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

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.[2] 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.

[3]“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[4] 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.”

[5]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[6] 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[7] 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[8]

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[9] 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[10] 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,[12] 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[13] 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[14] 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[15] 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[17] 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[18] 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[19] 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!’