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

hastily, “but I might send you a _carte-postale_ sometimes, if you liked.”

She felt obliged to laugh.

“Would you send a colored one, or just one of the regular _dix-centime_ kind,” she inquired with interest.

Von Ibn contemplated her curiously.

“You have such a pretty mouth!” he murmured.

She laughed afresh.

“But with the stamp it is fifteen _centimes_ anyway,” he continued.

“Stamp, what stamp? Oh, yes, the postal card,” she nodded; and then, “I never really expect to see you again, but I’m glad, very glad that I met you, because you have interested and amused me so much.”

“American men are so very stupid, are they not?” he said sympathetically.

“No, indeed,” she cried indignantly; “American men are charming, and they always rise and give their seats to women in the trams, which the men here never think of doing.”

“You need not speak to me so hotly,” said Von Ibn, “I always take a cab.”

The ending of his remark was sufficiently unexpected to cause a short break in the conversation; then Rosina went on:

“I saw a man do a very gallant thing once, he hurried to carry a poor old woman’s big bundle of washing for her because the tram stopped in the wrong place and she would have so far to take it. Wasn’t that royal in him?”

He did not appear impressed.

“Does that man take the broom and sweep a little for the street-cleaner when he meets her?” he asked, after a brief period for reflection.

“We do not have women street-cleaners in America.”

Then he yawned, with no attempt at disguise. She felt piqued at such an open display of ennui, and turned from him to the now brilliant shore past which they were gliding.

After a minute or two he took out his note-book and pencil.

“Deutsches-Filiale, Munich, you said, did you not?”

She nodded.

“Can you write my name?” he asked.

“If strict necessity should drive me to it.”

“Write it here, please.”

He held the book upon the rail and she obeyed the request. Afterwards he held the page to the light until he was apparently thoroughly assured of some doubtful point, and then put it back in his pocket.

“I shall send you a card _Poste Restante_ at Zurich,” he announced, as the lights of Lucerne blazed up close beside them.

“Be sure that you spell my name right.”

“Yes,” he said, taking out his note-book again; “it is like this, _n’est ce pas_?” and he wrote, and then showed her the result.

“Yes, that’s it,” she assented.

He continued to regard his book with deep attention.

“It exasperates me to have my name spelled wrong,” she went on; “doesn’t it you?”

“Yes,” he said; “it is for that that I look in my book.”

She came close and looked at what she had written,--“Von Ebn.”

“Isn’t that right?” she asked in surprise.

“It is your English E, but not my letter.”

“How do you spell your name?”

“I-b-n.”

“Oh!”

She laughed, and he laughed with her.

“That was very stupid in me,” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” he replied, with one of his rare smiles; “but I would have said nothing, only that at the _Poste Restante_ I shall lose all my letters from you.”

“All! what leads you to suppose that there would ever be any?”

He turned and looked steadily at her, his eyes widely earnest.

“What, not even a post card?”

Rosina forgave the yawn, or perhaps she had forgotten it.

“Do you really want to hear from me again?”

“Yes, really.”

“Shall you remember me after I am gone?”

“_Natürlich._”

“For how long?”

At that he shrugged his shoulders. Down below they were making ready for the landing.

“Who can say?” he answered at last.

“At least, monsieur, you are frank.”

“I am always frank.”

“Is that always best?”

“I think so.”

People were beginning to move towards the staircase. Below, the man stood ready to fling the rope.

“Let us go to the other landing and walk back across the stone bridge,” he suggested.

“There is not time; it is quite seven o’clock now.”

“But I shall not again be with you, and there is something that I must say.”

“You must say it here, then.”

The rope was thrown and caught, and every one aboard received the violent jolt that attends some boat-landings. Rosina was thrown against her companion and he was thrown against the stair-rail.

“Can you hear if I speak now,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“You will see that I really interest myself in you.”

Just then some one in front trod on a dog, which yelped violently for three minutes; for a brief space speech was impossible, and then they were on the gang-plank, and he bent above her once more.

“I want to ask you something; will you do it if I ask you?”

“What is it?”

“Will you promise me to do it?”

They were now squeezing past the ticket _kiosque_.

“But what is it?”

“It is this--”

A man behind stepped on Rosina’s skirt and nearly pulled her over backward; something ripped violently and she gave a low cry. The man said, “_Mille pardons_,” and Von Ibn looked ready to murder him.

“Are you undone?” he asked her solicitously.

“No, I’m only badly torn.”

“Do you want a pin?”

“Yes; have you one?”

“_Malheureusement que non._”

“I think that I can hold it up,” she said bravely.

“It is unpardonable--a such man!”

He turned to scowl again at the offender. They were now in the Promenade.

“He couldn’t see in the dark, I suppose,” she murmured.

“But why was he come so near? If it was I who had torn from being too near, that would be quite different.”

“If you don’t take care it will be exactly the same thing.”

He laughed, and gave way three inches.

“You have not yet promise,” he said then.

“Promised what?”

“To do what I ask.”

“Tell me what it is; if I can do it I will.”

He took her arm to cross towards the hotel.

“You can do it if you will,” he said; “it is this--”

The Schweizerhof shone before them, great and white and sparkling; every window was lighted, every table on the terrace was full. Rosina quickened her steps.

“Oh, I’m so late,” she cried, “and I have _such_ a toilette to make!”

Von Ibn had his hand upon her arm still.

“It is this,” he said emphatically, “promise me that you will go to the Victoria Hotel at Zurich; yes?”

* * * * *

Later in her own room, as Ottillie dressed her hair, she closed her eyes and tried to reduce her thoughts to a rational basis. But she gave up in despair.

“From the ‘Souvenir’ to the Victoria,” she murmured; “oh, he is most certainly a genius!” then she sighed a little. “I’m sorry that we shall probably never meet again,” she added sadly.


Chapter Five

Rosina fairly flung herself off of the train and into the arms of Molly, and then and there they kissed one another with the warmth born of a long interval apart.

“Well, my dear,” began the Irish girl, when they found themselves five minutes later being rolled away in one of the villainous Zurich cabs, “begin away back in the early days of our sad separation and tell me everything that has happened to you since.”

“Not much has happened,” Rosina replied. “I crossed in May and got some clothes in Paris, and then came Lucerne, and this is June. Before I came over _nothing_ happened. How could things happen while I had to wear a crape veil?”

“To be sure!” said Molly wisely; “and yet they do sometimes,--I know it for a fact. And anyway the veil is off now, and you look so well that I should think perhaps--lately?”

“Oh, _dear_, no,” said Rosina, turning quickly scarlet; “don’t harbor such an idea for a second. Nothing of that sort will ever happen to me again. A burnt child dreads the fire, and I can assure you I’m cinders to the last atom. But never mind me, tell me about yourself. That is much more interesting.”

“‘About myself is it you’re inquiring’?” laughed the Irish girl; “’tis easy told. Last winter, like a fool, I engaged myself to a sweet young Russian colonel, and this spring he died--”

“Oh, Molly!”

“Never mind, my dear, because I can assure you that _I_ didn’t. Russians are so furiously made up that he couldn’t stand any of the other men that I was engaged to. My life was too broad a burden in consequence, and I was well satisfied at his funeral.”

“Is it his mother that you are travelling with?”

“His mother! No, dear, I can’t stand any of the family now.”

“Whose mother is she?”

“She isn’t anybody’s mother. That’s how she can be sixty-five and look forty-two by gaslight.”

“Does she look forty-two by gaslight? Oh, imagine looking forty-two by gaslight!”

“By men’s gaslight she looks forty-two. Any woman could just instinctively see through everything from her wig to her waist, and that’s why she has grown to hate me so.”

“Does she hate you?”

“Hate me! Well, wait until you see her look at me. It’s a sort of cross between a mud-turtle and a basilisk, and she’s forever telling my age and telling it wrong. And she lays for every man that comes near me.”

“Why, Molly, how awful!”

“I’m going slowly mad. You’ve no idea! she’s so jealous that life is not only a burden, it’s a weight that’s smashing me flatter every day. I’m getting a gray hair and a wrinkle, and all because of her. And she wrote Ivan--”

“Who’s Ivan?”

“He’s one of the men that I’ve accepted lately; he’s her cousin. He’s a prince and she’s a princess; but oh, my soul and body, my head is uneasy enough with lying and I’ve ceased to care a bit about the crown.”

“Why, Molly, wouldn’t you like to be a princess?”

“Not after this trip. Do you know what straits she’s driven me to? actually I came near taking a Turk at Trieste.”

“Did you?”

“No, I didn’t. I thought it over and I decided I wasn’t built for the monopoly of a harem.”

Rosina burst out laughing.

“Molly,” she gasped, “imagine _you_ confined to only one man, and he your lord and master!”

“I couldn’t possibly imagine it, and I make it a point to never go in for anything that I can’t imagine. But, my dear, I must tell you the great news. Being engaged is an old habit with me; but” (she put her hand to her throat and felt within her high stock) “you must know that I am now actually in love, for the first time in my life, too.”

“Oh, Molly, since when?”

“Three weeks. Wait till I fish up my locket and you shall see him. Handsome is nowhere! And our