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.
“‘Oh, indeed,’ cried the priest, ‘a pretty guest you have brought to
us! She has a husband at Zlarin, and the holy truths are so many fairy
tales to her. This very morning she met me in the park and cried to me:
“Father Mark, tell me about hell-fire.” A child would have asked in the
same tone for the story of Blue Beard. She has demoralised your house,
and the devil is in the music she can make.’
“But the Count only laughed at him.
“‘Trust a priest to be busy when there is a petticoat in the place,’
said he; ‘who is your rival, Father Mark?’
“At this, excellency, the holy father went again to the oratory to pray.
“Count Paul, although he had twitted the priest, had determined
secretly that he would make himself aware of his strange guest’s
history without further loss of time. He had been overmuch occupied
with the military affairs of the province during his absence in
Serajevo; but now that he was home again he began to see that he had
taken a somewhat serious responsibility upon his shoulders, and that he
must face it without further loss of time. He made up his mind that he
would speak to Christine on the morrow; but when the morning came there
was much to hear from his steward and business to do with the Prefect
of Jajce. It was not until the afternoon that he thought again of his
intention, and that thought was thrust upon him curiously.
“He was riding up from the town, and had entered at a gate of the park
which is near the eastern end of the lake. There is a little wood
here, excellency, and great trees give shade even at the zenith of the
summer. The Count had turned his horse from the road, for the sun is
hot in Bosnia even when the autumn is come, and he was cantering gently
towards his house, when he heard the notes of a violin, played very
sweetly, yet with moments of passion and swift cunning execution which
betrayed the musician of large powers. Surprised that such music was to
be heard in his own park, he rode straight to the thicket whence the
sounds came, and speedily unravelled the mystery. Old Mother Theresa
had carried food and drink to a little bower of the woods, and there
was gathered a merry party--Hans cutting odd capers to the music of
the fiddle, the dame applauding, the priest leaning against a tree
with laughter and disapproval marked together upon his frowning face,
Christine sitting cross-legged upon the grass and wringing, from the
crazy old instrument they had found her, music which would have set the
oldest foot beating to its rhythm. So absorbed, indeed, was the party
in the lilt of the dance that Count Paul remained for many minutes
unobserved; and in this interval he used his eyes quickly. Nor could he
at the first bring himself to think that the little girl he then saw,
so gay, so full of happiness, and of such incontestable beauty, was
the wan-faced starving creature he had found upon the Jajce road not a
month ago.
“Well, indeed, may this pretty apparition have caused him wonder. You
have seen Christine for yourself, excellency; have seen her now that
she has passed through the heat of her trial, and sorrow has left its
stamp upon her--you have seen her, and you know that she is a woman
whose face is not to be forgotten by him who has once looked upon it;
a woman whose lightest gesture is grace, whose limbs are the limbs
of painters’ dreams. Think of her, then, when the whole sweetness of
youth was written in her dancing eyes, and the new joy of her life was
bursting into blossom. Oh, surely this man may well have stood dumb
in his surprise, slow to believe that some trick had not been played
upon him. And to this conclusion her new dress helped him. No longer
did ragged finery draggle about her limbs. No longer was the dust
matted in her hair. She wore a pretty gown that the dame had made for
her with loving labour. Her shoes were of yellow leather, and had
buckles like the priest’s. Her vest was scarlet, slashed with gold--for
that had come all the way from Serajevo, and was the secret gift of
the well-meaning Hans. She had a dainty white cap to hide the gold in
her curls, and silver bracelets rattled upon the arm which held the
bow. And when to these were added the lustre of her deep-black eyes,
the ripe red flush upon her cheeks, the pout of the little mouth and
the comely shape of her limbs, she was indeed a picture to please, a
creature to invite the love of all that set their eyes upon her.”