CHAPTER VIII.
AT VASSELOT.
“The life unlived, the deed undone, the tear unshed ... not judging those, who judges right?”
It was the father who spoke first.
“Shut that shutter, my friend,” he said. “It has not been opened forthirty years.”
He had an odd habit of jerking his head upwards and sideways with raisedeyebrows. It would appear that a trick of thus deploring some unavoidablemisfortune had crystallized itself, as it were, into a habit by long use.And the old man rarely spoke now without this upward jerk.
Lory closed the shutter and followed his father into an adjoining room--asmall, round apartment lighted by a skylight and impregnated withtobacco-smoke. The carpet was worn into holes in several places, and theboards beneath were polished by the passage of smooth soles. Lory glancedat his father’s feet, which were encased in carpet slippers several sizestoo large for him, bought at a guess in the village shop.
Here again the two men stood and looked at each other. And again it wasthe father who broke the silence.
“My son,” he said, half to himself; “and a soldier. Your mother was a badwoman, mon ami. And I have lived thirty years in this room,” he concludedsimply.
“Name of God!” exclaimed Lory. “And what have you done all this time?”
“Carnations,” replied the old man, gravely. “There is still daylight.Come; I will show you. Yes; carnations.”
As he spoke he turned and opened the door behind him. It led out to asmall terrace no larger than a verandah, and every inch of earth wasoccupied by the pale green of carnation-spikes. Some were budding, somein bloom. But there was not a flower among them at which a moderngardener would not have laughed aloud. And there were tears in Lory deVasselot’s eyes as he looked at them.
The father stood, jerking his head and looking at his son, waiting hisverdict.
“Yes,” was the son’s reply at last; “yes--very pretty.”
“But to-night you cannot see them,” said the old man, earnestly.“To-morrow morning--we shall get up early, eh?”
“Yes,” said Lory, slowly; and they went back into the little windowlessroom.
“We will get up early,” said the count, “to see the pinks. This cursedmistral beats them to pieces, but I have no other place to grow them. Itis the only spot that is not overlooked by Perucca.”
He spoke slowly and indifferently, as if his spirit had been bleached,like his face, by long confinement. He had lost his grip of the world andof human interests. As he looked at his son, his black eyes had a sort ofirresponsible vagueness in their glance.
“Tell me,” said Lory, gently, at length, as if he were speaking to achild; “why have you done this?”
“Then you did not know that I was alive?” inquired his father in return,with an uncanny, quiet laugh, as he sat down.
“No.”
“No; no one knows that--no one but the Abbé Susini and Jean there. Yousaw Jean as you came in. He recognized you or he would not have let youin; for he is quick with his gun. He shot a man seven years ago--one ofPerucca’s men, of course, who was creeping up through the tamarisk trees.I do not know what he came seeking, but he got more from Jean than helooked for. Jean was a boy when your mother went to France, and he wasleft in charge of the château. For they all thought that I had gone toFrance with your mother, and perhaps the police searched France for me; Ido not know. There is a warrant out against me still, though the paper itis written on must be yellow enough after thirty years.”
As he spoke he carefully drew up his trousers, which were of corduroy,like Jean’s; indeed, the Count de Vasselot was dressed like apeasant--but no rustic dress could conceal the tale told by the smallenergetic head, the clean-cut features. It was obvious that his thoughtswere more concerned in his immediate environments--in the care, forinstance, to preserve his trousers from bagging at the knee--than he wasin the past. He had the curious, slow touch and contemplative manner ofthe prisoner.
“Yes; Jean was a boy when he first came here, and now he is a grey-hairedman, as you see. He picks the olives and earns a little by selling them.Besides, I provided myself with money long ago, before--before I died. Ithought I might live long, and I have, for thirty years, like a tree.”
Which was nearly true, for his life must have been somewhere midwaybetween the human and the vegetable.
“But why, my God!” cried Lory, impatiently, “why have you done it?”
“Why?” echoed the count, in his calm and suppressed way. “Why? Because Iam a Corsican, and am not to be frightened into leaving the country by aparcel of Peruccas. They are no better than the Luccans you see workingin the road, and the miserable Pisans who come in the winter to build theterraces. They are no Corsicans, but come from Pisa.”
“But if they thought you were dead, what satisfaction could there be inliving on here?”
But the count only looked at his son in silence. He did not seem tofollow the hasty argument. He had the placid air of a child or a very oldman, who will not argue.
“Besides, Mattei Perucca is dead.”
“So they say. So Jean tells me. I have not seen the abbé lately. He doesnot dare to come more often than once in three months--four times a year.Mattei Perucca dead!” He shook his head with the odd, upward jerk and theweary smile. “I should like to see his carcass,” he said.
Then, after a pause, he went back to his original train of thought.
“We are different,” he said. “We are Corsicans. It was only when theBonapartes changed their name to a French one that your great-grandfatherGallicized ours. We are not to be frightened away by the Peruccas.”
“But since he is dead--” said Lory, with an effort to be patient.
He was beginning to realize now that it was all real and not a dream,that this was the Château de Vasselot, and this was his father--thislittle, vague, quiet man, who seemed to exist and speak as if he wereonly half alive.
“He may be,” was the answer; “but that will make no difference, since forone adherent that we have the Peruccas have twenty. There are a thousandmen between Cap Corse and Balagna who, if I went outside this door andwas recognized, would shoot me like a rat.”
“But why?”
“Because they are of Perucca’s clan, my friend,” replied the count, witha shrug of the shoulder.
“But still I ask why?” persisted Lory.
And the count spread out his thin white hands with a gesture of patientindifference.
“Well, of course I shot Andrei Perucca--the brother--thirty years ago. Weall know that. That is ancient history.”
Lory looked at the little white-haired, placid man, and said no word. Itwas perhaps the wisest thing to do. When you have nothing to say, saynothing.
“But he has had his revenge--that Mattei Perucca,” said the count atlength, in a tone of careless reminiscence--“by living in that house allthese years, and, so they tell me, by making a small fortune out of thevines. The house is not his, the land is not his. They are mine. Only heand I knew it, and to prove it I should have to come to life. Besides,what is land in this country, unless you till it with a spade in one handand a gun in the other?”
Lory de Vasselot leant forward in his chair.
“But now is the time to act,” he said. “I can act if you will not.I can make use of the law.” “The law,” answered his father, calmly. “Doyou think that you could get a jury in Bastia to give you a verdict? Doyou think you could find a witness who would dare to appear in yourfavour? No, my friend. There is no law in this country, except that;” and he pointed to a gun in the corner of the room, an old-fashionedmuzzle-loader, with which he had had the law of Andrei Perucca thirtyyears before.
“But now that there is no Perucca left the clan will cease to exist,” said Lory.
“Not at all,” replied the father. “The inheritor of the estate, whoeverit is, will become the head of the clan, and things will be as they werebefore. They tell me it is a woman named Den
ise Lange.”
Lory gave a start. He had forgotten Denise Lange, and all that world ofParis fad and fashion.
“And the women are always the worst,” concluded his father.
They sat in silence for some moments. And then the count spoke again inhis odd, detached way, as if he were contemplating his environments fromafar.
“There was a man in Sartene who had an enemy. He was a shoemaker, andcould therefore work at his trade indoors. He never crossed his thresholdfor sixteen years. One day they told him his enemy was dead, that thefuneral was for the same afternoon. It passed his door, and when it hadgone by, he stepped out, after sixteen, years, to watch it, and--Paff! Hetwisted himself round as he writhed on the ground, and there was hisenemy, laughing, with the smoke still at the muzzle. The funeral was atrick. No; I shall not believe that Mattei Perucca is dead until the AbbéSusini tells me that he has seen the body. Not that it would make anydifference. I should not go outside the door. I am accustomed to thislife now.”
He sat with his hands idly crossed on his knee, and looked at nothing inparticular. Nothing could arouse him now from his apathy, except perhapsthe culture of carnations--certainly not the arrival of the son whom hehad never seen. He had that air of waiting without expectancy which isassuredly the dungeon mark, and a moral mourning worn for dead Hope.
Lory contemplated him as a strange old man who interested him despitehimself. There was pity, but nothing filial in his feelings. For filiallove only grows out of propinquity and a firm respect which must keeppace with the growing demands of a daily increasing comprehension.
“Why did you come?” asked the count, suddenly.
It seemed as if his mind lay hidden under the accumulated _débris_ of theyears, as the old château perhaps lay hidden beneath that smooth turfwhich only grows over ruins.
“I do not know,” answered Lory, thoughtfully. Then he turned in his quickway, and looked at his father with a smile. “Perhaps it was the good Godwho put the idea into my head, for it came quite suddenly. We shall growaccustomed to each other, and then we may find perhaps that it was a goodthing that I came.”
The count looked at him with rather a puzzled air, as if he did not quiteunderstand.
“Yes,” he said at length--“yes; perhaps so. I thought it likely that youwould come. Do you mean to stay?”
“I do not know. I have not thought yet. I have had no time to think. Ionly know I am hungry. Perhaps Jean will get me something to eat.”
“I have not dined yet,” said the count, simply. “Yes; we will dine.”
He rose, and, going to the door, called Jean, who came, and a whisperedconsultation ensued. From out of the _débris_ of his mind the countseemed to have unearthed the fact that he was a gentleman, and as suchwas called upon to exercise an unsparing hospitality. He rather impededthan helped the taciturn man, who seemed to be gardener and servant allin one, and who now prepared the table, setting thereon linen and glassand silver of some value. There was excellent wine, and over the simplemeal the father and son, in a jerky, explosive way, made merry. For Lorywas at heart a Frenchman, and the French know, better than any, how neartogether tears and laughter must ever be, and have less difficulty insnatching a smile from sad environments than other men.
It was only as he finally cleared the table that Jean broke his habitualsilence.
“The moon is up,” he said to the count, and that was all.
The old man rose at once, and went to a window, which had hitherto beenshuttered and barred.
“I sometimes look out,” he said, “when there is a moon.”
With odd, slow movements he opened the shutter and window, and, turning,invited Lory by a jerk of the head to come and look. The moon, which musthave been at the full, was behind the château, and therefore invisible.Before them, in a framework of giant pines that have no match in Europe,lay a panorama of rolling plain and gleaming river. Far away towardsCalvi and the south, range after range of rugged mountain melted into adistance, where the snow-clad summits of Cinto and Grosso stoodmajestically against the sky. The clouds had vanished. It was almosttwilight under the southern moon. To the right the sea lay shimmering.
“I did not know that there was anything like it in Europe,” said Lory,after a long pause.
“There is nothing like it,” answered his father, gravely, “in the world.”
Father and son were still standing at the open window, when Jean camehurriedly into the room.
“It is the abbé,” he said, and went out again. The count stepped downfrom the raised window recess, and turned up the lamp, which he hadlowered. Lory paused to close the shutter, and as he did so the AbbéSusini came into the room without looking towards the window, which wasnear the door by which he entered, without, therefore, seeing Lory. Hehurried into the room, and stopped dead, facing the count. He threw outone finger, and pointed at his interlocutor as he spoke, in his quickdramatic way.
“I have just seen a man from Calvi. One landed there this morning whom herecognized. It could only have been your son. If one recognizes him,another may. Is the boy mad to return thus--”
He broke off, and made a step nearer, peering into the count’s face.
“You know something. I see it in your face. You know where he is.”
“He is there,” said the count, pointing over the priest’s shoulder.
“Then God bless him,” said the Abbé Susini, turning on his heel.