Withered Leaves Volume I Part 2

"I regret that I should disturb you," said the stranger, "but I felt constrained to satisfy myself as to whence came such lovely singing."

"The wood belongs to all the world," replied she, "and above all to sportsmen."

"Like yourself, my Frulein, I am merely a visitor here, I certainly have a right to disturb the stags and hinds, which at such a season of the year have no claims to be spared, but on no account may I startle other living creatures out of lovely hiding places."

Eva now raised her eyes, and regarded the stranger with a cursory glance; his figure was tall and slight, his features seemed to be bronzed by a southern sun, his eyes were half closed, listlessness lay in their glance, but a gentle, refined smile played upon his lips.

"I did not expect to find so charming a flower-fairy in this extensive forest, where the hart-royals dwell. You are as completely buried beneath leaf and flowers, as a Chinese woman of the wood, because if these little bells could ring, they would yield a far sweeter peal than that which the women of the Celestial Empire tinkle before their ancestors' images."

"Have you heard those bells ring?" asked Eva, with that boldness, which is often merely an indication of great embarra.s.sment.

"Certainly, my beautiful fairy! I have heard the bells of human folly in every zone; they have much the same sound in all parts; one flies from them, and finds them again everywhere; however, why should one destroy this charming woodland quiet with such thoughts? But yet.

Robbers everywhere! Do not be alarmed my lovely child! I am not one of them, I only mean the hawks which hover yonder about the summits! The nightingales have already winged their southern flight, it is a pity!

Their songs would sound so exquisitely here in the valley as an accompaniment to a living picture, to this _fleur anime_, the lovely _campanula_!"

Again Eva ventured to raise her glance, and saw a wide-open blue eye resting upon her. She had been mistaken before, when she deemed it to be small and insignificant; she thereupon recollected that there are eyes upon which the lids rest with heavy pressure, then suddenly seem to shake off this weight and gleam with a full, bright light.

"I am ashamed of myself," said she, already more confidentially, "it was childish folly to deck myself with these flowers. I was sitting over there upon the hill beneath the weeping willows, you probably know the little spot. Suddenly, my heart became filled with fear, I hastened down into the valley, and fancied I should become more cheerful, if all these flowers' eyes looked at me when placed quite close beside me."

"Still so young and yet sad?" asked the stranger, as he drew nearer concernedly, removing his fowling piece from his shoulder, and leaning upon it.

"Nor do I myself know why," replied Eva with embarra.s.sment, "it seems to be wafted over us! There is indeed so much sadness in the world."

"Yet if it does hover about in the air, it only settles and remains there where personal experience makes one susceptible of it, and what can a young girl have experienced?"

"Little and much!"

"You speak as if you were a sybil, promulgating mysterious prophecies!"

"Ah, no, my Herr! Little that can be told, what is but little for others, but unutterably much for myself!"

"Then no bankrupt father, no dead mother, no brother fallen in a duel?"

"Nothing of that kind!"

"Perhaps even a school friend, who, married before--"

"Oh, how you scoff!"

"Or, perhaps a dear friend, who has transferred his heart to another's keeping!"

Eva became red, and looked down upon the ground; the sportsman struck his gun against the earth.

"Oh, that I could leave it alone! You are right; this scoffing tone is horrid. Yet it is a means of defence against the world, and those who have learned to know it, at home and abroad, use it, and it becomes a habit to them; but here, where such sweetly-charming innocence encounters me in the shadow of the tall forest trees, here I might adopt another tone, as I feel my heart also is quite different. Truly, I feel as if in a fairy tale! If there were still enchanted princesses, I should believe I had found one here, and I am already looking round for the monster that guards you, so that in knightly combat I may release you from the dragon; I have an incomparable weapon; my bullet will penetrate through any scaly armour."

"But we are talking too long, my Herr," said Eva, rising. "Excuse me, but my friends are expecting me."

"Then, of course, I must retire," replied the sportsman, as he stepped respectfully on one side.

Eva bowed pleasantly, and followed the path which led into the valley.

"May I ask, my Frulein, where you wish to go?" said the stranger's voice, behind her; "on this road you would go still farther into the forest! That, indeed, confirms my idea that you dwell in some invisible fairy-palace, as queen of this wood, or that you are, after all, only a flower-spirit, that will float away to dance in the air with elves."

"I am, indeed, quite confused," said Eva, turning back. "Yonder lies the hill, with the weeping willows, and yet I hardly even know by which road I reached it! My friends will be seeking me; they will be uneasy about me! The sun already begins to glow with evening's red, between the tree-stems from the west, instead of beaming above their heads."

"If you really belong to mortal beings, my Frulein, and even to the most prosaic cla.s.s of them, who are known under the name of seaside visitors--"

"Now you are right, my Herr!"

"And if you will initiate me into the secret of the point whence you commenced this solitary wandering in the wood, I will guide you to the right road."

Eva told the name of the forest-house where her friends were resting.

"Then you must confide yourself to my unwelcome companions.h.i.+p."

"I am grateful to you, my Herr!"

"Oh, is it not a little adventure for you to wander through this wilderness, accompanied by a gentleman, who happily no longer can be accounted a young one. I certainly have experienced adventures enough in teak and palm groves, with tigers and crocodiles, and have wandered through forests with brown and black beauties, while apes and parrots looked on enviously; but to tell the truth, this nice little adventure in the Royal Prussian chase has a greater charm for me than the encounters with beauties who s.h.i.+ne in native brown like old mahogany."

They were now pa.s.sing by the hill. The heather, which grew wild upon it, was bathed in the evening's crimson, which also flooded the quivering bowed branches of the weeping willows.

Eva did not take any notice of it; she was quite absorbed in her conversation with the stranger.

"Oh, you cannot think, my Frulein, how a man's mind develops, not only with his wider aims, but also with his more extensive travels. So much weighed upon me; my fatherland had grown too small for me; I was a dreamer and an enthusiast; and as such, had laden myself with guilt."

"It pleases you, doubtlessly, to accuse yourself," said Eva. "Those are generally the best people who perceive so many dark spots in their own life."

"Did your governess tell you that?" said the sportsman, smiling. "The good lady may be mistaken."

"How disagreeable you are," said Eva, petulantly.

"Believe me, it was bad enough! Even now, when I feel myself freer, I often see the old shadow cross my path. But in those days the world's contempt pursued me in such a manner as to crush me to the ground. Only when I convinced myself that the world, as it is called, is merely a very small, fading portion of the great world through which I wandered, that what is whispered and insinuated here on the East Sea, becomes of no importance already on the Adriatic, and still less so far, far away on the Pacific, since then I became storm-proof and invulnerable to the little pin-p.r.i.c.ks of public opinion, to the gossip of the provincial neighbourhood. But what am I telling you! You do not yet know what all this means, and that you do not know it, that I can see how strange the dark legend of human guilt is to you, that it is which refreshes and benefits me so intensely. You still possess a delicate little conscience that at the outside ticks like a watch; my own alarms me with the groaning beats of a large clock, such as that which hangs at the Kremlin in Moscow."

"If you were in earnest about it," replied Eva, "you would not pa.s.s it over in such a light tone."

"Life, thought, feeling, my Frulein, with you are all cast in one mould. Therefore, you do not comprehend how, in a man of the world, it is all in confusion, how often in him his soul weeps, while his thoughts spend themselves in frivolous raillery."

"That is a bad habit," said Eva. "Why do people turn everything topsy-turvy? Nature must run its course; the tree with its straight growth strives to attain the summit, the plant the blossom, and both Heaven! What, then, would our good Lord say to His world if the trees wished suddenly to stand upon their heads, stirred up the earth with them, and with their roots sought to reach the sky?"

"There are plants, though, my Frulein, which one can turn upside down, and which then continue to grow briskly; perhaps I am some kind of offshoot of that species. Yet, seriously speaking, my Frulein, we stand immeasurably higher than Nature, and, therefore, can fall immeasurably lower."

Eva seemed to be lost in meditation, when she heard her companions'

voices, calling her name, sound through the aisles of beeches.

"We are at our goal," said the sportsman, "a few more steps and at a turn of the road you will see the roof of the forester's lodge."

"I thank you, my Herr!"

"But you shall not escape me thus! You penetrated much too far into the Royal Forest; I am a sort of a.s.sistant to the chief Forester, and must enquire about your antecedents. If I have understood the echo of these beech-aisles correctly, your name reminds one of Paradise, and it shall also remind me of it."