Columba

P >> Prosper Merimee >> Columba


The steepness of the declivity made it necessary for Orso to dismount.
He was walking quickly down the hill, which was slippery with ashes
(he had thrown the bridle on his horse's neck), and was hardly
five-and-twenty paces from one of these stone fences, when, just in
front of him, on the right-hand side of the road, he perceived first
of all the barrel of a gun, and then a head, rising over the top of the
wall. The gun was levelled, and he recognised Orlanduccio, just ready
to fire. Orso swiftly prepared for self-defence, and the two men, taking
deliberate aim, stared at each other for several seconds, with that
thrill of emotion which the bravest must feel when he knows he must
either deal death or endure it.

"Vile coward!" shouted Orso.

The words were hardly out of his mouth when he saw the flash of
Orlanduccio's gun, and almost at the same instant a second shot rang out
on his left from the other side of the path, fired by a man whom he had
not noticed, and who was aiming at him from behind another wall. Both
bullets struck him. The first, Orlanduccio's, passed through his left
arm, which Orso had turned toward him as he aimed. The second shot
struck him in the chest, and tore his coat, but coming in contact with
the blade of his dagger, it luckily flattened against it, and only
inflicted a trifling bruise. Orso's left arm fell helpless at his side,
and the barrel of his gun dropped for a moment, but he raised it at
once, and aiming his weapon with his right hand only, he fired at
Orlanduccio. His enemy's head, which was only exposed to the level of
the eyes, disappeared behind the wall. Then Orso, swinging round to the
left, fired the second barrel at a man in a cloud of smoke whom he could
hardly see. This face likewise disappeared. The four shots had followed
each other with incredible swiftness; no trained soldiers ever fired
their volleys in quicker succession. After Orso's last shot a great
silence fell. The smoke from his weapon rose slowly up into the sky.
There was not a movement, not the slightest sound from behind the wall.
But for the pain in his arm, he could have fancied the men on whom he
had just fired had been phantoms of his own imagination.

Fully expecting a second volley, Orso moved a few steps, to place
himself behind one of the burned trees that still stood upright in
the _maquis_. Thus sheltered, he put his gun between his knees,
and hurriedly reloaded it. Meanwhile his left arm began to hurt him
horribly, and felt as if it were being dragged down by a huge weight.

What had become of his adversaries? He could not understand. If they had
taken to flight, if they had been wounded, he would certainly have heard
some noise, some stir among the leaves. Were they dead, then? Or, what
was far more likely, were they not waiting behind their wall for a
chance of shooting at him again. In his uncertainty, and feeling his
strength fast failing him, he knelt down on his right knee, rested
his wounded arm upon the other, and took advantage of a branch that
protruded from the trunk of the burned tree to support his gun. With his
finger on the trigger, his eye fixed on the wall, and his ear strained
to catch the slightest sound, he knelt there, motionless, for several
minutes, which seemed to him a century. At last, behind him, in the far
distance, he heard a faint shout, and very soon a dog flew like an arrow
down the slope, and stopped short, close to him, wagging its tail.
It was Brusco, the comrade and follower of the bandits--the herald,
doubtless, of his master's approach. Never was any honest man more
impatiently awaited. With his muzzle in the air, and turned toward the
nearest fence, the dog sniffed anxiously. Suddenly he gave vent to a low
growl, sprang at a bound over the wall, and almost instantly reappeared
upon its crest, whence he gazed steadily at Orso with eyes that spoke
surprise as clearly as a dog's may do it. Then he sniffed again, this
time toward the other inclosure, the wall of which he also crossed.
Within a second he was back on the top of that, with the same air of
astonishment and alarm, and straightway he bounded into the thicket with
his tail between his legs, still gazing at Orso, and retiring from him
slowly, and sideways, until he had put some distance between them. Then
off he started again, tearing up the slope almost as fast as he had
come down it, to meet a man, who, in spite of its steepness, was rapidly
descending.

"Help, Brando!" shouted Orso, as soon as he thought he was within
hearing.

"Hallo! Ors' Anton'! are you wounded?" inquired Brandolaccio, as he ran
up panting. "Is it in your body or your limbs?"

"In the arm."

"The arm--oh, that's nothing! And the other fellow?"

"I think I hit him."

Brandolaccio ran after the dog to the nearest field and leaned over to
look at the other side of the wall, then pulling off his cap--

"Signor Orlanduccio, I salute you!" said he, then turning toward Orso,
he bowed to him, also, gravely.

"That," he remarked, "is what I call a man who has been properly done
for."

"Is he still alive?" asked Orso, who could hardly breathe.

"Oh! he wouldn't wish it! he'd be too much vexed about the bullet you
put into his eye! Holy Madonna! What a hole! That's a good gun, upon my
soul! what a weight! That spatters a man's brains for you! Hark ye, Ors'
Anton'! when I heard the first _piff, piff_, says I to myself: 'Dash it,
they're murdering my lieutenant!' Then I heard _boum, boum_. 'Ha, ha!'
says I, 'that's the English gun beginning to talk--he's firing back.'
But what on earth do you want with me, Brusco?"

The dog guided him to the other field.

"Upon my word," cried Brandolaccio, utterly astonished, "a right and
left, that's what it is! Deuce take it! Clear enough, powder must be
dear, for you don't waste it!"

"What do you mean, for God's sake?" asked Orso.

"Come, sir, don't try to humbug me; you bring down the dame, and then
you want somebody to pick it up for you. Well! there's one man who'll
have a queer dessert to-day, and that's Lawyer Barricini!--you want
butcher's meat, do you? Well, here you have it. Now, who the devil will
be the heir?"

"What! is Vincentello dead too?"

"Dead as mutton. _Salute a noi!_ The good point about you is that you
don't let them suffer. Just come over and look at Vincentello; he's
kneeling here with his head against the wall, as if he were asleep. You
may say he sleeps like lead, this time, poor devil."

Orso turned his head in horror.

"Are you certain he's dead?"

"You're like Sampiero Corso, who never had to fire more than once. Look
at it there, in his chest, on the left--just where Vincileone was hit at
Waterloo. I'll wager that bullet isn't far from his heart--a right and
left! Ah! I'll never talk about shooting again. Two with two shots, and
bullets at that! The two brothers! If he'd had a third shot he'd have
killed their papa. Better luck next time. What a shot! Ors' Anton'! And
to think that an honest poor chap like me will never get the chance of a
right and a left two gendarmes!"

As he talked the bandit was scanning Orso's arm, and splitting up his
sleeve with his dagger.

"This is nothing," said he. "But this coat of yours will give Signorina
Colomba work to do. Ha! what's this I see? this gash upon your chest?
Nothing went in there, surely? No! you wouldn't be so brisk as you are!
Come, try to move your finger. Do you feel my teeth when I bite your
little finger? Not very well? Never mind! It won't be much. Let me take
your handkerchief and your neckcloth. Well, your coat's spoilt, anyhow!
What the devil did you make yourself so smart for? Were you going to
a wedding? There! drink a drop of wine. Why on earth don't you carry a
flask? Does any Corsican ever go out without a flask?"

Then again he broke off the dressing of the wound to exclaim:

"A right and left! Both of them stone dead! How the Padre will laugh! A
right and left! Oh, here's that little dawdle Chilina at last!"

Orso made no reply--he was as pale as death and shaking in every limb.

"Chili!" shouted Brandolaccio, "go and look behind that wall!"

The child, using both hands and feet, scrambled onto the wall, and the
moment she caught sight of Orlanduccio's corpse she crossed herself.

"That's nothing," proceeded the bandit; "go and look farther on, over
there!"

The child crossed herself again.

"Was it you, uncle?" she asked timidly.

"Me! Don't you know I've turned into a useless old fellow! This, Chili,
is the signor's work; offer him your compliments."

"The signorina will be greatly rejoiced," said Chilina, "and she will be
very much grieved to know you are wounded, Ors' Anton'."

"Now then, Ors' Anton'," said the bandit, when he had finished binding
up the wound. "Chilina, here, has caught your horse. You must get on
his back, and come with me to the Stazzona _maquis_. It would be a sly
fellow who'd lay his hand on you there. When we get to the Cross of
Santa Christina, you'll have to dismount. You'll give over your horse to
Chilina, who'll go off and warn the signorina. You can say anything to
the child, Ors' Anton'. She would let herself be cut in pieces rather
than betray her friends," and then, fondly, he turned to the little
girl, "That's it, you little hussy; a ban on you, a curse on you--you
jade!" For Brandolaccio, who was superstitious, like most bandits,
feared he might cast a spell on a child if he blessed it or praised it,
seeing it is a well-known fact that the mysterious powers that rule the
_Annocchiatura_[*] have a vile habit of fulfilling our wishes in the
very opposite sense to that we give them.

[*] _Annocchiatura_, an involuntary spell cast either by the
eye or by spoken words.

"Where am I to go, Brando?" queried Orso in a faint voice.

"Faith! you must choose; either to jail or to the _maquis_. But no della
Rebbia knows the path that leads him to the jail. To the _maquis_, Ors'
Anton'."

"Farewell, then, to all my hopes!" exclaimed the wounded man, sadly.

"Your hopes? Deuce take it! Did you hope to do any better with a
double-barrelled gun? How on earth did the fellows contrive to hit you?
The rascals must have been as hard to kill as cats."

"They fired first," said Orso.

"True, true; I'd forgotten that!--_piff, piff--boum, boum_! A right and
left, and only one hand! If any man can do better, I'll go hang myself.
Come! now you're safely mounted! Before we start, just give a glance
at your work. It isn't civil to leave one's company without saying
good-bye."

Orso spurred his horse. He would not have looked at the two poor
wretches he had just destroyed, for anything on earth.

"Hark ye, Ors' Anton'," quoth the bandit, as he caught hold of the
horse's bridle, "shall I tell you the truth? Well, no offence to you!
I'm sorry for those poor young fellows! You'll pardon me, I hope; so
good-looking, so strong, so young. Orlanduccio, I've shot with him
so often! Only four days ago he gave me a bundle of cigars, and
Vincentello--he was always so cheery. Of course you've only done what
you had to do, and indeed the shot was such a splendid one, nobody could
regret it. But I, you see, had nothing to do with your vengeance. I know
you're perfectly in the right. When one has an enemy one must get rid of
him. But the Barricini were an old family. Here's another of them wiped
out, and by a right and left too! It's striking."

As he thus spoke his funeral oration over the Barricini, Brandolaccio
hastily guided Orso, Chilina, and Brusco, the dog, toward the Stazzona
_maquis_.



CHAPTER XVIII

Meanwhile, very shortly after Orso's departure, Colomba's spies had
warned her that the Barricini were out on the warpath, and from that
moment she was racked by the most intense anxiety. She was to be seen
moving hither and thither all over the house, between the kitchen and
the rooms that were being made ready for her guests, doing nothing, yet
always busy, and constantly stopping to look out of a window for any
unusual stir in the village. Toward eleven o'clock, a somewhat numerous
cavalcade rode into Pietranera. This was the colonel, with his daughter,
their servants, and their guide. Colomba's first word, as she welcomed
them, was "Have you seen my brother?" Then she questioned the guide as
to the road they had taken, and the hour of their departure, and having
heard his answers, she could not understand why they had not met him.

"Perhaps," said the guide, "your brother took the higher path; we came
by the lower one."

But Colomba only shook her head and asked more questions. In spite of
her natural firmness of character, increased as it was by her proud
desire to conceal any sign of weakness before strangers, she could not
hide her anxiety, and as soon as she had informed them of the attempted
reconciliation, and of its unfortunate issue, this was shared by the
colonel and Miss Lydia. Miss Nevil became very uneasy, and wanted to
have messengers sent off in every direction, and her father offered
to remount at once and set out with the guide in search of Orso. Her
guests' alarm recalled Colomba to a sense of her duties as a hostess.
She strove to force a smile as she pressed the colonel to come to table,
and suggested twenty plausible reasons, which she herself demolished
within an instant, to account for her brother's delay. The colonel,
feeling it to be his duty, as a man, to reassure the ladies, put forward
his own explanation.

"I'll wager," he said, "that della Rebbia has come across some game or
other. He has not been able to stand out against that temptation, and we
shall soon see him come in with a heavy bag. 'Pon my soul," he went on,
"we did hear four shots fired on the road. Two of them were louder
than the others, and I said to my girl, 'I'll bet anything that's della
Rebbia out shooting! My gun is the only one that would make that noise.'"

Colomba turned pale, and Lydia, who was watching her closely, had
no difficulty in guessing the suspicions with which the colonel's
conjecture had inspired her. After a few minutes' silence, Colomba
eagerly inquired whether the two louder reports had been heard before or
after the others. But neither the colonel, his daughter, nor the guide
had paid much attention to this all-important detail.

Toward one o'clock, as none of Colomba's messengers had yet returned,
she gathered all her courage, and insisted that her guests should sit
down to table with her. But, except the colonel, none of them could eat.
At the slightest sound in the square, Colomba ran to the window. Then
drearily she returned to her place, and struggled yet more drearily
to carry on a trivial conversation, to which nobody paid the slightest
attention, and which was broken by long intervals of silence. All at
once they heard a horse's gallop.

"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 glass. Miss Lydia screamed. They all rushed to
the door of the house. Before Chilina could jump off her steed, she was
snatched 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 Othello: "He lives!" Colomba's grasp
relaxed, and nimbly as a kitten Chilina dropped upon the ground.

"The others?" queried Colomba hoarsely. 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 flashing 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 nobody 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 passed 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 snatched 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 assure
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.