A Woman's Will - Anne Warner (english novels for students txt) 📗

down over all, peeped out from among their surrounding fruit-trees. Old, old women knit peacefully under the shadow of the stone-bound well, and little, little children tumbled about their knees in the grass. Out in the garden at one side the boys and girls were busy gathering berries or vegetables for the market of next day. Yokes of oxen passed slowly to and fro upon the shaded roads, their high, two-wheeled carts loaded to the very top; beside a pond a maiden herded geese; upon a hill a boy lay sleeping, his sheep nibbling the herbage near by. It was all quaint and picturesque, and to the American eyes surpassing strange to see, but those two particular American eyes before which all the panorama was displayed, happened just then to be blind to everything except one vivid spirit-photograph, and grew moist each time that they pictured that afresh.

“No, I shall not tell Molly one word,” she repeated mentally; “I can’t tell her part,--I won’t tell her all,--so I just shan’t tell her anything,” and then she stared sightlessly out of the wide-open window, and knew not that it was the dregs of her own evaporated anger which veiled the sunlit landscape in a dull-gray mist.

The train came slowly in by the banks of the Bodensee, and halted at the Kaufhaus soon after eleven o’clock. The Kaufhaus is that delightful old building where Huss was tried before the great Council. Built for a warehouse, it is now again a warehouse, Huss and his heresy having been but a ripple on the tranquil centuries of its existence.

Molly (who had been telegraphed to) was at the Gare to meet her friend, and managed to smother her surprise over the sudden turn of events with complete success.

“Let the maid take the boxes to the hotel,” she said, after having greeted the traveller, “and you and I will just have a nice drive before dinner, and a good long nap right afterwards.”

Rosina submitted to be led passively to a cab, and the strength of her resolution was such that before they reached the spot where Huss was burnt, Molly was in possession of the last detail as to the preceding evening. She said never a word in reply, being much engaged in looking out of the side of the cab to see if she could see the monument, an action which struck her unhappy friend as heartless in the extreme. When they drew up beside the iron fence, both got out and peered between the bars at the huge ivy-covered boulder within the enclosure.

“Was he burned _on_ this stone?” Molly called to the cabman in German; “now why does he laugh, do you suppose?” she asked in English of Rosina.

“Oh,” the latter replied wearily, “you used the word for ‘fried,’ instead of the word ‘burned,’ but it doesn’t matter,” she added with a heavy sigh.

“I wonder whether he was looking towards the woods or towards the town when they lighted him!” Molly pursued with real interest.

Rosina felt that such talk was horribly frivolous, her own tale of woe considered, and made no reply; so they went back to the cab, and then Molly clasped her hands in her lap and became serious.

“I would forget all about him, if I was you,” she said; “you will never get any satisfaction out of a man who is always going in for jealous rages like that.”

Rosina felt with a shock that Molly was of a nature more intensely unsympathetic than any which she had hitherto encountered. She looked at the Rhine, wondered if it flowed past Leipsic, and wished that she had kept to her original determination and said nothing at all about any of it.

“I’m glad that I did as I did,” she said, with an effort to speak in a tone of indifference (the effort was a marked failure). “I’m sure that I want to forget him badly enough,” she added, and swallowed a choke.

Molly put her hand upon hers and nodded.

“Certainly, my dear; it was the only thing to do with a man like that. You explained once, and once is enough, for one night, surely. Forget him now and be happy again.”

“Don’t let us talk about it any more,” said Rosina, feeling bitterly that Molly lightly demanded oblivion of her when all her inclinations were towards tears.

They drove some distance in silence, and then Rosina said slowly:

“Do you suppose that I shall ever see him again now?”

“Yes, if you want to. One always sees the men again that one wants to see again.”

“Are you sure?”

“I never knew it to fail.”

“How does that happen?”

“I don’t know why it is, but it always does happen. Effect of mental telepathy, perhaps. The man knows that he is to be given another chance, and comes to get it, I fancy.”

“But Monsieur von Ibn is so _very_ singular!”

“Every man is singular!”

“My husband wasn’t. And he wasn’t ever the least bit jealous,” she stopped to sigh. “I like jealous men!” she added.

“Yes,” said Molly, dryly, “so I observed.”

“He never lost his temper either,” Rosina continued. “We never had anything to make up. And making up is so delicious. Oh, me!” she sighed, and her eyes filled with tears again.

“Never mind,” said Molly, consolingly, “you’ll soon be making it up this time.”

“Don’t you think,” said Rosina, slowly, “that he ought to have sent some sort of an apology last night; it could have been put under the door, no matter how late it was, you know?”

“He isn’t that sort of a man, I fancy.”

“But his behavior was so unpardonable!”

“Yes, but he doesn’t see that.”

“Then I don’t care if I never do meet him again,” Rosina exclaimed passionately, and the next instant she burst into tears. “He’s so interesting,” she sobbed; “and his way of speaking is such an everlasting joy to me; and he never means to marry; and I never mean to marry; and I know that he really cared a great deal about me; and now it’s--all--all over!”

Molly leaned over and kissed her, drew a comforting arm around her waist, and gave her an affectionate squeeze.

“Don’t take it so awfully to heart, my dear,” she whispered soothingly; “we all have troubles of one kind, if not of another. Here’s a long letter come by the morning post from my dear gray-caped lieutenant, and it’s just full of the worst sort of desperation over our mutual affairs. He knows that we can’t possibly marry without a certain amount of money, which we have neither of us got, and so there you are!”

“How much is it?” Rosina asked dully. She felt that she ought to try and make an effort to interest herself in the lives of others, even if her own had so completely crashed in.

“Oh, it’s something awful in pounds, but in those Italian _lire_!--why, it’s not to be thought of for a moment. He thinks that he had best chuck up the army and take me to America instead!”

“Oh, Molly, don’t let him do that! We haven’t any Italians in America except organ-grinders and miners, and the Ambassador, of course!”

“I knew it wouldn’t do,” said the Irish girl. Then she shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

“But then I never did intend to marry him, anyhow!”

They drove back to the hotel, and Rosina’s eyes were fairly presentable when the _Portier_ came out to receive them.

“There is a letter just come for madame,” he said, as they entered the Kreuzgang; “it is in the office; I will bring it at once.”

“There!” Molly whispered, “do you see!”

Rosina trembled slightly as she held out her hand and saw the hotel stamp of Zurich on the envelope. Then she tore it open and pulled out the single folded sheet contained therein.

It was her bill, receipted, which Ottillie had let fall in the haste of their early departure!

* * * * *

Madame la Princesse Russe having a migraine that afternoon, the two friends had the pleasure of a tête-á-tête dinner at half-past six. They sat by one of the great windows of what used to be the chapel of the monastery, but is now the dining-room of the Inselhaus, and enjoyed the sweet lake breeze, while their tongues ran delightfully. Rosina, liberally refreshed by a long nap, and mightily reinforced as to her pride by the last terrific blow of the letter, was in the best possible spirits, and her gayety quite rivalled, if it did not surpass, that of her companion.

As the waiter was removing the salad, a shadow fell suddenly athwart the floor at their side, and Molly, looking quickly upward, beheld--the man!

He was in evening dress, calm, cool, and smiling, and neither the surprised face of the one, nor the violent start of the other shook his composure in the least.

“_Vous allez bien, mesdames?_” he asked politely, and then, speaking to the waiter with authority:

“Lay another place here,” he said, indicating the end of the small table, “for I shall dine with you, _n’est-ce pas_?” he added, looking straight at Rosina.

She appeared to have been stricken suddenly dumb, and was so evidently incapable of speech that Molly came boldly to the front with the un-original remark:

“When _did_ you come?”

“By Schaffhausen, that _train-rapide_ that does go so fast. I had been more wise to have come this morning by the train as madame, for this afternoon the tourists were very terrible--also the heat.”

“Was it dusty?” she went on.

“I believe you well that it was. And you,” he continued, turning to Rosina, who sat helplessly staring at her plate, and was very pale except for a crimson spot on either cheek, “had you a pleasant ride?”

“No, she hadn’t,” said her faithful friend; “she arrived all used up.”

“You were made too tired, and do not feel well?” he asked, addressing the scarlet cheeks again; “truly, you look much so. What has arrived in Zurich to make you like that?”

He put the question in a tone the intensity of which forced her to lift her eyes to his. Molly did not see the glance, for the infinitude of her own experiences led her to find the moment favorable for gazing out of the window in a sort of rapt admiration for the Insel rose-bushes in the foreground and the placid Bodensee beyond.

It was the waiter who jarred them all three back to the knowledge of mundane things by bringing soup for the latest arrival and ices for his two companions.

“Ah, now I may eat!” the gentleman exclaimed in a tone of deep satisfaction, and began at once.

“You must not be surprised over me,” he said to Molly, with a slight smile.

“I was not surprised,” she reassured him.

“Because I have not eaten to-day before,” he explained.

“Really?”

“Yes, of a truthfulness. I am most _drôle_ as that. I may never eat when I am much troubled.”

“Dear me, have you been troubled to-day?”

He looked at Rosina, whose face blazed yet deeper.

“I have said that I may not eat,” he repeated simply.

Molly laid down her spoon and glanced out of