A Woman's Will
“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.
Chapter Three
LATE in the afternoon of the same day Ottillie, coming in to wake her mistress from a nap which the morning’s long walk had resulted in stretching to a most unusual duration, brought with her a great bunch of those luxuriantly double violets which brim over with perfume and beauty. There was also a note, very short, and couched in a flawless French.
If one must be roused out of a delicious sleep on a warm June day, surely violets, and such a note as accompanied these particular violets, were the least disagreeable means ever invented for accomplishing that end. Rosina’s frown for Ottillie changed into a smile for some one else, and she rose from among her pillows and submitted to her toilet with a good grace. Ottillie, who was French enough and experienced enough never to need to be told things, divined what the note must have contained the second time that she saw her mistress glance at the clock, and so accelerated her ordinary rate of movement that even the gown of lace which appeared to fasten nowhere, was fastened everywhere ere the town bells rang five.
A few minutes after, a garçon in the hotel livery brought up a card, and, Continental etiquette made it quite en règle for Monsieur von Ibn to be ushered into the dainty little salon which the Schweizerhof permitted Rosina to enjoy (for a consideration), and there muse in company with his own violets, while he waited and turned his cane over and over in his gloved hands.
Then Ottillie opened the portières beyond, and Rosina appeared between them, delightfully cool and fresh-looking, and flatteringly glad to see him.
“We seem like quite long friends, do we not?” he said, as he bent above her hand and kissed it lightly.
“Yes, certainly, I feel that I have the sensation of at any rate three weeks,” she answered; and then she sank luxuriously down in a great fauteuil, and was conscious of an all-pervading well-content that it should be too warm to go out, and that he should be there opposite her while she must remain within. She was curious about this man who was so out of the ordinary, and the path along which her curiosity led her seemed a most attractive one.
“Why do you say three weeks,” he asked; “why not three months or three years?”
“But in three years one learns to know another so well, and I do not feel – ”
“Oh,” he interrupted, “it is better as it is; perhaps you may be like I am, and get weary always soon, and then have no longer any wish to see me.”
“Do you get tired of every one?”
He passed his hand across his eyes and sighed and smiled together.
“Yes, madame,” he said, and there was a sad note in his voice, “I get often tired. And it is bad, because I must depend so deeply on who I speak with for my mind to be able to work after. Comprenez-vous?”
She made a movement of assent that he seemed to have paused for, and he continued.
“When I meet a stranger I must always wonder how soon I shall be finished with him. It comes very soon with nearly all.”
“And are you sure that you are always the weary one?”
He looked blank for a moment, then,
“I have already bore you; yes?”
“Not at all, but I was warned this morning that you might possibly commit such a crime.”
“And have I?”
She looked on his earnestness and smiled.
“Have I?” he reiterated; “yes?”
Then she spoke suddenly.
“Why do foreigners always say ‘yes’ at the end of every question that they ask in English? I get so tired of it, it’s so superfluous. Why do they do it?”
He reflected.
“It is polite,” he said, after a moment. “I ask you, ‘Do I bore you?’ and then I ask you, ‘Do I?’”
“But why do you think that it is polite to ask me twice?”
He reflected again, and then replied:
“You are equally droll in English; you are even more droll in English, I think. You say, ‘You will go to walk, will you not?’ and the ’not’ makes no sense at all.”
It was her turn to reflect, and be forced to acquiesce.
“Yes, that is true.”
“And anyway,” he went on, “it is polite for me to ask you twice anything, because that shows that I am twice anxious to please you.”
“So!”
“Yes;” he took a violet from the bowl at his side and began to unclose its petals. “Why did he say that?” he asked, suddenly raising his eyes from the flower to her.
“He! who?”
“Our friend.”
“Why did he say what?”
“Why did he say that I was stupid? I have never been but nice to him.”
She looked startled.
“He never said that you were stupid.”
“You said that he told you that I was stupid.”
“No, I did not. I said that he warned me that – ”
“Oh, it matters not,” he broke in, shrugging his shoulders slightly, “ça ne me fait rien. What he may think of me matters me not at all. Pauvre garçon, he is so most uninteresting himself that I cannot expect interest from him. Ecoutez-donc! for him nothing exists but golf; for him where golf is there is something, elsewhere there is nothing anywhere. What did he say to me of Paris? he said that for him Paris was nothing, because no one plays golf; he said he could throw a dog all over the grounds any morning. I did not ask him what dog, or why a dog, for I thought it was not truly a dog, but just his bad American argot; and, if I must speak truth, pardon me that I find it very good that so stupid a fellow finds me dull. If he found me amusing, I should naturally know that I, too, must be a fool.”
He put the violet to his lips and smiled a little.
“He speaks but English,” he added; “he knows but golf, he has been around the world and has seen nothing. I am quite content to have such a man despise me.”
Then he was silent, biting the purple flower. Rosina rested her chin upon her hand.
“Please go on,” she said briefly, “I am listening.”
He looked at her and smiled.
“I do like Americans,” he went on, “and I see that all the women have small waists, and do not grow so large so soon, but I do not see why they do not learn many things and so become much more nice; why, for example, are they so ignorant of all the world and think their own country alone fine?”
“Are we so?”
“Yes, of a truth. Because I speak English I meet very many of America, and they always want to talk, so naturally I must listen, because no one can arrive at speaking louder surely. And so I must always hear how good the light is in America, and how warm the houses are in America, and how high the buildings are in America, and how much everything has cost – always how much everything has cost; that is always very faithfully told to me. And while I listen I must feel how very narrow to so speak is. And afterwards when I go on to hear how very poor the light is here, and how very cold the hotels are here, I certainly must feel how very ill-bred that is.”
He paused to get a fresh violet, and then continued:
“I see no possible beauty for a place of four walls fifty mètres high; and there can be no health where all is so hot night and day; and so I only listen and am content to be counted so stupid. Why do you go to Zurich Monday?”
The question terminated his monologue with such suddenness that she started involuntarily.
“Why do you ask?”
“Naturally because I want to know.”
“I go because I am anxious to be out of Switzerland before the first of July.”
“But Switzerland is very nice in July.”
“I know; and it is also very crowded.”
“Where shall you be in July?”
“I am not sure; probably in the Tyrol.”
He got up from his seat, went to the chimney-piece, lifted up a vase and turned it about in his hand with a critical air. Then he faced her again and said, with emphasis:
“I shall remain here all summer.”
“In Lucerne?”
“Yes; not perhaps always at the hotel, but somewhere on the lake. I am born here.”
“You are Swiss, then?”
“Yes; if I am Swiss because I am born here.”
“Were you born in Lucerne?”
“No, but at a place which my father had then by Fluellen. It is for that that I love the Vierwaldstattersee.”
“I wish that I had been born here,” Rosina murmured thoughtfully.
“Where are you born?”
“In the fourth house of a row of sixteen, all just alike.”
“How most American!”
She laughed a little.
“I amuse you?” he asked, with a look of pleased non-understanding.
“Oh, so very much!”
He came a little forward and smiled down at her.
“We are really friends, are we not?”
She looked into his big, earnest eyes.
“I think so,” she answered simply, with a little nod.
He moved slowly across the room and, going to the window, turned his back upon her.
“It is cooler out now, let us go out and walk. I like to walk, and you do too, do you not? yes?”
“Oh, please stop saying ‘yes’ like that, it makes me so horribly nervous.”
He continued to look out of the window.
“Are you nervous?” he said. “I am sorry, because it is very bad to be nervous.”
“I shall not be so if you will only cease tacking that ‘yes’ on to the end of every question that you find occasion to ask me.”
“What is ‘tacking’?” he asked, whirling around.
“Attaching.”
“Why did you not pronounce it plainly the first time?”
She rose slowly from her seat and retouched the violets where he had disturbed their carefully arranged disorder. He quitted the window and approached her side.