THE ABBÉ'S SALAD.
“He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.”
“And mademoiselle's witnesses?” inquired the notary, when he had
accommodated the ladies with chairs.
“Will arrive at ten o'clock,” answered Mademoiselle Brun, with a glance
at the notary's clock.
It was three minutes to ten. The notary was a young man, with smooth hair
brushed straight back from a high forehead. He was one of those men who
look clever, which, in some respects, is better than being clever. For a
man who really has brains usually perceives his own limitations, while he
who looks clever, and is not, has that boundless faith in himself which
serves to carry men very far in a world which is too lazy to get up and
kick impertinence as it passes.
The room had that atmosphere of mixed stuffiness and cigarette smoke
which the traveller may sample in any French post-office. It is also the
official air of a court of justice or a public bureau of any sort in
France. There was a blank space on the wall, where a portrait of the
emperor had lately hung. The notary would fill it by-and-by with a
president or a king, or any face of any man who was for the moment in
authority. Behind him, on the wall, was suspended a photograph of an
elderly lady--his mother. It established confidence in the hearts of
female clients, and reminded persons with daughters that this rising
lawyer had as yet no wife.
The notary's bow to Mademoiselle Brun when she was seated was
condescending, which betrayed the small fact that he was not so clever as
he looked. To Denise he endeavoured to convey in one graceful inclination
from the waist the deep regard of a legal adviser, struggling nobly to
keep in bounds the overwhelming admiration of a man of heart and (out of
office hours) of spirit. Gilbert, who had already exchanged greetings
with the ladies, was leaning against the window, playing idly with the
blind-cord. The notary's office was on the third floor. The colonel could
not, therefore, see the pavement without leaning out, and the window was
shut. Mademoiselle Brun noted this as she sat with crossed hands. She
also remembered that the Hotel Clément was on the same side of the
Boulevard du Palais as the house in which she found herself.
The notary had intended to be affable, but he dimly perceived that Denise
was what he tersely called in his own mind _grande dame_, and was wise
enough to busy himself with his papers in silence. He also suspected that
Colonel Gilbert was a friend of these ladies, but he did not care to take
advantage of his privilege in the presence of a fourth person, which left
an unpleasant flavour on the palate of the smooth-haired lawyer. He
glanced involuntarily at the blank space on the wall, and thought of the
Republic.
“I have prepared a deed of sale,” he said, in a formal voice, “which is
as binding on both sides as if the full purchase-money had been exchanged
for the title-deeds. All that will remain to be done after the present
signature will be the usual legal formalities between notaries.
Mademoiselle has but to sign here.” And he indicated a blank space on the
document.
Mademoiselle Brun was looking at the timepiece on the notary's wall. The
town clocks were striking the hour. A knock at the door made the notary
turn, with his quill pen still indicating the space for Denise's
signature. It was the dingy clerk who sat in a sort of cage in the outer
office. After opening the door he stood aside, and Susini came in with
glittering eyes and a defiant chin. There was a pause, and Lory de
Vasselot limped into the room after him. He was smiling and pleasant as
he always was; even, his friends said, on the battlefield.
He looked at Denise, met her eyes for a moment and turned to bow with
grave politeness to Gilbert. It was, oddly enough, the colonel who
brought forward a chair for the wounded man.
“Sit down,” he said curtly.
“These are my witnesses, Monsieur le Notaire,” said Mademoiselle Brun.
The abbé was rubbing his thin, brown hands together, and contemplating
the notary's table as a greedy man might contemplate a laden board. The
notary himself was looking from one to the other. There was something in
the atmosphere which he did not understand. It was, perhaps, the presence
in the room of a cleverer head than his own, and he did not know upon
whose shoulders to locate it. Denise, whose nature was frank and
straightforward, was looking at Lory--looking him reflectively up and
down--as a mother might look at a son of whose health she refrains from
asking. Mademoiselle was gazing at the blank space on the wall, and the
colonel was looking at mademoiselle with an odd smile.
He was standing in the embrasure of the window, and at this moment
glanced at his watch. The notary looked at him inquiringly; for his
attitude seemed to indicate that he expected some one else. And at this
moment the music of a military band burst upon their ears. The colonel
looked over his shoulder down into the street. He had his watch in his
hand. De Vasselot rose instantly and went to the window. He stood beside
the colonel, and those in the notary's office could see that they were
talking quickly and gravely together, though the music drowned their
voices. Behind them, on the notary's table, lay their differences; in
front lay that which bound them together with the strongest ties between
man and man--their honour and the honour of France. The music died away,
followed by the diminishing sound of steady feet. All in the room were
silent for a few moments, until the two soldiers turned from the window
and came towards the table.
Then the notary spoke:--
“Mademoiselle has but to sign here,” he repeated.
He indicated the exact spot, dipped the pen in the ink, and handed it to
Denise. She took the pen and half turned towards Lory, as if she knew
that he would be the next to speak and wished him to understand once and
for all that he would speak in vain.
“Mademoiselle cannot sign there,” he said.
Denise dipped the pen into the ink again, but she did not sign.
“Why not?” she asked without looking round, her hand still resting on the
paper.
“Because,” answered Lory, addressing her directly, “Perucca is not yours
to sell. It is mine.”
Denise turned and looked straight at Colonel Gilbert. She had never been
quite sure of him. He had never appeared to her to be quite in earnest.
His face showed no surprise now. He had known this all along, and did not
even take the trouble to feign astonishment. The notary gave a polite,
incredulous, legal laugh.
“That is an old story, Monsieur le Comte.”
At which point Susini so far forgot himself as to make use of a rude
local method of showing contempt in pretending to spit upon the notary's
floor.
“It is as old as you please,” answered Lory, half turning towards
Gilbert, who in his turn made a gesture in the direction of the notary,
as if to say that the lawyer had received his instructions and knew how
to act.
“Of course,” said the notary in a judicial voice, “we are aware that the
conveyance of the Perucca estate by the late Count de Vasselot to the
late Mattei Perucca lacked formality; many conveyances in Corsica lacked
formality in the beginning of the century. In many cases possession is
the only title-deed. We can point to a possession lasting over many
years, which carries the more weight from the fact that the late count
and his neighbour Monsieur Perucca were notoriously on bad terms. If the
count had been able, he would no doubt have evicted from Perucca a
neighbour so unsympathetic.”
“You seem,” said de Vasselot, quickly, “to be prepared for my objection.”
The notary spread out his hands in a gesture that conveyed assent.
“And if I had not come?”
“I regret to say, Monsieur le Comte, that your presence here bears little
upon the transaction in hand. You are only a witness. Mademoiselle will
no doubt complete the document now.”
And the notary again handed Denise a pen.
“Hardly upon a title-deed which consists of possession only.”
“Pardon me, but you have even less,” said the notary. “If I may remind
you of it, you have probably no title-deeds to Vasselot itself since the
burning of the château.”
“There you are wrong,” answered Lory, quietly. And the abbé snapped both
fingers and thumbs in a double-barrelled _feu de joie_.
“The count may have possessed title-deeds before his death, thirty years
ago,” said the notary, with that polite patience in argument which the
certain winner alone can compass.
Then the colonel's quiet voice broke into the conversation. His manner
was politely indifferent, and seemed to plead for peace at any cost.
“I should much like to be done with these formalities,” he said--“if I
may be allowed to suggest a little promptitude. The troops are moving, as
you have heard. In an hour's time I sail for Marseilles with these men.
Let us finish with the signatures.”
“Let us, on the contrary, delay signing until the war is over,” suggested
Lory.
“You cannot bring your father to life again, monsieur, and you cannot
manufacture title-deeds. Your father, the notary tells us, has been dead
thirty years, and the Château de Vasselot has been burnt with all the
papers in it. You have no case at all.”
Lory was unbuttoning his tunic, awkwardly with one hand.
“But the notary is wrong,” he said. “The Château de Vasselot was burnt,
it is true, but here are the title-deeds. My father did not die thirty
years ago, but yesterday morning, in my arms.”
Gilbert smiled gently. His innate politeness obviously forbade him to
laugh at this absurd story.
“Then where has he been all these years?” he inquired with a
good-humoured patience.
“In the Château de Vasselot.”
There was a dead silence for a moment, broken at length by a movement on
the part of Mademoiselle Brun. In her abrupt way she struck herself on
the forehead as a fool.
“Yes,” testified Susini, brusquely, “that is where he has been.”
Denise remembered ever afterwards, that Lory did not look at her at this
moment of his complete justification. It was now, and only for a moment,
that Colonel Gilbert lost his steady imperturbability. From the time that
Lory de Vasselot entered the room he had known that he had inevitably
failed. From that instant the only question in his mind had been that of
how much his enemies knew. It could not be chance that brought de
Vasselot, and the Abbé Susini, and Mademoiselle Brun together to meet him
at that time. He had been out-manoeuvred by some one of the three, and he
shrewdly suspected by whom. There was nothing to do but face it--and he
faced it with a calm audacity. He simply ignored mademoiselle's blinking
glance. He met de Vasselot's quick eyes without fear, and smiled coolly
in the abbé's fiery face. But when Denise turned and looked at him with
direct and honest eyes, his own wavered, and for a brief instant he saw
himself as Denise saw him--the bitterest moment of his life. The esteem
of the many is nothing compared to the esteem of one.
In a moment he recovered himself and turned towards Lory with his lazy
smile.
“Even to a romance there must be some motive,” he said. “One naturally
wonders why your father should allow his enemy to keep possession of a
house and estate which were not his, and why he himself should remain
concealed in the Château de Vasselot.”
“That is the affair of my father. There was that between him and Mattei
Perucca, which neither you nor I, monsieur, have any business to
investigate. There are the title-deeds. You have a certain right to look
at them. You are therefore at liberty to satisfy yourself that you cannot
buy the Perucca estate from Mademoiselle Lange, because it does not
belong to Mademoiselle Lange, and never has belonged to her! A fact of
which you may have been aware.”
“You seem to know much.”
“I know more than you suspect,” answered de Vasselot. “I know, for
instance, your reason for desiring to buy land on the western slope of
Monte Torre.”
“Ah?”
By way of reply, de Vasselot laid upon the table in front of Colonel
Gilbert, the nugget no larger than a pigeon's egg, that Mademoiselle Brun
had found in the _débris_ of the landslip. The colonel looked at it, and
gave a short laugh. He was too indolent a man to feel an acute curiosity.
But there were many questions he would have liked to ask at that moment.
He knew that de Vasselot was only the spokesman of another who
deliberately remained in the background. Lory had not found the gold, he
had not pieced together with the patience of a clocksmith the wheels
within wheels that Colonel Gilbert had constructed through the careful
years. The whole story had been handed to him whom it most concerned,
complete in itself like a barrister's brief, and de Vasselot was not
setting it forth with much skill, but bluntly, simply and generously like
a soldier.
“Surely I have said enough,” were his next words, and it is possible that
the colonel and Mademoiselle Brun alone understood the full meaning of
the words.
“Yes, monsieur,” said Gilbert at length, “I think you have.”
And he moved towards the door in an odd, sidelong way. He had taken only
three steps, when he swung round on his heel with a sharp exclamation.
The Abbé Susini, with blazing eyes--half mad with rage--had flown at him
like a terrier.
“Ah!” said the colonel, catching him by the two wrists, and holding him
at arm's length with steady northern nerve and muscle. “I know you
Corsicans too well to turn my back to one.”
He threw the abbé back, so that the little man fell heavily against the
table; Susini recovered himself with the litheness of a wild animal, but
when he flew at the closed door again it was Denise who stood in front of
it.