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

the way those windows go, you must wait to meet the shade of Klenze in the after-world. He made it all in 1823.”

“When I get among the Bavarian shades,” she said thoughtfully, “I want to meet King Louis more than any one else. I think that he is the most interesting figure in all the history of the country.”

“Perhaps he will be there as here, and not care to meet any one.”

“Oh, no,” she said hopefully; “he was crazy here, but he will be sane there and--”

“_Mon Dieu_, madame, have a care!” he cried in a low tone, glancing apprehensively about.

“What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

He lowered his voice to an almost inaudible pitch.

“It is that we do not discuss our kings in public as you are habited to do. _Voyons donc_,” he continued, “if I said, ‘_Oh, je trouve l’Empereur très-bête!_’ (as I well might say, for I find him often bête enough); if I say that, I might find a _sergeant-de-ville_ at my elbow, and myself in prison almost as the words were still in the air.”

Rosina looked thoroughly frightened.

“And what would they do to you?” she asked, looking up at him with an expression which brought a strange answering look into his own eyes.

“That would depend on how _bête_ I had found the emperor,” he declared, laughing; “but, madame, do not be so troubled, because no one has heard this time.”

They were walking at a good pace, the puddles considered, and came now to the arched entrance into the Hofgarten, where a turning brought them beneath the arcades. The south side was crowded, thanks to the guide-book recommendation to examine the frescoes there on a day when it is too wet to “do” other sights about the city; but the west side, where the frescoes are of landscapes only, and sadly defaced at that, was quite deserted, and they made their way through the crowd to the grateful peace of the silence beyond. It was a pleasant place to walk, with the Hofgarten showing its fresh green picture between the frames of the arcaded arches. The façade of the Hof formed the background to all--a background of stone and marble, of serried ranks of windows marshalled to order by lofty portals and balconies.

“Why are women always like that?” he asked, when they had paced in silence to the other end and turned to return.

“Like what?”

He threw a quick glance of exasperation at her.

“When I say a question, it is always with another question that you reply!”

“Well,” she said, “we were talking of the emperor, and now you say ‘why are women always like that?’ and I ask ‘like what?’”

He looked more exasperated than before.

“I have all finished with the emperor,” he said, as if outraged by her want of comprehension as to his meaning. “Is it likely that I will wish to talk of the emperor when on the nineteenth you sail from Genoa?”

She felt her eyes moistening afresh at this recurrence to her departure, and made no answer. He slashed along vigorously for two or three yards, cutting a wide swathe with his umbrella, and then his grievance appeared somewhat appeased, and he explained in a milder tone:

“I ask you why are women like that,--like that, that they never will like to be kissed?”

Rosina halted in astonishment.

“What is it now?” he asked, turning because he missed her. “Have I not yet made myself plain?”

“The idea--after all this while--of your going back to that subject!”

“I have not go back to it,” he said coolly; “I have thought of no other thing while you were booting yourself or now. Why do women say ‘No’? Why do you say ‘No’?”

“Let me see,” she said thoughtfully. “I think it is like this: if I allowed you to, you would naturally feel that hereafter you could, whereas I very much prefer that you should know that you can’t.”

He looked in a despair so complete as to be almost ludicrous.

“Oh, say slower,” he pleaded, earnestly. “It is so very important to well understand.”

She laughed at his serious face. For the moment Jack and Genoa were both forgotten, and nothing but the pleasure of good company and an atmosphere breathing the perfume that follows rain where there are flowers, were left to joy her.

“It isn’t worth repeating slower,” she said, with a smile. “It was a positive negative which even if developed in a dark room would make a proof that I did not want to be kissed.”

They went the entire length of the arcade while he endeavored to work out the solution of her second riddle, and then he shrugged his shoulders, remarking:

“I have never interest myself in a kodak any,” and appeared to regard the subject as finished.

They came back up the arcade, and, the sidewalks being now fairly dry, went out under the stairway at the corner, into the Galleriestrasse.

“Do you like this country?” he asked presently.

“Bavaria? Immensely.”

“I mean, do you like the Continent--Europe?”

“Yes.”

“What do think about it?”

“I think Europa showed great good taste in getting down from the bull just where she did.”

“Then you like this land?”

“I love it! It hurts me whenever I hear my countrymen malign it.”

They were in the Ludwigsstrasse, and the scene was like a holiday in America. Every one was out after the rain and all faces reflected that exuberant gayety which seems to be born about five o’clock in each continental city. People in carriages, people in cabs, people on horseback, people on bicycles, people walking, people leading dogs, people wheeling babies, people following children, all one laughing, bowing, chattering procession, coming and going ceaselessly between the Feldherrnhalle and the Siegesthor, with the blue Bavarian sky blessing all the pleasure, and the tame doves of Munich under the feet of each and every one.

Von Ibn stopped to watch the brilliant scene; Rosina stood beside him.

“What ill can one say of us?” he asked, after a while. “How can a place be better than this?”

“_I_ never said that any place could be better than this,” she asseverated; “but I am uncommon in my opinions. The average American is born in a land overflowing with steam-heat, ice-water, and bath-tubs, and he suffers when he has to lose the hyphens and use the nouns separately.”

Von Ibn frowned.

“You amuse yourself much with queer words to-day,” he said discontentedly. “I wish I have stayed with Jack. I was much pleasured with him.”

“But you said that you had to return because of some business,” she reminded him.

He raised his eyebrows, and they went on again. After a little she turned her eyes up to his and smiled.

“Don’t say that you wish you were with Jack. I am so glad that you are here.”

He returned the smile.

“I have no wish to be with your cousin,” he said amicably; “I find you much more agreeable.”

Then a little dog that a lady was leading by a long chain ran three times around his legs and half choked itself to death, and the lady screamed, and it was several minutes before all was calm again.

“I find it _bête_ to have a dog like that,” he said, looking disgustedly over his shoulder at the heroine of the episode, as she placidly continued on her way. “It was _grand merci_ that I am not fallen, then. What was about my feet I could not fancy, and also,”--he began to laugh,--“and also it was droll, for I might not kick the dog.”

Rosina laughed too.

“But in America,” he went on, suddenly recurring to their earlier topic, “have you no art?”

“Oh, yes; but nothing to compare with our sanitary arrangements. Our president’s bath-tub is cut out of one solid block of marble,” she added proudly.

“That is not so wonderful.”

“Isn’t it? The head-lines in the papers led me to think that it was. But I’ll tell you what I think is a disgrace to America,” she went on with energy, “and that is that the American artists who come to study abroad must pay duty on their own pictures when they take them back.”

“Is that really so?” he asked.

“Yes, that is really so. And it is very unjust, for the musician and surgeon and scientist can bring all the results of their study in duty free.”

“They have them within their heads.”

“Yes; but they have them just the same.”

“Everything costs a great deal with you, _n’est-ce pas_?”

“I should say it did. No one ought to blame us for telling what things cost, because everything costs so much. A carriage is six to ten _marks_ an hour.”

“_C’est assez cher!_” he said, laughing.

“_C’est un peu trop!_” she rejoined warmly. “But the well-to-do certainly do revel in griddle-cakes and hot-water faucets, and when I meet an American man in Europe I am forced to believe that they are the only really worthy ambitions to be striven for.”

“I could not live there, I think,” he exclaimed.

“I’m afraid not,” said she sadly. “You don’t play golf or drink, and men of leisure have almost no other careers open to them with us.”

“I have my music.”

“But you could never enjoy that there,” she cried, shivering involuntarily. “Every one talks during music, and some cough, and gentlemen clear their throats--”

“And does no one hiss them?” he interrupted, wide-eyed.

“Hiss them? Never! The idea!”

He stopped and lit a cigarette.

“But one can travel?” he suggested.

“Yes, surely there is plenty of room for that,” she said dryly; “but you don’t see many ruined castles or historic battlefields _en route_. And the dust, _oh, la, la_! And the steam coils under your seat--and the air--and the ventilation--and the nights--and the days.”

“You would better stay here,” he remarked.

“Oh, _I_ think so,” she responded frankly; “it’s so jolly getting your gloves cleaned for two cents a pair; but if we don’t change the subject I shall cry.”

He looked at her quickly.

“That is the University there,” he told her, pointing to their left; “shall we go there?”

“What for?”

“To look upon it.”

“Why, I’ve seen it dozens of times.”

He took his cigarette out of his mouth, examined it carefully, and replaced it between his lips.

“But one washes here,” he said presently.

“One--washes--” she stammered blankly; and then it flashed across her that it was the bath-tub that was rankling in his soul, and she gasped, adjusted herself, and answered:

“Of course one washes here. But in America it is all made so convenient, and is regarded as less of an event.”

“It is no event to me to wash,” he said indignantly; “I find no excitement in washing.”

“I never said you did; I was comparing quite another class of society with their equals in the other country.”

“But to shave,” he went on, “that I find terrible.”

“It’s no worse than having a _coiffure_ to make.”

“But I have no _coiffure_ to make.”

“No; but I have.”

He threw his cigarette into the street.

“It is not so bad as shaving.”

“It takes longer.”

“Yes; but shaving you may cut yourself.”

Rosina laughed; he heard