“LE MONDE EST LE LIVRE DES FEMMES”
“‘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.”