Colomba Part 18

"Ah! That must be my brother at last!" said Colomba, rising from her chair. But when she saw Chilina astride on Orso's horse--"My brother is dead!" she cried, in a heart-rending voice.

The colonel dropped his gla.s.s. Miss Lydia screamed. They all rushed to the door of the house. Before Chilina could jump off her steed, she was s.n.a.t.c.hed up like a feather by Colomba, who held her so tight that she almost choked her. The child understood her agonized look, and her first words were those of the chorus in Oth.e.l.lo: "He lives!" Colomba's grasp relaxed, and nimbly as a kitten Chilina dropped upon the ground.

"The others?" queried Colomba hoa.r.s.ely. Chilina crossed herself with her first and middle finger. A deep flush instantly replaced the deadly pallor of Colomba's face. She cast one fierce look at the Barricini dwelling, and then, with a smile, she turned to her guests.

"Let us go in and drink our coffee," she said.

The story the bandit's Iris had to tell was a long one. Her narrative, translated literally into Italian by Colomba, and then into English by Miss Nevil, wrung more than one oath from the colonel, more than one sigh from the fair Lydia. But Colomba heard it all unmoved. Only she twisted her damask napkin till it seemed as if she must tear it in pieces. She interrupted the child, five or six times over, to make her repeat again that Brandolaccio had said the wound was not dangerous, and that he had seen many worse. When she had finished her tale, Chilina announced that Orso earnestly begged he might be sent writing materials, and that he desired his sister would beseech a lady who might be staying in his house not to depart from it, until she had received a letter from him.

"That is what was worrying him most," the child added; "and even after I had started he called me back, to bid me not forget the message. It was the third time he had given it to me." When Colomba heard of her brother's injunction she smiled faintly, and squeezed the fair Englishwoman's hand. That young lady burst into tears, and did not seem to think it advisable to translate that particular part of the story to her father.

"Yes, my dear," cried Colomba, kissing Miss Nevil. "You shall stay with me, and you shall help us."

Then, taking a pile of old linen out of a cupboard, she began to cut it up, to make lint and bandages. Any one who saw her flas.h.i.+ng eyes, her heightened colour, her alternate fits of anxiety and composure, would have found it hard to say whether distress at her brother's wound, or delight at the extinction of her foes, were most affecting her. One moment she was pouring out the colonel's coffee, and telling him how well she made it, the next she was setting Miss Lydia and Chilina to work, exhorting them to sew bandages, and roll them up. Then, for the twentieth time, she would ask whether Orso's wound was very painful. She constantly broke off her own work to exclaim to the colonel:

"Two such cunning men, such dangerous fellows! And he alone, wounded, with only one arm! He killed the two of them! What courage, colonel!

Isn't he a hero? Ah, Miss Nevil! How good it is to live in a peaceful country like yours! I'm sure you did not really know my brother till now! I said it--'The falcon will spread his wings!' You were deceived by his gentle look! That's because with you, Miss Nevil--Ah! if he could see you working for him now! My poor Orso!"

Miss Lydia was doing hardly any work, and could not find a single word to say. Her father kept asking why n.o.body went to lay a complaint before a magistrate. He talked about a coroner's inquest, and all sorts of other proceedings quite unknown to Corsican economy. And then he begged to be told whether the country house owned by that worthy Signor Brandolaccio, who had brought succour to the wounded man, was very far away from Pietranera, and whether he could not go there himself, to see his friend.

And Colomba replied, with her usual composure, that Orso was in the _maquis_; that he was being taken care of by a bandit; that it would be a great risk for him to show himself until he was sure of the line the prefect and the judges were likely to take; and, finally, that she would manage to have him secretly attended by a skilful surgeon.

"Above all things, colonel," she added, "remember that you heard the four shots, and that you told me Orso fired last."

The colonel could make neither head nor tail of the business, and his daughter did nothing but heave sighs and dry her eyes.

The day was far advanced, when a gloomy procession wended its way into the village. The bodies of his two sons were brought home to Lawyer Barricini, each corpse thrown across a mule, which was led by a peasant.

A crowd of dependents and idlers followed the dreary _cortege_. With it appeared the gendarmes, who always came in too late, and the deputy-mayor, throwing up his hands, and incessantly repeating, "What will Signor Prefetto say!" Some of the women, among them Orlanduccio's foster-mother, were tearing their hair and shrieking wildly. But their clamorous grief was less impressive than the dumb despair of one man, on whom all eyes were fixed. This was the wretched father, who pa.s.sed from one corpse to the other, lifting up the earth-soiled heads, kissing the blackened lips, supporting the limbs that were stiff already, as if he would save them from the jolting of the road. Now and then he opened his mouth as though about to speak, but not a cry came, not a word. His eyes never left the dead bodies, and as he walked, he knocked himself against the stones, against the trees, against every obstacle that chanced to lie in his path.

The women's lamentations grew louder, and the men's curses deeper, when Orso's house appeared in sight. When some shepherds of the della Rebbia party ventured on a triumphant shout, their enemy's indignation became ungovernable. "Vengeance! Vengeance!" exclaimed several voices. Stones were thrown, and two shots, fired at the windows of the room in which Colomba and her guests were sitting, pierced the outside shutters, and carried splinters of wood on to the table at which the two ladies were working. Miss Lydia screamed violently, the colonel s.n.a.t.c.hed up a gun, and Colomba, before he could stop her, rushed to the door of the house and threw it violently open. There, standing high on the threshold, with her two hands outstretched to curse her enemies:

"Cowards!" she cried. "You fire on women and on foreigners! Are you Corsicans? Are you men? Wretches, who can only murder a man from behind.

Come on! I defy you! I am alone! My brother is far away! Come! kill me, kill my guests! It would be worthy of you! . . . But you dare not, cowards that you are! You know we avenge our wrongs! Away with you! Go, weep like women, and be thankful we do not ask you for more blood!"

There was something terrible and imposing in Colomba's voice and mien.

At the sight of her the crowd recoiled as though it beheld one of those evil fairies of which so many tales are told on long winter evenings, in Corsica. The deputy-mayor, the gendarmes, and a few women seized the opportunity, and threw themselves between the two factions; for the della Rebbia herdsmen were already loading their guns, and for a moment a general fight in the middle of the square had appeared imminent.

But the two parties were both leaderless, and Corsicans, whose rage is always subject to discipline, seldom come to blows unless the chief authors of their internecine quarrels are present. Besides, Colomba, who had learned prudence from victory, restrained her little garrison.

"Let the poor folks weep in peace," she said. "Let the old man carry his own flesh home. What is the good of killing an old fox who has no teeth left to bite with, . . . Giudice Barricini! Remember the 2d of August!

Remember the blood-stained pocket-book in which you wrote with your forger's hand! My father had written down your debt! Your sons have paid it. You may go free, old Barricini!"

With folded arms and a scornful smile upon her lips, Colomba watched the bearers carry the corpses of her enemies into their home, and the crowd without it melt gradually away. Then she closed her own door, and, going back into the dining-room, she said to the colonel:

"I beg, sir, you will forgive my fellow-countrymen! I never could have believed that any Corsican would have fired on a house that sheltered strangers, and I am ashamed of my country."

That night, when Miss Lydia had gone up to her room, the colonel followed her, and inquired whether they had not better get out of a village where they ran incessant risk of having a bullet through their heads, the very next morning, and leave this country, seething with treachery and murder, as soon as possible.

Miss Nevil did not answer for some time, and her father's suggestion evidently caused her considerable perplexity. At last she said:

"How can we leave this poor young creature, just when she is so much in need of consolation? Don't you think that would be cruel, father?"

"I only spoke on your account, child," said the colonel. "And I a.s.sure you that if I once felt you were safe in the hotel at Ajaccio, I should be very sorry to leave this cursed island myself, without shaking that plucky fellow della Rebbia's hand again."

"Well then, father, let us wait a while, and before we start let us make quite sure we can not be of any use to them."

"Kind soul!" said the colonel, as he kissed his daughter's forehead. "It is a pleasure to see you sacrifice yourself for the sake of softening other people's suffering. Let us stay on. We shall never have to repent having done right."

Miss Lydia tossed sleeplessly to and fro in her bed. Sometimes she took the vague night sounds for preparations for an attack on the house.

Sometimes, less alarmed on her own account, she thought of poor wounded Orso, who was probably lying on the cold earth, with no help beyond what she might expect from a bandit's charity. She fancied him covered with blood, and writhing in hideous suffering; and the extraordinary thing was that whenever Orso's image rose up before her mind's eye, she always beheld him as she had seen him when he rode away, pressing the talisman she had bestowed upon him to his lips. Then she mused over his courage.

She told herself he had exposed himself to the frightful danger he had just escaped on her account, just for the sake of seeing her a little sooner. A very little more, and she would have persuaded herself that Orso had earned his broken arm in her defence! She reproached herself with being the cause of his wound. But she admired him for it all the more, and if that celebrated right and left was not so splendid a feat in her sight as in Brandolaccio's or Colomba's, still she was convinced few heroes of romance could ever had behaved with such intrepidity and coolness, in so dangerous a pinch.

Her room was that usually occupied by Colomba. Above a kind of oaken _prie-dieu_, and beside a sprig of blessed palm, a little miniature of Orso, in his sub-lieutenant's uniform, hung on the wall. Miss Nevil took the portrait down, looked at it for a long time, and laid it at last on the table by her bed, instead of hanging it up again in its place.

She did not fall asleep till daybreak, and when she woke the sun had travelled high above the horizon. In front of her bed she beheld Colomba, waiting, motionless, till she should open her eyes.

"Well, dear lady, are you not very uncomfortable in this poor house of ours?" said Colomba to her. "I fear you have hardly slept at all."

"Have you any news, dear friend?" cried Miss Nevil, sitting up in bed.

Her eye fell on Orso's picture, and she hastily tossed her handkerchief upon it.

"Yes, I have news," said Colomba, with a smile.

Then she took up the picture.

"Do you think it like him? He is better looking than that!"

"Really," stammered Miss Nevil, quite confused, "I took down that picture in a fit of absence! I have a horrid habit of touching everything and never putting anything back! How is your brother?"

"Fairly well. Giocanto came here before four o'clock this morning. He brought me a letter for you, Miss Lydia. Orso hasn't written anything to me! It is addressed to Colomba, indeed, but underneath that he has written 'For Miss N.' But sisters are never jealous! Giocanto says it hurt him dreadfully to write. Giocanto, who writes a splendid hand, offered to do it at his dictation. But he would not let him. He wrote it with a pencil, lying on his back. Brandolaccio held the paper for him.

My brother kept trying to raise himself, and then the very slightest movement gave him the most dreadful agony in his arm. Giocanto says it was pitiful. Here is his letter."

Miss Nevil read the letter, which, as an extra precaution, no doubt, was written in English. Its contents were as follows:

"MADEMOISELLE: An unhappy fate has driven me on. I know not what my enemies will say, what slanders they will invent. I care little, so long as you, mademoiselle, give them no credence! Ever since I first saw you I have been nursing wild dreams. I needed this catastrophe to show me my own folly.

"I have come back to my senses now. I know the future that lies before me, and I shall face it with resignation. I dare not keep this ring you gave me, and which I believed to be a lucky talisman. I fear, Miss Nevil, you may regret your gift has been so ill-bestowed. Or rather, I fear it may remind me of the days of my own madness. Colomba will give it to you. Farewell, mademoiselle! You are about to leave Corsica, and I shall never see you again. But tell my sister, at least, that I still possess your esteem--and I tell you, confidently, that I am still worthy of it.

"O.D.R."

Miss Lydia had turned away while she read the letter, and Colomba, who was watching her closely, gave her the Egyptian ring, with an inquiring glance as to what it all meant. But Miss Lydia dared not raise her head, and looked dejectedly at the ring, alternately putting it on her finger and pulling it off again.

"Dear Miss Nevil," said Colomba, "may I not know what my brother says to you? Does he say anything about his health?"

"Indeed," said Miss Lydia, colouring, "he doesn't mention it. His letter is in English. He desires me to tell my father--He hopes the prefect will be able to arrange----"

With a mischievous smile, Colomba sat down on the bed, took hold of both Miss Nevil's hands, and, looking at her with her piercing eyes--