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

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“Have I?” he reiterated; “yes?”

Then she spoke suddenly.

“Why do foreigners always say ‘yes’ at the end of every question that they ask in English? I get so tired of it, it’s so superfluous. Why do they do it?”

He reflected.

“It is polite,” he said, after a moment. “I ask you, ‘Do I bore you?’ and then I ask you, ‘Do I?’”

“But why do you think that it is polite to ask me twice?”

He reflected again, and then replied:

“You are equally droll in English; you are even more droll in English, I think. You say, ‘You will go to walk, will you not?’ and the ’not’ makes no sense at all.”

It was her turn to reflect, and be forced to acquiesce.

“Yes, that is true.”

“And anyway,” he went on, “it is polite for me to ask you twice anything, because that shows that I am twice anxious to please you.”

“So!”

“Yes;” he took a violet from the bowl at his side and began to unclose its petals. “Why did he say that?” he asked, suddenly raising his eyes from the flower to her.

“He! who?”

“Our friend.”

“Why did he say what?”

“Why did he say that I was stupid? I have never been but nice to him.”

She looked startled.

“He never said that you were stupid.”

“You said that he told you that I was stupid.”

“No, I did not. I said that he warned me that--”

“Oh, it matters not,” he broke in, shrugging his shoulders slightly, “_ça ne me fait rien_. What he may think of me matters me not at all. _Pauvre garçon_, he is so most uninteresting himself that I cannot expect interest from him. _Ecoutez-donc!_ for him nothing exists but golf; for him where golf is there is something, elsewhere there is nothing anywhere. What did he say to me of Paris? he said that for him Paris was nothing, because no one plays golf; he said he could throw a dog all over the grounds any morning. I did not ask him what dog, or why a dog, for I thought it was not truly a dog, but just his bad American _argot_; and, if I must speak truth, pardon me that I find it very good that so stupid a fellow finds me dull. If he found me amusing, I should naturally know that I, too, must be a fool.”

He put the violet to his lips and smiled a little.

“He speaks but English,” he added; “he knows but golf, he has been around the world and has seen nothing. I am quite content to have such a man despise me.”

Then he was silent, biting the purple flower. Rosina rested her chin upon her hand.

“Please go on,” she said briefly, “I am listening.”

He looked at her and smiled.

“I do like Americans,” he went on, “and I see that all the women have small waists, and do not grow so large so soon, but I do not see why they do not learn many things and so become much more nice; why, for example, are they so ignorant of all the world and think their own country alone fine?”

“Are we so?”

“Yes, of a truth. Because I speak English I meet very many of America, and they always want to talk, so naturally I must listen, because no one can arrive at speaking louder surely. And so I must always hear how good the light is in America, and how warm the houses are in America, and how high the buildings are in America, and how much everything has cost--always how much everything has cost; that is always very faithfully told to me. And while I listen I must feel how very narrow to so speak is. And afterwards when I go on to hear how very poor the light is here, and how very cold the hotels are here, I certainly must feel how very ill-bred that is.”

He paused to get a fresh violet, and then continued:

“I see no possible beauty for a place of four walls fifty _mètres_ high; and there can be no health where all is so hot night and day; and so I only listen and am content to be counted so stupid. Why do you go to Zurich Monday?”

The question terminated his monologue with such suddenness that she started involuntarily.

“Why do you ask?”

“Naturally because I want to know.”

“I go because I am anxious to be out of Switzerland before the first of July.”

“But Switzerland is very nice in July.”

“I know; and it is also very crowded.”

“Where shall you be in July?”

“I am not sure; probably in the Tyrol.”

He got up from his seat, went to the chimney-piece, lifted up a vase and turned it about in his hand with a critical air. Then he faced her again and said, with emphasis:

“I shall remain here all summer.”

“In Lucerne?”

“Yes; not perhaps always at the hotel, but somewhere on the lake. I am born here.”

“You are Swiss, then?”

“Yes; if I am Swiss because I am born here.”

“Were you born in Lucerne?”

“No, but at a place which my father had then by Fluellen. It is for that that I love the Vierwaldstattersee.”

“I wish that I had been born here,” Rosina murmured thoughtfully.

“Where are you born?”

“In the fourth house of a row of sixteen, all just alike.”

“How most American!”

She laughed a little.

“I amuse you?” he asked, with a look of pleased non-understanding.

“Oh, so very much!”

He came a little forward and smiled down at her.

“We are really friends, are we not?”

She looked into his big, earnest eyes.

“I think so,” she answered simply, with a little nod.

He moved slowly across the room and, going to the window, turned his back upon her.

“It is cooler out now, let us go out and walk. I like to walk, and you do too, do you not? yes?”

“Oh, _please_ stop saying ‘yes’ like that, it makes me so horribly nervous.”

He continued to look out of the window.

“Are you nervous?” he said. “I am sorry, because it is very bad to be nervous.”

“I shall not be so if you will only cease tacking that ‘yes’ on to the end of every question that you find occasion to ask me.”

“What is ‘tacking’?” he asked, whirling around.

“Attaching.”

“Why did you not pronounce it plainly the first time?”

She rose slowly from her seat and retouched the violets where he had disturbed their carefully arranged disorder. He quitted the window and approached her side.

“I asked you to go out with me,” he reminded her; “will you go? Yes?--I mean ‘No’?” he added in hasty correction.

She bent above the flowers, just to see what he _would_ say next.

“Can you go to walk so,” he inquired, “or shall I go down and wait while you undress?”

She straightened up.

“I can go out this way,” she told him; “I have only to get my hat.”

“And you will go now?”

“Yes, with pleasure.”

“Is it long to get a hat? I will go down to wait for you, you know.”

“It is five minutes.”

“Is it really five minutes?” he asked anxiously; “or shall I be there very much longer?”

“If I say five minutes it will be five minutes.”

He took his hat and cane in his left hand and extended the other to her with a smile.

“I will go and wait,” he said.

She gave him her hand; he held it a minute, looking down into her eyes, which wavered and fell before his.

“_Comme vous êtes charmante!_” he exclaimed in a low voice, and, bending, pressed a kiss (a most fervent one this time) upon the fingers which he raised within his own.

After which he left the room at once.

Rosina caught a quick breath as she went in to where her maid sat mending some lace.

“Get my things, Ottillie, I am going out.”

“What a beautiful color madame has,” Ottillie remarked, as she rose hastily and went towards the wardrobe.

Rosina looked at herself in the mirror. She was forced to smile at what she saw there, for the best cosmetic in the wide world is the knowledge that the right person is waiting downstairs.

“Do hurry, Ottillie,” she said impatiently, “and get me out a pretty, a _very_ pretty, hat; do you hear?”

And then she felt with a glorious rush of joy how more than good life is when June is fair, and one is young, and--

“Where shall we walk?” he asked, when she came down to him.

“On the Quai, of course. No one ever walks anywhere else.”

“I do often, and we did this morning,” he replied, as they passed out through the maze of tables and orange-trees that covered the terrace before the hotel.

“I should have said ‘no one who is anybody.’”

He looked at her, a sadly puzzled trouble in his eyes.

“Is it a joke you make there,” he asked, “or but your _argot_?”

“I don’t know,” she said, unfurling her parasol; “the question that I am putting to myself just now is, why did not you raise this for me instead of allowing me to do it for myself?”

He looked at her fixedly.

“Why should I do so? or is _that_ a joke?”

“No, I asked that in dead earnest.”

“In dead--in dead--” he stammered hopelessly; “oh,” he exclaimed, “perhaps it is that I am really stupid, after all.”

“No, no,” she laughed; “it is I that am behaving badly. It amuses me to tease you by using words that you do not understand.”

“But that is not very nice of you,” he said, smiling. “Why do you want to tease me?”

“I don’t know, but I do.”

He laughed lightly.

“We amuse ourselves together, _n’est-ce pas_?” he asked. “It is like children to laugh and not know why. I find such pleasure very pleasant. One cannot be always wise--above all, with a woman.”

“I do not want to be wise,” she said, as they joined the promenading crowd; “I much prefer to have my clothes fit well.”

Then he laughed outright.

“_Vous êtes si drôle!_” he said apologetically.

“Oh, I don’t mind your laughing,” she said, “but I do wish that you would walk on the other side.”

“The other side of the street?” he asked, with surprise.

“No, no; the other side of me.”

“Why should I not be on this side as well as on that?”

“Because that’s the wrong one to be on.”

“It is not! I am on the very right place.”

“No; you should be between the lady and the street.”

“Why?” he demanded, as he raised his hat to some one.

“To protect her--me.”

“To protect you how? Nothing will come up out of the lake to hurt you.” Then he raised his hat to some people that she bowed to.

“It isn’t that, it is that the outside is where the man should walk. It’s the custom. It’s his proper place.”