A Woman's Will

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?”

“Natürlich! I always know.”

“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.”

“That’s different.”

“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.”

“Yes, I do.”

“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.”