CHAPTER XCOUNT PAUL AT HOME
“Here, then, excellency, is the little Christine whom the Count saw as he stood at the edge of the bower and gazed upon the scene with surprised eyes. Not until the capering Hans had sunk down exhausted upon the turf, and Mother Theresa had clapped her hands again and again, and the priest had raised his finger in warning, did the group become aware of the master’s presence, and hasten to put on some show of respect and greeting. As for Christine, Father Mark had not failed to impress upon her the nature of her obligation to the owner of the château, and no sooner had she seen him than she ran forward, and holding out her hand very prettily, she took his and pressed it to her lips.
“‘Herr Count,’ she said—for thus had they taught her to address him—‘I thank you, oh, I thank you from my heart—the Blessed Mother give me words—I will be your servantalways—I am so happy here, Herr Count, and it is to you that I must speak—you will not send me back to Zlarin?’
“The Count listened to her earnest prattle, not knowing whether to be amused or troubled. The touch of her lips upon his hand had been very sweet, and, stern recluse that he was, he had no heart to resist such attractive pleading.
“‘Child,’ said he—and he spoke Italian very readily—‘we will talk of all these things presently. Come up now to the house, that I may learn your story.’
“He offered her a stirrup leather, and holding to this she ran by his side, awed by his presence, yet drawn to him by an instinctive feeling that here she had found a friend. And he encouraged her to talk, desiring to form some opinion which would help him to deal with her future.
“‘Well, my little girl,’ he said cheerily, ‘and who taught you to play the fiddle?’
“‘Pietro,’ said she, ‘Pietro who sings for the priest at Zlarin. Oh, Pietro is a wise-head; he has great eyes and great ears and great hands like yours, Herr Count. When he opens his mouth it is just like looking intoa pumpkin. He talks to his fiddle and his fiddle talks to him. It is good to see Pietro at the feast, Herr Count—such notes out of his mouth—oh, they are like cannon on the sea; such anger—oh, it is something to watch Pietro beat his fiddle when he is angry. And he laughs and nods his head all the time, and says: “What music I make! What injustice that I do not play at Vienna!” He taught me the scales, and when I could not do it he would beat his breast and break my bow and smack my face; but when I pleased him he would cry: “Brava! the whole city shall dance to music such as that.”’
“The Count had smiled when she spoke of his great hands, excellency, for in truth he was a big man, uncouth of limb, large of frame, and a very giant in strength. But forty years of life had robbed him of all the vanities, and he was pleased to find one who spoke truth and had no shame of her words. He could not help but remember, as he looked down upon the picturesque little figure running at his side, that life in the house of the Zaloskis had been a poor round of official dulness these twenty years and more. Christine brought himto a sudden recollection of a past day when a woman had enchained him and drank of the heart’s blood of his affections, leaving him at last a soured and broken man. He recalled the hour when a glance from eyes, that were very like the eyes of his little Italian girl, had warmed him to ecstasies of hope and love; his mind went back to those fleeting years of passion when a woman’s hand had led him, and a woman’s whim had betrayed him and had cast him out with affections withered and soul embittered. They had given him the name of woman-hater since those days. Strange, then, to hear the babble of a pretty girl’s voice in his own park, to feel his hand warm at her kiss. More strange that such things should have been pleasing to him, that he should have decided in his mind not to send Christine from the house if circumstances would permit him to retain her there.
“He had come to this conclusion as he rode up to the gate of the château, and giving his horse to a groom, led the way to his study. This was a great vaulted apartment in the east wing—a room with many pillars buttressing the arches of the roof, and windows openingtowards the green mountains of Jajce. The walls of it spoke eloquently of the Count’s common employments—hunting implements, swords, suits of mail, old guns which dying Turks had dropped, spears, lances, pikes, adorned them. The tiled floor was covered with the soft skins of wolf and bear; other skins were piled upon the couches and the chairs. The heavy sideboard of oak shone resplendent with silver cups and jugs—mighty jugs for mighty drinkers. A small case for books, many implements of science, a table littered with papers, seemed out of place in that museum of a hundred wars—a soldier’s room, excellency, the room of a man whose ancestors had fought unnumbered battles.
“To such a room Count Paul led Christine. Here he pulled off his big riding-boots, and having lighted a cigar, he sat down at his table and bade her squat upon the cushion of skins at his side. And then he fell to questioning her.
“‘Child,’ said he, ‘they tell me that your father, Andrea, is now living at Sebenico, and that you ran away from him when he wished you to finish your education in a convent?’
“‘My father Andrea!’ she answered with surprise. ‘Oh, he is not my father, Herr Count, he is only my friend.’
“‘How came it, then, that he wished to send you to a convent?’
“‘It was because of Ugo—of Ugo Klun, who was to take me to Vienna. He is my husband, you know.’
“She said it, excellency, with no more concern than if Ugo had been her dog.
“‘Your husband, girl!’ cried the Count, angry at her indifference; ‘you have a husband, then?’
“‘I stood with Ugo before the altar upon the island Incoronata,’ she answered, playing with the bracelets upon her wrist; ‘he called me wife, and the priest blessed me. We rode that day to the mountains, for I feared to go to Sebenico to the Sisters, and Ugo feared that they would make a hussar of him. It was to the hut of Orio the shepherd that he carried me, and there I was ill with the fever. When I awoke Ugo had gone, and no one was with me in the hut. Then I tried to find him in the hills, and I ate all the bread, and the road was hot, and the sun burnt my face, and—oh! itwould have been good to die! You will not send me back to Zlarin, Herr Count?’
“She asked him pitifully, her black eyes raised to his, and yet he could not promise her.
“‘That is for your husband to say. First we must find him, child. You would wish that, of course?’
“Her answer astonished him.
“‘Herr Count,’ she cried, clinging to his knees, ‘how shall I tell you—the Blessed Mother give me words! Ugo is my friend, he has been good to me. I thought that we should be friends always, that he would take me to the great city; but when I was with him in the hut and he put his arm upon my neck and burnt my lips with kisses, I knew that it could never be, that God had meant it otherwise. Oh, his kisses hurt me; I shuddered at his touch—I, who wished to thank him and to be his friend. Herr Count, blame me not; we cannot give these things; we cannot love because we wish it. Do not send for him; let me be your servant always. I will work for you, I will serve you. Oh, I have known no love in all my life, God help me! I have been alone always;there has been none to care; even my brother beat me. When I was a little child they let me beg for bread. Herr Count, what happiness if you should speak a word of love to me—if you should hear me now! I cannot go back to Zlarin—I cannot! The holy angels are my witnesses, Herr Count.’
“She had sunk slowly to the floor, and she lay now with her head pillowed upon her arm and her right hand holding still the right hand of the master. So deeply did she feel the words she spoke that her whole body shook with her sobs and the floor was wet with her tears. She had tasted so sweet a draught of happiness that the thought of putting down the cup was bitter to her beyond words. And in her exceeding grief, excellency, she brought the Count to a memory of a day in his own life when he too had asked for the bread of love and had hungered. Such tears as she then shed openly he had shed in his heart, and they had frozen there, shutting out for twenty years all the warmth of human affections.
“‘Come,’ he said, when he had waited awhile, and she had raised her burning face to his, begging for an answer, ‘tell me more ofyour husband, and then perhaps I shall answer you. You say that they would have made a hussar of him—where, then, was he drawn?’
“‘He was drawn at Jajce—your own city. His father is the woodlander, but Ugo left him a year ago, for he would not serve, since that would have taken him from me. They must have heard that he was at Sebenico, and that is why he left me in the mountains. Herr Count, I cannot go back to him—I cannot go!’
“The Count heard her out, and then, rising from his seat, he unlocked the cabinet which held the books, and took from it a volume wherein the reports of the Prefect of Jajce were filed. Two of these, the most recent, he scanned without comment, but at the third he stopped, and an exclamation broke from his lips.
“‘Christine,’ said he—and that was the first time he had called her so—‘you are telling me the truth?’
“‘I swear it,’ she cried.
“‘You do not wish to go back to this man?’
“‘God knows that I cannot go.’
“‘Then think no more of him, my child, for he fired upon his officer and was shot by atrooper in the woods of the Verbas ten days ago.’
“The Count closed the book with a snap; but Christine, trembling and very pale, and awed by the words she had heard, rose to her feet.
“‘He was my friend,’ she said, and that was all, for as she spoke she ran from the room and listened no more. Grief and joy had conquered; the desire of years seemed gratified in that hour, the veil lifted off her life.
“Yet this was the cruelty of it—that even while the Count was telling her of the man’s death Ugo Klun, hidden in a cave above the Verbas, was saying to himself that the pursuit would soon be over, and that he would return to hold little Christine in his arms again.
“Excellency, the report had lied that a corporal might profit.”