Читать книгу A Woman's Will - Warner Anne - Страница 7

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THERE was at that particular date a man in Düsseldorf who was quite as set in his ideas as Rosina was in hers. He was lingering from day to day at the Hotel Heck, engaged for the most part in no more arduous pursuit than the awaiting of a telegram from his family. His family were at Evian, on the Lac de Génève, and if they decided to go from there to Paris, he wanted very much to visit Switzerland himself. But if, on the contrary, they merely ended in transferring their abode from Evian to Ouchy, as was very likely to prove to be the case, he had fully made up his mind to pass the early summer months in Leipsic. In Leipsic he had an interest—the one great interest of his existence. The family had but scant sympathy with the force of the Leipsic attraction; their ambitions were set in quite another direction, and all their hopes and plans and wishes were bent to the accomplishment of that one end. They desired most ardently that he should take unto himself a wife, because he was the last of his race, and there was a coronet hung up in the skies above his head. The natural effect of such anxiety upon the uncommon temperament of this particularly uncommon man was to decide him definitely to remain single forever, and because he had always proved himself of a strength of resolve and firmness of purpose quite unequalled in their experience, they felt justified in the gravest fears that in this case, as in all others, he would remain steadfast, keeping the word which he declared that he had solemnly pledged himself, and so become the last of a line whose castle had crowned the crag which it defended since the Goth was abroad in the land.

To be sure, he was not yet so old but that, when he casually glanced at a girl, the girl, her mother, and his mother all immediately held their breath. But he was old enough to have proved the futility of the hope by the casualty of the glance over and over again. And so his people were completely out of patience with him, and he and they found it accordingly more agreeable to take even their Switzerland in individual communion-cups. Therefore he remained in Düsseldorf, wandering in the Hofgarten, listening to the music in the Tonhalle, and occasionally quieting his impatience for the Lake of Lucerne, where his childhood had been passed, by writing a few pages to Leipsic, the scene of his studies and the spot where his one incentive to labor dwelt.

After three weeks of manifold hesitation the family at last concluded to let it be Paris, and thus Southeastern Europe was thrown open to the recalcitrant. It being now quite middle June, he took his way southward with a leisure born of the warm summer sun, and spent a month en route. The Storks of Strasbourg and the Bears of Berne both ate of his bread before the final definite checking of his trunks for Lucerne took place. But the cry at his heart for the Vierwaldstattersee and the Schweizerhof became of a strength beyond resisting, and so he turned his back upon the Jungfrau and his face towards the Rigi, and slept beneath the mist-wreaths of Mount Pilatus that very night.

It was the next morning that Rosina, walking on the Quai with an American man (not the one on the “Kronprinz,” however), first observed an especially tall and striking-looking individual, and wondered who he was. With her the wonder was always straightway followed by the ask, so she voiced her curiosity forthwith.

“That man?” said her companion, turning to make sure who she was referring to, “that dark man with the gray gloves? oh, that’s Von Ibn. He’s to be very great indeed some day, I’m given to understand.”

“Hasn’t he stopped growing yet?”

“There is ‘great’ and ‘great,’ you know. He is in for both kinds, it appears.”

“Because of his ‘von’?” demanded Rosina, whose thirst for knowledge was occasionally insatiable.

“No, because of his violin.”

“Does he play?”

“You show ignorance by asking such a question.”

“He plays well, then?—is known?”—

“He is a composer.”

She turned abruptly to the side and sank down on one of the numerous seats before which the endless procession of morning promenaders were ceaselessly defiling.

“Let me look at him!” she cried below her breath; “how more than interesting! He appears just as one might imagine that Paganini did before he made his famous bargain.”

The American stood beside her and waited for the object of their watching to turn and pass again. He was quite willing to humor his charming country-woman in any way possible. He did not care who she might take a fancy to, for he was himself engaged to a girl at Smith College, and men who fall in love with college girls are nearly always widow-proof.

Presently Von Ibn came strolling back. He was very tall, as befitted one half of his name, and very dark, as befitted the other, and around his rather melancholy eyes were those broad spaces which give genius room to develop as it will. He had black hair, a black moustache, and a chin which bore witness to the family opposition. Rosina, who chanced to be a connoisseur in chins, looked upon his with deep approval.

“Do you know him?” she asked, looking up at the man beside her; “oh, if you do, I do so wish that you would present him to me. He looks so utterly fascinating; I am sure that I shall like to talk to him.”

The American appeared frankly amused.

“I should really enjoy seeing you turned loose upon Von Ibn,” he said, “it would be such wild sport.”

“Then be nice and bring him to me, and you can have all the fun of standing by and watching us worry one another.”

Her friend hesitated.

“What is it?” she asked impatiently; “why don’t you go? Is there any reason why I may not meet him? Is he a gambler who doesn’t settle fair? Has he deserted his own wife, or run away with any other man’s? Does he lie, or drink beyond the polite limit, or what?”

“Why, the truth is,” said the American slowly, “many people consider him an awful bore. The fact is, he’s most peculiar. I’ve had him stare at me time and again in a way that made me wonder if he was full-witted. I don’t know anything worse against him than that, though.”

“If that’s all,” Rosina answered, laughing, “you need not fear for me. I’ve lived in good society too many years not to know how to deal with a bore. A little idiosyncrasy like that will not mar my enjoyment one bit. Do go and get him now.”

“But some consider him a very big bore indeed.”

“One can see that at the first glance, and just on that account I shall have infinite patience with him.”

“I warn you beforehand that he’s very much of a character.”

“I always did like characters better than people who were well-behaved.”

The American took one step away and then halted.

“Your mind is set upon meeting him?”

“Yes, quite; and do hurry. He may disappear.”

“She rose to receive them with radiant countenance”

He laughed.

“Possess yourself in patience for five short minutes,” he began, but she cut his speech off.

“There, there, never mind; while you’re talking he’ll take a train or a boat, and I’ll be left to go geniusless to my grave.”

He lifted his hat at once then and walked away without another word, although inwardly he marvelled much that any woman should care about meeting that man—that particular man; for he was one of those whom the man bored out and out.

The Schweizerhof Quai is long, but not so long but that you may meet any one for whom you chance to be searching within ten minutes of the time of your setting out. The young American was favored by good luck, and in less than half that time returned to Rosina’s bench, his capture safely in tow. She rose to receive them with the radiant countenance of a doll-less child who is engaged in negotiating the purchase of one which can both walk and talk. Indeed her joy was so delightfully spontaneous and unaffected that a bright reflection of it appeared in the shadows of those other eyes which were now meeting hers for the first time.

“Shall we walk on?” she suggested; “that is the pleasantest, to walk and talk, don’t you think?”

Von Ibn stood stock-still before her.

“What will monsieur do?” he asked, with a glance at the other man.

“He will enjoy walking,” Rosina answered.

“But I shall not. I find nothing so tiresome as trying to walk with two people. One must always be leaning forward to hear, or else hearing what is not amusing.”

After which astonishing beginning he waited, pulling his moustache as he contemplated them both. The American glanced at Rosina as much as to say, “There, I told you that he was the worst ever!” But Rosina only smiled cheerfully, saying to her countryman:

“Since Herr von Ibn feels as he does, I think you’d better go and study the Lion or meditate the glaciers, and leave me here with this lion to do either or both.”

The American laughed. He might not have been so amused except that he knew that she knew all about the girl in Smith College. Such things count sadly against one’s popularity, and being a man of sense he recognized the fact.

“At your service, madame,” he said; “I’m going to turn the care of you over to our friend for the remainder of the promenade hour. He will no doubt appreciate to the fullest extent the honor of the transferred charge.”

Von Ibn bowed.

“I do appreciate,” he said gravely; “thank you. Good-morning.”

Then as the other walked away he turned to Rosina.

“Was I impolite to him?” he asked, in quite the tone of an old and intimate friend.

“Yes, very,” she answered, nodding.

“You are then displeased?”

“Not at all; I wanted him to go myself.”

“Ah, yes,” he exclaimed eagerly, “you feel as I. Is it not always ungemüthlich, three people together?”

“Always.”

He glanced about them at the crowd of passers-by.

“It is not pleasant here; let us take a walk by the river, and then we can talk and come to know each one the other,”—he paused—“well,” he added.

“Do you really want to know me—well?” she asked, imitating his pause between the last two words.

“Yes, very much. I saw you in the hotel this morning when you came down the stair, and I wanted to know you then. And just now when we passed on the Quai I felt the want become much greater.”

“And I wanted to know you,” she said, looking and speaking with delicious frankness. “I wanted to know you because of your music.”

“Because of my music!” he repeated quickly; “you are then of interest in the music? you are yourself perhaps a musician?” and he turned a glance, as deep as it was burning, upon her face.

“A very every-day musician,” she replied, lifting her smile to his deep attention. “I can accompany the musician and I can appreciate him, that is all.”

“But that is quite of the best—in a woman,” he exclaimed earnestly. “The women were not meant to be the genius, only to help him, and rest him after his labor.”

“Really!”

“Of a surety.”

“But what made you want to know me?” she continued. “I had a good reason for desiring your acquaintance, but you can have had no equally good one for desiring mine.”

“No,” he said quickly and decidedly; “that is, of an undenying, most true.” He knit his brows and reflected for the space of time consumed in passing nine of the regularly disposed trees which shade the boulevard just there, for they were now moving slowly in the direction of the bridges, and then he spoke. “I do not know just why, yet I am glad that it is to be.”

“Would you have asked some one to introduce you if I had not sent for you?”

He thought again, this time for the space of six trees only, then:

“No, I do not think so.”

“Why not? since you wanted to meet me.”

“I never get myself made known to any one, because if I did that, then later, when they weary me, as they nearly always do, I must blame myself only.”

“Do most people weary you—later.”

“Oh, so very much,” he declared, with a sincerity that drew no veil over the truth of his statement.

Rosina, remembering the American’s views in regard to him, stifled a smile.

“Our friend,” she asked, “the man who presented you to me, you know, does he weary you?”

Von Ibn frowned.

“But he is a very terrible bore,” he said; “you surely know that, since you know him.”

Then she could but laugh outright.

“And I, monsieur,” she demanded merrily, “tell me, do you think that I too shall some day—?”

He looked at her in sudden, earnest anxiety.

“I hope otherwise,” he declared fervently.

While talking they had passed the limits of the Quai, crossed the big, sunny square, and come to the embankment that leads to the foot-bridge. The emerald-green Reuss rushed beside them with a smooth rapidity which seemed to hush the tumult of its swift current far underneath the rippling surface. The old stone light-house—the town’s traditionary godfather—stood sturdily for its rights out in mid-stream, and helped support the quaint zigzag of that most charming relic of the past, the longest wooden foot-bridge of Lucerne. A never-ending crowd of all ages and sexes and conditions of natives and strangers were mounting and descending its steps, hurrying along its crooked passage, or craning their necks to study the curious pictures painted in the wooden triangles of its pointed roof.

“I like the bridge better than I do the Lion,” Rosina remarked; “I think it is much more interesting.”

Von Ibn was looking down into the water where they had stopped by the bridge’s steps. He did not pay any attention to what she said, and after a minute she spoke again.

“What do you think?”

He made no answer. She turned her eyes in the direction of his and wondered what he was looking at. He appeared to be lost in a study of the Reuss.

“Do you always think before you speak,” she said, somewhat amused, “or are you doing mental exercises?”

But still no reply.

Then she too kept still. Her eyes wandered to a certain building on her left, and she reflected that necessity would shortly be driving her there with her letter of credit; but further reflection called to her mind the fact that she had intrusted Ottillie with a hundred-franc note to change that morning, and that would be enough to carry her over Sunday. The Gare across the water then attracted her attention, and she reviewed a last week’s journey on the St. Gotthard railway, and recalled the courtesy of a certain Englishman who had raised and lowered her window not once but perhaps twenty times. And then her gaze fell upon the skirt of her dress, which was a costume most appropriate for the Quai but much too delicate for a promiscuous stroll through the town streets.

“That is superficial!” Von Ibn suddenly declared.

She quite started.

“What is superficial?”

“Your comparison. You may not compare them at all.”

“May not compare what?”

“The bridge and the Lion. The bridge is a part of life out of the Middle Ages, and the Lion is a masterpiece of Thorwaldsen.”

Rosina simply stared at him.

“Is that what you have been thinking of all this long time?” she asked in astonishment.

“Was it so long?”

“I thought so.”

“What did you think of in that so long time?”

She told him about the bank, and the Englishman on the Gotthardbahn, and her dress. He smiled.

“How drôle a woman is!” he murmured, half to himself.

“But I think that you are droll too,” she told him.

“Oh,” he said energetically, “I assure you, madame, you do not as yet divine the tenth part of my drollness.”

She smiled.

“Do you think that I shall ever become sufficiently well acquainted with you to learn it all?”

He regarded her seriously.

“If you interest me,” he remarked, “I shall naturally see much of you, because we shall be much together. How long do you stay in Lucerne?”

“Until Monday. I leave on Monday.”

He looked at her in dismay.

“But I do not want to leave on Monday. I have only come the last night. I want to stay two weeks.”

She felt herself forced to bite her lips, even as she replied:

“But you can stay two weeks, monsieur.”

He looked blank.

“And you go?”

“Naturally; but what does that matter? You would not be going where I went anyway.”

“Where do you go?”

“To Zurich.”

“Alone? Do you go alone?”

“I have my maid, of course; and I am to meet a friend there.”

“A friend!” His whole face contracted suddenly. “Ah,” he cried, sharply, “I understand! It is that Englishman.”

“What Englishman?” she asked, utterly at a loss to follow his thought.

“Your friend.”

“But he’s an American.”

“You said he was an Englishman.”

“I never did! How could I? Why, can’t you tell at once that he is an American by the way that he talks?”

“I never have hear him talk.”

She stared afresh, then turned to walk on, saying, “You must be crazy! or aren’t you speaking of the man who presented you to me?”

“Why should I be of any interest as to that man? Naturally it is of the Englishman that I speak.”

“What Englishman?”

“But that Englishman upon the Gotthardbahn, of course; the one you have said was so nice to you.”

She began to laugh.

“Oh, pardon me, but you are so funny, you are really so very funny;” then pressing her handkerchief against her rioting lips, “you will forgive me for laughing, won’t you?”

He did not smile in the least nor reply to her appeal for forgiveness; he only waited until she was quiet, and then went on with increased asperity veiled in his tone.

“You are to see him again, n’est-ce pas?”

“I never expect to.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He stopped short and offered her his hand.

“Why?” she asked in surprise.

“Your word that you do not hope to meet him again.”

She began to laugh afresh.

Then, still holding out his hand, he repeated insistently.

“Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again.”

They were in one of the steep, narrow streets that lie beyond the bridges and lead up to the city wall. It was still, still as the desert; she looked at him, and his earnestness quelled her sense of humor over the absurdity of the situation.

“What shall I say to you?” she asked.

“Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again.”

“Certainly I do not expect to meet him again; although, of course, I might meet him by chance at any time.”

He looked into her face with an instant’s gravest scrutiny, and then some of his shadow lifted; with the hand that he had held out he suddenly seized hers.

“You are truthfully not caring for him, n’est-ce pas?” he demanded.

Rosina pulled her hand from his grasp.

“Of course not,” she said emphatically. “Why, I never saw the man but just that once.”

“But one may be much interested in once only.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yes, that is true. I know it. Do not laugh, but give me your hand and swear that he does not at all interest you now.”

She did not give him her hand, but she raised her eyes to the narrow strip of blazing sky that glowed above the street and said solemnly:

“I swear upon my word and honor that I do not take the slightest interest in that English gentleman who so kindly raised and lowered my windows when I was on the St. Gotthard last week.”

Von Ibn drew a breath of relief.

“I am so glad,” he said; and then he added, “because really, you know, it had not been very nice in you to interest yourself only for the getting up of your window.”

“He put it down too,” she reminded him.

“That is quite nothing—to put a window down. It is to raise them up that is to every one such labor on the Gotthardbahn. To let them down is not hard; very often mine have fell alone. And much smoke came in.”

Rosina walked on and looked the other way, because she felt a need of so doing for a brief space. Her escort strolled placidly at her side, all his perturbation appearing to have vanished into thin air with the satisfactory disposal of the English problem. They came to the top of the street and saw the old town-wall and its towers before them. The sun was very hot indeed, and the tourists in cabs all had their parasols raised.

“I think we had better return,” she said, pausing in the last patch of shade.

Von Ibn looked at his watch.

“Yes,” he said, “we must; déjeuner is there now.”

So they turned down into the town, taking another of the steep, little streets, so as to vary the scenery of their route. After a little he spoke again.

“And you are sure that you go Monday?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“To Zurich, and then to where?”

“Then to Constance.”

“And then?”

“I do not know where we shall go next.”

He started slightly, and a fresh cloud overspread his face.

“Much pleasure to you,” he said, almost savagely.

She looked up quickly, surprised at his tone, but her answer was spoken pleasantly enough.

“Thank you; and the same to you—all summer long.”

In response he shrugged his shoulders so fiercely as to force her to notice the movement.

“Why do you shrug your shoulders like that?” she demanded.

“I am amused.”

“You don’t look amused.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I am amused to see that all women are the same; I have that thought just now.”

“Are you in the habit of shrugging your shoulders whenever that thought occurs to you?”

He tossed his head to one side.

“Women are all the same,” he repeated impatiently.

“In what way?”

“They can never tell the truth!”

“What makes you say that?”

“You.”

“I?”

“Yes.”

She felt very nearly vexed.

“Please explain,” she commanded.

He simply gave another shrug.

She decided to keep her temper.

“I might be clever enough to read minds,” she said mildly, “and still be dense about divining shoulders; I confess I miss the point that you’re trying to make with yours.”

He was silent.

She glanced sideways at him and was thoroughly startled at the black humor displayed in his countenance.

“What is really the matter?” she asked, anxiously.

“Nothing.”

She gave him another quick look, and saw that he saw her look and avoided it. Then she was angry at such poor taste displayed in the first hour of a new acquaintance, and almost thought of turning from him and insisting on being left to return to the Schweizerhof alone. But something kept her impulse in check.

“He is a genius,” she thought, “and they are entirely different from other men,” so she waited a moment and then spoke with the utmost earnestness.

“Please tell me what it all means, monsieur; why are you like this?”

“Because,”—he cried with a sudden passionate outburst of feeling—“because you have lied to me!”

“Monsieur!” she exclaimed, in a shocked voice.

“You have done that,” he cried; “you have lift your eyes to heaven and swear that you were not interested in him, and then—” he stopped, and put his hands to either side of his collar as if it strangled him.

She grew pale at the sight of his emotion.

“Is it that man still?” she asked.

“But naturally it is that man still! Je ne me fâche jamais sans raison.”

“But what is there new to worry about him?”

She dared not contemplate smiling, instead she felt that the Englishman was rapidly becoming the centre of a prospective tragedy.

Von Ibn scowled until his black brows formed a terrible V just over his eyes.

“You do expect to see him in Zurich,” he declared.

“But I told you that I didn’t.”

He laughed harshly.

“I know; but you betrayed yourself so nicely.”

“How?”

“Just now, when I say where do you go from Constance, you quite forget your part, and you say, ‘I do not know where we shall go next.’ Yes, that is what you say, ‘We—we!’ ”

“And if I did.”

“But of a surety you did; and I must laugh in my interior when I hear your words.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed quickly, “you must not say that you laughed in your interior, it isn’t good English.”

“Where must I laugh within myself?”

“We say, ‘I laughed to myself.’ ”

He gave another shrug, as if her correction was too petty a matter to rightfully command attention at that crisis.

“This all does seem so foolish,” she said, “the idea of again having an explanation.”

“I do not care for you to explain,” he interrupted.

“Don’t you want to know what I meant?”

“I know quite well what you meant.”

“I meant my maid, she always travels with me.”

He looked his thorough disbelief.

“Very pretty!” he commented.

She glanced at him and wondered why she was not disgusted, but instead her heart swelled with a pity for the unhappiness that overlaid the doubt in his face.

“Just think,” she said softly, “our friendship is so very young, and you are already so very angry.”

“I am not angry; what I feel is justified.”

“Because I call my maid and myself ‘we’!”

He stopped short, and held out his hand.

“Will you say that it is only the maid?”

Then she felt sure that she should be obliged to scream outright, even while she was summoning all her self-control to the rescue.

They were come to an angle where two streets met steeply and started thence on a joint pitch into the centre of the town. She ran her eyes quickly up and down each vista of cobblestones, and, seeing no one that she knew either near or far, put her hand into his.

“Upon my word and honor,” she declared, with all the gravity which the occasion seemed to demand, “I swear that when I leave Constance my maid will be my only—”

“Assez, assez!” he interrupted, hastily dropping her hand, “it is not need that you swear that. I can see your truth, and I have just think that it may very well come about that I shall chance to be in Constance and wish to take the train as you. It would then be most misfortunate if you have swear alone with your maid. It is better that you swear nothing.”

This kaleidoscopic turn to the conversation quite took Rosina’s breath away, and she remained mute.

“What hotel in Constance do you stop at?” he asked presently.

“The Insel House, of course.”

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a note-book.

“Perhaps I will want to remember,” he said, as he wrote. Then he put up the book and smiled into her eyes; he had a beautiful smile, warm and winning. “I find that we are very sympathique,” he went on, “that is why I may perhaps come to see you again. People who can enjoy together are not many.”

“Have you enjoyed this morning? I thought you had not at all.”

“But, yes,” he protested gravely, “I enjoy it very much. How could you think otherwise?”

She felt silence to be safest, and made no reply. He too was silent for a little, and then spoke suddenly.

“Oh, because of that Englishman! But that is all over now. We will never speak of him again. Only it is most fortunate that I am not of a jealous temperament, or I might very well have really offended me that you talk so much about him.”

“It is fortunate,” she agreed.

“Yes,” he answered, “for me it was very good.”

They had come to the crossing of the great square, and the sunlight was dazzling and dancing upon the white stones of the bridge and the molten gold of the Vierwaldstattersee. The Promenade was deserted and even its shade was unpleasantly warm.

“Shall I see you this afternoon?” Von Ibn asked as they went leisurely through the heat.

“Perhaps.”

“I wish it was after the déjeuner,” he said, looking out upon the lake and the crest of the mountain beyond.

She wondered if she had better say “Why,” or not, and finally decided to say it. He brought his eyes back from the Rigi and looked at her.

“Because I have the habit of always sleeping after déjeuner,” he explained.

They crossed to the hotel. It was late, and more people were coming down in the lifts than going up.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“Yes, I think that I am—a little.”

“I advise you to sleep too,” he said gravely.

“I always do.”

“So,” he cried triumphantly, “you see I say the truth when I say that we are very sympathique!”

Rosina looked up at him and her eyes danced; he returned the look with a responsive glow in his own big pupils.

“I am so glad we meet,” he exclaimed impulsively.

She stepped out of the lift and turned to dismiss him.

“And you?” he asked, bowing above her hand.

“I’m glad too,” she said, and her tone was most sincere.