The following day went by without any hostile demonstration. Both sides
kept on the defensive. Orso did not leave his house, and the door of
the Barricini dwelling remained closely shut. The five gendarmes who
had been left to garrison Pietranera were to be seen walking about the
square and the outskirts of the village, in company with the village
constable, the sole representative of the urban police force. The
deputy-mayor never put off his sash. But there was no actual symptom
of war, except the loopholes in the two opponents’ houses. Nobody but
a Corsican would have noticed that the group round the evergreen oak in
the middle of the square consisted solely of women.
At supper-time Colomba gleefully showed her brother a letter she had
just received from Miss Nevil.
“My dear Signorina Colomba,” it ran, “I learn with great pleasure,
through a letter from your brother, that your enmities are all at an
end. I congratulate you heartily. My father can not endure Ajaccio now
your brother is not there to talk about war and go out shooting with
him. We are starting to-day, and shall sleep at the house of your
kinswoman, to whom we have a letter. The day after to-morrow, somewhere
about eleven o’clock, I shall come and ask you to let me taste that
mountain _bruccio_ of yours, which you say is so vastly superior to what
we get in the town.
“Farewell, dear Signorina Colomba.
“Your affectionate
“LYDIA NEVIL.”
“Then she hasn’t received my second letter!” exclaimed Orso.
“You see by the date of this one that Miss Lydia must have already
started when your letter reached Ajaccio. But did you tell her not to
come?”
“I told her we were in a state of siege. That does not seem to me a
condition that permits of our receiving company.”
“Bah! These English people are so odd. The very last night I slept in
her room she told me she would be sorry to leave Corsica without having
seen a good _vendetta_. If you choose, Orso, you might let her see an
assault on our enemies’ house.”
“Do you know, Colomba,” said Orso, “Nature blundered when she made you a
woman. You’d have made a first-rate soldier.”
“Maybe. Anyhow, I’m going to make my _bruccio_.”
“Don’t waste your time. We must send somebody down to warn them and stop
them before they start.”
“Do you mean to say you would send a messenger out in such weather, to
have him and your letter both swept away by a torrent? How I pity those
poor bandits in this storm! Luckily they have good _piloni_ (thick cloth
cloaks with hoods). Do you know what you ought to do, Orso. If the storm
clears you should start off very early to-morrow morning, and get to our
kinswoman’s house before they leave it. That will be easy enough, for
Miss Lydia always gets up so late. You can tell them everything that
has happened here, and if they still persist in coming, why! we shall be
very glad to welcome them.”
Orso lost no time in assenting to this plan, and after a few moments’
silence, Colomba continued:
“Perhaps, Orso, you think I was joking when I talked of an assault on
the Barricini’s house. Do you know we are in force--two to one at the
very least? Now that the prefect has suspended the mayor, every man in
the place is on our side. We might cut them to pieces. It would be quite
easy to bring it about. If you liked, I could go over to the
fountain and begin to jeer at their women folk. They would come out.
Perhaps--they are such cowards!--they would fire at me through their
loopholes. They wouldn’t hit me. Then the thing would be done. They
would have begun the attack, and the beaten party must take its chance.
How is anybody to know which person’s aim has been true, in a scuffle?
Listen to your own sister, Orso! These lawyers who are coming will
blacken lots of paper, and talk a great deal of useless stuff. Nothing
will come of it all. That old fox will contrive to make them think they
see stars in broad midday. Ah! if the prefect hadn’t thrown himself in
front of Vincentello, we should have had one less to deal with.”
All this was said with the same calm air as that with which she had
spoken, an instant previously, of her preparations for making the
_bruccio_.
Orso, quite dumfounded, gazed at his sister with an admiration not
unmixed with alarm.
“My sweet Colomba,” he said, as he rose from the table, “I really am
afraid you are the very devil. But make your mind easy. If I don’t
succeed in getting the Barricini hanged, I’ll contrive to get the better
of them in some other fashion. ‘Hot bullet or cold steel’--you see I
haven’t forgotten my Corsican.”
“The sooner the better,” said Colomba, with a sigh. “What horse will you
ride to-morrow, Ors’ Anton’?”
“The black. Why do you ask?”
“So as to make sure he has some barley.”
When Orso went up to his room, Colomba sent Saveria and the herdsmen
to their beds, and sat on alone in the kitchen, where the _bruccio_ was
simmering. Now and then she seemed to listen, and was apparently waiting
very anxiously for her brother to go to bed. At last, when she thought
he was asleep, she took a knife, made sure it was sharp, slipped her
little feet into thick shoes, and passed noiselessly out into the
garden.
This garden, which was inclosed by walls, lay next to a good-sized piece
of hedged ground, into which the horses were turned--for Corsican horses
do not know what a stable means. They are generally turned loose into
a field, and left to themselves, to find pasture and shelter from cold
winds, as best they may.
Colomba opened the garden gate with the same precaution, entered the
inclosure, and whistling gently, soon attracted the horses, to whom she
had often brought bread and salt. As soon as the black horse came within
reach, she caught him firmly by the mane, and split his ear open with
her knife. The horse gave a violent leap, and tore off with that
shrill cry which sharp pain occasionally extorts from his kind. Quite
satisfied, Colomba was making her way back into the garden, when Orso
threw open his window and shouted, “Who goes there?” At the same time
she heard him cock his gun. Luckily for her the garden-door lay in the
blackest shadow, and was partly screened by a large fig-tree. She
very soon gathered, from the light she saw glancing up and down in her
brother’s room, that he was trying to light his lamp. She lost no time
about closing the garden-door, and slipping along the wall, so that the
outline of her black garments was lost against the dark foliage of
the fruit-trees, and succeeded in getting back into the kitchen a few
moments before Orso entered it.
“What’s the matter?” she inquired.
“I fancied I heard somebody opening the garden-door,” said Orso.
“Impossible! The dog would have barked. But let us go and see!”
Orso went round the garden, and having made sure that the outer door
was safely secured, he was going back to his room, rather ashamed of his
false alarm.
“I am glad, brother,” remarked Colomba, “that you are learning to be
prudent, as a man in your position ought to be.”
“You are training me well,” said Orso. “Good-night!”
By dawn the next morning Orso was up and ready to start. His style of
dress betrayed the desire for smartness felt by every man bound for the
presence of the lady he would fain please, combined with the caution
of a Corsican _in vendetta_. Over a blue coat, that sat closely to his
figure, he wore a small tin case full of cartridges, slung across his
shoulder by a green silk cord. His dagger lay in his side pocket, and
in his hand he carried his handsome Manton, ready loaded. While he was
hastily swallowing the cup of coffee Colomba had poured out for him,
one of the herdsmen went out to put the bridle and saddle on the black
horse. Orso and his sister followed close on his heels and entered the
field. The man had caught the horse, but he had dropped both saddle
and bridle, and seemed quite paralyzed with horror, while the horse,
remembering the wound it had received during the night, and trembling
for its other ear, was rearing, kicking, and neighing like twenty
fiends.
“Now then! Make haste!” shouted Orso.
“Ho, Ors’ Anton’! Ho, Ors’ Anton’!” yelled the herdsman. “Holy Madonna!”
and he poured out a string of imprecations, numberless, endless, and
most of them quite untranslatable.
“What can be the matter?” inquired Colomba. They all drew near to the
horse, and at the sight of the creature’s bleeding head and split ear
there was a general outcry of surprise and indignation. My readers must
know that among the Corsicans to mutilate an enemy’s horse is at once a
vengeance, a challenge, and a mortal threat. “Nothing but a bullet-wound
can expiate such a crime.”
Though Orso, having lived so long on the mainland, was not so sensitive
as other Corsicans to the enormity of the insult, still, if any
supporter of the Barricini had appeared in his sight at that moment, he
would probably have taken vengeance on him for the outrage he ascribed
to his enemies.
“The cowardly wretches!” he cried. “To avenge themselves on a poor
brute, when they dare not meet me face to face!”
“What are we waiting for?” exclaimed Colomba vehemently. “They come
here and brave us! They mutilate our horses! and we are not to make any
response? Are you men?”
“Vengeance!” shouted the herdsmen. “Let us lead the horse through the
village, and attack their house!”
“There’s a thatched barn that touches their Tower,” said old Polo
Griffo; “I’d set fire to it in a trice.”
Another man wanted to fetch the ladders out of the church steeple. A
third proposed they should break in the doors of the house with a heavy
beam intended for some house in course of building, which had been left
lying in the square. Amid all the angry voices Colomba was heard telling
her satellites that before they went to work she would give each man of
them a large glass of anisette.
Unluckily, or rather luckily, the impression she had expected to produce
by her own cruel treatment of the poor horse was largely lost on Orso.
He felt no doubt that the savage mutilation was due to one of his foes,
and he specially suspected Orlanduccio; but he did not believe that the
young man, whom he himself had provoked and struck, had wiped out
his shame by slitting a horse’s ear. On the contrary, this mean and
ridiculous piece of vengeance had increased Orso’s scorn for his
opponents, and he now felt, with the prefect, that such people were not
worthy to try conclusions with himself. As soon as he was able to make
himself heard, he informed his astonished partisans that they would have
to relinquish all their bellicose intentions, and that the power of the
law, which would shortly be on the spot, would amply suffice to avenge
the hurt done to a horse’s ear.
“I’m master here!” he added sternly; “and I insist on being obeyed. The
first man who dares to say anything more about killing or burning, will
quite possibly get a scorching at my hands! Be off! Saddle me the gray
horse!”
“What’s this, Orso?” said Colomba, drawing him apart. “You allow these
people to insult us? No Barricini would have dared to mutilate any beast
of ours in my father’s time.”
“I promise you they shall have reason to repent it. But it is gendarme’s
and jailer’s work to punish wretches who only venture to raise their
hands against brute beasts. I’ve told you already, the law will punish
them; and if not, you will not need to remind me whose son I am.”
“Patience!” answered Colomba, with a sigh.
“Remember this, sister,” continued Orso; “if I find, when I come back,
that any demonstration whatever has been made against the Barricini
I shall never forgive you.” Then, in a gentler tone, he added, “Very
possibly--very probably--I shall bring the colonel and his daughter back
with me. See that their rooms are well prepared, and that the breakfast
is good. In fact, let us make our guests as comfortable as we can. It’s
a very good thing to be brave, Colomba, but a woman must know how to
manage her household, as well. Come, kiss me, and be good! Here’s the
gray, ready saddled.”
“Orso,” said Colomba, “you mustn’t go alone.”
“I don’t need anybody,” replied Orso; “and I’ll promise you nobody shall
slit my ear.”
“Oh, I’ll never consent to your going alone, while there is a feud.
Here! Polo Griffo! Gian’ Franco! Memmo! Take your guns; you must go with
my brother.”
After a somewhat lively argument, Orso had to give in, and accept an
escort. From the most excited of the herdsmen he chose out those who had
been loudest in their desire to commence hostilities; then, after laying
fresh injunctions on his sister and the men he was leaving behind, he
started, making a detour, this time, so as to avoid the Barricinis’
dwelling.
They were a long way from Pietranera, and were travelling along at a
great pace, when, as they crossed a streamlet that ran into a marsh,
Polo Griffo noticed several porkers wallowing comfortably in the mud, in
full enjoyment at once of the warmth of the sun and the coolness of the
water. Instantly he took aim at the biggest, fired at its head, and shot
it dead. The dead creature’s comrades rose and fled with astonishing
swiftness, and though another herdsman fired at them they reached a
thicket and disappeared into it, safe and sound.
“Idiots!” cried Orso. “You’ve been taking pigs for wild boars!”
“Not a bit, Ors’ Anton’,” replied Polo Griffo. “But that herd belongs to
the lawyer, and I’ve taught him, now, to mutilate our horses.”
“What! you rascal!” shouted Orso, in a perfect fury. “You ape the vile
behaviour of our enemies! Be off, villains! I don’t want you! You’re
only fit to fight with pigs. I swear to God that if you dare follow me
I’ll blow your brains out!”
The herdsmen stared at each other, struck quite dumb. Orso spurred his
horse, galloped off, and was soon out of sight.
“Well, well!” said Polo Griffo. “Here’s a pretty thing. You devote
yourself to people, and then this is how they treat you. His father, the
colonel, was angry with you long ago, because you levelled your gun at
the lawyer. Great idiot you were, not to shoot. And now here is his son.
You saw what I did for him. And he talks about cracking my skull, just
as he would crack a gourd that lets the wine leak out. That’s what
people learn on the mainland, Memmo!”
“Yes, and if any one finds out it was you who killed that pig there’ll
be a suit against you, and Ors’ Anton’ won’t speak to the judges, nor
buy off the lawyer for you. Luckily nobody saw, and you have Saint Nega
to help you out.”
After a hasty conclave, the two herdsmen concluded their wisest plan
was to throw the dead pig into a bog, and this project they carefully
executed, after each had duly carved himself several slices out of the
body of this innocent victim of the feud between the Barricini and the
della Rebbia.