CHAPTER VA WEDDING JOURNEY
“Whatbefell Christine and Ugo upon their wedding journey will best be told as a plain tale, excellency,” said the admirable Barbarossa, taking up the thread of his narrative as we set sail for Spalato two days after I had seen the last of his famous island. “I played small part in her life then, or for years afterwards. Though I had opened the spring whence flowed the stream of her misfortunes, I was not to witness them, or to be friend to her as I had wished. The blow which fell was not to drive her back to the home she had left or the man who waited for her. It carried her rather out upon the flood of life; opened her eyes to the visions she had enjoyed in her dreams, yet shewed them to her through a veil of tears.
“I say that it carried her out upon the flood of life, for that is common knowledge, excellency. You yourself have heard the tale in Vienna as the gossips love to tell it. Thatwhich you have not heard is the word of Christine herself, as I had it in the capital a year ago; the simple tale of a woman who could stoop from triumph to the old friends who had wished well to her, could look down over from the heights where fortune had carried her upon the difficult path she had trodden. She told me her story without ornament or emphasis—the story of a dreamer’s life. As she spoke, so may I speak, for she opened her heart to me; she laid bare her soul as a child before its father.
“In this attempt to follow the fortunes of a boy and girl lover cast loose suddenly upon the world, I would take your mind back with mine to the day when my word spoken at the bureau of the police sent mounted men into the hills in pursuit of the fugitives. Christine had indeed been married upon the island which is named Incoronata. She told me that my coming to Zlarin had decided her on the step. The boy had long pressed her to go to the mainland with him that they might seek their fortunes together. Until I came to put before her my proposals for a decent life in my own city she had turned a deaf ear to all such suggestions.
“‘Some day, Ugo—some day, I will go with thee,’ she would cry to the passionate boy, who carried her image before his eyes day and night, and never slept but that in fancy he had his arms about her; ‘some day we will see the great city together—and thou shalt have thy wish.’
“Thus she answered him, suffering him rarely to cool his burning lips upon her own, to hold her in his arms as he had wished to do. He, in his turn, knowing something of the nature of the girl, gave in to her, and would have waited many a day had not I come to the island and proposed to take the little one with me to Pola. The very thought that she must be immured in a town, and for a season in a convent—for thus I had proposed—broke down the resolution she had formed. No sooner was my back turned upon her hut than she prepared to leave it; and the man himself chancing to come to her with the dawn, they set out for the neighbouring island and were married when Mass was done. And let this be no surprise to you, excellency. We are a primitive people, and the forms and ceremonies of towns are nothing to us. Set a couplebefore a priest, and say to him: ‘Give these the Sacrament, for they wish it,’ and he will ask no other reason. Rather, he will thank God for the day, and hasten to the work.
“They were married at Incoronata, the boy and the girl, and meeting there with a fisherman who knew them, they crossed in his ship to Sebenico. Few words had until this time passed between them, for the boy was content to feed his eyes upon her whom he now called wife; and she in turn was too full of the sights and sounds around to think of aught but the world she was entering. Four years had she lived a child of the woods and the lonely seashore. Do you wonder that the voices in the city drummed upon her ears, that her eyes were dimmed by the things she saw, that she forgot all else but the multitudes that passed before her? Nay, I have heard that fear so prevailed with her when she came into the great street of the city that she begged her lover to take her to her home again, and was held back by him with difficulty when she would have run down to the sea.
“‘Ugo,’ she cried, ‘my eyes are blinded with the things I see. Take me back to Zlarin!’
“He turned to her, and saw that she was trembling and very pale.
“‘Courage, little wife,’ he answered; ‘another hour and we shall be out on the hills. Have you not my hand to hold,carissima? Oh, it will be nothing when a day has passed, and we are on the road to Vienna. They will laugh at you, sweetheart, and you will laugh at yourself.’
“Thus he spoke to her, and shielding her with his arm, he took her straight to the northern gate, beyond which is the house of his kinsman. He knew well enough that there was danger to him so long as he remained in Sebenico, and it was his plan to set off to the mountains at once, hoping if ever he reached Vienna to be secure from the pursuit of the soldiers.
“‘Not that they will look for me here, little Christine,’ said he, ‘for who will tell them that I have been drawn at Jajce? But a friend might come—and then they would take me.Madonna mia—and on my wedding day! What would become of you,carissima?’
“He said this to her when they had passed the city walls in safety; but she heard him calmly, answering him with none of thoseloving protestations he had looked for. The man had yet to learn that her flight had been the outcome of her impulse; that his marriage was on her part little more than the expression of a great gratitude. All else had been brushed aside that she might flee the convent I had chosen for her. Her only desire was to see the things she had pictured in her sleep. She was child still, and the meaning of marriage to her was that she should walk through life holding her lover’s hand. How many, excellency, have not, in their childhood, cherished so pretty a delusion? Thus it was that she was dumb before his questions, and followed him silently; and when they had passed safely through the town together, he took her to the house of his kinsman, leaving there the waggon with the few things she had brought from the hut. He had determined, so soon as he had given her meat, to set out on horseback for Verlika; and though she was quite unaccustomed to such a mode of travel, she rode well enough on the pack saddle he had put upon her pony.
“‘We must take to the hills, little wife,’ said he, as they set out; ‘I know the path well, andI will lead where no soldier can follow. You do not fear, Christine?’
“‘I fear nothing, Ugo,’ she answered; ‘I have no time to think. Surely, they will not follow to the mountains!’
“‘Who can tell?’ cried he; ‘if they had known in the city yonder when I passed through, we had never heard the gate close behind us, sweetheart. They are devils, those Austrians, and hunt men like swine. Some day we shall have our hands upon their throats. God send it soon.’
“He dug spurs into his horse with the words, and leading the pony by the rein, he turned towards the mountains as one who in their shelter would find liberty. A true son of the hills was this woodlander, excellency; hardy as the beasts he hunted, brown-burnt as the leaves in autumn, fearless, dogged, surpassing other men in cleverness with his gun, the subject for hussy tongues and wishes. Dressed up in his coat of green, with boots above his knees, and breeches white as the snow upon the peaks, he might well have been the object of something deeper than friendship in the heart of the little one he had taken towife. Had it been so, much of that which she suffered in the months to come might have passed her by. But it was not so decreed; love was yet to be born in her heart. And that love was not for Ugo Klun.
“It was growing late in the afternoon when these pretty fugitives struck the mountains which lay between them and their freedom. The road had carried them over the stony plain which borders the seashore; but, turning as the sun began to set, they came upon a narrow bridle-track winding about one of the sandy hills which here stand up boldly to the gates of the Adriatic. At that time the wonder and the fear had passed from little Christine’s face, and she had become silent and brooding. The loneliness of the barren mountains weighed heavily upon her. She saw on all sides nothing but the sullen purple heights, sentinelled by the white boulders of the rock which arose as so many tombstones in her path. All the home she had ever known was now but a haze upon the distant waters. Though no man there had bidden her Godspeed when she began her journey to that phantom world she had pictured, though no woman’s lips had pressed upon herown in sickness or in sorrow, she could yet hunger for the green woods and shady glens she had left for ever. There, at least, she had a roof above her and a warm bed to help her dreams. But here—here in the valley of the stony hills, rising up one above the other until they mingled with the clouds upon the far horizon, what haven had she save the friendship of the man, what shelter but that of the caverns in the heights?
“This from the first was the source of her foreboding; these the thoughts which stilled her tongue. But with the man it was otherwise. Every mile that he could put between the city and himself was a fetter struck off his natural gaiety. The crisp air blowing cool upon the hills exhilarated him and steeled his nerves to new courage. He foresaw happy days of freedom and of love. He looked down upon the wife at his side, and the sweetness of her face filled him with a tenderness he had never known.
“‘Christine, my little Christine!’ he exclaimed as the spires and domes of Sebenico were shut from his view by the gathering of the evening clouds, ‘are you not happy now?Look yonder—we can see the city no more. In another hour we shall laugh at the Austrian,carissima. Let us say good-bye to the sea, for we may never come back to it again.’
“They were standing well up on the hills then, and the waves below them rolled blood-red as the sun’s glory pencilled them with rays of burning light. Here and there upon the horizon the islands stood up to their view, eyots of wood and rock in mists of golden haze. The western sky gave birth to a mighty range of phantom shapes—the shapes of mountains and of cities, of peaks and domes and jagged rocks, cut upon the clouds with chisels of fire. The waters themselves danced with a glittering radiance fair to see. The wind was soft and sweet as a wind blowing from the gardens of spring. Christine herself, standing to observe these things, felt them press a new sense of loneliness upon her.
“‘Ugo,’ she cried for the second time, ‘take me back to Zlarin.’
“His answer to her was a kiss upon her forehead; and bending down from his saddle he put his arm about her and pressed her to him.
“‘To Zlarin, pretty one? What should we do in Zlarin? Say rather that I shall take thee to the hut of Duka, and there get supper. Oh, we will have a merry supper, Christine! There is wine in the pack, and the meat which Dame Vitali cooked, and confections from the shop, and a lamp to light us and sheets for the bed.Madonna mia, I had thought of the hut often. It lies in the mountains like a kernel in a nut. It is the hut of Orio, the shepherd, and I have his word to take thee there. To-night we rest there; but to-morrow we go on, as I have promised thee, sweetheart.’
“‘And to-morrow you will bring me to the great city, Ugo?’
“‘To-morrow to the great city? Nay, little one, we had need of wings for that. It is many days’ journey beyond the mountains.Diamine, that thou shouldest be so simple!’
“His wondering word had no meaning for her. Accustomed to the narrow boundaries of the island, which were her only standards of distance, she had not conceived the possibility that she must ride for days and nights before she might enter the city of her hopes. His explanations added to her gloom. The silenceof the valleys began to terrify her. Her limbs ached with the pressure of the saddle. The chill of evening struck her bones.
“‘When shall we come to the hut of Orio?’ she asked wearily, after many minutes had passed, and the silence between them had remained unbroken.
“‘Look,’ he answered her, ‘it is in yonder wood. Ten minutes more and we are safe, Christine.’
“Excellency, even as he spoke, there were soldiers in the valley below him.”