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