THUS FAR.
“There are some occasions on which a man must sell half his
secret in order to conceal the rest.”
“There is some one moving among the oleanders down by the river,” said
the count, coming quickly into the room where Lory de Vasselot was
sitting, one morning some days after his unexpected arrival at the
château.
The old man was cool enough, but he closed the window that led to the
small terrace where he cultivated his carnations, with that haste which
indicates a recognition of undeniable danger, coupled with no feeling of
fear.
“I know every branch in the valley,” he said, “every twig, every leaf,
every shadow. There is some one there.”
Lory rose, and laid aside the pen with which he was writing for an
extended leave of absence. In four days these two had, as one of them had
predicted, grown accustomed to each other. And the line between custom
and necessity is a fine drawn one.
“Show me,” he said, going towards the window.
“Ah!” murmured the count, jerking his head. “You will hardly perceive it
unless you are a hunter--or the hunted.”
Lory glanced at his father. Assuredly the sleeping mind was beginning to
rouse itself.
“It is nothing but the stirring of a leaf here, the movement of a branch
there, which are unusual and unnatural.”
As he spoke, he opened the window with that slow caution which had become
habitual to his every thought and action.
“There,” he said, pointing with a steady hand; “to the left of that
almond tree which is still in bloom. Watch those willows which have come
there since the wall fell away, and the terrace slipped into the flooded
river twenty-one years this spring. You will see the branches move.
There--there! You see. It is a man, and he comes too slowly to have an
honest purpose.”
“I see,” said Lory. “Is that land ours?”
The count gave an odd little laugh.
“You can see nothing from this window that is not ours,” he answered.
“As much as any other man's,” he added, after a pause. For the conviction
still holds good in some Corsican minds that the mountains are common
property.
“He is coming slowly, but not very cautiously,” said Lory. “Not like a
man who thinks that he may be watched from here. He probably is taking no
heed of these windows, for he thinks the place is deserted.”
“It is more probable,” replied the count, “that he is coming here to
ascertain that fact. What the abbé has heard, another may hear, though he
would not learn it from the abbé. If you want a secret kept, tell it to a
priest, and of all priests, the Abbé Susini. Some one has heard that you
are here in Corsica, and is creeping up to the castle to find out.”
“And I will go and find him out. Two can play at that game in the
bushes,” said Lory, with a laugh.
“If you go, take a gun; one can never tell how a game may turn.”
“Yes; I will take a gun if you wish it.” And Lory went towards the door.
“No,” he said, pausing in answer to a gesture made by his father, “not
that one. It is of too old a make.”
And he went out of the room, leaving his father holding in his hand the
gun with which he had shot Andrei Perucca thirty years before. He stood
looking at the closed door with dim, reflective eyes. Then he looked at
the gun, which he set slowly back in its corner.
“It seems,” he said to himself, “that I am of too old a make also.”
He went to the window, and, opening it cautiously, stood looking down
into the valley. There he perceived that, though two may play at the same
game, it is usually given to one to play it better than the other. For he
who was climbing up the hill might be followed by a careful eye, by the
chance displacement of a twig, the bending of a bough; while Lory,
creeping down into the valley, remained quite invisible, even to his
father, upon whose memory every shadow was imprinted.
“Aha!” laughed the old man, under his breath. “One sees that the boy is a
Corsican. And,” he added, after a pause, “one would almost say that the
other is not.”
In which the count's trained eye--trained as only is the vision of the
hunted--was by no means deceived. For Lory, who was far down in the
valley, had already caught sight of a braided sleeve, and, a moment
later, recognized Colonel Gilbert. The colonel not only failed to
perceive him, but was in nowise looking for him. He appeared to be
entirely absorbed, first in the examination of the ground beneath his
feet, and then in the contemplation of the rising land. In his hand he
seemed to be carrying a note-book, and, so far as the watcher could see,
consulted from time to time a compass.
“He is only engaged in his trade,” said Lory to himself, with a laugh;
and, going out into the open, he sat down on a rock with the gun across
his knee and waited.
Thus it happened that Colonel Gilbert, working his way up through the
bushes, note-book in hand, looked up and saw, within a few yards of him,
the owner of the land upon which they stood, whom he had every reason to
believe to be in Paris.
His ruddy face was of a deeper red as he slipped his note-book within his
tunic and came forward, holding out his hand. But his smile was as ready
and good-natured as ever.
“Well met!” he said. “You find me, count, taking a professional and
business-like survey of the laud that you promised to sell me.”
“You are welcome to take the survey,” answered Lory, taking the
outstretched, cordial hand, “but I must ask you to let me keep the land.
I did not take your offer seriously.”
“It was intended seriously, I assure you.”
“Then it was my mistake,” answered Lory, quite pleasantly.
He tapped himself vigorously on the chest, and made a gesture indicating
that at a word from the colonel he was ready to lay violent hands upon
himself for having been so foolish. The colonel laughed, and shrugged his
shoulders as if the matter were but a small one. The pitiless
Mediterranean, almost African, sun poured down on them, and one of those
short spells of absolute calm, which are characteristic of these
latitudes, made it unbearably hot. The colonel took off his cap, and,
sitting down in quite a friendly way near de Vasselot on a rock,
proceeded to mop his high forehead, pressing back the thin smooth hair
which was touched here and there with grey.
“You have come here at the wrong time,” he said. “The heats have begun.
One longs for the cool breezes of Paris or of Normandy.”
And he paused, giving Lory an opportunity of explaining why he had come
at this time, which opportunity was promptly neglected.
“At all events, count,” said the colonel, replacing his cap and lighting
a cigarette, “I did not deceive you as to the nature of the land which I
wished to buy. It is a desert, as you see. And yet I cannot help thinking
that something might be made of this land.”
He sat and gazed lazily in front of him. Presently, leaving his cigarette
to smoulder, he began to buzz through his teeth, in the bucolic manner,
an air of Offenbach. He was, in a word, entirely agricultural, and
consequently slow of speech.
“Yes, count,” he said, with conviction, after a long pause; “there is
only one drawback to Corsica.”
“Ah?”
“The Corsicans,” said the colonel, gravely. “You do not know them as I
do; for I suppose you have only been here a few days?”
De Vasselot's quick eyes glanced for a moment at the colonel's face, but
no reply was made to the supposition. Then the colonel fell to his
guileless Offenbach again. There is nothing so innocent as the meditative
rendering of a well-known tune. A popular air is that which echoes in
empty heads.
Colonel Gilbert glanced sideways at his companion. He had not thought
that this was a silent man. Nature was singularly at fault in her
mouldings if this slightly made, dark-eyed Frenchman was habitually
taciturn. And the colonel was vaguely uneasy.
“My horse,” he said, “is up at Olmeta. I took a walk round by the river.
It is my business to answer innumerable questions from the Ministry of
the Interior. Railway projects are still in the air, you understand. I
must know my Corsica. Besides, as I tell you, I thought I was on my own
land.”
“I am sorry that I cannot hold to my joke, for it was nothing else, as
you know.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” acquiesced the colonel. “And in the mean time, it
is a great pleasure to see you here, as well as a surprise. I need hardly
tell you that your presence here is quite unknown to your neighbours. We
have little to talk about at this end of the island now that the
Administration is centred more than ever at Ajaccio; and were it known in
the district that you are at Vasselot, you may be sure I should have
heard of it at the café or at the hotel where I dine.”
“Yes. I came without drum or trumpet.”
“You are wise.”
The remark was made so significantly that Lory could not ignore it even
if such a course had recommended itself to one of his quick and impulsive
nature.
“What do you mean, colonel?”
Gilbert made a little gesture of the hand that held the half-burnt
cigarette. He deprecated, it would appear, having been drawn to talk on
so serious a topic.
“Well, I speak as one Frenchman to another, as one soldier to another. If
the emperor does not die, he will declare war against Germany. There is
the situation in a nutshell, is it not? And do you think the army can
afford to lose one man at the present time, especially a man who has made
good use of such small opportunities of distinction as the fates have
offered him? And, so far as I have been able to follow the intricacies of
the parochial politics, your life is not worth two sous in this country,
my dear count. There, I have spoken. A word to the wise, is it not?”
He rose, and threw away his cigarette with a nod and a smile.
“And now I must be returning. You will allow me to pass up that small
pathway that leads past the chateau. Some day I should, above all things,
like to see the chateau. I am interested in old houses, I tell you
frankly.”
“I will walk part of the way with you,” answered Lory, with a stiffness
which was entirely due to a sense of self-reproach. For it was his
instinct to be hospitable and open-handed and friendly. And Lory would
have liked to ask the colonel then and there to come to the chateau.
“By the way,” said the colonel, as they climbed the hill together, “I did
not, of course, mean to suggest that you should sell me the old house
which bears your name--only a piece of land, a few hectares on this
south-west slope, that I may amuse myself with agriculture, as I told
you. Perhaps some day you may reconsider your decision?”
He waited for a reply to this suggestion, or an invitation in response to
the hint that he was interested in the old house. But neither came.
“I am much obliged to you for your warning as to the unpopularity of my
name in this district,” said Lory, rather laboriously changing the
subject. “I had, of course, heard something of the same sort before; but
I do not attach much importance to local tradition, do you?”
The colonel paused for a few minutes. He had the leisurely conversational
manner of an old man.
“These people have undergone a change,” he said at length, “since their
final subjugation by ourselves--exactly a hundred years ago, by the way.
They were a turbulent, fighting, obstinate people. Those qualities--good
enough in times of war--go bad in times of peace. They are a lawless,
idle, dishonest people now. Their grand fighting qualities have run to
seed in municipal disagreements and electioneering squabbles. And, worst
of all, we have grafted on them our French thrift, which has run to
greed. There is not a man in the district who would shoot you, count,
from any idea of the vendetta, but there are a hundred who would do it
for a thousand-franc note, or in order to prevent you taking back the
property which he has stolen from you. That is how it stands. And that is
why Pietro Andrei came to grief at Olmeta.”
“And Mattei Perucca?” asked Lory, thereby causing the colonel to trip
suddenly over a stone.
“Oh, Perucca,” he answered, “that was different. He died a more or less
natural death. He was a very stout man, and on receiving a letter, gave
way to such ungovernable rage that he fell in a fit. True, it was a
threatening letter; but such are common enough in this country. It may
have been a joke or may have had some comparatively harmless object. None
could have foreseen such a result.”
They were now near the chateau, and the colonel rather suddenly shook
hands and went away.
“I am always to be found at Bastia, and am always at your service,” he
said, waving a farewell with his whip.
Lory found the door of the chateau ajar, and Jean watching behind it. His
father, however, seemed to have forgotten upon what mission he had gone
forth, and was sitting placidly in the little room, lighted by a
skylight, where they always lived. The sight of Lory reminded him,
however.
“Who was it?” he asked, without showing a very keen interest.
“It was a man called Gilbert,” answered Lory, “whom I have met in Paris.
An engineer. He is stationed at Bastia, and is connected with the railway
scheme. A man I should like to like, and yet--He ought to be a good
fellow. He has every qualification, and yet--”
Lory did not finish the sentence, but stood reflectively looking at his
father.
“He has more than once offered to buy Vasselot,” he said, watching for
the effect.
“You must never sell Vasselot,” replied the old man. He did not seem to
conceive it possible that there should be any temptation to do so.
“I do not quite understand Colonel Gilbert,” continued Lory. “He has also
offered to buy Perucca; but there I think he has to deal with a clever
woman.”