Problematic Characters Part 11

Oswald, who had in the mean time recovered himself entirely, examined the woman more closely and recognized in her one of the many gypsy women who infest that country, telling fortunes, hawking trifles, playing on the jewsharp, begging, or more frequently stealing. Thus they go from fair to fair, and from village to village. This one might have been twenty-five or thirty years old, as far as one could judge from the fire of her black eyes, the round, half-naked arms, and the firm carriage of her tall, slender form; but wind and weather, hunger and sorrow, perhaps also evil pa.s.sions, had made sad havoc with the once good-looking face. The features were too sharply marked, the eyes too deeply sunk, and even the abundant bluish-black hair showed already here and there many a silvery streak. And yet it was a pity she did not rather display the thick tresses in their graceful windings than the rags of red stuff, which she had wrapped, turban-fashion, around her well-shaped head. Her dress was poor and much patched, her feet quite bare. Oswald now also noticed that an oddly shaped instrument was hanging on one of the trees, and a variety of quaint tools were lying about. A donkey, adorned with a red feather and a bright-colored blanket, was wandering thoughtfully through the trees and enjoying now and then a mouthful of the rich, hard gra.s.s.

"Are you quite alone, my good woman?" asked Oswald.

"No; I have my boy here, the Cziko; he is gone into the wood to fetch water; this here is fit only for frogs and toads."

"And how did you get to this secluded spot?"

"Know the place for years. Always stop here when I come to this country. Cheaper lodgings here than in the tavern, my good gentleman."

"Then you can show me the way to Berkow, I suppose. Is it far from here?"

"Not far at all. The boy, the Cziko, shall show you."

The woman put her hands to her mouth and imitated the call of the wood-dove in the most perfect manner. At once the cry of the hawk came back from the forest, and soon afterwards a boy came running out, who, however, stopped short, with an air of distrust and apprehension, as soon as he saw the stranger. The mother uttered a few words in an unknown tongue, and he seemed to feel at once rea.s.sured. He came forward, offered Oswald fearlessly the tin cup which he was holding in his hand, and said: "Will you drink, sir?"

The cup was not particularly neat, but the boy far too strikingly handsome to be refused, even if Oswald had been less thirsty than he really was. Cziko was perhaps ten years old, but he also looked older.

The damp fogs drifting over autumnal fields, and the snow-storms whistling through the hawthorn bushes had washed out the youthful freshness of the boy's face, and given an expression of sorrow and defiance to the dark gazelle eyes, so that one could not look at them without feeling saddened.

The woman saw at once, with the doubly sharp eye of the beggar and the mother, what a deep impression her boy had made upon the stranger.

"Yes, he is a fine boy, the Cziko," she said, "swift like a squirrel, and brave like a wild-cat, and he plays the cymbal like no other."

"Is that a cymbal hanging on the tree there?" asked Oswald, somewhat surprised that the instrument was really existing somewhere else but in Holy Writ and poetry.

"Go, Cziko, show the gentleman what you know," said the woman.

The boy took the instrument down, laid it carefully on the stump of a tree, and, seizing the two sticks, began a most wondrous music, striking first slowly and then quicker and quicker. His heart seemed to be overflowing with music; his hollow brown cheeks flushed up; his dark eyes, which he raised now and then dreamily to the tree-tops, shone brightly. Then he fell into another movement and another air, and after a few bars, the woman, who had in the mean time made a brisk fire under a kettle, began to sing, in a low, melodious voice, one of those Sclavonic national songs, whose plaintive air is apt to make the heart melancholy and the eyes tearful. Oswald sat there, leaning his head on his hand and listening as in a dream. He felt as if the sad notes, such as he had never heard before, were calling forth entirely new feelings in his bosom; as if they excited deep sympathy in him with his own life, and the life of all other beings, and made him long and yearn after an infinite, nameless happiness.

The song came to an end. Oswald started up. He looked at his watch.

Three hours had pa.s.sed away since he had entered the forest; if he wished to see Melitta to-day he must not lose another moment.

"Can Cziko show me the way to Berkow?" he said, going up to the woman and offering her a few pieces of money. The gypsy swept the money from his open hand, as if she only wanted to see the lines in it better, and holding it by the tips of the fingers, she seemed to study them eagerly.

"Well," said Oswald, "not much that is good there?"

"Much good, much evil," said the gypsy, shaking her head.

"That is the way of life," said Oswald, "and what is the good?"

"Much good, much evil," repeated the woman. "Every good line crossed by a bad line; cannot tell you the good without the evil."

"Well then, read it as it comes!" said Oswald

"Much happiness, and yet not happy," murmured the gypsy. "The enemy of men and the friend of women; quick to hate, quick to love; varied life, early death."

"Well," said Oswald, "I do not object to that. But how about the women?

I am interested in that."

"Much good, much evil," repeated the woman, bending still lower over the hand, as if she did not wish the faintest line to escape her. "Much love, very much love, and yet so little happiness, ah! so little!"

"Am I in love now?"

"Yes."

"And with whom?"

"A very great lady, very beautiful and very rich."

"Hm! And does she love me?"

"More, far more, than you love her."

"And where is the evil?"

"Much evil, much evil! You cannot be faithful."

"How do you know that?"

The fortune-teller shrugged her shoulders. "Here stands another lady, and there still another--you love them all. That ought not to be.

Brings you no good luck."

"But about the varied life and early death, is that quite sure? Well then, the harm cannot be so very great. Here, take this as a reward for your good news."

"Thanks. Take only for good luck, which I foretell, not for ill luck."

"Then I do not wonder that you are so poor, my good woman. Then take it for the trouble I am giving Cziko."

The gypsy took the money with real or feigned reluctance, and called the boy, who had, in the mean time, continued to improvise new melodies on his instrument. She whispered a few words in his ear, in her own language, and at once the boy started up and said to Oswald: "Will you follow me, sir?"

"Good-by, my good woman," said Oswald, looking with a feeling of interest into the dark, brilliant eyes of the gypsy woman. "When you come to Grenwitz, you must not forget to ask for Doctor Stein."

The woman crossed her arms over her swelling bosom and bowed low.

Oswald picked up his hat and followed Cziko, who was already half concealed by the trees.

CHAPTER XII.

"Not so fast, Cziko," cried Oswald, loosening his coat from the thorns of a bush; "have a little consideration for my state of civilization."

The boy went more slowly, but always kept at a distance from the stranger. Oswald tried in vain to engage him in a conversation, whilst he was busy pushing the branches aside, through which the boy had just slipped before him like a wildcat. Thus they might have been walking on for a quarter of an hour when they found themselves suddenly in a small wood, which probably belonged already to the park of Berkow. The paths were carefully kept; here and there a well-chosen seat, or a weather-beaten Hermes pillar; everywhere traces of the hand of man.

Then they came to a wider road, which was probably the continuation of that road on which Oswald had walked at first, and soon after to a pair of iron gates, which opened upon a fine court-yard. Cziko stopped suddenly; he pointed silently to the gates, bowed with crossed arms to Oswald, and ran back into the bushes, behind which he was almost instantly concealed.

"A mysterious beginning," said the young man to himself, as he walked slowly, almost hesitatingly, towards the gates. "I wonder if it is the after-effect of my strange encounter with those gypsies, or an antic.i.p.ation of what is to befall me here which gives me such a strange feeling. Perhaps I had, after all, done better to accept the carriage which the old baron offered me yesterday. I might have escaped the minister and his Primula, and, at all events, I should not arrive here in a sadly neglected and disordered costume, after the manner of a vagabond, but in state, drawn by two magnificent bays. Well, well! A man is a man for a' that, and Melitta, if I am not grievously mistaken, prefers the kernel to the sh.e.l.l of the nut."

He opened the gates, which were not locked, and entered the court-yard.

A huge Newfoundland dog who had been lying on the gra.s.s rose slowly when he heard the gates grating on their hinges, and came up to Oswald wagging his tail. "Well, here at least I meet with a kindly welcome,"