Chapter 19

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_ CHAPTER XIX

It was rather late when the surgeon put in an appearance. On his road up he had met with an adventure of his own. He had been stopped by Giocanto Castriconi, who, with the most scrupulous politeness, called on him to come and attend a wounded man. He had been conducted to Orso's retreat, and had applied the first dressings to his wound. The bandit had then accompanied the doctor some distance on his way, and had greatly edified him by his talk concerning the most celebrated professors at Pisa, whom he described as his intimate friends.

"Doctor," said the theologian, as they parted, "you have inspired me with such a feeling of respect that I think it hardly necessary to remind you that a physician should be as discreet as a confessor." And as he said the words he clicked the trigger of his gun. "You have quite forgotten the spot at which we have had the honour of meeting. Fare you well! I'm delighted to have made your acquaintance."

Colomba besought the colonel to be present at the post-mortem examination.

"You know my brother's gun better than anybody," she said, "and your presence will be most valuable. Besides there are so many wicked people here that we should run a great risk if there were nobody present to protect our interests."

When she was left alone with Miss Lydia, she complained that her head ached terribly, and proposed that they should take a walk just outside the village.

"The fresh air will do me good," she said. "It is so long since I've been out of doors."

As they walked along she talked about her brother, and Miss Lydia, who found the subject tolerably interesting, did not notice that they had travelled a long way from Pietranera. The sun was setting when she became aware of this fact, and she begged Colomba to return. Colomba said she knew a cross-cut which would greatly shorten the walk back, and turning out of the path, she took another, which seemed much less frequented. Soon she began to climb a hill, so steep that to keep her balance she was continually obliged to catch hold of branches with one hand, while she pulled her companion up after her with the other. After about twenty minutes of this trying ascent, they found themselves on a small plateau, clothed with arbutus and myrtle, growing round great granite boulders that jutted above the soil in every direction. Miss Lydia was very tired, there was no sign of the village, and it was almost quite dark.

"Do you know, Colomba, my dear," she said, "I'm afraid we've lost our way!"

"No fear!" answered Colomba. "Let us get on. You follow me."

"But I assure you we're going wrong. The village can't be over there. I'm certain we're turning our backs on it. Why, look at those lights, far away. Pietranera must be in that direction."

"My dear soul," said Colomba, and she looked very much agitated, "you're perfectly right. But in the _maquis_--less than a hundred yards from here--"

"Well?"

"My brother is lying. If you choose, I might see him, and give him one kiss."

Miss Nevil made a gesture of astonishment.

"I got out of Pietranera without being noticed," continued Colomba, "because I was with you, otherwise I should have been followed. To be so close to him, and not to see him! Why shouldn't you come with me to see my poor brother? You would make him so happy!"

"But, Colomba--That wouldn't be at all proper on my part----"

"I see. With you women who live in towns, your great anxiety is to be proper. We village women only think of what is kind."

"But it's so late! And then what will your brother think of me?"

"He'll think his friends have not forsaken him, and that will give him courage to bear his sufferings."

"And my father? He'll be so anxious!"

"He knows you are with me. Come! Make up your mind. You were looking at his picture this morning," she added, with a sly smile.

"No! Really and truly, I don't dare, Colomba! Think of the bandits who are there."

"Well, what matter? The bandits don't know you. And you were longing to see some."

"Oh, dear!"

"Come, signorina, settle something. I can't leave you alone here. I don't know what might happen to you. Let us go on to see Orso, or else let us go back to the village together. I shall see my brother again. God knows when--never, perhaps!"

"What's that you are saying, Colomba? Well, well, let us go! But only for a minute, and then we'll get home at once."

Colomba squeezed her hand, and without making any reply walked on so quickly that Miss Lydia could hardly keep up with her. She soon halted, luckily, and said to her companion:

"We won't go any farther without warning them. We might have a bullet flying at our heads."

She began to whistle through her fingers. Soon they heard a dog bark, and the bandits' advanced sentry shortly came in sight. This was our old acquaintance Brusco, who recognised Colomba at once and undertook to be her guide. After many windings through the narrow paths in the _maquis_ they were met by two men, armed to the teeth.

"Is that you, Brandolaccio?" inquired Colomba. "Where is my brother?"

"Just over there," replied the bandit. "But go quietly. He's asleep, and for the first time since his accident. Zounds, it's clear that where the devil gets through, a woman will get through too!"

The two girls moved forward cautiously, and beside a fire, the blaze of which was carefully concealed by a little wall of stones built round it, they beheld Orso, lying on a pile of heather, and covered with a _pilone_. He was very pale, and they could hear his laboured breathing. Colomba sat down near him, and gazed at him silently, with her hands clasped, as though she were praying in her heart. Miss Lydia hid her face in her handkerchief, and nestled close against her friend, but every now and then she lifted her head to take a look at the wounded man over Colomba's shoulder. Thus a quarter of an hour passed by without a word being said by anybody. At a sign from the theologian, Brandolaccio had plunged with him into the _maquis_, to the great relief of Miss Lydia, who for the first time fancied the local colour of the bandits' wild beards and warlike equipment was a trifle too strong.

At last Orso stirred. Instantly, Colomba bent over him, and kissed him again and again, pouring out questions anent his wound, his suffering, and his needs. After having answered that he was doing as well as possible, Orso inquired, in his turn, whether Miss Nevil was still at Pietranera, and whether she had written to him. Colomba, bending over her brother, completely hid her companion from his sight, and indeed the darkness would have made any recognition difficult. She was holding one of Miss Nevil's hands. With the other she slightly raised her wounded brother's head.

"No, brother," she replied. "She did not give me any letter for you. But are you still thinking about Miss Nevil? You must love her very much!"

"Love her, Colomba!--But--but now she may despise me!"

At this point Miss Nevil made a struggle to withdraw her fingers. But it was no easy matter to get Colomba to slacken her grasp. Small and well-shaped though her hand was, it possessed a strength of which we have already noticed certain proofs.

"Despise you!" cried Colomba. "After what you've done? No, indeed! She praises you! Oh, Orso, I could tell you so many things about her!"

Lydia's hand was still struggling for its freedom, but Colomba kept drawing it closer to Orso.

"But after all," said the wounded man, "why didn't she answer me? If she had sent me a single line, I should have been happy."

By dint of pulling at Miss Nevil's hand, Colomba contrived at last to put it into her brother's. Then, moving suddenly aside, she burst out laughing.

"Orso," she cried, "mind you don't speak evil of Miss Lydia--she understands Corsican quite well."

Miss Lydia took back her hand at once and stammered some unintelligible words. Orso thought he must be dreaming.

"You here, Miss Nevil? Good heavens! how did you dare? Oh, how happy you have made me!"

And raising himself painfully, he strove to get closer to her.

"I came with your sister," said Miss Lydia, "so that nobody might suspect where she was going. And then I--I wanted to make sure for myself. Alas! how uncomfortable you are here!"

Colomba had seated herself behind Orso. She raised him carefully so that his head might rest on her lap. She put her arms round his neck and signed to Miss Lydia to come near him.

"Closer! closer!" she said. "A sick man mustn't talk too loud." And when Miss Lydia hesitated, she caught her hand and forced her to sit down so close to Orso that her dress touched him, and her hand, still in Colomba's grasp, lay on the wounded man's shoulder.

"Now he's very comfortable!" said Colomba cheerily. "Isn't it good to lie out in the _maquis_ on such a lovely night? Eh, Orso?"

"How you must be suffering!" exclaimed Miss Lydia.

"My suffering is all gone now," said Orso, "and I should like to die here!" And his right hand crept up toward Miss Lydia's, which Colomba still held captive.

"You really must be taken to some place where you can be properly cared for, Signor della Rebbia," said Miss Nevil. "I shall never be able to sleep in my bed, now that I have seen you lying here, so uncomfortable, in the open air."

"If I had not been afraid of meeting you, Miss Nevil, I should have tried to get back to Pietranera, and I should have given myself up to the authorities."

"And why were you afraid of meeting her, Orso?" inquired Colomba.

"I had disobeyed you, Miss Nevil, and I should not have dared to look at you just then."

"Do you know you make my brother do everything you choose, Miss Lydia?" said Colomba, laughing. "I won't let you see him any more."

"I hope this unlucky business will soon be cleared up, and that you will have nothing more to fear," said Miss Nevil. "I shall be so happy, when we go away, to know justice has been done you, and that both your loyalty and your bravery have been acknowledged."

"Going away, Miss Nevil! Don't say that word yet!"

"What are we to do? My father can not spend his whole life shooting. He wants to go."

Orso's hand, which had been touching Miss Lydia's, dropped away, and there was silence for a moment.

"Nonsense!" said Colomba. "We won't let you go yet. We have plenty of things to show you still at Pietranera. Besides, you have promised to paint my picture, and you haven't even begun it so far. And then I've promised to compose you a _serenata_, with seventy-five verses. And then--but what can Brusco be growling about? And here's Brandolaccio running after him. I must go and see what's amiss."

She rose at once, and laying Orso's head, without further ceremony, on Miss Lydia's lap, she ran after the bandits.

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!" _

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