"It is a pity," rapped out Perucca, with an emphatic stick on the wooden floor, "that Andrei was so gentle with them. He drove the cattle off the land. I should have driven them into my own sheds, and told the owners to come and take them. He was too easy-going, too mild in his manners. Look at me--they don"t send me their threatening letters. You do not find any crosses chalked on my door--eh?"
And indeed, as he stood there, with his square shoulders, his erect bearing and fiery, dark eyes, Mattei Perucca seemed worthy of the name of his untamed ancestors, and was not a man to be trifled with.
"Eh--what?" he asked of the servant who had approached timorously, bearing a letter on a tray. "For me? Something about Andrei, from those fools of gendarmes, no doubt."
And he tore open the envelope which Colonel Gilbert had handed to the peasant a couple of hours earlier in the Lancone Defile. He fixed his eye-gla.s.ses upon his nose, clumsily, with one hand, and then unfolded the letter. It was merely a sheet of blank paper, with a cross drawn upon it.
His face suddenly blazed red with anger. His eyes glared at the paper through the gla.s.ses placed crookedly upon his nose.
"Holy name!" he cried. "Look at this--this to _me_! The dogs!"
The colonel looked at the paper with a shrug of the shoulders.
"You will have to sell," he suggested lightly; and glancing up at Perucca"s face, saw something there that made him leap to his feet.
"Hulloa! Here," he said quickly--"sit down."
And as he forced Perucca into the chair, his hands were already at the old man"s collar. And in five minutes, in the presence of Colonel Gilbert and two old servants, Mattei Perucca died.
CHAPTER IV.
A TOSS-UP.
"One can be but what one is born."
If any one had asked the Count Lory de Va.s.selot who and what he was, he would probably have answered that he was a member of the English Jockey Club. For he held that that distinction conferred greater honour upon him than the accident of his birth, which enabled him to claim for grandfather the first Count de Va.s.selot, one of Murat"s aides-de-camp, a brilliant, dashing cavalry officer, a boyhood"s friend of the great Napoleon. Lory de Va.s.selot was, moreover, a cavalry officer himself, but had not taken part in any of the enterprises of an emperor who held that to govern Frenchmen it is necessary to provide them with a war every four years.
"Bon Dieu!" he told his friends, "I did not sleep for two nights after I was elected to that great club."
Lory de Va.s.selot, moreover, did his best to live up to his position. He never, for instance, had his clothes made in Paris. His very gloves came from a little shop in Newmarket, where only the seamiest and clumsiest of hand-coverings are provided, and horn b.u.t.tons are a _sine qua non_.
To desire to be mistaken for an Englishman is a sure sign that you belong to the very best Parisian set, and Lory de Va.s.selot"s position was an enviable one, for so long as he kept his hat on and stood quite still and did not speak, he might easily have been some one connected with the British turf. It must, of course, be understood that the similitude of de Va.s.selot"s desire was only an outward one. We all think that every other nation would fain be English, but as all other countries have a like pitying contempt for us, there is perhaps no harm done. And it is to be presumed that if some candid friend were to tell de Va.s.selot that the moment he uncovered his hair, or opened his lips, or made a single movement, he was hopelessly and unmistakably French from top to toe, he would not have been sorely distressed.
It will be remembered that the Third Napoleon--the last of that strange dynasty--raised himself to the Imperial throne--made himself, indeed, the most powerful monarch in Europe--by statecraft, and not by power of sword. With the magic of his name he touched the heart of the most impetuous people in the world, and upon the uncertain, and, as it is whispered, not always honest suffrage of the plebiscite, climbed to the unstable height of despotism. For years he ruled France with a sort of careless cynicism, and it was only when his health failed that his hand began to relax its grip. In the scramble for place and power, the grandson of the first Count de Va.s.selot might easily have gained a prize, but Lory seemed to have no ambition in that direction. Perhaps he had no taste for ministry or bureau, nor cared to cultivate the subtle knowledge of court and cabinet, which meant so much at this time. His tastes were rather those of the camp; and, failing war, he had turned his thoughts to sport. He had hunted in England and fished in Norway. In the winter of 1869, he went to Africa for big game, and, returning in the early weeks of March, found France and his dear Paris gayer, more insouciant, more brilliant than ever.
For the empire had never seemed more secure than it did at this moment, had never stood higher in the eyes of the world, had never boasted so lavish a court. Paris was at her best, and Lory de Va.s.selot exclaimed aloud, after the manner of his countrymen, at the sight of the young buds and spring flowers around the Lac in the Bois de Boulogne, as he rode there this fresh morning.
He had only arrived in Paris the night before, and, dining at the Cercle Militaire, had accepted the loan of a horse.
"One will at all events see one"s friends in the wood," he said. But riding there in an ultra-English suit of cords at the fashionable hour, he found that he had somehow missed the fashion. The alleys, which had been popular a year ago, were now deserted; for there is nothing so fickle as social taste, and the riders were all at the other side of the Route de Longchamps.
Lory turned his horse"s head in that direction, and was riding leisurely, when he heard an authoritative voice apparently directed towards himself.
He was in one of the narrow _allees_, "reserved for cavaliers," and, turning, perceived that the soft sandy gravel had prevented his hearing the approach of other riders--a man and a woman. And the woman"s horse was beyond control. It was a little, fiery Arab, leaping high in the air at each stride, and timing a nasty forward jerk of the head at the worst moment for its rider"s comfort.
There was no time to do anything but touch his own trained charger with the spur and gallop ahead. He turned in his saddle. The Arab was gaining on him, and gradually leaving behind the heavy horse and weighty rider who were giving chase. The woman, with a set white face, was jerking at the bridle with her left hand in an odd, mechanical, feeble way, while with her right, she held to the pommel of her saddle. But she was swaying forward in an unmistakable manner. She was only half conscious, and in a moment must fall.
Lory glanced behind her, and saw a stout built man, with a fair moustache and a sunburnt face, riding his great horse in the stirrups like a jockey, his face alight with that sudden excitement which sometimes blazes in light blue eyes. He made a quick gesture, which said as plainly as words--"You must act, and quickly; I can do nothing."
And the three thundered on. The rides in the Bois de Boulogne are all bordered on either side by thick trees. If Lory de Va.s.selot pulled across, he would send the maddened Arab into the forest, where the first low branch must of a necessity batter in its rider"s head. He rode on, gradually edging across to what in France is the wrong side of the road.
"Hold on, madame; hold on," he said, in a quick low voice.
But the woman did not seem to hear him. She had dropped the bridle now, and the Arab had thrown it forward over its head.
Then Lory gradually reined in. The woman was reeling in the saddle as the Arab thundered alongside. The wind blew back the long habit, and showed her foot to be firmly in the stirrup.
"Stirrup, madame!" shouted Lory, as if she were miles away. "Mon Dieu, your stirrup!"
But she only looked ahead with glazed eyes.
Then, edging nearer with a delicate spur, de Va.s.selot shook off his own right stirrup, and, leaning down, lifted the fainting woman with his right arm clean out of the saddle. He rested her weight upon his thigh, and, feeling cautiously with his foot, found her stirrup and kicked it free. He pulled up slowly, and, drawing aside, allowed the lady"s companion to pa.s.s him at a steady gallop after the Arab.
The lady was now in a dead faint, her dark red hair hanging like a rope across de Va.s.selot"s arm. She was, fortunately, not a big woman; for it was no easy position to find one"s self in, on the top, thus, of a large horse with a senseless burden and no help in sight. He managed, however, to dismount, and rather breathlessly carried the lady to the shade of the trees, where he laid her with her head on a mound of rising turf, and, lifting aside her hair, saw her face for the first time.
"Ah! That dear baroness!" he exclaimed; and, turning, he found himself bowing rather stiffly to the gentleman, who had now returned, leading the runaway horse. He was not, it may be mentioned, the baron.
While the two men were thus regarding each other in a polite silence, the baroness opened a pair of remarkably bright brown eyes, at first with wonder, and then with understanding, and finally with wonder again when they lighted on de Va.s.selot.
"Lory!" she cried. "But where have you fallen from?"
"It must have been from heaven, baroness," he replied, "for I a.s.suredly came at the right moment."
He stood looking down at her--a lithe, neat, rather small-made man. Then he turned to attend to his horse. The baroness was already busy with her hair. She rose to her feet and smoothed her habit.
"Ah, good!" she laughed. "There is no harm done. But you saved my life, my dear Lory. One cannot have two opinions as to that. If it were not that the colonel is watching us, I should embrace you. But I have not introduced you. This is Colonel Gilbert--my dear and good cousin, Lory de Va.s.selot. The colonel is from Bastia, by the way, and the Count de Va.s.selot pretends to be a Corsican. I mention it because it is only friendly to tell you that you have something more than the weather and my grat.i.tude in common."
She laughed as she spoke; then became suddenly grave, and sat down again with her hand to her eyes.
"And I am going to faint," she added, with ghastly lips that tried to smile, "and n.o.body but you two men."
"It is the reaction," said Colonel Gilbert, in his soothing way. But he exchanged a quick glance with de Va.s.selot. "It will pa.s.s, baroness."
"It is well to remember at such a moment that one is a sportswoman,"
suggested de Va.s.selot.
"And that one has de Va.s.selot blood in one"s veins, you mean. You may as well say it." She rose as she spoke, and looked from one to the other with a brave laugh. "Bring me that horse," she said.
De Va.s.selot conveyed by one inimitable gesture that he admired her spirit, but refused to obey her. Colonel Gilbert smiled contemplatively, He was of a different school--of that school of Frenchmen which owes its existence to Napoleon III.--impa.s.sive, almost taciturn--more British than the typical Briton. De Va.s.selot, on the contrary, was quick and vivacious. His fine-cut face and dark eyes expressed a hundred things that his tongue had no time to put into words. He was hard and brown and sunburnt, which at once made him manly despite his slight frame.
"Ah," he cried, with a gay laugh, "that is better. But seriously, you know, you should have a patent stirrup--"
He broke off, described the patent stirrup in three gestures, how it opened and released the foot. He showed the rider falling, the horse galloping away, the released lady-rider rising to her feet and satisfying herself that no bones were broken--all in three more gestures.
"Voila!" he said; "I shall send you one."