The Isle of Unrest | Page 9

the manner of one having small
dealings with pens and paper, "Mattei Perucca--at Olmeta."
"Ah," said the colonel, lighting a cigarette. He had apparently not
troubled to read the address on the envelope.
In such a thinly populated country as Corsica, faces are of higher
import than in crowded cities, where types are mingled and
individuality soon fades. The colonel had already recognized this man
as of Olmeta--one of those, perhaps, who had stood smoking on the
"Place" there when Pietro Andrei crawled towards the fountain and
failed to reach it.
"I am going to Olmeta," said the man, "and you also, perhaps."
"No; I am exercising my horse, as you see. I shall turn to the left at the
cross-roads, and go towards Murato. I may come round by Olmeta
later--if I lose my way."
The man smiled grimly. In Corsica men rarely laugh.
"You will not do that. You know this country too well for that. You are
the officer connected with the railway. I have seen you looking through
your instruments at the earth, in the mountains, in the rocks, and down
in the plains--everywhere."
"It is my work," answered the colonel, tapping with his whip the gold
lace on his sleeve. "One must do what one is ordered."
The other shrugged his shoulders, not seeming to think that necessary.

They rode on in silence, which was only broken from time to time by
the colonel, who asked harmless questions as to the names of the
mountain summits now appearing through the riven clouds, or the
course of the rivers, or the ownership of the wild and rocky land. At the
cross-roads they parted.
"I am returning to Olmeta," said the peasant, as they neared the
sign-post, "and will send that letter up to the Casa Perucca by one of
my children. I wonder"--he paused, and, taking the letter from his
jacket pocket, turned it curiously in his hand--"I wonder what is in it?"
The colonel shrugged his shoulders and turned his horse's head. It was,
it appeared, no business of his to inquire what the letter contained, or to
care whether it be delivered or not. Indeed, he appeared to have
forgotten all about it.
"Good day, my friend--good day," he said absent-mindedly.
And an hour later he rode up to the Casa Perucca, having approached
that ancient house by a winding path from the valley below, instead of
by the high-road from the Col San Stefano to Olmeta, which runs past
its very gate. The Casa Perucca is rather singularly situated, and
commands one of the most wonderful views in this wild land of
unrivalled prospects. The high-road curves round the lower slope of the
mountains as round the base of a sugar-loaf, and is cut at times out of
the sheer rock, while a little lower it is begirt by huge trees. It forms as
it were a cornice, perched three thousand feet above the valley, over
which it commands a view of mountain and bay and inlet, but never a
house, never a church, and the farthest point is beyond Calvi, thirty
miles away. There is but one spur--a vast buttress of fertile land thrown
against the mountain, as a buttress may be thrown against a church
tower.
The Casa Perucca is built upon this spur of land, and the Perucca
estate--that is to say, the land attached to the Casa (for property is held
in small tenures in Corsica)--is all that lies outside the road. In the
middle ages the position would have been unrivalled, for it could be
attacked from one side only, and doubtless the Genoese Bank of St.

George must have had bitter reckonings with some dead and forgotten
rebel, who had his stronghold where the Casa now stands. The present
house is Italian in appearance--a long, low, verandahed house, built in
two parts, as if it had at one time been two houses, and only connected
later by a round tower, now painted a darker colour than the adjacent
buildings. There are occasional country houses like it to be found in
Tuscany, notably on the heights behind Fiesole.
The wall defining the peninsula is ten feet high, and is built actually on
the roadside, so that the Casa Perucca, with its great wooden gate, turns
a very cold shoulder upon its poor neighbours. It is, as a matter of fact,
the best house north of Calvi, and the site of it one of the oldest. Its
only rival is the Chateau de Vasselot, which stands deserted down in
the valley a few miles to the south, nearer to the sea, and farther out of
the world, for no high-road passes near it.
Beneath the Casa Perucca, on the northern slope of the shoulder, the
ground falls away rapidly in a