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.
[Illustration: _Max Pemberton_]
CHRISTINE OF THE HILLS
BY
MAX PEMBERTON
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1897
CONTENTS
PAGE
PROLOGUE. THE PAVILION OF THE ISLAND 1
CHAPTER
I. CHRISTINE THE CHILD 11
II. THE QUEST OF THE WOMAN 16
III. ANDREA FINDS CHRISTINE 23
IV. THE WORD IS SPOKEN 42
V. A WEDDING JOURNEY 50
VI. IN THE HUT OF ORIO 62
VII. CHRISTINE AWAKES 74
VIII. A MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS 82
IX. THE WHITE ROOM 88
X. COUNT PAUL AT HOME 104
XI. ANDREA BEARS WITNESS 114
XII. ANDREA PUTS THE QUESTION 125
XIII. “IF THE MAN LIVES” 130
XIV. THE WHIRLING FIRE 138
XV. THE APPARITION IN THE CLOISTERS 147
XVI. THE SECOND COMING OF UGO KLUN 166
XVII. ANDREA LEAVES JÉZERO 187
XVIII. “LE MONDE EST LE LIVRE DES FEMMES” 200
XIX. ANDREA GOES AN ERRAND 210
XX. LA PROVA 216
XXI. “ZOL” 232
XXII. THE MORNING OF THE DAY 238
XXIII. THE BEGINNING OF THE NIGHT 254
XXIV. “JOSEPH” 263
XXV. THE END OF THE STORY 278
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.”