Problematic Characters Part 65

"I was wondering whether Charles had raised the top of the carriage, so that my little Czika does not sit quite in the open air. I believe, however, she would like it best if she never had any other ceiling above her. During our journey she always was delighted when we travelled at night, and she could see her beloved stars on high."

"And may I ask what took you away so suddenly from our neighborhood?"

asked Oswald, and his voice trembled.

"A matter of business which interests me only indirectly. The illness of a man whose death may be of the utmost importance to two persons who are dear to me."

The baron waited to see if Oswald would reply.

"I was vain enough to fancy that my departure would make some noise in our society here," he added, when Oswald remained silent; "this seems, however, not to have been the case."

"Everybody has been so accustomed for years to see you come and go of a sudden that they no longer wonder," said Oswald; "but I think there is the carriage!"

"Where is Czika, Charles?" asked the baron.

"She is fast asleep in the carriage, sir," replied the coachman, who had come down from his seat to let down the steps. "I have covered her carefully."

"We will take her between us, as the other day when we found her on the high-road on our return from Barnewitz."

The baron was already inside.

"Is that you, master?" asked the child, awaking.

"Yes, my darling!"

"Who is the man with you?"

"Your friend, the man with the blue eyes."

"He must stay with us," Czika murmured, overcome by sleep and pressing close up to Oswald, who had taken his seat. "Czika is tired; Czika wants to sleep in your arms!"

"I believe," said the baron, when the carriage was in motion, "you have made an indelible impression upon the child. She often speaks of you, and asks why the man with the blue eyes does not come back again? She always calls you so. The human heart is, after all, a curious thing.

The wisest of the wise has no key to it. What trouble I have taken to win the heart of this child! I should like so much to call some one being in this wide world my own! And have I succeeded? I hardly know.

She follows me, but only as a child would do when the mother has said: Go with that gentleman, and behave well! I have surrounded her with the tenderest affection, and yet I am to her now only what I was to her the first day. She accepts everything, like a gift which we do not refuse merely because we do not wish to offend the giver."

"But is not that more or less the way with all children?" replied Oswald. "Is it not their privilege to be loved without being specially grateful for it? And then: what is a love which counts upon a reward?

Is it not here also true, that he who asks for a reward has already his reward?"

"I hope you may never experience that in your own case," said the baron, with much feeling. "And may others never learn it through your agency! You would not say so if you knew what hopeless love is; what it means to carry about in you the feeling that your love, true, warm love, is returned with indifference and coldness! No, no! A heart that loves us is a treasure which we must not despise, and if we owned every heart in the world; to have pained a heart that loves us is a recollection which sears our conscience, and which no new love can ever extinguish."

"And have _you_ had such experience?"

"Unfortunately I have! I have formed and broken many ties of love, without feeling any remorse about it. I knew too well that I would not break the dear hearts! Only once--I was quite young yet, and that must be my excuse, if there can be one--only once I became guilty of the crime of rewarding a woman, who I knew loved me truly and faithfully, with vile ingrat.i.tude. The story would be ever present to my mind, even if the Brown Countess had not recalled it to me in a strange way. Did I not tell you how I met, quite accidentally, many years ago and far away in Hungary, a gypsy girl----"

"Yes," said Oswald, "I recollect your story very well. Baron Cloten's arrival interrupted you. I forgot afterwards to ask you for the continuation. Was it not this way? You were on a visit to a friend whom you had known in Vienna. You found the girl in a gypsy camp, as you were roaming through the woods far from the house. The band had gone away and left her behind. To see her and to love her was one. You spent several days with her in romantic bliss. The story ended with the following tableau: A gypsy encampment in the forest--sunset--under the overhanging shelter of a broad, branching beech-tree, a loving pair on a soft moss carpet----"

"You have a good memory," said the baron, "and you have reproduced my state of mind at that time very faithfully. I was sitting then with the Zingarella--Xen.o.bia was her sweet name--in the manner mentioned by you.

I was singing the old song of love which would never end, and the poor little bird trusted the false old melody, and came closer and closer to my heart. Suddenly horses' tramp was heard in the silent woods, and laughing and talking of a merry cavalcade. I had hardly time to push the little one rudely from my lap and to rise, when the troop came galloping from under the tall trees into the clearing. They were my friends: the young Count Cryvanny, with his sisters, and several ladies and gentlemen from the neighborhood. You may imagine the scene that followed--I was at once surrounded and overwhelmed with questions.

Where had I been? How did I get there?--I thought you had been torn by wolves! said one--or you had killed yourself from unrequited love!

cried another.--I have the key to the secret! Love is the cause, but by no means unrequited love.--Look there! and he pointed with the handle of his riding-whip at my poor Xen.o.bia, who had crept behind the trunk of the tree. Universal laughter rewarded the witty man. One face only looked black. It was the youngest and prettiest of the three sisters, whom I had courted last, and who, I believe, honored me with her favor in her way--which, to be sure, did not amount to much. I was suddenly very much ashamed of my poor Xen.o.bia, and had only one wish, to get out of this embarra.s.sment without offending the proud Georgiana. I pretended to be indignant; I said I had wandered about in the woods, and that I had but just reached the encampment. 'But where does the girl get the gold chain from around her neck, which we admired only the other day, when you wore it?' asked Georgiana.--'She must have stolen it from me,' I said, 'while I slept here, tired by my wanderings.'--Then take it back.--I could have murdered Georgiana, but I had bound myself by my bold falsehood. I could not recall it. Xen.o.bia antic.i.p.ated me.--Here, sir! she said; take what I have stolen! and she handed me the chain. I shall never in my life forget the trembling hand, the face disfigured by pain and indignation. Let us get back home! cried Count Cryvanny, there is a storm coming up!--I took the horse of one of the servants, and off we went through the darkening forest. I dared not look back at Xen.o.bia. Georgiana, by whose side I was riding, would never have forgiven me. I had fully reconquered her favor, but at what cost? On the evening of the following day--I could not get away sooner I hastened to the forest to make amends for my wrong, but I found, after a long search, only the place of the encampment. Xen.o.bia was gone. The band had no sooner found their retreat discovered than they had broken up their tents and moved, no one knew where? I have never seen a trace again of Xen.o.bia."

The baron was silent, and puffed the smoke of his cigar in mighty clouds high into the air.

"You see," he began again, after a long pause, "I am pious enough, or superst.i.tious enough, if you prefer it, to believe that this wicked deed of mine has brought upon me a curse which no repentance can remove. That curse is fulfilled in my aimless life. From that day it has been my fate to sow love and to reap indifference. And now you will also understand what Czika is to me--an angel in the highest sense of the word, a sweet messenger from on high, who sings Peace! Peace! to my sick heart. The child's face, you know, has been for years before my mind's eye, and I have told you how I thought twice to be near the realization of my dreams. Here is the red rose Xen.o.bia once more, but in the morning dew of sweetest innocence. The red rose has no doubt long since faded and withered amid the storms of life, and even if I had kept it at that time--what would the world, the cold, impudent, slandering world have said of the romantic love of a baron and a zingarella! I was too young then, and could not have defended my poor wife against the world: now I am a man, and have to protect a child only, a foundling. I shall give the gypsy whatever she may ask, and my warmest, sincerest thanks into the bargain. I hope she has not forgotten the appointment--stop, Charles!--We must get out here and walk through the woods. I know the way from of old. This is the hour appointed by the Brown Countess. We are just in time."

"Had we not better leave the child here," said Oswald.

"Why?" inquired the baron, who had left the carriage.

"The child is so very much attached to the woman, who, after all, may be her mother. Perhaps when she sees her again her old love of the forest life may awake, and we shall at the very least have a painful scene."

Oswald spoke in a low voice, for Czika was moving in his arms.

"Czika wants to go too," she said suddenly. "Czika wants to go into the woods and see the moon and the stars dance in the branches. Czika knows every tree and every bush."

She was standing on the damp wood-soil and clapped her hands with delight, and danced and laughed and said:

"Come! come! You, master, and you man with the blue eyes! Czika will show you a beautiful place; Czika knows every tree and every bush along the whole road."

She slipped ahead on a narrow path, which left the road where the carriage was standing, to enter the forest sideways, and then she ran on, gliding through the bushes like a wild cat. The two men had much trouble to follow. Czika was not to be persuaded to moderate her zeal.

Her only answer to all the Not so fast! of the two men was the clear merry cry of the young falcon, which she uttered again and again, louder and shriller each time. Suddenly an answer came through the forest, the same proud cry which Oldenburg and Oswald remembered so well from that morning when the gypsy woman answered the child's cry from a great distance.

Now a rosy sheen became visible through the trees, which grew brighter and brighter at every step. "We shall soon be there," said the baron, who walked ahead.

In a few minutes they really came out upon the clearing, which Oswald had seen on the afternoon when he saw Melitta for the first time at her house. At the same place, near the edge of the pool, where the gypsies were then cooking their meal, a fire was now burning, but large and bright, as if to throw a flood of light upon the scene. The tops of the mighty trees glowed in rich purple or were lost in dark shade as the flames of the pile of wood blazed up or sank low; on the black mirror of the pool another fire shone in dim glow, and surrounded by this magic illumination the Brown Countess was seen on her knees before Czika, whom she overwhelmed with kisses and caresses. The child tried in vain to draw her up, and at last threw herself down by her side, hiding her head in the bosom of the woman. This was the sight that greeted the two men when they reached the clearing at last, completely out of breath.

They stood there silent and motionless, almost overawed by the strange, touching spectacle.

Then the gypsy rose, and taking the child by the hand she came up to the two, and said to Oldenburg, who stared at her with his eyes wide open:

"Do you know me, master?"

At that moment the flames blazed high up and fell with the brightness of daylight upon every feature in the n.o.ble, proud face of the Egyptian woman, and upon every line of her slight, lofty figure.

"Xen.o.bia!" cried the baron, opening his arms, "Xen.o.bia!"

The brown woman threw herself, with a cry of mad rapture, on his bosom, and held him as if she would never part again with the man of her love.

But the very next moment she tore herself away from him, stepped back, and stood there motionless, her arms crossed on her bosom. Czika was standing between her and the baron, turning her large dark eyes full of amazement from the one to the other.

The baron took her by the hand, and stepping up to the gypsy woman, he said to her, in a tone which, in spite of all his efforts, betrayed his deep emotion:

"Xen.o.bia, is this child----"

He could not continue; in vain he tried to utter the word. At last he stammered:

"Your and my child?"

"Yes, master," said the gypsy, without stirring, but fixing her dark, bright eyes on the baron.