Part 15 (1/2)

He listened. The voices rose, became more distinct.

A convulsive spasm flew across the features of the listener; a hoa.r.s.e, unpleasant laugh broke from his lips. The man who was speaking so warmly to Melitta was Baron Oldenburg.

The sofa on which the two speakers were sitting, stood close against the door which led from one room to the other. Oswald could not hear everything they said, but why was that necessary? The meeting of the two in this remote little town, which had already once before been the scene of their stealthy rendezvous, spoke eloquently enough. He had been right, after all! The two had after all but made a fool of him! He had done Melitta no wrong which she had not inflicted on him also. They were quits.

A knock at the door.

The porter came to carry the gentleman's trunk to the office.

”It is high time, sir. The postilion has blown his horn twice.”

Oswald followed the man mechanically down the long pa.s.sages, out of the house, across the dark street to the coach.

A minute later and the heavy coach was rumbling over the pavement. The postilion played a merry melody in the silent night-air, and Oswald furnished a text to the air: to despise one's self, despise the world, despise being despised.

CHAPTER XI.

It was an early hour of a murky day in autumn. Fogs were brewing in the mountains around Fichtenau, and hung so low that the traveller on the high road, which makes a steep ascent close behind the village and loses itself in thick woods, could scarcely distinguish the pine-trees on the edge of the forest.

By the wayside, at a place where two roads crossed each other, sat Xen.o.bia and Czika. Their faithful companion in all their wanderings, the little donkey, with the red feathers on his head and the scarlet saddle-cloth on his back, was grazing peacefully in the ditch on the short, ill-flavored gra.s.s. He did not seem to relish it much; he shook his head indignantly, as if he wanted to say: I am frugal, but everything has its limits.

Nor did the gypsy woman and her child seem to enjoy the weather any more. They sat there, each wrapped in a large coa.r.s.e shawl, silent and motionless, like a couple of Egyptian statues. This att.i.tude, natural as it might be to the woman, had something very uncanny in so young a child as Czika.

And Xen.o.bia herself was no longer the hearty woman whom Oswald had seen on that afternoon in October in the forest near Berkow. Was it the effect of the weather, or was it sickness and sorrow--but her features had little now of that haughty energy which formerly made them so remarkable. Her brow was furrowed with small lines; her eyes had sunk deep into their orbits and did not s.h.i.+ne with the same brightness as of old, as she now glanced in the direction from which her sharp ear heard the noise of a carriage comings from Fichtenau.

”That is not theirs,” she said, letting her head sink again. A few minutes later a well-closed travelling carriage, drawn by two horses, appeared rising out of the fog. On the box, by the side of the driver, sat an old man with a long, silver-gray moustache. He turned round continually, to cast a look at the inside of the carriage, and to smile respectfully and yet amicably at the occupants--a lady and a boy.

Thus he had failed to notice the gypsy woman, who had stepped forward as she saw the great lady in the carriage, and asked for alms. What was his amazement therefore, when he saw that the lady suddenly called to him to stop the horses, exhibiting all the signs of extreme consternation, and that she was standing in the road itself long before the horses could be checked.

”Isabel, it is you! and the Czika! My G.o.d, how fortunate!” cried Melitta, seizing both hands of the gypsy. ”Now I shall not let you go again. My G.o.d, how very fortunate!” and the young lady embraced the gypsy woman with tears in her eyes.

But the latter freed herself almost violently, and stepping back some little distance she crossed her arms on her bosom and looked at Melitta with a suspicious, almost hostile glance.

”Do you not know me, Isabel?” said Melitta; ”it is I! Have you forgotten the days at Berkow five years ago? That is my Julius, there!

And how tall and how beautiful the Czika has grown.”

Julius had jumped out of the carriage; old Baumann also had climbed down from the box.

Melitta hastened up to Czika, embraced the child, and kissed and caressed her over and over again. The others spoke to Xen.o.bia, who paid no attention to them, but looked with anxious eyes at Melitta, who now came back to her, holding Czika by the hand.

”Isabel!” said Melitta, ”you must, really you must, give me the little one. I dare not, I cannot, continue my journey without her.”

”Why will you not leave us as we are?” said the gypsy. ”You are a great lady, fit for the house; the gypsy is fit only for the forest. You would die in the forest; the gypsy would die in the house. I cannot go with you.”

”Then give me the Czika?”

”Will you give me your boy?”