Chapter 3

It was a lovely night. The moonlight was dancing on the waves, the ship
glided smoothly on before a gentle breeze. Miss Lydia was not sleepy,
and nothing but the presence of an unpoetical person had prevented her
from enjoying those emotions which every human being possessing a touch
of poetry must experience at sea by moonlight. When she felt sure the
young lieutenant must be sound asleep, like the prosaic creature he was,
she got up, took her cloak, woke her maid, and went on deck. Nobody
was to be seen except the sailor at the helm, who was singing a sort of
dirge in the Corsican dialect, to some wild and monotonous tune. In the
silence of the night this strange music had its charm. Unluckily Miss
Lydia did not understand perfectly what the sailor was singing. Amid
a good deal that was commonplace, a passionate line would occasionally
excite her liveliest curiosity. But just at the most important moment
some words of _patois_ would occur, the sense of which utterly escaped
her. Yet she did make out that the subject was connected with a murder.
Curses against the assassin, threats of vengeance, praise of the dead
were all mingled confusedly. She remembered some of the lines. I will
endeavour to translate them here.

. . . “Neither cannon nor bayonets . . . Brought pallor to his
brow. . . As serene on the battlefield . . . as a summer sky. He was the
falcon--the eagle’s friend . . . Honey of the sand to his friends . . .
To his enemies, a tempestuous sea. . . . . . . Prouder than the sun
. . . gentler than the moon . . . He for whom the enemies of France
. . . never waited . . . Murderers in his own land . . . struck him from
behind . . . As Vittolo slew Sampiero Corso . . . Never would they have
dared to look him in The face . . . Set up on the wall Before my bed
. . . my well-earned cross of honour . . . red is its ribbon . . . redder
is my shirt! . . . For my son, my son in a far country . . . keep my cross
and my blood-stained shirt! . . .

“. . . He will see two holes in it . . . For each hole a hole in another
shirt! . . . But will that accomplish the vengeance? . . . I must have
the hand that fired, the eye that aimed . . . the heart that
planned!” . . .

Suddenly the sailor stopped short.

“Why don’t you go on, my good man?” inquired Miss Nevil.

The sailor, with a jerk of his head, pointed to a figure appearing
through the main hatchway of the schooner: it was Orso, coming up to
enjoy the moonlight. “Pray finish your song,” said Miss Lydia. “It
interests me greatly!”

The sailor leaned toward her, and said, in a very low tone, “I don’t
give the _rimbecco_ to anybody!”

“The what?”

The sailor, without replying, began to whistle.

“I have caught you admiring our Mediterranean, Miss Nevil,” said Orso,
coming toward her. “You must allow you never see a moon like this
anywhere else!”

“I was not looking at it, I was altogether occupied in studying
Corsican. That sailor, who has been singing a most tragic dirge, stopped
short at the most interesting point.”

The sailor bent down, as if to see the compass more clearly, and tugged
sharply at Miss Nevil’s fur cloak. It was quite evident his lament could
not be sung before Lieutenant Orso.

“What were you singing, Paolo France?” said Orso. “Was it a _ballata_
or a _vocero_? Mademoiselle understands you, and would like to hear the
end.”

“I have forgotten it, Ors’ Anton’,” said the sailor.

And instantly he began a hymn to the Virgin, at the top of his voice.

Miss Lydia listened absent-mindedly to the hymn, and did not press the
singer any further--though she was quite resolved, in her own mind, to
find out the meaning of the riddle later. But her maid, who, being a
Florentine, could not understand the Corsican dialect any better than
her mistress, was as eager as Miss Lydia for information, and, turning
to Orso, before the English lady could warn her by a nudge, she said:
“Captain what does _giving the rimbecco_ mean?”

“The rimbecco!” said Orso. “Why, it’s the most deadly insult that can be
offered to a Corsican. It means reproaching him with not having avenged
his wrong. Who mentioned the rimbecco to you?”

“Yesterday, at Marseilles,” replied Miss Lydia hurriedly, “the captain
of the schooner used the word.”

“And whom was he talking about?” inquired Orso eagerly.

“Oh, he was telling us some odd story about the time--yes, I think it
was about Vannina d’Ornano.”

“I suppose, mademoiselle, that Vannina’s death has not inspired you with
any great love for our national hero, the brave Sampiero?”

“But do you think his conduct was so very heroic?”

“The excuse for his crime lies in the savage customs of the period. And
then Sampiero was waging deadly war against the Genoese. What confidence
could his fellow-countrymen have felt in him if he had not punished his
wife, who tried to treat with Genoa?”

“Vannina,” said the sailor, “had started off without her husband’s
leave. Sampiero did quite right to wring her neck!”

“But,” said Miss Lydia, “it was to save her husband, it was out of love
for him, that she was going to ask his pardon from the Genoese.”

“To ask his pardon was to degrade him!” exclaimed Orso.

“And then to kill her himself!” said Miss Lydia. “What a monster he must
have been!”

“You know she begged as a favour that she might die by his hand. What
about Othello, mademoiselle, do you look on him, too, as a monster?”

“There is a difference; he was jealous. Sampiero was only vain!”

“And after all is not jealousy a kind of vanity? It is the vanity of
love; will you not excuse it on account of its motive?”

Miss Lydia looked at him with an air of great dignity, and turning to
the sailor, inquired when the schooner would reach port.

“The day after to-morrow,” said he, “if the wind holds.”

“I wish Ajaccio were in sight already, for I am sick of this ship.”
She rose, took her maid’s arm, and walked a few paces on the deck. Orso
stood motionless beside the helm, not knowing whether he had better walk
beside her, or end a conversation which seemed displeasing to her.

“Blood of the Madonna, what a handsome girl!” said the sailor. “If every
flea in my bed were like her, I shouldn’t complain of their biting me!”

Miss Lydia may possibly have overheard this artless praise of her beauty
and been startled by it; for she went below almost immediately. Shortly
after Orso also retired. As soon as he had left the deck the maid
reappeared, and, having cross-questioned the sailor, carried back the
following information to her mistress. The _ballata_ which had been
broken off on Orso’s appearance had been composed on the occasion of
the death of his father, Colonel della Rebbia, who had been murdered two
years previously. The sailor had no doubt at all that Orso was coming
back to Corsica _per fare la vendetta_, such was his expression, and he
affirmed that before long there would be _fresh meat_ to be seen in
the village of Pietranera. This national expression, being interpreted,
meant that Signor Orso proposed to murder two or three individuals
suspected of having assassinated his father--individuals who had,
indeed, been prosecuted on that account, but had come out of the trial
as white as snow, for they were hand and glove with the judges, lawyers,
prefect, and gendarmes.

“There is no justice in Corsica,” added the sailor, “and I put much more
faith in a good gun than in a judge of the Royal Court. If a man has
an enemy he must choose one of the three S’s.” (A national expression
meaning _schioppetto_, _stiletto_, _strada_--that is, _gun_, _dagger_,
or _flight_.)

These interesting pieces of information wrought a notable change in Miss
Lydia’s manner and feeling with regard to Lieutenant della Rebbia.
From that moment he became a person of importance in the romantic
Englishwoman’s eyes.

His careless air, his frank and good humour, which had at first
impressed her so unfavourably, now seemed to her an additional merit,
as being proofs of the deep dissimulation of a strong nature, which will
not allow any inner feeling to appear upon the surface. Orso seemed to
her a sort of Fieschi, who hid mighty designs under an appearance of
frivolity, and, though it is less noble to kill a few rascals than to
free one’s country, still a fine deed of vengeance is a fine thing, and
besides, women are rather glad to find their hero is not a politician.
Then Miss Nevil remarked for the first time that the young lieutenant
had large eyes, white teeth, an elegant figure, that he was
well-educated, and possessed the habits of good society. During the
following day she talked to him frequently, and found his conversation
interesting. He was asked many questions about his own country, and
described it well. Corsica, which he had left when young, to go first
to college, and then to the Ecole militaire, had remained in his
imagination surrounded with poetic associations. When he talked of its
mountains, its forests, and the quaint customs of its inhabitants
he grew eager and animated. As may be imagined, the word _vengeance_
occurred more than once in the stories he told--for it is impossible
to speak of the Corsicans without either attacking or justifying their
proverbial passion. Orso somewhat surprised Miss Nevil by his general
condemnation of the undying hatreds nursed by his fellow-countrymen.
As regarded the peasants, however, he endeavoured to excuse them, and
claimed that the _vendetta_ is the poor man’s duel. “So true is this,”
he said, “that no assassination takes place till a formal challenge
has been delivered. ‘Be on your guard yourself, I am on mine!’ are the
sacramental words exchanged, from time immemorial, between two enemies,
before they begin to lie in wait for each other. There are more
assassinations among us,” he added, “than anywhere else. But you will
never discover an ignoble cause for any of these crimes. We have many
murderers, it is true, but not a single thief.”

When he spoke about vengeance and murder Miss Lydia looked at him
closely, but she could not detect the slightest trace of emotion on
his features. As she had made up her mind, however, that he possessed
sufficient strength of mind to be able to hide his thoughts from every
eye (her own, of course, excepted), she continued in her firm belief
that Colonel della Rebbia’s shade would not have to wait long for the
atonement it claimed.

The schooner was already within sight of Corsica. The captain pointed
out the principal features of the coast, and, though all of these
were absolutely unknown to Miss Lydia, she found a certain pleasure
in hearing their names; nothing is more tiresome than an anonymous
landscape. From time to time the colonel’s telescope revealed to her
the form of some islander clad in brown cloth, armed with a long gun,
bestriding a small horse, and galloping down steep slopes. In each of
these Miss Lydia believed she beheld either a brigand or a son going
forth to avenge his father’s death. But Orso always declared it was some
peaceful denizen of a neighbouring village travelling on business,
and that he carried a gun less from necessity than because it was the
fashion, just as no dandy ever takes a walk without an elegant cane.
Though a gun is a less noble and poetic weapon than a stiletto, Miss
Lydia thought it much more stylish for a man than any cane, and she
remembered that all Lord Byron’s heroes died by a bullet, and not by the
classic poniard.

After three days’ sailing, the ship reached Les Sanguinaires (The
Bloody Islands), and the magnificent panorama of the Gulf of Ajaccio was
unrolled before our travellers’ eyes. It is compared, with justice, to
the Bay of Naples, and just as the schooner was entering the harbour
a burning _maquis_, which covered the Punta di Girato, brought back
memories of Vesuvius and heightened the resemblance. To make it quite
complete, Naples should be seen after one of Attila’s armies had
devastated its suburbs--for round Ajaccio everything looks dead and
deserted. Instead of the handsome buildings observable on every
side from Castellamare to Cape Misena, nothing is to be seen in the
neighbourhood of the Gulf of Ajaccio but gloomy _maquis_ with bare
mountains rising behind them. Not a villa, not a dwelling of any
kind--only here and there, on the heights about the town, a few isolated
white structures stand out against a background of green. These are
mortuary chapels or family tombs. Everything in this landscape is
gravely and sadly beautiful.

The appearance of the town, at that period especially, deepened the
impression caused by the loneliness of its surroundings. There was
no stir in the streets, where only a few listless idlers--always the
same--were to be seen; no women at all, except an odd peasant come in to
sell her produce; no loud talk, laughter, and singing, as in the Italian
towns. Sometimes, under the shade of a tree on the public promenade, a
dozen armed peasants will play at cards or watch each other play; they
never shout or wrangle; if they get hot over the game, pistol shots ring
out, and this always before the utterance of any threat. The Corsican
is grave and silent by nature. In the evening, a few persons come out to
enjoy the cool air, but the promenaders on the Corso are nearly all of
them foreigners; the islanders stay in front of their own doors; each
one seems on the watch, like a falcon over its nest.