some wax-doll-like principle. She gave him a look of complete
unrecognition, and closed them with a sigh.
“You must not faint once more,” he cried, anxiously; “you cannot, you
know.”
Something like physical despair swept over him as he felt her tremble
and sway again.
“What can I do?” he cried, shaking her very hard indeed, “we are far
from all. I cannot leave you to get a carriage, I cannot take you--”
“I don’t care what you do,” she murmured, with the usual complete
resignation of the swooning, always so exasperating to those who care
for them. He felt desperately that she was telling the truth.
There was a sound in the wilderness beyond, a sound that thrilled him
with hope and fear at the same instant. The developments of a sound may
under some circumstances prove one’s salvation or destruction. He
riveted his eyes anxiously in the direction from whence the echo of a
horse’s feet splashing through the mud was now drawing nearer each
second.
“If it prove the Prinz Regent himself,” he said decidedly, “he must take
us in.”
It proved to be, not a royal coach, but a mere ordinary cab, than which
nothing more welcome had ever crossed his vision in all his life before.
He hailed the cabman, and the cabman stopped in the greatest possible
astonishment, and was good enough to descend in the mud and open the
door. He asked no questions--cabmen never do--but took the address,
mounted to his seat, and put his horse to a rounder trot in the
direction of the city.
Rosina leaned back in her corner and shook as if she had the ague. Her
hands and feet were icy cold; Von Ibn took her hands in his and feared
that she was ill, or going to be so.
“What did make you like that?” he asked, as the wheels dashed the
mud-spatters up against the windows; “was it that I distress you, yes?”
“Yes,” she sighed.
Then he kissed her hands.
“Forgive me,” he said, contritely, “I have not meant it so. There in the
trees, when you were unconscious, I did not kiss you, I did not touch
even your hair,--not thirty men in all Germany had been so good as that.
You see what I try to be for you.”
He was leaning over her, the blood seemed to be boiling up into her
ears. She put up her hand:
“If you speak so,” she said, “I shall faint again; I get dizzy when you
talk to me in that way.”
“But if I kiss you only once,” he whispered.
“No--no--no,” she reiterated, and raised her hand and pushed his lips
away with it.
“_En effet vous n’êtes pas du tout gentille_,” he cried, in violent
anger, for his moods knew no shading in their transposition from one to
another; “you are cold and without heart. How long do you think that I
stood there in the wet and hold you back from the mud, and now you will
do nothing for me; and you were quite heavy too, and--oh, _mon Dieu_!”
he exclaimed sharply, interrupting himself, “my umbrella!”
“Have you lost it?”
“Have I lost it? Naturally I have let it fall to upraise you, and now I
have leave it there.”
“I will give you another,” she said pacifically.
“Another,” he commented scornfully; “do you think that I have no other?”
Then his weathercock cast of mind whirled again: “I do not want an
umbrella,” he said more forcefully, “I want a kiss.”
“I thought that you were distressed over losing it.”
“Not at all; I have already very many others. But a kiss from you I have
never yet.”
He seized her hand again, and tearing off the glove with a haste that
demolished two buttonholes, pressed the bare cold fingers to his lips
and eyes and forehead.
“Oh, I do love you!” he cried in a fresh storm of feeling. “You _must_
love me, because my much _must_ make of you a little.”
Then he kissed her hand many times more, stopping his rapid caresses to
gaze upon her with that curious, burning glow firing the sombreness of
his eyes the while he held her wrist against the fever of his face.
“If I obeyed myself,” he said hoarsely, “how I would hold you and kiss
you. _Je vous embrasserais tellement!_”
She wondered why she was not distressed and alarmed. Instead the awe at
her own emotion that had come upon her spirit in the wood was with her
again. Something like strength seemed rising within her, and what it
rose against was--strangely enough--not him, but herself. She was
conscious of a sympathy for him in place of any fear for herself.
She looked from the window and saw that they were now rolling rapidly
through the brightly lighted streets, and a glimpse of the Hof told her
that the end was but five minutes further on.
“You answer not,” he said, insistently; “you must say me some word.”
“Oh, what can I say?” she cried helplessly.
“Say that you love me.”
“But I do not.”
Then he loosed her hand and ground his teeth.
“Decidedly you are queer,” he said bitterly; “it is there in your eyes
and you will to deny it. You are senseless,--_vous n’avez pas de
cœur!_ I am always a fool to go on as I go.”
She turned her eyes upon him.
“_Je ne suis pas pour vous_,” she said gently and very, very sadly;
“_mais je ne suis pour personne non plus_,” she added, and there was a
tone in her voice that he had never heard before. His temper faded
instantly.
“You think of me with kindness, always,--_n’est-ce pas_?” he said,
returning her look.
Their eyes rested steadily upon each other for a little space. Then he
exclaimed:
“You do love me,” and started to seize her in his arms forgetful of
lights, streets, passers-by, and all other good reasons for
self-restraint.
But just then the cab stopped before the door of No. 6, the cabman
descended.
There was no further question as to _les convenances_.
Chapter Twelve
“BUDA-PESTH.
“DEAR ROSINA,--If you’re laid up I might just as well take a
week more in this direction. Plenty to see, I find, and lots of
jolly company lying around loose. I’ll get back about the
twelfth and we’ll plan to skip then as fast as we can. Keep on
writing Poste Restante, Buda, and I’ll have them forward. Don’t
try to fool me any by being too sick to sail. I’ve got to go the
nineteenth and you must too.
“Lovingly,
“JACK.”
She sat in the little salon the night of October fifth and read the
above affectionate epistle which the postman had brought to keep her
company, because every one else in the house was gone to the famous
concert of the famous pianist.
She could not go; that little episode in the Englischergarten and all
the attendant agitation had put her in bed for three days and rendered
her quite unable to go out for two or three more. She had been obliged
to write Jack that she was ill, with the above results, and she read his
answer with the sensation that life was long, the future empty, and
none of its vistas worth contemplating. Her heart ached dully--it was
forever aching dully these days, and she--
There was a tap at the door. Europe has no open-door policy, be it
known; all doors are always shut. Even those of _pension_ salons.
She looked up, and saw him coming in, his violin case in his hand. Then
life and its vistas underwent a great transformation, because he smiled
upon her and, putting the case down carefully, came eagerly to kiss her
hand.
“_Vous allez bien ce soir?_” he asked pleasantly, standing before her
chair and looking down into her face.
“Oh, I am almost well, thank you; but why are you not gone to the
concert?”
He pointed to his violin with a smile.
“It is a concert that I bring to you who may not go out,” he said.
“But you are making a tremendous sacrifice for me, monsieur.”
He stood before her, twisting his moustache.
“It is that I am regretful for the other night,” he said briefly, “for
that I am glad to give the concert up and make you some pleasure. The
other night--”
“Don’t,” she pleaded uncomfortably; “never mind all that. Let it all
go.”
“But I would ask your pardon. _J’étais tout-à-fait fou!_”
“If I have anything to forgive it shall be forgiven you when you play.
Do so now, please. Oh, you have no idea how impatient I am to hear you.”
He stared through her and beyond her for several seconds, and then came
back to himself with a start.
“Then I do play,” he exclaimed, and went to where he had placed the case
of rosewood, and lifting it from the small table, set it on the floor
and knelt before it, as a priest at some holy shrine. She leaned her
head against the chair back and watched him, her eyes searching each
detail of his appearance without her spirit being cognizant of the
hunger which led to the seeking, of the soul-cry which strove to fortify
itself against the inevitable that each hour was bringing nearer.
He felt in his pocket for his key-ring, chose from the many one
particular key, inserted it, turned it, left it sticking in the hole,
and then, with a curious breathless tightening of the lips, he raised
the lid, put aside the knit wool shield of white and violet, and with
the tender care which a mother bestows upon a very tiny baby lifted the
violin from its resting-place. As he did so his eye travelled with a
sudden keen anxiety over its every detail, as if the possibility of harm
was ever present, and as he held it to his ear and snapped the strings
one after another, she beheld with something akin to awe the dawning of
another nature upon his face, of another light within his eyes, the
strange light of that abnormal, unworldly gift which God gave man and
which we have elected to call by the name of genius. As he rested there
before her, tightening one cord, trying another, listening to a third,
she realized--with a sorrowful sense of her own remoteness at the
minute--that this man was some one who, in spite of all their hours of
intercourse, she had never met before.
He loosened the bow from its buttons and rose slowly to his feet. His
eyes sought hers, and he said dreamily:
“What shall I play?” even while his fingers were forming dumb notes, and
the uplifted bow quivered in the air as if impatient.
“Oh,” she said, acutely conscious of her inferiority,--of the ten
thousand leagues of difference between his grandeur and her
commonplace,--“play what you will.”
He hardly seemed to hear, his eyes roved over the little salon as if its
walls were gone, and he beheld a horizon illimitless. He just slightly
knit his brows and then he bowed his head above the instrument and said
briefly:
“Listen!”
And she listened.
And the unvoiceable wonder of his magic!
It was an intangible echo of the Tonhalle at Zurich, with the music that
they had heard there sounding as the waves lapped up against the
embankment and the crowd laughed and chatted after; those strains to
which she had then been deaf on account of her agitation came back now,
and the thrill of her pain was there still, rising and falling amidst
the music and the water breaking up against the stones. While she waited
on the verge of tears, the whole shifted to Constance, and through the
slow sweep of the steamers coming into the harbor sounded the “Souvenir”
of Vieuxtemps, drifting across the rose-laden air and carrying her back
to the minutes when--Ah, when! She put her hand before her eyes and it
was not the cords of his violin, but the sinews of her soul which
responded to his bow. That which man may not voice he played, and that
which our ears may not hear she absorbed into the depths of her being.
Something within them each burst bonds and met at last, but neither knew
it then, and the wonder carried her out upon the bosom of the Bodensee,
showed her the charm of its gracious peace, and then drifted as the
breezes drift, to the concert in the open air that is given each day by
the Feldherrnhalle, a concert that knows no discord, because the murmur
of life, the calls of the birds, the splashing of the fountains, and the
light-hearted joy of the crowd around, all meet and mingle in its
chorus. He echoed them all with the sublimity of the power which he
controlled, and all--bird-calls, fountain-drip, desultory laughter, and
careless joy, all flowed from him, and took from him as they flowed that
subtle and precious subconsciousness which lines our every cloud with
the infinite hope that is better than all else in this world.
She leaned forward breathlessly, her fingers interlaced around her
knees; her eyes had grown as dark as his own, her heart stood still, and
between its throbs she asked herself if _this_ was the secret of their
sympathy,--if _this_ was the basis of his mastery.
Then there was silence in the room and he stood motionless, his eyes on
the floor, the violin still resting against his shoulder in its rightful
position, above his heart, quite touching his head.
She did not speak and he did not speak,--neither knew for how long that
period of silence endured. But after a while he lowered the instrument
and looked at her.
“You like, yes?” he said with a faint smile.
“Can you ask?”
He laid his hand upon a vase that sat upon the table and shook his head.
“All this is not good, you know,” he said, as if communing with himself
alone; “here is no room for the music to spread. All these,” he pointed
to another ornament, “are so very, very bad. But some day, perhaps,” he
added, with another smile, “you will hear me in a good place.”
Then he raised the violin to position once more.
“Choose what you will have,” he told her.
“Oh, forget that I am here,” she pleaded, speaking with a startled
hushedness, as if no claim of conventional politeness might dare intrude
itself upon that bewildering hour, “do not remember that I am
here,--play as you would if you were quite alone.”
“That is very well,” he said, with a recurrence to his unseeing stare
and dreamy tone, “because for me you really are not here. Nothing is
here;--the violin is not here;--I am myself not here;--only the music
exists. And if I talk,” he added slowly, “the inspiration may leave
me.”
He went beside the piano and turned his back towards her, and then his
prayer made itself real and his love found words....
She wept, and when he ceased to play he remained standing in silence as
the very reverent rest for a short interval after the termination of
holy service....
After a while he moved to where the case lay open on the floor and knelt
again, laying his instrument carefully in its place and covering it with
its little knit wool quilt. Then he locked the lid down, replaced the
keys in his pocket, and, rising, seemed to return to earth.
“Can you understand now,” he asked, taking a chair by her side,--“can
you understand now how it would be for me if I lost my power to create
music?”
“Yes,” she said, very humbly.
“I think that nothing so bad could arrive,” he went on, pulling his
moustache and looking at her as he spoke, “because I am very much more
strong than anything that may arrive at me, and the music is still much
more strong than I. But if that _could_ arrive, that a trouble might
kill my power, you can know how bad it would be for me.”
She sat there, gazing always at her new conception of him. The tears
which she had shed during his music filled her face with a sort of
tender charm. It did not occur to her that any words of hers could be
other than a desecration of those minutes.
“I am going now,” he said presently, rising. “I have done no work since
in June, but I feel it within me to write what I have played to-night.”
He went over and took up the violin case and then he laid it down again
and came back to her side.
“I shall kiss you,” he said, not in any tone of either doubt or
entreaty, rather with an imperativeness that was final. “In the music
that I go to write to-night I want to put your eyes and also your kiss.”
He put his arms about her and raised her to his bosom.
“_Regardez-moi!_” he commanded, and she lifted her eyes into his.
Their lips met, and the kiss endured.
Then he replaced her gently upon the sofa, took up the violin and went
out.
Later that night she reproached herself bitterly.
“I ought to have a chaperone,” she told her pillow in strict confidence.
But the kiss had a place now in her life, and the place, like the kiss
itself, endured.
Von Ibn, in his room at the hotel, paused over his manuscript score,
laid down his pen and closed his eyes.
“_Elle sera à moi!_” he murmured, and smiled.
For him also the kiss was enduring.
Chapter Thirteen
Jack was expected on the morrow, and on the day after the start for
Genoa was to be made.
Under these cheerful circumstances Von Ibn came to call at the pension,
and Amelia tapped at Rosina’s door to announce to the “_gnädige Frau_”
that “_der Herr von Ibn ist im Salon_.”
Rosina was dressed for dinner and when her visitor saw her gown with its
long trailing skirt his face fell.
“We go to walk, yes?” he said, in a doubtful tone. She looked from the
window out upon the rainy view.
“It’s too wet,” she said hopelessly; but the hopelessness was
hypocritical, because she had resolved to never walk alone with him
again.
He threw himself down upon the divan and entered into a species of
gloomy trance. She took a chair by the window and unfolded her
embroidery. Since the night of the music their mutual feelings had
become more complicated than ever, and sometimes she wanted to get away
with a desperation that was tainted with cowardice, while at other times
she almost wondered if she should ever have the strength to go at all.
What he was meditating in these last days she could not at all divine.
He continued to have fits of jealousy and periods of long and absorbing
thought. The new knowledge of the spirit which he revealed in his art
was always with her and always held her a little in awe. Also the
recollection of the Englischergarten and of her own overwhelming
sensations there stayed by her with a persistence which knew no
diminution.
“I wouldn’t be off like that with him again for anything,” she thought,
as she drew a thread of red chenille from the skein upon her knee, and
stole a glance at the dark face opposite her.
“Why may we not walk?” he asked, looking up as if she had spoken aloud.
“I will be _très raisonable_.”
“It isn’t that,” she replied, annoyed to feel herself blushing; “it is
that it is so wet. I should ruin a skirt.”
He started to argue the question but just then the salon door opened and
Mrs. Jones came in with a book in her hand. He saw the book and she knew
it. Mrs. Jones had evidently come to stay. The salon was public
property, and Mrs. Jones had just as much right there as they had.
Nevertheless when she smiled and said, “Shall I disturb you?” they
resented her question as a sarcasm unworthy of Genoa’s proximity. Von
Ibn stood up and said, “Certainly not,” with a politeness which did
credit to his bringing up, but Rosina as she threaded her needle took a
vow to remember to _never_, in all time to come, pause for an instant
even in a room where two people were talking together.
Mrs. Jones seated herself and then made the discovery that she had left
her glasses in her own room; she rose at once and started to get them.
“Now we _must_ go out,” he exclaimed, hurriedly, “we may not talk here
with her. She speaks French as well as we, and German much better than
you;” he referred to the cosmopolitan custom of altering one’s tongue to
disagree with an (unwelcome) third party.
Rosina was already huddling her work together in hot haste.
“Yes,” she said, “I have a short skirt that I can wear.” She rose and
went towards the door. “I won’t be five minutes,” she said, turning the
knob.
Mrs. Jones was leisurely about coming back. She did not want to
inconvenience them too much, but she did want to find the salon empty on
her return, and she found it so.
While she was smiling and settling herself, they were going down the
three flights of stairs and out of the large main door. The rain had
ceased but it was still blackly and distinctly wet. Von Ibn had a
tightly rolled umbrella which he held with a grasp that somehow
suggested thoughts of their other promenade at nightfall.
“You can walk well, yes?” he said, as they turned in the direction of
the Isar.
“In this skirt,” she laughed, glancing down at her costume whose
original foundations had been laid for golf, “in this skirt I am equal
to anything!”
“But if you slip?” he supposed, anxiously.
“You ought to see the soles of my boots. I sent them to the little
shoemaker in the Wurzerstrasse and he soled them with rubber half an
inch thick.”
“How much is an inch?” he asked.
“Twice the width of the rubber on my boots.”
“No, but earnestly,” he said, “is it a _centimètre_?”
“Two _centimètres_ and a half make one inch.”
“You are droll, you English and Americans,” he said, “you see nothing
but your own way. I have heard Englishmen laugh as to how yet the
Russians count their time different from the civilization part of the
world, and then all England and America do their measure and weight in
a manner so uneven that a European is useless to even attempt to
understand it. There was a man there at Lucerne,--what did he say to me?
‘A mark is a quarter, is it not?’ that is what he asked. ‘_Mon Dieu_,’
I said, ‘if you cut it in four pieces it is four quarters, and if you
leave it whole it is whole,’ then he looked to find me _bête_, and I was
very sure that he was, and we spoke no more.”
Rosina laughed.
“He meant a quarter of a dollar,” she explained.
“I know that. You do not really think that I did not know that, do you?
It was for his poor careless grammar that I find the American even more
_bête_ than for his ignorance. Do you believe that in my own tongue I
would speak as many of you speak yours? In my own tongue I am above
correction.”
They were under the long arcade in front of the Regierung and in view of
the discussion which seemed impending she judged it advisable to say,
with a gesture:
“There is where we met Jack; you remember?”
Von Ibn looked quickly about.
“Yes, it was here,” he said, and then he shuddered slightly. “It was
very well to laugh after, but that might have been so bad. I was angry
and I struck a fearful blow then; I have often think of it when we were
travelling together.”
She grew thoughtful also, and her imagination found food among some
miserable possibilities which might have been.
So they came to the river banks and the Maximilianbrücke, and paused by
its rail.
The air was grand, fresh and moist, reminiscent of summer’s breath while
also prophetic of winter’s bite, and the Isar swept below them, carrying
its hurry of tumult away, away, far into the west, towards a wealth of
rose and golden sky. Between the glory and the water, in the middle
distance, lay a line of roofs stretching irregularly into the blackness
of their own shadows, and beyond them was the forest, to the fringing
haze of whose bare branches the distance lent a softness not their own.
The banks of the Promenade were still green, but the masses of vine that
trailed in the green ripples were all of a crimson or reddish brown, and
the shrubs showed here and there an echo of the same color.
It was beautiful and wonderful to see, and they stood still and feasted
their eyes for some long minutes.
“Oh, Isar,” Rosina cried softly, holding her hand out towards the
singing waters below, “when shall I see you again?”
“You will return some day,” her companion said hopefully.
“Who can tell?”
“But always you must come over some bridge to return to-night.”
She felt that such levity jarred upon her mood, and refused to return
his smile. She did not like him to feel like smiling too often these
days.
“Do not be of a bad humor,” he entreated. “I am this afternoon of such a
good one; and how can you know that you will not return? A woman can
never be decided, so you may very well see the Isar soon again. _Vous
comprenez?_”
“Is it being bad-humored to be sad?” she asked; “and why can’t I be
decided if I want to be?”
“Because,” he said, wisely, “you are a woman; and a woman is very
foolish to ever be decided, for she always changes her mind; and then
all her decided seems to have been quite useless.”
Rosina felt that this sentence called for study before reply, and so
walked on without speaking.
“Is that not so?” he asked, as they went down by the little stone stair.
“I never change.”
“Oh, now you know well that you do not speak the truth,--you are so very
changeable. This afternoon, _par exemple_, when I first come to ask you
to go out, you say you cannot of any possibility make it, and then, very
suddenly, we go.”
“But I recollected that I might wear this skirt.”
“And there was that lady, also,” he said thoughtfully.
“Yes, she was there, too.”
“But always you did change.”
“I don’t call it being changeable when one has a good reason for so
doing.”
He stopped short; and she, after going a few steps further, discovered
herself to be unaccompanied and stopped also.
“What is the matter?”
“Suddenly, I think.”
“Can’t you walk and think at the same time?”
He smiled, and came up with her again.
“If I make you a good reason--” he began, and then hesitated and was
silent.
They followed the muddy path almost to the Luitpoldbrücke before he
continued his phrase.
“If one can change for a good reason, and if I make you a good reason,
then will you change about me?”
She drew a quick little breath.
“I can’t change in that way,” she said; “you know that I do not want to
marry again: marriage is too awful an undertaking. Don’t you see that
even now it does not make you always happy to be around me--”
“I am never around you,” he exclaimed indignantly. “I never have hardly
touch you. I have been with you not as a man, but as an angel. _Je me
comporte comme un ange--comme un ange--c’est moi qui vous le dit!_ I
have given you one kiss such as a small baby might give its mother, and
that is all;--and then you say that I am always around you.”
He ceased speaking, and looked straitly and darkly before him. She
wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
“I tell you,” he continued violently after a short interval, “I am very
much too good. Whatever you bid me do, that I do. Whatever you bid me
not do, that I do not. And you do not thank me, or trust me, or treat me
as a friend. _Vous avez toujours peur de moi._ When I approach you, you
have always the air to expect that I will displease you. Have I deserved
that? Have I behaved badly once? Did I kiss you when you knew nothing
and I held you there in the mud--the night when I lose my umbrella? _Mon
Dieu_, you are very _drôle_, if you have known many men and do not
appreciate me.”
He stopped as if choked.
They had passed beyond the bridge and entered upon a path along the
river bank, a path bordered with willow trees. The sky was more
brilliantly gorgeous than ever, but under foot it was wet indeed.
“Try not to stamp so much as you walk,” she asked him very gently; “you
keep splashing me.”
“What is splash?” he demanded gloomily; “something that annoys your
ears?”
“No, something that spoils my boots.”
“I do not care if I spoil those boots; I find them most ugly.”
“Perhaps; but I could not be here but for them.”
He walked on with somewhat less vigor.
“Let us talk about us,” he suggested, presently.
“With reference to what?”
“To me.”
“No, no,” she said unwillingly.
“Yes; why not?”
“You always come back to that same subject; your mind appears to follow
a circuit, like a squirrel in a ring.”
“‘Wheel,’ you mean.”
“Well, ‘wheel,’ then.”
“What squirrel? We never have talked of a squirrel before.”
Rosina’s laugh rang out among the willows.
“_Decidément vous n’êtes pas du tout poli_,” he cried angrily. “You say
I am like a squirrel; I ask what squirrel, and you begin to laugh.”
“I never said that you were like a squirrel,” she exclaimed, greatly
shocked; “how can you think that I would say such a thing?”
“You did,” he declared bitterly. “You said I was like a squirrel in his
wheel, because I tell you so often that I love you.”
“Oh, monsieur, you _know_ that I never meant it in that way; how can you
think for an instant that I could have--have said that--that--” She felt
it impossible to define her offence again without having the corners of
her mouth give way; but she went close beside him and faced his vexation
with earnest, upraised eyes the while that she laid one hand upon his
arm with the sweet impulsive gesture of a pleading child.
The gold had all faded from the sky, and the pink reflection in the far
west was sunk beyond the horizon. The path was very solitary; they were
quite alone except for an occasional peasant returning from his labor.
“Say that you understand,” she said anxiously, as a break in the trees
revealed a long stretch of river; “you _must_ say something, because I
want to know how far it is to the next bridge.”
He stopped and stared ahead.
“There are no more bridges,” he proclaimed.
“No more bridges,” she cried.
He shook his head.
“Must we go the whole way back along this same muddy path?”
“Yes, surely.”
She turned.
“Then let us go back now. There is no fun walking any further this way
after the sunset is over.”
“Is it for the sunset alone that you walk?”
“What shall I say?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Say that you walk for me.”
“And then what follows?”
“I follow.”
They laughed together.
“I am so good to you,” he declared; “even when you laugh at me I am
never angry. I am truly so very good.”
He appeared so well content with himself that they went the whole
distance to the Peace Monument before she disturbed his placid
introspection. There was a pleasure to her in simply walking beside him
in silence; it was a sensation which she had never attempted to analyze,
but its existence had become a part of her own.
“Do not let us go home,” he proposed suddenly, when her turning to cross
the Luitpoldbrücke recalled him to himself; “let us go somewhere and
dine alone together. It is perhaps the last time; Jack returns
to-morrow.”
“Oh, let us,” she agreed delightedly; but then her voice altered
suddenly for the worse. “No, it’s impossible,” she said sadly, “I can’t
go to a café and dine in this short skirt.”
“Why can you not?”
“Can’t you see why?”
He walked off some ways to the side and gazed critically at her skirt.
“Yes,” he said, rejoining her, “I can see why.”
They were halfway across the bridge; he laid his hand on her arm and
stopped her.
“_Je vous ferai un propos_,” he said eagerly; “we will take a car going
to the Ostbahnhof, and then we will leave it at a quiet place and seek a
quiet café and dine there.”
“All right,” she said; “but you must telephone to the _pension_, or they
won’t know what has become of me.”
“I can say that we are gone to the theatre,” he suggested.
“They won’t believe that because of this skirt.”
“I will say we are gone too far and must send for a cab, and will eat
while we wait.”
“I think that whatever you say will sound like a lie, so it doesn’t
really matter.”
“Then I will say that we do not return until after the supper, and
nothing else.”
“Where will you telephone from?”
“From the café. Where would I telephone from?”
Rosina looked vaguely around in the darkness.
“We are only three or four blocks from the _pension_ now, are we not?”
He glanced about.
“It will be droll if we meet some one you know.”
“Yes,” she said coldly; “it will be very funny--like Mrs. Jones to-day.”
“I am quite vexed when she came in,” he said seriously; “why do people
come in like that?”
“We’ll be just as thoughtless when we’re her age,” Rosina said
charitably. “I think myself that it is astonishing that so many young
people manage to get betrothed when there are so many old people to keep
coming in.”
“Getting betrothed is very simple,” said Von Ibn, “because always the
young girl is willing; but when she is a young widow and not willing,
that is what is difficult, and makes Mrs. Jones _de trop_.”
She was obliged to laugh.
They were come to the Maximiliansstrasse, and a car was making its way
jerkily around the corners of the monument in the middle of the square.
It was a car for the Ostbahnhof, and full--very full.
“Let it go by,” he said. “We will walk on and another comes in a
moment.”
They let it pass, and wandered on towards the rushing river.
“You see why it was so foolish to be sad,” he remarked, as they
approached the bridge; “here is the second time that you have seen the
Isar since you weep good-bye forever this afternoon.”
“I didn’t weep,” she said indignantly.
“Did you not? I thought that you did.”
They waited for another car at the end of the bridge; the island where
the Isarlust sports its lights and music all summer, looked particularly
deserted in the contrast of this October night. She spoke of the fact.
“You were often there?” he asked; “yes?”
“Yes, very often.”
“With who?”
She smiled a little in the dark.
“We used to come in the evenings,” she said; “every one used to come.”
Another car approached--again crowded.
“Let us walk,” she suggested; “all the cars will be crowded for the next
hour.”
“Will your feet go further?” he inquired anxiously.
“Yes, I think so.”
They turned their faces to that gardened slope which rises to the right
of the Maximilianeum. The full moon was coming up behind the stately
building, and its glorious open arches were outlined against the evening
sky. The great tower which rose at the end near them seemed to mount
straight upward into heaven itself.
“I don’t want to leave the Maximilianeum,” she exclaimed, reft with an
intense admiration for the grandeur of what was before her; “I don’t
want to leave the Bavarian moon; oh, I don’t want to leave Munich; not a
bit.”
“And me?” said her companion, taking her arm, “do you want to not leave
me also?”
“I don’t want to leave you either,” she declared. “I don’t want to leave
anything, and I must leave everything. Oh,” she exclaimed suddenly and
viciously, “I wish I might know who it was that wrote home to Uncle
John.”
“But you have thought to know?”
“Oh, I’m almost sure that it was that man in Zurich.”
“He was not so bad, that Zuricher man,” he said, reflectively. “Did I
ever say to you that I did go to the Gare with him when he went to
Lucerne?”
“No, you never told me that. What did you go to the station with him
for?”
“I thought that I would know whether after all he really went to
Constance. At the Gare, after he has bought his ticket for Lucerne, I
find him most agreeable.”
“Did you really think that perhaps he _was_ going to Constance?”
“Yes, I did. I find it very natural that he shall want to go to
Constance. I am surprise that day at every one who can decide to go any
other place because I so wish to get to Constance myself. _Vous
comprenez?_”
She was obliged to smile audibly.
“It was very funny the way that you came into the Insel _salle-à-manger_
that night. I never was more surprised in my life.”
“I like to come to you that way,” he went on. “When you are so your face
becomes glad and I believe that you have been really lonely for me
and--”
He stopped suddenly; two big electric lights loomed at the corner to
their right and the scene which was revealed by the uncurtained state of
the window was responsible for the sudden turn of the current of his
thoughts.
“We can eat there,” he exclaimed.
She stopped, astonished.
“Can we?” she asked. “I wouldn’t think so.”
“But surely yes,” he affirmed; “it is a café.”
He flung the door open as he spoke and stood back to let her pass
inside.
“It is a little smoky,” he continued, as the door fell to, “but--”
“A little!” she interrupted.
“But what does that do to you? and there is another lady, so it is very
right for you to be here too.”
“She doesn’t look like a lady to me,” said Rosina, dodging under a
billiard-cue, for in this particular café the centre of the room is
occupied by the billiard-tables; “she looks decidedly otherwise.”
Von Ibn glanced carelessly at the person alluded to.
“It is always a woman,” he remarked; and then he led the way around to
a vacant corner where there was somewhat less confusion than elsewhere.
“Here you may sit down,” he commanded, and laid aside his own hat and
overcoat.
She obeyed him, contemplating her surroundings with interest as she
began to unbutton her gloves.
For the place was, to her eyes, unique of its kind, her lot having been
cast hitherto in quite another class of cafés. It was very large, and
decidedly hideous, wainscoted in imitation panels and frescoed in
imitation paintings. The columns which supported the ceilings were
brilliantly banded in various colors and flowered out below their
pediments into iron branches of oak leaves among which blossomed the
bulbs of many electric lights. By each column stood a severely plain
hat-rack. In the middle of the room were four billiard tables, around
its sides numberless small marble-topped stands where beer was being
served galore. Against the walls were fastened several of those
magnificent mirrors which testify so loudly to the reasonable price of
good glass in that happy land across the seas; each mirror was flanked
by two stuffed eagles, and decorated above its centre with one ornate
quirl in gilt and stucco. And the whole was full and more than full of
smoke.
Von Ibn rapped on the tiled floor with his umbrella, and a waitress
serving at a table near, five beer-mugs in each hand, nodded that she
heard. Then he turned to Rosina:
“_Eh bien!_”
“I never was in a place like this before.”
“You may very likely never be in such a one again,” he told her
seriously; “so you must be as happy as you can while you’re here.”
“That reason for having a good time hadn’t occurred to me,” she
answered, giving him back his smile.
“Then think to occur it now,” he rejoined.
The waitress had by this time gotten rid of her ten mugs and came to
them, beginning proceedings by spreading the ménu down on the table and
running her pencil through item after item.
“You had better order before everything is gone,” Rosina suggested.
“I must think the same,” he replied, and took up the ménu.
“_Haben Sie bouillon?_” he demanded immediately.
The waitress signified that bouillon was not to be.
“How shall I do?” he asked, looking blank. “In all my life I have never
eat without a bouillon before?”
Rosina and the waitress felt their mutual helplessness in this
difficulty, and the proceedings in hand came to a standstill natural
under the circumstances.
“Can’t they make you some?” the American brain suggested.
He turned the idea over in his mind once or twice and then:
“No,” he said; “it is not worth. It will be better that we eat now, and
later, when I am in town, I will get a bouillon.”
So, that difficulty being disposed of, he ordered a species of repast
with an infinite sense of amusement over the bill of fare. The waitress
then retired and they were left alone in their corner.
“The other lady is getting kissed,” Rosina said. The publicity of a
certain grade of continental love-making is always both interesting and
amazing to the Anglo-Saxon temperament.
He looked behind him without at all disturbing what was in progress
there. After a minute’s quiet stare he turned back in his seat and
shrugged his shoulders.
“You see how simple it is when the woman is still,” he said pointedly.
“There is no fainting there; he loses no seventeen-mark umbrella from
Baden-Baden.”
She ignored the gist of this remark, and began to unhook the collar of
her jacket. Then she decided to take it off altogether.
“You find it too warm?” he said, rising to assist her.
“I certainly do.”
“It is curious for you and I to be in such a place, _n’est-ce pas_?”
“Very curious.”
“But it is an experience, like eating in the woods.”
“I don’t think that it is at all like eating in the woods; I think that
nothing could be more different.”
“We are so alone.”
“Oh!”
“Now you understand what I mean.”
“Yes, now I understand what you mean. And it is really a little like the
woods, too,” she added. “Those iron acorns and leaves are the branches,
and the stuffed eagles are the birds.”
He looked at the oak-branches and the eagles for some time, and then he
said:
“Let us talk.”
“What are we doing now?”
“We are waiting for what is to be to eat.”
“I thought that that in itself was always sufficient entertainment for a
man.”
“I like better to talk. I have not much time more to talk with you,
_vous savez_.”
“We will talk,” she said, hastily. Her eyes wandered vaguely over the
room seeking a subject for immediate discussion; all that she saw was
the perpendicular cue of one of the billiard players.
“Watch!” she exclaimed. “He’s going to make an awfully difficult shot.”
Von Ibn looked towards the player with very little interest depicted on
his countenance.
“Oh, he missed,” she exclaimed disgustedly.
“But of course. How could a man like that do such a _massé_? You are so
hopeful ever. You say, ‘See him make so difficult a play,’ when only
looking upon the man’s face tells that he himself is sure that he is
about to fail.”
“I’ll give you a riddle,” she went on, receiving his expostulation with
a smile. “But perhaps you don’t know what a riddle is?” she added
questioningly.
“Yes, I do know what a riddle is; it is what you do not know and must
tell.”
“Yes, that is it.”
“And your riddle is?”
“Why am I like a dragon?”
“Like a--” he faltered.
“Dragon.”
“What is a dragon?”
“It’s a horrible monster. Don’t you know the picture in the Schaak
Gallery of that creature running its neck out through the slit in the
rock so as to devour the two donkeys?”
“Yes, I know the picture. But that creature is blue.”
“Oh,” she said hopelessly, “it’s no use trying to tell you riddles, you
don’t understand.”
“Yes, I do,” he cried eagerly. “I understand perfectly and I assure you
that I like very much. Dragon is ‘_drachen_,’ _n’est ce pas_?”
“Yes.”
“And you are as one?”
“I ask _why_ am I like one?”
He looked particularly blank.
“You are perhaps hungry?” he hazarded.
She began to laugh.
“No, it’s because I’m breathing smoke.”
“Do dragons breathe smoke? It is a salamander you are believing in.”
“In pictures dragons always breathe smoke and fire.”
“But there is no fire here.”
“There must be somewhere, because there is so much smoke.”
He was unmoved and ruminative.
“I do not find your riddle very clever,” he said at last.
Rosina buried the poor, weak, little scintillation at once and stamped
on its grave in hot haste.
“I think that our dinner is coming,” she announced presently, turning
her veil above her brows, “and I am so hungry.”
“I find your hunger a much better answer of that riddle than to be
breathing smoke,” he said.
“Of course you do, because that is the answer that you thought of.”
The waitress began to arrange the dishes upon the table and when all was
in order he prepared to serve them both.
“I often start to say most clever things,” he said, as he carved the
fish, “but before I can speak you have always say something else.”
She took the plate that he passed her, and picked up her fork at once.
“Then when you are silent for a quarter of an hour or so it would really
pay me to keep still and wait; wouldn’t it?” she inquired.
He took a mouthful and deliberated.
“I think so,” he said at last.
A deep stillness fell over the festal board. Von Ibn was mute and his
companion felt that, the preceding remarks considered, she would be dumb
herself. The entire meal was accordingly eaten in absolute silence,
until, when she had finished, she could not refrain from stealing one
amused glance in his direction.
“You laugh,” he said, returning the smile in kind.
“I am sure that it is going to be something very brilliant this time,”
she told him.
He stared for a minute; and then he understood and laughed aloud.
“I only eat then,” he exclaimed, “_mais, Dieu! quels enfants nous sommes
ensemble_. I must often wonder if you are so happy with me as I am with
you? I cannot say why it is, but if you only be there I am content. Tell
me, is it at all so for you?”
“I enjoy you,” she answered; “most men are stupid or horrid.”
“When?” he asked anxiously.
“When one is much with them.”
He looked at her with some alarm.
“But are many men much with you?”
Rosina laughed merrily over the trouble in his face.
“You would have been unbearable if you had been of a jealous
disposition,” she said, nodding.
“Yes,” he replied gravely, “I have always feel that myself; for with me
it is very strong that there shall be no other. But tell me now, truly
are many men much with you?”
“Why I have hosts of friends,” she declared, “and, on account of the way
that the world is made, half of them are obliged to be men.”
“But you said that they were all stupid or horrible,” he reminded her
carefully.
“I said that most of them were.”
He thought a moment.
“I wish that there had been a bouillon here,” he said then.
She began to put on her gloves, thinking that the hour of departure was
close at hand.
“_J’ai envie de fûmer une cigarette_,” he said suddenly, “_ça ne vous
fait rien d’attender un peu_?”
“I don’t care,” she answered, and laid her gloves down again.
“Am I ever horrible to you?” he asked, taking a match from the white
china pyramid that ornamented the centre of the table.
“I didn’t say ‘horrible;’ I said ‘horrid.’”
“Is there a difference?” he lit his cigarette.
“Yes, indeed.”
He crossed his arms upon the table, and smiled at her through his own
personal quota of smoke.
“Tell me the difference. Why are we horrid?”
“Because you so often are. Men never understand.”
“_Au contraire_,” he said quietly, “men always understand. It is the
woman who will not believe it, and it is cruel to say her the truth. A
woman is always _genée_, she will sob in a man’s arms and still declare
that ‘No.’ Why is it necessary for her to be so? That I cannot
understand.”
Rosina caught a quick little breath; she had not been prepared for such
a turn of conversation. Von Ibn went on with a degree of nonchalance
that masked his close observance admirably.
“When a man loves a woman, he knows certainly if she loves him or not.
It is there every minute in her eyes and on her lips; and yet he must
ask her, and she must pretend a surprise. Why? We are altogether human.
Then why must women be different? I am most sorry for a poor woman; she
cannot be kissed or caressed or loved without the pretence that she
dislikes it. It must be very difficult.”
She felt her face getting warm.
“You do not like what I have say?” he asked.
“No.”
“Because it is true?”
“It isn’t true.”
“An American would not say that to you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Do you like better the American way of covering up all truth?”
“It is politer, I think.”
He looked at her for a moment.
“I have been horrible, _n’est-ce pas_?” he asked.
She felt very uncomfortable indeed.
“Do let us go now,” she said in a low tone.
He struck his water-glass with a knife, and their waitress, who was near
by, looked around.
“_’Zahlen!_” he called to her. She nodded. He went for his coat and hat,
and when he returned Rosina was fastening the frogs on her jacket.
“I would have put it on if you had waited,” he said in a tone of
remonstrance.
“I am used to getting into it,” she assured him.
He looked attentively at her and perceived more than she thought. Then
the waitress came up and recited all that they had eaten in a sing-song
tone, and he pushed some money towards her with a gesture that disposed
of the question as to making change.
“We will go out now,” he said, turning towards the door, and the next
minute they were in the cool, fresh night air. He put his hand upon her
arm, and bent his head a little.
“Do not be vexed with me,” he said softly; “even a little vexing of you
makes me great pain.”
Then he pressed her arm closely.
“It is not long that we have now to talk. I beg you talk to me; do not
be so sad.”
“I’m not sad.”
“Then talk.”
She gathered up her energy with a mighty effort.
“What shall we talk about?”
“Anything. Have you a letter to-day?”
“Yes.”
“From who? From Jack?”
“No, from the Marquis de W----.”
His fingers came together over her arm in a vice-like grip.
“I have never heard of him,” he cried; “where have you know him?”
“In Paris. And then I met him on the train--”
Von Ibn’s eyes grew large with fright.
“But you must not meet men on trains,” he said; “that is not at all
proper for you.”
“He took charge of me from Paris to Lucerne,” she said soothingly; “he
is really very delightful--”
“I did not see him at Lucerne,” he interrupted.
“No, he was gone when you came.”
“How old is he?”
“He is seventy.”
His heat subsided suddenly, and there was a pause during which she felt
circulation returning slowly to her arm.
“And you have a letter from him to-day?” he asked, after a while.
“I have a letter from him almost every day.”
He looked down at her with an air of genuine astonishment.
“What can a man of seventy say in a letter almost every day?” he asked.
“He can say a great deal. He wants me to marry him!”
He laughed aloud, and then exclaimed gayly:
“What a great lady you will be! and how nice you will look in your
mourning!” and then he threw his cigarette away and laughed afresh.
His laughter was so infectious that she laughed also.
“He writes me how happy I would be with him,” she continued merrily;
“and he is very positive about it, too. How can he think that I would
really wish to marry him?”
“He can think it very well from the newspapers of your land. Is he not a
marquis? If I did not love you, I should always have surprise to think
that you are an American, and will not let me make you a great lady.”
She ignored this speech in its entirety.
“To think,” she pursued, “that one cannot travel in a daughterly way
with a gentleman of seventy without--”
“Yes,” he interrupted, “but that is why it is best not to travel in the
charge of gentlemen. One is always so liable to be disagreeably urged to
become a marchioness.”
She assented with a thoughtful nod.
“I don’t answer all his letters,” she said; “I burn them.”
“Poor marquis!”
“They are good letters of their kind; but there are a whole lot of
things which it does not pay to write to a widow. You can fool a girl,
but a widow always knows.”
“Does a widow always know?”
“Oh, dear me; yes.”
“Then why did you not save the poor marquis his pain?”
“I never dreamed of his feeling that way. How could I? I only thought he
was delightful. And always, even the first day at Madame de S----’s,
when he said adieu he would kiss my hands in the most adorable Louis
XIV. kind of a way.”
“And all the while it was in his heart a plot to marry you. You see!”
“Men are so queer,” she reflected; “I cannot see why that old gentleman
should have wanted to marry me.”
“I can,” said Von Ibn, dryly; “I can see quite well.”
The marquis as a topic of conversation seemed at an end. They were in
the Hellerstrasse, going towards the river, and the heaviness which the
Isar always cast over her fell down about her spirits.
“Oh, I _cannot_ believe that in forty-eight hours I shall be gone!” she
exclaimed suddenly.
“Do not go,” he said, tightening his hold upon her arm again; “stay with
me.”
“I must go,” she declared. “I couldn’t stay with you, anyway,” she
added, in a tone of unintended mournfulness.
His mood altered, and the light of a street lamp showed that every tinge
of gayety had fled his face.
“You have no will of your own,” he said with acerbity; “that Jack has it
all. I find you so very weak.”
She raised her eyes to his and they looked strangely at one another. The
moon was above them, full and beautiful, and the Isar rapids were
murmuring their far cry.
“We shall return over the Ludwigsbrücke,” he said, and they went down
the incline in silence.
She thought vaguely, “I am here now, and _he_ is here! How will it be
when I am gone and we are separated forever?” But her brain refused to
comprehend--only her heart felt the warmth of his touch upon her sleeve.
So they came down to the bridge, which abuts on an island and
accommodates the tram passing from the Ostbahnhof to the Marien Platz.
The Isarthor rose up grimly between the city lights and their view.
Above was the golden moon. Behind, the black outlines of the suburb
which they had just quitted.
“Let us stop here,” he proposed, pausing by the bridge rail, and she
stayed her steps in obedience.
It was nearly nine o’clock, and the passers-by were few. They had the
bridge quite to themselves; the water running beneath murmured gently,
but did not interrupt even their unvoiced thoughts.
The man took out his _étui_ and lit another cigarette, sinking his
sombre gaze meanwhile deep into the stream below. His companion leaned
upon the stone parapet.
And then he sighed most heavily.
“It is the autumn,” he said; “all the summer is over. _Tout est fini!_”
There was a profound melancholy in his voice which threw a band of iron
about her throat and choked all power of speech out of her. “How little
I know last May of what this summer brings,” he continued; “I have
believe that all summers were to come alike to me.”
A tram approached and crossed behind them with a mighty rumble. When all
was still he spoke again, and the tone of his voice was childishly
wistful.
“I did not know, there in Lucerne, before you came, how happy I might
be. You are not so wonderful, but to me you are now a need, like air
which I must breathe to live.”
There was an anguish underlying his words which set her heart to aching
intolerably.
“Oh,” she gasped helplessly, “let us walk on! Let us go home! I cannot
bear to hear all that again.”
She turned to go, but he caught her hand in his.
“I must speak,” he said forcefully, though in the lowest possible tones;
“it is perhaps the tenth time, but it is certainly the last time. Will
you not think once more again of it all, and say here now that you love
me?”
He held her hand so tightly that it was impossible for her to withdraw
it. She looked up in his face, and the moon showed each the unfeigned
feeling of the other.
“You don’t know about marriage,” she told him with white lips and
laboring breath. “One may be very unhappy alone, and there is always the
strength to bear, but when you are married and unhappiness comes, there
is always that other unhappiness chained to you like a clog, shutting
out all joy in the present, all hope in the future; and nothing can help
you, and you can help nothing.” She stopped and put her hand to her
bosom. “Only death can help!” she cried, in a voice as if a physical
torture had its grip upon her; “and it is so awful when death alone can
help!” She looked at the ground and then up at him. “Oh,” she sighed
miserably, “how can I dare to go where I may come to that pass again?
Don’t ask that of me.”
He turned his face away from her and she felt his fingers loosen, little
by little, their clasp upon her arm. Then he loosed her altogether, left
her side, moved away a space, and stood, his head bowed, his eyes bent
upon the water. There was a fearful horror of hopelessness in his
attitude.
Down from the Gasteig came a cab, an empty cab, and he looked up and
hailed it.
“We will ride home,” he said, coming back to her; “I am bereft of
strength.”
The cab halted and he put her inside.
“6 Maximiliansstrasse,” he called to the driver, and got in himself and
banged the door behind him.
Then he threw himself back against the cushions, covered his eyes with
his hand, and remained silent and motionless the ten minutes that they
were _en route_.
She did not speak either; she dared not. The air was so heavy with
sorrow and despair that words would have seemed like desecration; and
the telepathic misery that emanated from him loaded her soul as if she
had been guilty of a crime.
When the cab stopped he opened the door, and as he turned to give her
his hand she caught one shocked glimpse of the grief in his face--of the
oddly drawn look of suffering in his half-closed eyes. The whole change
in him, in them, in it all, had come so quickly that as she stepped from
the cab she was conscious of a stunned sensation, a dazed lack of
feeling, a cold and stony power to bear much--for a little while.
“Go by the door,” he said in muffled tones, “I must pay the cab.”
She crossed the width of the sidewalk and stood by the great _porte_,
waiting.
When the cabman was disposed of he came to her side, and felt in his
pocket for the keys. Then he took his gloves off and felt again; as he
felt he stared steadily across the street.
“It’s the round key,” she said, when he finally produced them. “Have you
any tapers? I’m afraid that the hall will be dark.”
He shrugged his shoulders as if tapers were of no earthly consequence in
such a time of stress. Then he fitted the key in the lock and swung back
the massive portal.
Because of that vast key system which is part of the intricacy of the
very good housekeeping of Frau G----, there was no necessity to disturb
the Hausmeister; but nothing could lessen the wail of the door which let
them in with a groan, and closed behind them with a bang that was worthy
of the occasion. It was the man’s place to have lessened the noise by
laying a restraining hand upon the lock, in accordance with the printed
directions nailed against the main panel, but Rosina felt intuitively
that this was no time to remind him of the fact.
With the closing of the door they were left in a darkness thorough and
complete.
Rosina’s voice: “You said you had wax tapers.”
Von Ibn’s voice: “No, I have not say so.”
Rosina’s accents of distress: “Haven’t you any tapers?”
Von Ibn’s voice, dully: “Yes, I have, but I have not say so before.”
Rosina, entreatingly: “Then do please light one.”
Dead silence.
She began to walk towards the stairs that she could not see; as she did
so she heard his keys jingling, and knew from the sound that he must be
hunting the wherewithal for illumination. He struck a match and adjusted
it in the small hole at the end of the box, and as he did so he called:
“Stop! wait for me to come also.”
She paused and looked back towards him. By the white light of the little
taper his face appeared absolutely ghastly, and his heavy eyelids
drooped in a way that pierced her heart.
“I think,” he said, when he was beside her, “that it is better that I go
to-morrow very early, and that we meet no more.”
At that she was forced to put her hand against the wall in the seeking
for some support without herself. They were upon the first step of the
stairs, she leaning against one side wall and he standing close to the
other. After he had spoken he crossed to her and his voice altered.
“If you had loved me,” he said, “here--now--I should have kissed you,
and all would have been for us as of the skies above.”
“Oh, look out!” she exclaimed.
He was close above her.
“You are afraid of me?”
“No, it is the wax; you are letting it drip on us both.”
“It should stop upon the box,” he said shortly.
She began to mount the stairs, pulling off her gloves as she went. One
fell, and he stooped quickly for it, with the result that he dropped the
match-box. Again they were alone in the darkness.
“This is an awful place,” he said irritably, feeling blindly for what
was lost. “That I am on my knees to a match-box this night,” he added
savagely.
Her soul was full of sympathy for him. She bent to aid him in his
search, and her hand in its wandering encountered his own. He seized her
fingers and pressed them to his lips, and she knew that he was kneeling
close at her feet.
“This is impossible,” he said vaguely, hurriedly; “we may not part now
in a minute, like this. You have spoken foolishly, and I have accept it
too quick. We must speak longer and talk reasonably to each of us. We
must go where we may sit down and be quiet. _Faut être raisonable._ Let
us go out of the door and go to the Café Luitpold and there speak.”
The Café Luitpold is a gorgeous and fashionable resort in the
Briennerstrasse; its decorations are a cross between Herrn-Chiemsee and
a Norddeutscher steamer, and its reputation is blameless.
“I can’t go to the Café Luitpold at ten o’clock at night in a golf
skirt,” she objected gently, and tried to continue on her upward way;
but he held her fast by her hand, and as he pressed it alternately to
his face and lips, she felt her flesh wet with hot tears.
“You are crying!” she exclaimed in awe.
“I hope not,” he said; “I hope not, but I am near it. If I do weep, will
you then despise me?”
“No,” she said faintly; “no--I--”
He rose to his feet, and in the dark she knew him to be very, very near.
He still held her hand and his breath touched her cheek.
“Oh,” he whispered, “say you love me if it be but so little! _Dites que
vous m’aimez!_ I have hoped so greatly, I have dreamed so greatly; I
will ask now no more to possess you for my own; I will content myself
with what you can so easy give--only a little love--”
He drew his arm about her. Something within her was rising as the slow
tide rises before the September gale, and she felt that all her
firmness would be as the sand forts which the children build, when that
irresistible final wave shall carry its engulfing volume over all. She
summoned to her aid the most frightful souvenirs of her unhappy
marriage, and pushed him violently away. His answer was a sudden grasp
of mighty vigor, at which she gave a muffled scream.
“You detest me, then?” he said through his teeth.
“It is my hat,” she cried, freeing herself; “you drove the longest pin
straight into my head.”
He moved a little away, and in so doing trod upon the match-box. Then in
an instant there was light again, and he could see her, her arms
upraised, straightening her hat.
“It is most badly on,” he told her.
“I know it,” she replied, starting swiftly upward.
At the curve he stopped short and shut his eyes; she stopped too, three
steps farther on.
“Are you ill?” she asked anxiously.
He opened his eyes.
“I am most unhappy,” he replied, and went on again.
So they came to the top at last.
“Here we are,” she said, halting before the door; “give me the keys,
they work intricately.”
He handed them to her in silence; she took them in her hand and tried to
smile.
“If you really go to-morrow,” she said, as she put one into the lock, “I
hope--” her lips trembled traitorously and she could not go on.
“_Dites_,” he whispered, coming nearer, “you do care a little, a very--”
He dropped the matches a second time.
“_That_ was never an accident,” she cried, below her breath.
“It was not my intention,” he declared; then he added, “you have only to
go in, I can very well find my way out in the dark.”
But the door refused to open; instead, the key turned around and around
in the lock.
“I do believe,” she said at last, in a curiously inexplicable tone,
“that we have come up the wrong stairs!”
A sort of atmosphere of blankness saturated the gloom.
“Is there another stair?” he asked.
“Yes; it goes from the other passage. It’s the staircase to No. 5. I
think--indeed I’m sure--that we have come up the stairs of No. 6 with
the keys of No. 5.”
“I have never know that there was another stair,” he declared. “If you
had say that before I--” then a fresh thought led him to interrupt
himself. “It is a fate that leads us. We must go to the street again,
and we shall go to the American Bar and talk there.”
The “American Bar” is the name which the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten has
elected to give to a small and curious restaurant situated in its
basement. There is nothing against the “American Bar” except its name,
which naturally leads American women to avoid it.
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” said Rosina, drawing the keys into her
hand; “it is no use. We are both all used up. I want to get home. And I
couldn’t go anywhere if I wanted to in this skirt.”
“It is always that skirt,” he cried angrily; “that my heart breaks
to-night is nothing,--only ever I must hear of your skirt.”
“Oh, where _are_ the matches?” she said nervously; “we must find them
somehow.”
He stooped to institute another search, and the umbrella slipped from
his hand; it struck the floor with a noise that echoed from the attic to
the cellar.
“Oh!” she gasped sharply; “we shall wake every one in the building
before we get through.”
“It is very terrible--this night,” he said quietly, and as he spoke he
found the match-box and there was light again. Then he picked up his
umbrella, and they returned down the three flights of stairs. In the
lower hall he stopped again.
“We _cannot_ separate like this,” he said, laying his hand upon her arm;
“there are doings that one human cannot do. I must speak longer with you
before I go. It is not talking to be going ever up and down steps with a
wax taper. I know nothing of what I have say since we leave the cab, and
here, each minute, any one may enter. When we go out, come with me
across to the Hofbrauhaus, and there we will talk for but five minutes,
and then you shall return. Your skirt will go very well there. We shall
quickly return. _Dites ‘oui’_.”
The Hofbrauhaus is, as its name indicates, the café, or rather
_brasserie_, of the Court brewery. It is a curious place, the beer of
which is backed by centuries of fame, and Von Ibn told no lie when he
said that any skirt would do well there.
“Oh, I can’t go,” she said, almost crying in her distress and agitation.
“It will do no good; we just suffer more and more the longer we are
together. I am miserable and you are miserable, and it takes all my
strength to remember that if I yield we shall be very much more
miserable in the end. Let me get home!”
She unlocked the large _porte_ as she spoke, and he blew out the taper,
pushed it open, held it while she passed through, and then stayed its
slam carefully behind her.
Then there was the _porte_ of No. 5 to unlock and the taper to relight,
and three more staircases to mount.
“I shall go to-morrow morning,” he said quietly and hopelessly, as they
went a second time upon their upward way. “I shall put all the force of
my will to it that I go. It is better so. _Pourquoi vous vexer avec mon
ardent désir pour vous?_”
Her heart contracted with a spasm of pain, but she made no reply.
“To meet again will be but more to suffer,” he continued. “I touch at
the end of what I am capable to suffer. Why should I distress you for no
good to any one? And for me all this is so very bad! I can accomplish
nothing. The power dies in me these days. _Toute ma jeunesse est prise!_
I feel myself become old and most desolate. I am content that it is
good-bye here.”
It seemed to her that her turn had come to falter, and fail to move, and
close her eyes in misery. If--if--only--
But they went on slowly until the top landing was just above their
heads. Both knew that the top landing must bring the termination of all.
She took the door-key in her hand, went a little ahead of him and fitted
it noiselessly into the lock. It turned. The end was at hand. She looked
towards him and attempted a smile. He put the match-box on the window
ledge and drew her within his arms.
“It is for the first and the last time,” he said hoarsely, and then he
kissed her furiously, passionately,--twice, thrice, and once again.
“_C’est comme ça, l’amour!_” he whispered; “and because you know nothing
of it, you let it go from you.”
Then he put his hand to his throat as if strangling, and, opening the
door, stepped aside.
“Good-bye,” he murmured, as she passed within. “_Bon voyage!_”
The door closed between them.
* * * * *
She went to her room and found Ottillie asleep upon the sofa.
She crossed to the window, opened it softly and leaned out; after a
little she heard the door beneath open and close, and then his shadow
fell beneath the electric light.
Then he was gone!
This time there would be no return.
The moisture of his lips was yet upon her own, and he was gone forever.
* * * * *
She crossed the room and fell upon her knees beside the bed.