CHAPTER II
THE QUEST OF THE WOMAN
“Yes, excellency, four years passed from the going of little Christine from Sebenico until the day I found her again. You may have heard tell in the city how that I, when youth was still my abundant riches, served in the navy of his Majesty, our Kaiser. I had the training of an engineer; and to engineer’s work at Pola they called me on the morrow of the child’s departure. I had looked for employment for a week; but weeks became months and months made years before I set foot in my house at Sebenico again. Often had I written to those that I knew for tidings of my little one. For a season they answered me that it was well with her. The priest spoke of her brother’s industry and charity. I began to think that exile had made a new man of him, and to hope for Christine. Only when years had passed did I hear the talk which awoke me from my dream. One day a man of Zlarin came to Pola, and, in answer to my earnest question how the child did, told me that nothing was known of her; that she had fled to Vienna to dance in the Prater—that she was dead. I believed none of it, and sent word to her by a friend who had business in Zlarin. He returned to me with the tale that Nicolò Boldù’s house was a ruin, that man and child alike had disappeared.
“I say, excellency, that four years passed before I saw Christine again. It was in the fourth year that my agent returned to me from the island with the tidings, which awoke no little self-reproach that I had done nothing to keep faith with her. Vain indeed that I had taught her to call me father, when thus I left her friendless and without word in the place of her brother’s exile. Heavily as my work pressed upon me in Pola, I turned my back on it as the awakening came to me, and was content to look lightly upon my loss, if only I might repair the injury I had done. Nay, three days after they told me that the island knew the child no more, the steamer set me down at the priest’s house upon it, and I was asking for news of her.
“‘I have come for Christine, sister to Nicolò Boldù,’ said I to the bent old man who ministered to the needs of twenty souls with a vigilance that would have served for a thousand; ‘she is still among your people, father?’
“‘God reward you for the thought of her,’ he answered me, ‘and grant that she may merit it.’
“I saw that he was troubled, and wished to turn from the subject; but when I pressed him he told me the whole story.
“‘Would that I could speak otherwise,’ said he, ‘but the child has been a thorn in my side since the day you sent her to us. Neither love nor example avails with her. She is a shame to my people and to my village; and now she has become a beggar, and lives like a wild beast in the woods. What was to be done I have done; but she has no thanks for me, as she had none for the good brother who is gone—God rest his soul.’
“‘Father,’ said I, when I had heard him out, ‘you speak of a good brother; the man I knew as the guardian of Christine in Sebenico answered to no such description. It is of another you think!’
“‘Per nulla,’ he answered me, somewhat coldly. ‘I refer to Nicolò Boldù, who had the hut down by the headland, a Christian man who denied himself bread that his charge might eat. Well, she has rewarded him—and me, who taught her the Mass out of my own mouth, and held her pen while she learnt to shape the letters.’
“‘Oh!’ cried I, when he had done, ‘now is this the season of miracles. Nicolò Boldù denied himself bread! Per Baccho, he was sick with the fever when that happened!’