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

/> “You must change in Bregenz.”

“We must change in Bregenz,” Jack called out.

By that time the German Venice was well behind, and the train was skirting the southern shore of the Bodensee. The sun was shining on the waves, and the woods upon the banks were spattered with red and yellow. And off to the north Constance was lying. Ah, Constance--the Stadtgarten--Huss’ Tower--the “Souvenir” of Vieuxtemps!

Rosina wept afresh.

“Oh, Ottillie,” she sobbed, forlornly, “_que je suis malheureuse aujourd’hui_!”

Ottillie opened her little bag and handed her mistress another fresh handkerchief; it was the only way in which she could testify to her devotion upon this especial day.

At Bregenz they descended, with the aid of a porter, at about half-past two. As they left the train it was borne in upon them that this change was not a change at all, but just another custom-house.

“What strange country have we run up against, I’d like to know!” Jack asked in amazement; and then the black cocks’ plumes in the _casquette_ of the _douanier_ revealed the information that he craved.

“How does Austria get to the Bodensee?” Rosina begged to know, having seen the cocks’ plumes as quickly as he had.

“I don’t know,” replied Jack, not at all pleased at the discovery as to where they were. “It does seem as if every country in Europe has a finger in this lake, though; or, if they haven’t, they keep a custom-house open on it just as a side line to their regular business.”

The porter led them into the great wooden shed, where some unplaned boards laid across boxes served as counters, Bregenz being in the throes of the erection of a new station.

“I bet they make it plain whether its _kronen_ or _gulden_,” said Rosina’s cousin as he threw his valise on top of the porter’s small mountain; “if I’d known that I was to come in connection with that vile money system again I’d have _schiffed_ it across the lake or walked around the northern shore before I’d ever have come this route.”

By this remark he testified to a keen recollection of his Viennese experiences and the double dealing (no pun intended) of the Austrian shopkeeper just at the present epoch in the national finance system of that country.

Behind the boards two uniformed officials paced up and down, and when all was neatly ranged before them the one bestowed his attention upon Rosina while the other turned his in among the infinity of boxes belonging to her party. He peeped into two or three of the valises and chalked them and all of their kind; then he demanded the opening of the largest dress-box. Ottillie unstrapped it and undertook to satisfy his curiosity to the fullest possible extent.

The object uppermost of all was a Russian leather writing-tablet. The official leapt upon that at once.

“On this you must pay thirty _centimes_,” he declared, grabbing it up.

“_Warum?_” said Jack. He found “_warum_” the most useful word in his German vocabulary, because by the very nature of things it always threw the burden of the conversation on to the shoulders of the other party.

“You cannot pretend that it is an article of wearing apparel for madame,” said the officer archly.

“I never said that it was an article of wearing apparel for any one,” Jack retorted hotly; “I asked why I had to pay thirty _centimes_ on it. It isn’t new and it isn’t dutiable, and I know that, and you know it too.”

“What is it, anyhow?” asked the man.

“It’s to write on.”

“Why does not madame write on paper, like everybody else?” inquired the witty fellow.

“There’s your six cents,” said Jack, in great disgust; “I reckon you take _pfennigs_, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Austrian, “we take everything.”

“Yes,” replied the American, “so I observed in Vienna.”

Then he turned away and the porter loaded up again.

They went out on the platform and were told that the train had just gone.

“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” asked the guard, taking pity on their consternation at being left high and dry so unexpectedly.

“Zurich.”

“Oh, then that wasn’t your train anyway; that train went to Rorshack. You take the Zurichbahn at half-past three.”

There was three-quarters of an hour to wait.

“Do you suppose that there is anything worth seeing in Bregenz?” the man of the party suggested.

“I don’t want to see it if there is,” his cousin replied.

“Well, I do want to see it, even if there isn’t,” he answered; “you and Ottillie can go into the waiting-room and I’ll be back in half an hour.”

So he went off whistling, his ulster floating serenely around him. Rosina established herself in a boarded-off angle which under existing circumstances was dignified by the title of “Warte-Saal,” and every nail that was driven into the new Gare of Bregenz pierced her aching heart and echoed in her aching head.

After the lapse of half an hour Jack turned up again, having thoroughly exhausted Bregenz and purchased a new cane most ingeniously carved with bears’ heads and paws interlaced.

He was not overpleased to be informed that the Zurichbahn was late, and that there was no probability of their leaving the dominions of Francis Joseph before four o’clock at the earliest.

“It’s an awful shame the way this world is put on,” he said, yawning and walking up and down; “it would be Paradise to Von Ibn to have the right to cart you and your bags around, and it’s h--l for me, and I’ve got it to do notwithstanding.”

“I never sent for you to take me home,” Rosina said in an outraged tone.

“Oh, I wasn’t blaming you,” he declared amicably.

“Oh,” she said coldly, “I thought that you were.”

The Zurichbahn was very late, and did not put in an appearance until half-past four. Then they went aboard with a tired feeling that would have done credit to an arrival in Seattle from New York.

“Do we change again?” Rosina asked with latent sarcasm, when the guard (a handsome guard, worthy to have been a first lieutenant at the very least) came through to tear some pages out of their little books.

“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” he asked, with a beaming smile.

“Zurich,” Jack sung out, with renewed vigor.

The guard opened the door leading into the next compartment, and then, when his exit was assured, he told them:

“Must in St. Margarethen change,” and vanished.

“He knows the time for disappearing, evidently,” Jack said; “I bet somebody that felt as I do threw him out of the window when he said that once. And I have a first-class notion of getting down and taking the next train straight back to Munich for the express purpose of murdering that fellow that started us out this morning.”

Rosina felt a deep satisfaction that none of his heat could be charged up to her; _she_ had offered no advice as to this unlucky day. She sat there silent, her eyes turned upon the last view of the Bodensee, and after some varied and picturesque swearing her cousin laid down and went to sleep again.

They arrived in St. Margarethen about half-past five, and night, a damp, chill night, was falling fast. The instant that the train halted a guard rushed in upon them.

“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” he cried, breathlessly.

“Zurich, d---- you!” Jack howled. He was making too small a shawl-strap meet around too large a rug for the fifth time that day, and the last remnant of his patience had fled.

“Must be very quick; no time to lose,” said the man and hurried away.

That he spoke a deep and underlying truth was evidenced by the mad rush of passengers and porters which immediately ensued. They joined the crowd and found themselves speedily flung in some shape into Zurichbahn No. II., which moved out of the station at once.

Jack was too saturated with sleep to be able to try any more. He went through to the smoker’s compartment, and Rosina looked apathetically out upon the Lake of Zurich and reflected her same reflections over again and again. The moon, which had looked down upon the Isar rapids, rode amidst masses of storm clouds above the dark sheet of water, and illuminated with its fitful light the shadows that lay upon the bosom of the waves. She felt how infinitely darker were the shadows within her own bosom, and how vain it was to seek for any moon among her personal clouds.

“It’s a terrible thing to have been married,” she thought bitterly. “Before you’ve been married you’re so ready to be married to any one, and after you’ve been married you don’t dare marry any one.” Then she took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “Oh, dear,” she sobbed, “it doesn’t seem as if I could possibly be more wretched with him than I am without him!”

They reached Zurich in the neighborhood of nine o’clock. The end of a trip always brings a certain sense of relief to the head of the party, and Jack’s spirits rose prodigiously as he got them all into a cab.

“We’ll get something to eat that’s good,” he declared gayly, “and then to-morrow, after a first-class night’s sleep, we’ll go over the Gotthard, and be in Milan Monday. And then, ho for Genoa, Gibraltar, and joy everlasting!”

He seized Rosina’s hand and gave it a hard squeeze.

“Cheer up, you poor dear!” he cried; “you’ll come out all right in the end,--now you see!”

She pressed her lips tightly together and did not trust herself to say one word in reply.

She felt that she was beginning to really hate her cousin.


Chapter Fifteen

They stood at the summit of that double flight of marble steps which run up the right-hand side of the Milan Cathedral’s roof and down the left. There are one hundred steps on either side, and having just mounted the right-hand hundred Rosina looked down the left-hand hundred with an affright born of appreciative understanding.

“Oh, Jack,” she cried, “I never shall get down from here alive! What did you ever bring me up for?”

“I brought you up to talk,” said her cousin. “Come over here, and sit down on the ridge-pole beside me.”

The ridge-pole of the Milan Cathedral is of white marble, like all the rest of the edifice; it is wide and flat, and just the height for a comfortable seat.

The cousins placed themselves side by side thereon, and Jack lit a cigarette while he deliberated on just how he should proceed with the case in hand.

[Illustration]

“Well,” he said at last, folding his arms, clearing his throat, crossing his legs, and in other ways testifying to the solemnity of what was forthcoming, “I want you to pay a lot of attention to what I’m going to say, Rosina, for I’m going to talk to you very seriously, and you must weigh my words well, for once let us get out to sea next week and it will be too late to ever take any back tacks as to this matter.”

She turned her sad eyes towards him; she was looking pale and tired, but not cross or impatient.

“Go on,” she said quietly.

“It’s just this: it’s four days now since we left Munich, and I can see that your spirits aren’t picking up any; instead, you seem more