid discussion he said nothing at all.
“Brother,” said Colomba caressingly, “I have something to give you, too. The clothes you are wearing are much too grand for this country. Your fine cloth frock-coat would be in tatters in two days, if you wore it in the maquis. You must keep it for the time when Miss Nevil comes.”
Then, opening a cupboard, she took out a complete hunting dress.
“I’ve made you a velvet jacket, and here’s a cap, such as our smart young men wear. I embroidered it for you, ever so long ago. Will you try them on?” And she made him put on a loose green velvet jacket, with a huge pocket at the back. On his head she set a pointed black velvet cap, embroidered with jet and silk of the same colour, and finished with a sort of tassel.
“Here is our father’s carchera” she said. “His stiletto is in the pocket of the jacket. I’ll fetch you his pistol.”
Carchera, a belt for cartridges. A pistol is worn
fastened to the left side of it.
“I look like a brigand at the Ambigu-Comique,” said Orso, as he looked at himself in the little glass Saveria was holding up for him.
“Indeed, you look first-rate, dressed like that, Ors’ Anton’,” said the old servant, “and the smartest pinsuto in Bocognano or Bastelica is not braver.”
Pinsuto, the name given to men who wear the pointed cap,
barreta pinsuta.
Orso wore his new clothes at breakfast, and during that meal he told his sister that his trunk contained a certain number of books, that he was going to send to France and Italy for others, and intended she should study a great deal.
“For it really is disgraceful, Colomba,” he added, “that a grown-up girl like you should still be ignorant of things that children on the mainland know as soon as they are weaned.”
“You are right, brother,” said Colomba. “I know my own shortcomings quite well, and I shall be too glad to learn—especially if you are kind enough to teach me.”
Some days went by, and Colomba never mentioned the name of Barricini. She lavished care and attention on her brother, and often talked to him about Miss Nevil. Orso made her read French and Italian books, and was constantly being surprised either by the correctness and good sense of her comments, or by her utter ignorance on the most ordinary subjects.
One morning, after breakfast, Colomba left the room for a moment, and instead of returning as usual, with a book and some sheets of paper, reappeared with her mezzaro on her head. The expression of her countenance was even more serious than it generally was.
“Brother,” she said, “I want you to come out with me.”
“Where do you want me to go with you?” said Orso, holding out his arm.
“I don’t want your arm, brother, but take your gun and your cartridge-pouch. A man should never go abroad without his arms.”
“So be it. I must follow the fashion. Where are we going?”
Colomba, without answering, drew her mezzaro closer about her head, called the watch-dog, and went out followed by her brother. Striding swiftly out of the village, she turned into a sunken road that wound among the vineyards, sending on the dog, to whom she made some gesture, which he seemed to understand, in front of her. He instantly began to run zigzag fashion, through the vines, first on one side and then on the other, always keeping within about fifty paces of his mistress, and occasionally stopping in the middle of the road and wagging his tail. He seemed to perform his duties as a scout in the most perfect fashion imaginable.
“If Muschetto begins to bark, brother,” said Colomba, “cock your gun, and stand still.”
Half a mile beyond the village, after making many detours, Colomba stopped short, just where there was a bend in the road. On that spot there rose a little pyramid of branches, some of them green, some withered, heaped about three feet high. Above them rose the top of a wooden cross, painted black. In several of the Corsican cantons, especially those among the mountains, a very ancient custom, connected, it may be with some pagan superstition, constrains every passer-by to cast either a stone or a branch on the spot whereon a man has died a violent death. For years and years—as long as the memory of his tragic fate endures—this strange offering goes on accumulating from day to day.
This is called the dead man’s pile—his “mucchio.”
Colomba stopped before the heap of foliage, broke off an arbutus branch, and cast it on the pile.
“Orso,” she said, “this is where your father died. Let us pray for his soul!”
And she knelt down. Orso instantly followed her example. At that moment the village church-bell tolled slowly for a man who had died during the preceding night. Orso burst into tears.
After a few minutes Colomba rose. Her eyes were dry, but her face was eager. She hastily crossed herself with her thumb, after the fashion generally adopted by her companions, to seal any solemn oath, then, hurrying her brother with her, she took her way back to the village. They re-entered their house in silence. Orso went up to his room. A moment afterward Colomba followed him, carrying a small casket which she set upon the table. Opening it, she drew out a shirt, covered with great stains of blood.
“Here is your father’s shirt, Orso!”
And she threw it across his knees. “Here is the lead that killed him!” And she laid two blackened bullets on the shirt.
“Orso! Brother!” she cried, throwing herself into his arms and clasping him desperately to her. “Orso, you will avenge him!”
In a sort of frenzy she kissed him, then kissed the shirt and the bullets, and went out of the room, leaving her brother sitting on his chair, as if he had been turned to stone. For some time Orso sat motionless, not daring to put the terrible relics away. At last, with an effort, he laid them back in their box, rushed to the opposite end of his room, and threw himself on his bed, with his face turned to the wall, and his head buried in his pillow, as though he were trying to shut out the sight of some ghost. His sister’s last words rang unceasingly in his ears, like the words of an oracle, fatal, inevitable, calling out to him for blood, and for innocent blood! I shall not attempt to depict the unhappy young man’s sensations, which were as confused as those that overwhelm a madman’s brain. For a long time he lay in the same position, without daring to turn his head. At last he got up, closed the lid of the casket, and rushed headlong out of the house, into the open country, moving aimlessly forward, whither he knew not.
By degrees, the fresh air did him good. He grew calmer, and began to consider his position, and his means of escape from it, with some composure. He did not, as my readers already know, suspect the Barricini of the murder, but he did accuse them of having forged Agostini’s letter, and this letter, he believed, at any rate, had brought about his father’s death. He felt it was impossible to prosecute them for the forgery. Now and then, when the prejudices or the instincts of his race assailed him, and suggested an easy vengeance—a shot fired at the corner of some path—the thought of his brother-officers, of Parisian drawing-rooms, and above all, of Miss Nevil, made him shrink from them in horror. Then his mind dwelt on his sister’s reproaches, and all the Corsican within him justified her appeal, and even intensified its bitterness. One hope alone remained to him, in this battle between his conscience and his prejudices—the hope that, on some pretext or other, he might pick a quarrel with one of the lawyer’s sons, and fight a duel with him. The idea of killing the young man, either by a bullet or a sword-thrust reconciled his French and Corsican ideas. This expedient adopted, he began to meditate means for its execution, and was feeling relieved already of a heavy burden, when other and gentler thoughts contributed still further to calm his feverish agitation. Cicero, in his despair at the death of his daughter Tullia, forgot his sorrow when he mused over all the fine things he might say about it. Mr. Shandy consoled himself by discourses of the same nature for the loss of his son. Orso cooled his blood by thinking that he would depict his state of mind to Miss Nevil, and that such a picture could not fail to interest that fair lady deeply.
He was drawing near the village, from which he had unconsciously travelled a considerable distance, when he heard the voice of a little girl, who probably believed herself to be quite alone, singing in a path that ran along the edge of the maquis. It was one of those slow, monotonous airs consecrated to funeral dirges, and the child was singing the words:
“And when my son shall see again the dwelling of his father,
Give him that murdered father’s cross; show him my shirt blood-
spattered.”
“What’s that you’re singing, child?” said Orso, in an angry voice, as he suddenly appeared before her.
“Is that you, Ors’ Anton’?” exclaimed the child, rather startled. “It is Signorina Colomba’s song.”
“I forbid you to sing it!” said Orso, in a threatening voice.
The child kept turning her head this way and that, as though looking about for a way of escape, and she would certainly have run off had she not been held back by the necessity of taking care of a large bundle which lay on the grass, at her feet.
Orso felt ashamed of his own vehemence. “What are you carrying there, little one?” said he, with all the gentleness he could muster. And as Chilina hesitated, he lifted up the linen that was wrapped round the bundle, and saw it contained a loaf of bread and other food.
“To whom are you bringing the loaf, my dear?” he asked again.
“You know quite well, Ors’ Anton’: to my uncle.”
“And isn’t your uncle a bandit?”
“At your service, Ors’ Anton’.”
“If you met the gendarmes, they would ask you where you were going. . . .”
“I should tell them,” the child replied, at once, “that I was taking food to the men from Lucca who were cutting down the maquis.”
“And if you came across some hungry hunter who insisted on dining at your expense, and took your provisions away from you?”
“Nobody would dare! I would say they are for my uncle!”
“Well! he’s not the sort of man to let himself be cheated of his dinner! . . . Is your uncle very fond of you?”
“Oh, yes, Ors’ Anton’. Ever since my father died, he has taken care of my whole family—my mother and my little sister, and me. Before mother was ill, he used to recommend her to rich people, who gave her employment. The mayor gives me a frock every year, and the priest has taught me my catechism, and how to read, ever since my uncle spoke to them about us. But your sister is kindest of all to us!”
Just at this moment a dog ran out on the pathway. The little girl put two of her fingers into her mouth and gave a shrill whistle, the dog came to her at once, fawned upon her, and then plunged swiftly into the thicket. Soon two men, ill-dressed, but very well armed, rose up out of a clump of young wood a few paces from where Orso stood. It was as though they had crawled up like snakes through the tangle of cytisus and myrtle that covered the ground.
“Oh, Ors’ Anton’, you’re welcome!” said the elder of the two men. “Why, don’t you remember me?”
“No!” said Orso, looking hard at him.
“Queer how a beard and a peaked cap alter a man! Come, monsieur, look at me well! Have you forgotten your old Waterloo men? Don’t you remember Brando Savelli, who bit open more than one cartridge alongside of you on that unlucky day?”
“What! Is it you?” said Orso. “And you deserted in 1816!”
“Even so, sir. Faith! soldiering grows tiresome, and besides, I had a job to settle over in this country. Aha, Chili! You’re a good girl! Give us our dinner at once, we’re hungry. You’ve no notion what an appetite one gets in the maquis. Who sent us this—was it Signorina Colomba or the mayor?”
“No, uncle, it was the miller’s wife. She gave me this for you, and a blanket for my mother.”
“What does she want of me?”
“She says the Lucchesi she hired to clear the maquis are asking her five-and-thirty sous, and chestnuts as well—because of the fever in the lower parts of Pietranera.”
“The lazy scamps! . . . I’ll see to them! . . . Will you share our dinner, monsieur, without any ceremony? We’ve eaten worse meals together, in the days of that poor compatriot of ours, whom they have discharged from the army.”
“No, I thank you heartily. They have discharged me, too!”
“Yes, so I heard. But I’ll wager you weren’t sorry for it. You have your own account to settle too. . . . Come along, cure,” said the bandit to his comrade. “Let’s dine! Signor Orso, let me introduce the cure. I’m not quite sure he is a cure. But he knows as much as any priest, at all events!”
“A poor student of theology, monsieur,” quoth the second bandit, “who has been prevented from following his vocation. Who knows, Brandolaccio, I might have been Pope!”
“What was it that deprived the Church of your learning?” inquired Orso.
“A mere nothing—a bill that had to be settled, as my friend Brandolaccio puts it. One of my sisters had been making a fool of herself, while I was devouring book-lore at Pisa University. I had to come home, to get her married. But her future husband was in too great a hurry; he died of fever three days before I arrived. Then I called, as you would have done in my place, on the dead man’s brother. I was told he was married. What was I to do?”
“It really was puzzling! What did you do?”
“It was one of those cases in which one has to resort to the gunflint.”
“In other words?”
“I put a bullet in his head,” said the bandit coolly.
Orso made a horrified gesture. Nevertheless, curiosity, and, it may be, his desire to put off the moment when he must return home, induced him to remain where he was, and continue his conversation with the two men, each of whom had at least one murder on his conscience.
While his comrade was talking, Brandolaccio was laying bread and meat in front of him. He helped himself—then he gave some food to this dog, whom he introduced to Orso under the name of Brusco, as an animal possessing a wonderful instinct for recognising a soldier, whatever might be the disguise he had assumed. Lastly, he cut off a hunch of bread and a slice of raw ham, and gave them to his niece. “Oh, the merry life a bandit lives!” cried the student of theology, after he had swallowed a few mouthfuls. “You’ll try it some day, perhaps, Signor della Rebbia, and you’ll find out how delightful it is to acknowledge no master save one’s own fancy!”
Hitherto the bandit had talked Italian. He now proceeded in French.
“Corsica is not a very amusing country for a young man to live in—but for a bandit, there’s the difference! The women are all wild about us. I, as you see me now, have three mistresses in three different villages. I am at home in every one of them, and one of the ladies is married to a gendarme!”
“You know many languages, monsieur!” said Orso gravely.
“If I talk French, ‘tis because, look you, maxima debetur pueris reverentia! We have made up our minds, Brandolaccio and I, that the little girl shall turn out well, and go straight.”
“When she is turned fifteen,” remarked Chilina’s uncle, “I’ll find a good husband for her. I have one in my eye already.”
“Shall you make the proposal yourself?” said Orso.
“Of course! Do you suppose that any well-to-do man in this neighbourhood, to whom I said, ‘I should be glad to see a marriage between your son and Michilina Savelli,’ would require any pressing?”
“I wouldn’t advise him to!” quoth the other bandit. “Friend Brandolaccio has rather a heavy hand!”
“If I were a rogue,” continued Brandolaccio, “a blackguard, a forger, I should only have to hold my wallet open, and the five-franc pieces would rain into it.”
“Then is there something inside your wallet that attracts them?” said Orso.
“Nothing. But if I were to write to a rich man, as some people have written, ‘I want a hundred francs,’ he would lose no time about sending them to me. But I’m a man of honour, monsieur.”
“Do you know, Signor della Rebbia,” said the bandit whom his comrade called the cure, “do you know that in this country, with all its simple habits, there are some wretches who make use of the esteem our passports” (and he touched his gun) “insure us, to draw forged bills in our handwriting?”
“I know it,” said Orso, in a gruff tone; “but what bills?”
“Six months ago,” said the bandit, “I was taking my walks abroad near Orezza, when a sort of lunatic came up to me, pulling off his cap to me even in the distance, and said: ‘Oh, M. le Cure’ (they always call me that), ‘please excuse me—give me time. I have only been able to get fifty-five francs together! Honour bright, that’s all I’ve been able to scrape up.’ I, in my astonishment, said, ‘Fifty-five francs! What do you mean, you rascal!’ ‘I mean sixty-five,’ he replied; ‘but as for the hundred francs you asked me to give you, it’s not possible.’ ‘What! you villain! I ask you for a hundred francs? I don’t know who you are.’ Then he showed me a letter, or rather a dirty rag of paper, whereby he was summoned to deposit a hundred francs on a certain spot, on pain of having his house burned and his cows killed by Giocanto Castriconi—that’s my name. And they had been vile enough to forge my signature! What annoyed me most was that the letter was written in patois, and was full of mistakes in spelling—I who won every prize at the university! I began by giving my rascal a cuff that made him twist round and round. ‘Aha! You take me for a thief, blackguard that you are!’ I said, and I gave him a hearty kick, you know where. Then feeling rather better, I went on, ‘When are you to take the money to the spot mentioned in the letter?’ ‘This very day.’ ‘Very good, then take it there!’ It was at the foot of a pine-tree, and the place had been exactly described. He brought the money, buried it at the foot of the tree, and came and joined me. I had hidden myself close by. There I stayed, with my man, for six mortal hours, M. della Rebbia. I’d have staid three days, if it had been necessary. At the end of six hours a Bastiaccio, a vile money-lender, made his appearance. As he bent down to take up the money, I fired, and I had aimed so well that, as he fell, his head dropped upon the coins he was unearthing. ‘Now, rascal,’ said I to the peasant, ‘take your money, and never dare to suspect Giocanto Castriconi of a mean trick again!’
“The poor devil, all of a tremble, picked up his sixty-five francs without taking the trouble to wipe them. He thanked me, I gave him a good parting kick, and he may be running away still, for all I know.”
“Ah, cure!” said Brandolaccio, “I envy you that shot! How you must have laughed!”
“I had hit the money-lender in the temple,” the bandit went on, “and that reminded me of Virgil’s lines:
. . . “‘Liquefacto tempora plumbo
Diffidit, ac multa porrectum, extendit arena.’
“Liquefacto! Do you think, Signor Orso, that the rapidity with which a bullet flies through the air will melt it? You who have studied projectiles, tell me whether you think that idea is truth or fiction?”
Orso infinitely preferred discussing this question of physics to arguing with the licentiate as to the morality of his action. Brandolaccio, who did not find their scientific disquisition entertaining, interrupted it with the remark that the sun was just going to set.
“As you would not dine with us, Ors’ Anton’,” he said, “I advise you not to keep Mademoiselle Colomba waiting any longer. And then it is not always wise to be out on the roads after sunset. Why do you come out without a gun? There are bad folk about here—beware of them! You have nothing to fear to-day. The Barricini are bringing the prefect home with them. They have gone to meet him on the road, and he is to stop a day at Pietranera, before he goes on to Corte, to lay what they call a corner-stone—such stupid nonsense! He will sleep to-night with the Barricini; but to-morrow they’ll be disengaged. There is Vincentello, who is a good-for-nothing fellow, and Orlanduccio, who is not much better. . . . Try to come on them separately, one to-day, the other to-morrow. . . . But be on the lookout, that’s all I have to say to you!”
“Thanks for the warning,” said Orso. “But there is no quarrel between us. Until they come to look for me, I shall have nothing to say to them.”
The bandit stuck his tongue in his cheek, and smacked it ironically, but he made no reply. Orso got up to go away.
“By the way,” said Brandolaccio, “I haven’t thanked you for your powder. It came just when I needed it. Now I have everything I want . . . at least I do still want shoes . . . but I’ll make myself a pair out of the skin of a moufflon one of these days.”
Orso slipped two five-franc pieces into the bandit’s hand.
“It was Colomba who sent you the powder. This is to buy the shoes.”
“Nonsense, Lieutenant!” cried Brandolaccio, handing him back the two coins. “D’ye take me for a beggar? I accept bread and powder, but I won’t have anything else!”
“We are both old soldiers, so I thought we might have given each other a lift. Well, good-bye to you!”
But before he moved away he had slipped the money into he bandit’s wallet, unperceived by him.
“Good-bye, Ors’ Anton’,” quoth the theologian. “We shall meet again in the maquis, some day, perhaps, and then we’ll continue our study of Virgil.”
Quite a quarter of an hour after Orso had parted company with these worthies, he heard a man running after him, as fast as he could go. It was Brandolaccio.
“This is too bad, lieutenant!” he shouted breathlessly, “really it is too bad! I wouldn’t overlook the trick, if any other man had played it on me. Here are your ten francs. All my respects to Mademoiselle Colomba. You have made me run myself quite out of breath. Good-night!”
Orso found Colomba in a state of considerable anxiety because of his prolonged absence. But as soon as she saw him she recovered her usual serene, though sad, expression. During the evening meal the conversation turned on trivial subjects, and Orso, emboldened by his sister’s apparent calm, related his encounter with the bandits, and even ventured on a joke or two concerning the moral and religious education that was being imparted to little Chilina, thanks to the care of her uncle and of his worthy colleague Signor Castriconi.
“Brandolaccio is an upright man,” said Colomba; “but as to Castriconi, I have heard he is quite unprincipled.”
“I think,” said Orso, “that he is as good as Brandolaccio, and Brandolaccio is as good as he. Both of them are at open war with society. Their first crime leads them on to fresh ones, every day, and yet they are very likely not half so guilty as many people who don’t live in the maquis.”
A flash of joy shone in his sister’s eyes. “Yes,” he continued, “these wretches have a code of honour of their own. It is a cruel prejudice, not a mean instinct of greed, that has forced them into the life they are leading.”
There was a silence.
“Brother,” said Colomba, as she poured out his coffee, “perhaps you have heard that Carlo-Battista Pietri died last night. Yes, he died of the marsh-fever.”
“Who is Pietri?”
“A man belonging to this village, the husband of Maddalena, who took the pocket-book out of our father’s hand as he was dying. His widow has been here to ask me to join the watchers, and sing something. You ought to come, too. They are our neighbours, and in a small place like this we can not do otherwise than pay them this civility.”
“Confound these wakes, Colomba! I don’t at all like my sister to perform in public in this way.”
“Orso,” replied Colomba, “every country pays honour to its dead after its own fashion. The ballata has come down to us from our forefathers, and we must respect it as an ancient custom. Maddalena does not possess the ‘gift,’ and old Fiordispina, the best voceratrice in the country, is ill. They must have somebody for the ballata.”
“Do you believe Carlo-Battista won’t find his way safely into the next world unless somebody sings bad poetry over his bier? Go if you choose, Colomba—I’ll go with you, if you think I ought. But don’t improvise! It really is not fitting at your age, and—sister, I beg you not to do it!”
“Brother, I have promised. It is the custom here, as you know, and, I tell you again, there is nobody but me to improvise.”
“An idiotic custom it is!”
“It costs me a great deal to sing in this way. It brings back all our own sorrows to me. I shall be ill after it, to-morrow. But I must do it. Give me leave to do it. Brother, remember that when we were at Ajaccio, you told me to improvise to amuse that young English lady who makes a mock of our old customs. So why should I not do it to-day for these poor people, who will be grateful to me, and whom it will help to bear their grief?”
“Well, well, as you will. I’ll go bail you’ve composed your ballata already, and don’t want to waste it.”
“No, brother, I couldn’t compose it beforehand. I stand before the dead person, and I think about those he has left behind him. The tears spring into my eyes, and then I sing whatever comes into my head.”
All this was said so simply that it was quite impossible to suspect Signorina Colomba of the smallest poetic vanity. Orso let himself be persuaded, and went with his sister to Pietri’s house. The dead man lay on a table in the largest room, with his face uncovered. All the doors and windows stood open, and several tapers were burning round the table. At the head stood the widow, and behind her a great many women, who filled all one side of the room. On the other side were the men, in rows, bareheaded, with their eyes fixed on the corpse, all in the deepest silence. Each new arrival went up to the table, kissed the dead face, bowed his or her head to the widow and her son, and joined the circle, without uttering a word. Nevertheless, from time to time one of the persons present would break the solemn silence with a few words, addressed to the dead man.
“Why has thou left thy good wife?” said one old crone. “Did she not take good care of thee? What didst thou lack? Why not have waited another month? Thy daughter-in-law would have borne thee a grandson!” A tall young fellow, Pietri’s son, pressed his father’s cold hand and cried: “Oh! why hast thou not died of the mala morte? Then we could have avenged thee!”
La mala morte, a violent death.
These were the first words to fall on Orso’s ear as he entered the room. At the sight of him the circle parted, and a low murmur of curiosity betrayed the expectation roused in the gathering by the voceratrice’s presence. Colomba embraced the widow, took one of her hands, and stood for some moments wrapped in meditation, with her eyelids dropped. Then she threw back her mezzaro, gazed fixedly at the corpse, and bending over it, her face almost as waxen as that of the dead man, she began thus:
“Carlo-Battista! May Christ receive thy soul! . . . To live is to suffer! Thou goest to a place . . . where there is neither sun nor cold. . . . No longer dost thou need thy pruning-hook . . . nor thy heavy pick. . . . There is no more work for thee! . . . Henceforward all thy days are Sundays! . . . Carlo-Battista! May Christ receive thy soul! . . . Thy son rules in thy house. . . . I have seen the oak fall, . . . dried up by the libeccio. . . . I thought it was dead indeed, . . . but when I passed it again, its root . . . had thrown up a sapling. . . . The sapling grew into an oak . . . of mighty shade. . . . Under its great branches, Maddele, rest thee well! . . . And think of the oak that is no more!”
Here Maddalena began to sob aloud, and two or three men who, on occasion, would have shot at a Christian as coolly as at a partridge, brushed big tears off their sunburnt faces.
For some minutes Colomba continued in this strain, addressing herself sometimes to the corpse, sometimes to the family, and sometimes, by a personification frequently employed in the ballata, making the dead man himself speak words of consolation or counsel to his kinsfolk. As she proceeded, her face assumed a sublime expression, a delicate pink tinge crept over her features, heightening the brilliancy of her white teeth and the lustre of her flashing eyes. She was like a Pythoness on her tripod. Save for a sigh here and there, or a strangled sob, not the slightest noise rose from the assembly that crowded about her. Orso, though less easily affected than most people by this wild kind of poetry, was soon overcome by the general emotion. Hidden in a dark corner of the room, he wept as heartily as Pietri’s own son.
Suddenly a slight stir was perceptible among the audience. The circle opened, and several strangers entered. The respect shown them, and the eagerness with which room was made for them, proved them to be people of importance, whose advent was a great honour to the household. Nevertheless, out of respect for the ballata, nobody said a word to them. The man who had entered first seemed about forty years of age. From his black coat, his red rosette, his confident air, and look of authority, he was at once guessed to be the prefect. Behind him came a bent old man with a bilious-looking complexion, whose furtive and anxious glance was only partially concealed by his green spectacles. He wore a black coat, too large for him, and which, though still quite new, had evidently been made several years previously. He always kept close beside the prefect and looked as though he would fain hide himself under his shadow. Last of all, behind him, came two tall young men, with sunburnt faces, their cheeks hidden by heavy whiskers, proud and arrogant-looking, and showing symptoms of an impertinent curiosity. Orso had had time to forget the faces of his village neighbours; but the sight of the old man in green spectacles instantly called up old memories in his mind. His presence in attendance on the prefect sufficed to insure his recognition. This was Barricini, the lawyer, mayor of Pietranera, who had come, with his two sons, to show the prefect what a ballata was. It would be difficult exactly to describe what happened within Orso’s soul at that moment, but the presence of his father’s foe filled him with a sort of horror, and more than ever he felt inclined to yield to the suspicions with which he had been battling for so long.
As to Colomba, when she saw the man against whom she had sworn a deadly hatred, her mobile countenance assumed a most threatening aspect. She turned pale, her voice grew hoarse, the line she had begun to declaim died on her lips. But soon, taking up her ballata afresh, she proceeded with still greater vehemence.
“When the hawk bemoans himself . . . beside his harried nest, . . . the starlings flutter round him . . . insulting his distress.”
A smothered laugh was heard. The two young men who had just come in doubtless considered the metaphor too bold.
“The falcon will rouse himself. . . . He will spread his wings. . . . He will wash his beak in blood! . . . Now, to thee, Carlo-Battista, let thy friends . . . bid an eternal farewell! . . . Long enough have their tears flowed! . . . Only the poor orphan girl will not weep for thee! . . . Wherefore should she moan? . . . Thou has fallen asleep, full of years, . . in the midst of thine own kin . . . ready to appear . . . in the presence of the Almighty. . . . The orphan weeps for her father . . . overtaken by vile murderers, . . struck from behind. . . . For her father, whose blood lies red . . . beneath the heaped-up green leaves. . . . But she has gathered up this blood, . . this innocent and noble blood! . . . She has poured it out over Pietranera . . . that it may become a deadly poison. . . . And the mark shall be on Pietranera . . . until the blood of the guilty . . . shall have wiped out the blood of the innocent man!”
As Colomba pronounced the last words, she dropped into a chair, drew her mezzaro over her face, and was heard sobbing beneath it. The weeping women crowded round the improvisatrice; several of the men were casting savage glances at the mayor and his sons; some of the elders began to protest against the scandal to which their presence had given rise. The dead man’s son pushed his way through the throng, and was about to beg the mayor to clear out with all possible speed. But this functionary had not waited for the suggestion. He was on his way to the door, and his two sons were already in the street. The prefect said a few words of condolence to young Pietri, and followed them out, almost immediately. Orso went to his sister’s side, took her arm, and drew her out of the room.
“Go with them,” said young Pietri to some of his friends. “Take care no harm comes to them!”
Hastily two or three young men slipped their stilettos up the left sleeves of their jackets and escorted Orso and his sister to their own door.
Panting, exhausted, Colomba was utterly incapable of uttering a single word. Her head rested on her brother’s shoulder, and she clasped one of his hands tightly between her own. Orso, though secretly somewhat annoyed by her peroration, was too much alarmed to reprove her, even in the mildest fashion. He was silently waiting till the nervous attack from which she seemed to be suffering should have passed, when there was a knock at the door, and Saveria, very much flustered, announced the prefect. At the words, Colomba rose, as though ashamed of her weakness, and stood leaning on a chair, which shook visibly beneath her hand.
The prefect began with some commonplace apology for the unseasonable hour of his visit, condoled with Mademoiselle Colomba, touched on the danger connected with strong emotions, blamed the custom of composing funeral dirges, which the very talent of the voceratrice rendered the more harrowing to her auditors, skilfully slipped in a mild reproof concerning the tendency of the improvisation just concluded, and then, changing his tone—
“M. della Rebbia,” he said, “I have many messages for you from your English friends. Miss Nevil sends her affectionate regards to your sister. I have a letter for you from her.”
“A letter from Miss Nevil!” cried Orso.
“Unluckily I have not got it with me. But you shall have it within five minutes. Her father has not been well. For a little while we were afraid he had caught one of our terrible fevers. Luckily he is all right again, as you will observe for yourself, for I fancy you will see him very soon.”
“Miss Nevil must have been very much alarmed!”
“Fortunately she did not become aware of the danger till it was quite gone by. M. della Rebbia, Miss Nevil has talked to me a great deal about you and about your sister.”
Orso bowed.
“She has a great affection for you both. Under her charming appearance, and her apparent frivolity, a fund of good sense lies hidden.”
“She is a very fascinating person,” said Orso.
“I have come here, monsieur, almost at her prayer. Nobody is better acquainted than I with a fatal story which I would fain not have to recall to you. As M. Barricini is still the mayor of Pietranera, and as I am prefect of the department, I need hardly tell you what weight I attach to certain suspicions which, if I am rightly informed, some incautious individuals have communicated to you, and which you, I know, have spurned with the indignation your position and your character would have led me to expect.”
“Colomba,” said Orso, moving uneasily to his chair. “You are very tired. You had better go to bed.”
Colomba shook her head. She had recovered all her usual composure, and her burning eyes were fixed on the prefect.
“M. Barricini,” the prefect continued, “is exceedingly anxious to put an end to the sort of enmity . . . or rather, the condition of uncertainty, existing between yourself and him. . . . On my part, I should be delighted to see you both in those relations of friendly intercourse appropriate to people who certainly ought to esteem each other.”
“Monsieur,” replied Orso in a shaking voice, “I have never charged Barricini with my father’s murder. But he committed an act which must always prevent me from having anything to do with him. He forged a threatening letter, in the name of a certain bandit, or at least he hinted in an underhand sort of way that it was forged by my father. That letter, monsieur, was probably the indirect cause of my father’s death.”
The prefect sat thinking for a moment.
“That your father should have believed that, when his own hasty nature led him into a lawsuit with Signor Barricini, is excusable. But such blindness on your part really can not be admitted. Pray consider that Barricini could have served no interest of his own by forging the letter. I will not talk to you about his character, for you are not acquainted with it, and are prejudiced against it; but you can not suppose that a man conversant with the law——”
“But, monsieur,” said Orso, rising to his feet, “be good enough to recollect that when you tell me the letter was not Barricini’s work, you ascribe it to my father. And my father’s honour, monsieur, is mine!”
“No man on earth, sir, is more convinced of Colonel della Rebbia’s honour than myself! But the writer of the letter is now known.”
“Who wrote it?” exclaimed Colomba, making a step toward the prefect.
“A villain, guilty of several crimes—such crimes as you Corsicans never pardon—a thief, one Tomaso Bianchi, at present confined in the prison at Bastia, has acknowledged that he wrote the fatal letter.”
“I know nothing of the man,” said Orso. “What can have been his object?”
“He belongs to this neighbourhood,” said Colomba. “He is brother to a man who was our miller—a scamp and a liar, unworthy of belief.”
“You will soon see what his interest in the matter was,” continued the prefect. “The miller of whom your sister speaks—I think his name was Teodoro—was the tenant of a mill belonging to the colonel, standing on the very stream the ownership of which M. Barricini was disputing with your father. The colonel, always a generous man, made very little profit out of the mill. Now Tomaso thought that if Barricini got possession of the stream there would be a heavy rent to pay, for it is well known that Barricini is rather fond of money. In short, to oblige his brother, Tomaso forged the letter from the bandit—and there’s the whole story. You know that in Corsica the strength of the family tie is so great that it does sometimes lead to crime. Please read over this letter to me from the attorney-general. It confirms what I have just told you.”
Orso looked through the letter, which gave a detailed relation of Tomaso’s confession, and Colomba read it over his shoulder.
When she had come to the end of it she exclaimed:
“Orlanduccio Barricini went down to Bastia a month ago, when it became known that my brother was coming home. He must have seen Tomaso, and bought this lie of him!”
“Signorina,” said the prefect, out of patience, “you explain everything by odious imputations! Is that the way to find out the truth? You, sir, can judge more coolly. Tell me what you think of the business now? Do you believe, like this young lady, that a man who has only a slight sentence to fear would deliberately charge himself with forgery, just to oblige a person he doesn’t know?”
Orso read the attorney-general’s letter again, weighing every word with the greatest care—for now that he had seen the old lawyer, he felt it more difficult to convince himself than it would have been a few days previously. At last he found himself obliged to admit that the explanation seemed to him to be satisfactory. But Colomba cried out vehemently:
“Tomaso Bianchi is a knave! He’ll not be convicted, or he’ll escape from prison! I am certain of it!”
The prefect shrugged his shoulders.
“I have laid the information I have received before you, monsieur. I will now depart, and leave you to your own reflections. I shall wait till your own reason has enlightened you, and I trust it may prove stronger than your sister’s suppositions.”
Orso, after saying a few words of excuse for Colomba, repeated that he now believed Tomaso to be the sole culprit.
The prefect had risen to take his leave.
“If it were not so late,” said he, “I would suggest your coming over with me to fetch Miss Nevil’s letter. At the same time you might repeat to M. Barricini what you have just said to me, and the whole thing would be settled.”
“Orso della Rebbia will never set his foot inside the house of a Barricini!” exclaimed Colomba impetuously.
“This young lady appears to be the tintinajo of the family!” remarked the prefect, with a touch of irony.
This is the name given to the ram or he-goat which wears
a bell and leads the flock, and it is applied,
metaphorically, to any member of a family who guides it in
all important matters.
“Monsieur,” replied Colomba resolutely, “you are deceived. You do not know the lawyer. He is the most cunning and knavish of men. I beseech you not to make Orso do a thing that would overwhelm him with dishonour!”
“Colomba!” exclaimed Orso, “your passion has driven you out of your senses!”
“Orso! Orso! By the casket I gave you, I beseech you to listen to me! There is blood between you and the Barricini. You shall not go into their house!”
“Sister!”
“No, brother, you shall not go! Or I will leave this house, and you will never see me again! Have pity on me, Orso!” and she fell on her knees.
“I am grieved,” said the prefect, “to find Mademoiselle Colomba so unreasonable. You will convince her, I am sure.”
He opened the door and paused, seeming to expect Orso to follow him.
“I can not leave her now,” said Orso. “To-morrow, if——”
“I shall be starting very early,” said the prefect.
“Brother,” cried Colomba, clasping her hands, “wait till to-morrow morning, in any case. Let me look over my father’s papers. You can not refuse me that!”
“Well, you shall look them over to-night. But at all events you shall not torment me afterward with your violent hatreds. A thousand pardons, monsieur! I am so upset myself to-night—it had better be to-morrow.”
“The night brings counsel,” said the prefect, as he went out. “I hope all your uncertainty will have disappeared by to-morrow.”
“Saveria,” Colomba called, “take the lantern and attend the Signor Prefetto. He will give you a letter to bring back to my brother.”
She added a few words which reached Saveria’s ear alone.
“Colomba,” said Orso, when the prefect was gone, “you have distressed me very much. Will no evidence convince you?”
“You have given me till to-morrow,” she replied. “I have very little time; but I still have some hope.”
Then she took a bunch of keys and ran up to a room on the upper story. There he could hear her pulling open drawers, and rummaging in the writing-desk in which Colonel della Rebbia had kept his business papers.
Saveria was a long time away, and when she at last reappeared, carrying a letter, and followed by little Chilina, rubbing her eyes, and evidently just waked out of her beauty sleep, Orso was wound up to the highest possible pitch of impatience.
“Chili,” said Orso, “what are you doing here at this hour?”
“The signorina sent for me,” replied Chilina.
“What the devil does she want with her?” thought Orso to himself. But he was in a hurry to open Miss Lydia’s letter, and while he was reading it Chilina went upstairs to his sister’s room.
“My father, dear sir, has not been well,” Miss Nevil wrote, “and he is so indolent, besides, that I am obliged to act as his secretary. You remember that, instead of admiring the landscape with you and me the other day, he got his feet wet on the sea-shore—and in your delightful island, that is quite enough to give one a fever! I can see the face you are making! No doubt you are feeling for your dagger. But I will hope you have none now. Well, my father had a little fever, and I had a great fright. The prefect, whom I persist in thinking very pleasant, sent us a doctor, also a very pleasant man, who got us over our trouble in two days. There has been no return of the attack, and my father would like to begin to shoot again. But I have forbidden that. How did you find matters in your mountain home? Is your North Tower still in its old place? Are there any ghosts about it? I ask all these questions because my father remembers you have promised him buck and boar and moufflon—is that the right name for those strange creatures? We intend to crave your hospitality on our way to Bastia, where we are to embark, and I trust the della Rebbia Castle, which you declare is so old and tumble-down, will not fall in upon our heads! Though the prefect is so pleasant that subjects of conversation are never lacking to us—I flatter myself, by the way, that I have turned his head—we have been talking about your worshipful self. The legal people at Bastia have sent him certain confessions, made by a rascal they have under lock and key, which are calculated to destroy your last remaining suspicions. The enmity which sometimes alarmed me for you must therefore end at once. You have no idea what a pleasure this has been to me! When you started hence with the fair voceratrice, with your gun in hand, and your brow lowering, you struck me as being more Corsican than ever—too Corsican indeed! Basta! I write you this long letter because I am dull. The prefect, alas! is going away. We will send you a message when we start for your mountains, and I shall take the liberty of writing to Signorina Colomba to ask her to give me a bruccio, ma solenne! Meanwhile, give her my love. I use her dagger a great deal to cut the leaves of a novel I brought with me. But the doughty steel revolts against such usage, and tears my book for me, after a most pitiful fashion. Farewell, sir! My father sends you ‘his best love.’ Listen to what the prefect says. He is a sensible man, and is turning out of his way, I believe, on your account. He is going to lay a foundation-stone at Corte. I should fancy the ceremony will be very imposing, and I am very sorry not to see it. A gentleman in an embroidered coat and silk stockings and a white scarf, wielding a trowel—and a speech! And at the end of the performance manifold and reiterated shouts of ‘God save the King.’ I say again, sir, it will make you very vain to think I have written you four whole pages, and on that account I give you leave to write me a very long letter. By the way, I think it very odd of you not to have let me hear of your safe arrival at the Castle of Pietranera!
“LYDIA.
“P.S.—I beg you will listen to the prefect, and do as he bids you. We have agreed that this is the course you should pursue, and I shall be very glad if you do it.”
Orso read the letter three or four times over, making endless mental comments each time as he read. Then he wrote a long answer, which he sent by Saveria’s hand to a man in the village, who was to go down to Ajaccio the very next day. Already he had almost dismissed the idea of discussing his grievance, true or false, against the Barricini, with his sister. Miss Lydia’s letter had cast a rose-coloured tint over everything about him. He felt neither hatred nor suspicion now. He waited some time for his sister to come down, and finding she did not reappear, he went to bed, with a lighter heart than he had carried for many a day. Colomba, having dismissed Chilina with some secret instructions, spent the greater part of the night in reading old papers. A little before daybreak a few tiny pebbles rattled against the window-pane. At the signal, she went down to the garden, opened a back door, and conducted two very rough men into her house. Her first care was to bring them into the kitchen and give them food. My readers will shortly learn who these men were.