No one that has ever been in Dresden is likely to forget the beauties of
the Bruehlsche Terrasse. The cool plash of waters from the Elbe come up
invitingly; the green of the neighboring gardens is luscious, and there
are nearly always strains of music in the air. Especially pleasing is
the picture on a summer's evening.
In one of the concert gardens they give out on the Terrasse, there sat
at a small round table, one dreamy midsummer evening, Mrs. Ware and her
daughter, Dorothy. In front of them were small cups of coffee, and such
appetising rolls as only the Conditors of the continent can make. The
garden was in no wise different from a thousand others to be found in
German cities; save only that it was especially happy in its location.
There was a light, gravelly soil; a multitude of round tables; chairs
occupied by a cosmopolitan crew of both sexes; at one end, in the shadow
of huge lime trees, was the _Capelle_. Over all was the star-gemmed sky.
The air was sweet with the song of the violins, and the cheery laughter
of the many family parties came echoing along from time to time in
musical accompaniment. There were German students, with the
vari-colored caps and occasional sword-wounds on their faces; officers
with clanking swords and clothes fitting in lines that suggested stays;
English tourists, easily distinguishable by costumes they would not have
dared to startle Hyde Park with; Americans with high pitched voices; and
a few Russians, excessively polite of manner and cruel of eye.
Miss Dorothy Ware was engaged in munching at a roll that had been
steeping in the strong coffee, when she suddenly turned to her mother
with an eager exclamation.
"I declare, mamma," she said, "if there isn't Mr. Wooton coming this
way. The idea of meeting him again at all. I'm sure I never thought we
would; there are so many people away traveling about this time of the
year, and there are so many places. He has just seen us, mamma, and he's
coming over here. See he's lifting his hat. I'm glad we've got this
vacant chair."
Wooton shook hands with them. "The old platitude about the world being a
very small place seems to strike true," he said. "Do you know, it's a
positive relief to talk to people of my own sort once more." He had sat
down beside Dorothy, and placed his stick and gloves on the gravel
beside him. He looked decidedly handsome; his small mouth seemed smaller
than ever, and his face was paler than when he dictated the fortunes of
the _Torch_. He was scrupulously dressed; every detail was so nicely
adjusted that he would have successfully run the gauntlet of all the
comment of Piccadilly and Broadway.
"I've just come from Berlin," he went on, "it was like an oven there.
Nearly everybody was away; some of them in Heringsdorf, some in
Switzerland, some down in this district. My compartment in the train was
filled with a lot of officers on leave, and they talked army slang until
my head swam, and I would have given gold for the sound of an American
voice."
"You seem to rush about a good deal," ventured Mrs. Ware. "Didn't we
meet you in Schwalbach?"
"Mamma forgets so," put in Dorothy, "she's been meeting so many people,
I begin to think she jumbles them all up. But it was in Schwalbach,
mamma; you're right. Don't you remember? We were sitting near the
Stahlbrunnen, with the Tremonts--we used to set next to them at the
Hotel d'Europe--when Mr. Wooton came up and said how-d'ye-do to the
Tremonts, and they presented him to us. When Mrs. Tremont was at
boarding-school, you know," she went on, turning to Wooton, "she and
mamma were great chums. She was a Miss Alexander." She put her hand up
to her hat and gave it a mysterious pressure, presumably to rectify some
invisible displacement. She turned and looked out into the darkness
whence came the sullen swish of the river. "It was delightful in
Schwalbach," she said finally.
"It was horribly expensive," commented Mrs. Ware, sipping her coffee.
"But the waters did you good, I hope?" inquired Wooton, suavely
solicitous.
"Oh, I guess so. But I don't seem to improve right along, as I should?
But I shouldn't complain. I'm a good deal stouter than when I left home.
Besides, Dorothy is having a right good time."
"Ah," smiled Wooton, to the girl, "you like it--the life here?"
"Yes; I like it. I don't say that I like it better than other things.
But who could help liking that?" She swept her parasol around so that it
pointed out toward the river. There was complete darkness there, lit up
occasionally by the lights of passing steamers. Fog-whistles sounded
occasionally; on the opposite shore there was a dim glow of yellow
lights. The water sobbed ceaselessly; there was a mist rising, and the
steamer lights began to seem hazier than ever, mere golden circles
hanging in the dense darkness. The violins were playing something of
Waldteufel's.
It was true; not even the most patriotic of Americans could have helped
granting that all this was very pleasant. Dorothy Ware had certainly
given up being half-hearted in her enthusiasm for European things; they
had met so many people and had rubbed up against so much of
cosmopolitanism that unconsciously she had come to see that to apply the
narrow Lincolnville view to all the people she saw now was a trifle
absurd. She gave herself candidly over to enjoy it all. That was what
she had come for. And it must be confessed that, during this process of
enjoyment, her memories of her former self became ghosts of
ever-increasing vagueness. When she caught herself thinking of Dick
Lancaster it was usually to wonder what sort of a girl he had married.
She smiled when she thought of the things he had said to her before they
parted. It didn't seem to touch her at all now, and she seemed sure that
a man slips out of that sort of thing much earlier than the woman.
They met Wooton a good deal after that. He spent a good deal of time
among the pictures, and when they visited the _Gruene Gwoeble_ they
found him there. He was invariably bright and amusing; he offered to
pilot them and smooth things for them generally; Mrs. Ware began to
think he was tremendously nice. She remembered that Miss Alexander--now
Mrs. Tremont--had always been one of the most aristocratic of girls; she
recalled with something of a shudder, her own awe at her school-mate's
lengthy dissertation upon blood and family and kindred subjects. So, she
argued, if Wooton was in Mrs. Tremont's set in town, there was certainly
not the vestige of a doubt concerning his being eminently the correct
thing. She had lived in the country so long herself that she admitted
she was no longer able to note the difference between good coin and bad;
but she had infinite faith in Mrs. Tremont. Dorothy, too, got to feel
that he was very charming; he was so handsome, and dressed so well. It
was very pleasant to have him in the party; he added distinction.
Wooton had admitted that he knew young Lancaster; he divined that she
had liked the boy; he was wise enough to tell her only pleasant things
about Dick. The only thing Dorothy objected to was that Wooton went
about a good deal with the Tremonts. It seemed to her that he was quite
devoted to Miss Eugenie.
"I don't like her a bit," she told him rather tactlessly, speaking of
Miss Tremont, "she's so supercilious. I never know when she's laughing
at me and when she's not listening to me. I suppose she thinks I'm a
country chit and don't know anything. But I wouldn't be clever the way
she's clever for anything in the world. Why does she have to sneer at
innocence and goodness? Nobody ever accused her of either, did they?"
Which, Wooton thought to himself, was not half bad. As a matter of fact
he enjoyed being with Eugene Tremont immensely. She was one of those
intensely modern girls that the world is so unhappily rich in just now.
She would talk about any subject under the sun. She declared that she
had always cared more for male society anyway; she despised her own sex
and said spiteful things about it. She pretended to be completely
cognizant of all the wickedness there was in the world; and she went on
the presumption that man was a sort of infernal machine that there was
unlimited fun--the fun of danger--in handling. Men liked her at first
invariably; there was something refreshing and stimulating in the
nonchalance with which she tabooed no subject from her conversation;
they said to themselves that this was a person, thank goodness, whom one
did not eternally have to consider in the light of a sex, but rather of
a sexless cleverness. But, somehow or other, her cleverness wearied
presently; she palled as all surfaces must inevitably pall. Wooton,
however, turned to her because she was of his own special calibre--all
cleverness, and no apparent sharply defined system of conduct. With the
Wares he was so perpetually on a grid-iron; he was afraid of saying
something that would startle them. They amused him, these people, with
their simplicity, their taking virtue for granted and vice for an
abhorent mystery! To talk to them it was necessary to keep a constant
check on his cynical; while with Eugene Tremont it was sword to sword, a
sharp continuous fencing with verbal weapons.
So, when Dorothy Ware made the cutting little speech about Miss Tremont,
Wooton told himself that there was something more than mere dislike for
the Boston girl at the bottom of it. Considering the matter, he broke
into a laugh. Was it possible, h'm. That would really be too rich.
He began to be seen with the Tremonts oftener than ever. He went with
them to the opera, he took a seat in their landau. He went to Teplitz
with them.
"They're more in the same set, I suppose," said Mrs. Ware, when Dorothy
spoke of it. "He was at college with her brother, too; I guess they talk
about him a good deal."
Dorothy guessed that she knew better; but she said nothing. Somehow,
Dresden began to seem fearfully dreary. She began importuning her mother
to pack up and go to Munich; they had some friends there. Dorothy
declared Dresden made her homesick; she said it was all so small and
pretty, anyway; it wasn't a metropolis, yet it tried to ape the real
article. And then there were so many Americans--you couldn't talk
English anywhere without having people understand you, which was
distinctly annoying, because occasionally one likes to make personal
asides about costumes and hats and complexions--and, well, what was the
use of staying there any longer anyhow? But Mrs. Ware declared the
climate agreed with her. She said she hadn't felt so well for ever so
long, she wasn't going to try any other place as this one agreed with
her. Did Dorothy want to see her die? No; Dorothy did not. She
submitted, and went about looking dismal.
And then, one day, the sunshine came back into here face once more. It
was not that the good fairies had remodeled the town of Dresden; it was
not that all English-speaking people had suddenly deserted the place; in
fact, it was hard to say just what made the difference. It was just
possible that Wooton's return from Teplitz had something to do with the
good humor in which Dorothy came back to her mother that noon, after a
walk down to the Conditorei. She had almost cannoned into him, rounding
a corner; they had shaken hands; he had avowed the pleasure he felt at
seeing her again. It is just possible that the sight of this young man
was a talisman for Miss Ware's temper; it is at least certain that her
melancholia was gone.
He called on them, in a day or so, at their apartments in the Hotel
Bellevue. Mrs. Ware was very glad to see him; she was more vivacious
than she had yet shown herself. She proposed that they take their coffee
out in the garden, on the river front, under the trees. They sat
watching the boats, and the little boys paddling about barefooted; it
was in the cool of sunset, and there were red bars slanting across the
western horizon. It was very pleasant. The waiter moved about
noiselessly; there were some children making merry in the swing set up
at the far end of the garden.
"Is Teplitz very full?" asked Mrs. Ware.
"Yes; more people than usual, I believe. I should think the hot baths
would do you good, too, Mrs. Ware?"
"Oh, I guess I'll stay here awhile yet. I'm getting to feel quite spry
again. You left the Tremonts there?"
"Yes?"
Dorothy turned away from the river and looked at him a trifle
reproachfully. "You must be awfully fond of those people," she said,
trying to smile.
Wooton shrugged his shoulders carelessly.
"No," he replied, "I can't say that exactly. But Mrs. Tremont really
insisted on my going; she said she had never been there before, and
thought that as I knew the ropes of the place, it would be a small thing
for me to play pilot for them for a while. What was I to do?" He looked
at Dorothy appealingly.
Mrs. Ware was pushing a stray wisp of hair from her cheek.
"In Boston, Dorothy," she said, "I guess Mrs. Tremont is quite a society
leader." She said it as if that was an assertion of crushing
significance, intended to quiet any possible questionings as to why any
young man should think it necessary to comply with the wishes of so
great a personage.
"What if she is?" was Dorothy's quick reply; "that doesn't make her any
better, does it? I don't see how you can go around with them so much,
that's all, Mr. Wooton."
"Oh," he laughed, "I assure you I don't like them so very much myself;
but I don't dislike them. And I hate to offend people. They asked me to
go!"
They drank their coffee, and watched the twilight settling down. They
talked lightly, and laughed a good deal.
"Miss Ware," Wooton asked presently, "you've never been down to
Schandau, have you?"
"No. Is it worth while?"
"Immensely! You ought to make the trip."
"Oh, I simply can't begin to get mamma to move from this town. She's
perfectly enchanted with it, somehow." She looked at her mother, and
patted her on the arm. Mrs. Ware said nothing, only smiled back at her
daughter, who went on, "but I'd like it mightily."
"I wish you'd let me show you the place," Wooton persevered. He looked
over at Mrs. Ware in a hesitating way. "Perhaps--if Mrs. Ware would
rather not stir from the hotel--there would be no objection to Miss Ware
making the trip with me? The place is really pretty; the royal residence
there is one of the sights. It's only half an hour or so by the steamer.
You'd hardly notice our absence; I think she'd enjoy it." He wondered a
little whether they would look at him in frigid horror, or take it as a
proposition quite in accord with the conventions they were accustomed
to. He knew perfectly well that most of the people he knew in the East
would have considered him insane if he had ventured such a proposal;
but, in regard to these people, and this girl in particular, he
remembered that a friend of his had once used a phrase that had struck
him at the time as rather good, and that was, perhaps, applicable. The
man had declared, half in a spirit of banter, half in chivalrous
defense, that the girl of the West paraphrased the old motto to read:
"_Sans peur, sans reproche et sans chaperon_."
To his relief, Mrs. Ware's answer was merely a smile at her daughter,
and a "You'll have to see what Dorothy thinks about it, I guess. It's
her picnic. If she wares to go--." She left the sentence unfinished, as
if to convey the impression that under the circumstances mentioned her
own preference would be allowed lapse.
"I think," said Dorothy, with a little clasping together of her hands,
"that it would be simply delightful! You wouldn't worry, would you,
mamma? There are always so many waiters around and--dear, dear, I talk
just as if we were going this very minute!" She looked gratefully at
Wooton. Somehow or other, he felt himself blushing. He caught himself
regretting the fact that he was no longer as genuine as this girl was.
"I think it's simply perfect of you to ask me," she went on, "I'm sure
I'll enjoy it ever so much."
"Then," he said, airily, "we'll consider that settled. It's very good of
you to say you'll go, I'm sure. Suppose we say Wednesday?"