Christine of the hills

“‘There is your city, little Christine. What? You have no eyes for it? You are tired, you say. Accidente, but that is a misfortune, little one. Who knows where we shall get a night’s lodging—if we get one at all? And we have far to walk, carissima. Oh, surely, it is work and not play here. See what life, what talk, what shops! Is not this your dream come to life? Diamine, you are not very grateful, my beloved! A plague upon your pale face!’

“It was the hour when the great folk of Vienna were going to their homes, excellency; that pleasant hour when the work of the day is forgotten and the play of the night comes welcomely. Bright lights shone already in the shops; a thousand budding lamps were scattering flowers of colour over the rich grasses of the Prater. A soft wind stirred the great trees, heavy in blossom; the deep blue waters of the Danube foamed and sported beneath the bridges, their little waves tipped with silver. So great was the press of carriages in the streets that all Austria seemed to be keeping carnival there. Pretty women, whose gowns were a garden of tints; officers of the guards and the hussars, on horseback, lolling in broughams, loitering by the shops; courtesans flaunting their bravade; priests returning from the churches; Englishmen open-mouthed and wondering; Frenchmen chattering; Americans hurrying from sight to sight—these are the children of our capital whom Christine saw as her husband brought her from the Northern station, and they stood together, deafened by the clamour of her city, and half-blinded by its lights.

“‘You are tired, my Christine, and you are ashamed of your rags. Cospetto, what gratitude to see! You think that if you were still at Jézero there would be good food to eat and diamonds for your neck. Managgia, we shall get food here yet, and when you work all day, and play your fiddle in the cafés, you shall bring the money to me. Do you hear that, little one—work all day, and work again for me at night? Are you not my wife? Heaven! That I was fooled by thy talk, and thought that I loved thee!’

“He took her by the hand, excellency, and dragging her roughly from the station, he set out upon his walk to the market-place, where, although he had hid it from her, there was a lodging awaiting him. It is strange to think that this man, once so gentle towards the child of Zlarin, pursued her now with so constant a hatred. Rarely, since he had found her upon the Jajce road, and had carried her from her new life, had pity mitigated his anger or curbed his purpose. He saw that it lay in his power to make her suffer as he had suffered. She had won the love of a man—she had now won his hate. He believed nothing of her account of Count Paul and his home. His mind had been trained in cunning and in doubt of men. Christine had found a lover—that was the lie which steeled his will, and shut his eyes to the anguish of the woman who followed him uncomplainingly. He made it his business to see that every hour brought some new humiliation upon her. He mocked at her new knowledge, at her acquired refinement. Almost his first act was to sell the good clothes from her back and to force upon her rags which he had bought in the bazaar at Serajevo. The diamond ring—which was Count Paul’s first present to her—had served to pay their fare to the capital. He feared pursuit no longer; in his own way he felt himself the equal of his rival. His puny soul was filled with delight because this woman was his own to do with as he would.

“As for Christine, she walked like one from whom all life and hope had been snatched as by a sudden visitation of God. They speak in fables, excellency, of the difficulty we have to realise misfortune. Rather should they say that it is difficult to believe in the good things which come to us. The child had never satisfied herself that her life at the château of Jézero was not a cheat of her fancy. She said that she would wake up some day to find herself in the woods of her island, and to hear the cackle of the old women who had cried upon her. But she had looked for no such awakening as this. The very months of content and of education at the house of the Zaloskis sharpened her mind to a greater dread of the brutalities the man put upon her. The touch of the dirty rags made her flesh creep. The foul words whispered into her ear set her shuddering with fear. She looked back upon her short months of life at Jézero as one looks upon a fair garden from which one is for ever shut. Fifteen days of hardship and of degradation had cut her off for ever from her girlhood. She had become a woman—silent and broken-hearted.

“Only once during those fifteen days had there been a moment when this spirit of docility had been shaken off, and something of her old courage had come back to her. It was upon the second night after she had left the château, a night when the man had carried her to a dirty cottage in the mountains above the Verbas, and there had given her the rags in exchange for her good clothes. Moved to some passing tenderness, he had thrown his arms round her neck, and would have kissed her as he had kissed her in the hut of Orio. But she, snatching his knife from its sheath as he bent over her, sprang to her feet and struck at him; and he drew back cowering.

“‘Devil!’ he cried; ‘would you kill me?’

“‘Listen!’ she said, facing him with anger in her eyes; ‘what I have done I do because it is your right to ask it. I will work for you and follow you and obey you—God help me—I must do this; but if you touch me with your hands again, I will never sleep day or night until I have paid the debt!’

“She flung the knife away from her, and sank back upon the bed of straw. If she regretted then that she had not turned the blade upon her own breast, who shall blame her? Yet even in the first hours of her loss, the one thought—she must save Count Paul—was her salvation. While she lived she could in some way watch over the man who loved her. To that end she would submit to all but the kisses which Ugo sought to force upon her. He—a boaster at the best—was yet cunning enough to read her mind and to know how far he could go with her. And he played upon her fears always.

“‘Madonna mia,’ he exclaimed, ‘that thou shouldst turn spit-fire! Some day we will settle this, and you shall ask yourself if you have paid the debt or no. Securo, Christine, I have a good memory. I could tell you every line upon your lover’s face now. What—you do not wish to hear? Benissimo, we begin to understand one another. When he is dead, we shall come to love one another as wife and husband should. Do you think that I shall forget him, anima mia? That would be a strange day. Surely God will let me kill him, little one?’

“This was his threat often while he took her north to the capital, remembering her talent, and telling himself that she should make money of it.

“‘Corpo di Baccho, Christine,’ he would say, ‘your face will be bread to us in Vienna, and you shall scrape your fiddle, carina, while fools dance, and there are guldens in my pocket. Did I not promise, when I came to you at Zlarin, and you would have starved but for my bread, to take you to the city? Did I not tell you always that you did well to dream, for no dreams were like the wonders across the mountains? Wait a little while, and you shall see. Thirty hours in the train take us from Serajevo. We will go to Serajevo, and the money for the diamonds which your lover gave you shall help you on the road. That was a lucky day which took you to Jézero, my wife! Oh, we shall be rich yet.’

“It was thus, excellency, that they came to Vienna—the man that he might profit of the woman’s talent; the woman that she might save her one friend and benefactor. Although the wonders of the new life would, under other circumstances, have dazzled her eyes and made her brain reel, they were now powerless to impress her. She saw a railway for the first time, and no exclamation escaped her. She sat in a stinking carriage, provided by the State for paupers and cattle, and as the wheels droned the song of their ceaseless rolling she said—but this in accompaniment to the rhythm of their song—I love, I love! The boundless plains of Hungary, wearying the eye with their unmarked horizon, told her the more that she was utterly alone. The great city of Pesth, with its clatter of horses and its hum of men, dinned always in her ears a word of new foreboding. ‘For ever, for ever,’ she heard this alone of all the whirl of the city’s life. The very magnificence of building and of street terrified her. She cried in her heart for the woods of Zlarin and the desolation of her childish life. She answered nothing to the questions of the man—ready, perhaps, to forget his anger that his pride might be gratified in shewing her these wonders.

“‘Managgia,’ he would say, ‘that you should look upon all these things, and yet keep your lips shut! Body of my soul! but you must have dreamt well—that all this is nothing to you! Look yonder; that is the great opera house. Some day you shall hear the music there, and it shall set your brain on fire. Such music is not to be heard in sleep; it rises up like a great wave of the sea, my Christine; it makes your blood boil; and then it tickles you so that you would run and jump. And when it falls away, little one—oh, there is nothing but an echo in your ears, and you think that you could lie down and dream upon a bank of flowers. What! you do not listen to me?’

“He spoke well, excellency, for his words were wasted upon her. Nor was it otherwise when at last they came to the capital, and she followed him to the dreary lodging he had taken in the garret of a house whose back windows looked out upon the cathedral church of St. Stephen. The blaze of light did but blind her; the ringing of church bells was like a dirge in her heart; the great throngs passing told her that here was the beginning of her punishment. One gentle word—one whisper of love—would have brought her sobbing upon her knees; but there was none to speak it. Wearied with the travel, sick for want of bread, she climbed with the man to the dark of the attic, and the door closed upon her as upon a prisoner.

“And so the dreamer awoke at last from the dreams of long ago.”