CHAPTER IXTHE WHITE ROOM
“Thewhite 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 comfortableseat 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 hewould 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 congenialto 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 horrorat 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; thepeople 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 seemedto 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 peopleor 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 theallah il allahof themuezzin; 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 cameagain 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 hercarina, 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 theburning 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 woodhere, 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 himselfto 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.”