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Columba, a novel by Prosper Merimee |
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Chapter 16 |
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_ CHAPTER XVI The following day went by without any hostile demonstration. Both sides kept on the defensive. Orso did not leave his house, and the door of the Barricini dwelling remained closely shut. The five gendarmes who had been left to garrison Pietranera were to be seen walking about the square and the outskirts of the village, in company with the village constable, the sole representative of the urban police force. The deputy-mayor never put off his sash. But there was no actual symptom of war, except the loopholes in the two opponents' houses. Nobody but a Corsican would have noticed that the group round the evergreen oak in the middle of the square consisted solely of women. At supper-time Colomba gleefully showed her brother a letter she had just received from Miss Nevil.
"Farewell, dear Signorina Colomba. "Your affectionate "LYDIA NEVIL."
"You see by the date of this one that Miss Lydia must have already started when your letter reached Ajaccio. But did you tell her not to come?" "I told her we were in a state of siege. That does not seem to me a condition that permits of our receiving company." "Bah! These English people are so odd. The very last night I slept in her room she told me she would be sorry to leave Corsica without having seen a good _vendetta_. If you choose, Orso, you might let her see an assault on our enemies' house." "Do you know, Colomba," said Orso, "Nature blundered when she made you a woman. You'd have made a first-rate soldier." "Maybe. Anyhow, I'm going to make my _bruccio_." "Don't waste your time. We must send somebody down to warn them and stop them before they start." "Do you mean to say you would send a messenger out in such weather, to have him and your letter both swept away by a torrent? How I pity those poor bandits in this storm! Luckily they have good _piloni_ (thick cloth cloaks with hoods). Do you know what you ought to do, Orso. If the storm clears you should start off very early to-morrow morning, and get to our kinswoman's house before they leave it. That will be easy enough, for Miss Lydia always gets up so late. You can tell them everything that has happened here, and if they still persist in coming, why! we shall be very glad to welcome them." Orso lost no time in assenting to this plan, and after a few moments' silence, Colomba continued: "Perhaps, Orso, you think I was joking when I talked of an assault on the Barricini's house. Do you know we are in force--two to one at the very least? Now that the prefect has suspended the mayor, every man in the place is on our side. We might cut them to pieces. It would be quite easy to bring it about. If you liked, I could go over to the fountain and begin to jeer at their women folk. They would come out. Perhaps--they are such cowards!--they would fire at me through their loopholes. They wouldn't hit me. Then the thing would be done. They would have begun the attack, and the beaten party must take its chance. How is anybody to know which person's aim has been true, in a scuffle? Listen to your own sister, Orso! These lawyers who are coming will blacken lots of paper, and talk a great deal of useless stuff. Nothing will come of it all. That old fox will contrive to make them think they see stars in broad midday. Ah! if the prefect hadn't thrown himself in front of Vincentello, we should have had one less to deal with." All this was said with the same calm air as that with which she had spoken, an instant previously, of her preparations for making the _bruccio_. Orso, quite dumfounded, gazed at his sister with an admiration not unmixed with alarm. "My sweet Colomba," he said, as he rose from the table, "I really am afraid you are the very devil. But make your mind easy. If I don't succeed in getting the Barricini hanged, I'll contrive to get the better of them in some other fashion. 'Hot bullet or cold steel'--you see I haven't forgotten my Corsican." "The sooner the better," said Colomba, with a sigh. "What horse will you ride to-morrow, Ors' Anton'?" "The black. Why do you ask?" "So as to make sure he has some barley." When Orso went up to his room, Colomba sent Saveria and the herdsmen to their beds, and sat on alone in the kitchen, where the _bruccio_ was simmering. Now and then she seemed to listen, and was apparently waiting very anxiously for her brother to go to bed. At last, when she thought he was asleep, she took a knife, made sure it was sharp, slipped her little feet into thick shoes, and passed noiselessly out into the garden. This garden, which was inclosed by walls, lay next to a good-sized piece of hedged ground, into which the horses were turned--for Corsican horses do not know what a stable means. They are generally turned loose into a field, and left to themselves, to find pasture and shelter from cold winds, as best they may. Colomba opened the garden gate with the same precaution, entered the inclosure, and whistling gently, soon attracted the horses, to whom she had often brought bread and salt. As soon as the black horse came within reach, she caught him firmly by the mane, and split his ear open with her knife. The horse gave a violent leap, and tore off with that shrill cry which sharp pain occasionally extorts from his kind. Quite satisfied, Colomba was making her way back into the garden, when Orso threw open his window and shouted, "Who goes there?" At the same time she heard him cock his gun. Luckily for her the garden-door lay in the blackest shadow, and was partly screened by a large fig-tree. She very soon gathered, from the light she saw glancing up and down in her brother's room, that he was trying to light his lamp. She lost no time about closing the garden-door, and slipping along the wall, so that the outline of her black garments was lost against the dark foliage of the fruit-trees, and succeeded in getting back into the kitchen a few moments before Orso entered it. "What's the matter?" she inquired. "I fancied I heard somebody opening the garden-door," said Orso. "Impossible! The dog would have barked. But let us go and see!" Orso went round the garden, and having made sure that the outer door was safely secured, he was going back to his room, rather ashamed of his false alarm. "I am glad, brother," remarked Colomba, "that you are learning to be prudent, as a man in your position ought to be." "You are training me well," said Orso. "Good-night!" By dawn the next morning Orso was up and ready to start. His style of dress betrayed the desire for smartness felt by every man bound for the presence of the lady he would fain please, combined with the caution of a Corsican _in vendetta_. Over a blue coat, that sat closely to his figure, he wore a small tin case full of cartridges, slung across his shoulder by a green silk cord. His dagger lay in his side pocket, and in his hand he carried his handsome Manton, ready loaded. While he was hastily swallowing the cup of coffee Colomba had poured out for him, one of the herdsmen went out to put the bridle and saddle on the black horse. Orso and his sister followed close on his heels and entered the field. The man had caught the horse, but he had dropped both saddle and bridle, and seemed quite paralyzed with horror, while the horse, remembering the wound it had received during the night, and trembling for its other ear, was rearing, kicking, and neighing like twenty fiends. "Now then! Make haste!" shouted Orso. "Ho, Ors' Anton'! Ho, Ors' Anton'!" yelled the herdsman. "Holy Madonna!" and he poured out a string of imprecations, numberless, endless, and most of them quite untranslatable. "What can be the matter?" inquired Colomba. They all drew near to the horse, and at the sight of the creature's bleeding head and split ear there was a general outcry of surprise and indignation. My readers must know that among the Corsicans to mutilate an enemy's horse is at once a vengeance, a challenge, and a mortal threat. "Nothing but a bullet-wound can expiate such a crime." Though Orso, having lived so long on the mainland, was not so sensitive as other Corsicans to the enormity of the insult, still, if any supporter of the Barricini had appeared in his sight at that moment, he would probably have taken vengeance on him for the outrage he ascribed to his enemies. "The cowardly wretches!" he cried. "To avenge themselves on a poor brute, when they dare not meet me face to face!" "What are we waiting for?" exclaimed Colomba vehemently. "They come here and brave us! They mutilate our horses! and we are not to make any response? Are you men?" "Vengeance!" shouted the herdsmen. "Let us lead the horse through the village, and attack their house!" "There's a thatched barn that touches their Tower," said old Polo Griffo; "I'd set fire to it in a trice." Another man wanted to fetch the ladders out of the church steeple. A third proposed they should break in the doors of the house with a heavy beam intended for some house in course of building, which had been left lying in the square. Amid all the angry voices Colomba was heard telling her satellites that before they went to work she would give each man of them a large glass of anisette. Unluckily, or rather luckily, the impression she had expected to produce by her own cruel treatment of the poor horse was largely lost on Orso. He felt no doubt that the savage mutilation was due to one of his foes, and he specially suspected Orlanduccio; but he did not believe that the young man, whom he himself had provoked and struck, had wiped out his shame by slitting a horse's ear. On the contrary, this mean and ridiculous piece of vengeance had increased Orso's scorn for his opponents, and he now felt, with the prefect, that such people were not worthy to try conclusions with himself. As soon as he was able to make himself heard, he informed his astonished partisans that they would have to relinquish all their bellicose intentions, and that the power of the law, which would shortly be on the spot, would amply suffice to avenge the hurt done to a horse's ear. "I'm master here!" he added sternly; "and I insist on being obeyed. The first man who dares to say anything more about killing or burning, will quite possibly get a scorching at my hands! Be off! Saddle me the gray horse!" "What's this, Orso?" said Colomba, drawing him apart. "You allow these people to insult us? No Barricini would have dared to mutilate any beast of ours in my father's time." "I promise you they shall have reason to repent it. But it is gendarme's and jailer's work to punish wretches who only venture to raise their hands against brute beasts. I've told you already, the law will punish them; and if not, you will not need to remind me whose son I am." "Patience!" answered Colomba, with a sigh. "Remember this, sister," continued Orso; "if I find, when I come back, that any demonstration whatever has been made against the Barricini I shall never forgive you." Then, in a gentler tone, he added, "Very possibly--very probably--I shall bring the colonel and his daughter back with me. See that their rooms are well prepared, and that the breakfast is good. In fact, let us make our guests as comfortable as we can. It's a very good thing to be brave, Colomba, but a woman must know how to manage her household, as well. Come, kiss me, and be good! Here's the gray, ready saddled." "Orso," said Colomba, "you mustn't go alone." "I don't need anybody," replied Orso; "and I'll promise you nobody shall slit my ear." "Oh, I'll never consent to your going alone, while there is a feud. Here! Polo Griffo! Gian' Franco! Memmo! Take your guns; you must go with my brother." After a somewhat lively argument, Orso had to give in, and accept an escort. From the most excited of the herdsmen he chose out those who had been loudest in their desire to commence hostilities; then, after laying fresh injunctions on his sister and the men he was leaving behind, he started, making a detour, this time, so as to avoid the Barricinis' dwelling. They were a long way from Pietranera, and were travelling along at a great pace, when, as they crossed a streamlet that ran into a marsh, Polo Griffo noticed several porkers wallowing comfortably in the mud, in full enjoyment at once of the warmth of the sun and the coolness of the water. Instantly he took aim at the biggest, fired at its head, and shot it dead. The dead creature's comrades rose and fled with astonishing swiftness, and though another herdsman fired at them they reached a thicket and disappeared into it, safe and sound. "Idiots!" cried Orso. "You've been taking pigs for wild boars!" "Not a bit, Ors' Anton'," replied Polo Griffo. "But that herd belongs to the lawyer, and I've taught him, now, to mutilate our horses." "What! you rascal!" shouted Orso, in a perfect fury. "You ape the vile behaviour of our enemies! Be off, villains! I don't want you! You're only fit to fight with pigs. I swear to God that if you dare follow me I'll blow your brains out!" The herdsmen stared at each other, struck quite dumb. Orso spurred his horse, galloped off, and was soon out of sight. "Well, well!" said Polo Griffo. "Here's a pretty thing. You devote yourself to people, and then this is how they treat you. His father, the colonel, was angry with you long ago, because you levelled your gun at the lawyer. Great idiot you were, not to shoot. And now here is his son. You saw what I did for him. And he talks about cracking my skull, just as he would crack a gourd that lets the wine leak out. That's what people learn on the mainland, Memmo!" "Yes, and if any one finds out it was you who killed that pig there'll be a suit against you, and Ors' Anton' won't speak to the judges, nor buy off the lawyer for you. Luckily nobody saw, and you have Saint Nega to help you out." After a hasty conclave, the two herdsmen concluded their wisest plan was to throw the dead pig into a bog, and this project they carefully executed, after each had duly carved himself several slices out of the body of this innocent victim of the feud between the Barricini and the della Rebbia. _ |
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