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.”