“‘I want you to pay a lot of attention to what I am going to say, Rosina’”
“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 forit, 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 itwasfrom 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 toldyou 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 andheld 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’sawfulhard 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.
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’tthe 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 spreadingits 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 daydream, 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 isnotdead!” he told her forcefully; “honestly, he isnotdead! 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.
Therewasa 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, carriedher 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 luxuriousfauteuilswhich 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 mostmalheureux. 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 declaresthat she will not, and she always does do exactlyle 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 thepensionthat 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 Imustknow 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 alwaysgênées! 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 begênée!” he implored parenthetically; “what I have to say is so most important.”
“I am notgênée,” she assured him.
“Then why do you not come and stand byme?” 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 allthis 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 arrangedwith 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 acentimétremore 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 twométres,” 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,awfulliar, 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 agarçonwith 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 herfiancé, “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 ofat 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!”
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 thecarte-de-visitewhich she held in her fingers still.
“I’m not with her; I’mher!”
“You’re—”
“Madame La Francesca.”
“Molly, you’re not—”
“Yes, I am.”
“Notmarried?”
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, tobeg me to give up the lieutenant, who was taking to absinthe. My dear, you should just see the man! (Oh, if Ionlyhad 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 Italianlire. 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 knewabout 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.
“Youarehappy, 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 Ionlyhad 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 thefiancéeamicably; “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 issoadorable 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 Ihad 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 meanything!” 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.
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, butalways 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 askedgently; “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 everamuse myself of a woman; a woman does always know!”
Rosina looked at him.
“Why, itcouldn’thave been any one else,” she said positively; “you knowthat.”
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.
“Itwasn’t you!” she said incredulously; “notreally?”
“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”
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 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
By JOHN H. WHITSONAuthor 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”
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.
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By MARY E. WALLER, author of “A Daughter of theRich,” 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