"Yes," said the diligence-driver; and without further comment he walked on, keeping well in the middle of the road, as it is wise to do when one has enemies.
CHAPTER III.
A BY-PATH.
"L"intrigue c"est tromper son homme; L"habilete c"est faire qu"il se trompe lui-meme."
For an idle-minded man, Colonel Gilbert was early astir the next morning, and rode out of the town soon after sunrise, following the Vescovato road, and chatting pleasantly enough with the workers already on foot and in saddle on their way to the great plain of Biguglia, where men may labour all day, though, if they spend so much as one night there, must surely die. For the eastern coast of Corsica consists of a series of level plains where malarial fever is as rife as in any African swamp, and the traveller may ride through a fertile land where eucalyptus and palm grow amid the vineyards, and yet no human being may live after sunset.
The labourer goes forth to his work in the morning accompanied by his dog, carrying the ubiquitous double-barrelled gun at full c.o.c.k, and returns in the evening to his mountain village, where, at all events, he may breathe G.o.d"s air without fear.
The colonel turned to the right a few miles out, following the road which leads straight to that mountain wall which divides all Corsica into the "near" and the "far" side--into two peoples, speaking a different dialect, following slightly different customs, and only finding themselves united in the presence of a common foe. The road mounts steadily, and this February morning had broken grey and cloudy, so that the colonel found himself in the mists that hang over these mountains during the spring months, long before he reached the narrow entrance to the grim and soundless Lancone Defile. The heavy clouds had nestled down the mountains, covering them like a huge thickness of wet cotton-wool.
The road, which is little more than a mule-path, is cut in the face of the rock, and, far below, the river runs musically down to Lake Biguglia.
The colonel rode alone, though he could perceive another traveller on the winding road in front of him--a peasant in dark clothes, with a huge felt hat, astride on a little active Corsican horse--sure of foot, quick and nervous, as fiery as the men of this strange land.
The defile is narrow, and the sun rarely warms the river that runs through the depths where the foot of man can never have trodden since G.o.d fashioned this earth. Colonel Gilbert, it would appear, was accustomed to solitude. Perhaps he had known it so well during his sojourn in this island of silence and loneliness, that he had fallen a victim to its dangerous charms, and being indolent by nature, had discovered that it is less trouble to be alone than to cultivate the society of man. The Lancone Defile has to this day an evil name. It is not wise to pa.s.s through it alone, for some have entered one end never to emerge at the other. Colonel Gilbert pressed his heavy charger, and gained rapidly on the horseman in front of him. When he was within two hundred yards of him, at the highest part of the pa.s.s and through the narrow defile, he sought in the inner pocket of his tunic--for in those days French officers possessed no other clothes than their uniform--and produced a letter. He examined it, crumpled it between his fingers, and rubbed it across his dusty knee so that it looked old and travel-stained at once.
Then, with the letter in his hand, he put spurs to his horse and galloped after the horseman in front of him. The man turned almost at once in his saddle, as if care rode behind him there.
"Hi! mon ami," cried the colonel, holding the letter high above his head.
"You have, I imagine, dropped this letter?" he added, as he approached the other, who now awaited him.
"Where? No; but I have dropped no letter. Where was it? On the road?"
"Down there," answered the colonel, pointing back with his whip, and handing over the letter with a final air as if it were no affair of his.
"Perucca," read the man, slowly, in the manner of one having small dealings with pens and paper, "Mattei Perucca--at Olmeta."
"Ah," said the colonel, lighting a cigarette. He had apparently not troubled to read the address on the envelope.
In such a thinly populated country as Corsica, faces are of higher import than in crowded cities, where types are mingled and individuality soon fades. The colonel had already recognized this man as of Olmeta--one of those, perhaps, who had stood smoking on the "Place" there when Pietro Andrei crawled towards the fountain and failed to reach it.
"I am going to Olmeta," said the man, "and you also, perhaps."
"No; I am exercising my horse, as you see. I shall turn to the left at the cross-roads, and go towards Murato. I may come round by Olmeta later--if I lose my way."
The man smiled grimly. In Corsica men rarely laugh.
"You will not do that. You know this country too well for that. You are the officer connected with the railway. I have seen you looking through your instruments at the earth, in the mountains, in the rocks, and down in the plains--everywhere."
"It is my work," answered the colonel, tapping with his whip the gold lace on his sleeve. "One must do what one is ordered."
The other shrugged his shoulders, not seeming to think that necessary.
They rode on in silence, which was only broken from time to time by the colonel, who asked harmless questions as to the names of the mountain summits now appearing through the riven clouds, or the course of the rivers, or the ownership of the wild and rocky land. At the cross-roads they parted.
"I am returning to Olmeta," said the peasant, as they neared the sign-post, "and will send that letter up to the Casa Perucca by one of my children. I wonder"--he paused, and, taking the letter from his jacket pocket, turned it curiously in his hand--"I wonder what is in it?"
The colonel shrugged his shoulders and turned his horse"s head. It was, it appeared, no business of his to inquire what the letter contained, or to care whether it be delivered or not. Indeed, he appeared to have forgotten all about it.
"Good day, my friend--good day," he said absent-mindedly.
And an hour later he rode up to the Casa Perucca, having approached that ancient house by a winding path from the valley below, instead of by the high-road from the Col San Stefano to Olmeta, which runs past its very gate. The Casa Perucca is rather singularly situated, and commands one of the most wonderful views in this wild land of unrivalled prospects. The high-road curves round the lower slope of the mountains as round the base of a sugar-loaf, and is cut at times out of the sheer rock, while a little lower it is begirt by huge trees. It forms as it were a cornice, perched three thousand feet above the valley, over which it commands a view of mountain and bay and inlet, but never a house, never a church, and the farthest point is beyond Calvi, thirty miles away. There is but one spur--a vast b.u.t.tress of fertile land thrown against the mountain, as a b.u.t.tress may be thrown against a church tower.
The Casa Perucca is built upon this spur of land, and the Perucca estate--that is to say, the land attached to the Casa (for property is held in small tenures in Corsica)--is all that lies outside the road. In the middle ages the position would have been unrivalled, for it could be attacked from one side only, and doubtless the Genoese Bank of St. George must have had bitter reckonings with some dead and forgotten rebel, who had his stronghold where the Casa now stands. The present house is Italian in appearance--a long, low, verandahed house, built in two parts, as if it had at one time been two houses, and only connected later by a round tower, now painted a darker colour than the adjacent buildings.
There are occasional country houses like it to be found in Tuscany, notably on the heights behind Fiesole.
The wall defining the peninsula is ten feet high, and is built actually on the roadside, so that the Casa Perucca, with its great wooden gate, turns a very cold shoulder upon its poor neighbours. It is, as a matter of fact, the best house north of Calvi, and the site of it one of the oldest. Its only rival is the Chateau de Va.s.selot, which stands deserted down in the valley a few miles to the south, nearer to the sea, and farther out of the world, for no high-road pa.s.ses near it.
Beneath the Casa Perucca, on the northern slope of the shoulder, the ground falls away rapidly in a series of stony chutes, and to the south and west there are evidences of the land having once been laid out in terraces in the distant days when Corsicans were content to till the most fertile soil in Europe--always excepting the Island of Majorca--but now in the wane of the third empire, when every Corsican of any worth had found employment in France, there were none to grow vines or cultivate the olive. There is a short cut up from the valley from the mouldering Chateau de Va.s.selot, which is practicable for a trained horse. And Colonel Gilbert must have known this, for he had described a circle in the wooded valley in order to gain it. He must also have been to the Casa Perucca many times before, for he rang the bell suspended outside the door built in the thickness of the southern wall, where a horseman would not have expected to gain admittance. This door was, however, constructed without steps on its inner side, for Corsica has this in common with Spain, that no man walks where he can ride, so that steps are rarely built where a gradual slope will prove more convenient.
There was something suggestive of a siege in the way in which the door was cautiously opened, and a man-servant peeped forth.
"Ah!" he said, with relief, "it is the Colonel Gilbert. Yes; monsieur may see him, but no one else. Ah! But he is furious, I can tell you. He is in the verandah--like a wild beast. I will take monsieur"s horse."
Colonel Gilbert went through the palms and bamboos and orange-trees alone, towards the house; and there, walking up and down, and stopping every moment to glance towards the door, of which the bell still sounded, he perceived a large, stout man, clad in light tweed, wearing an old straw hat and carrying a thick stick.
"Ah!" cried Perucca, "so you have heard the news. And you have come, I hope, to apologize for your miserable France. It is thus that you govern Corsica, with a Civil Service made up of a parcel of old women and young counter-jumpers! I have no patience with your prefectures and your young men with flowing neck-ties and kid gloves. Are we a girls" school to be governed thus? And you--such great soldiers! Yes, I will admit that the French are great soldiers, but you do not know how to rule Corsica. A tight hand, colonel. Holy name of thunder!" And he stamped his foot with a decisiveness that made the verandah tremble.
The colonel laughed pleasantly.
"They want some men of your type," he said.
"Ah!" cried Perucca, "I would rule them, for they are cowards; they are afraid of me. Do you know, they had the impertinence to send one of their threatening letters to poor Andrei before they shot him. They sent him a sheet of paper with a cross drawn on it. Then I knew he was done for.
They do not send that _pour rire_."
He stopped short, and gave a jerk of the head. There was somewhere in his fierce old heart a cord that vibrated to the touch of these rude mountain customs; for the man was a Corsican of long descent and pure blood. Of such the fighting nations have made good soldiers in the past, and even Rome could not make them slaves.
"Or you could do it," went on Perucca, with a shrewd nod, looking at him beneath s.h.a.ggy brows. "The velvet glove--eh? That would surprise them, for they have never felt the touch of one. You, with your laugh and idle ways, and behind them the perception--the perception of the devil--or a woman."
The colonel had drawn forward a basket chair, and was leaning back in it with crossed legs, and one foot swinging.
"I? Heaven forbid! No, my friend; I require too little. It is only the discontented who get on in the world. But, mind you, I would not mind trying on a small scale. I have often thought I should like to buy a little property on this side of the island, and cultivate it as they do up in Cap Corse. It would be an amus.e.m.e.nt for my exile, and one could perhaps make the b.u.t.ter for one"s bread--green Chartreuse instead of yellow--eh?"
He paused, and seeing that the other made no reply, continued in the same careless strain.
"If you or one of the other proprietors on this side of the mountains would sell--perhaps."
But Perucca shook his head resolutely.
"No; we should not do that. You, who have had to do with the railway, must know that. We will let our land go to rack and ruin, we will starve it and not cultivate it, we will let the terraces fall away after the rains, we will live miserably on the finest soil in Europe--we may starve, but we won"t sell."
Gilbert did not seem to be listening very intently. He was watching the young bamboos now bursting into their feathery new green, as they waved to and fro against the blue sky. His head was slightly inclined to one side, his eyes were contemplative.
"It is a pity," he said, after a pause, "that Andrei did not have a better knowledge of the insular character. He need not have been in Olmeta churchyard now."