"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 Va.s.selot when he was a young man, and he was what you are now. You are a de Va.s.selot."
"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.
"Voila!" 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 Abbe 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 Va.s.selot. And I belong to the de Va.s.selots--! 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 Abbe 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 abbe. 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 abbe 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 Va.s.selot."
"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 pa.s.sed his hand pensively over his hair. Then he turned to Lory.
"There is no longer a Chateau de Va.s.selot--it is gone--burnt to the ground, mon brave monsieur."
"Who burnt it?" asked de Va.s.selot.
"Who knows?" replied the man. "The Peruccas, no doubt. They have a woman to lead them now!"