Colomba

Miss Nevil, somewhat startled at finding herself thus left in sole charge of a handsome young Corsican gentleman in the middle of a maquis, was rather puzzled what to do next.

For she was afraid that any sudden movement on her part might hurt the wounded man. But Orso himself resigned the exquisite pillow on which his sister had just laid his head, and raising himself on his right arm, he said:

“So you will soon be gone, Miss Lydia? I never expected your stay in this unhappy country would have been a long one. And yet since you have come to me here, the thought that I must bid you farewell has grown a hundred times more bitter to me. I am only a poor lieutenant. I had no future—and now I am an outlaw. What a moment in which to tell you that I love you, Miss Lydia! But no doubt this is my only chance of saying it. And I think I feel less wretched now I have unburdened my heart to you.”

Miss Lydia turned away her head, as if the darkness were not dark enough to hide her blushes.

“Signor della Rebbia,” she said, and her voice shook, “should I have come here at all if–” and as she spoke she laid the Egyptian talisman in Orso’s hand. Then, with a mighty effort to recover her usual bantering tone—“It’s very wrong of you, Signor Orso, to say such things! You know very well that here, in the middle of the maquis, and with your bandits all about me, I should never dare to be angry with you.”

Orso made an attempt to kiss the hand that held out the talisman. Miss Lydia drew it quickly back; he lost his balance, and fell on his wounded arm. He could not stifle a moan of pain.

“Oh, dear, you’ve hurt yourself, and it was my fault!” she cried, as she raised him up. “Forgive me!” They talked for some time longer, very low, and very close together.

Colomba, running hastily up, found them in the very same position in which she had left them.

“The soldiers!” she cried. “Orso! try to get up and walk! I’ll help you!”

“Leave me!” said Orso. “Tell the bandits to escape. What do I care if I am taken? But take away Miss Lydia. For God’s sake, don’t let anybody see her here!”

“I won’t leave you,” said Brandolaccio, who had come up on Colomba’s heels.

“The sergeant in charge is the lawyer’s godson. He’ll shoot you instead of arresting you, and then he’ll say he didn’t do it on purpose.”

Orso tried to rise; he even took a few steps. But he soon halted. “I can’t walk,” he said. “Fly, all of you! Good-bye, Miss Nevil! Give me your hand! Farewell!”

“We won’t leave you!” cried the two girls.

“If you can’t walk,” said Brandolaccio, “I must carry you. Come, sir, a little courage! We shall have time to slip away by the ravine. The Signor Padre will keep them busy.”

“No, leave me!” said Orso, lying down on the ground. “Colomba, take Miss Nevil away!—for God’s sake!”

“You’re strong, Signorina Colomba,” said Brandolaccio. “Catch hold of his shoulders; I’ll take his feet. That’s it! Now, then march!”

In spite of his protests, they began to carry him rapidly along. Miss Lydia was following them, in a terrible fright, when a gun was fired, and five or six other reports instantly responded. Miss Lydia screamed and Brandolaccio swore an oath, but he doubled his pace, and Colomba, imitating him, tore through the thicket without paying the slightest heed to the branches that slashed her face and tore her dress.

“Bend down, bend down, dear!” she called out to her companion. “You may be hit by some stray bullet!”

They had walked, or rather run, some five hundred paces in this fashion when Brandolaccio vowed he could go no further, and dropped on the ground, regardless of all Colomba’s exhortations and reproaches.

“Where is Miss Nevil?” was Orso’s one inquiry.

Terrified by the firing, checked at every step by the thick growth of the maquis, Miss Nevil had soon lost sight of the fugitives, and been left all alone in a state of the most cruel alarm.

“She has been left behind,” said Brandolaccio, “but she’ll not be lost—women always turn up again. Do listen to the row the Padre is making with your gun, Ors’ Anton’! Unluckily, it’s as black as pitch, and nobody takes much harm from being shot at in the dark.”

“Hush!” cried Colomba. “I hear a horse. We’re saved!”

Startled by the firing, a horse which had been wandering through the maquis, was really coming close up to them.

“Saved, indeed!” repeated Brandolaccio. It did not take the bandit more than an instant to rush up to the creature, catch hold of his mane, and with Colomba’s assistance, bridle him with a bit of knotted rope.

“Now we must warn the Padre,” he said. He whistled twice; another distant whistle answered the signal, and the loud voice of the Manton gun was hushed. Then Brandolaccio sprang on the horse’s back. Colomba lifted her brother up in front of the bandit, who held him close with one hand and managed his bridle with the other.

In spite of the double load, the animal, urged by a brace of hearty kicks, started off nimbly, and galloped headlong down a steep declivity on which anything but a Corsican steed would have broken its neck a dozen times.

Then Colomba retraced her steps, calling Miss Nevil at the top of her voice; but no answering cry was heard.

After walking hither and thither for some time, trying to recover the path, she stumbled on two riflemen, who shouted, “Who goes there?”

“Well, gentlemen,” cried Colomba jeeringly, “here’s a pretty racket! How many of you are killed?”

“You were with the bandits!” said one of the soldiers. “You must come with us.”

“With pleasure!” she replied. “But there’s a friend of mine somewhere close by, and we must find her first.”

“You friend is caught already, and both of you will sleep in jail to-night!”

“In jail, you say? Well, that remains to be seen. But take me to her, meanwhile.”

The soldiers led her to the bandits’ camp, where they had collected the trophies of their raid—to wit, the cloak which had covered Orso, an old cooking-pot, and a pitcher of cold water. On the same spot she found Miss Nevil, who had fallen among the soldiers, and, being half dead with terror, did nothing but sob in answer to their questions as to the number of the bandits, and the direction in which they had gone.

Colomba threw herself into her arms and whispered in her ear, “They are safe!” Then, turning to the sergeant, she said: “Sir, you can see this young lady knows none of the things you are trying to find out from her. Give us leave to go back to the village, where we are anxiously expected.”

“You’ll be taken there, and faster than you like, my beauty,” rejoined the sergeant. “And you’ll have to explain what you were after at this time of night with the ruffians who have just got away. I don’t know what witchcraft those villains practise, but they certainly do bewitch the women—for wherever there are bandits about, you are dead certain to find pretty girls.”

“You’re very flattering, sergeant!” said Colomba, “but you’ll do well to be careful what you say. This young lady is related to the prefect, and you’d better be careful of your language before her.”

“A relation of the prefect’s,” whispered one of the soldiers to his chief. “Why, she does wear a hat!”

“Hats have nothing to do with it,” said the sergeant. “They were both of them with the Padre—the greatest woman-wheedler in the whole country, so it’s my business to march them off. And, indeed, there’s nothing more for us to do here. But for that d–d Corporal Taupin—the drunken Frenchman showed himself before I’d surrounded the maquis—we should have had them all like fish in a net.”

“Are there only seven of you here?” inquired Colomba. “It strikes me, gentlemen, that if the three Poli brothers—Gambini, Sarocchi, and Teodoro—should happen to be at the Cross of Santa Christina, with Brandolaccio and the Padre, they might give you a good deal of corn to grind. If you mean to have a talk with the Commandante della Campagna, I’d just as soon not be there. In the dark, bullets don’t show any respect for persons.”

The idea of coming face to face with the dreaded bandits mentioned by Colomba made an evident impression on the soldiers. The sergeant, still cursing Corporal Taupin—“that dog of a Frenchman”—gave the order to retire, and his little party moved toward Pietranera, carrying the pilone and the cooking-pot; as for the pitcher, its fate was settled with a kick.

One of the men would have laid hold of Miss Lydia’s arm, but Colomba instantly pushed him away.

“Let none of you dare to lay a finger on her!” she said. “Do you fancy we want to run away? Come, Lydia, my dear, lean on me, and don’t cry like a baby. We’ve had an adventure, but it will end all right. In half an hour we shall be at our supper, and for my part I’m dying to get to it.”

“What will they think of me!” Miss Nevil whispered.

“They’ll think you lost your way in the maquis, that’s all.”

“What will the prefect say? Above all, what will my father say?”

“The prefect? You can tell him to mind his own business! Your father? I should have thought, from the way you and Orso were talking, that you had something to say to your father.”

Miss Nevil squeezed her arm, and answered nothing.

“Doesn’t my brother deserve to be loved?” whispered Colomba in her ear. “Don’t you love him a little?”

“Oh, Colomba!” answered Miss Nevil, smiling in spite of her blushes, “you’ve betrayed me! And I trusted you so!”

Colomba slipped her arm round her, and kissed her forehead.

“Little sister,” she whispered very low, “will you forgive me?”

“Why, I suppose I must, my masterful sister,” answered Lydia, as she kissed her back.

The prefect and the public prosecutor were staying with the deputy-mayor, and the colonel, who was very uneasy about his daughter, was paying them his twentieth call, to ask if they had heard of her, when a rifleman, whom the sergeant had sent on in advance, arrived with the full story of the great fight with the brigands—a fight in which nobody had been either killed or wounded, but which had resulted in the capture of a cooking-pot, a pilone, and two girls, whom the man described as the mistresses, or the spies, of the two bandits.

Thus heralded, the two prisoners appeared, surrounded by their armed escort.

My readers will imagine Colomba’s radiant face, her companion’s confusion, the prefect’s surprise, the colonel’s astonishment and joy. The public prosecutor permitted himself the mischievous entertainment of obliging poor Lydia to undergo a kind of cross-examination, which did not conclude until he had quite put her out of countenance.

“It seems to me,” said the prefect, “that we may release everybody. These young ladies went out for a walk—nothing is more natural in fine weather. They happened to meet a charming young man, who has been lately wounded—nothing could be more natural, again.” Then, taking Colomba aside—

“Signorina,” he said, “you can send word to your brother that this business promises to turn out better than I had expected. The post-mortem examination and the colonel’s deposition both prove that he only defended himself, and that he was alone when the fight took place. Everything will be settled—only he must leave the maquis and give himself up to the authorities.”

It was almost eleven o’clock when the colonel, his daughter, and Colomba sat down at last to their supper, which had grown cold. Colomba ate heartily, and made great fun of the prefect, the public prosecutor, and the soldiers. The colonel ate too, but never said a word, and gazed steadily at his daughter, who would not lift her eyes from her plate. At last, gently but seriously, he said in English:

“Lydia, I suppose you are engaged to della Rebbia?”

“Yes, father, to-day,” she answered, steadily, though she blushed. Then she raised her eyes, and reading no sign of anger in her father’s face, she threw herself into his arms and kissed him, as all well-brought-up young ladies do on such occasions.

“With all my heart!” said the colonel. “He’s a fine fellow. But, by G—d, we won’t live in this d–d country of his, or I’ll refuse my consent.”

“I don’t know English,” said Colomba, who was watching them with an air of the greatest curiosity, “but I’ll wager I’ve guessed what you are saying!”

“We are saying,” quoth the colonel, “that we are going to take you for a trip to Ireland.”

“Yes, with pleasure; and I’ll be the Surella Colomba. Is it settled, colonel? Shall we shake hands on it?”

“In such a case,” remarked the colonel, “people exchanges kisses!”

CHAPTER XX

One afternoon, a few months after the double shot which, as the newspapers said, “plunged the village of Pietranera into a state of consternation,” a young man with his left arm in a sling, rode out of Bastia, toward the village of Cardo, celebrated for its spring, which in summer supplies the more fastidious inhabitants of the town with delicious water. He was accompanied by a young lady, tall and remarkably handsome, mounted on a small black horse, the strength and shape of which would have attracted the admiration of a connoisseur, although, by some strange accident, one of its ears had been lacerated. On reaching the village, the girl sprang nimbly to the ground, and, having helped her comrade to dismount, she unfastened the somewhat heavy wallets strapped to his saddle-bow. The horses were left in charge of a peasant. The girl, laden with the wallets, which she had concealed under her mezzaro, and the young man, carrying a double-barrelled gun, took their way toward the mountain, along a very steep path that did not appear to lead to any dwelling. When they had climbed to one of the lower ridges of the Monte Querico, they halted, and sat down on the grass. They were evidently expecting somebody, for they kept perpetually looking toward the mountain, and the young lady often consulted a pretty gold watch—as much, it may be, for the pleasure of admiring what appeared a somewhat newly acquired trinket, as in order to know whether the hour appointed for some meeting or other had come. They had not long to wait. A dog ran out of the maquis, and when the girl called out “Brusco!” it approached at once, and fawned upon them. Presently two bearded men appeared, with guns under their arms, cartridge-belts round their waists, and pistols hanging at their sides. Their torn and patched garments contrasted oddly with their weapons, which were brilliantly polished, and came from a famous Continental factory. In spite of the apparent inequality of their positions, the four actors in this scene greeted one another in terms of old and familiar friendship.

“Well, Ors’ Anton’,” said the elder bandit to the young man, “so your business is settled—the indictment against you has fallen through? I congratulate you. I’m sorry the lawyer has left the island. I’d like to see his rage. And how’s your arm?”

“They tell me I shall get rid of my sling in a fortnight,” said the young man. “Brando, my good friend, I’m going to Italy to-morrow—I wanted to say good-bye to you and to the cure. That’s why I asked you to come here.”

“You’re in a fine hurry,” said Brandolaccio. “Only acquitted yesterday, and you’re off to-morrow.”

“Business must be attended to,” said the young lady merrily. “Gentlemen, I’ve brought some supper. Fall to, if you please, and don’t you forget my friend Brusco.”

“You spoil Brusco, Mademoiselle Colomba. But he’s a grateful dog. You shall see. Here, Brusco,” and he held out his gun horizontally, “jump for the Barricini!”

The dog stood motionless, licking his chops, and staring at his master.

“Jump for the della Rebbia!” And he leaped two feet higher than he need have done.

“Look here, my friends,” said Orso, “you’re plying a bad trade; and even if you don’t end your career on that square below us,8 the best you can look for is to die in the maquis by some gendarme’s bullet.”

“Well, well,” said Castriconi, “that’s no more than death, anyhow; and it’s better than being killed in your bed by a fever, with your heirs snivelling more or less honestly all round you. To men who are accustomed to the open air like us, there’s nothing so good as to die ‘in your shoes,’ as the village folk say.”

“I should like to see you get out of this country,” said Orso, “and lead a quieter life. For instance, why shouldn’t you settle in Sardinia, as several of your comrades have done? I could make the matter easy for you.”

“In Sardinia!” cried Brandolaccio. “Istos Sardos! Devil take them and their lingo! We couldn’t live in such bad company.”

“Sardinia’s a country without resources,” added the theologian. “For my part, I despise the Sardinians. They keep mounted men to hunt their bandits. That’s a stigma on both the bandits and the country.9 Out upon Sardinia, say I! The thing that astounds me, Signor della Rebbia, is that you, who are a man of taste and understanding, should not have taken to our life in the maquis, after having once tried it, as you did.”

“Well,” said Orso, with a smile, “when I was lucky enough to be your guest, I wasn’t in very good case for enjoying the charms of your position, and my ribs still ache when I think of the ride I took one lovely night, thrown like a bundle across an unsaddled horse that my good friend Brandolaccio guided.”

“And the delight of escaping from your pursuers,” rejoined Castriconi; “is that nothing to you? How can you fail to realize the charm of absolute freedom in such a beautiful climate as ours? With this to insure respect,” and he held up his gun, “we are kings of everything within its range. We can give orders, we can redress wrongs. That’s a highly moral entertainment, monsieur, and a very pleasant one, which we don’t deny ourselves. What can be more beautiful than a knight-errant’s life, when he has good weapons, and more common sense than Don Quixote had? Listen! The other day I was told that little Lilla Luigi’s uncle—old miser that he is—wouldn’t give her a dowry. So I wrote to him. I didn’t use threats—that’s not my way. Well, well, in one moment the man was convinced. He married his niece, and I made two people happy. Believe me, Orso, there’s no life like the bandit’s life! Pshaw! You’d have joined us, perhaps, if it hadn’t been for a certain young Englishwoman whom I have scarcely seen myself, but about whose beauty every one in Bastia is talking.”

“My future sister-in-law doesn’t like the maquis,” laughed Colomba. “She got too great a fright in one of them.”

“Well,” said Orso, “you are resolved to stay here? So be it! But tell me whether there is anything I can do for you?”

“Nothing,” said Brandolaccio. “You’ve heaped kindnesses upon us. Here’s little Chilina with her dowry ready, so that there’ll be no necessity for my friend the cure to write one of his persuasive letters to insure her marrying well. We know the man on your farm will give us bread and powder whenever we need them. So fare you well! I hope we shall see you back in Corsica one of these days.”

“In case of pressing need,” said Orso, “a few gold coins are very useful. Now we are such old friends, you won’t refuse this little cartouche.10 It will help you to provide cartridges of another kind.”

“No money between you and me, sir,” said Brandolaccio resolutely.

“In the world money is everything,” remarked Castriconi, “but in the maquis, all a man need care for is a brave heart, and a gun that carries true.”

“I don’t want to leave you without giving you something to remember me by,” persisted Orso. “Come, Brandolaccio, what can I leave with you?”

The bandit scratched his head and cast a sidelong glance at Orso’s gun.

“By my faith, if I dared—but no! you’re too fond of it.”

“What would you like?”

“Nothing! ‘Tisn’t anything at all. It’s knowing how to use it as well. I keep thinking of that devil of a double-shot of yours—and with only one hand, too! Oh! that never could happen twice over!”

“Is it the gun you fancy? I bought it for you. But see you don’t use it more than you are obliged.”

“Oh, I won’t promise to make as good use of it as you. But make your mind easy. When any other man has it, you may be certain it’s all over with Brando Savelli.”

“And you, Castriconi—what am I to give you?”

“Since you really insist on giving me some tangible keepsake, I’ll simply ask you to send me the smallest Horace you can get. It will amuse me, and prevent me from forgetting all my Latin. There’s a little woman who sells cigars on the jetty at Bastia. If you give it to her, she’ll see I get it.”

“You shall have an Elzevir, my erudite friend. There just happens to be one among some books I was going to take away with me. Well, good friends, we must part! Give me your hands. If you should ever think of Sardinia write to me. Signor N., the notary, will give you my address on the mainland.”

“To-morrow, lieutenant,” said Brando, “when you get out in the harbour, look up to this spot on the mountain-side. We shall be here, and we’ll wave our handkerchiefs to you.”

And so they parted. Orso and his sister took their way back to Cardo, and the bandits departed up the mountain.

CHAPTER XXI

One lovely April morning, Sir Thomas Nevil, his daughter, a newly made bride—Orso, and Colomba, drove out of Pisa to see a lately discovered Etruscan vault to which all strangers who came to that part of the country paid a visit.

Orso and his wife went down into the ancient building, pulled out their pencils, and began to sketch the mural paintings. But the colonel and Colomba, who neither of them cared much for archaeology, left them to themselves, and walked about in the neighbourhood.

“My dear Colomba,” said the colonel, “we shall never get back to Pisa in time for lunch. Aren’t you hungry? There are Orso and his wife buried in their antiquities; when once they begin sketching together, it lasts forever!”

“Yes,” remarked Colomba. “And yet they never bring the smallest sketch home with them.”

“I think,” proceeded the colonel, “our best plan would be to make our way to that little farm-house yonder. We should find bread there, and perhaps some aleatico. Who knows, we might even find strawberries and cream! And then we should be able to wait patiently for our artists.”

“You are quite right, colonel. You and I are the reasonable members of this family. We should be very foolish if we let ourselves by martyrized by that pair of lovers, who live on poetry! Give me your arm! Don’t you think I’m improving? I lean on people’s arms, wear fashionable hats and gowns and trinkets—I’m learning I don’t know how many fine things—I’m not at all a young savage any more. Just observe the grace with which I wear this shawl. That fair-haired spark—that officer belonging to your regiment who came to the wedding—oh, dear! I can’t recollect his name!—a tall, curly-headed man, whom I could knock over with one hand–”

“Chatsworth?” suggested the colonel.

“That’s it!—but I never shall be able to say it!—Well, you know he’s over head and ears in love with me!”

“O Colomba, you’re growing a terrible flirt! We shall have another wedding before long.”

“I! Marry! And then who will there be to bring up my nephew—when Orso provides me with a nephew? And who’ll teach him to talk Corsican? Yes, he shall talk Corsican, and I’ll make him a peaked cap, just to vex you.”

“Well, well, wait till you have your nephew, and then you shall teach him to use a dagger, if you choose.”

“Farewell to daggers!” said Colomba merrily. “I have a fan now, to rap your fingers with when you speak ill of my country.”

Chatting thus, they reached the farm-house, where they found wine, strawberries, and cream. Colomba helped the farmer’s wife to gather the strawberries, while the colonel drank his aleatico. At the turning of a path she caught sight of an old man, sitting in the sun, on a straw chair. He seemed ill, his cheeks were fallen in, his eyes were hollow, he was frightfully thin; as he sat there, motionless, pallid, staring fixedly in front of him, he looked more like a corpse than like a living creature. Colomba watched him for some minutes, and with a curiosity so great that it attracted the woman’s attention.

“That poor old fellow is a countryman of yours,” she said. “For I know you are from Corsica by the way you talk, signorina! He has had great trouble in his own country. His children met with some terrible death. They say—you’ll excuse me, signorina—that when they quarrel, your compatriots don’t show each other very much mercy. Then the poor old gentleman, being left all alone, came over to Pisa, to a distant relation of his, who owns this farm. Between his misfortunes and his sorrow, the good man is a little cracked. . . . The lady found him troublesome—for she sees a great deal of company. So she sent him out here. He’s very gentle—no worry at all. He doesn’t speak three words the whole day long. In fact, his brain’s quite gone. The doctor comes to see him every week. He says he won’t live long.”