“Yes,” said Lory, slowly; and they went back into the little windowless room.
“We will get up early,” said the count, “to see the pinks. This cursed mistral beats them to pieces, but I have no other place to grow them. It is the only spot that is not overlooked by Perucca.”
He spoke slowly and indifferently, as if his spirit had been bleached, like his face, by long confinement. He had lost his grip of the world and of human interests. As he looked at his son, his black eyes had a sort of irresponsible vagueness in their glance.
“Tell me,” said Lory, gently, at length, as if he were speaking to a child; “why have you done this?”
“Then you did not know that I was alive?” inquired his father in return, with an uncanny, quiet laugh, as he sat down.
“No.”
“No; no one knows that—no one but the Abbé Susini and Jean there. You saw Jean as you came in. He recognized you or he would not have let you in; for he is quick with his gun. He shot a man seven years ago—one of Perucca's men, of course, who was creeping up through the tamarisk trees. I do not know what he came seeking, but he got more from Jean than he looked for. Jean was a boy when your mother went to France, and he was left in charge of the château. For they all thought that I had gone to France with your mother, and perhaps the police searched France for me; I do not know. There is a warrant out against me still, though the paper it is written on must be yellow enough after thirty years.”
As he spoke he carefully drew up his trousers, which were of corduroy, like Jean's; indeed, the Count de Vasselot was dressed like a peasant—but no rustic dress could conceal the tale told by the small energetic head, the clean-cut features. It was obvious that his thoughts were more concerned in his immediate environments—in the care, for instance, to preserve his trousers from bagging at the knee—than he was in the past. He had the curious, slow touch and contemplative manner of the prisoner.
“Yes; Jean was a boy when he first came here, and now he is a grey-haired man, as you see. He picks the olives and earns a little by selling them. Besides, I provided myself with money long ago, before—before I died. I thought I might live long, and I have, for thirty years, like a tree.”
Which was nearly true, for his life must have been somewhere midway between the human and the vegetable.