“I walked long in the cloisters of the château, full of such happy thoughts as these. The dark came sweeping down upon the valleys, the beacons of the sun’s fires were gone from the hills, and I was still telling myself that no wonder in the world’s history was like this wonder of my child’s life, this happy fortune which had carried her—and her old friend—to such a home and to such a state. It may be, excellency, that in my surprise and my satisfaction I fell to taking all things as accomplished, to believing Christine already married, to planning a future which was at the best a shadow. And if this be so, my punishment was swift to follow, for even as I was about to retrace my steps to the house and to seek audience of the priest I heard a step upon the stone pavement behind me; and turning swiftly about, I saw an apparition which froze my heart’s blood and held me to the spot like one upon whom a judgment has come. God be my witness—I saw the face and figure of Ugo Klun!
“Signor, it was dark then, with the first darkness of night. The sun had gone from the heights, and there was no light of the moon to make silver of the snow. None the less was I sure that Christine’s husband stood there in the shadow of the cloister, and that his eyes were looking into mine. Though his face was thinned by want, though his clothes were torn and ragged, and one of his hands was bound up in a dirty white cloth, I knew the man from the first—knew him and shrank at the sight of him, and prayed God that it was a vision. All my consolation, all my imaginings, left me in that moment of foreboding. The breath of the frost seemed to breathe upon my life, the cup of all my bitterness to be full. ‘No longer,’ said I, ‘may Andrea look for a home in the house of the Zaloskis, no longer think that the burden of his years is taken from his shoulders. That was the hope of yesterday. To-day he is a beggar again, and the cup is snatched from little Christine’s lips. Oh, cursed hour!’
“These were my lamentations in the first minutes of my sorrow, excellency. That Ugo Klun lived I could doubt no more. The apparition which I saw was the apparition of a second of time, and was gone even while I was starting back in my dread of it; yet its reality I never questioned. And when I ran out a little way into the park and looked for footprints upon the snow, I beheld the path of the man, and it was clear to me that he had made on towards Jézero, there, as I assumed, to lie hidden until he could disclose himself advantageously. When that moment would come, or what profit the man would make of his liberty, I could not then foresee; nor had I any proper plan in my mind. My head was too full of the saying ‘He lives,’ my heart burnt too fiercely with anger and with regret of the present, to permit reflection upon the future. This only was I determined upon—that neither the Count nor Christine should learn of that which I had seen. ‘Perchance,’ I said, ‘fear will keep him to the mountains; perchance he will not find courage to claim what right he has. And if he does, then God help him, for I will strike him down with my own hand!’
“The month which followed upon this dreadful night, excellency, was one that time will never obliterate from my memory. It was difficult to realise in the unchanging life of the great house that so terrible a shadow lay over it. I saw Christine day by day coming to new health and a more fascinating maturity; I saw Count Paul robbed of his old taciturnity, made more gentle under her winning influence. That the man loved her with a fierce, dominating love, all the world about the château knew. Her presence was the midday of his waking hours. He asked for her so soon as he came from his bedroom in the morning; often his last word at night was an order for her comfort. No longer did the hunt in the woods carry him for days from Jajce. His horses waxed fat in the stables; his woodlanders made merry in their huts; his servants blessed the day when Christine had come between them and their master’s wrath. As for the priest, he had bowed his head to a fate he could not control, and, seeming to have abandoned all scruple as to the death of Ugo Klun, he spent his time in educating her who was to be his mistress and in praising her for accomplishments she did not possess. I alone lived with the shadow on my path; I alone cried to Heaven in the bitterness of my heart that the sun might shine again upon my hopes.
“Excellency, you may demand to know, and with reason, what steps I had taken to learn the truth of my fancies in the park. Be assured that I had left no work undone that might bring me to a fuller knowledge of the circumstances under which the man had contrived to present himself at the house of Count Paul. I went to the cottage of his father, who could tell me only that his son was dead. I sent letters to Sebenico, to a friend in the police there, asking for a circumstantial account of Ugo Klun’s arrest, and was told in answer that the man had fired upon the corporal sent to take him, and in turn had been shot dead by a trooper. How to reconcile this testimony with that to which my eyes bore witness I knew not. On the one hand, an official declaration; on the other, the apparition of the cloister. Had I been a witless, unthinking fool like those about me, I should have said at once that I had been the victim of hallucination, the creature of the mind’s dreaming. But never yet did a hag’s legend shake my nerves or the voice of the unseen terrify me. I knew that Ugo Klun lived; I felt his presence hovering like the shadow of disaster about the house. God of my life! scarce day or night could I rest, saying to myself always: ‘He will come to-day—to-day the Count will know—to-day I must set out for Sebenico and remember my poverty once more.’ Yet the days passed and he did not come; the days passed, and we grew in happiness—cospetto, the first breath of spring was upon the land, and we lived yet in our garden of delights.”
CHAPTER XVI
THE SECOND COMING OF UGO KLUN
“I have told you, excellency, how it was that I myself knew of the Count’s wish with regard to Christine. Yet I was careful to keep my counsel, and I found to my content that no one in the château looked for any early surprise. Some there were, indeed, to shake their heads and pray for the conversion of the little one; others said: ‘She amuses the Lord Count, and by-and-bye he will send her to her home again.’ The priest rarely spoke of the matter, but busied himself the more with the education of his pupil. He, too, may have deceived himself with the hope that his master would soon shake off the infatuation. I alone knew how close to the heart of the man the child had crept; how, loving her not from any desire of possession, he had found in her the satisfying sweetness of a gentle womanhood, and had learnt swiftly to lay down the heavy burdens of his life in her company.
“‘Christine,’ he would say, and she herself told me of this, ‘you never think of Zlarin now?’
“‘Madonna mia, I think of it often, dear friend. It is difficult to forget the past when we have suffered. But oh, I will; it cannot hurt me here!’
“She was sitting at his feet before the great fire in his room when he said this; and now she crept close to him and laid her head upon his knees, thinking that the haven of her safety was in his embrace. He, in turn, fell to stroking her hair very gently, and presently he bent down and kissed her.