A Woman's Will by Anne Warner (best 7 inch ereader txt) 📕

/> “Don’t say ‘unwell,’ say ‘not well.’”

“Not well; who will see it not well?”

“Ah,” she said, shaking her head, “there is no telling who would see only too well, and that is just the trouble.”

Von Ibn knit his black brows.

“I do not understand that just,” he said, after a moment. And then he reflected further and added, “You are of an oddness so peculiar. Why must the world matter? I am my world--nothing matters to me. _Vous êtes tortillante!_ you are afraid of stupid people and the tongues they have in them. That is your drollness. And anyway, I may go to Constance if I will. I may go anywhere if I will. You cannot prevent.”

She looked off across the lake.

“You ought to want to do what pleases me,” she suggested.

“But I do not,” he said vigorously; “I want to do what pleases me, and you must want it too,--it will be much better for America when all the women do that. I observe much, and I observe especially in particular that. An American woman is like a queen--she does her own wish always, and is always unhappy; in Europe she does her husband’s wish, and it is much better for her and very good for him, and they are very happy, and I am coming to Constance.”

“But I have no husband,” said Rosina insistently.

“It will be very good if you learn to obey, and then you can have one again.”

“But I never mean to marry again.”

“I never mean to marry once, _surtout pas une Americaine_.”

She felt hurt at this speech and made no reply.

“But I mean to come to Constance.”

“Monsieur, you say that we see too much of one another; then why do you want to drive our acquaintance to the last limits of boredom?”

“But you do not bore me,” he said; and then after a long pause he added, “yet.”

She was forced to feel that the “y” in “yet” had probably begun with a capital.

“I want to go to the hotel now,” she said, in a tired tone.

“Let us go and get an ice or some coffee first; yes?”

“Don’t keep saying ‘yes’ that way,” she cried impatiently; “you know how it frets me.”

He took her arm gently.

“You are indeed fatigued,” he said in a low tone, “I have troubled you much to-night. But I have trouble myself too. Did you see how unhappy I was, and was it so that you sent for me? _Dites-moi franchement_.”

“Yes,” she answered, with simplicity.

“And why did you care?”

“I didn’t want you to think what I knew that you were thinking.”

“Did you care that I was unhappy?”

“I cared that you thought that I would lie.”

“I was quite furious,” he meditated; “I came from the train so late and found that you were gone out. _Je ne me fâche jamais sans raison_,--but I had good reason to-night.”

“You had no right to be angry over my going out, and I had just as much cause for displeasure over your returning as you had over my going.”

“No,” he said quickly, “for it was a compliment to you that I return, and no compliment at all to me that you stay after I am gone so as to visit the concert with monsieur.”

She laughed a little.

“I hope that you will never behave so again; you were so unbearably rude that I was sorry to have sent for you. If I had not,” she asked, with real curiosity, “if I had not, would you have spoken to me after a while?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“_Je ne sais pas_,” he replied with brevity; and then looking down at her with one of his irresistible smiles he added, “but I find it probable.”

She smiled in return, saying:

“Do undertake to never be angry like that again.”

“Again!” he said quickly and pointedly; “then I _may_ come to Constance?”

Her mind was forced to take a sudden leap in order to rejoin his rapid deduction of effect from cause.

“No, no,” she cried hastily, “you must not think any more of Constance, you must go to Leipsic, just as you intended doing.”

“But you said--” he began.

“I meant, in the future, if we should ever chance to meet by accident.”

His brow darkened.

“Where?” he asked briefly.

“Who can tell,” she answered cheerfully; “people are always meeting again. See how that man of the steamer met me again to-day.”

“But you have hear of him since you come?” he demanded, a fresh shade of suspicion in his tone.

“Never! Never a word until he came out of the Promenade and spoke to me this afternoon.”

Von Ibn thought about it frowningly for a little and then decided it was not worth his pains.

“I would not care to meet again as he,” he declared carelessly; “how he was sent to fetch me, and then he must go alone while we speak together, and then make that tale of a drive when there was no drive by the University, only a knowledge that he was much not wanted.”

“Do you think he was not really invited to go to drive?” she asked, opening her eyes widely.

“Of a certainty not. But he could see he was not wanted by us. When he came near, you really looked to weep.”

“Oh, _no_!” she cried, in great distress.

“Yes; it was just so.”

There was a pause while she pondered this new phase of herself, and after a while he went on:

“There is something that I do not understand. Why do you desire so much to speak to me to-night and then not desire me at Constance? _Ça--je ne le comprends pas!_”

“You do understand,” she said; “I know you do, and you know that I know that you do.”

He looked at her for a few seconds and then asked:

“How long are you in Constance?”

“I do not know.”

“And then where do you go?”

“Probably to Munich.”

“With always that Molly?”

“I do not know whether they will go there or not. I believe they are going to Bayreuth and then to Berlin.”

He reflected for the space of half a block.

“I should really go to Leipsic,” he said at last.

“Then why don’t you go?” she retorted, more in answer to his tone than to his speech.

“I might perhaps go to Leipsic while you are in Constance,--_perhaps_.”

Heavy emphasis on the last “perhaps.”

“Oh, do!” she pleaded.

“Are you going to Bayreuth?”

“No, I don’t think so; they all come down to Munich right afterwards, you know.”

“But it is not the same in Munich. If you had been in Bayreuth you would know that. It is not the same at all. And ‘Parsifal’ is only there.”

He paused, but she made no answer.

“I am going to Bayreuth,” he said, “and then I shall come to Munich.”

He made the last statement with an echo of absolute determination, but she continued to keep silence.

“In Munich I shall see you once more?”

“Perhaps.”

“Where will you be?”

She told him.

“And I shall be in the ‘Vierjahreszeiten’; why do you not come there?” he added.

“Because I love the _pension_ with my whole heart,” she declared fervently; “I was there for an entire winter before my marriage; it is like home to me.”

He stopped, pulled out his note-book and carefully wrote down the name and address; as he put it up again, he remarked:

“That was droll, what you said to-night, that you would never marry again! Where do you get that idea?”

“From being married once.”

“I have it from never being married any, and I have it very strong. Have you it very strong?”

“Yes,” said Rosina decidedly, “very strong indeed.”

“Then when we know all is only nothing, why may I not come to Constance?”

“Because you can’t,” she said flatly, “I don’t want you to come.”

“But I will be very good, and--”

“Yes,” she said interrupting; “I know, but to prevent further misunderstanding, I may just as well tell you that I want all my time in Constance for my other friend--”

They were at the door of the hotel, and she had her foot upon the lower step; he was just behind her, his hand beneath her elbow. She felt him give a violent start and drop his hand, and, looking around quickly to see what had happened, she forgot to end her sentence in the emotion caused by the sight of his face. A very fury of anger had surcharged his eyes and swelled the veins upon his temples.

“So!” he said, in a low tone that almost shook with intense and angry feeling, “that is why I may not come! He goes, does he? _Bête que je suis_, that I did not comprehend before!”

Rosina stared at him, motionless, for the space of perhaps ten seconds, and then an utter contempt filled her, and every other consideration fled.

She ran up two or three steps, crossed the hall, and passed the _Portier_ like a flash, flew up the one flight of stairs that led to her corridor, and broke in upon Ottillie with a lack of dignity such as she was rarely guilty of.

“Ottillie,” she exclaimed, panting under the weight of many mixed feelings, “I want to leave for Constance by the first train that goes in the morning. I don’t care if it is at six o’clock, I’ll get up. Ring and find out about everything, and then see to the bill and all. I _must_ go!”

Ottillie stood there, and her clever fingers were already unfastening her mistress’ hat-pins.

“Madame may rest assured,” she said quietly, “all shall be as she desires.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile below stairs Von Ibn had entered the café, lit a cigarette and taken up one of the evening journals.

He appeared to look over the pages of the latter with an interest that was intent and unfeigned.

But was it so?


Chapter Nine

“I shall certainly not tell Molly one word about these latest developments,” Rosina said firmly to herself, and she remade the resolution not once but a hundred times during the train ride of that early Wednesday morning. She was too tired from excess of emotion, and no balance of much-needed sleep, to feel anything but unhappy over the termination of the preceding evening.

Everything was over now, and the only glory to be reaped in any direction would be the dignified way in which Molly should be kept in ignorance of all that had occurred.

Outside, the freshness of a Suabian morning lay over valley and mountain. The country was beautiful with the charm of midsummer’s immediate promise, which spread over the fields of ripening grain and lost itself among the threading rivulets, or in the shadow of forest and mountain. The white-plastered farmhouses with the stable-door at one end, the house-door at the other, and the great sweep of straw-thatched roof sloping