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

then of interest in the music? you are yourself perhaps a musician?” and he turned a glance, as deep as it was burning, upon her face.

“A very every-day musician,” she replied, lifting her smile to his deep attention. “I can accompany the musician and I can appreciate him, that is all.”

“But that is quite of the best--in a woman,” he exclaimed earnestly. “The women were not meant to be the genius, only to help him, and rest him after his labor.”

“Really!”

“Of a surety.”

“But what made you want to know me?” she continued. “I had a good reason for desiring your acquaintance, but you can have had no equally good one for desiring mine.”

“No,” he said quickly and decidedly; “that is, of an undenying, most true.” He knit his brows and reflected for the space of time consumed in passing nine of the regularly disposed trees which shade the boulevard just there, for they were now moving slowly in the direction of the bridges, and then he spoke. “I do not know just why, yet I am glad that it is to be.”

“Would you have asked some one to introduce you if I had not sent for you?”

He thought again, this time for the space of six trees only, then:

“No, I do not think so.”

“Why not? since you wanted to meet me.”

“I never get myself made known to any one, because if I did that, then later, when they weary me, as they nearly always do, I must blame myself only.”

“Do most people weary you--later.”

“Oh, so very much,” he declared, with a sincerity that drew no veil over the truth of his statement.

Rosina, remembering the American’s views in regard to him, stifled a smile.

“Our friend,” she asked, “the man who presented you to me, you know, does he weary you?”

Von Ibn frowned.

“But he is a very terrible bore,” he said; “you surely know that, since you know him.”

Then she could but laugh outright.

“And I, monsieur,” she demanded merrily, “tell me, do you think that I too shall some day--?”

He looked at her in sudden, earnest anxiety.

“I hope otherwise,” he declared fervently.

While talking they had passed the limits of the Quai, crossed the big, sunny square, and come to the embankment that leads to the foot-bridge. The emerald-green Reuss rushed beside them with a smooth rapidity which seemed to hush the tumult of its swift current far underneath the rippling surface. The old stone light-house--the town’s traditionary godfather--stood sturdily for its rights out in mid-stream, and helped support the quaint zigzag of that most charming relic of the past, the longest wooden foot-bridge of Lucerne. A never-ending crowd of all ages and sexes and conditions of natives and strangers were mounting and descending its steps, hurrying along its crooked passage, or craning their necks to study the curious pictures painted in the wooden triangles of its pointed roof.

“I like the bridge better than I do the Lion,” Rosina remarked; “I think it is much more interesting.”

Von Ibn was looking down into the water where they had stopped by the bridge’s steps. He did not pay any attention to what she said, and after a minute she spoke again.

“What do you think?”

He made no answer. She turned her eyes in the direction of his and wondered what he was looking at. He appeared to be lost in a study of the Reuss.

“Do you always think before you speak,” she said, somewhat amused, “or are you doing mental exercises?”

But still no reply.

Then she too kept still. Her eyes wandered to a certain building on her left, and she reflected that necessity would shortly be driving her there with her letter of credit; but further reflection called to her mind the fact that she had intrusted Ottillie with a hundred-franc note to change that morning, and that would be enough to carry her over Sunday. The Gare across the water then attracted her attention, and she reviewed a last week’s journey on the St. Gotthard railway, and recalled the courtesy of a certain Englishman who had raised and lowered her window not once but perhaps twenty times. And then her gaze fell upon the skirt of her dress, which was a costume most appropriate for the Quai but much too delicate for a promiscuous stroll through the town streets.

“That is superficial!” Von Ibn suddenly declared.

She quite started.

“What is superficial?”

“Your comparison. You may not compare them at all.”

“May not compare what?”

“The bridge and the Lion. The bridge is a part of life out of the Middle Ages, and the Lion is a masterpiece of Thorwaldsen.”

Rosina simply stared at him.

“Is that what you have been thinking of all this long time?” she asked in astonishment.

“Was it so long?”

“I thought so.”

“What did you think of in that so long time?”

She told him about the bank, and the Englishman on the Gotthardbahn, and her dress. He smiled.

“How _drôle_ a woman is!” he murmured, half to himself.

“But I think that you are droll too,” she told him.

“Oh,” he said energetically, “I assure you, madame, you do not as yet divine the tenth part of _my_ drollness.”

She smiled.

“Do you think that I shall ever become sufficiently well acquainted with you to learn it all?”

He regarded her seriously.

“If you interest me,” he remarked, “I shall naturally see much of you, because we shall be much together. How long do you stay in Lucerne?”

“Until Monday. I leave on Monday.”

He looked at her in dismay.

“But I do not want to leave on Monday. I have only come the last night. I want to stay two weeks.”

She felt herself forced to bite her lips, even as she replied:

“But you _can_ stay two weeks, monsieur.”

He looked blank.

“And you go?”

“Naturally; but what does that matter? You would not be going where I went anyway.”

“Where do you go?”

“To Zurich.”

“Alone? Do you go alone?”

“I have my maid, of course; and I am to meet a friend there.”

“A friend!” His whole face contracted suddenly. “Ah,” he cried, sharply, “I understand! It is that Englishman.”

“What Englishman?” she asked, utterly at a loss to follow his thought.

“Your friend.”

“But he’s an American.”

“You said he was an Englishman.”

“I never did! How could I? Why, can’t you tell at once that he is an American by the way that he talks?”

“I never have hear him talk.”

She stared afresh, then turned to walk on, saying, “You must be crazy! or aren’t you speaking of the man who presented you to me?”

“Why should I be of any interest as to that man? Naturally it is of the Englishman that I speak.”

“What Englishman?”

“But that Englishman upon the Gotthardbahn, of course; the one you have said was so nice to you.”

She began to laugh.

“Oh, pardon me, but you are so funny, you are really so very funny;” then pressing her handkerchief against her rioting lips, “you will forgive me for laughing, won’t you?”

He did not smile in the least nor reply to her appeal for forgiveness; he only waited until she was quiet, and then went on with increased asperity veiled in his tone.

“You are to see him again, _n’est-ce pas_?”

“I never expect to.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He stopped short and offered her his hand.

“Why?” she asked in surprise.

“Your word that you do not hope to meet him again.”

She began to laugh afresh.

Then, still holding out his hand, he repeated insistently.

“Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again.”

They were in one of the steep, narrow streets that lie beyond the bridges and lead up to the city wall. It was still, still as the desert; she looked at him, and his earnestness quelled her sense of humor over the absurdity of the situation.

“What shall I say to you?” she asked.

“Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again.”

“Certainly I do not expect to meet him again; although, of course, I might meet him by chance at any time.”

He looked into her face with an instant’s gravest scrutiny, and then some of his shadow lifted; with the hand that he had held out he suddenly seized hers.

“You are truthfully not caring for him, _n’est-ce pas_?” he demanded.

Rosina pulled her hand from his grasp.

“Of course not,” she said emphatically. “Why, I never saw the man but just that once.”

“But one may be much interested in once only.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yes, that is true. I know it. Do not laugh, but give me your hand and swear that he does not at all interest you now.”

She did not give him her hand, but she raised her eyes to the narrow strip of blazing sky that glowed above the street and said solemnly:

“I swear upon my word and honor that I do not take the slightest interest in that English gentleman who so kindly raised and lowered my windows when I was on the St. Gotthard last week.”

Von Ibn drew a breath of relief.

“I am so glad,” he said; and then he added, “because really, you know, it had not been very nice in you to interest yourself only for the getting up of your window.”

“He put it down too,” she reminded him.

“That is quite nothing--to put a window down. It is to raise them up that is to every one such labor on the Gotthardbahn. To let them down is not hard; very often mine have fell alone. And much smoke came in.”

Rosina walked on and looked the other way, because she felt a need of so doing for a brief space. Her escort strolled placidly at her side, all his perturbation appearing to have vanished into thin air with the satisfactory disposal of the English problem. They came to the top of the street and saw the old town-wall and its towers before them. The sun was very hot indeed, and the tourists in cabs all had their parasols raised.

“I think we had better return,” she said, pausing in the last patch of shade.

Von Ibn looked at his watch.

“Yes,” he said, “we must; _déjeuner_ is there now.”

So they turned down into the town, taking another of the steep, little streets, so as to vary the scenery of their route. After a little he spoke again.

“And you are sure that you go Monday?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“To Zurich, and then to where?”

“Then to Constance.”

“And then?”

“I do not know where we shall go next.”

He started slightly, and a fresh cloud overspread his face.

“Much pleasure to you,” he said, almost savagely.

She looked up quickly, surprised at his tone, but her answer was spoken pleasantly enough.

“Thank you; and the same to you--all summer long.”

In response he shrugged his shoulders so fiercely as to force her to notice the movement.

“Why do you shrug your shoulders like that?” she demanded.

“I am amused.”