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

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 to Dresden? Later I also must go to Dresden, and it would be so _gemüthlich_, in Dresden together.”

“It will be _gemüthlich_ for 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 men had 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 Tagernsee to-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; _if_ I 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 her mind, 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 the habit 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 the _pension_, 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 and she 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 big _porte_ open 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 the _pension_ and he was pressing the electric bell. She