“But I will not weary you, excellency, with any account of that which passed between me and the priest. I saw at once that he was not well disposed towards the child, and I left him, to learn, if that were possible, what was the whole story of her case, and how it came about that the village pointed the finger at her. And first I went over to the headland where the hut of Nicolò used to be; but the house I found tumbling and in ruins, nor was there any sign of recent habitation. A neighbour told me that the man had died in the winter of the year—for it was summer when I returned to Zlarin—and that his sister lived from that time in a hut over by the eastern bay, supporting herself none knew by what means—nor, indeed, cared to ask. He counselled me, if I would find her, to strike the bridle-path to the highland above the bay, and there to hunt for her as I would hunt wolf or bear; for the most part of her time she spent in the woods, and there must she be sought.
“‘Not that she is worth your trouble, signor,’ he added, as I thanked him and struck upon the path he indicated; ‘the man who could do good with Christine of the hills must yet be born. Madonna mia, she is pledged to the devil, and the feast will be soon!’
“I turned away from him with anger at my heart and heaviness in my limbs. I had loved the child, excellency, and to hear this of her was worse than a blow to me. ‘Fools all,’ I cried in my bitterness, ‘who know not charity nor loving kindness. There was none better than Christine, none so pretty. As she is, so have you made her. Black be the day he took her from me!’
“Thus did I reproach myself again and again as I followed the path which led me to the head of the woods and the higher places of the island. You have seen Zlarin to-day, signor—have seen what time and money and a man’s love have made it; but it was another place when I hunted its thickets for her I had called daughter, and beat my breast because there was no answer to my cry. The village, which stood then in the shelter of the bight, stands no longer; gardens bear flowers where swamps breathed out fever and pestilence; there are paths in the brushwood where then the foot of man could find no resting-place. Yet the island was a haven to many a cut-purse when Christine ran wild in it; and many an assassin turned to bless the dark places upon its heights. Well I remember it upon that June afternoon, when, running through the woods and hollows, I raised my voice to hear it echo from rock to rock and pool to pool. On the one hand, the blue of the sleeping sea; on the other, and far away as a haze of cloud, the red cliffs and distant mountains of my own Dalmatia. Shady groves everywhere invited to rest and sleep; the splash of falling cascades mingled melodiously with the distant throb of the sea; the scent of flowers filled the whole air with the sweetest perfumes. A traveller would have called it a garden of delights, and have loved to linger there. For myself, the thought of the child was my only thought; and, insensible to all but the necessity of finding her, I pushed on through the woods, forcing a path where no path had been before, cutting my hands often with the briars, blaming myself always for the things which had come to pass.
“Yet had I known what misfortunes my visit was to bring upon Christine I might well have turned my back upon Zlarin, and prayed God to carry her from the path I trod.”
CHAPTER III
ANDREA FINDS CHRISTINE
“I must have continued in my occupation for some hours, excellency, when at last I found Christine. My walk had carried me across the island to that north-westerly point of it which looks over towards the city of Venice. Here there is a great slope of the grassy cliffs to the beach, which is of the finest sand, soft as silk and sparkling as pure gold. A creek of the sea running inland has formed a haven, to which the trees dip down their branches and the bushes their leaves. I had not thought that the child would find a home in any such spot as this; nor should I have gone down to it had not the music of a violin, exquisitely played, as only one of my own countrymen can play it, drawn me thither. In the hope of learning something from the player I descended the slope of the cliff; and when I had walked, it might be, the third of a mile I came suddenly upon a hut built cunningly of wood and thatch in the full shelter of the grassy ravine. A garden that was no bigger than a carpet girt the hut about; and the lawn before its door led straight to the bank of that little creek I made mention of. Here the musician, whoever he was, had his home, and here he now played a wild, haunting melody, whose harmonies gathered beauty as they echoed in the hills. Nay, the spell of the strain was not to be resisted, and long I stood listening like one bewitched, until the theme died away in trembling chords, and mingled its notes with the throb of the ebbing seas. Then, and then only, I knocked upon the door of the cottage, and Christine herself opened to me.
“Aye, it was Christine. Though four years had passed since I had seen her, the face was still the face of the child of Sebenico. I can see her in my memory now, excellency, standing there with a timid, hunted look in her eyes, and her violin pressed close against her side. Wan and wistfully she looked at me, covering her breast with the tattered chemise, glancing at her bare and browned legs and arms as though to make excuse for them. There had been none to tell her in those days that beauty like hers was a rare gift, and to be prized. The words she heard everywhere were words of scorn and of rebuke. And yet, I vow, no more lovely thing has existed on God’s earth than the little musician I saw in the hut of Zlarin that summer evening five years ago.
“She came to the door, as I say, excellency, and it was plain to me from the look in her eyes that she had expected another, and was not a little vexed to find an old man come to trouble her. All recollection of my face—perhaps my very existence—had left her long ago. She could only stare at me questioningly, a flush upon her fair skin, an exclamation of surprise upon her lips.
“‘Corpo dell’ anima tua, do you not know me, little one?’ asked I, nettled to see her indifferent.