The Isle of Unrest Part 38

"But the notary is wrong," he said. "The Chateau de Va.s.selot was burnt, it is true, but here are the t.i.tle-deeds. My father did not die thirty years ago, but yesterday morning, in my arms."

Gilbert smiled gently. His innate politeness obviously forbade him to laugh at this absurd story.

"Then where has he been all these years?" he inquired with a good-humoured patience.

"In the Chateau de Va.s.selot."

There was a dead silence for a moment, broken at length by a movement on the part of Mademoiselle Brun. In her abrupt way she struck herself on the forehead as a fool.

"Yes," testified Susini, brusquely, "that is where he has been."

Denise remembered ever afterwards, that Lory did not look at her at this moment of his complete justification. It was now, and only for a moment, that Colonel Gilbert lost his steady imperturbability. From the time that Lory de Va.s.selot entered the room he had known that he had inevitably failed. From that instant the only question in his mind had been that of how much his enemies knew. It could not be chance that brought de Va.s.selot, and the Abbe Susini, and Mademoiselle Brun together to meet him at that time. He had been out-manoeuvred by some one of the three, and he shrewdly suspected by whom. There was nothing to do but face it--and he faced it with a calm audacity. He simply ignored mademoiselle's blinking glance. He met de Va.s.selot's quick eyes without fear, and smiled coolly in the abbe's fiery face. But when Denise turned and looked at him with direct and honest eyes, his own wavered, and for a brief instant he saw himself as Denise saw him--the bitterest moment of his life. The esteem of the many is nothing compared to the esteem of one.

In a moment he recovered himself and turned towards Lory with his lazy smile.

"Even to a romance there must be some motive," he said. "One naturally wonders why your father should allow his enemy to keep possession of a house and estate which were not his, and why he himself should remain concealed in the Chateau de Va.s.selot."

"That is the affair of my father. There was that between him and Mattei Perucca, which neither you nor I, monsieur, have any business to investigate. There are the t.i.tle-deeds. You have a certain right to look at them. You are therefore at liberty to satisfy yourself that you cannot buy the Perucca estate from Mademoiselle Lange, because it does not belong to Mademoiselle Lange, and never has belonged to her! A fact of which you may have been aware."

"You seem to know much."

"I know more than you suspect," answered de Va.s.selot. "I know, for instance, your reason for desiring to buy land on the western slope of Monte Torre."

"Ah?"

By way of reply, de Va.s.selot laid upon the table in front of Colonel Gilbert, the nugget no larger than a pigeon's egg, that Mademoiselle Brun had found in the _debris_ of the landslip. The colonel looked at it, and gave a short laugh. He was too indolent a man to feel an acute curiosity.

But there were many questions he would have liked to ask at that moment.

He knew that de Va.s.selot was only the spokesman of another who deliberately remained in the background. Lory had not found the gold, he had not pieced together with the patience of a clocksmith the wheels within wheels that Colonel Gilbert had constructed through the careful years. The whole story had been handed to him whom it most concerned, complete in itself like a barrister's brief, and de Va.s.selot was not setting it forth with much skill, but bluntly, simply and generously like a soldier.

"Surely I have said enough," were his next words, and it is possible that the colonel and Mademoiselle Brun alone understood the full meaning of the words.

"Yes, monsieur," said Gilbert at length, "I think you have."

And he moved towards the door in an odd, sidelong way. He had taken only three steps, when he swung round on his heel with a sharp exclamation.

The Abbe Susini, with blazing eyes--half mad with rage--had flown at him like a terrier.

"Ah!" said the colonel, catching him by the two wrists, and holding him at arm's length with steady northern nerve and muscle. "I know you Corsicans too well to turn my back to one."

He threw the abbe back, so that the little man fell heavily against the table; Susini recovered himself with the litheness of a wild animal, but when he flew at the closed door again it was Denise who stood in front of it.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

GOLD.

"I do believe yourself against yourself, And will henceforward rather die than doubt."

All eyes were now turned on the notary, who was hurriedly looking through the papers thrown down before him by Lory.

"They have pa.s.sed through my hands before, when I was a youth, in connection with a boundary dispute," he said, as if to explain his apparent hastiness. "They are all here--they are correct, monsieur."

He was a very quick man, and folding the papers as he spoke, he tied them together with the faded pink tape which had been fingered by three generations of Va.s.selots. He laid the packet on the table close to Lory's hand. Then he glanced at Denise and fell into thought, arranging in his mind that which he had to say to her.

"It is one of those cases, mademoiselle," he said at length, "common enough in Corsica, where a verbal agreement has never been confirmed in writing. Men who have been friends, become enemies so easily in this country. I cannot tell you upon what terms Mattei Perucca lived in the Casa. No one can tell you that. All that we know is that we have no t.i.tle-deeds--and that monsieur has them. The Casa may be yours, but you cannot prove it. Such a case tried in a law court in Corsica would go in favour of the litigant who possessed the greater number of friends in the locality. It would go in your favour if it could be tried here. But it would need to go to France. And there we could only look for justice, and justice is on the side of monsieur."

He apologized, as it were, for justice, of which he made himself the representative in that room. Then he turned towards de Va.s.selot.

"Monsieur is well within his rights--" he said, significantly, "--if he insist on them."

"I insist on them," replied Lory, who was proud of Denise's pride.

And Denise laughed.

The notary turned and looked curiously at her.

"Mademoiselle is able to be amused."

"I was thinking of the Rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris," she said, and the explanation left the lawyer more puzzled than before. She took up her gloves and drew them on.

"Then I am rendered penniless, monsieur?" she asked the notary.

"By me," answered Lory. And even the notary was silent. It is hard to silence a man who lives by his tongue. But there were here, it seemed, understandings and misunderstandings which the lawyer failed to comprehend.

The Abbe Susini had crossed the room and was whispering something hurriedly to Mademoiselle Brun, who acquiesced curtly and rather angrily.

She had the air of the man at the wheel, to whom one must not speak. For she was endeavouring rather nervously to steer two high-sailed vessels through those shoals and quicksands that must be pa.s.sed by all who set out in quest of love.

Then the abbe turned impulsively to Lory.

"Mademoiselle must be told about the gold--she must be told," he said.

"I had forgotten the gold," answered Lory, quite truthfully.

"You have forgotten everything, except the eyes of mademoiselle," the abbe muttered to himself as he went back to his place near the window. De Va.s.selot took up the packet of papers and began to untie the tape awkwardly with his one able hand. He was so slow that Mademoiselle Brun leant forward and a.s.sisted him. Denise bit her lip and pushed a chair towards him with her foot. He sat down and unfolded a map coloured and drawn in queer angles. This he laid upon the table, and, by a gesture, called Mademoiselle Brun and Denise to look at it. The abbe took a pencil from the notary's table, and after studying the map for a moment he drew a careful circle in the centre of it, embracing portions of the various colours and of the two estates described respectively as Perucca and Va.s.selot.

"That," he said to Lory, "is the probable radius of it so far as the expert could tell me on his examination of the ground yesterday."

Lory turned to Denise.

"You must think us all mad--at our games of cross-purposes," he said. "It appears that there is gold in the two estates--and gold has accounted for most human madnesses. Where the abbe has drawn this line there lies the gold--beyond the dreams of avarice, mademoiselle. And Colonel Gilbert was the only man who knew it. So you understand Gilbert, at all events."

"You did not know it when I asked your advice in Paris?"

"I learnt it two hours ago from the Abbe Susini; so I hastened here to claim the whole of it," answered Lory, with a laugh.

But Denise was grave.