THE BEATING OF THE WAVES
[Illustration]
Chapter Ten
It was September in Munich. They stood together on the Maximilianbrücke,
and, looking down into the gray and black turbulence of the Isar, felt
themselves to be by contrast most tranquil and even-tempered. The little
river rushed beneath them, forming a wealth of tiny whirlpools above its
stone-paved way, its waters seeming to clash and struggle in a species
of mimic, liquid warfare, and then, of a sudden, victor and vanquished
fled wildly on together, giving place to other waves with their other
personal scores to settle.
The banks on either side were beginning to show some touches of autumnal
scarlet among those masses of vine whose ends trailed in the water
below, and among the shrubs of the Promenade the same blood stain
betrayed the summer’s death at the hands of the merciless frost king.
The Peace Monument was there, piercing heaven with its golden wings;
the Lucaskirche towered to the east; above them all sat the lofty
Maximilianeum, that open-work crown of Munich, whose perfectly curved
approach and double arcaded wings must joy the soul of every
artist-nature that lingers near it.
“How old are you?” the man said suddenly.
Rosina jerked her consciousness up out of the bed of the Isar.
“No gentleman at home would ask a lady that,” she told him, thus showing
great presence of mind.
He smiled and twisted his moustache.
“But I am not a gentleman at home,” he said pleasantly, “I am a
gentleman travelling.”
“How old are you?”
“I have thirty-three years.”
“Well, I haven’t,” she said with decision; “you might think that I was
forty, but that is only because I have had so much experience.”
He looked at her in a dubious, troubled way.
“I did not think that you had forty: I did not get that just perhaps.
You have not truthfully forty, have you?”
Rosina laughed in unfeigned amusement.
“No, monsieur, I am not thirty even. I told you that if I seemed to be
forty, it was because I had had so much experience.”
“So much experience?”
“Yes.”
“You feel that you have had experience?”
“I know it.”
“Experience as, _par exemple_, me?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her and smiled, shaking his head.
“Oh, madame, you say that, not at all knowing how much experience I have
had.”
She raised her eyebrows slightly and turned to walk on. He followed at
her shoulder, and when they came to the little stone stair that leads
down to the Promenade, he halted and glanced expressively off among the
paths and shade.
“There isn’t time,” she said, shaking _her_ head now.
He went down two steps alone, and then held out his hand with that
irresistible smile; she hesitated, looked helplessly around, and then,
like all women who hesitate, was forthwith lost, swallowed up, in the
maze of those wandering paths. Von Ibn secured his cane well beneath his
arm and lit a cigarette.
“Do I ever now ask you ‘may I’?” he said.
“You never did ask me ‘might you?’” she replied.
He drew two or three satisfied puffs.
“It is good to be so friends,” he commented placidly, and then he took
his cane into his right hand again and swung it with the peculiarly
vigorous swing which in his case always betrayed the possession of an
uncommon degree of _bonne humeur_. “And now for your experience?” he
asked after a little. “It is that which I will to hear.”
“Did you ever go to a masked ball?”
“_Mais, naturellement._”
“Well, so did I.” She paused to note the effect.
He threw a quick glance of undefined question at her.
“Masked?” he demanded.
“Oh, dear no! thickly veiled, and ’way upstairs in a gallery.”
“Were you greatly amused ’way upstairs in your gallery?”
“Yes, really; there were ever so many men there that I knew.”
“Did they come upstairs in the gallery?”
“No indeed, no one knew that I was there. But it interested me to see
whom _I_ knew--”
“Was I there?” he interrupted.
“Oh, it wasn’t here! it was ever so long ago, while my husband was
alive.”
“Did you see your husband?”
“Yes,” she said flushing, “and he was just like all the other men. He
wore no mask, and he did not care one bit who might recognize him.”
“You had been better not gone,” said the man decidedly.
“Yes, I think so; I lost all my love for my husband that night, and
killed all my faith in mankind forever.”
“Why did you be possessed to go?”
“I went because I did not want to be deceived in the way that many women
are deceived.”
Von Ibn laughed.
“You know now all of everything, you think?”
“I know more than most other women do.”
“You would have known much more yet if you had worn a mask,” he told her
very dryly.
She did not reply, and after a few minutes he continued:
“And now, when you know everything, and can no more be deceived, are you
so most happy?”
“I do not know,” she said slowly.
“How have you lost your faith?” he inquired; “what in especial can no
more deceive you?”
“I don’t believe in men,” she declared; “I don’t believe in anything
that they say, nor in anything that they promise. And I don’t believe
one bit in love!”
The man stopped by an empty bench.
“We have walked so long,” he remarked parenthetically; and she sat down,
parenthetically also, so to speak.
“That is sad,” he said, digging in the gravel with his cane, “not to
believe in love, or in the truth of a man! and you are a woman, too!
Then there is no more truth and love for you.”
Rosina felt disheartened. A ready acquiescence in her views is always
discouraging to a woman. What is the use of having views, if they are
just tamely agreed to at once?
“I think perhaps men really mean what they say when they say it,” she
began; “but, oh dear, they can’t stick to it afterwards. Why, my husband
told me that my lightest wish should be his law, and then what do you
think he did?”
“He did perhaps kiss you.”
“No, he went and bought a monkey!”
“What is a monkey?”
“Don’t you know what a monkey is?”
“If I know I will not trouble you to ask.”
“_C’est un singe,--affe_; now you know.”
“Oh, yes; I was thinking of a monk, and of how one told me that you had
them not with you.”
Then he scraped gravel for a long time, while her mind wandered through
a vista of monks and monkeys, and finally, entering the realm of the
present day, paused over the dream of a hat which she had seen that
morning in the Theatinerstrasse, a hat with a remarkably clever
arrangement of one buckle between two wings; it was in the store that
faced--
“I am an atheist,” said her companion, rising abruptly from his seat.
“Apropos of what?” she asked, decidedly startled, but rising
too,--“apropos of the monkey?”
“_Comment?_” he said blankly.
“Nothing, nothing!” quickly.
They walked on slowly among the shadows which were beginning to gather
beneath the trees; after a while he spoke again.
“I tell you just now that I am an atheist, and that is very true. Now I
will make you a proposal and you shall see how serious I mean. I will
change myself and believe in God, if you will change yourself and
believe once more in men.”
“Can you believe in God or not just as you please?” she asked
wonderingly.
“I am the master of myself,” he replied straitly; “if I say that I will
pray to-night, I will pray. And you must say that you will believe,” he
insisted; “you must again have a faith in men, and in their truth, and
in honor.” Then he paused lengthily. “And in love?” he continued; “say
that you will again believe in love?--you will, will you not? yes?”
“I don’t know that I can do it, even if I want to,” she said musingly;
“looking on at life is so terribly disheartening, especially with us in
America, you know.”
“Oh,” he said quickly, “but I do not want you to believe in love in
America; I talk of here in Munich.”
“I suppose you mean yourself?”
“Yes,” he said most emphatically,--“me.”
She could not help laughing a little.
“You do really amuse me so much,” she apologized.
A workman in a dirty blouse and a forlorn, green Tyrolese hat, the
cock’s plume of which had been all too often rained upon, passed close
beside them. Von Ibn, nothing daunted, seized her gloved hand and
pressed it to his lips; she freed it quickly and swept all their
environage with one swift and comprehensive glance.
“If any one that knew us should see you!” she exclaimed.
He calmly gazed after the now distant workman.
“I did not know him,” he said; “did you?”
Then she was obliged to laugh again.
“You are always so afraid of the world,” he continued, remonstrating;
“what does it make if one do see me kiss your hand? kissing your hand is
so little kissing.”
He paused a moment and smiled whimsically.
“I did really laugh alone in my room the other night. I sit there
smoking and thinking what a bad fright you have always when I will to
take your hand and kiss it--you fear ever that some one shall not be
there to see. Then I think, if I would give you a true kiss, that would
be to your mind so awful,--the fear of a seeing, you know,--that we must
then go in a cellar and bolt nine doors first, probably.”
He laughed, but she did not.
“When I go into a cellar with you,” she said coldly, “and allow nine
doors bolted, you may kiss me, and I pledge you my word not to scream.”
A dead silence followed her remark, and lasted until Von Ibn broke it,
saying abstractedly:
“One does go underground to visit the breweries;” after which he
meditated some while longer before adding, “but they never would bolt
the doors, I think.”
Rosina felt any comment on these words to be unnecessary and continued
upon the even tenor of her way. They were close by the Luitpoldbrücke
now, and she went towards the bridge, which lay upon their homeward
route. Von Ibn followed her lead placidly until they were upon the
opposite bank, when he suddenly halted.
“Have you lost something?” she asked, stopping also.
“No, but I asked you some question just now and you have never reply.”
“What was it?”
“About believing.”
“But I am going so soon,” she objected.
“How soon?”
“In December.”
“It is then all settled?” he inquired, with interest.
“Yes.”
“But you can unsettle it?” he reminded her eagerly.
“I don’t want to unsettle it--I want to go.”
He stared at her blankly.
“How have I offended you?” he asked after a while.
“You have not offended me,” she said, much surprised.
“But you say that you want to go?”
“That is because I feel that I must go.”
“Why must you go? why do you not stay here this winter?--or, hold! why
do you not go to Dresden? Later I also must go to Dresden, and it would
be so _gemüthlich_, in Dresden together.”
“It will be _gemüthlich_ for me to get home, too.”
“Do you wish much to go?”
“Yes; I think that I do.”
Then she wondered if she was really speaking the truth, and, going to
the edge of the bank, looked abstractedly down into the rapid current.
“What do you think?” he asked, following her there.
She turned her face towards him with a smile.
“I cannot help feeling curious as to whether, when I shall really be
again in America, I shall know a longing for--for the Isar, or not?”
“I wonder, shall I ever be in America,” he said thoughtfully; “and if I
ever should come there, where do you think would be for me the most
interesting?”
“_Chez moi_,” she laughed.
He smiled in amusement at her quick answer.
“But I shall never come to America,” he went on presently; “I do not
think it is a healthy country. I have an uncle who did die of the yellow
fever in Chili.”
“There is more of America than Chili; that’s in South America--quite
another country from mine.”
“Yes, I know; your land is where the men had the war with the negroes
before they make them all free. I study all that once and find it quite
dull.”
“The war was between the Northern and Southern States of North
America--” she began.
“_Ça ne m’intéresse du tout_,” he broke in; “let us walk on.”
They walked on, and there was a lengthy pause in the conversation,
because Rosina considered his interruption to be extremely rude and
would not broach another subject. They went a long way in the darkness
of a heavily clouded September twilight, and finally:
“Where did he buy it?” he asked.
“Where did he buy what? where did who buy what?”
“The monkey.”
“Oh! I don’t know, I’m sure.”
Then there was another long silence.
“To-morrow,” he announced, “I am going to the Tagernsee, and--”
“I’m not,” she put in flatly.
He turned his head and stared reprovingly.
“How you have say that! not in the way of good manners at all.”
“No,” she said, with an air of retort, “I am with you so much that I am
beginning to forget all my good manners.”
“Am I so bad mannered?”
“Yes, you are.”
“How?”
“You interrupt, and you are frank to a degree that is always impolite,
and sometimes really awful.”
“And you,” he exclaimed eagerly, “how bad you also are! you never even
try to be agreeable, and when I speak with great seriosity you are often
more amused than before, even.”
Rosina tried to look sorry, but found it safer, even in the twilight, to
look the other way.
“The truth is,” he went on vigorously, “I am very much too good with
you! I have never taken my time to an American before, and I am always
fearful. I have been a fool. I shall not be a fool any more.”
“How do you intend to begin to grow wise?”
“You will see.”
The threat sounded dire, but they were now at the corner by the
Maximiliansstrasse, and supper was too near for her to feel downcast.
“I hope that we are to have potato salad to-night,” she said cheerfully.
He continued to meditate moodily.
“Oh, we are much too much together,” he announced at last.
“Well,” she replied, “if you go to the Tagernsee to-morrow that will
give us a little mutual rest.”
“I may miss the train,” he added thoughtfully; “if I do--”
“You can take the next one,” she finished for him.
He looked at her witheringly.
“If I do miss the train, I will carry my violin to you and we will make
some music in the evening.”
Rosina stopped, fairly paralyzed with joy.
“Oh, monsieur,” she cried, “will you really?”
“Yes, that is what I will; _if_ I miss the train.”
They had entered beneath the long arcade, which was dark and altogether
deserted except for one distant figure.
“I almost want you to miss your train,” she said eagerly. “You do not
know how very, very anxious I am to hear you play.”
“I can miss it,” he said thoughtfully; “it is very simple to miss a
train. One can sleep, and then here in Munich one may say the cabman a
wrong Gare. If I say ‘Ostbahnhof’ when I must go from the Starnberg, I
shall surely miss the train, you know.”
He looked at her gravely and she burst out laughing at the picture he
had drawn for her mind, because there is all of three or four miles
between those two particular stations.
“But I don’t want you to miss the train,” she said presently. “You can
play for me after you come back, I--”
At this moment the figure which had been coming towards them suddenly
resolved itself into that of a stalwart young man, who, just as he was
directly in front of them, stopped, seized Rosina in his arms and kissed
her. She very naturally screamed in fright, and her escort delivered a
blow at the stranger which sent him reeling backwards against one of the
stone pillars.
The man, who was well dressed and appeared to be a gentleman, recovered
himself with surprising quickness, and laughed oddly, saying:
“My Lord, what a welcome!”
At the sound of his voice Rosina screamed afresh, this time in quite
another tone, however, exclaiming:
“It’s my cousin Jack!”
“It is your--some one you know?” stammered Von Ibn. “Then I must demand
a thousand pardons.”
“Not at all,” said Jack, taking his hand and shaking it heartily;
“that’s all right! don’t say a word more. The trouble was that when I
saw Rosina I forgot that she had gotten out of the habit of being
kissed. Of course I scared her awfully. Are you over it yet, dear?”
Rosina stood between the two men, and appeared completely stunned by her
cousin’s arrival.
“Where did you drop from, anyhow?” she asked, finding her tongue at
last.
“Came over to go back with you; left Paris last night.”
“Where will you stay? There isn’t an empty corner in the _pension_, one
has to write ever so long ahead.”
“I’m going to stay at the Vierjahreszeiten, just beside you. I’m all
right.”
“Yes,” said Von Ibn suddenly, “you are very right; I stay there too.”
Rosina thought despairingly, “They’ll see a lot of one another, and Jack
will dislike him and he’ll hate Jack.”
By this time they were come to her door and paused there.
“I’m going in with you,” the cousin said. “Madame was so glad to see me
again that she wanted me to come back and sit next to her at supper. I
was awfully glad to see her. She’s even younger and prettier than when I
last saw her--when you and I were kids there that winter, don’t you
remember?”
Von Ibn was staring sombrely at Rosina and she was sure that Jack would
notice it, and wished that he wouldn’t. Then he gave a little start and
held out his hand.
“I shall not come to-night,” he said, “and to-morrow I go to the
Tagernsee; so it is ‘good-bye’ here.”
She felt choked.
“Good-bye,” she said, keenly aware of being watched, but striving to
speak pleasantly notwithstanding. He shook her hand, raised his hat, and
left them.
Then her cousin swung the big _porte_ open and they entered the passage
and went towards the stairs. At the first step he paused and said in a
peculiarly pointed tone of voice:
“Well, are you going to marry him?”
She jumped at the suddenness of the question, and then, recovering
herself quickly, answered coldly:
“Of course not.”
“Why of course not?”
Her neck took on a quite new poise--not new to the man behind her,
however.
“I asked you, ‘Why of course not’?” he repeated.
“You know how foolish such a question is.”
“It isn’t foolish. Yourself considered, it’s the most natural question
in the world.”
“You never met me before when I was walking with a stranger, and then
asked me such a thing.”
“This man’s different. Some one wrote home that you were going to marry
him. You can imagine Uncle John! I was sent for from the beach and
shipped by the first thing that sailed after my arrival.”
Rosina stopped on the first landing to stare in tranceful astonishment.
“Some one wrote!” she ejaculated faintly. “Who wrote?”
“Never you mind who wrote. Whoever it was set uncle thinking, and I was
posted off to look him up.”
“When did you come over?”
“Landed in Hamburg the last of August.”
“Where have you been ever since?”
“Been looking him up.”
Rosina began to mount the second staircase; she appeared completely
bewildered.
“It’s very nice of uncle,” she said about the fourth step, “and of
course I’m awfully obliged to whoever wrote home; but I’m not going to
marry him, really.”
Jack whistled.
“Well,” he said cheerily, as they attained the second landing, “I know
all about him now, anyway; and if you ever do want to go ahead, you can
be sure that he’s all right.”
“I knew that he was all right,” she said quietly; “every one in Europe
knows that he’s all right.”
“He’s a first-class boxer, anyhow,” the cousin declared. “Lord, what a
blow that was! And I did not mean to frighten you at all, either; I
thought that you saw me coming.”
“How was I to know that it was you? I supposed that you were in New
York. I did not think that there was a man on this continent who had a
right to kiss me. And even if there was I shouldn’t be expecting him to
do so in public. You never kissed me in the street yourself before. What
possessed you to do so this time?”
She faced about on the stairs as she spoke, and he stopped and drew a
deep breath or two. It takes time to become acclimated to the stairs
abroad.
“Don’t be vexed at me,” he implored, “or I shall think that you are not
glad that I came; and you are, aren’t you?”
“Yes, of course I am.”
“And after supper to-night we’ll go out and take a good old-fashioned
tramp and talk a lot, won’t we?”
They were now before the door of the _pension_ and he was pressing the
electric bell. She sighed a resigned sigh of utter submission, nodded
acquiescently, and waited beside him.
Anna, a maid whose countenance left much to be divined at pleasure,
finally let them in. When she saw that the lady had changed her escort,
her face fell and she slightly shook her head as if regretful that one
who was so generous should own openly to the vice of fickleness. They
went into the long hall and Jack paused to hang his hat upon one of the
hooks in that angle by the door; then he overtook his cousin and they
went together to the salon, the pretty little salon with its great
window, tall white-tiled stove, piano, corner-ways divan, tabouret,
table of magazines, quaint Dutch picture of Queen Wilhelmina, and the
vase in the corner--that green vase from whose stem hangs the
flower-like body of a delicate porcelain nymph.
“You can’t smoke here, you know,” she cautioned him. “If you want to
smoke you must go into the corridor.”
“I don’t want to smoke,” he said. “I’ll look out of the window. I like
to watch the people.”
So she left him there and sought Ottillie.
* * * * *
After supper that night they did go to walk; and if Rosina’s cousin
came abroad with a mission he certainly went in for fulfilling it
vigorously.
“Who wrote you about him, anyhow?” she demanded at last, when
her patience was nearly exhausted by the mercilessness of his
cross-examination. She was inwardly furious at whoever had done so,
but it seemed wisdom to conceal her fury--for the present at least.
“You can’t travel about all summer with the same man everlastingly at
your heels, without other people’s seeing him as well as yourself.”
“But some one person must have written. It can’t be that several people
would bother to.”
“You won’t ever know who wrote, so don’t you fret.”
They were crossing the Max-Joseph Platz diagonally, and a light flashing
from a passing trolley seemed to suddenly illuminate her brain.
“I bet I do know,” she cried.
“I bet you don’t.”
“It was a man; now wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was a man; but I won’t say a word more.”
She smiled, triumphant in her woman’s intuition.
“It was that man at Zurich,” she exclaimed; “wasn’t it?”
He turned into the Residenzstrasse and made no reply.
“It was, wasn’t it?” she insisted.
“I shan’t tell.”
“You needn’t tell. I know that it was and you know that it was too, so
I’m satisfied.”
They went along past the two sentinels who guard the gate of the royal
palace, and emerged on the large open space that spreads before the
Feldherrnhalle. From there the Ludwigsstrasse stretches straight out and
away to the Siegesthor, stretches in one magnificent splendor of breadth
and boulevard and electric lights. They took the right-hand side and set
off at a pace neither swift nor slow--just such a pace as will allow
sufficient breath for ample conversation.
“You know you’ll marry again, Rosina, no matter what you may say; you
know that, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Nonsense!”
“Well, I’m sure that I won’t for a long time.”
“Of course you can’t until the two years are out, but they’re out this
October; and you know the more dead-set you are against doing anything
the surer you are to do it. We all know that just by the light of the
past.”
She elevated her eyebrows and made no reply.
“You’ve got so much money that naturally we couldn’t hear that any one
was following you continually, without wanting to know what he was
after. I should think you could see how that would strike Uncle John.”
“Monsieur von Ibn doesn’t mean to marry any more than I do,” she
declared positively.
“Doesn’t he? How do you know?”
“He told me so himself.”
“When?”
“Ever so many times.”
He laughed and stopped to examine one of the posters of the
“Elfscharfrichters,”--the one of the cadaverous lady all in black, with
her hands outspread.
“What interests you in him, anyhow?” he asked after a little.
“Can’t a woman enjoy being with a man without wanting to marry him? I
like him because he’s so original.”
“He’s original all right,” Jack reflected; “that’s very, very true. He’s
the first man who ever thought of knocking me down for kissing you.”
“It was because I screamed. Why didn’t you write that you were coming?”
“I wanted to arrive unexpectedly and see for myself.”
“Well, did you see?”
He chuckled.
“Yes, and felt too. He doesn’t intend that any one else shall kiss you.”
Rosina whirled, her eyes sparkling with anger.
“I’ll never forgive you if you say another thing like that,” she cried
hotly.
The cousin judged it advisable to suggest diverging from the
Ludwigsstrasse, and extending their promenade in the direction of the
Wittelsbach Palace. Dark streets have a naturally subduing effect, and
he knew what an upheaval his arrival had produced even better than she
did.
They went towards the Caserne, and were in the Améliesstrasse before
either began another subject. And even then it was really not a new one,
because Jack, having a definite end in view, could not lose sight of it
for a minute.
“Why do you think that you don’t want to get married again?” he said,
courageously returning to the fight.
“I don’t think anything about it. I know that I don’t want to get
married again!”
“Von Ibn seems to be a mighty nice sort of a fellow. I’ve met ever so
many people who told me lots about him. He’s got quite a property for
these men over here, and he’ll have two jolly places and a title, too.
And the family won’t kick over his marrying any one; they’ve been at him
to get married for years and years. He’s the only son, you know.”
“All right,” she said dryly.
“Have you anything personal against him?”
“No; but I know that I can see all that I want of him without marrying
him; and as long as we do not get married we have the delightful
privilege of being able to separate the instant that we grow tired of
one another. And the ability to stop when you’ve had enough is a great
thing.”
“Has he bored you any yet?”
“Not yet. Oh, Jack, you ought to hear him talk. He said yesterday that
we must go somewhere early before the cool grew too hot.”
Jack regarded her sympathetically.
“I’d certainly marry him,” he said, with decision. “If he can say things
like that offhand, only think what he’d be to live with day after day.”
Rosina was silent for a moment, and then she gave a violent shiver.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, in a voice that echoed like a low cry, “I don’t
believe that I ever _can_ marry again--it’s so _terrible_!”
Jack took her hand and drew it closely within his arm.
“Don’t say that,” he said earnestly. “Every one knows that you didn’t
have a fair show first time. Your husband was--Well, you know what he
was.”
“I should say that I did know what he was.”
“I always wondered if you just wanted to get your hands on a big
establishment.”
“Oh, what makes you say such things? You know that I was desperately in
love with him--as much so as a girl can be.”
“Do you feel anything like it again now?”
She shook her head.
“No, indeed; I feel that I may get tired of monsieur any day.”
They turned down towards the Ludwigsstrasse and Rosina appeared to be
thinking deeply. At last she spoke, and her accents were firm as
granite.
“I do not believe that I ever _could_ marry again.”
Jack shrugged his shoulders.
“There’s no string on you,” he declared lightly.
* * * * *
The next morning, as the lady was stirring her whipped cream into her
chocolate, Ottillie entered with a note:
“DEAR ROSINA,--Von Ibn and I are leaving for the Tagernsee by
the early train. Think we’ll be gone four or five days.
“Always yours,
“JACK.”
Chapter Eleven
It was three o’clock on the last day of September, and the last day of
September had been a very rainy one. Little draggled sparrows quarrelled
on the black asphalt of the Maximiliansstrasse because it was wet and
they came in for their share of the consequent ill-humor; all the cabs
and cabmen and cab-horses were waterproofed to the fullest possible
extent; all the cocks’ plumes in the forlorn green hats of the forlorn
street-sweeping women hung dolefully and dejectedly down their backs.
People coming to the Schauspielhaus lowered their umbrellas at the
entrance and scooted in out of the drizzle; people coming out of the
Schauspielhaus raised their umbrellas and slopped away through the
universal damp and spatters.
All of which but served to deepen the already deep melancholy and
_ennui_ of Rosina, who leaned in her window across the way, staring upon
the outer world with an infinite sense of its pitiful inadequacy to meet
her present wishes, and a most profound regret that her cousin had ever
crossed the ocean on her account.
For they had not returned from the Tagernsee. On the contrary the
expedition had stretched to other “sees,” to the Herrn-Chiemsee, to
Salzburg, and now she held in her hand a hastily pencilled scrawl,
brought by the two o’clock post, which said:
“Ho for Vienna. Always did want to see Buda-Pesth. J.”
And nothing more!
“It’s so like a man,” she told herself without troubling to think just
what she did mean by the words. “Oh, dear! oh, _dear_!” and she turned
from the window and flung herself despairingly into one of the big red
velvet chairs, preparing to read or to cry as the fancy might seize her.
There came a light tap at the door and then it opened a very little.
“Oh, pardon me,” cried a sweet, sweet voice, “I think you are perhaps
gone out!”
Then the door opened and the speaker showed herself. It was the daughter
of the house, an ideally blonde and bonny German girl. She came across
the room and her face shaded slightly as she asked:
“You have no bad news? no?”
“No,” said Rosina, forcing a smile; “I’m only very cross.”
“Cross? Why cross? You are but laughing at me. You are not really
cross.”
Rosina was silent; her lip quivered slightly.
“Oh,” said Fraülein quickly. “I am come that I may ask you a favor! The
parlor has a workman to make the window again; it is not good closed,
and the French lady wishes to call on you. May she come here?”
“Yes,” Rosina said, “I shall be so very glad to have her come here, and
Ottillie can bring us some tea after a while.”
She dried her eyes openly in preparation for the visit to be.
“You are lonely to-day,” said Fraülein sympathetically. “I am glad that
your cousin did come.”
“Yes,” said Rosina, “but he went away so soon again.”
Her eyes immediately refilled.
“You love each other so very much in America,” said the German girl
gently; she stood still for a minute and then smiled suddenly. “I will
tell madame to come here,” she added, and left the room.
Rosina went back to the window and her unseeing contemplation of the
outdoors. Presently some one knocked and she turned, crying:
“_Entrez!_”
The door opened, and instead of the French lady whose husband was
fleeing the revolution in Caraccas by bringing his family to Munich for
the winter, a man entered.
The man was tall and dark, with brown eyes and a black moustache, and
his eyes were oddly full of light and laughter.
She stood still staring for one short minute, and then suddenly
something swallowed up all the space between them, and her hand was fast
between his grasp, pressed hard against his lips, while the pleasure in
her eyes rose and fell against the joy of his own.
“_Vous me voyez revenu!_” he said.
“Where is Jack?” she asked; both spoke almost at once, and Von Ibn was
conscious of sharing a divine sense of relief with her as he replied:
“He is gone alone to Vienna!”
It was as if a heavy cloud had been lifted from her horizon. She sank
down in one of the big easy-chairs and he dragged another close, very
close to her side.
“Not so near!” she exclaimed, a little frightened.
He withdrew the chair two inches and fixed his eyes hungrily upon her
face.
“Has it been long to you?” he asked, his tone one of breathless
feeling.
And then she realized to the full how very long it had been, and
confessed the fact in one great in-drawn sigh.
“Why did you go so far?” she demanded.
“It was one step beyond the another; I have no idea but of the Tagernsee
when we leave.”
“You’ve been gone weeks!”
He leaned forward and seized her hand again.
“Was it so long?” he questioned softly.
“You know that I only saw my cousin just that one evening!” she had the
face to say complainingly.
“Yes,” he said sympathetically; “he is so nice, your cousin. I have
learned to like him so very much; we have really great pleasure
together. But,” he added, “I did not come back to talk of him.”
“Why did you come back?” she asked, freeing herself and pushing her
chair away.
He smiled upon her.
“You ask?” he said, in amusement; “shall I say that it was to see you?”
“I hope that you did not return on my account.”
He paused, twisting his moustache; then started a little and said:
“No, I am returned wholly for business.”
Rosina received the cold douche with a composure bred of experience, and
after a liberal interval he went on.
“But I wanted also to see you too.”
“Well, you are seeing me, are you not?”
“Yes, but you do not smile as before your cousin is come. I want you to
smile. Oh,” he exclaimed, suddenly interrupting himself, “have you ride
horseback since I left?”
“Oh, yes, almost every day.”
His face clouded slightly.
“Who have you ride with?”
“With my friends who are here, and twice with the lieutenant.”
Then his face clouded very heavily.
“Is he interesting?” he asked; “yes?”
“It was the Englischergarten that was wonderful,” she told him. “We rode
very early in the morning and the dew was on the grass and we could hear
the pheasants in the underbrush when the noise of the horses’ feet
frightened them further away.”
“And the lieutenant?” he asked.
“And oh,” she continued, “you know that place where the woods open so
widely, and you can see so far across,--_eh bien_, we saw one morning
the deer standing in the edge of the forest just there, one would have
said fifty miles from civilization, not at all as if they were in the
midst of Munich.”
“And the lieutenant?” he repeated.
“And then another day the clouds of morning mist were so thick that we
could see their outlines as they lay upon the earth, and ride into them
and ride out of them,--a quite new experience for me.”
“But the lieutenant?” he exclaimed impatiently, “the lieutenant? what
did he talk of? what did you speak together of?”
Rosina laughed, nodding merrily over his impatience.
“We talked of the pheasants,” she said, “of the deer, of the fog. Are
you satisfied?”
He shrugged his shoulders, his frown lifted.
“It is quite one to me,” he said indifferently; “you know that I have
said before that I am not of a _tempérament jaloux_.”
Then he got up and walked about the room, taking a cigar from his pocket
and holding it unlighted in his mouth.
“May I smoke here?” he asked.
“I don’t care if you do.”
He returned suddenly to his chair, laid the cigar on the table, and took
her hand again.
“Your cousin is so nice,” he told her, as if the recollection of Jack’s
charms had necessitated his at once expressing his feelings towards
Jack’s cousin.
“When is he coming back?” she asked.
“In one week.”
“When does he sail? Do you know?”
“On the nineteenth day, from Genoa.”
She quite sprang from her seat.
“Not really!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, so he tell me.”
He drew her back into her chair and she forgot the hand which he still
held in her desperate feeling of the instant. She was helplessly choked
with conflicting emotions. October instead of December! That came of
having a cousin!
The kingdom of the other chair advanced its border-line more than two
inches, and she did not appear to notice the bold encroachment.
“What does it matter?” she asked herself bitterly; “in a few days I’m
going, and then I shall never lay eyes on him again,” and the tears
welled up thickly at the thought.
“_Qu’est-ce que vous avez?_” he said anxiously; “you must not cry when I
am returned, you know!”
At that she sobbed outright.
He looked at her with an intentness very foreign to his usual
expression, and seemed to weigh two courses of action and deliberate as
to their relative advisability; he ended by laying her hand down gently
and going to the window, where he remained for several minutes, looking
out and saying nothing.
She dried her eyes quickly and quietly (only a foolish woman continues
to weep after the man has gone), and waited for him to turn. Finally he
did so.
“It is not raining once more,” he said; “let us go out and walk far.
That will do you quite well; I cannot bear that you weep.”
He added the last words in a lower tone, and coming close behind her
chair suddenly stooped.
She realized all in a flash where he was, what he was meditating, the
half-open door, and writhed quickly out of the chair and away.
“Why not?” he asked, looking after her unsmilingly. “It will do you no
hurt and me much good.”
“I’m out of the habit,” she said shortly, recollecting Jack’s words on
that famous night of his arrival.
They were both on their feet, she by the window and he by the chair
which she had just left.
“Was your husband very _tendre_?” he asked.
She felt the corners of her mouth give way under the stressful shock of
this question. “I might say, ‘I never tried him to see,’” she thought,
“but he _never_ would understand,” and so there was an instant of
silence.
“Why do you smile?” he demanded, smiling himself.
“Because we don’t call men ‘tender.’ We call meat ‘tender’ and men
‘affectionate.’”
“But I _am_ tender,” he affirmed.
“Are you? Well, you are younger than my husband and perhaps that
accounts for it.”
He reflected, but did not appear to understand; finally he gave it up
for a bad job and said, changing to a less abstruse subject:
“We go to walk? yes?”
“Certainly; if you will wait while I have some proper boots found for
me.”
“Yes, I will wait.”
He came towards her.
“Oh, you had better go into the corridor and wait,” she exclaimed
hastily. “I’ll come in a moment.”
He stopped short and smiled his irresistible smile.
“You are so madly queer. _Qu’est-ce que vous avez_? You scream always,
and yet I have not done nothing.”
Then without another word he left the room.
When she was alone Rosina rang for her maid. As Ottillie knelt at her
feet, she frowned deeply, thinking how more than horrid it was that Jack
should have come, that she should be obliged to go, and that women may
not allow themselves to be kissed. Later she recollected that Jack was
in Vienna, that there was the half of October yet to be lived, and that
all disembodied kisses must of necessity have an incarnation yet to
come. And then she smiled once more.
Ottillie brought her wraps and adjusted her hat.
“Will madame take supper here?” she asked.
“_Je le pense, oui._”
The maid muffled a sigh; she would have made Von Ibn a conquering hero
indeed, if her heartfelt wishes could have given him the victory. And
apropos of this subject, it would be interesting, very interesting, to
know how many international marriages have been backed up by a French
_femme-de-chambre_ burning with impatience to return to her own
continent.
Rosina went to the salon and found her hero looking at a “Jugend” with a
bored expression. When he saw her he sprang to his feet and sought his
hat and umbrella forthwith.
Then they went down the three flights of stairs to the street, and found
it wet indeed.
“We cannot go on the Promenade,” he said, after casting a comprehensive
glance about and afar. “I think we will go by the Hofgarten and walk
under the arcade there; there will it be dry, _n’est-ce pas_?”
“Yes, surely it will be dry there,” she acquiesced. “It is always dry
under cover in Europe, because your rain is so quiet and well behaved;
it never comes with a terrible gale, whirling and twisting, and
drenching everything inside and outside, like our storms.”
“Why do your storms be so?”
“We haven’t found any way of teaching them better manners yet. They are
like our flies; our flies are the noisiest, most intrusive, most
impertinent creatures. You don’t appreciate your timid, modest little
flies.”
“I do not like flies.”
“Yes,” she laughed, “that is the whole story. You ‘do not like flies,’
while we go crazy if there is one around, and have our houses screened
from cellar to garret.”
“I do not find this subject very amusing,” he said; “let us speak of
another thing.”
Rosina glanced up at the prison-like façade which they were passing.
“I find the architecture of the Hoftheater terribly monotonous,” she
said warmly. “Why do you not have a more diversified style of windows
where so many must be in a straight row?”
“Munich is not my city,” he responded, shrugging his shoulder; “and if
you will to find fault with the way those windows go, you must wait to
meet the shade of Klenze in the after-world. He made it all in 1823.”
“When I get among the Bavarian shades,” she said thoughtfully, “I want
to meet King Louis more than any one else. I think that he is the most
interesting figure in all the history of the country.”
“Perhaps he will be there as here, and not care to meet any one.”
“Oh, no,” she said hopefully; “he was crazy here, but he will be sane
there and--”
“_Mon Dieu_, madame, have a care!” he cried in a low tone, glancing
apprehensively about.
“What is it?” she asked, alarmed.
He lowered his voice to an almost inaudible pitch.
“It is that we do not discuss our kings in public as you are habited to
do. _Voyons donc_,” he continued, “if I said, ‘_Oh, je trouve
l’Empereur très-bête!_’ (as I well might say, for I find him often bête
enough); if I say that, I might find a _sergeant-de-ville_ at my elbow,
and myself in prison almost as the words were still in the air.”
Rosina looked thoroughly frightened.
“And what would they do to you?” she asked, looking up at him with an
expression which brought a strange answering look into his own eyes.
“That would depend on how _bête_ I had found the emperor,” he declared,
laughing; “but, madame, do not be so troubled, because no one has heard
this time.”
They were walking at a good pace, the puddles considered, and came now
to the arched entrance into the Hofgarten, where a turning brought them
beneath the arcades. The south side was crowded, thanks to the
guide-book recommendation to examine the frescoes there on a day when it
is too wet to “do” other sights about the city; but the west side, where
the frescoes are of landscapes only, and sadly defaced at that, was
quite deserted, and they made their way through the crowd to the
grateful peace of the silence beyond. It was a pleasant place to walk,
with the Hofgarten showing its fresh green picture between the frames of
the arcaded arches. The façade of the Hof formed the background to
all--a background of stone and marble, of serried ranks of windows
marshalled to order by lofty portals and balconies.
“Why are women always like that?” he asked, when they had paced in
silence to the other end and turned to return.
“Like what?”
He threw a quick glance of exasperation at her.
“When I say a question, it is always with another question that you
reply!”
“Well,” she said, “we were talking of the emperor, and now you say ‘why
are women always like that?’ and I ask ‘like what?’”
He looked more exasperated than before.
“I have all finished with the emperor,” he said, as if outraged by her
want of comprehension as to his meaning. “Is it likely that I will wish
to talk of the emperor when on the nineteenth you sail from Genoa?”
She felt her eyes moistening afresh at this recurrence to her departure,
and made no answer. He slashed along vigorously for two or three yards,
cutting a wide swathe with his umbrella, and then his grievance appeared
somewhat appeased, and he explained in a milder tone:
“I ask you why are women like that,--like that, that they never will
like to be kissed?”
Rosina halted in astonishment.
“What is it now?” he asked, turning because he missed her. “Have I not
yet made myself plain?”
“The idea--after all this while--of your going back to that subject!”
“I have not go back to it,” he said coolly; “I have thought of no other
thing while you were booting yourself or now. Why do women say ‘No’?
Why do you say ‘No’?”
“Let me see,” she said thoughtfully. “I think it is like this: if I
allowed you to, you would naturally feel that hereafter you could,
whereas I very much prefer that you should know that you can’t.”
He looked in a despair so complete as to be almost ludicrous.
“Oh, say slower,” he pleaded, earnestly. “It is so very important to
well understand.”
She laughed at his serious face. For the moment Jack and Genoa were both
forgotten, and nothing but the pleasure of good company and an
atmosphere breathing the perfume that follows rain where there are
flowers, were left to joy her.
“It isn’t worth repeating slower,” she said, with a smile. “It was a
positive negative which even if developed in a dark room would make a
proof that I did not want to be kissed.”
They went the entire length of the arcade while he endeavored to work
out the solution of her second riddle, and then he shrugged his
shoulders, remarking:
“I have never interest myself in a kodak any,” and appeared to regard
the subject as finished.
They came back up the arcade, and, the sidewalks being now fairly dry,
went out under the stairway at the corner, into the Galleriestrasse.
“Do you like this country?” he asked presently.
“Bavaria? Immensely.”
“I mean, do you like the Continent--Europe?”
“Yes.”
“What do think about it?”
“I think Europa showed great good taste in getting down from the bull
just where she did.”
“Then you like this land?”
“I love it! It hurts me whenever I hear my countrymen malign it.”
They were in the Ludwigsstrasse, and the scene was like a holiday in
America. Every one was out after the rain and all faces reflected that
exuberant gayety which seems to be born about five o’clock in each
continental city. People in carriages, people in cabs, people on
horseback, people on bicycles, people walking, people leading dogs,
people wheeling babies, people following children, all one laughing,
bowing, chattering procession, coming and going ceaselessly between the
Feldherrnhalle and the Siegesthor, with the blue Bavarian sky blessing
all the pleasure, and the tame doves of Munich under the feet of each
and every one.
Von Ibn stopped to watch the brilliant scene; Rosina stood beside him.
“What ill can one say of us?” he asked, after a while. “How can a place
be better than this?”
“_I_ never said that any place could be better than this,” she
asseverated; “but I am uncommon in my opinions. The average American is
born in a land overflowing with steam-heat, ice-water, and bath-tubs,
and he suffers when he has to lose the hyphens and use the nouns
separately.”
Von Ibn frowned.
“You amuse yourself much with queer words to-day,” he said
discontentedly. “I wish I have stayed with Jack. I was much pleasured
with him.”
“But you said that you had to return because of some business,” she
reminded him.
He raised his eyebrows, and they went on again. After a little she
turned her eyes up to his and smiled.
“Don’t say that you wish you were with Jack. I am so glad that you are
here.”
He returned the smile.
“I have no wish to be with your cousin,” he said amicably; “I find you
much more agreeable.”
Then a little dog that a lady was leading by a long chain ran three
times around his legs and half choked itself to death, and the lady
screamed, and it was several minutes before all was calm again.
“I find it _bête_ to have a dog like that,” he said, looking disgustedly
over his shoulder at the heroine of the episode, as she placidly
continued on her way. “It was _grand merci_ that I am not fallen, then.
What was about my feet I could not fancy, and also,”--he began to
laugh,--“and also it was droll, for I might not kick the dog.”
Rosina laughed too.
“But in America,” he went on, suddenly recurring to their earlier topic,
“have you no art?”
“Oh, yes; but nothing to compare with our sanitary arrangements. Our
president’s bath-tub is cut out of one solid block of marble,” she added
proudly.
“That is not so wonderful.”
“Isn’t it? The head-lines in the papers led me to think that it was. But
I’ll tell you what I think is a disgrace to America,” she went on with
energy, “and that is that the American artists who come to study abroad
must pay duty on their own pictures when they take them back.”
“Is that really so?” he asked.
“Yes, that is really so. And it is very unjust, for the musician and
surgeon and scientist can bring all the results of their study in duty
free.”
“They have them within their heads.”
“Yes; but they have them just the same.”
“Everything costs a great deal with you, _n’est-ce pas_?”
“I should say it did. No one ought to blame us for telling what things
cost, because everything costs so much. A carriage is six to ten _marks_
an hour.”
“_C’est assez cher!_” he said, laughing.
“_C’est un peu trop!_” she rejoined warmly. “But the well-to-do
certainly do revel in griddle-cakes and hot-water faucets, and when I
meet an American man in Europe I am forced to believe that they are the
only really worthy ambitions to be striven for.”
“I could not live there, I think,” he exclaimed.
“I’m afraid not,” said she sadly. “You don’t play golf or drink, and men
of leisure have almost no other careers open to them with us.”
“I have my music.”
“But you could never enjoy that there,” she cried, shivering
involuntarily. “Every one talks during music, and some cough, and
gentlemen clear their throats--”
“And does no one hiss them?” he interrupted, wide-eyed.
“Hiss them? Never! The idea!”
He stopped and lit a cigarette.
“But one can travel?” he suggested.
“Yes, surely there is plenty of room for that,” she said dryly; “but you
don’t see many ruined castles or historic battlefields _en route_. And
the dust, _oh, la, la_! And the steam coils under your seat--and the
air--and the ventilation--and the nights--and the days.”
“You would better stay here,” he remarked.
“Oh, _I_ think so,” she responded frankly; “it’s so jolly getting your
gloves cleaned for two cents a pair; but if we don’t change the subject
I shall cry.”
He looked at her quickly.
“That is the University there,” he told her, pointing to their left;
“shall we go there?”
“What for?”
“To look upon it.”
“Why, I’ve seen it dozens of times.”
He took his cigarette out of his mouth, examined it carefully, and
replaced it between his lips.
“But one washes here,” he said presently.
“One--washes--” she stammered blankly; and then it flashed across her
that it was the bath-tub that was rankling in his soul, and she gasped,
adjusted herself, and answered:
“Of course one washes here. But in America it is all made so
convenient, and is regarded as less of an event.”
“It is no event to me to wash,” he said indignantly; “I find no
excitement in washing.”
“I never said you did; I was comparing quite another class of society
with their equals in the other country.”
“But to shave,” he went on, “that I find terrible.”
“It’s no worse than having a _coiffure_ to make.”
“But I have no _coiffure_ to make.”
“No; but I have.”
He threw his cigarette into the street.
“It is not so bad as shaving.”
“It takes longer.”
“Yes; but shaving you may cut yourself.”
Rosina laughed; he heard her and turned suspiciously.
“Why do you laugh?”
“Because.”
“What amuses you?”
“You do.”
He smiled and they walked one or two blocks in silence. They were now in
the suburb of Schwabing, far out by the western end of the
Englischergarten. The street was very uninteresting and comparatively
deserted.
“Do you see my cravat?” he asked.
She was wondering if they had not better be returning towards home.
“I know that you have one on,” she said; “I can’t say that I notice
anything especial about it.”
“I will show you something very curious about it.”
“You’re not going to take it off, are you?”
“I will show you how I tie it.”
“I know how to tie that kind myself.”
“Not as I tie it.”
Then he deliberately handed her his umbrella and untied his cravat, and
proceeded to turn one end up and fold the other across and poke a loop
through and draw an end under, and thus manipulate the whole into a
reproduction of the same tiny bowknot as before. She held the umbrella
and contemplated the performance with an interest which was most
flattering to his labor.
“I don’t see how you ever do it,” she exclaimed when the job was
complete and he took the umbrella again.
“I will teach you some day,” he said readily. “I have myself invented
four cravats,” he added with pride.
“Will you teach me all the four?”
“Yes; I have thought, if I shall ever be poor, to go to Paris and have a
cab and drive about from house to house each morning and tie cravats
_pour les messieurs_. You can see how many would pay for that.”
“Yes; but when you arrived and they were not ready,--were still in bed,
you know,--what would you do then?”
He reflected, and then shrugged his shoulders.
“I would put on the collar, tie the cravat, and leave monsieur to sleep
again.”
Rosina’s marital past presented her mind with a lively picture of one of
the cravat-tier’s clients struggling to bring his shirt into proper
connection with the _chef d’œuvre_, when he should arise to attire
himself for the day. She laughed outright. Then she grew sober and said:
“We ought to go back; it must be after five.”
He took out his watch.
“No, it is not.”
“Yes, it is; it was after four when we left the _pension_. I know it’s
after five now.”
“It is not after five,” he declared calmly; “it is not after five
because it is after six.”
She laughed again; he looked at her, smiling brightly himself.
“It is good together, _n’est-ce pas_?” he said, putting his hand upon
her arm as they turned back upon their steps. There was in his eyes the
happy look that dispelled every trace of the usual shadow on his face.
“We are again those same children,” he went on, “children that the same
toy amuses both. What pleasures you always makes joy for me also.”
Something came up in her throat as she listened. It might have been a
choke, but she was so positive that it was only Genoa that she swallowed
it at once and looked in the opposite direction. He had kept his hand
upon her arm, and now he bent his head a little and said, his voice
lowering:
“I think--”
The dusk was gathering heavily. The Siegesthor loomed blackly great
against the lights of the city beyond. It was no longer quiet about
them, but the hum and buzz of all the bees swarming home was in the air,
on the pavement, along the trolley wires.
“I think,”--he said, his fingers closing about her arm,--“I think that
we might be always very happy together.”
She looked up quickly, and then down yet more quickly.
“Why do you speak that way when you know that I am going so soon?”
“Let us turn here,” he said eagerly; “by here it will be quiet. Do walk
so,” he added pleadingly, as she hesitated, “we have not long to be
together. _Il faut me gâter un peu._ There is but a week left for us.”
She started.
“A week! If we sail the nineteenth we need not leave here until the
fourteenth surely.”
“But your cousin will leave on the eighth.”
She looked up at him, and by the light of a street lamp which they were
just passing, he saw the great tears starting in her eyes, tears of
helplessness, the tears of a woman who feels and cannot speak. It was a
very quiet little street, that into which they had turned, with lines of
monotonous gray houses on either side, and certainly no better place for
tears was ever invented. Rosina’s appeared to know a good thing when
they saw it, and rolled heavily downward, thus proving in their passage
the sincerity of both her nature and her color. Her companion drew her
hand within his own, pressing her fingers hard and fast. He did not say
one word, and finally she wiped her eyes, smiled through the mist that
hung upon her lashes, and said with simple directness:
“I don’t want to go.”
“I know.”
“But they want me to, and I must.”
There was another long silence, and then he said:
“You would not stay for me?”
His voice was wonderfully soft and persuasive, and for a single instant
she admitted the possibility into her mental future; but the instant
after it found itself driven violently forth again.
“No, no,” she cried, forcibly, “I will not--I cannot. I _never_ want
another husband.”
He hesitated one step in his gait and then went on as before.
“I do not say that all would be as you wished,” he said slowly, with
pauses between, “or that I would live only to joy your life. That would
be very untrue. To be with you this week I put aside as it would not be
right for me to put aside again. These days I have throw away because I
will not say all in my after life that I did not try.” He stopped and
his voice changed strangely. “I must try with all my strength,” he
continued, drawing each breath as if in great pain; “I must, because to
me with my work it is what does not trouble, what gives me sympathy,
that is the most large of all. I have never marry because I know that so
well. How could I ever do my work if a single discord is there to
fret--fret--fret? As well ask me to play in concert on an untuned
instrument. To my ear the untune is agony; to my music, a discord in my
day is death to what would have been written that day. It is so that I
have come to expect to never marry. My music must be first, and how can
I risk--” he stopped his speech and his steps. She tried to move on but
he held her still. “But,” he said, very low but with an accent the
intensity of which cut into her very heart, “but now I know that better
work would be if you were there; I should have greater force; I
should--I--if you loved--”
He trailed his speech helplessly, faltered, and was silent. The night
had come heavily down and they learned the fact by the discovery that
they could no longer look into the eyes of one another. The quiet little
street had led them down to the borders of the Englischergarten, and its
forest rose up before them. He led her straight towards it.
“It will be wet,” he said, in reply to the resistance in her arm; “but
we must be alone until I have finished all that I will to say. The trees
about us are best; we do not want cabs and streets just now.”
She felt blindly, miserably wretched.
“I don’t want to be married again,” she declared in a voice that was
thick with more tears; and then she gathered her skirt well into her
hand and they plunged together into the darkness beyond.
The park was dusk with night’s downfall and heavily misted by the day’s
rain. Its paths, usually like hard gray cement, were a slippery mosaic
of clay and brown leaves, and on either hand arose a stockade-like
effect of tree-trunks knowing no light beyond. Wind there was none to
rustle the leaves, nor sound of bird or beast. An utter and complete
silence echoed the footfalls of these two who had come into the
solitude, to the end that they might search there for a solution of
themselves.
At the first forking of their way, Rosina said timidly:
“We must not go too far; it is so lonely, I am afraid.”
Von Ibn stopped short, drew one of her arms behind his back, caught her
firmly to his bosom, and approached his face so close to hers that his
breath came and went against her lips.
“Are you frightened?” he asked.
“No,” she said, wrapt in a sort of awe at the wonder of her own
sensations, “I have the utmost faith in you.”
He loosed her instantly, and walked a little way off for a moment.
“I felt that you wished not,” he said, bitterly, “and so I held myself
back. _Mon Dieu_, how good I am to you,--how cruel to myself,--and no
thanks.”
Her heart was wrung.
“Oh, let us go back and go home,” she cried; “all this is of no use. It
makes me glad to go away, because I see now that for me to go will be
better for you.”
“And for you?” he asked, returning to her side.
“I said ‘for you,’” she answered gently.
“Then not at all for you too?”--he laid his hand insistently upon her
arm,--“not at all for you too?” he repeated.
She was silent.
“It was there in Lucerne,” he went on presently; “I knew it at
first--the first time I see you; and when I found that it wasyou
who had sent for me--I--I dared to hope that you too felt something,
even then, even so at the very first. Have you never known that
feeling?”--he exclaimed, his breath rising passionately, “has such
storm never swept within you?--and you have no other life for a while
but its longing,--no sleep but the stupid fatigue when one cannot
think more? What has my existence been since that day on the Quai by
the Vierwaldstattersee?--_Je ne peux rien faire!_--To the world I am
dead.--There is perhaps no future for me because I have learned to
love and have not learned to be loved.”
His voice broke utterly; he loosed her arm, walked apart once more, and
was once more silent.
Then her agitation suddenly found voice and to her own intense horror
she heard herself laughing--laughing a loud hysterical laughter, that
resounded hideously and was beyond her own control.
“You are amused,” he exclaimed, and his mood took on a justifiable tone
of outraged anger; “you laugh. You have made me like this and now you
laugh. If you were suffering and I had made you so, I should be ashamed
and sorry; but a woman laughs. You are as that other,” he continued,
impetuously, “and it will be the same some time after. When she had made
me wild, then she laughed. When I heard her laugh, I grew quite cold, I
cared no more, never more. Then, when I cared no more, she learned to
care, she grew to love, she wrote me many letters, she became most
miserable; but for me nothing mattered. Because I could not care more.”
Her laughter continued spasmodically in spite of her struggles to check
it. But between the paroxysms she gasped:
“I never tried--to make you love me. I never wanted you to come where I
did--”
“But now that I am all yours,” he interrupted, “now that nothing is
left for me, but you--” He paused. “What will I do now?” he added,
asking the question with a simplicity at once boyish and heartrending.
She was silent; her laughter had ceased. He came close to her and took
her hand again within his own. And then in the darkness beside him he
suddenly heard the bursting misery of her sobs.
“You weep,” he cried.
“No,” she whispered faintly, “no.”
“You weep,” he repeated slowly, and gathered her warmly and closely
within his arms.
“What is it necessary that we suffer?” he asked her softly. “Let us
cease struggling, let us be only happy,” and then he bent his head so
that his cheek touched hers, and waited for the words of her answer.
“Your heart is very near mine,” he whispered to her silence, “let it
stay near mine, let it rest mine.” Still she was silent. “_N’est-ce
pas?_” he asked, pressing her closer yet.
To her, at that instant, the darkness was flashing with strange lights,
the silence was roaring in thunder, the trees charging and whirling in
giant combat. Her head was suddenly light and then suddenly heavy; her
breath strangled her and then failed altogether. She swayed from side to
side, her head fell backward, and Von Ibn had it borne upon him, that
instead of being in love she had fainted.
“_Qu’est-ce que vous avez?_” he cried, as he felt her reeling, and then
he knew; and knowing, recognized the fact that he was alone in the
depths of the rain-soaked forest, with a helpless woman on his hands,
and that the situation was infinitely more novel than amusing.
He was obliged to let his umbrella fall in order that he might raise her
in his arms; and when she was so raised he felt a poignant wonder as to
what to do with her next. He had no idea which direction to take, for
the night was now night in good earnest, and the Englischergarten is so
large that one may walk for two hours and a half without passing its
limits. He felt uncertain as to just where they had entered it, the
common ingress not being from Schwabing, and also uncertain as to just
how far towards the centre they had penetrated. A pale, young moon
peeped up above the tree-tops; he looked at the moon and then at Rosina,
and they both appeared unnecessarily weak and inadequate to the urgent
necessities of the moment.
“She should be laid on her back and have water thrown upon her face,” he
murmured to himself in French, and then he felt his boots sinking deeply
into the mud, and recognized the impracticability of that means of
resuscitation at this particular moment.
“Why did I ever pray that I might hold her in my arms?” he thought in
German. “_Mein Gott_, what shall I do?”