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

sighed a 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 ever _can_ marry again--it’s so _terrible_!”

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 ever _could_ marry 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.”


Chapter Eleven

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 and _ennui_ of 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.”

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