Czipra ran out to meet them and clapped her hands.
"You were driven away; how did you get back so soon? Well no one expected you to dinner."
Lorand was the first to leap off the cart, and tenderly offered his hand to the girl.
"We have arrived, my dear Czipra. Even if you did not expect us to dinner, you can give us some of your own."
"Oh, no," said the girl in a whisper, blushing at the same time, "I have been accustomed to eat at the servant"s table, when you were not at home, and you have brought a guest too. Who is that gentleman?"
"My brother, Desi, a very good fellow. Kiss him, Czipra."
Czipra did not wait to be told twice, and Desiderius returned the kiss.
"Now give him a room: to-day we shall stay here. Send up water to my room, we have got very dusty on the way, although we wished to be handsome to-day."
"Indeed?"--Czipra took Desiderius" hand, and as she led him to his room, asked him the whole history of his life: where he lived: why he had not visited Lorand sooner: was he married already, and would he ever come back there again?
Desiderius had learned from Lorand"s letters about Czipra that he might readily answer any question the poor girl might ask, and might at first sight tell her every secret of his heart. Czipra was delighted.
Lorand, however, did not wait for Topandy, who was coming behind, but rushed to his room.
That letter, that letter!--it had been on his mind the whole way.
His first duty was to take it out of the closed drawer and read it over.
He did not deliberate long now whether to break the seal or not: and the envelope tore in his hand, as the seal would not yield.
And then he read the following words:
"SIR:
"That minute, in which I learned your name, raised a barrier for ever between us. The recollections which are a burden upon you, cannot be continued by an alliance between us. You who dragged my mother down into misfortune, and then faithlessly deserted her, cannot insure me happiness, or expect faithfulness from me. I shall weep over Balint Tatray, as my departed to whom my dream gave being, and whom cold truth has buried; but Lorand aronffy I do not know. It is my duty to tell you so, and if you are, as I believe, a man of honor, you will consider it your duty, should we ever meet in life, never again to make mention of what was Balint Tatray.
Good-bye, "MELANIE."
Lorand fell back in his chair broken-hearted.
That was the contents of the letter he had kissed--the letter which, on the threshold of the house of death he had not dared to open, lest the happiness which would beam upon him should shake the firmness of his tread. Ah, they wished to make death easy for him! To write such a letter to him! To utter such words to one she had loved!...
"Why, she is right. I was not the Joseph of the Bible: but does not love begin with pardon? Did I blame her for the possession of that ring she let fall in the water? And from whom could she know that my crime was worse than that which hung round that ring?
"And if I were steeped in that crime with which she charges me, how can an angel, who may know nothing of what happens in h.e.l.l, put such a thought in these cold-blooded words.
"They wished to kill me.
"They wished to close the door behind me, as Johanna of Naples did to her husband, when he was struggling with his a.s.sa.s.sins.
"And they wished to wash clean the murderer"s hands, throwing upon me the charge of having killed myself because my love was despised.
"They knew everything well, they calculated all with cold mercilessness.
They waited for the hour to come, and whetted the knife before I took it in my hands.
"And yet I can never hate her! She has plunged the dagger into my heart, and I remember only the kiss she gave...."
That moment he felt a quiet pressure on his shoulder.
Confused, he looked up. Czipra was standing behind him. The poor gypsy girl could not allow anyone else to wait on Lorand: she had herself brought him the water.
The girl"s face betrayed a tender fear: she might long have been observing him, unknown to him.
"What is the matter?" she asked in trembling anxiety.
Lorand could not speak. He merely showed her the letter he had read.
Czipra could not understand the writing. She did not know how one could poison another with dumb letters, could wound his heart to its depths, and murder it. She merely saw that the letter made Lorand ill.
She recognized that rose-colored paper, those fine characters.
"Melanie wrote that."
By way of reply Lorand in bitter inexpressible pain turned his gaze towards the letter.
And the gypsy girl knew what that gaze said, knew what was written in that letter: with a wild beast"s pa.s.sion she tore it from Lorand"s hand and pa.s.sionately shred it into fragments and cast it on the ground, then trampled upon its pieces, as one tramples upon running spiders.
Thereupon she hid her face in her hands and wept in Lorand"s stead.
Lorand went towards her and taking her hand, said sadly:
"You see, such are not the gypsy girls whose faces are brown, who are born under tents, and who cut cards, and make that their religion."
Then with Czipra"s hand in his he walked long up and down his room without a word. Neither knew what to say to the other. They merely reflected how they could comfort each other"s sorrow--and could not find a way.
This melancholy reverie was interrupted by Topandy"s arrival.
"Now I beg you, Czipra, if you love me--" said Lorand.
If she loved him?
"To say not a single word to anybody of what you have seen. Nothing has happened to me.--If from this moment you ever see me sad, ask me "What is the matter?" and I shall confess to you. But _that_ pale face shall never be among those for which I mourn."
Czipra was rejoiced at these words.
"Let us show cheerful faces before my uncle and brother. Let us be good-humored. No one shall see the sting within us."
"And who knows, perhaps the bee will die for it--" Czipra departed with a cheery face as she said that. At the door she turned back once more:
"The cards told me all that last night. Till midnight I kept cutting them. But the murderer always threatens you albeit the green-robed girl always defends you.--See, I am so mad--but there is nothing else in which I can believe."
"There will be something else, Czipra," said Lorand. "Now I am going away with my brother to celebrate his marriage, then I shall return again."