A general alarm had been sent out, and investigations were being made even at the time of Daniel’s arrival. But they were in vain; it was impossible to find the slightest clue. To the authorities, indeed to every one, the case was a hopeless riddle.
They made a thorough search of the forests; the canals were drained; vagabonds were cross-questioned. It was all in vain; Eva had apparently been spirited away in some mysterious fashion. Then the Mayor received an anonymous letter that read as follows: “The child you are looking for is in safe keeping. She was not forced to do what she has done; of her own free will and out of love for her art she went off with the people with whom she is at present. She sends her grandmother the tenderest of greetings, and hopes to see her some time again, after she has attained to what she now has in mind.”
To this Eva had added in a handwriting which Marian Nothafft could be reasonably certain was her own: “This is true. Good-bye, grandmother!”
The people who mourned with Marian the loss of the child were convinced that if Eva had really written these words herself, she had been forced to do it by the kidnappers.
The letter bore the postmark of a city in the Rhenish Palatinate. A telegram brought the reply that a company of jugglers had been there a short while ago, but that they had already gone. It was impossible to say in what direction, but it was most likely that they had gone to France.
Marian was completely broken up. She no longer had any interest in life. She did not even manifest joy or pleasure at seeing Daniel.
Daniel in turn felt that the brightest star had fallen from his heaven. As soon as he had really grasped the full meaning of the tragedy, he went quietly into the attic room, threw himself across the bed of his lost daughter, and wept. “Man, man, are you weeping at last?” a voice seemed to call out to him.
Of evenings he would sit with his mother, and they would both brood over the loss. Once Marian began to speak; she talked of Eva. She had always been made uneasy by the child’s love for mimicry and shows of any kind. Long ago, she said, when Eva was only eight years old, a company of comedians had come to the village, and Eva had taken a passionate interest in them. She would run around the tent in which they played, from early in the morning until late in the evening. She had made the acquaintance of some of them at the time, and one of them took her along to a performance. Whenever the circus came to town, it was impossible to keep her in the house. “At times I thought to myself, there must be gipsy blood in her veins,” said Marian sadly, “but she was such a good and obedient child.”
Another time she told the following story. One Sunday in spring she took a walk with Eva. It had grown late, night had come on, and on the return journey they had to go through the forest. Marian became tired, and sat down on the stump of a tree to rest. The moon was shining, and there was a clearing in the forest where they had stopped. All of a sudden Eva sprang up and began to dance. “It was marvellous the way she danced,” said Marian, at the close of her story. “The girl’s slender, delicate little figure seemed to glide around on the moss in the moonlight of its own accord. It was marvellous, but my heart grew heavy, and I thought to myself at the time, she is not going to be with me much longer.”
Daniel was silent. “Oh, enchanting and enchanted creature!” he thought, “heredity and destiny!”