Chapter Three
LATE in the afternoon of the same day Ottillie, coming in to wake her mistress from a nap which the morning’s long walk had resulted in stretching to a most unusual duration, brought with her a great bunch of those luxuriantly double violets which brim over with perfume and beauty. There was also a note, very short, and couched in a flawless French.
If one must be roused out of a delicious sleep on a warm June day, surely violets, and such a note as accompanied these particular violets, were the least disagreeable means ever invented for accomplishing that end. Rosina’s frown for Ottillie changed into a smile for some one else, and she rose from among her pillows and submitted to her toilet with a good grace. Ottillie, who was French enough and experienced enough never to need to be told things, divined what the note must have contained the second time that she saw her mistress glance at the clock, and so accelerated her ordinary rate of movement that even the gown of lace which appeared to fasten nowhere, was fastened everywhere ere the town bells rang five.
A few minutes after, a garçon in the hotel livery brought up a card, and, Continental etiquette made it quite en règle for Monsieur von Ibn to be ushered into the dainty little salon which the Schweizerhof permitted Rosina to enjoy (for a consideration), and there muse in company with his own violets, while he waited and turned his cane over and over in his gloved hands.
Then Ottillie opened the portières beyond, and Rosina appeared between them, delightfully cool and fresh-looking, and flatteringly glad to see him.
“We seem like quite long friends, do we not?” he said, as he bent above her hand and kissed it lightly.
“Yes, certainly, I feel that I have the sensation of at any rate three weeks,” she answered; and then she sank luxuriously down in a great fauteuil, and was conscious of an all-pervading well-content that it should be too warm to go out, and that he should be there opposite her while she must remain within. She was curious about this man who was so out of the ordinary, and the path along which her curiosity led her seemed a most attractive one.
“Why do you say three weeks,” he asked; “why not three months or three years?”
“But in three years one learns to know another so well, and I do not feel—”
“Oh,” he interrupted, “it is better as it is; perhaps you may be like I am, and get weary always soon, and then have no longer any wish to see me.”
“Do you get tired of every one?”
He passed his hand across his eyes and sighed and smiled together.
“Yes, madame,” he said, and there was a sad note in his voice, “I get often tired. And it is bad, because I must depend so deeply on who I speak with for my mind to be able to work after. Comprenez-vous?”
She made a movement of assent that he seemed to have paused for, and he continued.
“When I meet a stranger I must always wonder how soon I shall be finished with him. It comes very soon with nearly all.”
“And are you sure that you are always the weary one?”
He looked blank for a moment, then,
“I have already bore you; yes?”
“Not at all, but I was warned this morning that you might possibly commit such a crime.”
“And have I?”
She looked on his earnestness and smiled.
“Have I?” he reiterated; “yes?”
Then she spoke suddenly.
“Why do foreigners always say ‘yes’ at the end of every question that they ask in English? I get so tired of it, it’s so superfluous. Why do they do it?”
He reflected.
“It is polite,” he said, after a moment. “I ask you, ‘Do I bore you?’ and then I ask you, ‘Do I?’”
“But why do you think that it is polite to ask me twice?”
He reflected again, and then replied:
“You are equally droll in English; you are even more droll in English, I think. You say, ‘You will go to walk, will you not?’ and the ’not’ makes no sense at all.”
It was her turn to reflect, and be forced to acquiesce.
“Yes, that is true.”
“And anyway,” he went on, “it is polite for me to ask you twice anything, because that shows that I am twice anxious to please you.”
“So!”
“Yes;” he took a violet from the bowl at his side and began to unclose its petals. “Why did he say that?” he asked, suddenly raising his eyes from the flower to her.
“Our friend.”
“Why did he say what?”
“Why did he say that I was stupid? I have never been but nice to him.”
She looked startled.
“He never said that you were stupid.”
“You said that he told you that I was stupid.”
“No, I did not. I said that he warned me that—”
“Oh, it matters not,” he broke in, shrugging his shoulders slightly, “ça ne me fait rien. What he may think of me matters me not at all. Pauvre garçon, he is so most uninteresting himself that I cannot expect interest from him. Ecoutez-donc! for him nothing exists but golf; for him where golf is there is something, elsewhere there is nothing anywhere. What did he say to me of Paris? he said that for him Paris was nothing, because no one plays golf; he said he could throw a dog all over the grounds any morning. I did not ask him what dog, or why a dog, for I thought it was not truly a dog, but just his bad American argot; and, if I must speak truth, pardon me that I find it very good that so stupid a fellow finds me dull. If he found me amusing, I should naturally know that I, too, must be a fool.”
He put the violet to his lips and smiled a little.
“He speaks but English,” he added; “he knows but golf, he has been around the world and has seen nothing. I am quite content to have such a man despise me.”
Then he was silent, biting the purple flower. Rosina rested her chin upon her hand.
“Please go on,” she said briefly, “I am listening.”
He looked at her and smiled.
“I do like Americans,” he went on, “and I see that all the women have small waists, and do not grow so large so soon, but I do not see why they do not learn many things and so become much more nice; why, for example, are they so ignorant of all the world and think their own country alone fine?”
“Are we so?”
“Yes, of a truth. Because I speak English I meet very many of America, and they always want to talk, so naturally I must listen, because no one can arrive at speaking louder surely. And so I must always hear how good the light is in America, and how warm the houses are in America, and how high the buildings are in America, and how much everything has cost—always how much everything has cost; that is always very faithfully told to me. And while I listen I must feel how very narrow to so speak is. And afterwards when I go on to hear how very poor the light is here, and how very cold the hotels are here, I certainly must feel how very ill-bred that is.”
He paused to get a fresh violet, and then continued:
“I see no possible beauty for a place of four walls fifty mètres high; and there can be no health where all is so hot night and day; and so I only listen and am content to be counted so stupid. Why do you go to Zurich Monday?”
The question terminated his monologue with such suddenness that she started involuntarily.
“Why do you ask?”
“Naturally because I want to know.”
“I go because I am anxious to be out of Switzerland before the first of July.”
“But Switzerland is very nice in July.”
“I know; and it is also very crowded.”
“Where shall you be in July?”
“I am not sure; probably in the Tyrol.”
He got up from his seat, went to the chimney-piece, lifted up a vase and turned it about in his hand with a critical air. Then he faced her again and said, with emphasis:
“I shall remain here all summer.”
“Yes; not perhaps always at the hotel, but somewhere on the lake. I am born here.”
“You are Swiss, then?”
“Yes; if I am Swiss because I am born here.”
“Were you born in Lucerne?”
“No, but at a place which my father had then by Fluellen. It is for that that I love the Vierwaldstattersee.”
“I wish that I had been born here,” Rosina murmured thoughtfully.
“Where are you born?”
“In the fourth house of a row of sixteen, all just alike.”
“How most American!”
She laughed a little.
“I amuse you?” he asked, with a look of pleased non-understanding.
“Oh, so very much!”
He came a little forward and smiled down at her.
“We are really friends, are we not?”
She looked into his big, earnest eyes.
“I think so,” she answered simply, with a little nod.
He moved slowly across the room and, going to the window, turned his back upon her.
“It is cooler out now, let us go out and walk. I like to walk, and you do too, do you not? yes?”
“Oh, please stop saying ‘yes’ like that, it makes me so horribly nervous.”
He continued to look out of the window.
“Are you nervous?” he said. “I am sorry, because it is very bad to be nervous.”
“I shall not be so if you will only cease tacking that ‘yes’ on to the end of every question that you find occasion to ask me.”
“What is ‘tacking’?” he asked, whirling around.
“Attaching.”
“Why did you not pronounce it plainly the first time?”
She rose slowly from her seat and retouched the violets where he had disturbed their carefully arranged disorder. He quitted the window and approached her side.
“I asked you to go out with me,” he reminded her; “will you go? Yes?—I mean ‘No’?” he added in hasty correction.
She bent above the flowers, just to see what he would say next.
“Can you go to walk so,” he inquired, “or shall I go down and wait while you undress?”
She straightened up.
“I can go out this way,” she told him; “I have only to get my hat.”
“And you will go now?”
“Yes, with pleasure.”
“Is it long to get a hat? I will go down to wait for you, you know.”
“It is five minutes.”
“Is it really five minutes?” he asked anxiously; “or shall I be there very much longer?”
“If I say five minutes it will be five minutes.”
He took his hat and cane in his left hand and extended the other to her with a smile.
“I will go and wait,” he said.
She gave him her hand; he held it a minute, looking down into her eyes, which wavered and fell before his.
“Comme vous êtes charmante!” he exclaimed in a low voice, and, bending, pressed a kiss (a most fervent one this time) upon the fingers which he raised within his own.
After which he left the room at once.
Rosina caught a quick breath as she went in to where her maid sat mending some lace.
“Get my things, Ottillie, I am going out.”
“What a beautiful color madame has,” Ottillie remarked, as she rose hastily and went towards the wardrobe.
Rosina looked at herself in the mirror. She was forced to smile at what she saw there, for the best cosmetic in the wide world is the knowledge that the right person is waiting downstairs.
“Do hurry, Ottillie,” she said impatiently, “and get me out a pretty, a very pretty, hat; do you hear?”
And then she felt with a glorious rush of joy how more than good life is when June is fair, and one is young, and—
“Where shall we walk?” he asked, when she came down to him.
“On the Quai, of course. No one ever walks anywhere else.”
“I do often, and we did this morning,” he replied, as they passed out through the maze of tables and orange-trees that covered the terrace before the hotel.
“I should have said ‘no one who is anybody.’”
He looked at her, a sadly puzzled trouble in his eyes.
“Is it a joke you make there,” he asked, “or but your argot?”
“I don’t know,” she said, unfurling her parasol; “the question that I am putting to myself just now is, why did not you raise this for me instead of allowing me to do it for myself?”
He looked at her fixedly.
“Why should I do so? or is that a joke?”
“No, I asked that in dead earnest.”
“In dead—in dead—” he stammered hopelessly; “oh,” he exclaimed, “perhaps it is that I am really stupid, after all.”
“No, no,” she laughed; “it is I that am behaving badly. It amuses me to tease you by using words that you do not understand.”
“But that is not very nice of you,” he said, smiling. “Why do you want to tease me?”
“I don’t know, but I do.”
He laughed lightly.
“We amuse ourselves together, n’est-ce pas?” he asked. “It is like children to laugh and not know why. I find such pleasure very pleasant. One cannot be always wise—above all, with a woman.”
“I do not want to be wise,” she said, as they joined the promenading crowd; “I much prefer to have my clothes fit well.”
Then he laughed outright.
“Vous êtes si drôle!” he said apologetically.
“Oh, I don’t mind your laughing,” she said, “but I do wish that you would walk on the other side.”
“The other side of the street?” he asked, with surprise.
“No, no; the other side of me.”
“Why should I not be on this side as well as on that?”
“Because that’s the wrong one to be on.”
“It is not! I am on the very right place.”
“No; you should be between the lady and the street.”
“Why?” he demanded, as he raised his hat to some one.
“To protect her—me.”
“To protect you how? Nothing will come up out of the lake to hurt you.” Then he raised his hat to some people that she bowed to.
“It isn’t that, it is that the outside is where the man should walk. It’s the custom. It’s his proper place.”
“No, it is not. I am proper where I am; I would be improper if I was over there.”
“In America men always walk on the outside.”
“But we are not in America, we are in Lucerne, and that is Europe, and for Europe I am right. Mon Dieu, do you think that I do not know!”
Rosina shrugged her shoulders.
“I am really distressed when we meet any Americans, because I am sure that they think that you have not been well brought up.”
Von Ibn shrugged his shoulders.
“There are not many Americans here to think anything,” he said carelessly, “and all the Europeans whom we meet know that I am well brought up whichever side I may choose to walk upon.” He bowed again to some carriage people.
She trailed her pace a little and then paused; he was such a temptation that she could not resist.
“I do wish,” she said earnestly, “that to please me you would do as I ask you, just this once!”
He stopped short and stared first at her and then at the lake.
“I wonder,” he said slowly,—“I wonder if we are to be together ever after these days?”
“Why do you wonder that? Would you rather never see me again than do something to please me?”
“No, no,” he said hastily, a little shock in his tone, “but you must understand that if we are to be much together I cannot begin with the making of my obedience to suit you. And yet, if it is but for these two days, I can very well do whatever you may wish.”
He moved out of the line so as to think maturely upon such a weighty matter. She covered her real interest in his meditations with an excellent assumption of interest in the superb view before her. The Rigi was towering there, and its crest and the crests of all its lofty neighbors were brightly silvered by the descending sun. From Pilatus on the right, away to the green banks of Weggis and Vitznau on the left, the lake spread in blue and bronze, and by the opposite shore the water’s calm was such that a ghostly Lucerne of the under-world lay upside down just beneath its level, and mocked reality above by the perfection of detail. Little bright-sailed boats danced here and there, a large steamer was gliding into the landing by the Gare, and the music from a band aboard came floating to their ears.
That little gray mother-duck who raises so many families under the shelter of the Schweizerhof Quai presently noticed these two silent people, and, suspecting them of possessing superfluous bread, came hastily paddling to the feast. It made Rosina feel badly to see the patient little creature wait there below; but she was breadless, and could only muse over the curious similarity of a woman’s lot with a hungry duck’s, until the duck gave up in despair and paddled off, leaving a possible lesson in her wake.
“Oh dear!” she exclaimed then, “I’m going to Zurich Monday, and you’re going to stay here all summer; we shall never meet again, so what is the use of thinking so long over nothing!”
Then he put his hand up, gave his moustache ends a twist, and turned to walk on. He was still on the same side, and there was a sort of emphasis about his being there which made her want to laugh, even while she recognized the fact that the under-current of the minute was a strong one—stronger perhaps than she was understanding just then.
“You don’t feel altogether positive as to your summer plans, I see?” she queried, with a little glance of fun.
“I never am positive,” he said, almost grimly. “I will never bind myself even by a thread. I must go free; no one must think to hold me.”
“I’m sure I don’t want to hold you,” she laughed; “I think you are dreadfully rude, but of course you can do what you please.”
“You find me rude?” he asked soberly.
“Yes, indeed, I think you are very rude. Here we are still on the first day of our acquaintance, and you refuse absolutely to grant me such a trifling request.”
They had continued to follow the stone dalles of the embankment and were now near the end of the Quai; he stopped short again, and again stared at the mountains.
“Ask me what you will,” he said, after a moment’s pause, “and you shall have it; but to that first most absurd asking I shall always refuse.”
“If I asked you to buy me an automobile!” she ventured.
He glanced at her quickly.
“Do you ask me for an automobile?” he demanded.
Her eyes wandered towards a certain shop on the other side of the carriage way.
“If I asked you for that necklace in the window there!”
He raised his shoulders slightly.
“Ladies prefer to buy their own necklaces,” he said briefly.
She gave him a furtive look out of the corner of her eye.
“Monsieur, suppose I beg you to take me back to the hotel and henceforth never speak to me!”
He did not appear in the slightest degree alarmed. Instead he put his hand beneath her arm and turned her for another round of promenade.
“I think the automobile will be best,” he said tranquilly. “I will find you a good chauffeur, and you can go to Zurich on its wheels.”
“I only said ‘if,’ you know,” she murmured.
“Yes, I know,” he replied; “but an automobile is always useful.” He thought a moment and then added, “About how much will you choose to pay for it?”
In spite of herself she started and stared at him. He met her eyes with a smile of mockery; Its innuendo was unbearable.
“You know very well,” she burst forth impetuously, “that I would never have thought of really accepting an automobile from you!”
Then he laughed again with fresh amusement.
“Comme madame se fâche!” he cried, “it is most droll! All that I may say you will believe.”
“I find you very exasperating,” Rosina exclaimed, her cheeks becoming hotly pink; “you amuse yourself in a way that transcends politeness. I honestly think that you are very rude indeed, and I am in earnest now.”
He made a careless movement with his head.
“Would you have preferred that I should believe you really expect of me an automobile?” he asked.
“You could not possibly have thought that anyhow, and so why should you have spoken as if you were afraid lest I might have meant it?”
He rapped on a tree with his cane as he passed it.
“‘Might,’ and ‘would,’ and ‘should,’” he said placidly, “those are the hardest words for a stranger to learn correctly.”
She felt her temper slipping its anchor.
“Probably when your tutor endeavored to teach you their difference you feared that yielding to his way might be sacrificing your independence, and so you refused to consider his instruction.”
He struck another tree with his cane.
“When you talk so fast and use such great words I cannot understand at all,” he said calmly.
Then she fairly choked.
“Are you quite really angry?” he asked with curiosity. She turned her face away and kept it averted.
“Let us go into the café of the Nationale and dine,” he proposed suddenly.
“No,” she said quickly,—“no, I must go home at once. I have a dinner engagement, and I must change my dress before I go.”
“Then I shall not see you this evening?”
“No” (very bitterly); “what a pity that will be!”
“But to-morrow?”
“I am going with a party to the Gutsch.”
“But that will not be all day?”
“Perhaps.”
He hesitated in his step, and then came to a full stop.
“Let us go up this little street,” he suggested. “I was there yesterday; it is interesting really.”
She continued to walk on alone and he was obliged to rejoin her; then he glanced downward somewhat anxiously.
“We cannot speak here,” he said in a low tone, “we know so many people that come against us each minute. Do walk with me up to the church there, we cannot go to the hotel like this.”
It is true that the Quai at Lucerne has a trick of slipping away beneath one’s feet to the end that the hotel is forever springing up in one’s face. At this moment it loomed disagreeably close at hand.
“If you want to walk farther, monsieur, you will have to walk alone; I am going home.”
For answer he took her arm firmly in his and turned her across towards the church street. Well-bred people do not have scenes on the Schweizerhof Quai, so Rosina went where she was steered by the iron grip on her elbow.
The instant that they were out of the crowd his manner and voice altered materially.
“You must forgive me,” he pleaded. “I thought that you understood; I thought that we were together amused; it was against my intention to offend you.”
She stopped and looked at a window full of carved bears and lions; various expressions contended in her face, but none of them were soft or sweet.
“You pardon me, do you not?” he went on, laying his fingers upon her arm, while beneath his heavy eyelids there crept a look which his family would have regarded as too good to be true.
She shook the hand off quickly with an apprehensive glance at their surroundings.
“I ask you ten thousand pardons,” he repeated; “what can I do to make you know my feeling is true?”
She bit her lip, and then a sudden thought occurred to her. Her anger took wings at once.
“Will you walk back to the hotel on the outside,” she asked seriously, looking up into his face.
He gave a quick movement of surprise, and then made his customary pause for decision.
“How drolly odd women are,” he murmured presently, “and you are so very oddly droll!”
“But will you do it?” she repeated insistently.
He took his cane and drew a line in the dust between two of the cement blocks of the sidewalk, and then he lifted his eyes to hers with a smile so sweet and bright, so liquidly warm and winning, that it metamorphosed him for the nonce into a rarely handsome man.
Few women are proof against such smiles, or the men who can produce them at will, and the remnants of Rosina’s wrath faded completely as she saw its dawning. It seemed futile to try to be cross with any one who had such magic in his face, and so she returned the glance in kind.
“And you will walk home on the outside, will you not?” she asked, quite secure as to his answer now.
He laughed lightly and turned to continue on their way.
“Of a surety not,” he said; “but we will be from now on very sympathique, and never so foolishly dispute once more.”
At the dinner-party that evening was the young American who was engaged to the girl at Smith College.
“I saw you walking with Von Ibn this afternoon,” he said to Rosina as they chanced together during the coffee-and-cigarette period.
“Where?” she asked. “I don’t remember seeing you anywhere.”
“No; he appeared to engross you pretty thoroughly. I feel that I ought to warn you.”
“What about?”
“He isn’t a bit popular.”
“None of the men ever have anything to do with him; you never see him with any one, and it’s odd, because he talks English awfully well.”
“What do you suppose they have against him?”
“Oh, nothing in particular, I guess, only they don’t like him. He isn’t interesting to any one.”
“Oh, there I beg to differ with you,” she said quickly; “I saw him speak to some one to-day who I am sure found him very interesting indeed.”
“Who was it?”
“Myself.”
Chapter Four
HAVE you ever thought what is love and what is passion?”
It was the man who spoke as they leaned against the rail of that afternoon steamer which is scheduled to make port at the Quai by seven o’clock, at the Gare by seven-ten.
Rosina simply shook her head.
“I am going to tell you that,” he said, turning his dark gaze down upon the shadows in the wake behind them; “we part perhaps this night, and I have a fancy to talk of just that. Perhaps it will come that we never meet again, but when you love you will think of what I have say.”
“I never shall love,” she said thoughtfully.
He did not appear to hear her at all.
“It is as this,” he said, his eyes glowing into the tossing foam below: “many may love, and there may be very many loves; very few can know a passion, and they can know but one. You may love, and have it for one that is quite of another rank or all of another world, but one has a passion only for what one may hope for one’s own. Love, that is a feeling, a something of the heart,”—he touched his bosom as he spoke but never raised his eyes,—“what I may have known,—or you. But passion, that is only half a feeling, and the other half must be in some other, or if it be not there it must be of a force put there, because with passion there must be two, and one must find the other and possess the other; that other heart must be, and must be won, and be your own, and be your own all alone.” He paused a moment and took out his cigarette case, and contemplated it and put it back. She leaned on the rail and listened, undisturbed by the strength of his speech. In the few short hours of their acquaintance the breadth of mutual comprehension between them seemed to be widening at a ratio similar to the circles spread by a stone striking still water.
“I am going to speak to you in my tongue,” he went on presently, “I am going to explain what I say with my music. Will you think to understand?”
“I will try,” she told him simply.
“It is so easy there,” he said; “I think if I had but my violin I could tell you all things. Because in music is all things. You must have feel that yourself. Only I fear you must smile at my language—it is not so easy to place your soul on a strange tongue.”
“I shall not smile,” she reassured him, “I am deeply interested.”
“That is good of you,” he replied, raising his head to cast a briefly grateful glance at her, “if you may only really understand! For, just as there are all colors for the painter to use, so are there all of the same within music. There is from darkness far below the under bass to the dazzle of sun in the high over the treble, and in between there are gray, and rose, and rain, and twilight, so that with my bow I may make you all a sad picture between the clefs or a gay one of flowers blooming from G to upper C. And there is heat and cold there too,—one gasps in the F flat down low and one shivers at the needle frost above high C. And there are all feelings too. I may sing you to sleep, I may thunder you awake, I may even steal your heart forever while you think to only listen in pleasure.”
“Not my heart,” said Rosina decidedly.
“Ah, now it reminds me what I have begin to tell you,” he exclaimed,—“of love and of passion. I must get some music and teach you that. Do you know the ‘Souvenir’ of Vieuxtemps?” he asked her abruptly.
“No, no,” he said impatiently, “not one of those. ‘Le Souvenir’ it is. Not of anything. Just alone. If we were only to be of some together I would teach it to you; I have never teach any one, but I would trouble me to teach you that.”
Then he paused and, producing his étui for the second time, lit a cigarette.
“It is like this,” he went on, staring again upon the now rapidly darkening waters, “you may learn all that I have begin to tell you there in that one piece of music. There is love singing up and up in the treble, and one listens and finds that nothing may be sweeter or of more beauty, and then, most sudden and terrible there sounds there, below, a cry, ‘E,—F,—F sharp,—G;’ and it is not a cry, rather a scream, strength, force,—a Must made of the music,—and one perceives of a lightning flash that all the love was but the background of the passion of that cry of those four notes; and one listens, one trembles, one feels that they were to come before they are there, and when they have come, one can but shake and know their force.” He stopped and took his cigarette from between his lips. “Mon Dieu,” he cried violently, “of what was the composer thinking when he beat out those bars? When you shall play them you shall take only your forefinger and draw all your strength within it, and when the notes shriek in pain you shall have one secret of passion there beneath your hand.”
He spoke with such force,—such a tremendous force of feeling, that her face betrayed her wonder.
“I frighten you,—yes?” he asked with a smile of reassurance; “oh, that must not be. I only speak so because I will that you know too. It is good to know. Many go to the end and never know but love and are very well content, but I think you will know more. I did love myself once. She was never mine, and the time is gone, and I have thought to suffer much forever, and then I have stop to suffer, and now I am all forget. But,” he flung his cigarette to the waves, and for the first time during his monologue turned squarely towards her, “but if I have a passion come to me now, that woman shall be mine! If I die for it she shall be mine. Because what I feel shall be so strong that she shall of force feel it too. Every day, every night, every hour, the need of me will go to her strongly and make her weaker, and weaker, and weaker, until she have no choice but of the being all mine. And so you are quite decided to go to Zurich to-morrow?”
He brought forth the question in such sudden change of subject that she started involuntarily. But then relief at the descent into the commonplace came on her and she replied:
“Yes, I want to go there to-morrow.”
“But why do you not want to on Tuesday—or next week?”
“My friend is there,” she reminded him.
His brow clouded, and she knew the reason why.
“You are so typically European,” she laughed; “I do believe that humanity over here has only two bases of action, and they are governed by ‘Cherchez la femme’ and ‘Cherchez l’homme.’”
“Mais c’est vrai, ça!” he said doggedly.
“Not always,” she replied; “or perhaps not always in the usual sense. It is true that I am going to Zurich to meet some one, but it is so very innocent when a woman goes ‘cherchant la femme,’ and, as I told you before, it is a woman that I go to meet, or, rather, it is a girl.”
“Are you sure?” he asked suspiciously.
“You don’t believe my word yet, do you?”
“I did not say that.”
“No, but really you do not.”
He gave a slight shrug.
“My friend is an Irish girl,” Rosina went on placidly. “I do love her so. We shall have such a good time being together next week.”
“You are sure that she is not English?” the man asked, with a little touch of sarcasm in his inflection.
“If you could hear her speak you could tell that from her accent.”
Von Ibn took out his case and lit another cigarette.
“What hotel do you go at in Zurich?” he asked presently.
“I shall go wherever my friend is.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know; I write her Poste Restante. She has been travelling for a long time with a Russian friend,—a lady,” she added, with a jerk.
“I hope you will go to the Victoria,” Von Ibn said slowly; “that is where I always have stay in Zurich.”
“So that we may have our dining-room souvenir in common, I suppose?”
“It is a very nice place,” he cried hotly; “it is not at all common! It is one of the best hotels in Zurich.”
She hastily interposed an explanation of the error in his comprehension of her meaning, and by the time that he understood, the lights of Lucerne were hazing the darkness, while the Rigi and Pilate had each hung out their rope ladder of stars.
“What time do you travel in the morning?” he asked then, turning his eyes downward upon her face.
“By the first express; it goes, I believe, about eight o’clock.”
“I shall not be awake,” he said gloomily.
“I shall not be, either; but Ottillie will get me aboard somehow.”
“If it was noon that you go, I should certainly come to the Gare,” he said thoughtfully; then he reflected for a short space, and added eagerly, “why do you not go later, and make an excursion by Zug; it is just on your way, and a so interesting journey.”
“I know Zug, and the lake too; I’ve coached all through there.”
“Then it would not again interest you?”
“No; I want to go straight to Molly as fast as I can.”
“To Molli! Where is that? You said to Zurich you went.”
She laughed and explained.
“Molly is the name of my girl friend.”
“Ah, truly.”
Then he was silent, and she was silent, and the lights of Lucerne continued to draw nearer and nearer.
“I wonder if I shall really never see you again,” he said, after a long interval.
“It is very unlikely that we shall ever meet again.”
“Very.”
In spite of herself her voice sounded dry.
“Where is your bank address?”
“Deutsches-Filiale, Munich, while I am in this part of the world. But why? Were you thinking of writing me weekly?”
“Oh, no,” he said hastily, “but I might send you a carte-postale sometimes, if you liked.”
She felt obliged to laugh.
“Would you send a colored one, or just one of the regular dix-centime kind,” she inquired with interest.
Von Ibn contemplated her curiously.
“You have such a pretty mouth!” he murmured.
She laughed afresh.
“But with the stamp it is fifteen centimes anyway,” he continued.
“Stamp, what stamp? Oh, yes, the postal card,” she nodded; and then, “I never really expect to see you again, but I’m glad, very glad that I met you, because you have interested and amused me so much.”
“American men are so very stupid, are they not?” he said sympathetically.
“No, indeed,” she cried indignantly; “American men are charming, and they always rise and give their seats to women in the trams, which the men here never think of doing.”
“You need not speak to me so hotly,” said Von Ibn, “I always take a cab.”
The ending of his remark was sufficiently unexpected to cause a short break in the conversation; then Rosina went on:
“I saw a man do a very gallant thing once, he hurried to carry a poor old woman’s big bundle of washing for her because the tram stopped in the wrong place and she would have so far to take it. Wasn’t that royal in him?”
He did not appear impressed.
“Does that man take the broom and sweep a little for the street-cleaner when he meets her?” he asked, after a brief period for reflection.
“We do not have women street-cleaners in America.”
Then he yawned, with no attempt at disguise. She felt piqued at such an open display of ennui, and turned from him to the now brilliant shore past which they were gliding.
After a minute or two he took out his note-book and pencil.
“Deutsches-Filiale, Munich, you said, did you not?”
“Can you write my name?” he asked.
“If strict necessity should drive me to it.”
“Write it here, please.”
He held the book upon the rail and she obeyed the request. Afterwards he held the page to the light until he was apparently thoroughly assured of some doubtful point, and then put it back in his pocket.
“I shall send you a card Poste Restante at Zurich,” he announced, as the lights of Lucerne blazed up close beside them.
“Be sure that you spell my name right.”
“Yes,” he said, taking out his note-book again; “it is like this, n’est ce pas?” and he wrote, and then showed her the result.
“Yes, that’s it,” she assented.
He continued to regard his book with deep attention.
“It exasperates me to have my name spelled wrong,” she went on; “doesn’t it you?”
“Yes,” he said; “it is for that that I look in my book.”
She came close and looked at what she had written,—“Von Ebn.”
“Isn’t that right?” she asked in surprise.
“It is your English E, but not my letter.”
“How do you spell your name?”
“Oh!”
She laughed, and he laughed with her.
“That was very stupid in me,” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” he replied, with one of his rare smiles; “but I would have said nothing, only that at the Poste Restante I shall lose all my letters from you.”
“All! what leads you to suppose that there would ever be any?”
He turned and looked steadily at her, his eyes widely earnest.
“What, not even a post card?”
Rosina forgave the yawn, or perhaps she had forgotten it.
“Do you really want to hear from me again?”
“Yes, really.”
“Shall you remember me after I am gone?”
“Natürlich.”
“For how long?”
At that he shrugged his shoulders. Down below they were making ready for the landing.
“Who can say?” he answered at last.
“At least, monsieur, you are frank.”
“I am always frank.”
“Is that always best?”
“I think so.”
People were beginning to move towards the staircase. Below, the man stood ready to fling the rope.
“Let us go to the other landing and walk back across the stone bridge,” he suggested.
“There is not time; it is quite seven o’clock now.”
“But I shall not again be with you, and there is something that I must say.”
“You must say it here, then.”
The rope was thrown and caught, and every one aboard received the violent jolt that attends some boat-landings. Rosina was thrown against her companion and he was thrown against the stair-rail.
“Can you hear if I speak now,” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“You will see that I really interest myself in you.”
Just then some one in front trod on a dog, which yelped violently for three minutes; for a brief space speech was impossible, and then they were on the gang-plank, and he bent above her once more.
“I want to ask you something; will you do it if I ask you?”
“What is it?”
“Will you promise me to do it?”
They were now squeezing past the ticket kiosque.
“It is this—”
A man behind stepped on Rosina’s skirt and nearly pulled her over backward; something ripped violently and she gave a low cry. The man said, “Mille pardons,” and Von Ibn looked ready to murder him.
“Are you undone?” he asked her solicitously.
“No, I’m only badly torn.”
“Do you want a pin?”
“Yes; have you one?”
“Malheureusement que non.”
“I think that I can hold it up,” she said bravely.
“It is unpardonable—a such man!”
He turned to scowl again at the offender. They were now in the Promenade.
“He couldn’t see in the dark, I suppose,” she murmured.
“But why was he come so near? If it was I who had torn from being too near, that would be quite different.”
“If you don’t take care it will be exactly the same thing.”
He laughed, and gave way three inches.
“You have not yet promise,” he said then.
“Promised what?”
“To do what I ask.”
“Tell me what it is; if I can do it I will.”
He took her arm to cross towards the hotel.
“You can do it if you will,” he said; “it is this—”
The Schweizerhof shone before them, great and white and sparkling; every window was lighted, every table on the terrace was full. Rosina quickened her steps.
“Oh, I’m so late,” she cried, “and I have such a toilette to make!”
Von Ibn had his hand upon her arm still.
“It is this,” he said emphatically, “promise me that you will go to the Victoria Hotel at Zurich; yes?”
Later in her own room, as Ottillie dressed her hair, she closed her eyes and tried to reduce her thoughts to a rational basis. But she gave up in despair.
“From the ‘Souvenir’ to the Victoria,” she murmured; “oh, he is most certainly a genius!” then she sighed a little. “I’m sorry that we shall probably never meet again,” she added sadly.
Chapter Five
ROSINA fairly flung herself off of the train and into the arms of Molly, and then and there they kissed one another with the warmth born of a long interval apart.
“Well, my dear,” began the Irish girl, when they found themselves five minutes later being rolled away in one of the villainous Zurich cabs, “begin away back in the early days of our sad separation and tell me everything that has happened to you since.”
“Not much has happened,” Rosina replied. “I crossed in May and got some clothes in Paris, and then came Lucerne, and this is June. Before I came over nothing happened. How could things happen while I had to wear a crape veil?”
“To be sure!” said Molly wisely; “and yet they do sometimes,—I know it for a fact. And anyway the veil is off now, and you look so well that I should think perhaps—lately?”
“Oh, dear, no,” said Rosina, turning quickly scarlet; “don’t harbor such an idea for a second. Nothing of that sort will ever happen to me again. A burnt child dreads the fire, and I can assure you I’m cinders to the last atom. But never mind me, tell me about yourself. That is much more interesting.”
“‘About myself is it you’re inquiring’?” laughed the Irish girl; “’tis easy told. Last winter, like a fool, I engaged myself to a sweet young Russian colonel, and this spring he died—”
“Oh, Molly!”
“Never mind, my dear, because I can assure you that I didn’t. Russians are so furiously made up that he couldn’t stand any of the other men that I was engaged to. My life was too broad a burden in consequence, and I was well satisfied at his funeral.”
“Is it his mother that you are travelling with?”
“His mother! No, dear, I can’t stand any of the family now.”
“Whose mother is she?”
“She isn’t anybody’s mother. That’s how she can be sixty-five and look forty-two by gaslight.”
“Does she look forty-two by gaslight? Oh, imagine looking forty-two by gaslight!”
“By men’s gaslight she looks forty-two. Any woman could just instinctively see through everything from her wig to her waist, and that’s why she has grown to hate me so.”
“Hate me! Well, wait until you see her look at me. It’s a sort of cross between a mud-turtle and a basilisk, and she’s forever telling my age and telling it wrong. And she lays for every man that comes near me.”
“Why, Molly, how awful!”
“I’m going slowly mad. You’ve no idea! she’s so jealous that life is not only a burden, it’s a weight that’s smashing me flatter every day. I’m getting a gray hair and a wrinkle, and all because of her. And she wrote Ivan—”
“Who’s Ivan?”
“He’s one of the men that I’ve accepted lately; he’s her cousin. He’s a prince and she’s a princess; but oh, my soul and body, my head is uneasy enough with lying and I’ve ceased to care a bit about the crown.”
“Why, Molly, wouldn’t you like to be a princess?”
“Not after this trip. Do you know what straits she’s driven me to? actually I came near taking a Turk at Trieste.”
“Did you?”
“No, I didn’t. I thought it over and I decided I wasn’t built for the monopoly of a harem.”
Rosina burst out laughing.
“Molly,” she gasped, “imagine you confined to only one man, and he your lord and master!”
“I couldn’t possibly imagine it, and I make it a point to never go in for anything that I can’t imagine. But, my dear, I must tell you the great news. Being engaged is an old habit with me; but” (she put her hand to her throat and felt within her high stock) “you must know that I am now actually in love, for the first time in my life, too.”
“Oh, Molly, since when?”
“Three weeks. Wait till I fish up my locket and you shall see him. Handsome is nowhere! And our meeting was so romantic. I was lying on the bottom of a boat waiting to be paddled into the Blue Grotto, and at the last minute a stranger came, and they laid him down at my feet. When we got into the grotto, of course we stood up; and it was lucky we did, for we fell in love directly, and of course we couldn’t have fallen unless we were standing.”
“Oh, Molly, who is he? do show me the picture.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do, but I think the clasp has hooked on to Captain Douglas’ locket,—you remember Captain Douglas!—I can’t pull it anyway. Never mind, I’ll show you to-night.”
“English, no; he’s Italian. Such eyes you never saw. They’re warmer than white porcelain tile stoves in early autumn. And he belongs to the Queen-mother’s regiment, and wears the most resplendent uniform and a gray cape that he just carelessly sweeps across his chest and up over the other shoulder—ah!”
Molly stopped to draw a deep breath and sigh.
“Where is he stationed?” her friend inquired.
“Rome; and he hasn’t a cent beyond his pay, so we can’t think of any future which makes him so blue.”
“Poor fellow! do you consider yourself engaged to him?”
“Of course I’m engaged to him. He came a whole day’s journey to propose. You don’t suppose I’d say ‘no’ to a chap who was awfully hard up, and then took a long, expensive trip just on my account! Besides, I’m most desperately in love with him, and he is the kind of man who couldn’t come to time any other way. He is a most awfully good sort—the sort that believe in everything. Why, he has such a high opinion of me that it’s almost depressing at times. I can’t live up to a high opinion; it’s all I can do to keep above a low one.”
“But how will it come out, Molly?”
“It won’t come out at all unless you tell it. No one else knows. He can’t say anything without compromising himself, and I’m not likely to let it out unless I some day pull up the wrong locket by accident.”
“But don’t it trouble you?”
“Trouble me! Why should it trouble me? It’s that old Russian woman who troubles me. I’d be idiotic to add to my miseries by thinking up any other torments while I’m around with her. Here we are at the Quai,—that’s the hotel yonder. And I’ve talked one continuous stream ever since we left the Gare and you’ve never said a word. Begin right off and tell me something about yourself. Who have you met since you came over in May? Of course you’ve met some one. Who?”
“An old French marquis,” Rosina told her thoughtfully.
“And no one else?”
“Oh, yes, of course there were loads of others. But this was such a dear old gentleman, when he kissed my hand—well, really, I almost felt like a princess.”
“But not like a marchioness?”
“Oh, dear no! I wouldn’t think of undertaking the gout before I’m thirty.”
“The Lord preserve me from dear old men!” Molly ejaculated with fervor. “Why, I had a baron propose to me last winter; he was actually so shaky that his valet was always in attendance to stand him up and sit him down. While he was pouring out his remnant of a heart I kept expecting to see the valet come running in to throw him at my knees. He was over eighty and awfully rich, but that servant of his was too careful and conscientious for me to dare risk it,—a man like that with devoted attention and plenty of rare beef might live ten years, you know,—so I told him ‘no,’ and the valet came in and stood him up and led him away.”
The cab coming to a standstill before the hotel just at this moment, the two young women were forced to interrupt their conversation, and undertake the arduous labor of preparing for déjeuner. Ottillie was just laying out the contents of the travelling toilet-case when her mistress came in to be dressed, and it was quite two hours later before any opportunity presented itself for renewing their talk. Then Molly came into the salon of the blue-and-white suite which the friends shared, and they curled up together on the divan, prepared to spend one of those infinitely delightful hours which are only known to two thoroughly congenial women who have had the rare luck of chancing to know one another well.
Molly began by winding her arm about her friend’s shoulders and kissing her warmly.
“’Tis like Paradise to be with you instead of that fussy old woman,” she said warmly; “now go on with what you were telling me in the carriage,—the marquis, you know.”
“There isn’t any more to tell you about him, he’s all over, but I’ll tell you about some one else, if you’ll be good.”
“I’ll be good. Who, and where, and which, and what is the other?”
“I haven’t any faith in you, I’m afraid you will tease me.”
“Did I ever tease you before?”
“I was married then and I didn’t mind. I feel differently now.”
“I promise not to tease you one bit. Where did you meet him?”
“In Lucerne.”
“What’s his name? I know a lot of people who are in Lucerne just now. Perhaps I know him.”
“I wish that you did know him.”
“Tell me his name.”
“It’s the composer, Herr von Ibn.”
Molly screamed with joy.
“Oh, my dear, what luck you do have! Did he play for you? Have you heard any of his things?”
“No, unfortunately. You see I only met him on Saturday, and as I came away this morning we had to rush every second as hard as we could in order to become acquainted at all.”
“What fun to know him! He’s going to be so tremendously famous, they say; did you know that?”
“So they told me there.”
“And he plays in such a wonderful manner, too. What a pity he didn’t play for you. Don’t you love a violin, anyhow?”
“I don’t know,” said Rosina thoughtfully; “I think that I like a flute best, but I always think whenever I see a man playing on a violin that the attitude ought to develop very affectionate tendencies in him.”
“What kind of a fellow was he to talk to? Was he agreeable?”
“Most of the American men didn’t like him, I believe,” said Rosina; then she added, “but most of the American men never like any foreigners, you know, unless it’s the Englishmen, perhaps.”
“But what did you think of him?”
“I thought he was very queer; and he got the better of me all the time.”
“That ought to have made you hate him.”
“That is what seems so odd to me. I’ve been thinking about him all the time that I was on the train this morning. Do you know, Molly, that man was positively rude to me over and over again, and yet, try as I might, I couldn’t stay angry with him.” She paused and knit her brows for a few seconds over some recollection, and then she turned suddenly and laid her face against the other’s shoulder. “Molly, dear,” she said softly, “he had a way of smiling,—if you could only see it! Well!”
“Well!”
“I could forgive anything to that smile,—honestly.”
Molly looked thoughtful.
“Saturday to Monday,” she murmured apropos of nothing.
Rosina lifted her head and gave her a glance.
“I wish that you might meet him,” she said gravely.
“I wish that he was here in Zurich,” her friend replied.
At that instant there sounded a tap on the door.
“Herein!” Rosina cried.
It was a waiter with a card upon a tray; Molly held out her hand for the bit of pasteboard, glanced at it, and gave a start and a cry.
“Is anything the matter?” Rosina asked, reaching for the card. Her friend gave it to her, and as her eyes fell upon the name she turned first white and then red.
“It can’t be that he is here in Zurich!” she exclaimed.
“This is his card, anyway.”
“Mercy on us!”
“Shall he come up here,—he had better, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” she gasped. “I’m too surprised to think! The idea of his coming here this afternoon! Why, I never thought of such a thing. He said good-bye forever last night. I—”
“Show monsieur to the room,” Molly said to the man, cutting Rosina short in the full tide of her astonishment.
“Of course you must see him,” she said, as the door closed, “and, not being entirely devoid of curiosity, I can’t help feeling awfully glad to think that now I shall see him too.”
She quitted the divan as she spoke and went to the mirror over the mantelpiece. There was something in the action that suddenly recalled Rosina to her senses, and she sprang to her feet and disappeared into the sleeping-room beyond, returning in two or three minutes bearing evidence of Ottillie’s deft touch. She found Molly still before the mirror, and as her own reflection appeared over her friend’s shoulder the other nodded and laughed.
“You seem to have made a deep impression,” she said gayly.
“I can’t understand it all,” Rosina began; “he made such a fuss over his good-bye last night and—and—well, really, I never dreamed of his doing such a thing as to come here.”
“I’m heartily glad that he’s come, because now I shall meet him, and I’ve heard—”
She was interrupted by a slight tap at the door, and before either could cry “Entrez!” it was flung open and Von Ibn strode into the room. The first glance at his face showed both that something was gone all wrong, and most horribly so.
Rosina, flushed afresh, went towards him, holding out her hand and wondering if it was anything in connection with Molly that had produced such an utter blackness.
“This is a very great surprise,” she began, but he interrupted her at once.
“Comme je vous ai cherché!” he cried, with violence. “Why are you not gone to the Victoria as you say—as I ask you to?” His face was like a thunder-storm.
The corners of her mouth felt suddenly traitorous; she tried to speak, beginning, “I did not know—” but he broke in, and went hotly on with:
“Naturally you did not know, but I had already known! One could not, of course, expect me to get up to ride on that most uncomfortable train which you chose, but of course also I came on the first train leaving after I did wake up.”
Molly turned abruptly to the window and leaned as far out as she could, her handkerchief pressed tightly over her mouth. Rosina wished that her friend might have been anywhere else; even during what is commonly called “a scene” two are infinitely better company than three.
“How most absurd I have been made,” Von Ibn continued wrathfully, “in a cab from hotel to hotel hunting for you! Do you think I have ever done so before? Do you think I have found it very amusing to-day? Naturally I go from the Gare to the Victoria, where I have told you to go. I take there a room, and tell the garçon to bring my card to madame; and in ten minutes, as I am getting me out of the dust of that most abominable middle-day train, he returns to say that no such as madame is within the house. Figurez-vous? Why are you acted so? Why are you always so oddly singular?”
Rosina appeared struck dumb by the torrent of his words; she stood pink and silent before his towering blackness. Molly, at the window, judged it prudent to interfere, and, turning, began:
“It’s all my fault, monsieur. Rosina wanted to go to the Victoria; she wept when she found that she couldn’t, but I was here already and we wanted to be together, and so she consented to come with me and live by the lake.”
Von Ibn turned his eyes upon the new speaker, and their first expression was one of deep displeasure. But Molly’s eyes were of that brown which is almost bronze, and fringed by eyelashes that were irresistibly long and curly, and she furthermore possessed a smile that could have found its way anywhere alone, and yet was rendered twice wise in the business of hearts by two attendant dimples, to the end that the combination was powerful enough to slowly smooth out some of the deepest lines of anger in the face before her, and to vastly ameliorate its generally offended air.
From the evidently pardoned Irish girl the caller turned his somewhat softened gaze towards the young American, and then, and then only, it appeared that a fresh storm-centre had gathered force unto itself in that one small salon, and that it was now Rosina who had decided to exhibit her temper, beginning by saying, with a very haughty coolness:
“It’s nice of mademoiselle to try and make a joke out of all this, but she knows that I never thought for a minute of going anywhere except where she might chance to be. And as to you, monsieur, I cannot see how you could have expected or demanded that I should pay any attention whatever to your wishes. You told me last night that we might never meet again—”
“And that could have truthed itself by chance,” he interrupted eagerly.
“—And I believed you, and you know it,” she finished, not noticing his interpolation.
He stood still, looking straight at her, and when she was altogether silent he stepped forward and raised her hand within his own.
“Does one meet a real friendship on Saturday to let it go from him for always after Monday?” he asked her, speaking with a simple dignity that suddenly swept the atmosphere free from clouds and storms.
Molly crossed the room hastily.
“I hear madame calling,” she explained.
Rosina knew that madame was down a corridor well around the corner, and that she was not in the habit of calling for anything or anybody, but she felt no desire to cover her friend with shame by forcing her to admit that she was lying. Indeed, just at that particular moment Molly’s absence appeared to be a very desirable quota in the general scheme of things. So the girl went away and stayed away—being wise in her views as to life and love affairs.
When they were alone Von Ibn flung himself into an arm-chair and stretched forth his hand almost as if to command her approach to his side. She stood still, but she could feel her color rising and was desperately annoyed that it should be so.
“You are not angry that I be here?” he asked.
She drew a quick little breath and then turned to seat herself.
“You must have known that I must come,” he continued.
She felt her lips tremble, and was furious at them for it.
“I played the ‘Souvenir’ last night,” he said, dropping his eyes and sinking his voice; “it is then plain to me that I must travel to-day.”
Something dragged her gaze upward until their eyes met.
He smiled, and she blushed deeply....
Chapter Six
IT was very late that night—indeed the hour was dangerously close upon the morning after—before the two friends found themselves alone together again. Rosina lay up among the pillows, the centre of a mass of blue cambric, with tiny bands of lace confining the fulness here and there; while Molly, in such a dressing-gown as grows only in the Rue de la Paix, sat on the foot of the narrow continental bed and thoughtfully bound the braids of her bonny brown hair.
“Well, you know him now,” Rosina said at last, the inflection of her voice rampant with interrogative meaning.
“Yes,” was the non-committal answer.
“Don’t be horrid, Molly; you know I want so much to know what you think of him? Isn’t he delicious? Isn’t he grand? Didn’t he impress you as being just an ideal sort of a celebrity?”
Molly opened her eyes to an exceeding width.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly.
“Don’t know! then you don’t like him? What don’t you like about him?”
“Well, I’d prefer a Russian myself.”
“Why! what do you mean?”
“They’re not so fierce, and if one likes fierceness they’re plenty fierce enough.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The way that he came bursting in on us to-day.”
“But that was splendid! it was lovely to see him so worked up.”
“You never can count on when he’ll work up, though.”
“But I like men you can’t count on.”
“Do you?”
“You see, I could always count on my husband, and that sort of arithmetic isn’t to my taste any more.”
“Well, dear, from the little I’ve seen of Herr von Ibn I should say that it would be impossible to ever work him by any other rule than that of his own sweet—or otherwise—will.”
“But I like that.”
“Yes, so I gathered from your actions.”
“And, after all, whatever he is—” Rosina paused and ran her fingers through her hair. “It doesn’t any of it amount to anything, you know,” she added.
“Oh, dear no. That’s evident enough.”
Rosina started.
“What do you mean?” she cried.
“Oh, nothing as far as he’s concerned;—only as far as you are.”
“But,” Rosina insisted, “you did mean something. What was it? You mean—”
“I don’t mean anything,” said Molly; “if he don’t mean anything and you don’t mean anything, how in Heaven’s name could I mean anything?”
“I only met him Saturday, you know,” Rosina reminded her. “And this is Monday,” she reminded her further. “Nothing ever can happen in such a short time,” she wound up airily.
“No,” said Molly thoughtfully, “to be sure you can die and they can bury you between Saturday and Monday, but nothing ever happened to living people in such a short time, of course.”
“I wish you wouldn’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing, I’m thinking.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I was thinking that if I met a man in Lucerne on Saturday and he came stalking me to Zurich on Monday, I certainly should—” she hesitated.
“Well, I shouldn’t,” Rosina declared flatly.
There was a pause, during which Molly finished her braids and proceeded to establish herself on the foot of her friend’s bed in a most confidence-provoking attitude.
“Let’s talk about the lieutenant,” the American suggested at last.
“He’s too mild for to-night,” her friend said; “it would be like toast and rain-water after a hunt meet to discuss him just now. Let’s talk about Dmitri.”
“Whose Dmitri? another one of your fiancés?”
“Oh, dear no. He’s a cross Russian poodle that was given me last Christmas. When you try to be nice to him he bites. I don’t know what makes me think of him just now.”
Rosina laughed, and held her hand out lovingly towards the pretty girl at her feet.
“Forgive me, Molly. I really didn’t mean to be vexed. Let us talk of something pleasant and leave my latest to sleep in peace at the Victoria.”
“Are you sure that he’s at the Victoria?”
“Not at all; he may have moved to this hotel, or returned to Lucerne.”
“I should think so, indeed.”
“But never mind.”
Molly took her knees into the embrace of her clasped hands.
“I wonder if you ever will marry again,” she murmured curiously.
“Are you sorry that you ever married?”
“No-o-o,” said the other reflectively, “because I never could have known the joy of being a widow any other way, you know.”
“Would you advise me to marry,” Molly inquired; “one can’t be sure of the widowhood, and if one has courage and self-denial a life of single blessedness is attainable for any woman.”
“I don’t believe it is for you, though.”
“Why not, pray?”
“Your eyes are all wrong; old maids never have such eyes.”
“I got my eyes from my father.”
“Well, he wasn’t an old maid, surely?”
“No, he was a captain in the Irish Dragoons.”
“There, you see!”
Molly stood up and shook her gown out, preparatory to untying its series of frontal bows.
“But if you were to marry again—” she began.
Rosina threw up an imploring hand.
“You send cold December chills down my warm June back,” she cried sharply.
Molly flung the dressing-gown upon a chair and proceeded to turn off the lights.
“I don’t want you to think I’m cross,” began an apologetic voice in the dark which descended about them.
“I wasn’t thinking of you at all.”
“What were you thinking of?”
“Of Dmitri.”
Then low laughter rippled from one narrow bed to the other and back again.
Five minutes later there was a murmur.
“I do wish, Molly, that you’d tell me what you really thought of him.”
“I thought he was grand. How could any one think anything else?”
Then through the stillness and darkness there sounded the frou-frou of ruffles and the sweetness and warmth of a fervent kiss.
Chapter Seven
THE next morning they both breakfasted in bed, the ingenuity of Ottillie having somewhat mitigated the tray difficulty by a clever adjustment of the wedge-shaped piece of mattress with which Europe elevates its head at night. Molly was just “winding up” a liberal supply of honey, and Rosina was salting her egg, when there came a tap at the door of the salon.
“Ah, Monsieur von Ibn is up early,” the Irish girl said in a calm whisper, thereby frightening her friend to such a degree that she dropped the salt-spoon into her cup of chocolate. Then they both held their breath while Ottillie hurried to the door.
It proved to be nothing more unconventional than the maid of Madame la Princesse, a long-suffering female who bore the name of Claudine.
“What is the matter?” Molly demanded anxiously.
“Oh, mademoiselle, I am sent to say that it must that all go to-day!”
“To-day!” Molly screamed; “I thought that we were to remain until Friday anyway?”
“And I also thought it. Let mademoiselle but figure to herself how yesterday I did all unpack in the thought of until Friday; and now to-day I am bidden inpack once more!”
“Now, did you ever?” Molly asked emphatically of Rosina, who shook her head and looked troubled in good earnest. “Do you really think that she means it?” she continued, turning to the maid once more; “she sometimes changes her mind, you know.”
“Not of this time, mademoiselle, I have already arrange her hairs, and I am bidden place her other hairs in the case.”
“Then it’s settled,” cried the Irish girl despairingly; “when her hair is done, the end of all is at hand. What train do we go by, Claudine?”
“I am not of all sure, mademoiselle; madame has spoken of he who runs by Schaffhausen.”
The Irish girl sighed heavily.
“Very well, Claudine, you and I know what it is to travel as we do. Go to madame and tell her I will come as soon as I am dressed,” and then she picked up the honey-jar and sighed again.
The maid went out.
“What makes you go?” Rosina asked; “I wouldn’t.”
“Oh, my dear, I’ve stayed at their place in the Caucasus weeks at a time, and I have to be decent, and she knows it.”
“Why did you ever accept an invitation to travel with such a horrid person?”
Molly was out of bed and jerking her hair-ribbons savagely loose.
“She isn’t a horrid person,” she said; “they are very nice princes and princesses, all of them. Only I hate to lead an existence like the slave of the ring or the genii of the lamp, or whoever the johnny was who had to jump whenever they rubbed their hands. It riles my blood just a bit too much.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Rosina decidedly; “I certainly wouldn’t.”
“I wish I’d taken the Turk,” the Irish girl exclaimed, as she wove her hair back and forth and in and out upon the crown of her head, “I’d have been free of Russia then; ’tis a hint for European politics, my present situation.”
Rosina suddenly gave a sharp cry.
“Oh, Molly,—and me?”
Molly looked over her shoulder.
“What is it?” she asked anxiously.
“Why, what am I to do? I came here to be with you, and now you’re going away.”
“You’ll have to go too if you can’t stay behind without me.”
“But I only came yesterday.”
“Well, what of that?”
“And, oh Molly, that man! I’ll have to go!”
“Why?”
“Why, because—because—Oh, you know why. And then,—if I go—what do you suppose he will think?”
Molly snatched her dressing-gown.
“He’ll come too, I fancy. At least, judging from what I’ve seen of him I should suppose that he’d come too.”
“Come too!” Rosina gasped.
“Why not? He’ll be just as interesting in Constance as he is here, or in Lucerne.”
“You don’t really think that he would come too; Molly, not really?”
“Certainly I think that he would.”
“Oh, Molly!”
“’Tis their way here on the Continent; they’ve nothing else to do, you know. I know a man who went from Paris to St. Petersburg after a girl (I know it for a fact, for the girl was myself), and another who came from Naples to Nice just to call, and went back at midnight.”
Rosina appeared most uncomfortable.
“I don’t want him to go to Constance—I don’t want to go myself!”
“Oh, if it comes to that, you can both remain in Zurich indefinitely, of course.”
“No, we can’t; that is, I can’t. You know that. If he’s going to stay I’ve got to go. Oh dear, oh dear, how aggravating it all is! I don’t want him to follow me about.”
“Why don’t you tell him so, then?”
“Molly!”
“Yes, just tell him so, and if you really mean it, he’ll understand, never fear.”
“But I don’t want to do that.”
“No, I didn’t expect that you would. One never likes to do that, which is one reason why I am myself betrothed to three different men at the present minute.”
“But, Molly—”
“I thought that you liked him.”
“I do like him, but there’s a wide difference between liking a man and wanting to have him tagging along behind all the time.”
“Oh, as to that, I don’t believe that der Herr von Ibn will stay enough behind to be considered as tagging very long.”
Rosina twisted uneasily in bed.
“I don’t see what to do,” she murmured.
Molly was getting into her clothes with a rapidity little short of marvellous.
“I’ll be curious to see what you do do,” she said, sticking pins recklessly into herself here and there, while she settled all nice points with a jerk. “It’s ten o’clock,” she added, with a glance towards the chimney-piece, “you’d better be arising, for I presume he is coming this morning?”
Rosina smiled delightfully.
“You heard him say so last night, didn’t you?”
“Perhaps; somehow the remark didn’t make an impression on me, if I did.”
“I’ll get up directly you go. And oh, Molly, do tell me just once more before you leave me that you think he’s—”
Molly slashed the end of her four-in-hand through the loop and drew up the knot with a single pull; then she approached the bed and leaned over the face upon the pillow.
“I think he’s desperately in love,” she said, “and I’ve no blame for him if he is.”
“But do you really think that he is?”
“Well, of course one can never be sure with foreigners.”
“Molly!”
“’Tis a fact, my dear. But then you know one can never be sure with one’s self either, so there you are.”
Rosina laughed ringingly. Then they kissed one another and Molly departed.
Then came work for Ottillie, and her mistress was hardly completed as to embroidered batiste and black moiré ribbon, when the large and remarkable card with which the more distinguished portion of European masculinity announce their presence was brought to the room by one of the hotel garçons.
He awaited her in the salon below, and when she appeared there to him, such an expression dawned within his eyes as altered completely not only their habitual melancholy, but the customary shadows of his whole face as well. There is no flattery so subtle in its charm or so deeply touching in its homage as such a change, and Rosina felt as much complimented as any other woman would have been, had it been in her to work so great a miracle in so great, and such, a man.
“Vous allez bien?” he asked eagerly, as he came quickly forward to bow over her hand.
“Yes, very well;” and then, because she always became nervous directly she lived beneath his steady look, she plunged wildly into the subject uppermost in her mind. “And I ought to feel very well, because in all probability I must travel again to-day.”
“You leave Zurich already so soon?” he asked, and his voice betrayed neither surprise nor even interest.
“Yes,” she answered, “we are all going to Constance this afternoon.”
“You have change your plans?” he inquired; “yes?”
She looked up quickly at the much-objected-to word, and he received the little glance with a shrug of apology and a smile.
“Madame la Princesse wishes to go on,” said Rosina, “and mademoiselle thought that I would be so lonely without her that I—”
“You would have wished to stay, n’est-ce pas?” he asked, interrupting her.
“I don’t like to travel two days in succession.”
“I would beg you to stay,” he said, looking at his gloved hands, “but I also go to-day.”
She felt her heart jump suddenly; Molly’s prediction assaulted her memory with great violence.
“Yes,” he went on, “it happens oddly that my plans are also suddenly changed. It is to say good-bye that I am come.”
Ah, then he was not going to Constance.
“I am called to Leipsic by a telegram.”
“No, fortunately,” he replied pleasantly; “but in Leipsic I am much interested.”
Rosina felt a sudden shock, not the less disagreeable because it was so undefined, but she pulled herself together at once and promptly swallowed it whole.
“I do hope that you will have a pleasant journey,” she said cordially.
He was staring steadily at her.
“Shall we meet again?” he said at last.
“Very likely.”
“And your address?”
“You have it.”
“Ah, yes, truly.”
Then he stood up.
“I go at one, and I have ordered to eat at twelve. I must therefore leave you this shortly. You will make my adieux to your charming friend, n’est-ce pas?”
“I am so glad that you came to Zurich and met her,” she said, rising also and lifting her eyes to his.
He was looking so indifferent that she felt for the instant both puzzled and hurt, and was angry at herself for ever having blushed on his account. Then she recollected the telegram from Leipsic and drew herself up well.
“Is it only because that I have the pleasure to meet mademoiselle that you are glad I come?” he asked, holding out his hand.
She nodded, smiling, but ignoring the hand.
“In Lucerne you gave me your hand in good-bye,” he said presently.
She offered her fingers with a frankness unequalled.
“Good-bye,” she said.
He kissed her rings.
“It is ‘au revoir,’” he replied, in an almost inaudible tone.
She wondered which was true, the indifferent look or the inaudible tone.
He took up his hat.
“Pensez à moi quelquefois,” he said cheerfully, and departed.
When Molly was made acquainted with this piece of news her comment was simplicity itself.
“How queer!” she said, folding a lace fichu into a tulle hat, for she was packing fast and furiously.
“Of course I shall not go now; I shall stay here until Thursday and buy silk stockings.”
“Very commendable in you.”
“I’m really too tired to go before Thursday. I’ve been around night and day in Lucerne until I’m all worn out.”
“Yes?” said Molly, ramming down shoes into the corners; “well you can rest now, sure.”
“You will engage rooms for me near yours for Thursday, won’t you?”
“I will.”
“I’ll sleep and shop to-morrow, and come on that ten o’clock express Thursday.”
“’Tis settled,” said Molly, slamming down the trunk-lid; “we’ll be at the Insel, and expect you day after to-morrow.”
“What number do you wear?” Rosina asked, as she watched the trunk locked.
“Where,—round my neck or my waist?”
“On your feet?”
“Two-and-a-half.”
“Oh, what a fairy!”
Then they hurried down to lunch.
Chapter Eight
THAT afternoon Rosina took her maid and went for a walk. As a companion Ottillie was certainly less congenial than the lofty and eccentric gentleman who had just taken his departure for Leipsic; but going out alone with a maid is such an eminently proper occupation for a young widow travelling abroad, that the knowledge that she was entirely above suspicion should have compensated for any slight ennui which Rosina may have suffered.
They first went a few blocks up and down the Bahnhofstrasse, and sent the various packages which were the natural result of such a course of action to the hotel; then came the Stadthaus Garten and the Alpen-Quai.
The Quai was as gay as the Quai in Lucerne, or as any other Promenade in Switzerland at that hour and season. Rosina, tired with her shopping, seated herself upon a bench and watched with interest the vast variety and animation of the never-ending double rank which passed slowly along before her. Beyond, the Zurichersee lay brilliantly blue beneath the midsummer sun, and far away, upon the opposite shore, the Alps rose upward, dark gray below, and shining white above.
There was a sudden exclamation, and out from among the crowd thronging before her came that American whose steamer-chair had elbowed Rosina’s on the passage over. There was no manner of doubt as to his joy over meeting his fellow-traveller again, and they first shook hands and then sat down to re-tie their mutual recollections. The result was that Ottillie returned alone to the hotel.
“And since Berlin?” Rosina asked, interestedly.
“Since Berlin—” said the man (and she noticed that his voice appeared to be pitched quite two octaves higher than that other voice which had lately dawned upon her ear), “oh, I’ve been lots of places since then,—France and Germany and Italy, up to Innspruch and into Austria and over to Buda-Pesth, and then to Salzburg and down through the Tyrol here. I’ve never quit seeing new places since I finished my business,—not once.”
“Dear me, but you must have had a good time!”
“Yes, I have. But I’ve often wished myself back on the ‘Kronprinz,’—haven’t you?”
“No, I don’t think that I have. The person that I saw the most of on the ‘Kronprinz’ has been with me ever since.”
The American looked surprised, having supposed himself to be that very person. Rosina laughed at his face.
“I mean my maid,” she explained.
Then he laughed too.
“Did you ever smoke any more?”
“Oh, dear, no. Don’t you remember how that one cigarette used me up?”
“You ought to have kept on,—you’d have liked them after a while.”
“Perhaps; but some one told me that they would make my fingers yellow.”
“Oh, pshaw, not if you hold them the right way.”
“The smoke got in my eyes so too; oh, I didn’t seem to care anything about it.”
Then they rose and joined the promenaders, who were beginning to grow a little fewer with the approach of the dinner hour.
“And where have you been all this time?” the man asked.
“In Paris buying clothes, and in Lucerne wearing them.”
“You’re travelling with friends?”
“Yes, most of the time. They went on to Constance to-day, and I am to join them there Thursday.”
“If you haven’t anything else to do to-night, won’t you go with me to the Tonhalle and hear the music? It appears to be quite the thing to do.”
“I think that that would be lovely, and I’d like to very much, only we must be back at the hotel by ten or half-past, for I am really very tired.”
“That’s easily done; you know we can go whenever we want to. What time shall I call for you?”
“I’ll be ready after eight.”
“I’ll come about quarter past, and we can stroll about first and see something of the night side of Zurich.”
“The night side of everything here is so beautiful,” said Rosina; “the shops that are temptation incarnate by day become after dark nothing but bottomless pits into which all my money and my good resolutions tumble together.”
By this time they had crossed the bridge and followed the Uto nearly to the Badeanstalt; it seemed time to turn their faces hotel-ward, and so they did so, and parted for an hour or two, during which to dine and to dress were the main objects in life for each.
Then about half-past eight Monsieur l’Américain came for his country-woman, and both went out into the charm and glow of the Continental night, with no other thought than that of enjoying a placid and uninterrupted evening amidst the music and electric lights of the Tonhalle. That such was not to be the case was one of the secrets of the immediate future, and the advantage of the future, when it is immediate, is that it is soon forced to stand and deliver as regards its secrets. Rosina, totally unconscious of what was impending over her head, entered fully into the spirit of gayety which prevailed, and absorbed the pleasure of the scene with open heart and hands. It is good to grow to womanhood (or manhood) without losing a child’s capacity for spontaneous enjoyment,—to be capable of joy without knowing the reason why, to be flooded with enthusiasm for one knows not what. It was our lady’s luck to possess this charm, and to be able to give herself up wholly to the end in view, and drink its glass to the dregs,—which in her life had generally proved to be sugar and to be almost as good as the liquid,—only requiring a spoon.
The concert, as is the way with summer concerts, was so arranged as to be easily varied with something cool and refreshing; and when her escort suggested that they should do as all the others did, a table was found, and they sat down to ices and fairy cakes, amid the flowers and colored lights.
It was about nine o’clock, and Rosina, in spite of the environments, was beginning to realize forcibly that more interesting men than the one before her undoubtedly did exist, when the ice that she was putting in her mouth suddenly seemed to glide the full length of her spine, giving her a terrible sensation of frozen fright. She had just heard somebody behind her speaking in German to the garçon, and German, French, or English, that voice was unmistakable. How, what, or why she knew not, but he was surely there behind her, and the instant after he passed close at her side.
Of course it was Von Ibn, and the look that he gave her as he bowed, and walked on at once, dyed her face as deeply as ever a face was dyed in all the world before. She looked after him with a sort of gasp in her eyes, forgetting the man opposite her, the crowd around her, everybody, everything, except that one tall figure which with the passing of each instant was disappearing more and more among the labyrinth of tables and people. She saw him pause at last and seem to hesitate, and her heart throbbed wildly in her throat as she felt, with that strange instinctive intuition which continues to follow one train of thought while our very life seems paralyzed by another, that if he took a seat with his back to her, the action would be witness to a displeasure far beyond what he must be feeling if he so placed himself as to be able to watch her.
He stood still, with his usual halt for deliberation, and then, at the end of a long minute, seated himself so that his profile was presented to her view.
“Now,” she said to herself, “he will look away very carefully for a while, and then he will look at us;” and with the thought her breath mounted tumultuously.
The music, which had been playing loudly, wound up to a crashing pitch just here, and then ceased suddenly. With its ceasing her escort, who rejoiced in the well-known “wide-awake American look,” and saw all that was to be seen within his range of vision, spoke:
“You knew that man who just passed, didn’t you?”
She started, having forgotten the very existence of him who addressed her.
“Yes, oh, yes,” she said confusedly; “I know him very well indeed,” and then she was choked to silence by Von Ibn, who turned and gave her a carefully cold look of complete unrecognition. It was too elaborate to be genuine, but it made her feel sick all over; for where other women had brains or souls, Rosina had a heart, and again a heart, and yet once more a heart. And that heart was not only the mainspring of her physical life, but it was also the source of all her thoughts and actions. Von Ibn’s haughty stare pierced it to the very centre; she knew exactly what he was thinking, and the injustice of appearances goaded her to distraction. She did not stop to consider whether his own re-appearance was or was not an unworthy trick; she only writhed painfully under the lash of his vast displeasure. The American continued to probe her face with his eyes, but for that she cared not a whit; her only care was for those other eyes, those two great dark-circled, heavy-lidded eyes which knew no mask and tore her to the quick. Her mind fled here and there among the possibilities of the present, and found but one end to every vista, and that end grew momentarily in importance until she felt that at all costs he who glowered from afar must learn the falsity of his own imaginings and so restore her peace of mind to her. She looked upon her American friend as a mere means towards that end, a tool to quickly accomplish that which her impatience could no longer delay. So she leaned suddenly forward and threw herself upon his mercy.
“I must tell you,” she cried hurriedly, “I know him very well—very, very well. I did not know that he was in Zurich, and he—he did not expect to see me here. I want to speak to him; I must speak to him—I must!” And then, without paying any attention to the other’s look of astonishment, she added with haste, “I wish that you would go to him and beg him to come to me for five minutes. I only want five minutes. And some day, perhaps, I’ll be able to do you a good turn too.”
The American did not look exactly rejoiced over this latest development in their acquaintance, but he rose from his chair and asked what name he should address the stranger by. Rosina told him, and he was sufficiently unversed in the world of music to have never heard it before and to experience a difficulty in getting it straight now.
“Von Ibn, Von Ibn,” Rosina repeated impatiently. “Oh, I am so much obliged to you; he—he—”
She stopped; some queer grip was at her throat. Her companion was touched; he had never imagined her going all to pieces like that, and he felt sorry for the terrible earnestness betrayed in her voice and manner.
“I’ll go,” he said, “and he shall be here in five minutes.”
Then he walked away, and she bent her eyes upon her music-card, asking herself if it was possible that not four full days had elapsed since the first one left her to seek Von Ibn at her request. This time she did not look after the messenger, she could not; she only felt able to breathe and try to grow calmer so that whatever might—
Ah, the long minutes!
Then a voice at her side said, almost harshly:
“You wish to speak to me, madame!”
She looked up and straight into his eyes; their blackness was so cool and hard that some women’s courage would have been daunted; but the courage of Rosina was a mighty one that rose with all opposing difficulties.
“Why are you not en route to Leipsic?” she asked.
“Why are you not in Constance?” he retorted.
“Sit down,” she said, “and I will tell you.”
“I do not wish to take the place of your friend,” he answered, with a stab of sharpest contempt.
“I think that he will not return for a little.”
Von Ibn remained standing, in the attitude of one detained against his inclination. She could not but resent the attitude, but she felt that her need of the moment required the swallowing of all resentment, and she did so. She was not able to raise her eyes to his a second time, but fixed them instead upon her card, and began in a low tone:
“Monsieur, I intended going—”
“I can’t hear what you say,” he interrupted.
“You’ll have to sit down then; I can’t speak any louder; I’m afraid that I shall cry,” in spite of herself her voice trembled at the last words.
“Why should you cry?” he asked, and he sat down at the table beside her, and, leaning his chin upon his hand, turned his eyes upon her with a look that blended undisguised anger with a strange and passionate hunger.
She was biting her lip,—the under one,—unconscious of the fact that by so doing she rendered the corners of her mouth quite distracting; but he perceived both cause and result, and both the anger and the hunger in his gaze deepened as he looked, apparently in a blacker humor than ever.
“Why should you cry?” he said again, after a minute; “you are in a beautiful spot, listening to most excellent music, and you had with you (before I come) a friend very agreeable. Why should you cry?”
She clasped her hands hard and fast together.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, “I—I hardly know how to speak in the noise and the crowd! I feel quite crazy! I don’t know what I am saying—” she stopped short.
He leaned a little towards her.
“Let us walk outside a minute,” he said. “Monsieur will surely know that we are not far. In the air it is better,—yes?”
“But what will he think?”
“Mon Dieu, let him think what he will! I also have had thinking this night. Let him think a little.”
He rose as he spoke, and she rose too. Already the anger in his eyes was fading fast before the sight of her so genuine emotion. They went out into the garden, and there she took up her explanation again.
“You thought I stayed here because of that man, didn’t you?”
“Donnerwetter!” he cried violently; “here he returns already again!”
It was indeed the American, approaching as fast as the crowd would let him. His face bore a curious expression. One might have gathered from it that he was much more clever, or much more stupid, than the vast majority gave him credit for being. The instant that he was near enough to speak, he began in out-of-breath accents:
“I’ve just met some people that I haven’t seen in years, and they want me to drive with them up by the University and see the town by moonlight, and I wondered if I could find you here in three-quarters of an hour—”
Rosina looked at him helplessly, divining that he supposed a degree of friendship between herself and Von Ibn which would cause his proposition to be most warmly welcome.
But Von Ibn spoke at once, coldly, but politely.
“Perhaps madame will permit me to escort her to her hotel this evening. If she will do so, I shall be most happy.”
The American looked eagerly at Rosina.
“I am going very soon,” she said; “perhaps that will be best.”
He appeared puzzled.
“If you’d rather I stayed—” he suggested.
“No,” said Von Ibn sharply, “it is better that you go!” then he added, in a somewhat milder tone, “it is very fine, the moonlight from the University.”
When they were alone, he was silent and led her out of the crowded garden down upon the Quai. It was a superb night, and the moon and its golden beams were mirrored in the lake. Little waves came running tranquilly across the shivering silver sheet and tossing themselves gently up against the stone-sheathed bank; some merry boat-loads were drifting out among the shadows, listening to the music from the shore and sending a silver echo of laughter to join in its accords.
They walked on until something of their own tumult was stayed by the stillness, and then Von Ibn said quietly:
“Tell me of what you were saying.”
“I was saying that you thought that I had remained here because of that man, and yet it was really all an accident.”
He shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“But you are quite free,—and he seems very nice, and is of your own country and all so agreeable.”
“I was really too tired to go to Constance, but—”
“Oh, madame, je vous en prie,” he interrupted, “no explanation is needful. It does not interest me, I assure you.”
“I did not want to go to Constance until Thursday,” she went steadily on; “but I could not stay here because—because—”
“Yes,” he interrupted, “all that I have understand,—I understand all.”
“So,” she continued, “I packed to go, and meant to go, and then when you told me that you were leaving too, I thought that I might just as well adhere to my—”
“What is ‘adhere’?” he broke in; “that word I have never known before.”
“It means—well—it means ‘stick to.’”
“Glue paste?”
She felt as if a clown had suddenly turned a somersault into the midst of the death scene of Hamlet!
“Not glue paste,” she explained carefully; “of course, in one way, it means the same thing; but I meant that when I knew that you were going, I felt that I might just as well do as I had originally intended doing, and remain here to rest a little.”
“And you repose by coming to the Tonhalle with a gentleman?” he asked in a tone of smothered sarcasm.
“I met him this afternoon as I was walking—”
“Have you only know him first this afternoon?”
“Monsieur!” she cried in horror, “I came on the steamer with him from New York, and he went to college with my cousin!”
Von Ibn gave another shrug.
“You tell everything very cleverly,” he remarked; “but, my dear madame, we have too many difficulties,—it is always that between us, and—what is your proverb?—no smoke without over a fire?—Eh bien, I begin to grow weary.”
“Don’t you believe what I have just told you?” she demanded.
They were near the further end of the Quai where the crowd was thinnest and the play of moonbeam and shadow most alluring. He stopped and looked long upon the shining water, and then long upon her face.
“Yes,” he said at last, “I do believe.” He held out his hand, “I do believe now, but I must tell you that truly if I had been of a ‘tempérament jaloux,’ I would have been very angry this night. Yes,—of a surety.”
She looked away, with an impulse to smile, and her heart was sufficiently eased of its burden to allow her to do so.
“Shall we go to the hotel now?” she asked after a moment.
“But you have not given me your hand?”
She put her hand in his, and he pressed it warmly, and then drew it within his arm as they turned to retrace their steps.
“I like better to walk alone,” she said, freeing herself.
“You are, perhaps, still angry?” he inquired anxiously.
“No, but I can walk easier alone. And I want you to tell me now why you are not en route North, instead of staying here in Zurich.”
“But I have been North,” he said eagerly; “I have been this day to Aârburg.”
“To Aârburg!—Where is that?”
“Wait, I will make all plain to you,” he looked down upon her with the smile that always proclaimed a complete declaration of peace, “it all went like this: I see so plain that I make you to leave before you like, that I am glad to go away and so make you quite free. It came to my head like this,—I wanted to know something and by looking at your face and saying that I must go to Leipsic for some one there, I see all that I wish to know—”
“What did you see?” Rosina interrupted.
“I see plainly that you think it is some lady—”
“I did not think any such a thing!” she cried hotly.
He laughed and tossed his head.
“And so as I really should go to Leipsic I take the train and go, and then on the train I think why am I gone, and when I think again, I feel to leave the train at Aârburg and telegraph, and when the answer come that you are still here, I feel very strongly to return at once, and so I do.”
Rosina looked up with a smile, and, meeting his eyes, was suddenly overcome with a fear, vague and undefined, it is true, but not the less real, as to whether she had been wise in bringing about this most complete reconciliation.
“But you must still go to Leipsic?” she asked presently.
“Yes, after a little.”
“I wish you had gone when you started.”
“Why?”
“I am sure that you, who always understand, know why.”
“After a while will do,” he said easily, “when we are more tired of ourselves.” He paused. “Perhaps Thursday,” he suggested.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, in spite of herself.
“Why ‘oh’?”
“You are so positive that we shall be ennuyés by Thursday.”
“Yes,” he replied tranquilly, “we see so much of us together that it cannot last long so. Indeed it was for that that I was quite willing to go to-day, but on the train I begin to think otherwise, and my otherwise thoughts are become so strong that I find myself obliged to get down at Aârburg.”
“And Leipsic?”
“Ah, for that you were so charming to send for me to-night and tell me how all has been I will tell you all the truth of Leipsic. It is there that my professor lives, the man who has teach me all that I know. He is to me the most dear out of all the world, for he gave to me my music, which is my life and my soul. And so you may understand that I speak truth indeed when I say that I have much interest in Leipsic.”
Rosina nodded, a sympathetic smile upon her lips.
“But we must go back to the hotel now,” she said sadly; “it is nearly ten o’clock.”
“And I may come to-morrow morning and we shall make a promenade together, n’est-ce pas?” he said eagerly; “it is so good, you and I together, these days. How can I make you know how I feel if you have not the same feeling,—the feeling that all the clouds and all the grass are singing, that all about us is perfect accord of sound, when we are only free to laugh and to talk as we may please.”
“But I ought to go on to my friends to-morrow,” she said, “you must know that.”
“But I will go there.”
“To Constance?”
“Yes, surely.”
“Oh, monsieur, that will not do at all!”
“Why will it not do at all?”
“I don’t want you following me to Constance as you did to Zurich.”
“But I will not follow you; I will this time go on the same train with you.”
“Oh,” she said, in despair at the wide space between his views and those of the world in general, “you cannot do that, it would not look well at all.”
He stared at her in surprise.
“Who will it look unwell to?”
“Don’t say ‘unwell,’ say ‘not well.’”
“Not well; who will see it not well?”
“Ah,” she said, shaking her head, “there is no telling who would see only too well, and that is just the trouble.”
Von Ibn knit his black brows.
“I do not understand that just,” he said, after a moment. And then he reflected further and added, “You are of an oddness so peculiar. Why must the world matter? I am my world—nothing matters to me. Vous êtes tortillante! you are afraid of stupid people and the tongues they have in them. That is your drollness. And anyway, I may go to Constance if I will. I may go anywhere if I will. You cannot prevent.”
She looked off across the lake.
“You ought to want to do what pleases me,” she suggested.
“But I do not,” he said vigorously; “I want to do what pleases me, and you must want it too,—it will be much better for America when all the women do that. I observe much, and I observe especially in particular that. An American woman is like a queen—she does her own wish always, and is always unhappy; in Europe she does her husband’s wish, and it is much better for her and very good for him, and they are very happy, and I am coming to Constance.”
“But I have no husband,” said Rosina insistently.
“It will be very good if you learn to obey, and then you can have one again.”
“But I never mean to marry again.”
“I never mean to marry once, surtout pas une Americaine.”
She felt hurt at this speech and made no reply.
“But I mean to come to Constance.”
“Monsieur, you say that we see too much of one another; then why do you want to drive our acquaintance to the last limits of boredom?”
“But you do not bore me,” he said; and then after a long pause he added, “yet.”
She was forced to feel that the “y” in “yet” had probably begun with a capital.
“I want to go to the hotel now,” she said, in a tired tone.
“Let us go and get an ice or some coffee first; yes?”
“Don’t keep saying ‘yes’ that way,” she cried impatiently; “you know how it frets me.”
He took her arm gently.
“You are indeed fatigued,” he said in a low tone, “I have troubled you much to-night. But I have trouble myself too. Did you see how unhappy I was, and was it so that you sent for me? Dites-moi franchement.”
“Yes,” she answered, with simplicity.
“And why did you care?”
“I didn’t want you to think what I knew that you were thinking.”
“Did you care that I was unhappy?”
“I cared that you thought that I would lie.”
“I was quite furious,” he meditated; “I came from the train so late and found that you were gone out. Je ne me fâche jamais sans raison,—but I had good reason to-night.”
“You had no right to be angry over my going out, and I had just as much cause for displeasure over your returning as you had over my going.”
“No,” he said quickly, “for it was a compliment to you that I return, and no compliment at all to me that you stay after I am gone so as to visit the concert with monsieur.”
She laughed a little.
“I hope that you will never behave so again; you were so unbearably rude that I was sorry to have sent for you. If I had not,” she asked, with real curiosity, “if I had not, would you have spoken to me after a while?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Je ne sais pas,” he replied with brevity; and then looking down at her with one of his irresistible smiles he added, “but I find it probable.”
She smiled in return, saying:
“Do undertake to never be angry like that again.”
“Again!” he said quickly and pointedly; “then I may come to Constance?”
Her mind was forced to take a sudden leap in order to rejoin his rapid deduction of effect from cause.
“No, no,” she cried hastily, “you must not think any more of Constance, you must go to Leipsic, just as you intended doing.”
“But you said—” he began.
“I meant, in the future, if we should ever chance to meet by accident.”
His brow darkened.
“Where?” he asked briefly.
“Who can tell,” she answered cheerfully; “people are always meeting again. See how that man of the steamer met me again to-day.”
“But you have hear of him since you come?” he demanded, a fresh shade of suspicion in his tone.
“Never! Never a word until he came out of the Promenade and spoke to me this afternoon.”
Von Ibn thought about it frowningly for a little and then decided it was not worth his pains.
“I would not care to meet again as he,” he declared carelessly; “how he was sent to fetch me, and then he must go alone while we speak together, and then make that tale of a drive when there was no drive by the University, only a knowledge that he was much not wanted.”
“Do you think he was not really invited to go to drive?” she asked, opening her eyes widely.
“Of a certainty not. But he could see he was not wanted by us. When he came near, you really looked to weep.”
“Oh, no!” she cried, in great distress.
“Yes; it was just so.”
There was a pause while she pondered this new phase of herself, and after a while he went on:
“There is something that I do not understand. Why do you desire so much to speak to me to-night and then not desire me at Constance? Ça—je ne le comprends pas!”
“You do understand,” she said; “I know you do, and you know that I know that you do.”
He looked at her for a few seconds and then asked:
“How long are you in Constance?”
“I do not know.”
“And then where do you go?”
“Probably to Munich.”
“With always that Molly?”
“I do not know whether they will go there or not. I believe they are going to Bayreuth and then to Berlin.”
He reflected for the space of half a block.
“I should really go to Leipsic,” he said at last.
“Then why don’t you go?” she retorted, more in answer to his tone than to his speech.
“I might perhaps go to Leipsic while you are in Constance,—perhaps.”
Heavy emphasis on the last “perhaps.”
“Oh, do!” she pleaded.
“Are you going to Bayreuth?”
“No, I don’t think so; they all come down to Munich right afterwards, you know.”
“But it is not the same in Munich. If you had been in Bayreuth you would know that. It is not the same at all. And ‘Parsifal’ is only there.”
He paused, but she made no answer.
“I am going to Bayreuth,” he said, “and then I shall come to Munich.”
He made the last statement with an echo of absolute determination, but she continued to keep silence.
“In Munich I shall see you once more?”
“Perhaps.”
“Where will you be?”
She told him.
“And I shall be in the ‘Vierjahreszeiten’; why do you not come there?” he added.
“Because I love the pension with my whole heart,” she declared fervently; “I was there for an entire winter before my marriage; it is like home to me.”
He stopped, pulled out his note-book and carefully wrote down the name and address; as he put it up again, he remarked:
“That was droll, what you said to-night, that you would never marry again! Where do you get that idea?”
“From being married once.”
“I have it from never being married any, and I have it very strong. Have you it very strong?”
“Yes,” said Rosina decidedly, “very strong indeed.”
“Then when we know all is only nothing, why may I not come to Constance?”
“Because you can’t,” she said flatly, “I don’t want you to come.”
“But I will be very good, and—”
“Yes,” she said interrupting; “I know, but to prevent further misunderstanding, I may just as well tell you that I want all my time in Constance for my other friend—”
They were at the door of the hotel, and she had her foot upon the lower step; he was just behind her, his hand beneath her elbow. She felt him give a violent start and drop his hand, and, looking around quickly to see what had happened, she forgot to end her sentence in the emotion caused by the sight of his face. A very fury of anger had surcharged his eyes and swelled the veins upon his temples.
“So!” he said, in a low tone that almost shook with intense and angry feeling, “that is why I may not come! He goes, does he? Bête que je suis, that I did not comprehend before!”
Rosina stared at him, motionless, for the space of perhaps ten seconds, and then an utter contempt filled her, and every other consideration fled.
She ran up two or three steps, crossed the hall, and passed the Portier like a flash, flew up the one flight of stairs that led to her corridor, and broke in upon Ottillie with a lack of dignity such as she was rarely guilty of.
“Ottillie,” she exclaimed, panting under the weight of many mixed feelings, “I want to leave for Constance by the first train that goes in the morning. I don’t care if it is at six o’clock, I’ll get up. Ring and find out about everything, and then see to the bill and all. I must go!”
Ottillie stood there, and her clever fingers were already unfastening her mistress’ hat-pins.
“Madame may rest assured,” she said quietly, “all shall be as she desires.”
Meanwhile below stairs Von Ibn had entered the café, lit a cigarette and taken up one of the evening journals.
He appeared to look over the pages of the latter with an interest that was intent and unfeigned.
But was it so?
Chapter Nine
I SHALL certainly not tell Molly one word about these latest developments,” Rosina said firmly to herself, and she remade the resolution not once but a hundred times during the train ride of that early Wednesday morning. She was too tired from excess of emotion, and no balance of much-needed sleep, to feel anything but unhappy over the termination of the preceding evening.
Everything was over now, and the only glory to be reaped in any direction would be the dignified way in which Molly should be kept in ignorance of all that had occurred.
Outside, the freshness of a Suabian morning lay over valley and mountain. The country was beautiful with the charm of midsummer’s immediate promise, which spread over the fields of ripening grain and lost itself among the threading rivulets, or in the shadow of forest and mountain. The white-plastered farmhouses with the stable-door at one end, the house-door at the other, and the great sweep of straw-thatched roof sloping down over all, peeped out from among their surrounding fruit-trees. Old, old women knit peacefully under the shadow of the stone-bound well, and little, little children tumbled about their knees in the grass. Out in the garden at one side the boys and girls were busy gathering berries or vegetables for the market of next day. Yokes of oxen passed slowly to and fro upon the shaded roads, their high, two-wheeled carts loaded to the very top; beside a pond a maiden herded geese; upon a hill a boy lay sleeping, his sheep nibbling the herbage near by. It was all quaint and picturesque, and to the American eyes surpassing strange to see, but those two particular American eyes before which all the panorama was displayed, happened just then to be blind to everything except one vivid spirit-photograph, and grew moist each time that they pictured that afresh.
“No, I shall not tell Molly one word,” she repeated mentally; “I can’t tell her part,—I won’t tell her all,—so I just shan’t tell her anything,” and then she stared sightlessly out of the wide-open window, and knew not that it was the dregs of her own evaporated anger which veiled the sunlit landscape in a dull-gray mist.
The train came slowly in by the banks of the Bodensee, and halted at the Kaufhaus soon after eleven o’clock. The Kaufhaus is that delightful old building where Huss was tried before the great Council. Built for a warehouse, it is now again a warehouse, Huss and his heresy having been but a ripple on the tranquil centuries of its existence.
Molly (who had been telegraphed to) was at the Gare to meet her friend, and managed to smother her surprise over the sudden turn of events with complete success.
“Let the maid take the boxes to the hotel,” she said, after having greeted the traveller, “and you and I will just have a nice drive before dinner, and a good long nap right afterwards.”
Rosina submitted to be led passively to a cab, and the strength of her resolution was such that before they reached the spot where Huss was burnt, Molly was in possession of the last detail as to the preceding evening. She said never a word in reply, being much engaged in looking out of the side of the cab to see if she could see the monument, an action which struck her unhappy friend as heartless in the extreme. When they drew up beside the iron fence, both got out and peered between the bars at the huge ivy-covered boulder within the enclosure.
“Was he burned on this stone?” Molly called to the cabman in German; “now why does he laugh, do you suppose?” she asked in English of Rosina.
“Oh,” the latter replied wearily, “you used the word for ‘fried,’ instead of the word ‘burned,’ but it doesn’t matter,” she added with a heavy sigh.
“I wonder whether he was looking towards the woods or towards the town when they lighted him!” Molly pursued with real interest.
Rosina felt that such talk was horribly frivolous, her own tale of woe considered, and made no reply; so they went back to the cab, and then Molly clasped her hands in her lap and became serious.
“I would forget all about him, if I was you,” she said; “you will never get any satisfaction out of a man who is always going in for jealous rages like that.”
Rosina felt with a shock that Molly was of a nature more intensely unsympathetic than any which she had hitherto encountered. She looked at the Rhine, wondered if it flowed past Leipsic, and wished that she had kept to her original determination and said nothing at all about any of it.
“I’m glad that I did as I did,” she said, with an effort to speak in a tone of indifference (the effort was a marked failure). “I’m sure that I want to forget him badly enough,” she added, and swallowed a choke.
Molly put her hand upon hers and nodded.
“Certainly, my dear; it was the only thing to do with a man like that. You explained once, and once is enough, for one night, surely. Forget him now and be happy again.”
“Don’t let us talk about it any more,” said Rosina, feeling bitterly that Molly lightly demanded oblivion of her when all her inclinations were towards tears.
They drove some distance in silence, and then Rosina said slowly:
“Do you suppose that I shall ever see him again now?”
“Yes, if you want to. One always sees the men again that one wants to see again.”
“Are you sure?”
“I never knew it to fail.”
“How does that happen?”
“I don’t know why it is, but it always does happen. Effect of mental telepathy, perhaps. The man knows that he is to be given another chance, and comes to get it, I fancy.”
“But Monsieur von Ibn is so very singular!”
“Every man is singular!”
“My husband wasn’t. And he wasn’t ever the least bit jealous,” she stopped to sigh. “I like jealous men!” she added.
“Yes,” said Molly, dryly, “so I observed.”
“He never lost his temper either,” Rosina continued. “We never had anything to make up. And making up is so delicious. Oh, me!” she sighed, and her eyes filled with tears again.
“Never mind,” said Molly, consolingly, “you’ll soon be making it up this time.”
“Don’t you think,” said Rosina, slowly, “that he ought to have sent some sort of an apology last night; it could have been put under the door, no matter how late it was, you know?”
“He isn’t that sort of a man, I fancy.”
“But his behavior was so unpardonable!”
“Yes, but he doesn’t see that.”
“Then I don’t care if I never do meet him again,” Rosina exclaimed passionately, and the next instant she burst into tears. “He’s so interesting,” she sobbed; “and his way of speaking is such an everlasting joy to me; and he never means to marry; and I never mean to marry; and I know that he really cared a great deal about me; and now it’s—all—all over!”
Molly leaned over and kissed her, drew a comforting arm around her waist, and gave her an affectionate squeeze.
“Don’t take it so awfully to heart, my dear,” she whispered soothingly; “we all have troubles of one kind, if not of another. Here’s a long letter come by the morning post from my dear gray-caped lieutenant, and it’s just full of the worst sort of desperation over our mutual affairs. He knows that we can’t possibly marry without a certain amount of money, which we have neither of us got, and so there you are!”
“How much is it?” Rosina asked dully. She felt that she ought to try and make an effort to interest herself in the lives of others, even if her own had so completely crashed in.
“Oh, it’s something awful in pounds, but in those Italian lire!—why, it’s not to be thought of for a moment. He thinks that he had best chuck up the army and take me to America instead!”
“Oh, Molly, don’t let him do that! We haven’t any Italians in America except organ-grinders and miners, and the Ambassador, of course!”
“I knew it wouldn’t do,” said the Irish girl. Then she shrugged her shoulders and laughed.
“But then I never did intend to marry him, anyhow!”
They drove back to the hotel, and Rosina’s eyes were fairly presentable when the Portier came out to receive them.
“There is a letter just come for madame,” he said, as they entered the Kreuzgang; “it is in the office; I will bring it at once.”
“There!” Molly whispered, “do you see!”
Rosina trembled slightly as she held out her hand and saw the hotel stamp of Zurich on the envelope. Then she tore it open and pulled out the single folded sheet contained therein.
It was her bill, receipted, which Ottillie had let fall in the haste of their early departure!
Madame la Princesse Russe having a migraine that afternoon, the two friends had the pleasure of a tête-á-tête dinner at half-past six. They sat by one of the great windows of what used to be the chapel of the monastery, but is now the dining-room of the Inselhaus, and enjoyed the sweet lake breeze, while their tongues ran delightfully. Rosina, liberally refreshed by a long nap, and mightily reinforced as to her pride by the last terrific blow of the letter, was in the best possible spirits, and her gayety quite rivalled, if it did not surpass, that of her companion.
As the waiter was removing the salad, a shadow fell suddenly athwart the floor at their side, and Molly, looking quickly upward, beheld—the man!
He was in evening dress, calm, cool, and smiling, and neither the surprised face of the one, nor the violent start of the other shook his composure in the least.
“Vous allez bien, mesdames?” he asked politely, and then, speaking to the waiter with authority:
“Lay another place here,” he said, indicating the end of the small table, “for I shall dine with you, n’est-ce pas?” he added, looking straight at Rosina.
She appeared to have been stricken suddenly dumb, and was so evidently incapable of speech that Molly came boldly to the front with the un-original remark:
“When did you come?”
“By Schaffhausen, that train-rapide that does go so fast. I had been more wise to have come this morning by the train as madame, for this afternoon the tourists were very terrible—also the heat.”
“Was it dusty?” she went on.
“I believe you well that it was. And you,” he continued, turning to Rosina, who sat helplessly staring at her plate, and was very pale except for a crimson spot on either cheek, “had you a pleasant ride?”
“No, she hadn’t,” said her faithful friend; “she arrived all used up.”
“You were made too tired, and do not feel well?” he asked, addressing the scarlet cheeks again; “truly, you look much so. What has arrived in Zurich to make you like that?”
He put the question in a tone the intensity of which forced her to lift her eyes to his. Molly did not see the glance, for the infinitude of her own experiences led her to find the moment favorable for gazing out of the window in a sort of rapt admiration for the Insel rose-bushes in the foreground and the placid Bodensee beyond.
It was the waiter who jarred them all three back to the knowledge of mundane things by bringing soup for the latest arrival and ices for his two companions.
“Ah, now I may eat!” the gentleman exclaimed in a tone of deep satisfaction, and began at once.
“You must not be surprised over me,” he said to Molly, with a slight smile.
“I was not surprised,” she reassured him.
“Because I have not eaten to-day before,” he explained.
“Really?”
“Yes, of a truthfulness. I am most drôle as that. I may never eat when I am much troubled.”
“Dear me, have you been troubled to-day?”
He looked at Rosina, whose face blazed yet deeper.
“I have said that I may not eat,” he repeated simply.
Molly laid down her spoon and glanced out of the window again. Her feminine instinct divined what was to be.
“And madame your friend, she is not ill, I hope?” he inquired politely, as the waiter removed his soup.
“No,” said the Irish girl, slowly, “or—that is,—yes, yes, she is.”
“And you must go at once to her,” he cried, springing up to draw back her chair, “I am so sad for that.”
Molly rose to her feet.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, nodding a smiling thanks; “but you see I’ve no choice.” And then she went coffee-less away to laugh alone above-stairs.
Von Ibn sat down again and ate his fish in silence. He did not appear greatly perturbed over the twin-silence which was opposite him, rather seeming to reflect upon the fresh reconciliation which was building itself on such a substantial foundation of blushes.
Finally, when the fish was gone, he leaned somewhat forward and spoke very low.
“Oh, que j’étais malheureux hier le soir!” he said in a tone that trembled with feeling; “you can figure to yourself nothing of what it was! And this morning—when I send and find that you are gone!—I must know then that you were very furious of me.”
She raised her eyes, but to the window, not to him.
“I was,” she said briefly, but not the less tensely.
“When you are run last night—on the stairs like that, you know!—it should have been amusing to see you run so fast; but I was not any amused whatever. But why did you run?” he questioned, interrupting himself; “did you think to leave me always then, there, forever? For an instant I had the idea to go after you, but the Portier was there, and I have thought, ‘What may he think?’”
“Oh,” she exclaimed, distressedly, “I altogether forgot him! What do you suppose he did think?”
Von Ibn shrugged his shoulders.
“Rien du tout,” he said easily; “he has think most probably that you have lost something from you—a pin or a button, you know. When a woman runs so, that is what every one knows.”
“Do they?”
“Oh!”
He finished his dinner in short order and then looked a smiling inquiry into her eyes.
“We shall go now on to the terrace for the coffee; yes?” he asked as he rose, and she rose too and went with him to where their little table was spread among the dusk and the roses. The band in the Stadtgarten was playing delightfully, and its sweetness came across water and park to search out their very souls. The Bodensee spread all beyond in a gray peace that seemed to bid the very leaves upon the trees to slumber. The steamers were coming to their harbor rest in answer to the flaming summons flung them by the searchlight at the head of the pier. They glided in in slow procession, shivered at anchor, and submitted to the lulling of the lake’s night breath.
Von Ibn rested his elbow on the table and his chin upon his hand. He looked dreamily out across the water for a long time before saying:
“You pardon my impoliteness then of last night? I am not come to trouble you here, only to ask that, and something else, and then I go again at once.”
“Yes, I will pardon you,” said Rosina gently. She too was looking thoughtfully out into the twilight on the water. “Only don’t do so again.”
“It is that that I would ask,” he went on, looking always at the lake, never at her; “that is what I would beg of you. Let us promise sincerely—let us take a vow never to be angry again. I have suffer enough last night both with my own anger and from yours. I will believe what you may tell me. And let us never be angry so again.”
“It is you who are so unreasonable,” she began.
“No,” he interrupted quickly, “not unreasonable. Jamais je ne me fâche sans raison!”
“Yes, you do too. Just think of last night, you were twice angry for nothing at all. It was terrible!”
He stared afar and seemed to reflect doubly.
“He was bête, that man,” he said at last.
“He wasn’t either. He was very nice; I don’t know how I should have gotten along coming over if I had not had him on the steamer to amuse me.”
“You could have done very well without him at Zurich,” said Von Ibn doggedly; “myself, I did not like him the first minute that I see him.”
“When did you first see him?”
“He was there at the table beside you.”
Rosina laughed a little. He turned towards her and smiled.
“Then you will forgive me?”
“Yes, this one time more. But never, never again.”
He turned to the lake and consumed five minutes in assimilating her remark. Then his look came back to her.
“I was awake so much last night that my eyes burn me; do they show it?”
She looked into his eyes, and they burned indeed—burned with a latent glow that forced her own to lower their lids.
“Do they look strangely to you?” he asked.
“No,” she said in a low tone.
“That is odd, because in all my life they have never look at any one as they look at you to-night.”
She drew herself together suddenly.
“Don’t talk foolishly,” she said distinctly.
“That was no foolishness; it is true.”
“It is just the sort of thing that all men say, and I like you because you do not say things like all other men.”
“Do all other men say to you that?”
“Not just that, but its equivalents. Men in general are not very original.”
He took out his cigarette case and contemplated its bas-relief of two silver nymphs for several seconds.
“You may,” said his companion, smiling.
“May what?”
“May smoke.”
“But I am going to, anyway.”
“Oh.”
He looked at her with an air of remonstrance.
“This is not your parlor,” he reminded her.
“No,” she said meekly; “I stand corrected.”
He lit the cigarette and threw the match into a rose-bush.
“I think that I will go and find Molly,” she suggested presently.
“Why?”
“I think that she would be able to leave madame by this time.”
“But if she can leave her then she will come to us, and I do not want her; do you?”
“I always want her.”
“That is absurd. Why do you want her? I never want another man when we speak together.”
“But I am very fond of Molly.”
“So am I most affectionate of my professor in Leipsic, but I never once have wished for him when I was with you.”
“No, it is quite one. Do not go for mademoiselle; I have something to say to you, and there is only to-night to say it.”
“What is it?”
“It is that I have really to go away. This time I must. I go to-morrow morning without fail.”
“I am so glad,” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” he said, with a quick glance; “is it really so that my going makes you pleasure? Truly I only come in return for your kindness of last night—when you send for me, you know. I think that I wish to repay. But now, if we are quite friends, I must go very early to-morrow in the morning.”
“I am glad that you are going,” she said quietly, “and you know why. And I shall be glad when we meet again,” she added in a lighter tone.
Then a long silence fell between them, while to their ears came the famous symphony of a famous composer. When the music ceased he spoke again.
“You will write to me?”
“I am not a letter writer.”
“But you will send me a few lines sometimes?”
“Are you going to write me?”
“Si vous voulez de mes nouvelles.”
“I will tell you,” he said, tossing his cigarette into the lake; “I will send you a post-card, as I tell you before—you recall? yes.”
“No,” said Rosina, with decision, “I don’t want post-cards; you can write me in an envelope or not at all.”
He looked at her thoughtfully.
“I have some very small paper,” he said at last, “I can use that; I use it to write my family on.”
She almost laughed.
“That will be all right,” she said, “and I will answer on my correspondence-cards. They only hold half a dozen lines, and they have my monogram on them and are really very pretty.”
“You can write on the back too,” he suggested.
“I shan’t have any more to say than will go easily on the front, though.”
“And I shall see you next in August in Munich?”
“Espérons!” with a smile.
He stood up suddenly.
“Let us walk to the Garten,” he suggested; “it is good to walk after dinner a little.”
She rose too, very willingly, and they went towards the bridge that connects the Insel with the mainland.
“Did you love your husband?” he asked as they passed above the moat-like stream.
“Tremendously.”
“For long?”
“Until after we were married.”
He halted short at that.
“It was too bad to stop just then.”
Rosina felt that there were safer places to pause than there on the railroad tracks, and went on to the other side.
“It was too bad to stop at all,” she said, when he came too.
“Assurément.”
They walked along the bank and came into the Stadtgarten, full of people laughing and talking with the liveliness that is so pleasant to see and so difficult, apparently, to import, unless it be in the steerage. Perhaps it is the Custom House which takes all the gayety out of the First and Second Classes before they can get ashore in America.
“We shall have to say our parting very soon,” the man said presently; “we have both travelled to-day, and I must go in a very early hour to-morrow.”
“Yes,” she replied, “I am much more weary to-night even than I was last night.”
“If we are tired we might again have trouble,” suggested her companion wisely. Then he added quickly, “But, no, never again,—I have promise that.”
“Shall we not return to the hotel now?” she asked.
“But why will you go back so quick?” he asked in an injured tone; “do you want to be so soon alone?”
“I thought that you wanted to be.”
“I want to sit down and not walk ever,” he said, pausing by an empty table in the open-air café. “What made you stop?” he went on, looking at her, she having paused where he did, naturally.
“I stopped because you did.”
“Because I did! that has no sense.”
“Then I’ll go on alone,” and she moved away.
He rejoined her in three steps, laughing.
“Why do you walk off like that?” he demanded.
“Because you said that there was no sense in my stopping.”
He looked at her in great amusement.
“Que vous êtes tordante! I asked you why you stopped loving your husband?”
She stared.
“Why, it’s ever so long since we were speaking of that. How funny you are!”
He turned her back towards the empty table.
“Let us sit down here and talk, it may be the last time for long.”
She hesitated, thinking of Molly.
“It is so nice here,” he declared, persuasively; “only for a few minutes we stay.”
She sat down forthwith; he followed suit. A maid came and took his order, and then he clasped his hands upon the table before him and was still, appearing to be overtaken by some sudden and absorbing train of thought.
After a little the music recommenced, and his soul returned to his eyes with a quick upblazing light. He reached out his hand and touched hers.
“Listen!” he exclaimed imperatively; “you go to learn something now. Pay much notice.”
The violins of the orchestra were pouring forth their hearts in a sweet treble song, whose liquid liaisons flowed high above the background of a dark monotony of single chords. The air was singularly full of feeling, and reached forth its individual pleading to each individual listener.
“You have hear that?” he whispered with a smile.
“Never,” she whispered in return.
“You shall wait a little,” he murmured, resting his chin on his hand and turning his eyes on the lake again; “in a moment you shall hear.”
At that instant the song appeared to terminate, and bass and treble ran together in long, sweeping arpeggios; and then, out over the merry crowd, out over the infinite peace of the Bodensee, there rang and resounded four notes,—E, F, F sharp, G; four notes, the pain, the prayer, the passion of which shrieked to the inmost mysteries of every hearing heart.
Rosina started; her companion turned quickly towards her.
“It is what you told me of at Lucerne that night on the steamer?” she asked, with no question in her voice.
He moved his head slowly in assent to her certainty. The cascading song was already running its silvery course again; he leaned far towards her.
“Have you comprehend, do you think?” he asked.
She nodded. And then she too leaned her chin on her hand, and looked to the lake to guard her eyes, while the music invaded and took complete possession of her senses.
“Do you play that on your violin?” she asked, when all was over.
“There is no music that I may not play,” he replied, “unless I have never see it, or hear it, or divine it for myself.”
“Do you play the piano also?”
“Only what I must. Sometimes I must, you know. Then I say to my hands, ‘You shall go here, you shall go there!’ and they go, but very badly.”
She looked straight at him with a curious dawning in her eyes.
“I wonder, shall we ever make any music together?” she murmured.
“Much,” he said tritely.
She was conscious of neither wonder nor resistance, as if the music had cast a spell over her self-mastery.
“I want to hear you play,” she said, with an echo of entreaty.
He shook his head, brushing a lock of hair off of his temple as he did so. There was a sort of impatience in each movement.
“Not these days; no! I played once after I saw you first, but only once. Since that the case is locked; the key is here.” He interrupted himself to draw out his keys, and separating one from the rest held it up to her. “Let us hope that in Munich, perhaps.”
The waitress had returned with their ices. He watched her arrange them, and she watched him. The heavy circle under his eyes was especially noticeable this night, the eyes themselves especially laughless.
“You are glad that I go?” he asked suddenly as he picked up his spoon and plunged it into the saucer before him; “yes?”
“I shall be more glad when I know that you are really gone.”
“But this time it is sure. This time it is really a true going.” He stopped and broke a piece of cake into tiny morsels, pushing them together into a neat little pile. “Why were you unhappy in your husband?” he asked slowly.
“He drank,” she replied.
“Perhaps he was unhappy?”
“Perhaps.”
“And you?”
“Beyond a doubt.”
He took another bit of cake and crumbed that up as he had the first.
“Don’t do that.”
“Why shall I not?” with an air of surprise.
“It isn’t right.”
“But I shall pay for it,” he said remonstrantly.
“It’s bad manners, anyhow.”
“What does it matter if I like, and pay for it too?”
“Well, then, if you must know, it makes me horribly nervous!”
He looked at her quickly.
“Are you nervous?”
“Yes, when people waste cake like that.”
He sighed and stopped his play.
“Did you ever love after?” he asked presently.
“No, never! Good Heavens, once was enough!”
“Was your husband so very bad?”
“He wasn’t bad at all; he was only disagreeable.”
“Perhaps he made you nervous?” he queried.
“Perhaps,” she answered dryly.
There was a long, long pause. The band now played “Doch Einer Schoner Zeit,” and some peasants in the native costume sang the words.
Finally he pushed his plate away and crossed his arms upon the table; his eyes were very earnest.
“Once I loved,” he said; “I have speak of that to you before.”
She made no reply.
“It was no passion of a whole life, but for a boy, as I was then, it was much. I was quite young, and, Gott! how I did love! She was such a woman as says, ‘I will make this man absolutely mad;’ and she did so. She made me crazy—tout-à-fait fou; and then, when I could only breathe by her eyes, she showed me that she was uncaring!”
He stopped, stared sightlessly out at the black water beyond, and then turned towards her.
“Is it so in your mind towards me?” he asked, and in his voice and eyes was that heartrending pathos which once in a lifetime a man’s soul may come to share with childhood’s heavy sorrows.
She drew a quick breath. The pointed roofs of the Inselhaus off there beyond the trees printed themselves darkly and forever upon her brain; the scattered lights in the windows, the inky spots where the ivy trailings were massed thickest,—all those details and a dozen others were in that instant photographed upon her spirit, destined to henceforth form the background to the scene whose centre was the face opposite to her, all of the expression of which seemed to have condensed itself into the burning gaze of those two great eyes, so vastly sad.
“Oh, monsieur,” she said, with a tone of deep appeal, “believe me, I have never done so cruel a thing as that in all my life!”
“Are you to all men as to me?”
“I hope so.”
“That American in Zurich! when you met him again was it as to meet me again?”
“But he is no especial friend of mine.”
“And am I especial?—Am I?—Yes?”
“Yes,” she said slowly, “I feel as if I had known you all my life.”
“Yes,” he answered quickly, “just so I feel also.”
He put up his hand and again brushed the loose lock of his wavy hair back from his forehead.
“Vraiment,” he exclaimed, “I begin to feel that it is impossible that I go to-morrow.”
“Oh, but you must,” she cried, much alarmed.
“We are so happy; why can we not let this pleasure last?”
“You must go!” she reiterated with decision.
“We understand so well,” he went on, without noticing her words; “you understand, I understand. I wish nothing of you, I require nothing of you, only the friendship—only these good hours that we know together, only the joy of our sympathy. Why can I not be where you are everywhere? Warum nichts?”
“It isn’t possible!” she said firmly.
He turned about in his seat and called for the reckoning. After it was paid they went together back towards the hotel.
“You have told me that you will never marry again,” he said presently, “and I have told you that I also intend never. But—” he stopped short. The hotel court was there before them, and the scent of some night flowers came on the evening breeze from those beds of riotous color which fill the central space of the old Cloister.
“Let us walk once around the Kreuzgang,” he suggested, “and after that we will go in.”
She assented, and they followed the vivid outline of Constance’s history as portrayed in the large frescoes upon the inner wall of the vaulted passage.
“I do not breathe here,” he said suddenly; “come into the garden with me once again. But for a moment? I beg—I pray!”
They went out on to the terrace, passing through the Refectory, now thick with smoke and scintillating with beer-steins.
“You say that you will never marry,” he said again, as they encircled the base of Huss’ Tower, “and I tell you that I also have the idea to never marry. But—”
He paused again, just by that bit of the old monastery wall which extends out towards the bathing-houses.
“But if—if,” he emphasized the monosyllable with marked emphasis,—“if I asked you to marry me, what would you say?”
Rosina did not stop for an instant’s consideration.
“I should say ‘no.’”
He received the blow full in his face.
“Why?” he asked.
“I do not want another husband. I don’t like husbands. They are all alike.”
“How?”
“You can’t tell a thing about them beforehand; they always change, and are different after marriage from what they were before.”
“I shall never change,” he declared positively.
“They all say that.”
“But I speak truth!”
“They all say that too.”
“But with me it will arrive;” then he added, “with me it will arrive that I shall never change, because I shall never marry.”
His remark was such a complete surprise to her that she could hardly master her shock for a moment.
“If that was the point that you were leading up to,” she said finally, “I’m certainly glad that I did not say ‘yes.’”
He surveyed her, smiling.
“I particularly said ‘if,’” he reminded her; “I said, ‘if I asked you to marry me,’ you know?”
Rosina felt a strong inclination to bring the evening to a close. She wanted to be alone and think.
“We must go in,” she said.
“I also feel it,” he answered.
So they went in. The hall and staircase were quite deserted. He walked with her to the top of the first flight.
“Do we leave good-bye here?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said smiling; “I think so.”
He stood looking at her, and out of the depths of his nature various phantoms strove into shape.
“It is well that I go,” he said seriously; “after all, we are not children, you and I, and however we laugh it is always that, that we really are not children.” He put out his hand and took hers. “I shall be away, and the time will be long, and—” he paused abruptly.
Her eyes almost closed beneath the unbearable heat of his gaze.
“Shall you remember me?” she asked, faintly this time.
“Yes, much.”
Then she opened her eyes and withdrew her hand.
“For how long?” she said as before.
He was still staring down at her.
“Who can say!”
“For three weeks? for four? for six?”
“Je ne sais pas,” he said briefly; “if I think too much I must come back, and that will not be wisely.”
“We must not stand here,” she said suddenly; “adieu, au revoir!”
“Yes,” he replied sombrely, “we must part now.”
He looked at her, and his eyes locked hers hard and fast for a long minute. She felt ill, faint, her breath seemed failing her. Then—
He seized her hand and pressed it so strongly against his lips that his lips parted and she felt his teeth against her flesh.
“Je vous aime!” he whispered, almost inaudibly. “Adieu!”
“They stood together on the Maximilianbrücke”