CHAPTER XXIV.
CE QUE FEMME VEUT.
“All nature is but art, unknown to thee! All chance, direction which thou canst not see.”
It rained all night with a semi-tropical enthusiasm. The autumn rains arelooked for in these latitudes at certain dates, and if by chance theyfail, the whole winter will be disturbed and broken. With sunrise,however, the clouds broke on the western side of the island, and from thesummit of the great Perucca rock the blue and distant sea was visiblethrough the grey confusion of mist and cloud. The autumn had been a dryone, so the whole mountain-side was clothed in shades of red and brown,rising from the scarlet of the blackberry leaves to the deep amber of thebare rock, where all vegetation ceased. The distant peeps of the valleyof Vasselot glowed blue and purple, the sea was a bright cobalt, andthrough the broken clouds the sun cast shafts of yellow gold andshimmering silver. The whole effect was dazzling, and such as dimNorthern eyes can scarce imagine.
Mademoiselle Brun, who had just risen from the table where she and Denisehad had their early breakfast of coffee and bread, was standing by thewindow that opened upon the verandah where old Mattei Perucca had passedso many hours of his life.
“One should build on this spot,” she began, “a convalescent home foratheists.”
She broke off, and staggered back. The room, the verandah, the wholeworld it seemed, was shaking and vibrating like a rickety steam-engine.For a moment the human senses were paralyzed by a deafening roar andrattle. Mademoiselle Brun turned to Denise, and for a time they clung toeach other; and then Denise, whose strong young arms half lifted hercompanion from the ground, gained the open window. She held there for amoment, and then staggered across the verandah and down the steps,dragging mademoiselle with her.
There was no question of speech, of thought, of understanding. Theymerely stood, holding to each other, and watching the house. Then asudden silence closed over the world, and all was still. Denise turnedand looked down into the valley, smiling beneath them in its brilliantcolouring. Her hand was at her throat as if she were choking.Mademoiselle, shaking in every limb, turned and sat down on a gardenseat. Denise would not sit, but stood shaking and swaying like a reed ina mistral. And yet each in her way was as brave a woman as could be foundeven in their own country.
Mademoiselle Brun leant forward, and held her head between her two hands,while she stared at the ground between her feet. At last speech caine toher, but not her natural voice.
“I suppose,” she said, passing her little shrivelled hand across hereyes, “that it was an earthquake.”
“No,” said Denise. “Look!” And she pointed with a shaking finger downtowards the river.
A great piece of the mountain-side, comprising half a dozen vineterraces, a few olive terraces, and a patch of pinewood, had fallenbodily down into the river-bed, leaving the slope a bare and scarifiedmass of rock and red soil. The little Guadelle river, a tributary of theAliso, was completely dammed. Perucca was the poorer by the completedisappearance of one of its sunniest slopes, but the house stood unhurt.
“No more will fall,” said Denise presently. “See; there is the barerock.”
Mademoiselle rose, and came slowly towards Denise. They were recoveringfrom their terror now. For at all events, the cause of it lay beforethem, and lacked the dread uncertainty of an earthquake. Mademoisellegave an odd laugh.
“It is the boundary-line between Perucca and Vasselot,” she said, “thathas fallen into the valley.”
Denise was thinking the same thought, and made no answer. The footpathfrom the château up to the Casa by which Gilbert had come on the day ofMattei Perucca’s death, by which he had also ridden to the château oneday, was completely obliterated. Where it had crept along the face of theslope, there now rose a bare red rock. There was no longer a short cutfrom the one house to the other. It made Perucca all the moreinaccessible.
“Curious,” whispered Mademoiselle Brun to herself, as she turned towardsthe house. She went indoors to get a hat, for the autumn sun was nowglaring down upon them.
When she came out again, Denise was sitting looking thoughtfully downinto the valley where had once stood the old château, now gone, to whichhad led this pathway, now wiped off the face of the earth.
“There is assuredly,” she said, without looking round, “a curse upon thiscountry.”
Which Seneca had thought eighteen hundred years before, and which thehistory of the islands steadily confirms.
Mademoiselle was drawing on her gloves, and carried her umbrella.
“I am going down the pathway to look at it all,” she said.
There was nothing to be done. When Nature takes things into her ownhands, men can only stand by and look. Denise was perhaps more shakenthan the smaller, tougher woman. She made no attempt to accompanymademoiselle, but sat in the shade of a mimosa tree, and watched herdescend into the valley, now appearing, now hidden, in the brushwood.
Mademoiselle Brun made her way to the spot where the pathway was suddenlycut short by the avalanche of rock and rubble and soil. It happened to bethe exact spot where Colonel Gilbert’s heavy horse had stumbled monthsbefore, where the footpath crossed the bed of a small mountain torrent. Afew loosened stones had come bowling down the slope, set free by thelandslip. These had fallen on to the pathway, and there shatteredthemselves into a thousand pieces. Mademoiselle stood among the _débris_.She looked down in order to make sure of her foothold, and somethingcaught her eye. She knelt down eagerly, and then, looking up, glancedround surreptitiously like a thief. She could not see the Casa Perucca.She was alone on this solitary mountain-side. Slowly she collected the_débris_ of the broken rock, which was mixed with a red powdery soil.
“Ciel!” she whispered, “Ciel! what fools we have all been!”
She rose from her knees with one clasped handful of rubble. Slowly andthoughtfully she climbed the hill again. On the terrace, where shearrived hot and tired, the widow Andrei met her. The woman had been tothe village on an errand, and had returned during mademoiselle’s absence.
“The Abbé Susini awaits you in the library,” she said. “He asked for youand not for mademoiselle, who has gone to her own garden.”
Mademoiselle hurried into the library. The arrival of the abbé at thismoment seemed providential, though the explanation of it was simpleenough.
“I came,” he said, looking at her keenly, “on a fool’s errand. I came toask whether the ladies were afraid.”
Mademoiselle gave a chilly smile.
“The ladies were not afraid, Monsieur l’Abbé,” she said. “They wereterrified--since you ask.”
She went to a side-table and brought a newspaper; for even in herexcitement she was scrupulously tidy. She laid it on the table in frontof the abbé, rather awkwardly with her left hand, and then, holding herright over the newspaper, she suddenly opened it, and let fall a littleheap of stones and soil. Some of the stones had a singular roundedappearance.
The abbé treated her movements with the kindly interest offered at theshrine of childhood or imbecility. It was evident that he supposed thatthe landslip had unhinged Mademoiselle Brun’s reason.
“What is that?” he asked soothingly, contemplating the mineral trophy.
“I think,” answered mademoiselle, “that it is the explanation.”
“The explanation of what, if one may inquire?”
“Of your precious colonel,” said mademoiselle. “That is gold, MonsieurL’Abbé. I have seen similar dirt in a museum in Paris.” She took up oneof the pebbles. “Scrape it with your knife,” she said, handing it to him.
The abbé obeyed her, and volunteered on his own account to bite it. Hehanded it back to her with the marks of his teeth on it, and one side ofit scraped clean showing pure gold. Then he walked pensively to thewindow, where he stood with his back turned to her in deep thought forsome minutes. At length he turned on his heel and looked at her.
“It began,” he said, holding up one finger and shaking it slowly fromside t
o side, which seemed to indicate that his hearer must be silent fora while, “long ago. I see it now.”
“Part of it,” corrected mademoiselle, inexorably.
“He must have discovered it two years ago when he first surveyed thiscountry for the proposed railway. I see now why that man from St. Florentshot Pietro Andrei on the high-road. Pietro Andrei was in the way, and alittle subtle revival of a forgotten vendetta secured his removal. I seenow whence came the anonymous letter intended to frighten Mattei Peruccaaway from here. It frightened him into the next world.”
“And I see now,” interrupted the refractory listener, “why Denisereceived an offer for the estate before she had become possessed of it,and an offer of marriage before we had been here a month. But he trippedand fell then,” she concluded grimly.
“And all for money,” said the abbé, contemptuously.
“Wait,” said mademoiselle--“wait till you have yourself been tempted. Somany fall. It must be greater than we think, that temptation. You and Iperhaps have never had it.”
“No,” replied the abbé, simply. “There has never been more than asou in my poor-box at the church. I see now,” continued Susini, “whohas been stirring up this old strife between the Peruccas and theVasselots--offering, as he was, to buy from one and the otheralternately. This _dirt_, mademoiselle, must lie on both estates.”
“It lies between the two.”
The priest was deep in thought, rubbing his stubbly chin with twofingers.
“I see so much now,” he said at length, “which I never understoodbefore.”
He turned towards the window, and looked down at the rocky slope with anew interest.
“There must be a great quantity of it,” he said reflectively. “He haswalked over so many obstacles to get to it, with his pleasant laugh.”
“He has walked over his own heart,” said mademoiselle, persistentlycontemplating the question from the woman’s point of view.
The priest moved impatiently.
“I was thinking of men’s lives,” he said. Then he turned and faced herwith a sudden gleam in his eye. “There is one thing yet unexplained--theburning of the Château de Vasselot. An empty house does not igniteitself. Explain me that.”
Mademoiselle shrugged her shoulders.
“That still remains to be explained,” she said. “In the mean time we mustact.”
“I know that--I know that,” he cried. “I have acted! I am acting! DeVasselot arrives in Corsica to-morrow night. A letter from him crossedthe message I sent to him by a special boat from St. Florent last night.”
“What brings him here?”
The abbé turned and looked at her with scorn.
“Bah!” he cried. “You know as well as I. It is the eyes of MademoiselleDenise.”
He took his hat and went towards the door.
“On Wednesday morning, if you do not see me before, at the office of thenotary, in the Boulevard du Palais at Bastia,” he said. “Where there willbe a pretty salad for Mister the Colonel, prepared for him by a woman anda priest--eh! Both your witnesses shall be there, mademoiselle--both.”
He broke off with a laugh and an upward jerk of the head.
“Ah! but he is a pretty scoundrel, your colonel.”
“He is not my colonel,” returned Mademoiselle Brun. “Besides, even he hashis good points. He is brave, and he is capable of an honest affection.”
The priest gave a scornful laugh.
“Ah! you women,” he cried. “You think that excuses everything. You do notknow that if it is worth anything it should make a man better instead ofworse. Otherwise it is not worth a snap of my finger--your honestaffection.”
And he came back into the room on purpose to snap his finger, in his rudeway, quite close to Mademoiselle Brun’s parchment face.