The Corsican Lovers

CHAPTER I.


BROTHERLY LOVE.

“You have no right, Pascal, to command me to marry a man whom I do not love.”

The speaker was a young girl not more than eighteen years of age. As she spoke, the flashing of her eyes and her clenched hands betokened the intensity of her feelings.

The person to whom the words were addressed was a man of about forty. He was smooth-shaven, and the black, shaggy eyebrows which met above the bridge of his nose, gave to his face a stern and almost forbidding expression. He did not reply to his sister’s impassioned words for some time, but sat, apparently unconcerned, tapping lightly on the library table with the fingers of his right hand.

At last he spoke: “I do not command you, Vivienne; all I ask is that you will comply with your father’s dying wish.”

“How do you know that it was his dying wish? He was dead when found, stabbed to the heart, as you told me, by Manuel Della Coscia—that brave Corsican who ran away to escape the vengeance he so well deserved.”

The man looked up approvingly. “My sister, that was spoken like a true Batistelli. If you loved your father, as your words seem to indicate, I do not see how you can disobey his slightest wish.


”

The girl turned upon him, that bright flash again in her eyes. “Why are you so anxious that I should marry? Why is it that you yourself do not marry?”

The man’s answer came quickly: “I have sworn, and so has your brother Julien, that we will not marry until our father’s death has been avenged.”

The girl placed both her hands on the edge of the table, leaned forward, and looked into her brother’s face, as she said: “And neither will I.”

She spoke with suppressed intensity.

“You knew our father,” she continued; “you loved him when he was alive and you can love him now. You have something tangible to remember; I can only love his memory. I was but a child a few days old when he fell beneath the knife of the assassin. I do love his memory, and I know if he were living he would not condemn me to a loveless marriage.”

Again that inscrutable look came upon the man’s face. He shrugged his shoulders and the dark line of eyebrows lifted perceptibly.

“I do not know what he would do; I only know what he did.”

“And what did he do?” broke in Vivienne.

The man started. The question was asked with such vehemence that for an instant his marked self-possession was overcome.

“What did he do?” he repeated, thus gaining time, for he wished to think of the most forcible way in which to present the matter to his sister. “I will tell you. I know that he talked the matter over with old Count Mont d’Oro. The Count is dead, or there would be a living witness to the compact. But a few days before our father’s death, in fact the very day you were born, even while you were in your nurse’s arms, he said to me, ‘I am glad that it is a daughter. She shall be called Vivienne, and when she grows to womanhood she shall be a countess, for I have talked the matter over


 with Count Mont d’Oro, and we have both agreed that the little Count Napier shall be the husband of my little Vivienne.’ Three days later I looked upon his lifeless body. The words of the dead cannot be changed.”

It was now the young girl’s turn to think before speaking. The position that her brother had taken seemed, for the moment at least, unanswerable; but woman’s wisdom, like her wit, is equal to any emergency.

“Brother Pascal,” she began, and her voice was tremulous, “when I was bereft of a father’s and a mother’s love, you took their place. It is to you I have always looked for advice—both Julien and I, for you are so much older and wiser than we are. You have taken our father’s place; his words have become your words, but you are living and can change your words and free me from this bondage, for I would rather die than become the wife of Count Napier, or any other man I cannot love.”

Pascal Batistelli set his teeth tightly together, a dark look came into his face. “Am I to understand, then, that you absolutely refuse to marry Count Mont d’Oro?”

“Not only him, but any one else,” answered the girl. “I am content as I am.”

She turned away from the table, walked to the window, and looked out upon the grounds which stretched far and wide from the castle walls. The bright sunlight fell on tree and bush and on the brightly tinted flowers. All was beauty and peace without. How could nature be so happy, and she so miserable? Suddenly she turned and approached her brother, who had not changed his position.

“When did you wish this marriage to take place?” she asked, making a vain attempt to smile.

“On your eighteenth birthday,” he said, calmly.

“Oh, I have some time, then, to wait,” and she gave


 a little laugh. “You may tell Count Mont d’Oro that I will see him. I will tell him how much I love him. Then——” She could say no more. With a convulsive sob she turned and fled from the room.

“When a woman says she won’t, she often will,” soliloquised Pascal, as he arose and went to the window from which Vivienne had looked. “My father left fine estates. How could a sensible man make such a foolish will?”

Pascal took a small silver key from his pocket, and turning to an old escritoire, opened a drawer and took therefrom a paper. He then reseated himself at the table. “I should not have known,” said he to himself, “what was in my father’s will if I had not bribed the notary to break the seals and make me a copy. It is well to know what the future has in store for you—and for others. My father executed a document by which I was made guardian of my brother Julien and my sister Vivienne, until they became of age, I to supply all their wants as their father would have done. By a strange coincidence, my brother Julien is exactly seven years older than my sister. In a few months he will be twenty-five and she eighteen. The will must then be opened and what I alone know—I do not count the notary, for I have paid him his price—all will know.” Then he read the document carefully:

“If my daughter Vivienne marries Count Mont d’Oro’s son Napier, on or before her eighteenth birthday, as he will be wealthy in his own right, and I wish the marriage to be one of love, my estates shall be divided equally between my two sons, Pascal and Julien, if both are living; if but one be living, then to him, and if both should die and my daughter live, all shall go to her. If she does not marry Count Mont d’Oro’s son Napier for lack of love of him, half of my estate shall become hers. As Pascal will have had the entire income of my estate for eighteen years, he will


 be worth much, and the other half of my estate shall go to Julien, if living; if not, all shall go to Vivienne.”

“A very unfair will,” said Pascal, as he replaced the document in the escritoire. “If the dead could come back, such injustice would probably be remedied.”

There was a tap at the door, which opened almost immediately and Adolphe, Pascal’s valet, entered.

“The Count Mont d’Oro.”

“Admit him,” said Pascal, and a moment later the young Count advanced with outstretched hand, exclaiming even before their hands met:

“What news? What news? What does she say?”

“Oh, the impatience of you young lovers!” cried Pascal. “I think the leaven of love must have been left out of my composition. I have never yet met a woman who could put such fire into my blood as there seems to be in yours, my dear Count.”

“No more about me. Let us speak of her. What does she say?”

“Do not be too impatient. Even if I could repeat her very words, I could not say them just as she did. I can but translate them into a cold, formal phrase. She will see you.”

“I thought she would,” cried the young Count, “and when I kneel and lay my love at her feet, she will accept me and make me the happiest of men.”

“Be not too confident,” said Pascal; “she is young and wilful. You know the Batistellis are a determined race. I did not try to plead your cause. I am not used to love-making, and I felt that I should injure your prospects if I spoke in your behalf. But I warn you that you must use your eloquence and not appear too confident at the first.”

The Count laughed. It was not an honest, sincere laugh. A good judge of human nature would have detected in it a hollow sound—more of mockery than of true passion.


“One can see by looking at you, Pascal, that you are not an Adonis. You are not to blame if you have not the graces of Apollo. I have not descended from the ancient gods of Greece, but I have had an experience which even they might envy. I have run the gamut of Parisian society from the ante-chamber of royalty to the gutter, and in Paris there are beauties to be found even in the gutter.”

“I would not tell Vivienne that,” suggested Pascal.

“Of course not,” said the Count; “she is young and inexperienced and would not understand.”

“She might not understand,” said Pascal, “but on the other hand she might imagine more than the truth, and that would be fatal to your prospects, for I warn you, Count, that she is a woman who will not marry a man she does not love, and she will insist that he love her and her only.”

Again the Count laughed. “Why, even the King of France cannot command so much as that. I suppose I must bury the past. She is worth it. By the way, my dear Pascal, I think you told me that in case she marries me before her eighteenth birthday, the estates go with her.”

“My father made a most foolish will,” said Pascal, guardedly.

“That is what troubles me,” said the Count. “I feel like a robber; as though I had placed a pistol at your head and said, ‘Pascal Batistelli, give me your sister and your estates or you are a dead man.’” Then he added, after a moment’s thought: “I do not think that I can do it, after all. I think I shall go back to Paris.”

“Then you do not love my sister?” queried Pascal. He did not think the Count meant what he said, but it suited his purpose to take the remark seriously.

“When I am with her, yes,” said the Count; “then


 your sister Vivienne is the divine She; but, as I told you, there are beautiful women in Paris.”

Pascal felt the ground slipping from under his feet. “When you are married, Count, you can go to Paris; you are not obliged to live here in this dull place.”

“Oh, yes, but they will know that I am married.” Then, with a conceit which did not seem particularly offensive on account of the manner in which it was spoken, he added: “And, you know, I am quite a catch myself.”

“Certainly,” said Pascal, “and when the estates of Mont d’Oro and Batistelli are united, I have no doubt that many a fair eye in Paris will be wet with tears.”

“Well spoken, my dear Pascal,” cried the Count, as he threw his arm about the neck of his prospective brother-in-law.

Pascal did not appreciate the caress, but the urgency of the situation prevented his refusing it. “But you will see her?” he asked.

“Oh, yes!” cried the Count. “My father wished this marriage to take place; my mother does not think that I am good enough for your sister. That is one reason why I am determined to marry her. To-morrow?”

“Yes, to-morrow,” said Pascal; “any hour in the morning. We breakfast at eight; no earlier than that, of course.”

“Don’t worry,” said the Count, “I do not rise until nine. By half-past ten she may expect her ardent suitor.” He flourished his hat through the air, bowed low to Pascal before placing it on his head, and a moment later was gone.

Pascal walked to the window and looked again upon the far-reaching acres of the Batistelli estate. “She must marry him; then I shall have half. That precious brother of mine will be killed in some drunken brawl or die a sot, then all will be mine.”………………….