A MASTERFUL MAN.
“Tous les raisonnements des hommes ne valent pas un
sentiment d'une femme.”
It would seem that Lory de Vasselot had played the part of a stormy
petrel when he visited Paris, for that calm Frenchman, the Baron de
Mélide, packed his wife off to Provence the same night, and the letter
that Lory wrote to the Abbé Susini, reaching Olmeta three days later,
aroused its recipient from a contemplative perusal of the _Petit
Bastiais_ as if it had been a bomb-shell.
The abbé threw aside his newspaper and cigarette. He was essentially a
man of action. He had been on his feet all day, hurrying hither and
thither over his widespread parish, interfering in this man's business
and that woman's quarrels with that hastiness which usually characterizes
the doings of such as pride themselves upon their capability for action
and contempt for mere passive thought. It was now evening, and a blessed
cool air was stealing down from the mountains. Successive days of
unbroken sunshine had burnt all the western side of the island, had
almost dried up the Aliso, which crept, a mere rivulet in its stormy bed,
towards St. Florent and the sea.
Susini went to-the window of his little room and opened the wooden
shutters. His house is next to the church at Olmeta and faces north-west;
so that in the summer the evening sun glares across the valley into its
windows. He was no great scholar, and had but a poor record in the
archives of the college at Corte. Lory de Vasselot had written in a
hurry, and the letter was a long one. Susini read it once, and was
turning it to read again, when, glancing out of the window, he saw Denise
cross the Place, and go into the church.
“Ah!” he said aloud, “that will save me a long walk.”
Then he read the letter again, with curt nods of the head from time to
time, as if Lory were making points or giving minute instructions. He
folded the letter, placed it in the pocket of his cassock, and gave
himself a smart tap on the chest, as if to indicate that this was the
moment and himself the man. He was brisk and full of self-confidence,
managing, interfering, commanding, as all true Corsicans are. He took his
hat, hardly paused to blow the dust off it, and hurried out into the
sunlit Place. He went rather slowly up the church steps, however, for he
was afraid of Denise. Her youth, and something spring-like and mystic in
her being, disturbed him, made him uneasy and shy; which was perhaps his
reason for drawing aside the heavy leather curtain and going into the
church, instead of waiting for her outside. He preferred to meet her on
his own ground--in the chill air, heavy with the odour of stale incense,
and in the dim light of that place where he laid down, in blunt language,
his own dim reading of God's law.
He stood just within the curtain, looking at Denise, who was praying on
one of the low chairs a few yards away from him; and he was betrayed into
a characteristic impatience when she remained longer on her knees than he
(as a man) deemed necessary at that moment. He showed his impatience by
shuffling with his feet, and still Denise took no notice.
The abbé, by chance or instinct, slipped his hand within his cassock, and
drew out the letter which he had just received. The rustle of the thin
paper brought Denise to her feet in a moment, facing him.
“The French mail has arrived,” said the priest.
“Yes,” replied Denise, quickly, looking down at his hands.
They were alone in the church which, as a matter of fact, was never very
well attended; and the abbé, who had not that respect for God or man
which finds expression in a lowered voice, spoke in his natural tones.
“And I have news which affects you, mademoiselle.”
“I suppose that any news of France must do that,” replied Denise, with
some spirit.
“Of course--of course,” said the abbé, rubbing his chin with his
forefinger, and making a rasping sound on that shaven surface.
He reflected in silence for a moment, and Denise made, in her turn, a
hasty movement of impatience. She had only met the abbé once or twice;
and all that she knew of him was the fact that he had an imperious way
with him which aroused a spirit of opposition in herself.
“Well, Monsieur l'Abbé,” she said, “what is it?”
“It is that Mademoiselle Brun and yourself will have but two hours to
prepare for your departure from the Casa Perucca,” he answered. And he
drew out a large silver watch, which he consulted with the quiet air of a
commander.
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 cassock, and he blew
defiance at her through it. “I--who speak, take the liberty of making
this suggestion. I, the Abbé 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 abbé, 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 abbé, 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 Vasselot 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 Vasselot?”
The abbé 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 Vasselot attended to his own
affairs at the Château de Vasselot, and the interests he has there?”
replied Denise, turning away from his persistent eyes.
And the abbé'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 abbé, 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 passed 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 Marseilles; now it is on board the
Persévérance, 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 Vasselots.
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
passed her, and she received a curt bow and salutation from the Abbé
Susini who was in it. The carriage turned to the right at the crossroads,
and rattled down the hill in the direction of Vasselot. Denise's head
went an inch higher at the sight of it.
“I met the Abbé 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 Vasselot's command that we should leave the Casa
Perucca to-night for France. I suggested that the order should be given
to the Château de Vasselot instead of the Casa Perucca, and the abbé took
me at my word. He has gone to the Château de Vasselot 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 Vasselot 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 Mélide.”
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 de Mélide'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 God 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 Vasselot, and Henri de Mélide, 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
Vasselot.