Debts of Honor Part 55

Lorand became very meditative some days later.

Once after dinner Czipra grasped his hand and said playfully:

"You are thinking very deeply about something. You are pale. Come, I will tell you your fortune."

"My fortune?"

"Of course: I shall read the cards for you: you know

"'A gypsy woman was my mother, Taught me to read the cards of fortune, In that surpa.s.sing many wishes.'"

"Very well, my dear Czipra: then tell me my fortune."

Czipra was delighted to be able to see Lorand once more alone in her strange room. She made him sit down on the velvet camp-stool, took her place on the tiger-skin and drew her cards from her pocket. For two years she had always had them by her. They were her sole counsellors, friends, science, faith, worship--the sooth-saying cards.

A person, especially a woman, must believe something!

At first she shuffled the cards, then, placing them on her hand offered them to Lorand.

"Here they are, cut them: the one, whose future is being told, must cut.

Not with the left hand, that is not good. With the right hand, towards you."

Lorand did so, to please her.

Czipra piled the cards in packs before her.

Then, resting her elbows on her knees and laying her beautiful sun-goldened face upon her hand she very carefully examined the well-known picture-cards.

The knave of hearts came just in the middle.

"Some journey is before you," the gypsy girl began to explain, with a serious face. "You will meet the mourning woman. Great delight. The queen of hearts is in the same row:--well met. But the queen of jealousy[68] and the murderer[68] stand between them and separate them.

The dog[68] means faithfulness, the cat[68] slyness. The queen of melancholy stands beside the dog.--Take care of yourself, for some woman, who is angered, wishes to kill you."

[Footnote 68: These prophecies are made with Magyar cards and the gypsy girl pointing at certain cards, gives an interpretation of her own to them.]

Lorand looked with such a pitying glance at Czipra that she could not help reading the young man's thoughts.

She too replied tacitly. She pressed three fingers to her bosom, and silently intimated that she was not "that" girl. The yellow-robed woman, the queen of jealousy in the cards, was some one else. She placed her pointing fingers to the green-robed--that queen of melancholy. And Lorand remarked that Czipra had long been wearing a green robe, like the green-robed lady in the fortune-telling cards.

Czipra suddenly mixed the cards together:

"Let us try once more. Cut three times in succession. That is right."

She placed the cards out again in packs.

Lorand noticed that as the cards came side by side, Czipra's face suddenly flushed; her eyes began to blaze with unwonted fire.

"See, the queen of melancholy is just beside you, on the far side the murderer. The queen of jealousy and the queen of hearts are in the opposite corner. On the other side the old lady. Above your head a burning house. Beware of some great misfortune. Some one wishes to cause you great sorrow, but some one will defend you."

Lorand did not wish to embitter the poor girl by laughing in her face at her simplicity.

"Get up now, Czipra, enough of this play."

Czipra gathered the cards up sadly. But she did not accept Lorand's proffered hand, she rose alone.

"Well, what shall I do, when I don't understand anything else?"

"Come, play my favorite air for me on the czimbalom. It is such a long time since I heard it."

Czipra was accustomed to acquiesce: she immediately took her seat beside her instrument, and began to beat out upon it that lowland reverie, of which so many had wonderingly said that a poet's and an artist's soul had blended therein.

At the sound of music Topandy and Melanie came in from the adjoining rooms. Melanie stood behind Czipra; Topandy drew a chair beside her, and smoked furiously.

Czipra struck the responsive strings and meantime remarked that Lorand all the while fixed his eyes in happy rapture upon the place where she sat; though not upon her face, but beyond, above, upon the face of that girl standing behind her. Suddenly the czimbalom-sticks fell from her hand. She covered her face with her two hands and said panting:

"Ah--this pipe-smoke is killing me."

For answer Topandy blew a long mouthful playfully into the girl's face.--She must accustom herself to it: and then he hinted to Lorand that they should leave that room and go where unlimited freedom ruled.

But Czipra began to put the strings of the czimbalom out of tune with her tuning-key.

"Why did you do that?" inquired Melanie.

"Because I shall never play on this instrument again."

"Why not?"

"You will see it will be so: the cards always foretell a coffin for me; if you do not believe me, come and see for yourself."

Therewith she spread the cards again out on the table, and in sad triumph pointed to the picture portrayed by the cards.

"See, now the coffin is here under the girl in green."

"Why, that is not you," said Melanie, half jestingly, half encouragingly, "but you are here."

And she pointed with her hand to the queen of hearts.

But Czipra--saw something other than what had been shown her. She suddenly seized Melanie's tender wrist with her iron-strong right hand, and pointed with her ill-foreboding first finger to that still whiter blank circle remaining on the white finger of her white hand.

"Where has _that_ ring gone to?"

Melanie's face flushed deeply at these words, while Czipra's turned deathly pale. The black depths of h.e.l.l were to be seen in the gypsy girl's wide-opened eyes.

CHAPTER XVII