CHRISTINE OF THE HILLS

Books by Max Pemberton.

THE LITTLE HUGUENOT. 16mo. $0.75.
THE IMPREGNABLE CITY. 12mo. $1.25.
A PURITAN’S WIFE. Small 12mo. $1.25.

New York: DODD, MEAD & CO.

Max Pemberton

Christine of the Hills

BY
MAX PEMBERTON

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1897

CONTENTS

CHRISTINE OF THE HILLS

PROLOGUE
THE PAVILION OF THE ISLAND

We had been sailing for some hours with no word between us, but Barbarossa woke up as the yacht went about under the lee of the promontory, and with a lordly sweep of his brown-burnt arms he indicated the place.

“Olà, excellency,” said he, “yonder is the pavilion of little Christine.”

I had called him Barbarossa, though heaven knows he was neither Suabian nor renegade Greek of Mitylene, but an old sinner of Sebenico who chanced to have a yacht to let and a week to idle through.

“Shew your excellency the islands?” cried he, when I had made him the offer. “Madonna mia, there is no man in all the city that knows them so well! From Trieste to Cattaro I shall lead you with a handkerchief upon my eyes. Hills and woods and cities—they are my children; the Adriatic—she is my daughter. Hasten to step in, excellency. God has been good to you in sending you to me.”

It was all very well for him thus to appropriate the special dispensations of Providence; but, as the fact went, he proved almost an ideal boatman. Silent when he saw that silence was my mood; gay when he read laughter in my voice; well-informed to the point of learning—this sage of Sebenico was a treasure. For days together I let him lead me through the silent islands and the infinitely blue channels of the “spouseless sea;” for days together we pitched our tent in some haven which the foot of man never seemed to tread. No bay or bight was there of which he had not the history; no island people whose story he could not write for you. Now rising in finely chosen heroics to the dead splendours of Venice, now cackling upon the trickeries of some village maiden, the resources of this guide of guides were infinite, beyond praise, above all experience. And I admitted the spell of mastership quickly, and avowed that Barbarossa was a miracle in a land where miracles were rare and to be prized.

“Yonder is the pavilion of little Christine.”

It was early in the afternoon of the seventh day when the words were spoken. We were cruising upon the eastern side of an island whose name I did not then know. When the little yacht was put about she came suddenly into a bay, beautiful beyond any of the bays to which the sage had yet conducted me. Here the water was in colour like the deepest indigo; the hills, rising from a sweep of golden sand, were decked out with vines and orange-trees and rare shrubs, and beyond those, again, with shade-giving woods of chestnuts and of oaks. So powerful was the sunshine, though the month was September, that all the splendid foliage was mirrored in the waters; and looking down from the ship’s deck you could see phantom thickets and flowery dells and dark woods wherein the nereids might have loved to play. Yet I turned my eyes rather to the shore, for thereon was the house I had come to see, and there, if luck willed it, was the woman in whom my guide had interested me so deeply.

We had held a slow course for many minutes in this haven of woods and flowers before Barbarossa was moved to a second outburst. Until that came I had observed little of the pavilion which he had spoken of, though its shape was plain, standing out white and prominent in a clearing of the woods. I saw at once that it was a new building, for the flowering creepers had scarce climbed above its lower windows, and gardeners were even then engaged in laying out formal terraces and in setting up fountains. But the house was no way remarkable, either for size or beauty, resembling nothing so much as the bungalows now common upon the banks of the Thames; and my first impression was one of disappointment, as the excellent Barbarossa did not fail to observe.

“Diamine,” said he; “it is necessary to wait. To-day they build; to-morrow we praise. There will be no finer house in Dalmatia when the sirocco comes again. God grant that she is not alone then!”

He was stroking his fine beard as he spoke, and there was a troubled look upon his face; but at the very moment when it was on my lips to protest against his riddles he gripped me by the arm and pointed quickly to the shore.

“Accidente!” cried he; “there is little Christine herself.”

At the word, we had come quite close into the woods upon the northern side of the bay. Here was a great tangle of flowering bush and generous creeper rising up above a bank which sloped steeply to the water’s edge. Through the tracery of tree and thicket I could see the glades of the island, unsurpassably green, and rich in the finest grasses. Countless roses gave colour to the dark places of the woods, rare orchids, blossoms ripe in the deepest tones of violet and of purple, contrived the perfection of that natural garden. And conspicuous in it, nay—first to be observed—was the girl who had called the exclamation from Barbarossa.

She was standing, as then I saw her, in a gap of the bank, in a tiny creek where the sea lapped gently and the bushes bent down their heads to the cool of the water. She had red stockings upon her feet, and a short skirt of dark blue stuff shewed her shapely limbs in all their perfection. I observed that the sun had burnt her naked arms to a tint of the deepest brown, and that the dress she wore hung upon her loosely and without affording protection even to her shoulders. Nor was there any token elsewhere in her attire of that state and condition to which rumour had elevated her. A tawdry Greek cap, such as skilled impostors sell to tourists for a gulden, scarce hid anything of the beauty of her gold-brown hair. Her hands, small to the point of absurdity, were without rings; her wrists without bracelets. She might have been a little vagrant of the hills, run out of school to let the waves lap about her feet, to gather roses from the banks above the sea.

This, I say, she might have been; yet I knew well that she was not. Though I had led Barbarossa to believe me profoundly ignorant even of the existence of his “little Christine,” I had seen her once before—at Vienna, in the first week of the January of that year. She was driving a sleigh in the Prater then, and all the city pointed the finger and cried: “That is she.” I remember the look of girlish triumph upon her face as she drove through the throngs which were so eager to anticipate a victory for her; I could recollect even the splendour of her furs and the excellence of her horses; the muttered exclamations to which her coming gave birth. Yet here she was, become the peasant again, on the island of Zlarin.

We had come upon the girl suddenly, as I have written, and the drift of our boat towards the shore was without wash of water, so that minutes passed and she did not see us. So close, for a truth, did the stream carry us to the bank that I could have put out my hand and clutched the roses as we passed. From this near point of view the child’s face was very plain to me. In many ways it was the face of the Mademoiselle Zlarin I had seen in Vienna; yet it lacked the feverish colour which then had been the subject of my remark, and there were lines now where no lines had been eight months before. Whatever had been her story, the fact that she had suffered much was plain to all the world. Yet suffering had but deepened that indescribable charm of feature and of expression which set Vienna running wild after her in the January of the year. She was of an age when a face loses nothing by repose. Her youth dominated all. She could yet reap of the years, and glean beauty from their harvest. Neither dress nor jewels were needed to round off that picture. I said to myself that she was the prettier a hundred times for her tawdry Greek cap and her skirt of common stuff. I declared that the rôle of peasant girl became her beyond any part that she had played in the life of the city. And with this thought there came the engrossing question—how was it that she, who had disappeared like a ray of sunlight from her haunts and her triumphs in the capital, should be here upon an island of the Adriatic, the mistress of a home which made the people about her raise their hands in wonder, the subject of a story of which no man was able to tell more than a chapter? And this was the question I now set myself to answer.

All this passed through my mind quickly as our felucca lay flapping her sails in the wind, and we drifted slowly under the shadow of the bushes. I was still speculating upon it when the girl saw us, and awoke, as it were, from a reverie, to spring back and hide herself behind the bushes. But Barbarossa called out loudly at the action, and when she heard his voice she returned again to the water’s edge and kissed her hand to him most prettily. Then she ran away swiftly towards her house, and was instantly hidden from our sight by the foliage.

“Barbarossa,” said I, when she was gone, “does your wife permit you often to come to these islands?”

The old rogue feigned astonishment for a moment, but pluming himself upon the compliment, he leered presently like some old man of the sea, and his body danced with his laughter.

“Ho, ho, that is very good. Does my wife permit? Per Baccho, that I should have a woman at my heels—I, who am the father of the city and can kiss where I please! Ho, ho, excellency, what a fine wit you have!”

“But,” said I, with some indignation, “the lady had the bad taste to mean that salute for you and not for me.”

He became grave instantly, stroking his long beard and carrying his mind back in thought.

“Securo!” cried he, after a pause; “it was meant for me, and why not? Have I not been a father to her? Was it not to me that she came for bread when all the world cried out upon her for a vagrant and worthless? Did I not shelter her from her brother’s blows and the curses of the priest? Nay, she is my daughter—the little Christine that I love.”

I heard him out, silent in astonishment.

“You know the story of her life, then?” I exclaimed.

“Santa Maria! The story of her life! Who should know it if I do not?”

“Then you shall tell it to me to-night, when we have dined, my friend.”

He nodded his head gravely at the words, repeating them after me.

“To-night, when we have dined, the story of Christine. Benissimo! There are few that have my tongue, excellency. God was good to you in sending you to me.”

CHAPTER I
CHRISTINE THE CHILD

We dined upon a little grass bank of the island named Incoronata, in a clearing of the woods, where the soft night wind breathed cool upon our faces, and the rustle of the leaves was like a harmony of sleep. It was not until the boat had been moored for the night, and new logs had been thrown upon the fire, that Barbarossa bethought him of his pledge, and consented to begin his narrative. Squatting upon his haunches, with his cigar held deftly as a bâton, when the need of emphasis was, this strange old man unfolded a history no less strange. So clear was his sense of proportion, so simple were his words, that I would give much to tell the story of Christine as then—and again on other nights—he told it to me. But his narrative remains a memory—a memory often inaccurate, always lacking those pleasing touches of colour with which he graced his picture. Nor, I think, could any pen set down the charm of his rich voice or the wonders of his manner.

“Excellency,” said he, “the story of Christine is a story of one who, five years ago, had learnt to call me father that she in turn might be called daughter by me. To-day she is the mistress of riches and of a great house; I am still the beggar of the city, who has no right to raise my eyes to her. Yet you have seen that she remembers, as I, on my part, still love.

“I remember Christine—aye, God witness, I remember the day she came, the day she went. Her father was an Italian merchant of Zara; her mother was the daughter of a musician of Marseilles. They brought her to my city when she was a babe; she was seven years old when the fever struck them down and left her to the care of her half-brother, Nicolò Boldù. You have heard of Nicolò—nay, how should you have heard? He was one to be forgotten in his shame, a drunkard, and a lover of women. Well was it for Sebenico that a brawl sent him trembling for his life to that very island where the pavilion of Christine stands to-day. Three days the soldiers hunted for him; three days he lay in the cellar of my house, wailing for mercy with the tongue of a woman. Then I took him in my boat to Zlarin, and within a month he had sent to me for Christine.

“She was twelve years old then, a pretty child that strangers marked in our streets and the priests spoke of for example in the schools. I say nothing of that part which I played both in attending to her education and making it my care that she did not want for bread. God knows, she would have fared ill if no other hand than Nicolò’s had ministered to her necessities. Rare was the day when he had food even for himself. What money he got from his wretched inn out beyond the city walls scarce served for his own pleasures. When the child hungered, he beat her with his belt; when she was hurt with the cold, he turned her into the road to sleep. I alone in all the city opened my door to her; I alone saw her weep, for she had the courage of a woman, and there is no courage like to that.

“Nicolò went to Zlarin, and within a month he had sent for Christine. The trouble which had banished him from the city was a trouble no more. The police had forgotten him, or cared to remember him no longer. He had a right to such help in the hut which he had built upon the island; and the law gave me no claim upon his sister. Yet I parted from her as from one of my own, for she had been the light of my house, and oh, excellency! it is good to give bread to a little child.

“‘Andrea, dear Andrea,’ she cried to me when I put her into the boat—for Andrea is my true name, signor—‘you love me, Andrea; then why do you send me to Nicolò?’

“‘Child,’ I answered, ‘God knows that I love you. But he is your brother, and it is right that you should be with him.’

“‘He will beat me, Andrea.’

“‘As he does to you, so will I do to him a hundredfold.’

“‘I have no one to help me in Zlarin, Andrea.’

“‘Nay, but you shall make friends, little one.’

“‘You will come and see me often—if you love me, Andrea?’

“‘Before the seventh day passes I shall be at Nicolò’s door, Christine. Oh, have no fear; am I not your father, child? Nay, but I will write to the priest at Zlarin, and you shall be his charge.’

“So I comforted her, excellency; yet was my heart heavy for her as she put her arms about my neck, and laid her pretty face upon my shoulder, bidding me ‘Good-bye,’ and again ‘Good-bye,’ until my hands were wet with her tears and my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth. Her brother had sent a neighbour to carry her in his fishing-boat to the island; and it was noon of the day when at last she left me. I watched the sails of the ship until they were hidden by the headland of the gulf, and then returned with heavy foot to my own labour. Nor did I know that God had willed it that I should not see little Christine again until four years had made a woman of her, and of me an old and time-worn man.”

CHAPTER II
THE QUEST OF THE WOMAN

“Yes, excellency, four years passed from the going of little Christine from Sebenico until the day I found her again. You may have heard tell in the city how that I, when youth was still my abundant riches, served in the navy of his Majesty, our Kaiser. I had the training of an engineer; and to engineer’s work at Pola they called me on the morrow of the child’s departure. I had looked for employment for a week; but weeks became months and months made years before I set foot in my house at Sebenico again. Often had I written to those that I knew for tidings of my little one. For a season they answered me that it was well with her. The priest spoke of her brother’s industry and charity. I began to think that exile had made a new man of him, and to hope for Christine. Only when years had passed did I hear the talk which awoke me from my dream. One day a man of Zlarin came to Pola, and, in answer to my earnest question how the child did, told me that nothing was known of her; that she had fled to Vienna to dance in the Prater—that she was dead. I believed none of it, and sent word to her by a friend who had business in Zlarin. He returned to me with the tale that Nicolò Boldù’s house was a ruin, that man and child alike had disappeared.

“I say, excellency, that four years passed before I saw Christine again. It was in the fourth year that my agent returned to me from the island with the tidings, which awoke no little self-reproach that I had done nothing to keep faith with her. Vain indeed that I had taught her to call me father, when thus I left her friendless and without word in the place of her brother’s exile. Heavily as my work pressed upon me in Pola, I turned my back on it as the awakening came to me, and was content to look lightly upon my loss, if only I might repair the injury I had done. Nay, three days after they told me that the island knew the child no more, the steamer set me down at the priest’s house upon it, and I was asking for news of her.

“‘I have come for Christine, sister to Nicolò Boldù,’ said I to the bent old man who ministered to the needs of twenty souls with a vigilance that would have served for a thousand; ‘she is still among your people, father?’

“‘God reward you for the thought of her,’ he answered me, ‘and grant that she may merit it.’

“I saw that he was troubled, and wished to turn from the subject; but when I pressed him he told me the whole story.

“‘Would that I could speak otherwise,’ said he, ‘but the child has been a thorn in my side since the day you sent her to us. Neither love nor example avails with her. She is a shame to my people and to my village; and now she has become a beggar, and lives like a wild beast in the woods. What was to be done I have done; but she has no thanks for me, as she had none for the good brother who is gone—God rest his soul.’

“‘Father,’ said I, when I had heard him out, ‘you speak of a good brother; the man I knew as the guardian of Christine in Sebenico answered to no such description. It is of another you think!’

“‘Per nulla,’ he answered me, somewhat coldly. ‘I refer to Nicolò Boldù, who had the hut down by the headland, a Christian man who denied himself bread that his charge might eat. Well, she has rewarded him—and me, who taught her the Mass out of my own mouth, and held her pen while she learnt to shape the letters.’

“‘Oh!’ cried I, when he had done, ‘now is this the season of miracles. Nicolò Boldù denied himself bread! Per Baccho, he was sick with the fever when that happened!’

“But I will not weary you, excellency, with any account of that which passed between me and the priest. I saw at once that he was not well disposed towards the child, and I left him, to learn, if that were possible, what was the whole story of her case, and how it came about that the village pointed the finger at her. And first I went over to the headland where the hut of Nicolò used to be; but the house I found tumbling and in ruins, nor was there any sign of recent habitation. A neighbour told me that the man had died in the winter of the year—for it was summer when I returned to Zlarin—and that his sister lived from that time in a hut over by the eastern bay, supporting herself none knew by what means—nor, indeed, cared to ask. He counselled me, if I would find her, to strike the bridle-path to the highland above the bay, and there to hunt for her as I would hunt wolf or bear; for the most part of her time she spent in the woods, and there must she be sought.

“‘Not that she is worth your trouble, signor,’ he added, as I thanked him and struck upon the path he indicated; ‘the man who could do good with Christine of the hills must yet be born. Madonna mia, she is pledged to the devil, and the feast will be soon!’

“I turned away from him with anger at my heart and heaviness in my limbs. I had loved the child, excellency, and to hear this of her was worse than a blow to me. ‘Fools all,’ I cried in my bitterness, ‘who know not charity nor loving kindness. There was none better than Christine, none so pretty. As she is, so have you made her. Black be the day he took her from me!’

“Thus did I reproach myself again and again as I followed the path which led me to the head of the woods and the higher places of the island. You have seen Zlarin to-day, signor—have seen what time and money and a man’s love have made it; but it was another place when I hunted its thickets for her I had called daughter, and beat my breast because there was no answer to my cry. The village, which stood then in the shelter of the bight, stands no longer; gardens bear flowers where swamps breathed out fever and pestilence; there are paths in the brushwood where then the foot of man could find no resting-place. Yet the island was a haven to many a cut-purse when Christine ran wild in it; and many an assassin turned to bless the dark places upon its heights. Well I remember it upon that June afternoon, when, running through the woods and hollows, I raised my voice to hear it echo from rock to rock and pool to pool. On the one hand, the blue of the sleeping sea; on the other, and far away as a haze of cloud, the red cliffs and distant mountains of my own Dalmatia. Shady groves everywhere invited to rest and sleep; the splash of falling cascades mingled melodiously with the distant throb of the sea; the scent of flowers filled the whole air with the sweetest perfumes. A traveller would have called it a garden of delights, and have loved to linger there. For myself, the thought of the child was my only thought; and, insensible to all but the necessity of finding her, I pushed on through the woods, forcing a path where no path had been before, cutting my hands often with the briars, blaming myself always for the things which had come to pass.

“Yet had I known what misfortunes my visit was to bring upon Christine I might well have turned my back upon Zlarin, and prayed God to carry her from the path I trod.”

CHAPTER III
ANDREA FINDS CHRISTINE

“I must have continued in my occupation for some hours, excellency, when at last I found Christine. My walk had carried me across the island to that north-westerly point of it which looks over towards the city of Venice. Here there is a great slope of the grassy cliffs to the beach, which is of the finest sand, soft as silk and sparkling as pure gold. A creek of the sea running inland has formed a haven, to which the trees dip down their branches and the bushes their leaves. I had not thought that the child would find a home in any such spot as this; nor should I have gone down to it had not the music of a violin, exquisitely played, as only one of my own countrymen can play it, drawn me thither. In the hope of learning something from the player I descended the slope of the cliff; and when I had walked, it might be, the third of a mile I came suddenly upon a hut built cunningly of wood and thatch in the full shelter of the grassy ravine. A garden that was no bigger than a carpet girt the hut about; and the lawn before its door led straight to the bank of that little creek I made mention of. Here the musician, whoever he was, had his home, and here he now played a wild, haunting melody, whose harmonies gathered beauty as they echoed in the hills. Nay, the spell of the strain was not to be resisted, and long I stood listening like one bewitched, until the theme died away in trembling chords, and mingled its notes with the throb of the ebbing seas. Then, and then only, I knocked upon the door of the cottage, and Christine herself opened to me.

“Aye, it was Christine. Though four years had passed since I had seen her, the face was still the face of the child of Sebenico. I can see her in my memory now, excellency, standing there with a timid, hunted look in her eyes, and her violin pressed close against her side. Wan and wistfully she looked at me, covering her breast with the tattered chemise, glancing at her bare and browned legs and arms as though to make excuse for them. There had been none to tell her in those days that beauty like hers was a rare gift, and to be prized. The words she heard everywhere were words of scorn and of rebuke. And yet, I vow, no more lovely thing has existed on God’s earth than the little musician I saw in the hut of Zlarin that summer evening five years ago.

“She came to the door, as I say, excellency, and it was plain to me from the look in her eyes that she had expected another, and was not a little vexed to find an old man come to trouble her. All recollection of my face—perhaps my very existence—had left her long ago. She could only stare at me questioningly, a flush upon her fair skin, an exclamation of surprise upon her lips.

“‘Corpo dell’ anima tua, do you not know me, little one?’ asked I, nettled to see her indifferent.

“She looked at me the closer when I spoke thus, signor, the light of recognition leaping suddenly into her eyes.

“‘It is Father Andrea,’ she cried at last; and then she put her hand into mine. But there was no gladness in her word or greeting; and while the surprise of this was still upon me, she led the way into the hut which was her home. Never was there a cleaner or prettier place in Zlarin. A little bed with the whitest sheets stood in one corner of it; a big cupboard of mahogany contained unlooked-for possessions; there was a crucifix and an old gilt mirror; a clock to tick merrily, and a table set out with cup and platter. Even a stove, with the embers of a fire in it, had come by some magic into this house of marvels. I remembered when I saw it that the priest had spoken of Christine as a beggar—a vagrant of the hills—worthless and idle, and to be avoided. His words were not to be reconciled with that which I observed all about me in the hut; and when I had seen all that was to be seen I sat down upon her rough-hewn bench and began to question her.

“‘Child,’ said I, ‘how comes it that all these months have passed and you have not written to me?’

“She was sitting upon her bed, thumbing the strings of her fiddle; but now she looked up at me very frankly, and with no fear.

“‘What was news of me to you, Father Andrea, who broke your promise to me from the first?’

“‘Christine,’ said I, ‘it is true that I broke my promise; yet necessity carried me to Pola, and so kept me from you. But I wrote often to ask of you, and have sent you many gifts, as you know——’

“‘Nay,’ cried she, and there was truth in her voice, ‘no gifts have I received. Nicolò and the priest must answer for those.’

“‘Speak not so lightly of one who serves Christ,’ said I; ‘as for Nicolò, they tell me that he did well to you here, and that you rewarded him but ill.’

“Now, at this question, excellency, she did not answer me directly, but laughed with much bitterness; and presently, tearing the chemise off her arms and back, she shewed me her flesh scarred and riven where the blows of whip or staff had fallen upon it.

“‘God help me,’ said she, ‘if that were well! Look for yourself and see what Nicolò did for the sister who was left to him. Oh, I have suffered, Andrea—I, the child that loved all and was loved by none—I have suffered, as the Blessed Mother is my witness. Think you that there can be any room in my heart for love now?’

“Excellency, my tongue was busy indeed with complaint against myself when thus she spoke to me, for I knew that I had left her alone; and what cry of bitterness can go up to Heaven like the cry of a lonely child?

“‘Christine,’ said I, ‘they have done ill to you; yet remember that no more. Am I not come back to take you to the city, where new friends await you, and a new home?’

“‘To take me to the city—to Sebenico, Andrea?’ she answered, with astonishment in her eyes. ‘Why should you take me there?’

“‘That you may leave this vagrant’s life, and become what your father would have made you if life had been spared to him.’

“She thought upon it for a moment, and then she said:

“‘Nay, let me be where I am—it is well with me here, Andrea.’

“‘Well with you!’ I cried, for her ingratitude angered me, ‘well with you—to have no clothes upon your body; to run in the woods like a savage who knows not God; well with you to rot in such a kennel as this——’

“This I said, for my anger went near to choking me; but she heard me out in a savage silence, neither word nor gesture escaping her.

“‘I shall not go to Sebenico, Andrea,’ she answered very quietly, ‘until Ugo takes me there.’

“‘Until Ugo takes you there! And who, then, is Ugo that he should order and you should obey?’

“‘He is my lover.’

“‘Your lover—you can tell me that with no shame upon your cheek! Your lover! Now for a truth did the priest speak well.’

“Again she heard me with indifference, plucking like a petulant child at the strings of her fiddle. I saw that anger would not avail with her; yet, as I live, I had rather that a man had struck me a blow than that she had spoken as she did.

“‘Child,’ said I, when I had been silent a long time, ‘God is witness that I love you. Tell me—who is this man, and how came he here?’

“‘He is Ugo Klun, the son of the woodlander. He sailed often from Zara when Nicolò lived. His hands built me this hut when I had no other home. I had starved but for Ugo, Andrea!’

“‘You are his wife, then?’

“‘He will come at the feast of the Rosary to marry me, if he is free then.’

“‘He has promised that?’

“‘Surely—he has promised it often. It is I who have held back.’

“She spoke very simply, not fearing to look me in the face, excellency. I began to think that I had judged her in haste, and so put another question to her.

“‘Christine,’ said I, ‘what has Ugo asked of thee for all that he has done?’

“‘That I should be a wife to him—what should he ask more, Andrea?’

“I did not answer her, for I had learnt that which I wished to know. Vagrant that she was, she remained the child in heart, in thought, in speech. Though no guiding voice had said to her here is right and there is wrong, the spirit of evil had not breathed upon her mind or withered her innocence. Nor could I help but feel kindly towards a man who, having these things in his influence, had used that influence to such honest ends.

“‘Little one,’ said I, presently, ‘we will talk more of Ugo to-morrow; but what means he by this saying “free”? Is he not free as I am free and you are free?’

“‘Nay,’ she said, ‘has he not yet his years to serve? They will make a hussar of him, Andrea, and I shall see him no more.’

“She said this with so much unconcern, signor, that I looked searchingly at her, asking her the question which had long been in my mind.

“‘You love him, child?’ I said.

“She shook her head, rising from her seat that she might watch the sun setting in a great ring of red and golden light above Venice and the west.

“‘Do I love him?’ she exclaimed presently. ‘Madonna mia, how shall I answer you! There are days when I say that it would be happiness to be with him always; other days when I tremble at his touch. Is it love to draw away your lips when he holds them in kisses—love, to tremble when he puts his arms about you? If that be so, I love him well. Yet he is the only friend I have ever known; when he is away I hear no voice and see no face. They have turned me even from the church door in Zlarin. Oh, I am very lonely, Andrea!’

“There were tears in her eyes now, excellency, for the first time since I had come to her, and I drew her head down upon my shoulder, putting my arms about her as I had done in the olden time.

“‘Little Christine,’ said I, ‘you shall be lonely no more. To-morrow we will find a new home and new friends. God be praised that I have found you again.’

“The burst of weeping comforted her. She began, after a while, to laugh through her tears; and remembering that I had come far, and had eaten nothing since midday, she put bread and fruit upon her table, and a bottle of the wine of Mostar. And at this she fell to telling me how she lived by her needle, doing work that Ugo brought her from the city, and existing on the pence which would have been starvation to a beggar. She pointed also to the little fishing-boat anchored in the creek, letting me know that it had come to her from her brother together with the furniture of the cabin and the old violin she played so sweetly.

“‘Pietro taught me,’ said she, as she busied herself to serve me, ‘Pietro, who comes to sing the Mass on Sundays. He promised me that I should play in Vienna some day—but look you, Andrea, he is like the rest now.’

“‘Child,’ asked I, ‘how came it that they speak so of you in the village?’

“‘It was the word of Nicolò, my brother. He whined to the priest, and would have sent me as a servant to the Sisters at Zara. But I ran from him and hid myself in the woods. Oh, it is good to be free, good to lie in the shade of the trees and to look over the sea and dream of the city and the people beyond. I have read of it in books, and I think sometimes that I shall wake from my sleep to see the things I read of. Can you not understand, Andrea?’

“I told her that I could; yet, God knows, I understood Christine but ill. She was not a peasant, excellency, for her father had been a man of some little learning, and her mother was a musician of rare gifts. Had I thought upon it, this remembrance would have led me to discern the double nature which was then my stumbling-block. For here was one reared as a savage, yet controlled at every turn by the birthright of natural culture; a vagrant in name, yet a little queen in gesture and in speech. The visions which deluded her were the visions of a past growing up and magnifying with the years; carrying one whose world was a few acres of thicket and of sand out to the life across the sea. Isolated as she was, friendless, homeless, never once did she cease to dream of a greater world, where triumph and love and that pride of self which is victory awaited her. The same spirit, I doubt not, held her back from the embraces of the peasant who worshipped her. She was grateful to the man in that he was a friend to her. But at his touch she trembled; his kisses were like coals of fire upon her lips.

“Something of these thoughts, signor, passed through my mind as the child waited upon me so prettily in her cottage. I knew that her beauty would be riches to her wherever she might carry it; I could feel instinctively that conscious superiority which birth may give and circumstance cannot check. And this was odd to recognise in one whose legs were bare and whose hands and arms were burnt almost black with her labour in the sun. Yet she had but to speak and her rags were forgotten; but to take her crazy violin in her hand to awaken the mind to passionate dreams or to all the sweets of languorous rest. Long I listened to her that night, as the dark came down upon the Adriatic, and the sea moaned upon the beach before her door. It was as though she had put some spell upon me with her wild, untrained music; had carried me back to remember forgotten days of my own childhood; had peopled the island with unnumbered men and women, or had set before my eyes visions of the greater cities themselves, with all their world of sound and light and struggle and death. The whole of her soul was in the music, excellency; it awakened her to laughter, to tears, to joy. Her face was the face of one transformed while she played; yet she had but to set down her violin, and indifference, silence, nay, almost the shadow of hate, were to be read in her eyes.

“I speak of these things, excellency, that you, when you come to hear of the whole life of the woman you have seen to-day living in luxury and in the light of gratified desire, may know of the impulses which led her to the path she followed, and of that surpassingly curious childhood which fate decreed should be her portion. When I left her that night in her cottage, to lie myself at the house of the priest, my chief thought was of her future, and of the man to whom it would be given to hold her in his arms.

“‘For,’ said I, ‘that man will either pluck a thorn for his pillow or take treasure to his house—yet which of these he is to do the God above us alone can tell.’

“Next day I rose at an early hour from my bed, and, having heard Mass in the little church, set out upon my journey to the eastern shore. There were many of the islanders now ready to help me, for the news that I had money in my pocket was quick to be noised abroad, and one old woman tottered far upon her stick that she might look at a piece of gold again. But I listened to none of them—neither to their tales of the love they had treasured secretly for the child nor to their offers of service.

“‘Fools and hypocrites,’ cried I, ‘who would drain the oil from the wounds of him that fell among thieves; even as you did unto the little one so will I do to you. Begone! or I will lay my staff upon your backs!’

“They ran at my words, signor, but still cried for alms in the Name of God; and when no alms were given to them, they cursed me until the woods echoed with their voices. Nevertheless, I turned a deaf ear to them; and going my way I came at length to the creek of the sea, and to the hut where I had found Christine again. It was my expectation that she would be up and looking for my coming; but I heard no voice when I called out to her from the garden, and when I would have knocked upon her door I saw that it was open, and that the cottage was empty. My first thought was that she had gone out to the sea to fish, for I saw that her boat no longer lay at anchor in the creek; but when I had looked a second time, and had observed the disorder which had fallen upon the place, the truth was not to be hidden from me. Everything in the cottage bore the stamp of her flight. The drawers were opened and rifled. There was an empty coffee-pot upon the rough wooden table, and two cups by it. The bed was stripped of its blankets and sheets; the crucifix was gone; the gilt mirror was cracked, as if broken in the haste of her leaving. No need of words to tell me the story. She had surrendered at last, I said, to the will of the man, and had fled—God knew to what home or to what fate.

“I said this, excellency, moved at the first to remember all my abiding love for her; the memory of her childhood and that which she had been to me then. But anon, and as I stood looking out upon the sea and the empty creek, a great anger against the man came upon it, and I vowed that wheresoever he had gone, there would I follow him, until the truth should be known and right should be done. For that she had gone away with Ugo, the son of the woodlander, I never doubted. Or had I done so, the lie would not have deceived me long. Scarce, indeed, had I turned my face again towards the house of the priest, when a hag burst out from the shelter of the woods and gave me the news.

“‘Ho, ho, Father Andrea, seekest thou thy little one? Nay, but thou shalt find her with the woodcutter. Thou wilt not forget that I have told thee. The Mother of God bless thee! She left with him at daybreak. I saw them sail. Thou wilt remember me—oh! there was jade’s blood in her veins—jade’s blood! What! do you not hear me?—I spit upon your face in hell!’

“I left her croaking; but the news was then round the island, and those who before had begged of me now came out from their holes to whine upon my misfortunes. Even the priest, who in his own way had wished well to her, could not help me. Christine’s flight was in some way a vindication of himself, a justification of that which he had done. It remained only for him to raise his hands in condemnation—to cry that the fault was none of his.

“‘Certainly,’ said he, ‘one who travels upon the devil’s road must come at last to the devil’s house. Did she not cross the yule-log at the feast of the Nativity? What else was to be expected, friend? She was a hussy from her birth up. Santa Maria! the words I have wasted upon her!’”

He spoke thus; but I was in no mood to war with him.

“‘Friend,’ said I, ‘there is a Gospel which teaches us that we love our neighbours as we love ourselves. If you believe in that, how great must your love of Christine be! Waste yet a few more words upon her, I beseech you, and tell me what you know of the woodlander who has carried her to the city?’

“‘That will I do,’ exclaimed he, ‘though little there is of good in the telling. The man is the son of Alvise, the steward of Jajce. His father would have made a priest of him and sent him to help the Catholics of the mountain towns. But he fled from the seminary, and has lived where he could, though chiefly upon a neighbouring island. A man of hot blood and temper, friend, neither Christian nor infidel—a savage, and yet not a savage, since he can read from the book and hold a pen in his hands. Per Baccho! the devil hath paired them finely!’

“‘Is he not, then,’ I asked, ‘such a one as might win a woman’s love?’

“‘Accidente—is that a question to put to a priest? What is a woman’s whim to me that I should scan the face of every lout who comes lusting to the village?’

“‘Nay,’ said I, ‘but you must have seen him often if he lived as you say.’

“‘Oh, surely, I saw him often—a gloomy, silent man, who gave few civil words that he might hear few. Yet I have heard that he was the friend of the children here and was beloved of them.’

“‘And where, think you, must I seek him now?’

“He shrugged his shoulders, as though he pitied me.

“‘Where must you seek him? Nay, how shall I tell you? Am I his keeper? Be advised of me, and go back to your work in Pola. She would only mock you for your pains, as she has mocked me for mine.’

“This was his counsel, excellency, but his words fell on deaf ears. I had determined already that I would know how it fared with Christine. ‘At least,’ said I, ‘he shall stand before the altar with her; and if he will not do that—did she not tell me that they would make a hussar of him?’ Nay, I knew that he had drawn an unlucky number, and that I had only to raise my finger to send a corporal and troopers to the work. We are all soldiers in Austria, excellency. If Ugo Klun refused to answer the summons to serve his time with a regiment, a prison instead of a wife awaited him. I said that he should come to that if ill befell Christine; and with this rod in my hand I set out for Sebenico.”

CHAPTER IV
THE WORD IS SPOKEN

“It was late in the afternoon, excellency, when the boatman put me ashore among my own people. I had learnt from him in crossing that Ugo Klun and Christine had sailed from the island at dawn; and when I stood upon the quay a friend of mine confirmed the tale.

“‘The son of the woodlander—have you not heard? He came here at noon with a wench from Zlarin, and has set off with her to the hills. She called him husband—olà, he has a good wit, has Ugo, the rogue!’

“Thus he spoke—one who knew the man and had seen him that day in the streets of Sebenico. It was a poor story, he being able to tell me no more than this simple fact, that the two had come and gone, and that the woman had called the man husband. And this it was that troubled me. For if she had really stood before the altar with Ugo—then was my work at an end, and nothing remained but to turn my steps northward and go to my business. Yet, think as I would, I could see no means by which this lawful consummation had come about. That the two were not married upon the island of Zlarin I knew well. How, then, I asked, should she call him husband rightly so soon as the ship which carried her from Zlarin touched the quay at Sebenico? The more I thought upon it, the more convinced I was that he had tricked her with some promise, saying: ‘Come with me and I will shew thee this and that, and you shall be my wife when we are in the city.’ Nay, so sure was I of this that I went at once to the Place du Dôme, and there inquired of the priests if any marriage had been celebrated that day, either there or in the neighbouring churches. They were ready enough to make inquiry for me; and presently were able to tell that no priest in Sebenico had celebrated the Sacrament of marriage for three days. I had looked for no other answer, yet I went from the church with pity at my heart. A great gulf seemed to have opened between the child and myself. I could think of her as child no more—and yet must think of the woman and of the path she had chosen.

“Signor, there was pity at my heart for a truth, and yet more than pity. I have told you that I had left Zlarin firm in my purpose to follow the affair to the end, and, if need be, to let the law do for me that which I could not do for myself. This purpose was not changed but strengthened by my visit to the cathedral. What counsel of charity or of kindness, I asked myself, should stay my hand? I was an old man and could not hunt in the mountains for her I called my child, as a younger might have done. Had I started upon such an errand, the very stones would have called out upon me for a fool. Yet I knew that I had but to whisper a word in the ear of the police-inspector in Sebenico to trap my man as surely as though a prison then held him. Long I hesitated, standing in the busy street, and thinking again upon all that might be, saying what I could for the motives of the one and the surrender of the other. For I knew that once the word was spoken, that once the police knew that Ugo Klun, the son of the woodlander, had been drawn for the army at Jajce and had fled from the service, no afterthought could save him. There was no retreat from a step like that. Either I let the man and woman go, or I separated them for ever. Excellency, do you wonder that my will faltered, and that the word came slowly to my lips?

“It came slowly—aye, an hour passed and found me still walking in the Place du Dôme. Perchance I had never spoken, and had returned to Pola, if a sudden memory of my talk with little Christine had not recurred to me at the very moment when I was telling myself that she was no longer a child and must take upon her own shoulders the burden she had sought. I remembered then that she had confessed rather to aversion than to love; had told me of her dread of the man’s touch, of her fear when he held her in his embrace. ‘She has gone with him,’ I said, ‘in the hope that he will carry her to those cities she has seen in her dreams. Love is no part of the bargain. He or any other, what matter so long as she is taken from the savage life she lives to that current of the greater life which is her ambition. It may be that she knows nothing of that which awaits her; that in her childish fancy she sees herself running through the world hand in hand with this friend she has found, maintaining to old age the simple affections of her island home. What the awakening will bring, God alone can tell. It may be that he will leave her; and that she, cut adrift in a land where woman is reckoned a little lower than the animals, will become the victim of those who know neither fear nor pity.’

“In the island it was different, excellency. We remain children of Italy, faithful sons of the Church; the old spirit of our past still breathes upon us the breath of freedom and of faith. But cross the mountains and all is changed. It is to pass from the West to the East; to leave a land where woman is the creature of reason and of affection for one where she is but a beast of burden and the slave of passion. To such a land the man was now leading the child. I knew that her exceeding beauty was the most dangerous weapon she could carry for the journey, I foresaw the day when she would be alone—excellency, I spoke the word.

“The sun was setting over the gulf; a great arc of golden light fell upon the distant islands when at last I brought myself to this resolution.

“‘Better,’ I said, ‘that she should awake from her dream this very night than that the morrow should tell her what bargain she has made.’ Perhaps it was that my own abiding love for her helped me in some measure to the action. I whispered to myself that so soon as the man was in prison at the fort I would take her to Pola with me. She would be my daughter in fact if not in name. I would spend money to give her education; and those wonderful gifts of hers should make her famous among the musicians of Italy. As for the woodlander, she would forget him in a month. She would even laugh at herself for this day’s work, and thank me for my share in it. The man would serve his years in the landwehr, and those days he must spend in a cell would help to make a good soldier of him. They would catch him in a few hours, for he had left the town in a rumbling waggon, and that would be no match for the troopers at the fort sent out to the pursuit of a deserter.

“This I said to myself going up the hill to the office of the police. Once I had bent my mind to the resolution, I hesitated no longer. A few words to a sergeant at the bureau—and my purpose was fulfilled. He took down my story, noting that Ugo Klun, the son of the woodlander at Jajce, had been drawn for service with the hussars, but had fled to the hills; that he was seen in Sebenico at noon that day, and was then supposed to be upon the road to Verlika.

“‘You have done well,’ said he; ‘there is too much of this sort of thing, and we are in trouble at Vienna about it already. We shall catch your man before midnight; and that will be something. You must drink a glass of wine with me, my friend.’

“I declined his offer, pleading that I had been long away from home and must see to my own affairs before the dark fell. But I had not taken many steps from his office when a man, who had there listened to our talk, pulled at the sleeve of my coat and spoke a word to me.

“‘Accidente, old Andrea,’ cried he, ‘but you are no friend to the lovers!’

“‘How—what mean you?’ said I, drawing back from him.

“‘To put fetters upon a man’s legs when he is away with his bride. Per Baccho, that is cunning work!’

“My heart was chilled at his words, and my lips trembled when I said:

“‘She is no bride of his.’

“‘No bride of his?—then the devil must have divorced them. She was married before my eyes this very morning. I had business last night at Incoronata, and she came there at Mass to-day. The priest married them before I sailed. Santa Maria, but you have laid his sheets well, old Andrea!’

“I turned from him impatiently, and went in silence and in gloom to my house. That Christine had chosen to cross not to the city, but to a neighbouring island, and there to receive the Sacrament of marriage, was a thing I had never looked to hear.

“‘Now God forgive me,’ said I, ‘for those whom He has joined together I have this night put asunder.’”

CHAPTER V
A WEDDING JOURNEY

“What befell Christine and Ugo upon their wedding journey will best be told as a plain tale, excellency,” said the admirable Barbarossa, taking up the thread of his narrative as we set sail for Spalato two days after I had seen the last of his famous island. “I played small part in her life then, or for years afterwards. Though I had opened the spring whence flowed the stream of her misfortunes, I was not to witness them, or to be friend to her as I had wished. The blow which fell was not to drive her back to the home she had left or the man who waited for her. It carried her rather out upon the flood of life; opened her eyes to the visions she had enjoyed in her dreams, yet shewed them to her through a veil of tears.

“I say that it carried her out upon the flood of life, for that is common knowledge, excellency. You yourself have heard the tale in Vienna as the gossips love to tell it. That which you have not heard is the word of Christine herself, as I had it in the capital a year ago; the simple tale of a woman who could stoop from triumph to the old friends who had wished well to her, could look down over from the heights where fortune had carried her upon the difficult path she had trodden. She told me her story without ornament or emphasis—the story of a dreamer’s life. As she spoke, so may I speak, for she opened her heart to me; she laid bare her soul as a child before its father.

“In this attempt to follow the fortunes of a boy and girl lover cast loose suddenly upon the world, I would take your mind back with mine to the day when my word spoken at the bureau of the police sent mounted men into the hills in pursuit of the fugitives. Christine had indeed been married upon the island which is named Incoronata. She told me that my coming to Zlarin had decided her on the step. The boy had long pressed her to go to the mainland with him that they might seek their fortunes together. Until I came to put before her my proposals for a decent life in my own city she had turned a deaf ear to all such suggestions.

“‘Some day, Ugo—some day, I will go with thee,’ she would cry to the passionate boy, who carried her image before his eyes day and night, and never slept but that in fancy he had his arms about her; ‘some day we will see the great city together—and thou shalt have thy wish.’

“Thus she answered him, suffering him rarely to cool his burning lips upon her own, to hold her in his arms as he had wished to do. He, in his turn, knowing something of the nature of the girl, gave in to her, and would have waited many a day had not I come to the island and proposed to take the little one with me to Pola. The very thought that she must be immured in a town, and for a season in a convent—for thus I had proposed—broke down the resolution she had formed. No sooner was my back turned upon her hut than she prepared to leave it; and the man himself chancing to come to her with the dawn, they set out for the neighbouring island and were married when Mass was done. And let this be no surprise to you, excellency. We are a primitive people, and the forms and ceremonies of towns are nothing to us. Set a couple before a priest, and say to him: ‘Give these the Sacrament, for they wish it,’ and he will ask no other reason. Rather, he will thank God for the day, and hasten to the work.

“They were married at Incoronata, the boy and the girl, and meeting there with a fisherman who knew them, they crossed in his ship to Sebenico. Few words had until this time passed between them, for the boy was content to feed his eyes upon her whom he now called wife; and she in turn was too full of the sights and sounds around to think of aught but the world she was entering. Four years had she lived a child of the woods and the lonely seashore. Do you wonder that the voices in the city drummed upon her ears, that her eyes were dimmed by the things she saw, that she forgot all else but the multitudes that passed before her? Nay, I have heard that fear so prevailed with her when she came into the great street of the city that she begged her lover to take her to her home again, and was held back by him with difficulty when she would have run down to the sea.

“‘Ugo,’ she cried, ‘my eyes are blinded with the things I see. Take me back to Zlarin!’

“He turned to her, and saw that she was trembling and very pale.

“‘Courage, little wife,’ he answered; ‘another hour and we shall be out on the hills. Have you not my hand to hold, carissima? Oh, it will be nothing when a day has passed, and we are on the road to Vienna. They will laugh at you, sweetheart, and you will laugh at yourself.’

“Thus he spoke to her, and shielding her with his arm, he took her straight to the northern gate, beyond which is the house of his kinsman. He knew well enough that there was danger to him so long as he remained in Sebenico, and it was his plan to set off to the mountains at once, hoping if ever he reached Vienna to be secure from the pursuit of the soldiers.

“‘Not that they will look for me here, little Christine,’ said he, ‘for who will tell them that I have been drawn at Jajce? But a friend might come—and then they would take me. Madonna mia—and on my wedding day! What would become of you, carissima?’

“He said this to her when they had passed the city walls in safety; but she heard him calmly, answering him with none of those loving protestations he had looked for. The man had yet to learn that her flight had been the outcome of her impulse; that his marriage was on her part little more than the expression of a great gratitude. All else had been brushed aside that she might flee the convent I had chosen for her. Her only desire was to see the things she had pictured in her sleep. She was child still, and the meaning of marriage to her was that she should walk through life holding her lover’s hand. How many, excellency, have not, in their childhood, cherished so pretty a delusion? Thus it was that she was dumb before his questions, and followed him silently; and when they had passed safely through the town together, he took her to the house of his kinsman, leaving there the waggon with the few things she had brought from the hut. He had determined, so soon as he had given her meat, to set out on horseback for Verlika; and though she was quite unaccustomed to such a mode of travel, she rode well enough on the pack saddle he had put upon her pony.

“‘We must take to the hills, little wife,’ said he, as they set out; ‘I know the path well, and I will lead where no soldier can follow. You do not fear, Christine?’

“‘I fear nothing, Ugo,’ she answered; ‘I have no time to think. Surely, they will not follow to the mountains!’

“‘Who can tell?’ cried he; ‘if they had known in the city yonder when I passed through, we had never heard the gate close behind us, sweetheart. They are devils, those Austrians, and hunt men like swine. Some day we shall have our hands upon their throats. God send it soon.’

“He dug spurs into his horse with the words, and leading the pony by the rein, he turned towards the mountains as one who in their shelter would find liberty. A true son of the hills was this woodlander, excellency; hardy as the beasts he hunted, brown-burnt as the leaves in autumn, fearless, dogged, surpassing other men in cleverness with his gun, the subject for hussy tongues and wishes. Dressed up in his coat of green, with boots above his knees, and breeches white as the snow upon the peaks, he might well have been the object of something deeper than friendship in the heart of the little one he had taken to wife. Had it been so, much of that which she suffered in the months to come might have passed her by. But it was not so decreed; love was yet to be born in her heart. And that love was not for Ugo Klun.

“It was growing late in the afternoon when these pretty fugitives struck the mountains which lay between them and their freedom. The road had carried them over the stony plain which borders the seashore; but, turning as the sun began to set, they came upon a narrow bridle-track winding about one of the sandy hills which here stand up boldly to the gates of the Adriatic. At that time the wonder and the fear had passed from little Christine’s face, and she had become silent and brooding. The loneliness of the barren mountains weighed heavily upon her. She saw on all sides nothing but the sullen purple heights, sentinelled by the white boulders of the rock which arose as so many tombstones in her path. All the home she had ever known was now but a haze upon the distant waters. Though no man there had bidden her Godspeed when she began her journey to that phantom world she had pictured, though no woman’s lips had pressed upon her own in sickness or in sorrow, she could yet hunger for the green woods and shady glens she had left for ever. There, at least, she had a roof above her and a warm bed to help her dreams. But here—here in the valley of the stony hills, rising up one above the other until they mingled with the clouds upon the far horizon, what haven had she save the friendship of the man, what shelter but that of the caverns in the heights?

“This from the first was the source of her foreboding; these the thoughts which stilled her tongue. But with the man it was otherwise. Every mile that he could put between the city and himself was a fetter struck off his natural gaiety. The crisp air blowing cool upon the hills exhilarated him and steeled his nerves to new courage. He foresaw happy days of freedom and of love. He looked down upon the wife at his side, and the sweetness of her face filled him with a tenderness he had never known.

“‘Christine, my little Christine!’ he exclaimed as the spires and domes of Sebenico were shut from his view by the gathering of the evening clouds, ‘are you not happy now? Look yonder—we can see the city no more. In another hour we shall laugh at the Austrian, carissima. Let us say good-bye to the sea, for we may never come back to it again.’

“They were standing well up on the hills then, and the waves below them rolled blood-red as the sun’s glory pencilled them with rays of burning light. Here and there upon the horizon the islands stood up to their view, eyots of wood and rock in mists of golden haze. The western sky gave birth to a mighty range of phantom shapes—the shapes of mountains and of cities, of peaks and domes and jagged rocks, cut upon the clouds with chisels of fire. The waters themselves danced with a glittering radiance fair to see. The wind was soft and sweet as a wind blowing from the gardens of spring. Christine herself, standing to observe these things, felt them press a new sense of loneliness upon her.

“‘Ugo,’ she cried for the second time, ‘take me back to Zlarin.’

“His answer to her was a kiss upon her forehead; and bending down from his saddle he put his arm about her and pressed her to him.

“‘To Zlarin, pretty one? What should we do in Zlarin? Say rather that I shall take thee to the hut of Duka, and there get supper. Oh, we will have a merry supper, Christine! There is wine in the pack, and the meat which Dame Vitali cooked, and confections from the shop, and a lamp to light us and sheets for the bed. Madonna mia, I had thought of the hut often. It lies in the mountains like a kernel in a nut. It is the hut of Orio, the shepherd, and I have his word to take thee there. To-night we rest there; but to-morrow we go on, as I have promised thee, sweetheart.’

“‘And to-morrow you will bring me to the great city, Ugo?’

“‘To-morrow to the great city? Nay, little one, we had need of wings for that. It is many days’ journey beyond the mountains. Diamine, that thou shouldest be so simple!’

“His wondering word had no meaning for her. Accustomed to the narrow boundaries of the island, which were her only standards of distance, she had not conceived the possibility that she must ride for days and nights before she might enter the city of her hopes. His explanations added to her gloom. The silence of the valleys began to terrify her. Her limbs ached with the pressure of the saddle. The chill of evening struck her bones.

“‘When shall we come to the hut of Orio?’ she asked wearily, after many minutes had passed, and the silence between them had remained unbroken.

“‘Look,’ he answered her, ‘it is in yonder wood. Ten minutes more and we are safe, Christine.’

“Excellency, even as he spoke, there were soldiers in the valley below him.”

CHAPTER VI
IN THE HUT OF ORIO

“It was almost dark in the little forest of pines when Ugo jumped from his horse and knocked upon the door of the hut of Orio. The shepherd himself gave answer, coming out with a lantern in his hand and a pack upon his back. He and the lad were friends of the old time; and that spirit of mutuality which is the finest spirit of the poor, excellency, had led him to rejoice in the opportunity of so small a service.

“‘Olà, Ugo, is it thou? I have been waiting for thee since the Angelus. Cospetto, it should be a swift horse that carries a bride. Look, now, I am going to lie the night at Duka. What, thou wouldst have my company?—out on thee for a rogue!’

“Such was his hearty greeting; and when he had kissed the bride on both cheeks he lifted her from the saddle and showed her all that he had done to make ready for them. And this, out of his exceeding poverty, was not a little. The poor love the poor; and this man, who lived upon maize bread and ate meat only at the feasts, had spread upon his table a supper from which a noble would not have turned. Fresh sweet fruits, crisp loaves, a steaming dish of meat dressed with garlic, a dainty confection, a bottle of Chianti—these were the treasures he spread before their astonished eyes.

“‘Nay, Ugo, it is nothing,’ he answered to their words of wonder; ‘there is only one day in a man’s life when a fast comes ill—and this is thy day. Let thy wife eat and drink before there is sleep in her eyes. To-morrow she may run through the woods with thee; and the day after I will come again. If there is any talk of thee then, trust that I will carry it. But he will have a keen nose who follows to the hut of Orio. Surely, thy pretty words will lie snug here, my son.’

“The shepherd took his lantern, excellency, and when he had lighted it he set out upon the road to Duka. He was a merry fellow, whole-hearted and kindly, and they could hear his song rising up, faintly and still more faintly, from the thickets and the gorge below them. Only when the note had died away in the whispers of the wind did Ugo turn to Christine, and feel, for the first time since the priest had married them, that she had become a wife to him. She stood there before him, pale, her eyes wan with fatigue, her hair blown awry by the wind, her feet weary, her little Greek cap, which was his present to her, powdered with the dust of the stony road. Yet was she the child of his hopes, the little one whose face he had kissed in his dreams, the one living creature in all the world whose touch was an ecstasy to him.

“‘Carissima, anima mia,’ he cried, ‘now art thou surely my wife! Thou dost not fear my touch, Christine—nay, thou wilt lie in my arms always, for I love thee, I love thee. Oh, there was never love like mine, beloved, and never a wife like thee. Come close to my heart, that I may hear thine beating. My lips burn upon thy face and arms, Christine—sweet wife, dost thou not kiss me?’

“Lovers’ words they were, whispered as sacred messages, while he pressed her to him and his breath was hot upon her cheek. She had been all his hope—this little vagrant of the hills; and now she was his own, to lie warm against his heart, to look love to him with her wondrous eyes. His was Southern blood—the blood of a man nurtured upon the sunlight and the breezes of the woods. He would have killed men for Christine, excellency—but that night—the night of his life—no other thoughts but those of his love were with him when his arms were about the child, and her cheek pressed hot on his. He told himself that she had come to him—would be with him evermore. All his world was in the hut which the forest hid, all the joy of years rolled into one long-drawn day.

“‘Dost thou not kiss me?’ for the second time he asked; and looking up to him, she touched him lightly upon the forehead with her lips.

“‘Ugo,’ she said, ‘I am tired; thy arms hurt me; let me rest, and then I will speak.’

“‘My arms hurt thee—thou sayest so—nay, that is the word of yesterday. I know that thou lovest me, Christine, sweet wife!’

“‘I love thee, Ugo; have I not told thee often? What wouldst thou that I should say? There is sleep in my eyes, and my limbs tremble. To-morrow I will tell thee.’

“She drew back from his embrace, and sinking upon the rough couch of skins which Orio had spread for her, she rested her head upon her hands, and tears sprang to her eyes. The long day’s journey had brought at its end nothing but this sense of homelessness and fatigue which now weighed upon her to complete subjection. She prayed bitterly that some power might carry her back to the island she had left—to the people who had cried upon her, and the desolation of her home. The stillness of the mountains frightened her; she began to remember that she had stood before the altar with the man. Hour by hour that vision of a childish friendship, of a journey upon halcyon days through flowery walks and shady woods, grew dimmer and less pleasing. The flame of a candle in a rude lantern cast a ghostly light upon the face of him she must now call husband, and upon all things in that gloomy hut. Her limbs ached with the labours of the journey; there was mist before her eyes; she was one hungering for love—the love that is sympathy and strength, and the foe to sorrow. She asked, though she knew it not, for a father’s hands, that she might kneel to them and cling to them, and shed unchecked the tears which now fell in burning drops upon her scalded cheeks.

“‘Thou art tired, Christine—aye, surely thou art tired,’ cried Ugo when he had watched her awhile, helpless to stem the tide of her gloom. ‘The road was long, and there is dust on the hills; diamine, thou mayest well feel thy limbs tremble! And I have brought thee here to fast when there is wine upon the table, and the meat which Orio cooked. Accidente, that thou shouldst shed tears on such a night!’

“He was awake to her condition now, and pouring out a cup of the wine which the shepherd had left, he knelt at her side, compelling her to drink, and stroking her cheeks with his hand as he would have stroked the cheeks of some dumb animal. It was not to be hidden from him any longer that her fatigue was akin to illness; for when he pressed close to her he could feel the tremble of her body, and her hands lay icily cold in his. But she drank of the wine he offered her; and anon, when she had rested her head upon his shoulder a little while, he found that she had sunk into a deep sleep; and with a tenderness beyond his state he laid her gently, as one would lay the most sacred thing in the world, upon the bed, and covered her with the wolf skins which the shepherd had prepared. And until midnight, excellency, he watched at her side, forgetful of his own hunger and fatigue; glad that his should be the eyes to watch her thus, his the arms to make a pillow for her head.

“Until midnight he watched, and sleep was still far from his eyes. Nay, his lips were touching the girl’s forehead and his cheek was warm on hers when the sound of a footstep in the wood without called him from his reverie. No longer fearful that Christine would awaken, startled as a hunted deer, he sat up to listen, and knew that he heard the step of man. A moment later there was a knock upon the door of the cottage.

“‘Ugo, dost thou hear? It is I, Orio. Put out thy lantern and open to me.’

“Excellency, the lad’s heart quaked as he heard the words and hastened to obey them. He knew that Orio would not have returned thus unless danger was abroad in the hills; and that danger should have come at such a moment was a bitter thought. Yet his was not the courage to be blown away by the first whisper of warning; and silently, quickly, he answered the summons.

“‘Is it thou, Orio?’ he cried, as the door was pressed back upon him and the wind swept into the hut; ‘then surely thou hast news for me?’

“‘Aye, news indeed, my son,’ said the shepherd, stepping out of the darkness and holding up his hand that the other might hush his voice. ‘There are soldiers now leaving Duka to search for thee. I have the word that they beat this wood on their road to Jajce. Thou hast not a moment to lose—unless thou wouldst feel the teeth of the Austrian dog. Maria santissima—what a word to bring thee!’

“‘Sayest thou that they will first search thy hut, Orio? Then who has spoken of me?’

“‘That will time tell. Think not of it now, but look to the things while I get thy horse. The morrow must find thee in the woods of the Verbas—nay, thou hast not an hour. They are abroad in the pass like dogs in a thicket. Does thy wife sleep?’

“‘God have mercy, she sleeps heavy with cold and sickness. I have tried to awaken her twice within the hour, and she has not answered me. See for thyself how she is able to cross the mountains. They must take me here, Orio. Madonna mia, that it should have come to-night! I cannot leave her—you see that I cannot leave her.’

“The shepherd did not answer the lad at the moment, but struck a match and lighted his lantern. The feeble yellow rays fell upon the face of the sleeping girl, and added to the pallor of it. Though a flush of red suffused the cheeks, there were heavy rings about the eyes, and the hands which before had been cold now burnt with the rising fever. A rapid, irregular breathing, a low moaning, an ever-changing attitude, betrayed the penalties of fatigue and sickness. It was plain that he who carried little Christine from the hut that night would carry her to her death.

“‘God help thee, Ugo; thou sayest well,’ cried Orio, when he had held his hand for a moment upon the child’s temples; ‘she is in the sweat of the fever, and will travel no road to-night. Accidente, that thou must leave her——’

“Ugo, wringing his hands with the trouble and the danger, turned upon the shepherd a look of withering scorn.

“‘That I must leave her—you say that? And you are my friend, Orio!’

“‘My son,’ said the shepherd, quietly, ‘if you do not leave her before the clock strikes again, you will wake to-morrow in the prison at the fort. How then will you watch her? Oh, surely you have no choice! Either the hills or the whip of the corporal—a hard ride to-night or a cell in the city. And look now—I will guide you to a place in the thickets of Glamoch, where all the soldiers in Austria will not find you; but to-morrow before dawn I will be here again, and my wife shall come, and we will do what we can for the little one. Corpo dell’ anima tua, would I leave such as her to the wolves?’

“Ugo listened to his words like one distracted, bending often to kiss the burning face of his wife, or protesting again and again that he would never leave the hut. Misfortune had come upon him so quickly, he had been so near to happiness, that passion and grief together blinded him, and shut his ears to reason. He declared that the soldiers might take him where he stood; that they should come to find his body by that of his wife. Tears sprang to his eyes as he knelt at the bedside and pressed close to her by whom this suffering had come. He cursed the day when first he had seen her, the day when she was born.

“‘Thou wilt come again, Orio—aye surely—to find her dead. Let them take me where I am. I will not leave her. She is all I have. Oh! thou knowest that I love her, and she will wake at dawn and hold her arms out to me and call my name, and there will be none to answer. You cannot wish it—you, my friend?’

“Excellency, the shepherd did not respond to this passionate cry. He had opened the door and put out the lantern even while the lad was speaking; and now he held up his hand and stood to listen.

“‘Hark! dost thou hear any sound, Ugo?’

“‘I hear the breaking of branches in the wood.’

“‘Then get thy horse, lad, and God be with us. The troopers are coming up the glen.’

“Ugo argued no more. Love of the woman had given way for the moment to hate of the Austrian and fear of the prison. With one passionate kiss upon the burning lips of the child, he followed the shepherd through the thicket. And little Christine was still sleeping when the woods echoed to the rattle of rifles, and the shepherd Orio fell dead upon the hillside. For the men had delayed too long, excellency, and the troopers met them face to face as they debouched from the sheltering glade.”

CHAPTER VII
CHRISTINE AWAKES

“There was but one little window in the hut of Orio, and so well did this lie in the shadow of the trees that the sun’s rays hardly searched the room in which Christine slept. Yet so old was the habit of the child that she waked with the first glimmerings of dawn, and sprang up from her bed, thinking that she was in her own home and that the waves of the Adriatic were lapping before her door. It was only when she stood upright, to see all things swim before her eyes and to feel her limbs tremble beneath her, that some consciousness of change came upon her, and she sank back with a little cry of surprise upon her lips. Then for the first time she became aware that she had not slept in her own bed. She saw the remains of the supper which Orio had spread, the fruit in the basket, the baked meats, the half-drunk bottle of wine. She looked at the rough bed upon which she had slept and observed the skins which covered it—skins both of bear and of wolf. Minute by minute her awakening mind built up for her the picture of the yesterday. She remembered that she had left her own home and had come to a city where the multitudes of men and women and the great shapes of the buildings had frightened her. She recalled the words of the priest upon the island named Incoronata, how that he had spoken gravely of the love and the service which the Sacrament demanded. She fell to thinking of the kisses which her lover had pressed upon her, of his passionate devotion when they had come to the shelter of the hut, of her own coldness and repugnance at his touch. Nor did she forget that she had gone to sleep with her hand in his, that he had promised to watch until she should wake again.

“Remembrances such as these are formed slowly, excellency. The whole of the yesterday was lived again by little Christine, before she realised that the man should have been with her at that moment in the hut. It was plain to her now that she had been ill; that the dreaded fever of the marshes by the sea had scourged her limbs and dried her mouth, and breathed its hot breath upon her parched skin. Yet Ugo had left her—without word or message. Though she cried to him again and again as she dragged herself to the door, and stood shivering in the cool wind of morning, there was no answering voice from the thicket of the forest. The very grandeur of the scene around her, the distant snow mountains, the amphitheatre of the hills, the gloom of the woods, terrified her. She could see the valley lying far below, with its stony road winding sinuously about the heights; but neither man nor beast trod it. No living thing stood out to dispute the lonely glory of the pass; there was no sound—not so much as of a bird’s note or the splash of waters. To her untrained fancy it seemed as though they had set her down in some pit of the world, wherein she was doomed to unending captivity. She brought herself to believe that she had lived the night of death, and was now awake in a kingdom cut off from her God and from humanity. She looked to see the gorge below peopled with ghostly figures of men and beasts; she waited to hear the dirges of damned souls and the cries of the imprisoned spirits.

“Let not this be any matter of wonder to us, signor. Here was one whose only schooling for years past had been the schooling of the hills and the sea. Always a child of a wondrous imagination—a child who saw visions in the glades of her island, and whose quick brain peopled the very shore and sky with phantoms—the weakness of fever had now compelled her mind to conjure up these pictures and these fears. She has told me often that when she awoke in the hut and found that Ugo was not at her side she believed indeed that the shadow of death was upon her. All her old life was left behind for ever, she said. Never again would she hear the sound of human voice, or know anything of the human affections. The ramparts of the hills looked like so many gates of her prison. She thought that she was doomed for unnumbered years to wander through the silent valleys of the pass. Never might she come to the great city for which her ambition hungered, and wherein the triumph of which she had dreamt vaguely awaited her. Yesterday these things might have been; to-day they were for ever done with.

“These, excellency, were the thoughts of her waking moments. They passed away anon as the sun rose and the strength of the fever began to abate. Always the possessor of unsurpassable health, sturdy of limb and body, fortified by plain living, Christine was no subject for malaria. The mountain air and the sweet sleep she had enjoyed brought her speedily to a greater tranquillity and to a clearer understanding. She began to say that Ugo had gone down to one of the villages to get bread for breakfast; or that he was tending the horses in a clearing of the thicket. She expected momentarily to hear his voice or his step. Weak as she was, she ran a little way into the wood and called his name. She stood again to scan the road below her, and observed now that there was a waggon upon it. But there was no answer to her cry; no sign of him she sought. Even his horse and her pony were gone; and not so much as a word to tell her for what cause or at what hour they went. She could make nothing of the enigma, had no clear reasoning powers; and faint and weary she returned to the hut and moistened her lips with the wine which Orio had left. Then she lay upon her bed again, and slept until the hills were red with the dying light of the sun and all the western sky was ablaze with flame.

“When she awoke for the second time the fever had left her, and she was conscious no longer of that devouring weakness which had consumed her energies at dawn. She was hungry too, and she ate with relish of the food which remained and drank from the flask which was to serve for her bridal supper. She could think now—think well with that clever little brain of hers; and she began to tell herself that Ugo had left her not because he had wished, but because he must. She recalled his fear that they would make a hussar of him, and remembered his aversion to linger in Sebenico. Possibly, she said, this fear had carried him from her side to some more remote place in the hills, and he would come again when the night fell. That he had been hunted down by the soldiers she did not think; for her sleep had been unbroken, and she knew that he would not have left her without word. And while she in her friendship uttered many a devout prayer for him, she could not think of his return without some displeasure, nor forget that there had been a shudder upon her lips when he had held her with his kisses.

“Upon that night and during the week which followed Christine slept in the hut of Orio. Her food was maize bread; her drink was the shepherd’s wine. Yet when the hours passed and no man came to her, when the bread failed and she began to want even water to drink, reason told her that if she would see her lover again she must seek him in the hills. She had suffered bitterly—suffered from weakness and from solitude, from the regret of home and the loneliness of the hills. She had looked out across the mountains, and in her fancy had seen the cities and the men of her dreams lying beyond the ramparts and the eternal snows. That strange and haunting voice which often had bidden her in her childhood to rise up and look upon these things with her own eyes now returned and whispered to her that fortune lay beyond the heights. She had memories still of those early years when love and affection had been hers in a home beyond the seas. It seemed to her that she would find across the mountains a link which would bind her to this unforgotten past, and fulfil that destiny which instinct told her was rightly hers. The day upon which she had given herself to Ugo Klun was already being forgotten. The fact that she was the man’s wife was one she ever failed to realise. She cared only to know that she had cut herself adrift from the unchanging years of captivity—that a new world and a new home were hers to seek and hers to make.

“Excellency, it was upon the seventh night after her coming to the hut of Orio that she quitted the thicket of the woods and descended the bridle-path to the high-road of the pass. Three days later, at the full heat of the day, she was picked up insensible upon the road to Jajce by Count Paul Zaloski, who was riding to his home from the mountain town of Livno.”

CHAPTER VIII
A MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS

“Count Paul found Christine insensible upon the road, excellency, and called at once to his steward, who followed him on horseback:

“‘Hans, do you know this woman?’

“‘I, Herr Count—donnerwetter, that I should know her! And yet——’

“‘Hans, you are a fool! I asked you if you knew the woman. Get down at once and lift her from the ground.’

“The steward lumbered off his horse and raised the girl in his arms. She lay with her white face hidden by the rushes at the roadside; but now the Count could see it, pale as it was, and pinched and wan, yet the face of Christine, unalterable in its sweetness.

“‘Herr Count,’ said the steward, ‘this is no woman from Jajce; she has the clothes of a peasant of Zara. And, Herr Count, I think that she is dead.’

“He spoke, they tell me, as if he had taken some dumb thing in his hands. That his master should be concerned because a peasant girl lay dying in the road was beyond his comprehension. He had seen them die by scores, for he had lived forty years in the mountains. One more or less—what matter? Oh, life is very cheap in Bosnia, excellency.

“The Count waited until his steward had raised Christine up; but no sooner had he looked upon her face than he sprang from his horse to bend over her and listen for a beat of the heart or a sign of breathing in the body. They laugh now when they tell the story in Jajce, excellency, for that was the first time their master had held a woman in his arms.

“He knelt at her side, and holding his hand upon her breast, he spoke again to his steward:

“‘Dip this handkerchief in the lake and bring water in the cup of the flask. Quick—have you not seen a woman faint before?’

“The steward stared with increasing wonder.

“‘Himmel,’ he cried—‘a little brandy upon her lips, now.’

“‘Would you choke her, imbecile? Get the water, before I lay my whip upon your shoulders!’

“The man ran to the brink of the lake, for they had just passed the town of Jézero, and bringing the water and the wetted handkerchief, he helped his master to bathe Christine’s forehead and to chafe her hands. Count Paul had not followed the great war of the year ’70 for nothing. There was no better surgeon in the State. So well did he treat the patient whom God had put in his path that anon she opened her eyes, and the name upon her lips was neither that of her lover nor of the shepherd. Excellency, she spoke of me, crying for Father Andrea.

“‘Girl,’ said the Count in his brusque way, now wetting her lips with the brandy, ‘how did you come here?’

“The question was repeated, but she had no strength to answer him, only crying for me again, and then shutting her eyes as though she would sleep.

“‘I am tired,’ she said; ‘oh, I sink through the ground. Let me rest, Andrea; it is well with me here.’

“Her voice was weak when she spoke, yet it was sweet as of old time—a plaintive, winning voice, captivating as the note of a bird. Count Paul the recluse, accustomed to the grating tones of the native women, thought it the prettiest voice he had heard.

“‘Well,’ said he, ‘you are right; this is no peasant woman. I am going to carry her to the house. Let the white room be prepared—and hot wine. Do you hear me—the white room and hot wine!’

“The steward’s eyes were very wide open when he heard these things, signor, and he did not cease to mutter to himself while he raised the girl from the ground and put her into the arms of his master—strong arms, which made very light of the burden, yet bore it with much tenderness. He himself rode on as he had been told, cantering over the soft grass of the park to the great house which for five centuries has been the home of the Zaloskis and the keystone of their fortunes.

“‘Himmel,’ he said as he rode, ‘that he should bring a woman to his doors—he who has lived forty years without touching a woman’s hand—a slut that he picks off the road. And in the white room, too! What a thing to get abroad! He will be taking a wife next, and she will be calling me “fool” also. God of Heaven! that I was born to such a service.’

“He continued to mutter thus all the way to the great house; and when he had come within call of it he bawled to the grooms and the men about that they should run down the road and help their master. So great was the din which he made that all the household presently was abroad in the park, and only the maidservants and the priest were left to listen to him. Not that they failed to be ready listeners, excellency, for a woman could ever roll a scandal prettily in the mouth; and as for the priest, Father Mark, he would have walked an hour any day to wag his tongue with five minutes’ gossip.

“‘What,’ he cried now to the complaining steward, ‘the Herr Count brings a guest to the white room? He has picked her up in the road, say you? Out on you for a tale-bearer!’

“‘It is no tale, Father, as you may learn presently for yourself. He is coming through the park now, and is cuddling the woman as you would cuddle a bottle—that is to say, as I—sinner that I am——’

“The priest waited to hear no more. Hatless and without his cloak, thinking nothing of the heat of the sun or the dignity of his office, he strode over the grass with long strides on his journey to meet the Count. That a woman was to be brought as a guest to the house of Paul Zaloski was a thing he could not contemplate with equanimity. Yet he had to contemplate it presently, when little Christine lay sleeping in the white room of the château, and the servants were striving one against the other to do her service.”

CHAPTER IX
THE WHITE ROOM

“The white room, excellency, was, until a year ago, the only chamber in the house of Paul Zaloski which was set apart for the entertainment of women. Elsewhere, the many rooms which opened off from the cloisters and the silent corridors were so many tents for soldiers—barrack-like dens, in which the only furniture was a bed, and the only adornment a crucifix. There were periodical days when Count Paul would break these crucifixes with the flat of his sword or any weapon that came handy—for he was ever a man of a violent temper, and he had a religion that he kept to himself. Old Father Mark, the priest, was permitted rather than welcomed in the house. He had been a servant of the Count’s father; and while he would not swerve a hair’s-breadth from the formularies of his office, he did many a good deed among the poor of Jajce, and had once converted a Turk—a fact upon which he relied for a comfortable seat in Paradise. He it was who replaced the crucifixes when the Count broke them in his wrath; and he never failed after such an outburst to spend hours before the altar in the chapel, praying that a curse might not come upon the house.

“Side by side with these miserable apartments I have spoken of, the white room was a thing to see. The great bed of it was heavy with gold and painting; there was a canopy above, supported by carved figures of angels. Many mirrors with gold frames almost hid the panels of the wall, themselves decked with frescoes and medallions. The carpet had come from the looms at Serajevo; the roomy chairs were from Vienna; the fine cut glass from Venice. Twenty years before the day of which I write, the house had many rooms such as this to shew; but the people had plundered it when Austria came to take their country, and the last of the Zaloskis was no lover of gewgaws or of women’s finery. Camp beds, without crucifixes above them, were good enough for him. While there was a room ready for his sister, who came at Easter from Vienna and remained regularly one month in the château, he cared nothing in what state the other apartments might be.

“‘Let them rot,’ he would cry to the priest, when the good man spoke of restoration; ‘let those buy carpets who have nails in their feet. I have no money for fopperies. If you find my beds hard, there is an hotel in Jajce, Father, with pretty chambermaids to tuck you in, and a cellar full of sour Burgundy to split your head before matins. What! you have no tongue for that? Then mind your business and leave me to mine.’

“Father Mark used to twinge at these rough-and-ready rejoinders; or, when the Count persisted, he would shut his ears and go out to pray in the chapel. Not that he personally was any lover of fine stuffs or of gilding; but he looked upon the house of the Zaloskis with the eye of an artist and the soul of a great builder. He loved every stone in those ramparts, which had stood invincible before Turk and heretic through so many centuries. He had pride in the traditions of a family which had witnessed for the faith with its blood, and had surrendered nothing to the example of Eastern barbarism and teaching. Had he been consulted he would have made the castle a centre of power and of learning, whence his religion might have spread abroad an influence to the uttermost ends of the province. The Count was the only obstacle—the Count, whose heart was shut to women—the man who was the last of his race, who cared nothing that an heir should be born to him.

“But I am telling you of things which have small concern with this story, excellency. Rather let me show you Christine, not asleep, but awake and well clothed, and wondering, in the white room to which she had been carried on that day the Count found her. Her aimless flight from the mountains had brought her very near to death. What food she had got by the way had been thrown to her by those who had compassion upon her pretty face and her obvious need. And for a week she lay in the Count’s house hovering between life and death. I have heard it said that nothing was more remarkable than the care bestowed by the master of the château upon this little vagrant he had snatched from the roadside. Always an incurable lover of the medical science, he found in this case an occupation most congenial to him. Scarce an hour passed, they tell me, but he was at her bedside; he watched her through the dangerous changes of the night; he brought physicians from Jajce and Livno. And all this, excellency, without one thought of the sweetness of the face before him, or the pretty figure which lay racked with pain in the great gold bed of the white room. Such things were nothing to him; but the disease—that was worthy of his skill and of his knowledge. And when at last he knew that he had won a victory—when the fever was gone, and the pulse beat calmly, and the flush had left the cheeks—then he returned to his own work with no more thought of little Christine than of a wench in his scullery.

“‘She is no peasant’s daughter,’ he would say to the priest; ‘I must have her history when she is well enough to tell it. She wears a silver ring on her finger; but so does every slut in Dalmatia, for that matter. You shall make her speak, Father, and we will send her to her home—but that must be some days yet. Meanwhile—no little flirtations on your own account; you understand me?’

“Father Mark held up his hands in horror at the suggestion; and the Count, with a sly twinkle in his eye—such a twinkle as this, excellency—went off to hunt the bear in the mountains of the Verbas. It was just then that Christine was lying like one bewitched in the great bed.

“From misery, beggary, and a couch of the brushwood she awoke to see those splendours which were to her like the splendours of Paradise itself. Remember her education—recall her training in those fine superstitions which are the wealth of the islanders—and then how shall we wonder that there was a time when she believed that the spirits had carried her up to a mansion of the heavens? Such comfort she had never known; of such marvels her imagination had taught her nothing. For hours she lay dazed and fascinated and spell-bound, asking herself if the angels in the paintings lived, if her limbs really rested upon a bed, or were not rather floating in a gauze-like cloud. Of memory of that which she had passed through there was at the moment none. It was as though the years which had come between her childhood and that pleasant hour had never been. Her lover; her island home; the people who had cried upon her; the shepherd; the hut in the hills—these she had forgotten. Her prevailing sense was that of rest and gladness—of a great gladness and of a perfect content.

“Once or twice during the first hours of waking she had seen a kindly face bend over her. It was the face of Mother Theresa, the housekeeper at the château. She, good soul, watched unceasingly when the Count had resumed his old occupation. She had children of her own; she fancied that she could read the story of this child. And when at length she saw that her patient was coming back to life again, her joy was that of a mother who has found a daughter.

“‘My little girl,’ she said, kissing the white forehead and holding the shrunken hand—‘nay, sweet, you must not raise that pretty head; by-and-bye we will get up together, dear, but rest now.’

“She pressed cooling drink to the parched lips and smoothed the long brown hair; and, excellency, the words were sweet to her who had never known what a mother’s word may be. They were sweet, for love and kindness seemed to be breathed with them. Yet of their meaning Christine knew nothing. She had never spoken any other tongue than the dialect of Zlarin, which is wholly Italian. Mother Theresa was an Austrian of Linz; and although she had a smattering of the uncouth speech of Bosnia, German served all her purposes in the château. As well might she have spoken Russian to her patient, who did but lie and smile lovingly upon her, and open her eyes wider at the wonders, and tell herself that here, indeed, was the palace of her visions, here the destiny which she had crossed the mountains to fulfil.

“In this happy state she lay for three days, but upon the third day she rose from her bed. The Count was away at Serajevo then, and Father Mark having business with his bishop, it befell that Mother Theresa was left to do her will with the patient. So soon as Christine was strong enough they went abroad in the park together, and the first breath of autumn being upon the lake, the child shewed the old mother how well she could sail a boat, and how familiar she was with all things concerning the woods and waters. Nor, when they drove to the town of Jajce together, did the number of the people or the shapes of the buildings frighten her. You know Jajce, excellency? Ah, she is a queen of the hills, a white city of the mountains; her minarets rise up abundantly like silver spires above the unsurpassable green of the heights; she listens ever to the foam of the great cascade which thunders at her gates; the spray of the waters bathes her as in a foam of jewels. In her streets are Turks and Christians, Greeks and Jews. Friars raise their voices against the allah il allah of the muezzin; a new hotel rubs shoulders with the catacombs where lie the dead who fought against Mohammed. Yet she is the one citadel which time has not touched nor civilisation conquered. Her walls stand to-day as they stood when Kings of Bosnia looked out from them upon the armies of the infidels. Her people dress as they dressed when Corvin was their lord; her castle still marks her glory and the glory of her chiefs. She is a city of the East and of the West—a gem of the mountains, like to nothing that was or is or shall be.

“Christine saw Jajce, and found new delights in its contemplation. The invigorating winds of autumn now began to fill her blood with youthful strength and vigour. The colour came again to her cheeks when the crisp mountain air wooed them; her eyes sparkled with health restored. And she was quick to make friends in the château. Old Mother Theresa adored her; Hans, the steward, being convinced that his master had no such thoughts as he feared, remembered that he was once at Trieste, and had three words of Italian for his dictionary. He called her carina, and treated her like a little schoolgirl come home for the holidays. As for the priest, who made it his first business to inquire, as well as he could in his broken Italian, what was her faith and who were her parents, even he admitted that she had brought a new spirit to lighten the gloom of the house of the Zaloskis.

“‘My daughter,’ he would stammer as he endeavoured to impart to her the mysteries of the catechism, ‘you know that there is hell-fire for the wicked?’

“‘You say so, Father,’ she would answer him.

“‘But I wish you to believe that there is.’

“‘I will try, Father.’

“‘You must try always,’ he repeated, ‘try to think of the good God above you and of the burning fire below—the fire which is, which is, my child——’

“But the priest was ill-equipped when he came to the larger use of Italian adjectives, and he would turn in despair to question her upon that past concerning which she had as yet remembered so little.

“‘You have a home, my child?’

“‘Si, si,’ she answered him.

“‘Your father lives there?’

“‘I have no father but Father Andrea.’

“‘Is your mother dead?’

“‘I do not know; I have never seen her.’

“‘This ring, my child—is it a ring of betrothal or of marriage?’

“‘It is a ring of marriage.’

“‘Where, then, is your husband?’

“‘He left me in the mountains, in the hut of the shepherd Orio.’

“‘That was long ago?’

“She shook her head. Though health had restored her memory to her, it had yet left but faint and blurred impressions of that week of suffering in the hut. She realised little of the meaning of the tie she had contracted; of sense of obligation there was none.

“‘Girl,’ said the priest, severely, ‘the Holy Gospels teach us that the wife should cleave unto her husband. You are well punished for your sins, as God always punishes those who break His commandments. You must return to Zlarin when your strength is wholly restored. I must speak to the Count when he is back again. I fear you have acted very wrongly.’

“Her only answer was a merry laugh, excellency. He neither frightened nor convinced her. She did not believe that the God he spoke of would ever carry her back to that loneliness and misery which she had fled. Nay, all exhortation was lost upon her; and when the Count returned at the end of the week he found Father Mark full of bitterness and despair.