CHAPTER III.
A BY-PATH.
“L’intrigue c’est tromper son homme; L’habileté c’est faire qu’il se trompe lui-même.”
For an idle-minded man, Colonel Gilbert was early astir the next morning,and rode out of the town soon after sunrise, following the Vescovatoroad, and chatting pleasantly enough with the workers already on foot andin saddle on their way to the great plain of Biguglia, where men maylabour all day, though, if they spend so much as one night there, mustsurely die. For the eastern coast of Corsica consists of a series oflevel plains where malarial fever is as rife as in any African swamp, andthe traveller may ride through a fertile land where eucalyptus and palmgrow amid the vineyards, and yet no human being may live after sunset.The labourer goes forth to his work in the morning accompanied by hisdog, carrying the ubiquitous double-barrelled gun at full cock, andreturns in the evening to his mountain village, where, at all events, hemay breathe God’s air without fear.
The colonel turned to the right a few miles out, following the road whichleads straight to that mountain wall which divides all Corsica into the“near” and the “far” side--into two peoples, speaking a differentdialect, following slightly different customs, and only findingthemselves united in the presence of a common foe. The road mountssteadily, and this February morning had broken grey and cloudy, so thatthe colonel found himself in the mists that hang over these mountainsduring the spring months, long before he reached the narrow entrance tothe grim and soundless Lancone Defile. The heavy clouds had nestled downthe mountains, covering them like a huge thickness of wet cotton-wool.The road, which is little more than a mule-path, is cut in the face ofthe rock, and, far below, the river runs musically down to Lake Biguglia.The colonel rode alone, though he could perceive another traveller on thewinding road in front of him--a peasant in dark clothes, with a huge felthat, astride on a little active Corsican horse--sure of foot, quick andnervous, as fiery as the men of this strange land.
The defile is narrow, and the sun rarely warms the river that runsthrough the depths where the foot of man can never have trodden since Godfashioned this earth. Colonel Gilbert, it would appear, was accustomed tosolitude. Perhaps he had known it so well during his sojourn in thisisland of silence and loneliness, that he had fallen a victim to itsdangerous charms, and being indolent by nature, had discovered that it isless trouble to be alone than to cultivate the society of man. TheLancone Defile has to this day an evil name. It is not wise to passthrough it alone, for some have entered one end never to emerge at theother. Colonel Gilbert pressed his heavy charger, and gained rapidly onthe horseman in front of him. When he was within two hundred yards ofhim, at the highest part of the pass and through the narrow defile, hesought in the inner pocket of his tunic--for in those days Frenchofficers possessed no other clothes than their uniform--and produced aletter. He examined it, crumpled it between his fingers, and rubbed itacross his dusty knee so that it looked old and travel-stained at once.Then, with the letter in his hand, he put spurs to his horse and gallopedafter the horseman in front of him. The man turned almost at once in hissaddle, as if care rode behind him there.
“Hi! mon ami,” cried the colonel, holding the letter high above his head.“You have, I imagine, dropped this letter?” he added, as he approachedthe other, who now awaited him.
“Where? No; but I have dropped no letter. Where was it? On the road?”
“Down there,” answered the colonel, pointing back with his whip, andhanding over the letter with a final air as if it were no affair of his.
“Perucca,” read the man, slowly, in the manner of one having smalldealings with pens and paper, “Mattei Perucca--at Olmeta.”
“Ah,” said the colonel, lighting a cigarette. He had apparently nottroubled to read the address on the envelope.
In such a thinly populated country as Corsica, faces are of higher importthan in crowded cities, where types are mingled and individuality soonfades. The colonel had already recognized this man as of Olmeta--one ofthose, perhaps, who had stood smoking on the “Place” there when PietroAndrei crawled towards the fountain and failed to reach it.
“I am going to Olmeta,” said the man, “and you also, perhaps.”
“No; I am exercising my horse, as you see. I shall turn to the left atthe cross-roads, and go towards Murato. I may come round by Olmetalater--if I lose my way.”
The man smiled grimly. In Corsica men rarely laugh.
“You will not do that. You know this country too well for that. You arethe officer connected with the railway. I have seen you looking throughyour instruments at the earth, in the mountains, in the rocks, and downin the plains--everywhere.”
“It is my work,” answered the colonel, tapping with his whip the goldlace on his sleeve. “One must do what one is ordered.”
The other shrugged his shoulders, not seeming to think that necessary.They rode on in silence, which was only broken from time to time by thecolonel, who asked harmless questions as to the names of the mountainsummits now appearing through the riven clouds, or the course of therivers, or the ownership of the wild and rocky land. At the cross-roadsthey parted.
“I am returning to Olmeta,” said the peasant, as they neared thesign-post, “and will send that letter up to the Casa Perucca by one of mychildren. I wonder”--he paused, and, taking the letter from his jacketpocket, turned it curiously in his hand--“I wonder what is in it?”
The colonel shrugged his shoulders and turned his horse’s head. It was,it appeared, no business of his to inquire what the letter contained, orto care whether it be delivered or not. Indeed, he appeared to haveforgotten all about it.
“Good day, my friend--good day,” he said absent-mindedly.
And an hour later he rode up to the Casa Perucca, having approached thatancient house by a winding path from the valley below, instead of by thehigh-road from the Col San Stefano to Olmeta, which runs past its verygate. The Casa Perucca is rather singularly situated, and commands one ofthe most wonderful views in this wild land of unrivalled prospects. Thehigh-road curves round the lower slope of the mountains as round the baseof a sugar-loaf, and is cut at times out of the sheer rock, while alittle lower it is begirt by huge trees. It forms as it were a cornice,perched three thousand feet above the valley, over which it commands aview of mountain and bay and inlet, but never a house, never a church,and the farthest point is beyond Calvi, thirty miles away. There is butone spur--a vast buttress of fertile land thrown against the mountain, asa buttress may be thrown against a church tower.
The Casa Perucca is built upon this spur of land, and the Peruccaestate--that is to say, the land attached to the Casa (for property isheld in small tenures in Corsica)--is all that lies outside the road. Inthe middle ages the position would have been unrivalled, for it could beattacked from one side only, and doubtless the Genoese Bank of St. Georgemust have had bitter reckonings with some dead and forgotten rebel, whohad his stronghold where the Casa now stands. The present house isItalian in appearance--a long, low, verandahed house, built in two parts,as if it had at one time been two houses, and only connected later by around tower, now painted a darker colour than the adjacent buildings.There are occasional country houses like it to be found in Tuscany,notably on the heights behind Fiesole.
The wall defining the peninsula is ten feet high, and is built actuallyon the roadside, so that the Casa Perucca, with its great wooden gate,turns a very cold shoulder upon its poor neighbours. It is, as a matterof fact, the best house north of Calvi, and the site of it one of theoldest. Its only rival is the Chateau de Vasselot, which stands deserteddown in the valley a few miles to the south, nearer to the sea, andfarther out of the world, for no high-road passes near it.
Beneath the Casa Perucca, on the northern slope of the shoulder, theground falls away rapidly in a series of stony chutes, and to the southand west there are evidences of the land having once been laid out interraces in the distant days when Corsicans were content to till the mostfertile soil in Eur
ope--always excepting the Island of Majorca--but nowin the wane of the third empire, when every Corsican of any worth hadfound employment in France, there were none to grow vines or cultivatethe olive. There is a short cut up from the valley from the moulderingChateau de Vasselot, which is practicable for a trained horse. AndColonel Gilbert must have known this, for he had described a circle inthe wooded valley in order to gain it. He must also have been to the CasaPerucca many times before, for he rang the bell suspended outside thedoor built in the thickness of the southern wall, where a horseman wouldnot have expected to gain admittance. This door was, however, constructedwithout steps on its inner side, for Corsica has this in common withSpain, that no man walks where he can ride, so that steps are rarelybuilt where a gradual slope will prove more convenient.
There was something suggestive of a siege in the way in which the doorwas cautiously opened, and a man-servant peeped forth.
“Ah!” he said, with relief, “it is the Colonel Gilbert. Yes; monsieur maysee him, but no one else. Ah! But he is furious, I can tell you. He is inthe verandah--like a wild beast. I will take monsieur’s horse.”
Colonel Gilbert went through the palms and bamboos and orange-treesalone, towards the house; and there, walking up and down, and stoppingevery moment to glance towards the door, of which the bell still sounded,he perceived a large, stout man, clad in light tweed, wearing an oldstraw hat and carrying a thick stick.
“Ah!” cried Perucca, “so you have heard the news. And you have come, Ihope, to apologize for your miserable France. It is thus that you governCorsica, with a Civil Service made up of a parcel of old women and youngcounter-jumpers! I have no patience with your prefectures and your youngmen with flowing neck-ties and kid gloves. Are we a girls’ school to begoverned thus? And you--such great soldiers! Yes, I will admit that theFrench are great soldiers, but you do not know how to rule Corsica. Atight hand, colonel. Holy name of thunder!” And he stamped his foot witha decisiveness that made the verandah tremble.
The colonel laughed pleasantly.
“They want some men of your type,” he said.
“Ah!” cried Perucca, “I would rule them, for they are cowards; they areafraid of me. Do you know, they had the impertinence to send one of theirthreatening letters to poor Andrei before they shot him. They sent him asheet of paper with a cross drawn on it. Then I knew he was done for.They do not send that _pour rire_.”
He stopped short, and gave a jerk of the head. There was somewhere in hisfierce old heart a cord that vibrated to the touch of these rude mountaincustoms; for the man was a Corsican of long descent and pure blood. Ofsuch the fighting nations have made good soldiers in the past, and evenRome could not make them slaves.
“Or you could do it,” went on Perucca, with a shrewd nod, looking at himbeneath shaggy brows. “The velvet glove--eh? That would surprise them,for they have never felt the touch of one. You, with your laugh and idleways, and behind them the perception--the perception of the devil--or awoman.”
The colonel had drawn forward a basket chair, and was leaning back in itwith crossed legs, and one foot swinging.
“I? Heaven forbid! No, my friend; I require too little. It is only thediscontented who get on in the world. But, mind you, I would not mindtrying on a small scale. I have often thought I should like to buy alittle property on this side of the island, and cultivate it as they doup in Cap Corse. It would be an amusement for my exile, and one couldperhaps make the butter for one’s bread--green Chartreuse instead ofyellow--eh?”
He paused, and seeing that the other made no reply, continued in the samecareless strain.
“If you or one of the other proprietors on this side of the mountainswould sell--perhaps.”
But Perucca shook his head resolutely.
“No; we should not do that. You, who have had to do with the railway,must know that. We will let our land go to rack and ruin, we will starveit and not cultivate it, we will let the terraces fall away after therains, we will live miserably on the finest soil in Europe--we maystarve, but we won’t sell.”
Gilbert did not seem to be listening very intently. He was watching theyoung bamboos now bursting into their feathery new green, as they wavedto and fro against the blue sky. His head was slightly inclined to oneside, his eyes were contemplative.
“It is a pity,” he said, after a pause, “that Andrei did not have abetter knowledge of the insular character. He need not have been inOlmeta churchyard now.”
“It is a pity,” rapped out Perucca, with an emphatic stick on the woodenfloor, “that Andrei was so gentle with them. He drove the cattle off theland. I should have driven them into my own sheds, and told the owners tocome and take them. He was too easy-going, too mild in his manners. Lookat me--they don’t send me their threatening letters. You do not find anycrosses chalked on my door--eh?”
And indeed, as he stood there, with his square shoulders, his erectbearing and fiery, dark eyes, Mattei Perucca seemed worthy of the name ofhis untamed ancestors, and was not a man to be trifled with.
“Eh--what?” he asked of the servant who had approached timorously,bearing a letter on a tray. “For me? Something about Andrei, from thosefools of gendarmes, no doubt.”
And he tore open the envelope which Colonel Gilbert had handed to thepeasant a couple of hours earlier in the Lancone Defile. He fixed hiseye-glasses upon his nose, clumsily, with one hand, and then unfolded theletter. It was merely a sheet of blank paper, with a cross drawn upon it.
His face suddenly blazed red with anger. His eyes glared at the paperthrough the glasses placed crookedly upon his nose.
“Holy name!” he cried. “Look at this--this to _me_! The dogs!”
The colonel looked at the paper with a shrug of the shoulders.
“You will have to sell,” he suggested lightly; and glancing up atPerucca’s face, saw something there that made him leap to his feet.“Hulloa! Here,” he said quickly--“sit down.”
And as he forced Perucca into the chair, his hands were already at theold man’s collar. And in five minutes, in the presence of Colonel Gilbertand two old servants, Mattei Perucca died.