“Mademoiselle,” said Orso to Miss Nevil, “my sister is anxious to give you a very odd present, but we Corsicans have not much to offer—except our affection—which time never wipes out. My sister tells me you have looked with some curiosity at this dagger. It is an ancient possession in our family. It probably hung, once upon a time, at the belt of one of those corporals, to whom I owe the honour of your acquaintance. Colomba thinks it so precious that she has asked my leave to give it to you, and I hardly know if I ought to grant it, for I am afraid you’ll laugh at us!”
“The dagger is beautiful,” said Miss Lydia. “But it is a family weapon, I can not accept it!”
“It’s not my father’s dagger,” exclaimed Colomba eagerly; “it was given to one of mother’s ancestors by King Theodore. If the signorina will accept it, she will give us great pleasure.”
“Come, Miss Lydia,” said Orso, “don’t scorn a king’s dagger!”
To a collector, relics of King Theodore are infinitely more precious than those of the most powerful of monarchs. The temptation was a strong one, and already Miss Lydia could see the effect the weapon would produce laid out on a lacquered table in her room at St. James’s Place.
“But,” said she, taking the dagger with the hesitating air of one who longs to accept, and casting one of her most delightful smiles on Colomba, “dear Signorina Colomba . . . I can not . . . I should not dare to let you depart thus, unarmed.”
“My brother is with me,” said Colomba proudly, “and we have the good gun your father has given us. Orso, have you put a bullet in it?”
Miss Nevil kept the dagger, and to avert the danger consequent on giving instruments that cut or pierce to a friend, Colomba insisted on receiving a soldo in payment.
A start had to be made at last. Yet once again Orso pressed Miss Nevil’s hand, Colomba kissed her, and then held up her rosy lips to the colonel, who was enchanted with this Corsican politeness. From the window of the drawing-room Miss Lydia watched the brother and sister mount their horses. Colomba’s eyes shone with a malignant joy which she had never remarked in them before. The sight of this tall strong creature, with her fanatical ideas of savage honour, pride written on her forehead, and curled in a sardonic smile upon her lips, carrying off the young man with his weapons, as though on some death-dealing errand, recalled Orso’s fears to her, and she fancied she beheld his evil genius dragging him to his ruin. Orso, who was already in the saddle, raised his head and caught sight of her. Either because he had guessed her thought, or desired to send her a last farewell, he took the Egyptian ring, which he had hung upon a ribbon, and carried it to his lips. Blushing, Miss Lydia stepped back from the window, then returning to it almost at once, she saw the two Corsicans cantering their little ponies rapidly toward the mountains. Half an hour later the colonel showed them to her, through his glasses, riding along the end of the bay, and she noticed that Orso constantly turned his head toward the town. At last he disappeared behind the marshes, the site of which is now filled by a flourishing nursery garden.
Miss Lydia glanced at herself in the glass, and thought she looked pale.
“What must that young man think of me,” said she, “and what did I think of him? And why did I think about him? . . . A travelling acquaintance! . . . What have I come to Corsica for? . . . Oh! I don’t care for him! . . . No! no! and besides the thing is impossible . . . And Colomba . . . Fancy me sister-in-law to a voceratrice, who wears a big dagger!”
And she noticed she was still holding King Theodore’s dagger in her hand. She tossed it on to her toilette table. “Colomba, in London, dancing at Almacks! . . . Good heavens! what a lion1 that would be, to show off! . . . Perhaps she’d make a great sensation! . . . He loves me, I’m certain of it! He is the hero of a novel, and I have interrupted his adventurous career. . . . But did he really long to avenge his father in true Corsican fashion? . . . He was something between a Conrad and a dandy . . . I’ve turned him into nothing but a dandy! . . . And a dandy with a Corsican tailor! . . .”
She threw herself on her bed, and tried to sleep—but that proved an impossibility, and I will not undertake to continue her soliloquy, during which she declared, more than a hundred times over, that Signor della Rebbia had not been, was not, and never should be, anything to her.
CHAPTER IX
Meanwhile Orso was riding along beside his sister. At first the speed at which their horses moved prevented all conversation, but when the hills grew so steep that they were obliged to go at a foot’s pace, they began to exchange a few words about the friends from whom they had just parted. Colomba spoke with admiration of Miss Nevil’s beauty, of her golden hair, and charming ways. Then she asked whether the colonel was really as rich as he appeared, and whether Miss Lydia was his only child.
“She would be a good match,” said she. “Her father seems to have a great liking for you–”
And as Orso made no response, she added: “Our family was rich, in days gone by. It is still one of the most respected in the island. All these signori about us are bastards. The only noble blood left is in the families of the corporals, and as you know, Orso, your ancestors were the chief corporals in the island. You know our family came from beyond the hills, and it was the civil wars that forced us over to this side. If I were you, Orso, I shouldn’t hesitate—I should ask Colonel Nevil for his daughter’s hand.” Orso shrugged his shoulders. “With her fortune, you might buy the Falsetta woods, and the vineyards below ours. I would build a fine stone house, and add a story to the old tower in which Sambucuccio killed so many Moors in the days of Count Henry, il bel Missere.”
“Colomba, you’re talking nonsense,” said Orso, cantering forward.
“You are a man, Ors’ Anton’, and of course you know what you ought to do better than any woman. But I should very much like to know what objection that Englishman could have to the marriage. Are there any corporals in England?”
After a somewhat lengthy ride, spent in talking in this fashion, the brother and sister reached a little village, not far from Bocognano, where they halted to dine and sleep at a friend’s house. They were welcomed with a hospitality which must be experienced before it can be appreciated. The next morning, their host, who had stood godfather to a child to whom Madame della Rebbia had been godmother, accompanied them a league beyond his house.
“Do you see those woods and thickets?” said he to Orso, just as they were parting. “A man who had met with a misfortune might live there peacefully for ten years, and no gendarme or soldier would ever come to look for him. The woods run into the Vizzavona forest, and anybody who had friends at Bocognano or in the neighbourhood would want for nothing. That’s a good gun you have there. It must carry a long way. Blood of the Madonna! What calibre! You might kill better game than boars with it!”
Orso answered, coldly, that his gun was of English make, and carried “the lead” a long distance. The friends embraced, and took their different ways.
Our travellers were drawing quite close to Pietranera, when, at the entrance of a little gorge, through which they had to pass, they beheld seven or eight men, armed with guns, some sitting on stones, others lying on the grass, others standing up, and seemingly on the lookout. Their horses were grazing a little way off. Colomba looked at them for a moment, through a spy-glass which she took out of one of the large leathern pockets all Corsicans wear when on a journey.
“Those are our men!” she cried, with a well-pleased air. “Pieruccio had done his errand well!”
“What men?” inquired Orso.
“Our herdsmen,” she replied. “I sent Pieruccio off yesterday evening to call the good fellows together, so that they may attend you home. It would not do for you to enter Pietranera without an escort, and besides, you must know the Barricini are capable of anything!”
1
At this period this name was used in England for people who were the fashion because they had something extraordinary about them.