panting, exhausted, colomba was utterly incapable of uttering a single word. her head rested on her brother’s shoulder, and she clasped one of his hands tightly between her own. orso, though secretly somewhat annoyed by her peroration, was too much alarmed to reprove her, even in the mildest fashion. he was silently waiting till the nervous attack from which she seemed to be suffering should have passed, when there was a knock at the door, and saveria, very much flustered, announced the prefect. at the words, colomba rose, as though ashamed of her weakness, and stood leaning on a chair, which shook visibly beneath her hand.
the prefect began with some commonplace apology for the unseasonable hour of his visit, condoled with mademoiselle colomba, touched on the danger connected with strong emotions, blamed the custom of composing funeral dirges, which the very talent of the voceratrice rendered the more harrowing to her auditors, skilfully slipped in a mild reproof concerning the tendency of the improvisation just concluded, and then, changing his tone—
“m. della rebbia,” he said, “i have many messages for you from your english friends. miss nevil sends her affectionate regards to your sister. i have a letter for you from her.”
“a letter from miss nevil!” cried orso.
“unluckily i have not got it with me. but you shall have it within five minutes. her father has not been well. for a little while we were afraid he had caught one of our terrible fevers. luckily he is all right again, as you will observe for yourself, for i fancy you will see him very soon.”
“miss nevil must have been very much alarmed!”
“fortunately she did not become aware of the danger till it was quite gone by. m. della rebbia, miss nevil has talked to me a great deal about you and about your sister.”
orso bowed.
“she has a great affection for you both. under her charming appearance, and her apparent frivolity, a fund of good sense lies hidden.”
“she is a very fascinating person,” said orso.
“i have come here, monsieur, almost at her prayer. nobody is better acquainted than i with a fatal story which i would fain not have to recall to you. as m. barricini is still the mayor of pietranera, and as i am prefect of the department, i need hardly tell you what weight i attach to certain suspicions which, if i am rightly informed, some incautious individuals have communicated to you, and which you, i know, have spurned with the indignation your position and your character would have led me to expect.”
“colomba,” said orso, moving uneasily to his chair. “you are very tired. you had better go to bed.”
colomba shook her head. she had recovered all her usual composure, and her burning eyes were fixed on the prefect.
“m. barricini,” the prefect continued, “is exceedingly anxious to put an end to the sort of enmity . . . or rather, the condition of uncertainty, existing between yourself and him. . . . on my part, i should be delighted to see you both in those relations of friendly intercourse appropriate to people who certainly ought to esteem each other.”
“monsieur,” replied orso in a shaking voice, “i have never charged barricini with my father’s murder. but he committed an act which must always prevent me from having anything to do with him. he forged a threatening letter, in the name of a certain bandit, or at least he hinted in an underhand sort of way that it was forged by my father. that letter, monsieur, was probably the indirect cause of my father’s death.”
the prefect sat thinking for a moment.
“that your father should have believed that, when his own hasty nature led him into a lawsuit with signor barricini, is excusable. but such blindness on your part really can not be admitted. pray consider that barricini could have served no interest of his own by forging the letter. i will not talk to you about his character, for you are not acquainted with it, and are prejudiced against it; but you can not suppose that a man conversant with the law——”
“but, monsieur,” said orso, rising to his feet, “be good enough to recollect that when you tell me the letter was not barricini’s work, you ascribe it to my father. and my father’s honour, monsieur, is mine!”
“no man on earth, sir, is more convinced of colonel della rebbia’s honour than myself! but the writer of the letter is now known.”
“who wrote it?” exclaimed colomba, making a step toward the prefect.
“a villain, guilty of several crimes—such crimes as you corsicans never pardon—a thief, one tomaso bianchi, at present confined in the prison at bastia, has acknowledged that he wrote the fatal letter.”
“i know nothing of the man,” said orso. “what can have been his object?”
“he belongs to this neighbourhood,” said colomba. “he is brother to a man who was our miller—a scamp and a liar, unworthy of belief.”
“you will soon see what his interest in the matter was,” continued the prefect. “the miller of whom your sister speaks—i think his name was teodoro—was the tenant of a mill belonging to the colonel, standing on the very stream the ownership of which m. barricini was disputing with your father. the colonel, always a generous man, made very little profit out of the mill. now tomaso thought that if barricini got possession of the stream there would be a heavy rent to pay, for it is well known that barricini is rather fond of money. in short, to oblige his brother, tomaso forged the letter from the bandit—and there’s the whole story. you know that in corsica the strength of the family tie is so great that it does sometimes lead to crime. please read over this letter to me from the attorney-general. it confirms what i have just told you.”
orso looked through the letter, which gave a detailed relation of tomaso’s confession, and colomba read it over his shoulder.
when she had come to the end of it she exclaimed:
“orlanduccio barricini went down to bastia a month ago, when it became known that my brother was coming home. he must have seen tomaso, and bought this lie of him!”
“signorina,” said the prefect, out of patience, “you explain everything by odious imputations! is that the way to find out the truth? you, sir, can judge more coolly. tell me what you think of the business now? do you believe, like this young lady, that a man who has only a slight sentence to fear would deliberately charge himself with forgery, just to oblige a person he doesn’t know?”
orso read the attorney-general’s letter again, weighing every word with the greatest care—for now that he had seen the old lawyer, he felt it more difficult to convince himself than it would have been a few days previously. at last he found himself obliged to admit that the explanation seemed to him to be satisfactory. but colomba cried out vehemently:
“tomaso bianchi is a knave! he’ll not be convicted, or he’ll escape from prison! i am certain of it!”
the prefect shrugged his shoulders.
“i have laid the information i have received before you, monsieur. i will now depart, and leave you to your own reflections. i shall wait till your own reason has enlightened you, and i trust it may prove stronger than your sister’s suppositions.”
orso, after saying a few words of excuse for colomba, repeated that he now believed tomaso to be the sole culprit.
the prefect had risen to take his leave.
“if it were not so late,” said he, “i would suggest your coming over with me to fetch miss nevil’s letter. at the same time you might repeat to m. barricini what you have just said to me, and the whole thing would be settled.”
“orso della rebbia will never set his foot inside the house of a barricini!” exclaimed colomba impetuously.
“this young lady appears to be the tintinajo[*] of the family!” remarked the prefect, with a touch of irony.
[*] this is the name given to the ram or he-goat which wears
a bell and leads the flock, and it is applied,
metaphorically, to any member of a family who guides it in
all important matters.
“monsieur,” replied colomba resolutely, “you are deceived. you do not know the lawyer. he is the most cunning and knavish of men. i beseech you not to make orso do a thing that would overwhelm him with dishonour!”
“colomba!” exclaimed orso, “your passion has driven you out of your senses!”
“orso! orso! by the casket i gave you, i beseech you to listen to me! there is blood between you and the barricini. you shall not go into their house!”
“sister!”
“no, brother, you shall not go! or i will leave this house, and you will never see me again! have pity on me, orso!” and she fell on her knees.
“i am grieved,” said the prefect, “to find mademoiselle colomba so unreasonable. you will convince her, i am sure.”
he opened the door and paused, seeming to expect orso to follow him.
“i can not leave her now,” said orso. “to-morrow, if——”
“i shall be starting very early,” said the prefect.
“brother,” cried colomba, clasping her hands, “wait till to-morrow morning, in any case. let me look over my father’s papers. you can not refuse me that!”
“well, you shall look them over to-night. but at all events you shall not torment me afterward with your violent hatreds. a thousand pardons, monsieur! i am so upset myself to-night—it had better be to-morrow.”
“the night brings counsel,” said the prefect, as he went out. “i hope all your uncertainty will have disappeared by to-morrow.”
“saveria,” colomba called, “take the lantern and attend the signor prefetto. he will give you a letter to bring back to my brother.”
she added a few words which reached saveria’s ear alone.
“colomba,” said orso, when the prefect was gone, “you have distressed me very much. will no evidence convince you?”
“you have given me till to-morrow,” she replied. “i have very little time; but i still have some hope.”
then she took a bunch of keys and ran up to a room on the upper story. there he could hear her pulling open drawers, and rummaging in the writing-desk in which colonel della rebbia had kept his business papers.
