“No, it’s because I’m breathing smoke.”
“Do dragons breathe smoke? It is a salamander you are believing in.”
“In pictures dragons always breathe smoke and fire.”
“But there is no fire here.”
“There must be somewhere, because there is so much smoke.”
He was unmoved and ruminative.
“I do not find your riddle very clever,” he said at last.
Rosina buried the poor, weak, little scintillation at once and stamped on its grave in hot haste.
“I think that our dinner is coming,” she announced presently, turning her veil above her brows, “and I am so hungry.”
“I find your hunger a much better answer of that riddle than to be breathing smoke,” he said.
“Of course you do, because that is the answer that you thought of.”
The waitress began to arrange the dishes upon the table and when all was in order he prepared to serve them both.
“I often start to say most clever things,” he said, as he carved the fish, “but before I can speak you have always say something else.”
She took the plate that he passed her, and picked up her fork at once.
“Then when you are silent for a quarter of an hour or so it would really pay me to keep still and wait; wouldn’t it?” she inquired.
He took a mouthful and deliberated.
“I think so,” he said at last.
A deep stillness fell over the festal board. Von Ibn was mute and his companion felt that, the preceding remarks considered, she would be dumb herself. The entire meal was accordingly eaten in absolute silence, until, when she had finished,she could not refrain from stealing one amused glance in his direction.
“You laugh,” he said, returning the smile in kind.
“I am sure that it is going to be something very brilliant this time,” she told him.
He stared for a minute; and then he understood and laughed aloud.
“I only eat then,” he exclaimed, “mais, Dieu! quels enfants nous sommes ensemble. I must often wonder if you are so happy with me as I am with you? I cannot say why it is, but if you only be there I am content. Tell me, is it at all so for you?”
“I enjoy you,” she answered; “most men are stupid or horrid.”
“When?” he asked anxiously.
“When one is much with them.”
He looked at her with some alarm.
“But are many men much with you?”
Rosina laughed merrily over the trouble in his face.
“You would have been unbearable if you had been of a jealous disposition,” she said, nodding.
“Yes,” he replied gravely, “I have always feel that myself; for with me it is very strong that there shall be no other. But tell me now, truly are many men much with you?”
“Why I have hosts of friends,” she declared, “and, on account of the way that the world is made, half of them are obliged to be men.”
“But you said that they were all stupid or horrible,” he reminded her carefully.
“I said that most of them were.”
He thought a moment.
“I wish that there had been a bouillon here,” he said then.
She began to put on her gloves, thinking that the hour of departure was close at hand.
“J’ai envie de fûmer une cigarette,” he said suddenly, “ça ne vous fait rien d’attender un peu?”
“I don’t care,” she answered, and laid her gloves down again.
“Am I ever horrible to you?” he asked, taking a match from the white china pyramid that ornamented the centre of the table.
“I didn’t say ‘horrible;’ I said ‘horrid.’”
“Is there a difference?” he lit his cigarette.
“Yes, indeed.”
He crossed his arms upon the table, and smiled at her through his own personal quota of smoke.
“Tell me the difference. Why are we horrid?”
“Because you so often are. Men never understand.”
“Au contraire,” he said quietly, “men alwaysunderstand. It is the woman who will not believe it, and it is cruel to say her the truth. A woman is alwaysgenée, she will sob in a man’s arms and still declare that ‘No.’ Why is it necessary for her to be so? That I cannot understand.”
Rosina caught a quick little breath; she had not been prepared for such a turn of conversation. Von Ibn went on with a degree of nonchalance that masked his close observance admirably.
“When a man loves a woman, he knows certainly if she loves him or not. It is there every minute in her eyes and on her lips; and yet he must ask her, and she must pretend a surprise. Why? We are altogether human. Then why must women be different? I am most sorry for a poor woman; she cannot be kissed or caressed or loved without the pretence that she dislikes it. It must be very difficult.”
She felt her face getting warm.
“You do not like what I have say?” he asked.
“No.”
“Because it is true?”
“It isn’t true.”
“An American would not say that to you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Do you like better the American way of covering up all truth?”
“It is politer, I think.”
He looked at her for a moment.
“I have been horrible,n’est-ce pas?” he asked.
She felt very uncomfortable indeed.
“Do let us go now,” she said in a low tone.
He struck his water-glass with a knife, and their waitress, who was near by, looked around.
“’Zahlen!” he called to her. She nodded. He went for his coat and hat, and when he returned Rosina was fastening the frogs on her jacket.
“I would have put it on if you had waited,” he said in a tone of remonstrance.
“I am used to getting into it,” she assured him.
He looked attentively at her and perceived more than she thought. Then the waitress came up and recited all that they had eaten in a sing-song tone, and he pushed some money towards her with a gesture that disposed of the question as to making change.
“We will go out now,” he said, turning towards the door, and the next minute they were in the cool, fresh night air. He put his hand upon her arm, and bent his head a little.
“Do not be vexed with me,” he said softly; “even a little vexing of you makes me great pain.”
Then he pressed her arm closely.
“It is not long that we have now to talk. I beg you talk to me; do not be so sad.”
“I’m not sad.”
“Then talk.”
She gathered up her energy with a mighty effort.
“What shall we talk about?”
“Anything. Have you a letter to-day?”
“Yes.”
“From who? From Jack?”
“No, from the Marquis de W——.”
His fingers came together over her arm in a vice-like grip.
“I have never heard of him,” he cried; “where have you know him?”
“In Paris. And then I met him on the train—”
Von Ibn’s eyes grew large with fright.
“But you must not meet men on trains,” he said; “that is not at all proper for you.”
“He took charge of me from Paris to Lucerne,” she said soothingly; “he is really very delightful—”
“I did not see him at Lucerne,” he interrupted.
“No, he was gone when you came.”
“How old is he?”
“He is seventy.”
His heat subsided suddenly, and there was a pause during which she felt circulation returning slowly to her arm.
“And you have a letter from him to-day?” he asked, after a while.
“I have a letter from him almost every day.”
He looked down at her with an air of genuine astonishment.
“What can a man of seventy say in a letter almost every day?” he asked.
“He can say a great deal. He wants me to marry him!”
He laughed aloud, and then exclaimed gayly:
“What a great lady you will be! and how nice you will look in your mourning!” and then he threw his cigarette away and laughed afresh.
His laughter was so infectious that she laughed also.
“He writes me how happy I would be with him,” she continued merrily; “and he is very positive about it, too. How can he think that I would really wish to marry him?”
“He can think it very well from the newspapers of your land. Is he not a marquis? If I did not love you, I should always have surprise to think that you are an American, and will not let me make you a great lady.”
She ignored this speech in its entirety.
“To think,” she pursued, “that one cannot travel in a daughterly way with a gentleman of seventy without—”
“Yes,” he interrupted, “but that is why it is best not to travel in the charge of gentlemen. One is always so liable to be disagreeably urged to become a marchioness.”
She assented with a thoughtful nod.
“I don’t answer all his letters,” she said; “I burn them.”
“Poor marquis!”
“They are good letters of their kind; but there are a whole lot of things which it does not pay to write to a widow. You can fool a girl, but a widow always knows.”
“Does a widow always know?”
“Oh, dear me; yes.”
“Then why did you not save the poor marquis his pain?”
“I never dreamed of his feeling that way. How could I? I only thought he was delightful. And always, even the first day at Madame de S——’s, when he said adieu he would kiss my hands in the most adorable Louis XIV. kind of a way.”
“And all the while it was in his heart a plot to marry you. You see!”
“Men are so queer,” she reflected; “I cannot see why that old gentleman should have wanted to marry me.”
“I can,” said Von Ibn, dryly; “I can see quite well.”
The marquis as a topic of conversation seemed at an end. They were in the Hellerstrasse, going towards the river, and the heaviness which the Isar always cast over her fell down about her spirits.
“Oh, Icannotbelieve that in forty-eight hours I shall be gone!” she exclaimed suddenly.
“Do not go,” he said, tightening his hold upon her arm again; “stay with me.”
“I must go,” she declared. “I couldn’t stay with you, anyway,” she added, in a tone of unintended mournfulness.
His mood altered, and the light of a street lamp showed that every tinge of gayety had fled his face.
“You have no will of your own,” he said with acerbity; “that Jack has it all. I find you so very weak.”
She raised her eyes to his and they looked strangely at one another. The moon was above them, full and beautiful, and the Isar rapids were murmuring their far cry.
“We shall return over the Ludwigsbrücke,” he said, and they went down the incline in silence.
She thought vaguely, “I am here now, andheis here! How will it be when I am gone and we are separated forever?” But her brain refused to comprehend—only her heart felt the warmth of his touch upon her sleeve.
So they came down to the bridge, which abuts on an island and accommodates the tram passing from the Ostbahnhof to the Marien Platz. The Isarthor rose up grimly between the city lights and their view. Above was the golden moon. Behind, the black outlines of the suburb which they had just quitted.
“Let us stop here,” he proposed, pausing by the bridge rail, and she stayed her steps in obedience.
It was nearly nine o’clock, and the passers-by were few. They had the bridge quite to themselves; the water running beneath murmured gently, but did not interrupt even their unvoiced thoughts.
The man took out hisétuiand lit another cigarette, sinking his sombre gaze meanwhile deep into the stream below. His companion leaned upon the stone parapet.
And then he sighed most heavily.
“It is the autumn,” he said; “all the summeris over.Tout est fini!” There was a profound melancholy in his voice which threw a band of iron about her throat and choked all power of speech out of her. “How little I know last May of what this summer brings,” he continued; “I have believe that all summers were to come alike to me.”
A tram approached and crossed behind them with a mighty rumble. When all was still he spoke again, and the tone of his voice was childishly wistful.
“I did not know, there in Lucerne, before you came, how happy I might be. You are not so wonderful, but to me you are now a need, like air which I must breathe to live.”
There was an anguish underlying his words which set her heart to aching intolerably.
“Oh,” she gasped helplessly, “let us walk on! Let us go home! I cannot bear to hear all that again.”
She turned to go, but he caught her hand in his.
“I must speak,” he said forcefully, though in the lowest possible tones; “it is perhaps the tenth time, but it is certainly the last time. Will you not think once more again of it all, and say here now that you love me?”
He held her hand so tightly that it was impossible for her to withdraw it. She looked up inhis face, and the moon showed each the unfeigned feeling of the other.
“You don’t know about marriage,” she told him with white lips and laboring breath. “One may be very unhappy alone, and there is always the strength to bear, but when you are married and unhappiness comes, there is always that other unhappiness chained to you like a clog, shutting out all joy in the present, all hope in the future; and nothing can help you, and you can help nothing.” She stopped and put her hand to her bosom. “Only death can help!” she cried, in a voice as if a physical torture had its grip upon her; “and it is so awful when death alone can help!” She looked at the ground and then up at him. “Oh,” she sighed miserably, “how can I dare to go where I may come to that pass again? Don’t ask that of me.”
He turned his face away from her and she felt his fingers loosen, little by little, their clasp upon her arm. Then he loosed her altogether, left her side, moved away a space, and stood, his head bowed, his eyes bent upon the water. There was a fearful horror of hopelessness in his attitude.
Down from the Gasteig came a cab, an empty cab, and he looked up and hailed it.
“We will ride home,” he said, coming back to her; “I am bereft of strength.”
The cab halted and he put her inside.
“6 Maximiliansstrasse,” he called to the driver, and got in himself and banged the door behind him.
Then he threw himself back against the cushions, covered his eyes with his hand, and remained silent and motionless the ten minutes that they wereen route.
She did not speak either; she dared not. The air was so heavy with sorrow and despair that words would have seemed like desecration; and the telepathic misery that emanated from him loaded her soul as if she had been guilty of a crime.
When the cab stopped he opened the door, and as he turned to give her his hand she caught one shocked glimpse of the grief in his face—of the oddly drawn look of suffering in his half-closed eyes. The whole change in him, in them, in it all, had come so quickly that as she stepped from the cab she was conscious of a stunned sensation, a dazed lack of feeling, a cold and stony power to bear much—for a little while.
“Go by the door,” he said in muffled tones, “I must pay the cab.”
She crossed the width of the sidewalk and stood by the greatporte, waiting.
When the cabman was disposed of he came to her side, and felt in his pocket for the keys.Then he took his gloves off and felt again; as he felt he stared steadily across the street.
“It’s the round key,” she said, when he finally produced them. “Have you any tapers? I’m afraid that the hall will be dark.”
He shrugged his shoulders as if tapers were of no earthly consequence in such a time of stress. Then he fitted the key in the lock and swung back the massive portal.
Because of that vast key system which is part of the intricacy of the very good housekeeping of Frau G——, there was no necessity to disturb the Hausmeister; but nothing could lessen the wail of the door which let them in with a groan, and closed behind them with a bang that was worthy of the occasion. It was the man’s place to have lessened the noise by laying a restraining hand upon the lock, in accordance with the printed directions nailed against the main panel, but Rosina felt intuitively that this was no time to remind him of the fact.
With the closing of the door they were left in a darkness thorough and complete.
Rosina’s voice: “You said you had wax tapers.”
Von Ibn’s voice: “No, I have not say so.”
Rosina’s accents of distress: “Haven’t you any tapers?”
Von Ibn’s voice, dully: “Yes, I have, but I have not say so before.”
Rosina, entreatingly: “Then do please light one.”
Dead silence.
She began to walk towards the stairs that she could not see; as she did so she heard his keys jingling, and knew from the sound that he must be hunting the wherewithal for illumination. He struck a match and adjusted it in the small hole at the end of the box, and as he did so he called:
“Stop! wait for me to come also.”
She paused and looked back towards him. By the white light of the little taper his face appeared absolutely ghastly, and his heavy eyelids drooped in a way that pierced her heart.
“I think,” he said, when he was beside her, “that it is better that I go to-morrow very early, and that we meet no more.”
At that she was forced to put her hand against the wall in the seeking for some support without herself. They were upon the first step of the stairs, she leaning against one side wall and he standing close to the other. After he had spoken he crossed to her and his voice altered.
“If you had loved me,” he said, “here—now—I should have kissed you, and all would have been for us as of the skies above.”
“Oh, look out!” she exclaimed.
He was close above her.
“You are afraid of me?”
“No, it is the wax; you are letting it drip on us both.”
“It should stop upon the box,” he said shortly.
She began to mount the stairs, pulling off her gloves as she went. One fell, and he stooped quickly for it, with the result that he dropped the match-box. Again they were alone in the darkness.
“This is an awful place,” he said irritably, feeling blindly for what was lost. “That I am on my knees to a match-box this night,” he added savagely.
Her soul was full of sympathy for him. She bent to aid him in his search, and her hand in its wandering encountered his own. He seized her fingers and pressed them to his lips, and she knew that he was kneeling close at her feet.
“This is impossible,” he said vaguely, hurriedly; “we may not part now in a minute, like this. You have spoken foolishly, and I have accept it too quick. We must speak longer and talk reasonably to each of us. We must go where we may sit down and be quiet.Faut être raisonable.Let us go out of the door and go to the Café Luitpold and there speak.”
The Café Luitpold is a gorgeous and fashionable resort in the Briennerstrasse; its decorations are a cross between Herrn-Chiemsee and a Norddeutscher steamer, and its reputation is blameless.
“I can’t go to the Café Luitpold at ten o’clock at night in a golf skirt,” she objected gently, and tried to continue on her upward way; but he held her fast by her hand, and as he pressed it alternately to his face and lips, she felt her flesh wet with hot tears.
“You are crying!” she exclaimed in awe.
“I hope not,” he said; “I hope not, but I am near it. If I do weep, will you then despise me?”
“No,” she said faintly; “no—I—”
He rose to his feet, and in the dark she knew him to be very, very near. He still held her hand and his breath touched her cheek.
“Oh,” he whispered, “say you love me if it be but so little!Dites que vous m’aimez!I have hoped so greatly, I have dreamed so greatly; I will ask now no more to possess you for my own; I will content myself with what you can so easy give—only a little love—”
He drew his arm about her. Something within her was rising as the slow tide rises before the September gale, and she felt that all her firmnesswould be as the sand forts which the children build, when that irresistible final wave shall carry its engulfing volume over all. She summoned to her aid the most frightful souvenirs of her unhappy marriage, and pushed him violently away. His answer was a sudden grasp of mighty vigor, at which she gave a muffled scream.
“You detest me, then?” he said through his teeth.
“It is my hat,” she cried, freeing herself; “you drove the longest pin straight into my head.”
He moved a little away, and in so doing trod upon the match-box. Then in an instant there was light again, and he could see her, her arms upraised, straightening her hat.
“It is most badly on,” he told her.
“I know it,” she replied, starting swiftly upward.
At the curve he stopped short and shut his eyes; she stopped too, three steps farther on.
“Are you ill?” she asked anxiously.
He opened his eyes.
“I am most unhappy,” he replied, and went on again.
So they came to the top at last.
“Here we are,” she said, halting before the door; “give me the keys, they work intricately.”
He handed them to her in silence; she took them in her hand and tried to smile.
“If you really go to-morrow,” she said, as she put one into the lock, “I hope—” her lips trembled traitorously and she could not go on.
“Dites,” he whispered, coming nearer, “you do care a little, a very—”
He dropped the matches a second time.
“Thatwas never an accident,” she cried, below her breath.
“It was not my intention,” he declared; then he added, “you have only to go in, I can very well find my way out in the dark.”
But the door refused to open; instead, the key turned around and around in the lock.
“I do believe,” she said at last, in a curiously inexplicable tone, “that we have come up the wrong stairs!”
A sort of atmosphere of blankness saturated the gloom.
“Is there another stair?” he asked.
“Yes; it goes from the other passage. It’s the staircase to No. 5. I think—indeed I’m sure—that we have come up the stairs of No. 6 with the keys of No. 5.”
“I have never know that there was another stair,” he declared. “If you had say that beforeI—” then a fresh thought led him to interrupt himself. “It is a fate that leads us. We must go to the street again, and we shall go to the American Bar and talk there.”
The “American Bar” is the name which the Hotel Vierjahreszeiten has elected to give to a small and curious restaurant situated in its basement. There is nothing against the “American Bar” except its name, which naturally leads American women to avoid it.
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” said Rosina, drawing the keys into her hand; “it is no use. We are both all used up. I want to get home. And I couldn’t go anywhere if I wanted to in this skirt.”
“It is always that skirt,” he cried angrily; “that my heart breaks to-night is nothing,—only ever I must hear of your skirt.”
“Oh, wherearethe matches?” she said nervously; “we must find them somehow.”
He stooped to institute another search, and the umbrella slipped from his hand; it struck the floor with a noise that echoed from the attic to the cellar.
“Oh!” she gasped sharply; “we shall wake every one in the building before we get through.”
“It is very terrible—this night,” he said quietly, and as he spoke he found the match-boxand there was light again. Then he picked up his umbrella, and they returned down the three flights of stairs. In the lower hall he stopped again.
“Wecannotseparate like this,” he said, laying his hand upon her arm; “there are doings that one human cannot do. I must speak longer with you before I go. It is not talking to be going ever up and down steps with a wax taper. I know nothing of what I have say since we leave the cab, and here, each minute, any one may enter. When we go out, come with me across to the Hofbrauhaus, and there we will talk for but five minutes, and then you shall return. Your skirt will go very well there. We shall quickly return.Dites ‘oui’.”
The Hofbrauhaus is, as its name indicates, the café, or ratherbrasserie, of the Court brewery. It is a curious place, the beer of which is backed by centuries of fame, and Von Ibn told no lie when he said that any skirt would do well there.
“Oh, I can’t go,” she said, almost crying in her distress and agitation. “It will do no good; we just suffer more and more the longer we are together. I am miserable and you are miserable, and it takes all my strength to remember that if I yield we shall be very much more miserable in the end. Let me get home!”
She unlocked the largeporteas she spoke, and he blew out the taper, pushed it open, held it while she passed through, and then stayed its slam carefully behind her.
Then there was theporteof No. 5 to unlock and the taper to relight, and three more staircases to mount.
“I shall go to-morrow morning,” he said quietly and hopelessly, as they went a second time upon their upward way. “I shall put all the force of my will to it that I go. It is better so.Pourquoi vous vexer avec mon ardent désir pour vous?”
Her heart contracted with a spasm of pain, but she made no reply.
“To meet again will be but more to suffer,” he continued. “I touch at the end of what I am capable to suffer. Why should I distress you for no good to any one? And for me all this is so very bad! I can accomplish nothing. The power dies in me these days.Toute ma jeunesse est prise!I feel myself become old and most desolate. I am content that it is good-bye here.”
It seemed to her that her turn had come to falter, and fail to move, and close her eyes in misery. If—if—only—
But they went on slowly until the top landingwas just above their heads. Both knew that the top landing must bring the termination of all.
She took the door-key in her hand, went a little ahead of him and fitted it noiselessly into the lock. It turned. The end was at hand. She looked towards him and attempted a smile. He put the match-box on the window ledge and drew her within his arms.
“It is for the first and the last time,” he said hoarsely, and then he kissed her furiously, passionately,—twice, thrice, and once again. “C’est comme ça, l’amour!” he whispered; “and because you know nothing of it, you let it go from you.”
Then he put his hand to his throat as if strangling, and, opening the door, stepped aside.
“Good-bye,” he murmured, as she passed within. “Bon voyage!”
The door closed between them.
She went to her room and found Ottillie asleep upon the sofa.
She crossed to the window, opened it softly and leaned out; after a little she heard the door beneath open and close, and then his shadow fell beneath the electric light.
Then he was gone!
This time there would be no return.
The moisture of his lips was yet upon her own, and he was gone forever.
She crossed the room and fell upon her knees beside the bed.
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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 athrilling 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 trunksfrachtguttwo 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’reever 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 theportetheir 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, “andwir haben sehr wenigtime to spare; you want to look lively.” Then he rushed to the ticket gate to send Rosina andher 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 notleavingat 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.
“Youarea 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 theway 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 featuresof 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 tofahrfrom here onmittheBahnor theSchiff?”
“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’llfahrright alongmittheBahn. 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 werespattered 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 thecasquetteof thedouanierrevealed 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, theykeep 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 itskronenorgulden,” 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 haveschiffedit 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 thirtycentimes,” 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 thirtycentimeson 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 takepfennigs, 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 upagain, 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;shehad 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.
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.