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

must hurry up, my dear; the cab will be at the door in five minutes, and we don’t want to miss that train, you know.”

“I’m quite ready,” she said helplessly.

“Is all this stuff going?” he asked, looking about; “you can’t mean to carry all this with us to Genoa, surely.”

Rosina’s eyes strayed here and there over the umbrella case, the two dress-boxes, the carry-all, the toilet case, the two valises, the dress-suit case, and the hat-box. She did not appear to consider the total anything to be ashamed of.

“What’s in those two boxes?” Jack continued.

“Clothes.”

“Why didn’t you put them in a trunk?”

“You told me to send all my trunks _frachtgut_ two weeks ago. I had to keep out some to wear, naturally.”

He drew a martyr’s breath.

“You do beat all! I don’t know how we’re ever going to get all this stuff along with us. There isn’t anything more, is there, Ottillie?”

“_Oh, mais non, monsieur!_”

“All right. You better have them take all this down; the cab must be there by this time.”

Rosina stood up.

“I must say good-bye to Fraulein Hélène and her mamma,” she said sadly, going to the door.

The good-bye was a trying one, and its tears were harshly interrupted by a voice in the hall:

“Come on, Rosina, we’re going to miss that train for a fact if you don’t hurry.”

“Go, my dear child,” said Frau G----; “do not weep so. Many think that they are going forever, but they all always return.”

Rosina choked, and went.

Jack rattled her down the stairs--those sob-provoking stairs--at a tremendous rate, and when they went out of the _porte_ their eyes were greeted by a cab that looked like a furniture van, so overloaded was its capacity.

“George, but it’s full!” Jack cried in dismay. “Well, there’s no time to get another; we must just pile in some way and let it go at that.”

They piled in some way and it went at that.

“The train leaves at 7.20,” Jack remarked as they passed the post-office clock, “we shall just make it easy.”

Rosina made no answer, and no one spoke again until they reached the Karl Platz and the cabman slowed up and looked around inquiringly; for some trains are reached from the front and some from the sides of the main station at Munich, and the cabs suit their routes to the circumstances from the Karl Platz on.

“Zurich!” Jack called out, “and hurry!” he added. “We really are making pretty close connection,” he went on, “it’s 7.05 now. But then there is only one trunk to check.”

“I’m glad that that’s yours,” Rosina said, thinking of her hand luggage and his comments thereon.

He whistled blithely.

“Oh, we’ll get there all straight,” he said hopefully.

They drew up before the Bahnhof at 7.10, and it behooved the man of the party to be very spry indeed. He got their unlimited baggage on to a hand-truck, paid the cabman, and hustled the whole caravan inside.

“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” asked the porter who operated the hand-truck, as he went leisurely after their haste.

“Zurich,” said Jack, “and _wir haben sehr wenig_ time to spare; you want to look lively.” Then he rushed to the ticket gate to send Rosina and her maid aboard while the trunk was being weighed.

“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” asked the man at the gate.

“Zurich.”

“Train goes at 7.45.”

“It doesn’t either,” said Jack, who understood German fluently, “it goes at 7.20.”

For answer the man pointed to the great sign above his head, which bore out the truth of his statement in letters six inches high.

“Well, I vow,” said Jack blankly, “if that man at Schenker’s isn’t the worst fraud I ever ran up against. Say, cousin, we’ve got over half an hour to check my trunk in.”

She shook her head as if she didn’t care.

“I’ll go and see to it now,” he said, “and then I’ll come back here and try to get on to the train.”

He went off, and they waited by the gate while the man stationed there looked at Ottillie, and her mistress recalled the tone in which a voice had said, “It is for the first and last time!” and what came next.

When Jack returned they were permitted to pass the gates and go aboard the cars. The porter loaded the entire length of both racks with their belongings, and as soon as he was paid Jack hung up his ulster with the deer-horn buttons, stretched himself at full length upon the longest seat, and was asleep within five minutes.

Rosina took the window corner opposite him and contemplated his callous slumber with a burning bitterness.

“And he must see how unhappy I am, too,” she said to herself.

Then she leaned her chin upon her hand and fell into a reverie which so blinded her with tears that when the train did move out of the yards she beheld a Munich of mist and fog, and a Pasing which was a mere blot amidst the general blur of her universe. She did not want to go to Genoa, she wanted to stay in Germany; and everything which the train passed appeared to be returning towards Munich with all possible speed, while she, she alone, was being borne swiftly away from all--all--all.

“Leaving for home,” she reflected. “I’m not _leaving_ at all; I’m simply being wrenched away! Talk about turning one’s face towards America! I’m not turning my face; I’m having my neck wrung in that direction!” and the tears rolled heavily down her cheeks.

Ottillie unfastened one of the small valises and handed her mistress a fresh pocket-handkerchief, an attention which was most welcome just at that juncture.

About ten o’clock Jack opened his eyes and yawned vigorously twice or thrice. Then he got up on his elbow.

“You _are_ a pretty sight!” he said, after a lengthy contemplation of her woe; “you look like--like--well, you look pretty bad, and you haven’t a soul to blame for it all but yourself.”

She made no reply.

“There’s Von Ibn gone north, declaring that his future is completely ruined, and you sit crying like a baby because you must leave him, and yet you won’t marry him. If he was some worthless scoundrel that couldn’t be thought of, you know very well that all we might try to say or do wouldn’t keep you from him for three minutes; but just because he is so eminently all right you see a necessity for cooking up a sort of tragedy out of nothing, and making him crazy, and yourself about as bad.”

“Have you heard from him?” she asked coldly.

“I know that he left Munich yesterday early. He must have been awfully cut up to have been willing to undertake a trip at that hour. He hates to get up early--”

“That’s no crime.”

“Who said it was? So far from being a crime, it ought to have been another bond of congeniality between you two.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“If he was a man at home he’d take to drink and go to the devil, but being a fellow over here I suppose that he’ll just go up the Zug-spitz and down the Matterhorn, and up Mont Blanc and down the Dent du Midi, until he considers himself whole again.”

She choked and said no more.

The train guard came through soon after and put the usual question:

“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_”

“Zurich,” said Jack, as he produced their tickets; “about what time do we get there?”

“Are you going straight through?” the guard inquired as he punched a page in each little book and restored the library to their rightful possessor.

“Yes.”

“Then why did you not take the express?”

Jack fairly bounded in his seat.

“The express!” he ejaculated. “Great Scott, do you mean to say that we are not on it!!!”

“Oh, no,” said the guard, “you are upon the way-train that follows half an hour later. The express arrives at two-forty; this train gets in between seven and eight at night.”

Nothing could bear deeper testimony to the state of Rosina’s crushed sensibilities than the way in which she received this bit of information. While Jack swore violently she continued to look out of the window with an indifference that was entirely genuine.

“To think that that other train must have been right there within a hundred feet of us!” cried her cousin.

She did not turn an eyelash.

“By George, Rosina, I don’t believe I ever was as mad as this in all my life before!”

She sighed.

“I don’t mind anything,” she said sadly.

“You ought to mind getting to Zurich at eight o’clock instead of half-past two; there’s quite a little difference.”

“I don’t mind,” she repeated.

“Well, I do,” said Jack. After a pause of stormy thought he unclenched his fist and said, “I bet I get even for this some day, but just at present I think that I’ll go to sleep again.”

Which he did forthwith.

About noon they came to Lindau on the Bodensee. Rosina shivered and felt sick, because Constance lay upon the further side. The train did not run beyond Lindau and a change was necessary. The change revealed the fact that there was a custom-house at that point. An unexpected custom-house is one of the worst features of continental travel; but the officials of Lindau were delightful, drew chalk circles on everything, and sent every one upon their way rejoicing. Our party went around the little station and were halted by a guard with the common greeting:

“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_”

“Zurich,” Jack answered, hauling out his tickets.

“_Fahren Sie mit Bahn oder fahren Sie mit Schiff?_”

Jack looked nonplussed.

“Which are the tickets for?” he asked.

“Either.”

He turned to where Rosina waited, her eyes gazing in the direction of Constance.

“Oh, Rosina,” he called out, “do you want to _fahr_ from here on _mit_ the _Bahn_ or the _Schiff_?”

“I don’t care,” she replied.

“What’s the difference, anyhow?” he asked the man.

“With the boat you do not connect with the train on the other shore,” he was told.

“You don’t, eh? Well, I’m very anxious to make that train upon the other shore, so I think we’ll _fahr_ right along _mit_ the _Bahn_. Come on!” he called again to his cousin, “we must get aboard.”

They went slowly along the platform to the train gate.

“They call Lindau the German Venice,” he said, as they waited to pass the gate, “but I don’t think that it looks very Venetian; do you?”

She choked, because Venice began with V, and felt herself quite unable to frame an answer to his question.

As every one but themselves seemed to have elected for the “Schiff,” they found an entire wagon empty and spread their luggage out well. Jack even went so far as to establish himself in solitary state in an adjoining compartment, to the end that he might consider the proposition of more sleep. Before the train was well under way the guard came through, and past experience led Rosina to call through the connecting door:

“Do ask him if we must change again.”

“Do we change again?” he asked.

“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_”

“Zurich.”