THE BREAKING OF THE BARRIERS
Chapter Fourteen
It was very early, very dark, very cheerless, that most miserable hour
of six o’clock in the morning, the very worst hour ever known in which
to be routed out of bed in order that an unpleasant journey may be
begun.
Without, it was faintly light; within, it was brightly gas. What is less
cheerful than the aspect given a room by the gas burning high at six
o’clock in the morning? Rosina’s room looked absolutely ghastly, for it
was bare of everything but travelling apparatus, and they were all
strapped and waiting. She herself sat before her untouched breakfast
tray and watched Ottillie lace her boots, while she dismally went over
for the two hundred and seventy-sixth time every detail of the night
before the last.
There was a tap at the door and Jack came in. He was tanned with his
recent trip and had a thrilling new travelling ulster with carved
deer-horn buttons. He had bought the buttons at the Tagernsee and had
had an ulster constructed in Vienna, just as a background for them. He
looked at his cousin with a buoyant air that she felt to be bitterly
unkind, all things considered, and exclaimed:
“You must hurry up, my dear; the cab will be at the door in five
minutes, and we don’t want to miss that train, you know.”
“I’m quite ready,” she said helplessly.
“Is all this stuff going?” he asked, looking about; “you can’t mean to
carry all this with us to Genoa, surely.”
Rosina’s eyes strayed here and there over the umbrella case, the two
dress-boxes, the carry-all, the toilet case, the two valises, the
dress-suit case, and the hat-box. She did not appear to consider the
total anything to be ashamed of.
“What’s in those two boxes?” Jack continued.
“Clothes.”
“Why didn’t you put them in a trunk?”
“You told me to send all my trunks _frachtgut_ two weeks ago. I had to
keep out some to wear, naturally.”
He drew a martyr’s breath.
“You do beat all! I don’t know how we’re ever going to get all this
stuff along with us. There isn’t anything more, is there, Ottillie?”
“_Oh, mais non, monsieur!_”
“All right. You better have them take all this down; the cab must be
there by this time.”
Rosina stood up.
“I must say good-bye to Fraulein Hélène and her mamma,” she said sadly,
going to the door.
The good-bye was a trying one, and its tears were harshly interrupted by
a voice in the hall:
“Come on, Rosina, we’re going to miss that train for a fact if you don’t
hurry.”
“Go, my dear child,” said Frau G----; “do not weep so. Many think that
they are going forever, but they all always return.”
Rosina choked, and went.
Jack rattled her down the stairs--those sob-provoking stairs--at a
tremendous rate, and when they went out of the _porte_ their eyes were
greeted by a cab that looked like a furniture van, so overloaded was its
capacity.
“George, but it’s full!” Jack cried in dismay. “Well, there’s no time to
get another; we must just pile in some way and let it go at that.”
They piled in some way and it went at that.
“The train leaves at 7.20,” Jack remarked as they passed the post-office
clock, “we shall just make it easy.”
Rosina made no answer, and no one spoke again until they reached the
Karl Platz and the cabman slowed up and looked around inquiringly; for
some trains are reached from the front and some from the sides of the
main station at Munich, and the cabs suit their routes to the
circumstances from the Karl Platz on.
“Zurich!” Jack called out, “and hurry!” he added. “We really are making
pretty close connection,” he went on, “it’s 7.05 now. But then there is
only one trunk to check.”
“I’m glad that that’s yours,” Rosina said, thinking of her hand luggage
and his comments thereon.
He whistled blithely.
“Oh, we’ll get there all straight,” he said hopefully.
They drew up before the Bahnhof at 7.10, and it behooved the man of the
party to be very spry indeed. He got their unlimited baggage on to a
hand-truck, paid the cabman, and hustled the whole caravan inside.
“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” asked the porter who operated the hand-truck, as
he went leisurely after their haste.
“Zurich,” said Jack, “and _wir haben sehr wenig_ time to spare; you want
to look lively.” Then he rushed to the ticket gate to send Rosina and
her maid aboard while the trunk was being weighed.
“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” asked the man at the gate.
“Zurich.”
“Train goes at 7.45.”
“It doesn’t either,” said Jack, who understood German fluently, “it goes
at 7.20.”
For answer the man pointed to the great sign above his head, which bore
out the truth of his statement in letters six inches high.
“Well, I vow,” said Jack blankly, “if that man at Schenker’s isn’t the
worst fraud I ever ran up against. Say, cousin, we’ve got over half an
hour to check my trunk in.”
She shook her head as if she didn’t care.
“I’ll go and see to it now,” he said, “and then I’ll come back here and
try to get on to the train.”
He went off, and they waited by the gate while the man stationed there
looked at Ottillie, and her mistress recalled the tone in which a voice
had said, “It is for the first and last time!” and what came next.
When Jack returned they were permitted to pass the gates and go aboard
the cars. The porter loaded the entire length of both racks with their
belongings, and as soon as he was paid Jack hung up his ulster with the
deer-horn buttons, stretched himself at full length upon the longest
seat, and was asleep within five minutes.
Rosina took the window corner opposite him and contemplated his callous
slumber with a burning bitterness.
“And he must see how unhappy I am, too,” she said to herself.
Then she leaned her chin upon her hand and fell into a reverie which so
blinded her with tears that when the train did move out of the yards she
beheld a Munich of mist and fog, and a Pasing which was a mere blot
amidst the general blur of her universe. She did not want to go to
Genoa, she wanted to stay in Germany; and everything which the train
passed appeared to be returning towards Munich with all possible speed,
while she, she alone, was being borne swiftly away from all--all--all.
“Leaving for home,” she reflected. “I’m not _leaving_ at all; I’m simply
being wrenched away! Talk about turning one’s face towards America! I’m
not turning my face; I’m having my neck wrung in that direction!” and
the tears rolled heavily down her cheeks.
Ottillie unfastened one of the small valises and handed her mistress a
fresh pocket-handkerchief, an attention which was most welcome just at
that juncture.
About ten o’clock Jack opened his eyes and yawned vigorously twice or
thrice. Then he got up on his elbow.
“You _are_ a pretty sight!” he said, after a lengthy contemplation of
her woe; “you look like--like--well, you look pretty bad, and you
haven’t a soul to blame for it all but yourself.”
She made no reply.
“There’s Von Ibn gone north, declaring that his future is completely
ruined, and you sit crying like a baby because you must leave him, and
yet you won’t marry him. If he was some worthless scoundrel that
couldn’t be thought of, you know very well that all we might try to say
or do wouldn’t keep you from him for three minutes; but just because he
is so eminently all right you see a necessity for cooking up a sort of
tragedy out of nothing, and making him crazy, and yourself about as
bad.”
“Have you heard from him?” she asked coldly.
“I know that he left Munich yesterday early. He must have been awfully
cut up to have been willing to undertake a trip at that hour. He hates
to get up early--”
“That’s no crime.”
“Who said it was? So far from being a crime, it ought to have been
another bond of congeniality between you two.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“If he was a man at home he’d take to drink and go to the devil, but
being a fellow over here I suppose that he’ll just go up the Zug-spitz
and down the Matterhorn, and up Mont Blanc and down the Dent du Midi,
until he considers himself whole again.”
She choked and said no more.
The train guard came through soon after and put the usual question:
“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_”
“Zurich,” said Jack, as he produced their tickets; “about what time do
we get there?”
“Are you going straight through?” the guard inquired as he punched a
page in each little book and restored the library to their rightful
possessor.
“Yes.”
“Then why did you not take the express?”
Jack fairly bounded in his seat.
“The express!” he ejaculated. “Great Scott, do you mean to say that we
are not on it!!!”
“Oh, no,” said the guard, “you are upon the way-train that follows half
an hour later. The express arrives at two-forty; this train gets in
between seven and eight at night.”
Nothing could bear deeper testimony to the state of Rosina’s crushed
sensibilities than the way in which she received this bit of
information. While Jack swore violently she continued to look out of the
window with an indifference that was entirely genuine.
“To think that that other train must have been right there within a
hundred feet of us!” cried her cousin.
She did not turn an eyelash.
“By George, Rosina, I don’t believe I ever was as mad as this in all my
life before!”
She sighed.
“I don’t mind anything,” she said sadly.
“You ought to mind getting to Zurich at eight o’clock instead of
half-past two; there’s quite a little difference.”
“I don’t mind,” she repeated.
“Well, I do,” said Jack. After a pause of stormy thought he unclenched
his fist and said, “I bet I get even for this some day, but just at
present I think that I’ll go to sleep again.”
Which he did forthwith.
About noon they came to Lindau on the Bodensee. Rosina shivered and felt
sick, because Constance lay upon the further side. The train did not run
beyond Lindau and a change was necessary. The change revealed the fact
that there was a custom-house at that point. An unexpected custom-house
is one of the worst features of continental travel; but the officials
of Lindau were delightful, drew chalk circles on everything, and sent
every one upon their way rejoicing. Our party went around the little
station and were halted by a guard with the common greeting:
“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_”
“Zurich,” Jack answered, hauling out his tickets.
“_Fahren Sie mit Bahn oder fahren Sie mit Schiff?_”
Jack looked nonplussed.
“Which are the tickets for?” he asked.
“Either.”
He turned to where Rosina waited, her eyes gazing in the direction of
Constance.
“Oh, Rosina,” he called out, “do you want to _fahr_ from here on _mit_
the _Bahn_ or the _Schiff_?”
“I don’t care,” she replied.
“What’s the difference, anyhow?” he asked the man.
“With the boat you do not connect with the train on the other shore,” he
was told.
“You don’t, eh? Well, I’m very anxious to make that train upon the other
shore, so I think we’ll _fahr_ right along _mit_ the _Bahn_. Come on!”
he called again to his cousin, “we must get aboard.”
They went slowly along the platform to the train gate.
“They call Lindau the German Venice,” he said, as they waited to pass
the gate, “but I don’t think that it looks very Venetian; do you?”
She choked, because Venice began with V, and felt herself quite unable
to frame an answer to his question.
As every one but themselves seemed to have elected for the “Schiff,”
they found an entire wagon empty and spread their luggage out well. Jack
even went so far as to establish himself in solitary state in an
adjoining compartment, to the end that he might consider the proposition
of more sleep. Before the train was well under way the guard came
through, and past experience led Rosina to call through the connecting
door:
“Do ask him if we must change again.”
“Do we change again?” he asked.
“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_”
“Zurich.”
“You must change in Bregenz.”
“We must change in Bregenz,” Jack called out.
By that time the German Venice was well behind, and the train was
skirting the southern shore of the Bodensee. The sun was shining on the
waves, and the woods upon the banks were spattered with red and yellow.
And off to the north Constance was lying. Ah, Constance--the
Stadtgarten--Huss’ Tower--the “Souvenir” of Vieuxtemps!
Rosina wept afresh.
“Oh, Ottillie,” she sobbed, forlornly, “_que je suis malheureuse
aujourd’hui_!”
Ottillie opened her little bag and handed her mistress another fresh
handkerchief; it was the only way in which she could testify to her
devotion upon this especial day.
At Bregenz they descended, with the aid of a porter, at about half-past
two. As they left the train it was borne in upon them that this change
was not a change at all, but just another custom-house.
“What strange country have we run up against, I’d like to know!” Jack
asked in amazement; and then the black cocks’ plumes in the _casquette_
of the _douanier_ revealed the information that he craved.
“How does Austria get to the Bodensee?” Rosina begged to know, having
seen the cocks’ plumes as quickly as he had.
“I don’t know,” replied Jack, not at all pleased at the discovery as to
where they were. “It does seem as if every country in Europe has a
finger in this lake, though; or, if they haven’t, they keep a
custom-house open on it just as a side line to their regular business.”
The porter led them into the great wooden shed, where some unplaned
boards laid across boxes served as counters, Bregenz being in the throes
of the erection of a new station.
“I bet they make it plain whether its _kronen_ or _gulden_,” said
Rosina’s cousin as he threw his valise on top of the porter’s small
mountain; “if I’d known that I was to come in connection with that vile
money system again I’d have _schiffed_ it across the lake or walked
around the northern shore before I’d ever have come this route.”
By this remark he testified to a keen recollection of his Viennese
experiences and the double dealing (no pun intended) of the Austrian
shopkeeper just at the present epoch in the national finance system of
that country.
Behind the boards two uniformed officials paced up and down, and when
all was neatly ranged before them the one bestowed his attention upon
Rosina while the other turned his in among the infinity of boxes
belonging to her party. He peeped into two or three of the valises and
chalked them and all of their kind; then he demanded the opening of the
largest dress-box. Ottillie unstrapped it and undertook to satisfy his
curiosity to the fullest possible extent.
The object uppermost of all was a Russian leather writing-tablet. The
official leapt upon that at once.
“On this you must pay thirty _centimes_,” he declared, grabbing it up.
“_Warum?_” said Jack. He found “_warum_” the most useful word in his
German vocabulary, because by the very nature of things it always threw
the burden of the conversation on to the shoulders of the other party.
“You cannot pretend that it is an article of wearing apparel for
madame,” said the officer archly.
“I never said that it was an article of wearing apparel for any one,”
Jack retorted hotly; “I asked why I had to pay thirty _centimes_ on it.
It isn’t new and it isn’t dutiable, and I know that, and you know it
too.”
“What is it, anyhow?” asked the man.
“It’s to write on.”
“Why does not madame write on paper, like everybody else?” inquired the
witty fellow.
“There’s your six cents,” said Jack, in great disgust; “I reckon you
take _pfennigs_, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” said the Austrian, “we take everything.”
“Yes,” replied the American, “so I observed in Vienna.”
Then he turned away and the porter loaded up again.
They went out on the platform and were told that the train had just
gone.
“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” asked the guard, taking pity on their
consternation at being left high and dry so unexpectedly.
“Zurich.”
“Oh, then that wasn’t your train anyway; that train went to Rorshack.
You take the Zurichbahn at half-past three.”
There was three-quarters of an hour to wait.
“Do you suppose that there is anything worth seeing in Bregenz?” the man
of the party suggested.
“I don’t want to see it if there is,” his cousin replied.
“Well, I do want to see it, even if there isn’t,” he answered; “you and
Ottillie can go into the waiting-room and I’ll be back in half an hour.”
So he went off whistling, his ulster floating serenely around him.
Rosina established herself in a boarded-off angle which under existing
circumstances was dignified by the title of “Warte-Saal,” and every nail
that was driven into the new Gare of Bregenz pierced her aching heart
and echoed in her aching head.
After the lapse of half an hour Jack turned up again, having thoroughly
exhausted Bregenz and purchased a new cane most ingeniously carved with
bears’ heads and paws interlaced.
He was not overpleased to be informed that the Zurichbahn was late, and
that there was no probability of their leaving the dominions of Francis
Joseph before four o’clock at the earliest.
“It’s an awful shame the way this world is put on,” he said, yawning and
walking up and down; “it would be Paradise to Von Ibn to have the right
to cart you and your bags around, and it’s h--l for me, and I’ve got it
to do notwithstanding.”
“I never sent for you to take me home,” Rosina said in an outraged tone.
“Oh, I wasn’t blaming you,” he declared amicably.
“Oh,” she said coldly, “I thought that you were.”
The Zurichbahn was very late, and did not put in an appearance until
half-past four. Then they went aboard with a tired feeling that would
have done credit to an arrival in Seattle from New York.
“Do we change again?” Rosina asked with latent sarcasm, when the guard
(a handsome guard, worthy to have been a first lieutenant at the very
least) came through to tear some pages out of their little books.
“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” he asked, with a beaming smile.
“Zurich,” Jack sung out, with renewed vigor.
The guard opened the door leading into the next compartment, and then,
when his exit was assured, he told them:
“Must in St. Margarethen change,” and vanished.
“He knows the time for disappearing, evidently,” Jack said; “I bet
somebody that felt as I do threw him out of the window when he said that
once. And I have a first-class notion of getting down and taking the
next train straight back to Munich for the express purpose of murdering
that fellow that started us out this morning.”
Rosina felt a deep satisfaction that none of his heat could be charged
up to her; _she_ had offered no advice as to this unlucky day. She sat
there silent, her eyes turned upon the last view of the Bodensee, and
after some varied and picturesque swearing her cousin laid down and went
to sleep again.
They arrived in St. Margarethen about half-past five, and night, a damp,
chill night, was falling fast. The instant that the train halted a guard
rushed in upon them.
“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” he cried, breathlessly.
“Zurich, d---- you!” Jack howled. He was making too small a shawl-strap
meet around too large a rug for the fifth time that day, and the last
remnant of his patience had fled.
“Must be very quick; no time to lose,” said the man and hurried away.
That he spoke a deep and underlying truth was evidenced by the mad rush
of passengers and porters which immediately ensued. They joined the
crowd and found themselves speedily flung in some shape into Zurichbahn
No. II., which moved out of the station at once.
Jack was too saturated with sleep to be able to try any more. He went
through to the smoker’s compartment, and Rosina looked apathetically out
upon the Lake of Zurich and reflected her same reflections over again
and again. The moon, which had looked down upon the Isar rapids, rode
amidst masses of storm clouds above the dark sheet of water, and
illuminated with its fitful light the shadows that lay upon the bosom of
the waves. She felt how infinitely darker were the shadows within her
own bosom, and how vain it was to seek for any moon among her personal
clouds.
“It’s a terrible thing to have been married,” she thought bitterly.
“Before you’ve been married you’re so ready to be married to any one,
and after you’ve been married you don’t dare marry any one.” Then she
took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “Oh, dear,” she sobbed,
“it doesn’t seem as if I could possibly be more wretched with him than I
am without him!”
They reached Zurich in the neighborhood of nine o’clock. The end of a
trip always brings a certain sense of relief to the head of the party,
and Jack’s spirits rose prodigiously as he got them all into a cab.
“We’ll get something to eat that’s good,” he declared gayly, “and then
to-morrow, after a first-class night’s sleep, we’ll go over the
Gotthard, and be in Milan Monday. And then, ho for Genoa, Gibraltar, and
joy everlasting!”
He seized Rosina’s hand and gave it a hard squeeze.
“Cheer up, you poor dear!” he cried; “you’ll come out all right in the
end,--now you see!”
She pressed her lips tightly together and did not trust herself to say
one word in reply.
She felt that she was beginning to really hate her cousin.
Chapter Fifteen
They stood at the summit of that double flight of marble steps which run
up the right-hand side of the Milan Cathedral’s roof and down the left.
There are one hundred steps on either side, and having just mounted the
right-hand hundred Rosina looked down the left-hand hundred with an
affright born of appreciative understanding.
“Oh, Jack,” she cried, “I never shall get down from here alive! What did
you ever bring me up for?”
“I brought you up to talk,” said her cousin. “Come over here, and sit
down on the ridge-pole beside me.”
The ridge-pole of the Milan Cathedral is of white marble, like all the
rest of the edifice; it is wide and flat, and just the height for a
comfortable seat.
The cousins placed themselves side by side thereon, and Jack lit a
cigarette while he deliberated on just how he should proceed with the
case in hand.
[Illustration]
“Well,” he said at last, folding his arms, clearing his throat, crossing
his legs, and in other ways testifying to the solemnity of what was
forthcoming, “I want you to pay a lot of attention to what I’m going to
say, Rosina, for I’m going to talk to you very seriously, and you must
weigh my words well, for once let us get out to sea next week and it
will be too late to ever take any back tacks as to this matter.”
She turned her sad eyes towards him; she was looking pale and tired, but
not cross or impatient.
“Go on,” she said quietly.
“It’s just this: it’s four days now since we left Munich, and I can see
that your spirits aren’t picking up any; instead, you seem more utterly
done up every day. So I’ve made up my mind to give you one more chance.
It’s this way: you know we’re all awfully fond of you and proud of you
and all that, but you know too that no one can ever make you out or
manage you--unless it’s me,” he added parenthetically; “and you always
do what you please, and you always will do what you please, and the
family share in the game generally consists in having to get you out of
the messes that your own folly gets you into. You didn’t need to marry,
you know, but you just would do it in spite of anything that any one
could say, and all we could do was to be sorry for it, and sorry for
you when you were unhappy, as we all knew that you would be beforehand.
And that was the one mess that no one could get you out of. Well, then
he died, and you had another show.” Jack paused and jarred his cigarette
ash off with his finger-tip. “You know and I know just who there was
waiting there at home, but you elected to turn them all down and come
over here to travel around alone. And that was all right as long as you
stayed alone, but terribly risky when,--well, when that letter was
written in Zurich--”
“Ah,” she cried sharply, “then it _was_ from Zurich!”
“Yes, it was from Zurich,” he replied indifferently; “and it was
perfectly natural under the circumstances that the letter should have
been written. The letter was straightforward enough, only, of course, it
necessitated Uncle John’s sending me over to--”
“But I hadn’t known him but three days then,” she interrupted.
“That wasn’t making any difference to him, evidently. And so I came over
and looked up everything; and I even did more, I came there to Munich
and went off with him on that trip so as to learn just everything that
it was possible to learn, and it all comes to just what I’ve told you
before: if you want to marry him, you can; if you don’t want to marry
him, you needn’t; but for Heaven’s sake why do you persist in refusing
him if it uses you up so awfully?”
Her mouth quivered and her eyes filled slowly.
“Have you been flirting?” he asked, with a very real kindness veiled in
his voice, “or do you really love him?”
She lifted her wet eyes to his.
“I don’t know,” she said, with simple sincerity; and after a minute she
added, “But I can’t make up my mind to marry just for the sake of
finding out.”
Jack whistled softly.
“So that’s it!” he said at last.
They remained sitting quietly side by side for two or three minutes, and
then he spoke again; his voice was gentle, but firm and resolved, and
there was a sort of finality about his words which clinched into her
heart like an ice-grip.
“Then the best thing to do is just what we’re doing; I know that you
wanted to stay and see more of him, but, feeling as you do, that
wouldn’t have been right to him or to yourself either. It seems tough on
you, but you’ll get over it in a few months, and if it comes to a
funeral for Von Ibn--why, it isn’t our funeral, anyway!”
He stood up as he spoke, and smiled and held out his hand to her. She
rose, feeling as if some fearful ultimatum had been proclaimed above her
head.
“It’s sort of hard, you know,” Jack said, as he assisted her carefully
down the steep steps; “it’s _awful_ hard to travel with you and have you
never smile and never say anything, and not be able to explain that you
feel bad because you won’t marry a man who wants you and whom you want.”
“I married just such a man once upon a time,” she replied sadly.
“Yes,” said Jack; “but I didn’t like that man, and I do like Von Ibn.”
She drew a quick breath.
From the cathedral they returned directly to the hotel.
Chapter Sixteen
It was Genoa.
The end of all was at hand.
Rosina recollected the careless, callous manner with which in earlier,
happier days she had spoken of this fated spot.
“Are you going home by the Southern Route?”
“Yes, we sail from Genoa;” or, “Do you leave at Naples?” “Oh, no, it’s
Monte Carlo this time, so we shall get off at Genoa.”
Genoa!
Once she had thought its blue mountain masses most sublimely beautiful,
now anything with hollows and shadows reminded her of those two
misery-circled eyes, and she was led to wonder afresh if he, or she,
would ever recover.
It is always astonishing how the port from which we sail partakes of our
sailing sentiments. It’s a “jolly good place” or a “dull old hole,” just
according to who is on the deck or who is on the dock. Handkerchiefs
flutter gayly in the stolid face of Hoboken every day of the year, and
many beside Marie Stuart have wept themselves out of sight of sunny
France. It isn’t the place that counts when the anchor goes down or up,
it’s the Who and the When; and in view of what has filled all the
foregoing pages I trust that the reader will sympathize with Rosina and
pardon my slang if I state that Genoa appeared to her upon this occasion
very much more rocky than ever before.
Their arrival had not been auspicious, to begin with. The cab on its
narrow way hotel-ward had collided energetically with another cab and
had a wheel taken off. Jack was on the high side, and Rosina was only
too anxious to have anything happen to her; but Ottillie, who had
narrowly escaped being pitched out on her head, was quite perturbed, and
feared that the accident was a bad omen for the voyage.
The following morning Rosina saw her cousin leave for the inevitable
visit to Fratelli’s, and when he was safely out of the way she put on a
walking-suit, veiled herself thickly, and, taking a carriage, went all
alone to that grand eastern sweep of boulevard whose panorama of sea and
city is so beyond the language of any pen to portray. At the summit she
dismissed the carriage, and rested there alone, leaning against the iron
balustrade, her eyes turned afar, her bosom riven by emotions as
limitless as the horizon that lay before her. A sailing-vessel was
spreading its wings for an Egyptian flight; in the port to her right
the great white ocean liner was loading her cargo; overhead the gulls
whirled, shrieking. But to all she was blind, deaf, unwitting.
For with the conversation upon the ridge-pole of the Milan Cathedral
life had seemed to close for her. The finality of Jack’s ruling had
barred the future out of her present forever. There is no more
unmitigated grief for a woman than to be chained to the consequences
begotten of her own way, and to have her judgment taken seriously and
acted upon, to the end that all possible chance of change is swept
forever beyond the reach of her will.
She hung there against the cold iron and knew no tears, because her
wretchedness had outstripped their solace.
Her reasons had reached the pass where they craved to be overruled, and
no one was going to overrule them. She did not state the facts to
herself in so many words, but she felt her helplessness and moaned her
pain.
Oh, that pain! the pain of one who sees the light too late, who divines
the sun only by the splendor of the glow which it has left behind. What
memories they hold to torture everlastingly! What reveries they nurse
from thence on evermore!
If only more had been said, or less! If only more had been denied, or
granted! There is forever imprinted on the brain some one especial look
which time can never dim--some special word whose burden nor sleep nor
wake will lighten.
There, at her feet, the Isar rushed, and through the myriad murmur of
its rapids his voice came back to her. “_Tout est fini_,--all is
finished!” he had said, with that enveloping mist of melancholy in which
his spirit shrouded itself so easily. And then a wax taper flashed
before the blackness that sheathed her vision, and she looked in
heart-quivering agony upon the dumb appeal of those great, brown eyes,
with their shadows doubled by the torturing of the hour.
“He felt perhaps as I feel now,” she thought, pressing her hand against
her bosom; “I didn’t know then--I didn’t know!”
She turned to walk along the cliff.
“If I was sure,” she told herself, “I think that I would--” but there
she paused, shuddered violently, and left the phrase unfinished.
At luncheon Jack was uncommonly cheerful. He asked her if she didn’t
want to go to Nice and spend one of the two days before their departure.
She shook her head.
“But why don’t you go?” she said; “you could just as well as not.”
“I don’t know but that I will,” he replied; “only I hate to leave you
here alone.”
“Oh, I’ll do very well,” she assured him, smiling.
About four that afternoon he came into her room, where she was lying in
a reclining-chair by the window, looking listlessly out and dreaming of
Munich. He stood before her for a long time, contemplating her and the
gown of lace and silk which foamed about her throat and arms, and then
cascaded down to spread in billows on the floor.
“I declare,” he said suddenly, “it seems wasteful somehow for you to
dress like that just to sit here alone.”
Her mouth curved a little.
“Is that a night-dress?” he inquired curiously.
“No, cousin, it’s a tea-gown.”
“Oh!”
He stood still beside her.
“They told me a funny thing at the steamship office this morning,” he
said, after a while; “the man says that there’s never a steamer sails
but that some one who has made their last payment down is obliged for
some reason to stay behind.”
“Do they give them back their money?” she asked, trying to appear
interested.
“Yes; and they always fill the room either at Naples or Gibraltar.”
And still he stood there.
“Why don’t you sit down?” she asked at last.
“Where’s Ottillie?” he said, without seeming to notice her question.
“I’ve sent her out to do some errands. Why, do you want anything done?”
“No;” he leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I do love you, Rosina,” he
added, half joking, half serious; “I wonder what sort of a show I’d have
had if I’d tried--ever?”
She shrank from him with a quick breath.
“Oh, Jack, I beg of you, don’t tease me these days.”
He straightened up and laughed, taking out his watch.
“It’s quarter after four,” he said, reflecting. “The mail must be in;
I’ll see if there are any letters,” and he went out.
She remained by the window, twirling the shade-tassel with her idle
fingers, and seeing, not the rattle and clatter of Italian street-life,
but the great space of the Maximilian-Joseph Platz, with the doves
pattering placidly over the white and black pattern of its pavement, and
the Maximiliansstrasse stretching before her with the open arches of the
Maximilianeum closing its long vista at the further end....
Quick steps in the hall broke in upon her day dream, and her cousin
re-entered, an open letter in his hand and his face curiously drawn. He
gave her one strange look and halted.
“What has happened?” she asked hastily and anxiously.
He went to the window and looked out, so that his back was turned
towards her and his face concealed from her view.
“I’ve just heard from Von Ibn,” he said briefly.
“Is that letter from him?”
“No; he’s not writing any letters these days.”
“Oh--” she began, and then stopped.
He kept his back towards her, and then, after a short pause:
“He’s going all to pieces,” he said in a low tone, very slowly.
“Oh--” she exclaimed again, and again stopped.
“I reckon he’s pretty badly off; he’s got beyond himself. He’s--well,
he’s--. Rosina, the long and short of it is, he’s gone crazy!”
She rose slowly out of her seat, her face deadly white, her finger-nails
turned cruelly into her palms.
“Jack!” she stammered; “Jack!”
He continued to look from the window.
“I knew he’d take it awfully hard,” he said, in a voice that sounded
strained, “but I didn’t think he’d give up so completely; he’s--”
Then she screamed, reaching forth and touching his hand.
“You’re not breaking it to me that he’s dead! You’re not telling me that
he’s dead!”
He turned from the window at that, and was shocked at her face and the
way that her hands were twisting.
“I know he’s dead!” she screamed again, and he sprang forward and caught
her in his arms as she sank down there at his knees.
“He is _not_ dead!” he told her forcefully; “honestly, he is _not_ dead!
But he’s in a bad way, and with it all just as it is, I don’t know what
to do about you. If you don’t care, why, as I said before, it’s not our
funeral; but if you do care, I--well, I--”
“Oh, Jack, can I go to him? I must go to him! Can’t you take me to him?”
She writhed in his arms as if she also was become a maniac.
“Do you really want to go to him? Do you know what that means? It means
no more backing out, now or never.”
“I know, I understand, I’m willing! Only hurry! only telegraph that I
will come! only--” she began to choke.
“I’ll tell you,” said he, putting her into the big chair again; “you
shall go to him. Stay there a minute and I’ll get my railway guides and
look it up right away. Collect yourself, be a good girl!”
He went out, and she folded her hands and prayed wildly:
“God, let him live! God, take me to him!” over and over again.
And then her impatience stretched the seconds into minutes, and she
sought her cousin’s room, which was just across the hall from the suite
given to herself.
She flung the door open without knocking and entered precipitately,
expecting to find Jack and the railway guides. But Jack was not there.
There _was_ a man there, sitting by the window, twisting his moustache
and biting his lips in raging impatience. To this man Jack had said
three minutes before, “She’ll be in here in less than sixty seconds. I’m
going to the steamship office,” and then the man had been left to wait,
and his was not a patient disposition....
A tall man, a dark man, a man whose hair lay in loose, damp, wavy locks
above his high forehead; a man whose eyes were heavy-circled underneath,
and whose long, white hands beat nervously upon the chair-arms.
At the sound of the opening door the man looked up. She was there,
staring as if petrified, by the door.
He made one bound. She was within his arms.
“_Alors tu m’aimes!_” he cried, and something mutual swallowed her reply
and the consciousness of both for one long heaven-rifting minute.
“_Alors tu m’aimes?_” he said again, with a great quivering breath; “_tu
m’aimes, n’est-ce pas?_”
“With my whole heart and soul and life,” she confessed.
And then he kissed her hastily, hungrily, murmuring:
“_Ma cherie!_ my angel, mine, mine!”
She cried a little and laughed a little, looked up a little and looked
down a little, tried to draw away from him and found herself drawn yet
nearer; was kissed, and kissed him; was looked upon and returned the
look; felt the strength of his love and felt the strength of her own;
feeling at last that the wavelets of Lucerne which had splashed softly
up against the stones at Zurich, and murmured in her ears at Constance,
had been swelled by the current of the Isar into a mighty resistless
storm that here, this day, upon the rocky coast of the Mediterranean,
had come resistlessly roaring upwards, and, sweeping away all barriers,
carried her heart and her life out into its bottomless depths
forevermore.
“_Attends!_” he said, after a minute, loosing her suddenly to the end
that he might turn the key in Jack’s door; then he took her by the hand
and led her to the chair where he had been sitting. It was one of those
vast and luxurious _fauteuils_ which have prevented the Old World from
ever importing the rocker. He installed her in its depth and placed
himself upon the broad and cushioned arm.
“_Mon Dieu, que je suis heureux!_” he said, smiling down into her eyes;
“_alors tu m’aimes vraiment_?”
“Jack told me that you were terribly ill,” she said, her eyes resting
upon his face with a sort of overwhelming content.
“And you have care?”
“I thought that I should lose my mind!”
“_Ma cherie!_”
“But you really look as if you had been ill?”
“Not ill, but most _malheureux_. It has not been easy always to wait and
believe that you shall love me yet.”
“But you always did believe it?”
He smiled his irresistible smile of eyes and lip.
“Your cousin has said to me in Tagernsee, ‘She will certainly marry you
because she declares that she will not, and she always does do exactly
_le contraire_;’ but, _Mon Dieu_, how could I trust to that?”
Rosina laughed ringingly.
“Dear Jack! I wish that I had known myself as well as he knows me.”
“He has been very good to me,” said Von Ibn, leaning above her and
breaking his sentences in a manner that was perhaps only natural, all
things considered; “he has kept me from--the real madness. But for him I
was quite willing to shoot myself. It has never been anything so
terrible for me as--when you enter the door of the _pension_ that night
and shut it between us.”
She lifted up her hand and closed his big eyes with its soft touch.
“I loved you in Lucerne,” she declared to his blindness, “that first
moment when I saw you walking on the Quai. I did not know why, but I
felt that I _must_ know you.”
He snatched her hand away and laughed.
“_Voilà!_” he exclaimed; “what have I say to you that time in Munich,
that the women are always _gênées_! You love in Lucerne, and insist not
for all the summer after.”
Then they laughed together.
“Would you have liked me to have told you there on the Quai? would you
have believed it?”
“Yes,” he said gravely; “I would have believed it very well, because I
also knew the same. In the hotel I had seen you, and on the Promenade I
said myself, ‘_Voilà la jolie Américaine encore une fois!_’ You see!”
She wondered how she had ever for a moment thought that his eyes were
melancholy, they appeared so big and bright and joyous now.
“When did you come?” she remembered to ask after a long time.
“I am come yesterday morning.”
“Before we did?”
“Oh, yes; because I have very much here to do.”
“In Genoa?”
“Yes; and Jack and I have been out all this morning also.”
“And I never knew!”
He looked a little uneasy and rose to his feet.
“There is something very serious that I must say,” he said, standing
before her.
She looked up in a little anxiety; a crowd of ordinary, every-day
thoughts suddenly swarmed into her mind.
“Do not be _gênée_!” he implored parenthetically; “what I have to say is
so most important.”
“I am not _gênée_,” she assured him.
“Then why do you not come and stand by me?” he asked. “If you love me
and will not show it, I am to be very unhappy always.”
Rosina laughed; but she stood up and went close to him at once.
“I do love you,” she said, “and I am not at all afraid to show it. You
see!”
He took her face between his hands and gazed down fondly upon her.
“Love is good, is it not?” he said. “There is a great joy to me to hold
you so, and reflect upon those stairs at Munich.”
He paused--perhaps in consideration of the Munichian stairs--for a
moment, and then said:
“I have heard that there is love so strong that it crushes; if I ever
take hold of you so that your bones break, it is only that I think of
the stairs in Munich.”
She laughed again.
“I will remember,” she said, not at all frightened.
He took her two hands tightly within his own.
“I must now say that very serious thing.”
“But I shall not run away.”
“No, but you may be surprised and unarrange yourself before I can hold
you to stop.”
“Go on,” she begged.
“It is this: Jack and I have been out all this morning, because all
must be very ready; I--” he stopped.
“You are going with us?” she exclaimed joyously.
“No; I--”
“You are not going before we do?”
He smiled and shook his head.
Then he drew her very closely and tenderly to him and kissed her eyes
and forehead.
“It is that I am to be married to-morrow,” he told her softly, and held
her tightly as the shock of his words ran quivering through her.
“And I!” she gasped, after two or three paralyzed seconds.
“Naturally you are to be married also.”
She stared mutely up into the reassurance of his smile.
“Jack and I find that best,” he said. “I have no time to go to America
to bring you again, and all is quite good arranged. I have telegraphed
to Dresden about a larger apartment, and those papers from the lawyers
in New York waited here when you came. We may not marry like peasants,
you and I, you know.”
She felt completely overcome.
“_To-morrow!_” she said, at last.
“Yes,” he said placidly; “I am much hasted to be again in the north, and
we have arranged with the consuls--your consul and my consul--for
to-morrow.”
“But my steamer passage!”
“Oh, that your cousin has given up; all the money has been returned. I
think for a little that we will go with him as far as Naples, but I go
and look at your stateroom this morning, and I have just a _centimétre_
more than the berth.”
Rosina was forced to laugh; her humor began to bubble riotously upwards
at the notion of Von Ibn and Jack measuring the berth that morning. He
did not know why she laughed, but he kissed her without caring.
“For me there is no comfort under two _métres_,” he declared vigorously.
Just then the owner of the room tried the door.
“This is my room,” he called through the crack.
They looked at each other, and she ran lightly to the door, unlocked it
and let her cousin enter.
“You fearful liar!” she exclaimed, as he put his arm about her, and held
out the spare hand to her lover. “Oh, Jack, you awful, _awful_ liar,
what shall I say to you?”
“Say to him that you are most happy,” her lover suggested.
Jack was beaming.
“I never said a word that wasn’t true,” he declared. “You asked me if
the letter was from him, and I said that he wasn’t writing any letters
these days, and then I said that he was going crazy.”
“And that was most true,” the other man broke in; “I have no manner to
think left in my head these later nights.”
“And you began to scream that you must go to him, and I told you that
you could go; and I see that you went.”
Von Ibn crossed to the chimney-piece and picked up a cigarette and a
match. He was smiling to himself.
“She consents to be married to-morrow,” he said, facing about.
“Yes,” said Rosina airily; “I see that conventionality and I are to be
more two than ever henceforth, so I am going to yield up my own way at
once.”
“You are a brave fellow,” Jack said to his friend; “I have always been
able to do more with her than any one else, but, honestly, I tell you
that I, even I, would never dare to undertake her forever.”
Von Ibn lit his cigarette and laughed.
“She will obey me,” he said easily; “she will have to. It will be a
great good for her. I shall be very tender with her and most severe,
that is what is best for a woman.”
“Oh, Rosina!” said Jack, and in his tone resounded a succession of many
feelings each more indescribable than its predecessor.
“It is not needful that you kiss her,” the lover went on, coming back
across the room; “I wish that you would not, that does me no pleasure to
watch.”
“I don’t care anything about kissing her,” the cousin replied; “Rosina’s
novelty in kisses was over for me before I was five years old. Don’t you
remember--”
Some one rapped at the door.
“_Entrez!_” they cried in chorus.
It was a _garçon_ with a card.
“‘Madame La Francesca,’” said Rosina, reading. “Who is Madame La
Francesca?”
The two men exchanged glances.
“Where is the lady?” Jack asked.
“She is gone at once to madame’s room,” the boy replied.
“You’d better go and see who’s in your room,” Jack suggested; “and you,”
he added, turning to her _fiancé_, “you must come with me and attend to
what yet remains to be done.”
Rosina hesitated, her hand upon the door-knob.
“I will come at once,” she told the boy, who was waiting, and then she
looked towards the man by the chimney-piece.
“Never mind me,” said her cousin kindly; “I’ll look out of the window,
if you wish.”
Von Ibn threw his cigarette into the grate.
“You need not look from the window,” he said, laughing; “you may look
straight to us, and see two most happy.”
He put his hand on either side of her smile and took the smile to
himself. Then she went out.
“I can’t tell you,” the American said warmly, “how glad I am for you
both. I do honestly think that she’ll make you very happy. And I hope
and pray that you’ll be good to her.”
“I shall be good to her,” said his friend seriously; “I know her well.
She is very ‘_tendre_’ and I love her much; she will not have her own
will always, but with her love she will do mine. It is that that makes
the life so happy with us. We give much affection and little liberty; it
is not well for you, because with you all is so different. In America it
is all liberty, and no time for love.”
“Maybe not,” said Jack carelessly; “but we make a lot of money all the
same.” He picked up his ulster with the deer-horn buttons. “You’re
coming, aren’t you?” he said.
The other man sought an eminently correct overcoat and silk hat in the
adjoining room.
“_Natürlich_,” he said, “you know that I am of at any rate an equal
interest with you in what is to be to-morrow.”
Jack laughed.
“Perhaps if you knew your lady as well as I do--” he began, and then he
stopped.
They went out to the staircase, and Von Ibn descended several steps in
advance. Jack contemplated his back, and his lips twitched with the
conquering of a rebellious smile.
“So there walks the end of all,” he said to himself. “Who would have
thought it of Rosina! Poor girl, she is about over; in fact, I’m afraid
that, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, ‘Rosina’ has already
ceased to exist--knocked under for good, so to speak. Only to think of
that particular girl choosing a thorough-bred European husband with a
Tartar syllable in his name!” He paused and chuckled. “I’ve proved my
truth to Carter, anyhow. I told him that there was but one man in
America clever enough to marry my cousin, and now he’ll perceive that
that man’s brains so far surpass the brains of all others, that,
although capable of marrying her, he took precious good care to marry
her to another fellow. Well, if they’re happy they owe it all to me; and
if they’re miserable, they have no one but themselves to blame.”
Von Ibn had paused at the foot of the stairs and now looked up, smiling,
into his friend’s eyes.
“I am this day so greatly rejoiced,” he said earnestly, “what life is to
have for me, and for her, after this! You may not divine it, I think.”
Jack looked into the warm and shining light of his uplifted face.
“I hope you’ll both be just everlastingly happy,” he said sincerely.
“But that is certain,” the lover said, in a tone of deep feeling. “Did
you look at her to-day? It is heaven she brings me with her. We were two
in the great world, and Lucerne brought us to one. Then love did all the
rest.”
“Oh, I say,” Jack remonstrated; “I certainly worked some too!”
Chapter Seventeen
When Rosina opened her door it was Molly who stood there; a gorgeous
Molly, put forth by all that was uppermost in the Kärntnerstrasse of
that year.
“Why, where ever did you come from?” she cried.
“From Vienna,” said Molly; “from Vienna by way of Botzen and Venice.”
“And Madame la Princesse?”
“I’ve left her and qualified as a chaperone on my own hook.”
“You’re with Madame--Madame--” Rosina looked down at the
_carte-de-visite_ which she held in her fingers still.
“I’m not with her; I’m _her_!”
“You’re--”
“Madame La Francesca.”
“Molly, you’re not--”
“Yes, I am.”
“Not _married_?”
The Irish girl, or rather the Italian lady, nodded.
“Why, Molly, however did you do it? you said he was too poor.”
“He was too poor.”
“And how--”
Molly was pulling off her gloves and laughing.
“My dear, this is another.”
Rosina sank abruptly on the sofa.
“’Tis a fact. I never told you a thing about him, but he’s as
handsome--wait!” She put her hand to her collar. “No getting them
tangled any more,” she said, smiling, as she felt for her chain. “I wear
only one now, but I wear that one night and day.”
Rosina could do little else than gasp and stare.
“But who is he?” she asked.
“He’s the lieutenant’s colonel. He called on me to--Well, I do believe
I’ve left that locket on the washstand after all!”
“Haven’t you got it on?”
“No, I haven’t. And I meant to wear it forever.”
“Never mind, go on about the colonel.”
“I do hope he won’t find the locket, that’s all. He put it on me the day
we were married, and I promised to never unclasp it. Of course I never
thought of baths when I spoke.”
“But do go on about how you came to--”
“I didn’t come to any one; he came to me, to beg me to give up the
lieutenant, who was taking to absinthe. My dear, you should just see the
man! (Oh, if I _only_ had my locket!) All Italy can’t show such another!
I gave up the lieutenant that day and married the colonel just as fast
as was possible. That’s why I haven’t written you this last month.”
“Is he rich?”
“Well, not in pounds; but he’s a millionaire in these Italian _lire_. We
shall live like princes,--Italian princes, _bien entendu_.”
“But when were you married?”
“Day before yesterday; to-day’s the first time I’ve taken off the
locket.”
“And where?”
“In Venice. Oh, ’twas like heaven, being paddled to church.”
“And now you’re--”
“Signora La Francesca.”
“Well, I declare!”
Rosina leaned back, staring helplessly. Finally she said:
“And how did you happen to come here?”
“To your wedding. I hurried my own a little on that account.”
“_Molly_, then you knew about me!”
Molly swept down upon the sofa and folded her friend in her arms.
“Knew about you! Why, my dear, I knew about you in Zurich. How could I
help it? How could any one help it?”
“Why, Molly, was it as bad as that?”
“Worse,” said the signora briefly.
“But you never could have known that I would marry him in Genoa then?”
“Oh, no; of course I didn’t know about Genoa, I only knew you were bound
to marry him somewhere.”
“When did you know about Genoa?”
“Last week. Your cousin wrote me.”
Rosina’s face was a study, but finally she began to laugh.
“Molly, I have been tricked and deceived at every turn by those two men.
Just listen while I tell you all about it.”
Molly listened and was told all about it, from the Isar to the
Mediterranean, the roof of Milan’s cathedral included.
“You wouldn’t believe it, would you?” the heroine of all concluded when
she paused, altogether out of breath.
“Yes, I would. Because really I never saw two people so tremendously in
love before.”
“And you thought I--cared for him when we were there in Zurich?”
“I didn’t think; I could see it with my eyes shut.”
“Really?”
“Sure! and as to him--” the signora shrugged her shoulders expressively.
Rosina threw her arms around her and kissed her.
“Oh, I am so delightfully glad to be so happy, and for you to be so
happy at the same time.”
“Yes, I like to be happy myself,” Molly confessed.
“You _are_ happy, aren’t you? You do like being married, don’t you?”
“Pleasantest two days of my life,” declared the bride, with apparent
sincerity.
“Do you think your husband is as good-looking as monsieur?”
Molly started violently.
“_As good-looking!_ Why, my dear, didn’t I tell you that he was the--Oh,
if I _only_ had my locket!”
“Never mind,” Rosina said soothingly; “you can think he’s handsomest, if
you like, I don’t mind. At any rate, he isn’t a great musician.”
“No,” said Molly proudly; “but he’s a colonel, and a colonel ranks a
genius anywhere, any day, in Europe.”
“All right,” said the _fiancée_ amicably; “but, dear, didn’t you think
that it was awful in Jack to tell me that he’d gone crazy, and frighten
me half to death?”
“It must have been a terrible blow when you found that he hadn’t cared
enough to go crazy, after all.”
“_Molly!_”
“And however are you going to exist with the _‘tempérament jaloux_’?”
“I never minded that a bit. Every time he is angry he is _so_ adorable
afterwards. We shall have such lovely makings-up. Oh, I expect to just
revel in his rages!”
Madame La Francesca’s dimples danced afresh.
“And I,” she said, “I was raised with a hot-headed Irish father and four
hot-headed Irish brothers, and I’ve been engaged to one peppery
Scotchman and to frequent red-peppery continentals, so I find my ideal
in an Italian who is, as the French say, ‘_Doux comme un agneau._’”
“I thought it was ‘_Doux comme un mouton_,’” said Rosina cruelly, even
while she was conscious of a real and genuine pity for her friend, under
the circumstances.
“No, it’s ‘_agneau_,’” the other replied placidly, and then she rose
and shook out her stunning blue grenadine self. “I must go. I’ve been
away a long time.”
“You don’t get a bit tired of him, do you?”
“Well, I haven’t yet.”
“Isn’t it curious? I used to be so bored if I had to talk to the same
man into the second hour, and then I never guessed what made me so
contented to walk around with this one forever and ever.”
“But you know now?”
“Yes, I know now.”
“I shall see you to-night,” Molly said, adjusting her hat before the
pier-glass; “your cousin is going to give an especially magnificent
dinner to just we five.”
“I didn’t know that he was going to give a dinner,” Rosina exclaimed,
starting up affrightedly. “Why, all my trunks are down on the steamer!”
“They aren’t now,” said Molly, “they’re in the next room; and your gown
is laid out on the bed, and on the table is a diamond star from your
cousin, and a bracelet from my beloved and myself, and a perfectly
ripping tiara from your beloved to yourself.”
Rosina put two bewildered hands to her head.
“Nobody tells me _anything_!” she wailed.
“No,” said Molly mockingly; “you’re so set on having your own way that
it really seems wiser not to.”
Then they threw their arms about one another, kissed, laughed, kissed
again, and parted.
Chapter Eighteen
It was some ten or twelve days later, and the hour was half-past nine,
and the scene a private salon in the Schweizerhof at Lucerne. It was
early November, or very close upon it, and so a fire blazed on the
hearth, and the looped-back curtains at the windows showed only a
mirrored reflection of what was within. Beside the chimney-piece stood a
wee table with a coffee service upon it, and scattered on the floor
beside was a typical European mail,--letters, postals and papers galore;
the “Munchener Jugend,” the “Town Topics,” a “Punch,” a “Paris-Herald,”
the “Fliegender-Blätter,” three “Figaros,” and two “Petit-Journaux.”
There was a grand piano across one corner of the room, and the priceless
Stradivarius lay in its unlocked case beside it. Upon the music-rack was
spread “Le Souvenir” of Vieuxtemps, with directions in pencil dashed
across it here and there, and upward sweeps and great fortes and
pianissimos indicated by the hand that was never patient with life, but
always positive in the painstaking of perfection as to its art.
The artist himself lay in a deep chair before the fire, smoking and
dreaming in his old familiar way; his wife sat on the floor beside him,
her head leaning against the arm of his chair, her clasped hands hanging
about his knee, and in her eyes and on her lips there rested a charm of
utter joy as sweet as it was beautiful.
They were so silent in the content of their mutual reverie that the call
of the cuckoo clock startled them both slightly. Von Ibn took his cigar
from between his lips and discovered that it had gone out some time
since. Rosina smiled at his face and extended her hand towards the
coffee table, on the side of which lay two or three wax matches.
“No, no,” her husband cried quickly, “it is no need. I have quite
finish,” and he threw what remained of the cigar to the flames as he
spoke. “What have you think of?” he asked, as she laid her head back on
the chair-arm; “was it of a pleasant thing?”
“I was thinking,” she said slowly, “of that man in Zurich, and wondering
when and where he would learn of our marriage.”
“Who of Zurich?”
“Surely you haven’t forgotten that man in Zurich that I went to the
Tonhalle with.”
“Oh, yes,” he exclaimed quickly; “the one I did go to the Gare with.”
“Yes, the one who wrote Uncle John about you.”
“Did he write about me? What has that Zuricher man to say of me?”
She rose to her feet and stood beside the fire, staring down into its
leaping blades of light and flame.
“You know what he said as well as I do,--just everything that he could
to make trouble for you and me.”
Then her wrath began to rise, as it always did when her mind recurred to
this particular subject.
“What do you suppose made him bother to do such a mean thing? Why did he
want to make all that trouble for? Why couldn’t he stick to his own
business and let us alone? It is maddening to think of. I shall never
forgive him--never!”
Von Ibn raised the heavy darkness of his eyes up to her profile, and a
dancing light passed over the unutterable tenderness that shadowed their
glow.
“What trouble has he make?” he asked gently; “why may you never forgive
him? Come to me, here upon my knee, and tell me of that.”
He held out his hand, smiling, and she smiled too, and came to take her
place upon the seat which he had indicated to her.
“He made all the trouble that he possibly could,” she said, touching his
hair here and there with a fanciful hand, while the expression of her
face indicated a conflict between the sentiments with which the man of
Zurich inspired her and those provoked by her hearer.
“Ah, so,” said the latter; and then after a little he added, “But
because he writes, your cousin is caused to arrive, and of that arriving
we are become married. I see no trouble in that. _Au contraire_, I see
much good. If I think it were really that Zuricher man that has write to
America I should be most grateful of him. I think I should at once buy
him a cane as that one which I get myself this afternoon.”
“Oh, it was he,” she said confidently; “Jack told me as much himself. I
asked him if the letter was from Zurich, and he said ‘Yes.’”
Von Ibn flung his head far back against the chair cushions and laughed
heartily.
“Oh, _mon Dieu_!” he exclaimed, “I must ever amuse myself of a woman; a
woman does always know!”
Rosina looked at him.
“Why, it _couldn’t_ have been any one else,” she said positively; “you
know _that_.”
He caught her face quickly between his hands and kissed it.
“It could very well be myself,” he exclaimed, laughing.
“_You!_”
“Yes; quite with ease. _Pourquoi pas?_”
“_You!_”
Then he laughed afresh in the face of her most complete bewilderment.
“_Tu es tordante!_” he said, and then he crushed her suddenly up in his
arms. “It was I that wrote; it was like this.--You shall hear.”
She freed herself so as to regain an upright position and the ability to
fully satisfy her desire to stare in amazement full in his face.
“It _wasn’t you_!” she said incredulously; “not _really_?”
“Yes, it was very really I. _Écoutez donc_, you shall know all.”
He raised her hands in his, palm to palm, the fingers interwoven, and
looked into her eyes.
“It was because I am quite decided to marry you,” he began.
“There, in Zurich!” she interrupted with a gasp.
“No, not in Zurich.--Naturally in Lucerne; here that first day, out
there where the Quai lies so still in to-night’s darkness. When you have
spoken first to me I have decided, and from that hour on it is become
only stronger, never less sure.”
She was drawn to lay her two arms about his neck and to listen
breathlessly to his recital.
“If you had been rich and I nobody, it had been so simple to marry you,
perhaps; but being myself somebody, I cannot risk anything. It is so
easy to marry an American when one desires but her money, but when one
has also money and desires to marry, _voilà ce qui est difficile_. It
was for that that I go to the Gare with that man of Zurich,--ah, he has
surely serve us well, that Zuricher man,--and I get of him the address
of your uncle, and then I may write to that uncle and beg that one be
sent over who will have full power to arrange for you, if I can ever
bring you to say ‘Yes.’” He stopped and his voice sank. “I could not be
sure that you would say ‘Yes’ ever,” he continued softly; “but in your
eyes, even at first, I have thought to find a hope.”
“Go on,” she whispered, touching his lips very lightly with her own.
“I am cabled to Leipsic that your cousin will arrive at Hâvre, and we
meet there.”
Rosina’s head flew upward suddenly.
“You met Jack!”
“But certainly. We go together to Dinard that he may meet all my family,
and then we go to Cassel, where there is a castle to us, and to hunt in
the Schwarzwald, and then he has written to America that I am quite rich
and most honest, and of a real love for you; and when there has come an
answer of your uncle, then I return to Munich to you.”
“And I never knew a thing about any of it!”
“_Ah, ma chérie, pour l’instant on n’avait pas besoin de toi_,” he
reminded her, smiling.
“Go on!”
“Jack is very sure that all goes well at the end, and I am full of hope
when--”
“But if you knew him, why did you strike him that night in front of the
Regierung?”
“But I did not know him there in the dark, and that he should kiss you
there in the street, that did me great surprise. And you have scream so,
naturally I have not think but of a stranger; one would not expect a
cousin of such a scream.”
“And you went off with him the very next day; why didn’t you let him go
alone?”
“He has say you were better left. _Mon Dieu_, but I have been the angel
these past months! I must despair, you are so much decided; and when I
despair the most, Jack will always say, ‘Wait and you shall see that
she sails never from Genoa.’ But I was most unhappy. And my work, my
work that should have gone so greatly out to the world this summer!
_Perdu_--lost--lost!”
She laid her cheek softly against his.
“But that music is not really gone,” she whispered; “it will find a
voice again, a better voice, because--”
She kissed him fondly.
“Oh, of a surety,” he said, returning the kiss twofold; “do not think
that I repent me of one second lost in your winning. _Mon Dieu_, what
life was left me if I had get you not? That I will never bear to
remember for a second. But you must now say that you forgive the man who
did write the letter from Zurich. You will, will you not?”
“Yes,” she declared fervently; “I forgive him for ever and always. I
even,” she smiled into his eyes,--“I even feel obliged to him for the
trouble that he took. But,” she added, “I truly never expected to learn
in the end that ours was simply a ‘_mariage des convenances_’ after
all!”
“It was as the marriage of a queen,” he laughed, taking her hand within
his own and raising it reverently to his lips; “with such a marriage
every one knows, everything is quite well ready, the lawyers are done,
all the papers are signed, and then it is last of all that they go to
the queen, and the queen does then say ‘Yes.’”
* * * * *
_A New Romance by the Author of “The Shadow of the Czar”_
THE VIKING’S SKULL
By JOHN R. CARLING, author of “The Shadow of the Czar,” etc.
Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50
Mr. Carling has written a spirited story of love and adventure, with an
ingeniously constructed plot, which tells how Idris Marville, true Earl
of Ormsby, recovered a treasure hidden by one of his progenitors,--a
Viking of the Ninth Century,--and how he cleared the memory of his
father, who had been wrongfully convicted of murder. There are many
powerful scenes in the book and abundant love interest. The whole story
is exceptionally strong, dramatic, vivid, and interest-compelling. It is
a worthy successor to the author’s remarkable and successful novel, “The
Shadow of the Czar.”
* * * * *
_A Story of Modern Quebec by Miss Ray_
BY THE GOOD SAINTE ANNE
By ANNA CHAPIN RAY, author of “The Dominant Strain,” etc.
With frontispiece. 12mo. $1.25
A young Englishman, Cecil Barth, visiting Quebec on his way to a ranch,
a New York physician and his daughter Nancy, a Canadian of English
descent, and a young French-Canadian studying law are the chief
characters of this charming summer novel, abounding in bright and
interesting conversations. This pleasing story of the love affairs of
vivacious Nancy, the heroine, has for a background the many places of
interest in and around Quebec.
* * * * *
_A Stirring Tale of the Plains_
THE RAINBOW CHASERS
By JOHN H. WHITSON
Author of “Barbara, A Woman of the West,” etc. Illustrated.
12mo. $1.50
Full of the atmosphere of the West, with a cowboy, land speculator, and
lover for its hero, Mr. Whitson’s new novel, without being in the least
a copy, has many of the attractions of Mr. Wister’s hero, “The
Virginian.”
“The Rainbow Chasers” is a virile American novel and treats of the
elemental forces of Western life and the results of the great fever of
speculation in land. The prairies and forests of the West are the scenes
which the author has chosen for a novel which is full of interest and
strength.
The characters of the story are vigorous men, men with red blood in
their veins, men of action who build up new communities.
* * * * *
_By the Author of “A Prince of Sinners”_
ANNA THE ADVENTURESS
By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM, author of “A Prince of Sinners,” etc.
Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50
Mr. Oppenheim’s new story of London life shows this talented and
increasingly popular author at his best. The subtle character study of
two sisters, Anna and Annabel, is masterly. The latter “got herself
talked about” when she and her sister lived in Paris, and when Sir John
Ferringham proposed to her, believing her to be Anna, she keeps up the
delusion. The consequences of this bold deception Mr. Oppenheim has
unfolded to us with remarkable ingenuity. The story increases in
interest as it progresses, and sparkles with brilliant conversation and
strong situations.
* * * * *
_The Story of a Man’s Triumph over the Flesh_
THE WOOD-CARVER OF ’LYMPUS
By MARY E. WALLER, author of “A Daughter of the Rich,” etc.
Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50
The hero of Miss Waller’s new story is one of the most powerful and
original characters portrayed in recent fiction. Hugh Armstrong, used to
a busy out-of-door life, in felling a tree meets with an accident and
loses the use of his limbs. At first he finds it impossible to adjust
himself to his shut-in life, but a friend suggests wood-carving to him.
Through work and love a great change comes over him, and the author has
portrayed to us in a powerful manner Armstrong’s salvation. The scenes
are laid in the Green Mountains of Vermont.
* * * * *
_A New Novel of Present-Day Virginia Life_
WHERE THE TIDE COMES IN
By LUCY MEACHAM THRUSTON, author of “Mistress Brent,” “A Girl
of Virginia,” etc. Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50
In her new story Mrs. Thruston portrays a heroine as charming as her
delightful “Girl of Virginia.” The scenes of the novel are laid at
Norfolk and Portsmouth, and the vicissitudes of the Southern vegetable
farmer, who depends on the irrepressible negro, are strongly pictured.
The novel is a genuine love-story with a touch of politics, and the
Southern atmosphere is delightfully unhackneyed.
* * * * *
_A Tale of Norway in the Tenth Century_
THE NORTH STAR
By M. E. HENRY-RUFFIN. Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50
This Viking romance is a tale of love and adventure with King Olaf
Tryggveson for the hero. The story opens with a scene at a fair in
Ireland, where Olaf meets a beautiful Irish princess, and later changes
to Norway, where Olaf returns to be received as King. Such history and
legend as have come to us of that time furnish fertile imagination a
frame for stirring incident and rapid action.
* * * * *
_By the Author of “The God of Things”_
THE EFFENDI
By FLORENCE BROOKS WHITEHOUSE. With illustrations. 12mo. $1.50
The Prologue of this engrossing romance of the Soudan deals with the
siege of Khartoum and the death of the hero, Gordon, and the Epilogue
with the retribution which England exacted from the Arab hordes. Between
the two is placed a dramatic story of love and adventure.
The author of this stirring story has been highly praised for
characterization and imagination, and for her knowledge of the Nile
country.
* * * * *
_Some New Stories by Sienkiewicz_
LIFE AND DEATH
AND OTHER LEGENDS AND STORIES. By HENRYK
SIENKIEWICZ, author of “_Quo Vadis_,” etc. Translated
from the original Polish by JEREMIAH CURTIN. Illustrated.
16mo. $1.00.
Contents: I. Life and Death: a Hindu Legend. II. Is he the Dearest One?
III. A Legend of the Sea. IV. The Cranes. V. The Judgment of Peter and
Paul on Olympus.
* * * * *
LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS
BOSTON, MASS.
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| Transcriber’s Note: |
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| Accents are as they appear in the original book. |
| |
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