The Isle of Unrest | Page 2

very mention of Corte and Sartene--where, at all events,
the women have for husbands, men--and not degenerate Pisan
vine-snippers.
It was not so long ago either. For the man might have been alive to-day,
though he would have been old and bent no doubt; for he was a
thick-set man, and must have been strong. He had, indeed, carried his
lead up from the road that runs by the Guadelle river. Was he not to be
traced all the way up the short cut through the olive terraces by one
bloody footprint at regular intervals? You could track his passage
across the "Place," towards the fountain of which he had fallen short
like a poisoned rat that tries to reach water and fails.
He lay quite alone, still grasping the gun which he had never laid aside
since boyhood. No one went to him; no one had attempted to help him.

He lay as he had fallen, with a thin stream of blood running slowly
from one trouser-leg. For this was Corsican work--that is to say, dirty
work--from behind a rock, in the back, at close range, without warning
or mercy, as honest men would be ashamed to shoot the merest beast of
the forest. It was as likely as not a charge of buck-shot low down in the
body, leaving the rest to hemorrhage or gangrene.
All Olmeta knew of it, and every man took care that it should be no
business of his. Several had approached, pipe in mouth, and looked at
the dead man without comment; but all had gone away again, idly,
indifferently. For in this the most beautiful of the islands, human life is
held cheaper than in any land of Europe.
Some one, it was understood, had gone to tell the gendarmes down at
St. Florent. There was no need to send and tell his wife--half a dozen
women were racing through the olive groves to get the first taste of that.
Perhaps some one had gone towards Oletta to meet the Abbé Susini,
whose business in a measure this must be.
The sun suddenly dipped behind the heavy bank of clouds and the
mountains darkened. Although it lies in the very centre of the
Mediterranean, Corsica is a gloomy land, and the summits of her high
mountains are more often covered than clear. It is a land of silence and
brooding quiet. The women are seldom gay; the men, in their heavy
clothes of dark corduroy, have little to say for themselves. Some of
them were standing now in the shadow of the great trees, smoking their
pipes in silence, and looking with a studied indifference at nothing.
Each was prepared to swear before a jury at the Bastia assizes that he
knew nothing of the "accident," as it is here called, to Pietro Andrei,
and had not seen him crawl up to Olmeta to die. Indeed, Pietro Andrei's
death seemed to be nobody's business, though we are told that not so
much as a sparrow may fall unheeded.
The Abbé Susini was coming now--a little fiery man, with the walk of
one who was slightly bow-legged, though his cassock naturally
concealed this defect. He was small and not too broad, with a narrow
face and clean, straight features--something of the Spaniard, something
of the Greek, nothing Italian, nothing French. In a word, this was a

Corsican, which is to say that he was different from any other European
race, and would, as sure as there is corn in Egypt, be overbearing,
masterful, impossible. He was, of course, clean shaven, as brown as old
oak, with little flashing black eyes. His cassock was a good one, and his
hat, though dusty, shapely and new. But his whole bearing threw, as it
were, into the observer's face the suggestion that the habit does not
make the priest.
He came forward without undue haste, and displayed little surprise and
no horror.
"Quite like old times," he said to himself, remembering the days of
Louis Philippe. He knelt down beside the dead man, and perhaps the
attitude reminded him of his calling; for he fell to praying, and made
the gesture of the cross over Andrei's head. Then suddenly he leapt to
his feet, and shook his lean fist out towards the valley and St. Florent,
as if he knew whence this trouble came.
"Provided they would keep their work in their own commune," he cried,
"instead of bringing disgrace on a parish that has not had the gendarmes
this--this--"
"Three days," added one of the bystanders, who had drawn near. And
he said it with a certain pride, as of one well pleased to belong to a
virtuous community.
But the priest was not listening. He had already turned aside in his
quick, jerky way; for he