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 ca.s.sock, and he blew defiance at her through it. "I--who speak, take the liberty of making this suggestion. I, the Abbe 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 abbe, 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 abbe, 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 Va.s.selot 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 Va.s.selot?"
The abbe 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 Va.s.selot attended to his own affairs at the Chateau de Va.s.selot, and the interests he has there?"
replied Denise, turning away from his persistent eyes.
And the abbe"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 abbe, 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 pa.s.sed 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 Ma.r.s.eilles; now it is on board the Perseverance, 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 Va.s.selots.
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 pa.s.sed her, and she received a curt bow and salutation from the Abbe Susini who was in it. The carriage turned to the right at the crossroads, and rattled down the hill in the direction of Va.s.selot. Denise"s head went an inch higher at the sight of it.
"I met the Abbe 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 Va.s.selot"s command that we should leave the Casa Perucca to-night for France. I suggested that the order should be given to the Chateau de Va.s.selot instead of the Casa Perucca, and the abbe took me at my word. He has gone to the Chateau de Va.s.selot 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 Va.s.selot 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 Melide."
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 do Melide"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 G.o.d 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 Va.s.selot, and Henri de Melide, 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 Va.s.selot.