A Woman's Will
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“Why, where ever did you come from?” she cried.
“From Vienna,” said Molly; “from Vienna by way of Botzen and Venice.”
“And Madame la Princesse?”
“I’ve left her and qualified as a chaperone on my own hook.”
“You’re with Madame – Madame – ” Rosina looked down at the carte-de-visite which she held in her fingers still.
“I’m not with her; I’m her!”
“You’re – ”
“Madame La Francesca.”
“Molly, you’re not – ”
“Yes, I am.”
“Not married?”
The Irish girl, or rather the Italian lady, nodded.
“Why, Molly, however did you do it? you said he was too poor.”
“He was too poor.”
“And how – ”
Molly was pulling off her gloves and laughing.
“My dear, this is another.”
Rosina sank abruptly on the sofa.
“’Tis a fact. I never told you a thing about him, but he’s as handsome – wait!” She put her hand to her collar. “No getting them tangled any more,” she said, smiling, as she felt for her chain. “I wear only one now, but I wear that one night and day.”
Rosina could do little else than gasp and stare.
“But who is he?” she asked.
“He’s the lieutenant’s colonel. He called on me to – Well, I do believe I’ve left that locket on the washstand after all!”
“Haven’t you got it on?”
“No, I haven’t. And I meant to wear it forever.”
“Never mind, go on about the colonel.”
“I do hope he won’t find the locket, that’s all. He put it on me the day we were married, and I promised to never unclasp it. Of course I never thought of baths when I spoke.”
“But do go on about how you came to – ”
“I didn’t come to any one; he came to me, to beg me to give up the lieutenant, who was taking to absinthe. My dear, you should just see the man! (Oh, if I only had my locket!) All Italy can’t show such another! I gave up the lieutenant that day and married the colonel just as fast as was possible. That’s why I haven’t written you this last month.”
“Is he rich?”
“Well, not in pounds; but he’s a millionaire in these Italian lire. We shall live like princes, – Italian princes, bien entendu.”
“But when were you married?”
“Day before yesterday; to-day’s the first time I’ve taken off the locket.”
“And where?”
“In Venice. Oh, ’twas like heaven, being paddled to church.”
“And now you’re – ”
“Signora La Francesca.”
“Well, I declare!”
Rosina leaned back, staring helplessly. Finally she said:
“And how did you happen to come here?”
“To your wedding. I hurried my own a little on that account.”
“Molly, then you knew about me!”
Molly swept down upon the sofa and folded her friend in her arms.
“Knew about you! Why, my dear, I knew about you in Zurich. How could I help it? How could any one help it?”
“Why, Molly, was it as bad as that?”
“Worse,” said the signora briefly.
“But you never could have known that I would marry him in Genoa then?”
“Oh, no; of course I didn’t know about Genoa, I only knew you were bound to marry him somewhere.”
“When did you know about Genoa?”
“Last week. Your cousin wrote me.”
Rosina’s face was a study, but finally she began to laugh.
“Molly, I have been tricked and deceived at every turn by those two men. Just listen while I tell you all about it.”
Molly listened and was told all about it, from the Isar to the Mediterranean, the roof of Milan’s cathedral included.
“You wouldn’t believe it, would you?” the heroine of all concluded when she paused, altogether out of breath.
“Yes, I would. Because really I never saw two people so tremendously in love before.”
“And you thought I – cared for him when we were there in Zurich?”
“I didn’t think; I could see it with my eyes shut.”
“Really?”
“Sure! and as to him – ” the signora shrugged her shoulders expressively.
Rosina threw her arms around her and kissed her.
“Oh, I am so delightfully glad to be so happy, and for you to be so happy at the same time.”
“Yes, I like to be happy myself,” Molly confessed.
“You are happy, aren’t you? You do like being married, don’t you?”
“Pleasantest two days of my life,” declared the bride, with apparent sincerity.
“Do you think your husband is as good-looking as monsieur?”
Molly started violently.
“As good-looking! Why, my dear, didn’t I tell you that he was the – Oh, if I only had my locket!”
“Never mind,” Rosina said soothingly; “you can think he’s handsomest, if you like, I don’t mind. At any rate, he isn’t a great musician.”
“No,” said Molly proudly; “but he’s a colonel, and a colonel ranks a genius anywhere, any day, in Europe.”
“All right,” said the fiancée amicably; “but, dear, didn’t you think that it was awful in Jack to tell me that he’d gone crazy, and frighten me half to death?”
“It must have been a terrible blow when you found that he hadn’t cared enough to go crazy, after all.”
“Molly!”
“And however are you going to exist with the ‘tempérament jaloux’?”
“I never minded that a bit. Every time he is angry he is so adorable afterwards. We shall have such lovely makings-up. Oh, I expect to just revel in his rages!”
Madame La Francesca’s dimples danced afresh.
“And I,” she said, “I was raised with a hot-headed Irish father and four hot-headed Irish brothers, and I’ve been engaged to one peppery Scotchman and to frequent red-peppery continentals, so I find my ideal in an Italian who is, as the French say, ‘Doux comme un agneau.’”
“I thought it was ‘Doux comme un mouton,’” said Rosina cruelly, even while she was conscious of a real and genuine pity for her friend, under the circumstances.
“No, it’s ‘agneau,’” the other replied placidly, and then she rose and shook out her stunning blue grenadine self. “I must go. I’ve been away a long time.”
“You don’t get a bit tired of him, do you?”
“Well, I haven’t yet.”
“Isn’t it curious? I used to be so bored if I had to talk to the same man into the second hour, and then I never guessed what made me so contented to walk around with this one forever and ever.”
“But you know now?”
“Yes, I know now.”
“I shall see you to-night,” Molly said, adjusting her hat before the pier-glass; “your cousin is going to give an especially magnificent dinner to just we five.”
“I didn’t know that he was going to give a dinner,” Rosina exclaimed, starting up affrightedly. “Why, all my trunks are down on the steamer!”
“They aren’t now,” said Molly, “they’re in the next room; and your gown is laid out on the bed, and on the table is a diamond star from your cousin, and a bracelet from my beloved and myself, and a perfectly ripping tiara from your beloved to yourself.”
Rosina put two bewildered hands to her head.
“Nobody tells me anything!” she wailed.
“No,” said Molly mockingly; “you’re so set on having your own way that it really seems wiser not to.”
Then they threw their arms about one another, kissed, laughed, kissed again, and parted.
Chapter Eighteen
IT was some ten or twelve days later, and the hour was half-past nine, and the scene a private salon in the Schweizerhof at Lucerne. It was early November, or very close upon it, and so a fire blazed on the hearth, and the looped-back curtains at the windows showed only a mirrored reflection of what was within. Beside the chimney-piece stood a wee table with a coffee service upon it, and scattered on the floor beside was a typical European mail, – letters, postals and papers galore; the “Munchener Jugend,” the “Town Topics,” a “Punch,” a “Paris-Herald,” the “Fliegender-Blätter,” three “Figaros,” and two “Petit-Journaux.” There was a grand piano across one corner of the room, and the priceless Stradivarius lay in its unlocked case beside it. Upon the music-rack was spread “Le Souvenir” of Vieuxtemps, with directions in pencil dashed across it here and there, and upward sweeps and great fortes and pianissimos indicated by the hand that was never patient with life, but always positive in the painstaking of perfection as to its art.
The artist himself lay in a deep chair before the fire, smoking and dreaming in his old familiar way; his wife sat on the floor beside him, her head leaning against the arm of his chair, her clasped hands hanging about his knee, and in her eyes and on her lips there rested a charm of utter joy as sweet as it was beautiful.
They were so silent in the content of their mutual reverie that the call of the cuckoo clock startled them both slightly. Von Ibn took his cigar from between his lips and discovered that it had gone out some time since. Rosina smiled at his face and extended her hand towards the coffee table, on the side of which lay two or three wax matches.
“No, no,” her husband cried quickly, “it is no need. I have quite finish,” and he threw what remained of the cigar to the flames as he spoke. “What have you think of?” he asked, as she laid her head back on the chair-arm; “was it of a pleasant thing?”
“I was thinking,” she said slowly, “of that man in Zurich, and wondering when and where he would learn of our marriage.”
“Who of Zurich?”
“Surely you haven’t forgotten that man in Zurich that I went to the Tonhalle with.”
“Oh, yes,” he exclaimed quickly; “the one I did go to the Gare with.”
“Yes, the one who wrote Uncle John about you.”
“Did he write about me? What has that Zuricher man to say of me?”
She rose to her feet and stood beside the fire, staring down into its leaping blades of light and flame.
“You know what he said as well as I do, – just everything that he could to make trouble for you and me.”
Then her wrath began to rise, as it always did when her mind recurred to this particular subject.
“What do you suppose made him bother to do such a mean thing? Why did he want to make all that trouble for? Why couldn’t he stick to his own business and let us alone? It is maddening to think of. I shall never forgive him – never!”
Von Ibn raised the heavy darkness of his eyes up to her profile, and a dancing light passed over the unutterable tenderness that shadowed their glow.
“What trouble has he make?” he asked gently; “why may you never forgive him? Come to me, here upon my knee, and tell me of that.”
He held out his hand, smiling, and she smiled too, and came to take her place upon the seat which he had indicated to her.
“He made all the trouble that he possibly could,” she said, touching his hair here and there with a fanciful hand, while the expression of her face indicated a conflict between the sentiments with which the man of Zurich inspired her and those provoked by her hearer.
“Ah, so,” said the latter; and then after a little he added, “But because he writes, your cousin is caused to arrive, and of that arriving we are become married. I see no trouble in that. Au contraire, I see much good. If I think it were really that Zuricher man that has write to America I should be most grateful of him. I think I should at once buy him a cane as that one which I get myself this afternoon.”
“Oh, it was he,” she said confidently; “Jack told me as much himself. I asked him if the letter was from Zurich, and he said ‘Yes.’”
Von Ibn flung his head far back against the chair cushions and laughed heartily.
“Oh, mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, “I must ever amuse myself of a woman; a woman does always know!”
Rosina looked at him.
“Why, it couldn’t have been any one else,” she said positively; “you know that.”
He caught her face quickly between his hands and kissed it.
“It could very well be myself,” he exclaimed, laughing.
“You!”
“Yes; quite with ease. Pourquoi pas?”
“You!”
Then he laughed afresh in the face of her most complete bewilderment.
“Tu es tordante!” he said, and then he crushed her suddenly up in his arms. “It was I that wrote; it was like this. – You shall hear.”
She freed herself so as to regain an upright position and the ability to fully satisfy her desire to stare in amazement full in his face.
“It wasn’t you!” she said incredulously; “not really?”
“Yes, it was very really I. Écoutez donc, you shall know all.”
He raised her hands in his, palm to palm, the fingers interwoven, and looked into her eyes.
“It was because I am quite decided to marry you,” he began.
“There, in Zurich!” she interrupted with a gasp.
“No, not in Zurich. – Naturally in Lucerne; here that first day, out there where the Quai lies so still in to-night’s darkness. When you have spoken first to me I have decided, and from that hour on it is become only stronger, never less sure.”
She was drawn to lay her two arms about his neck and to listen breathlessly to his recital.
“If you had been rich and I nobody, it had been so simple to marry you, perhaps; but being myself somebody, I cannot risk anything. It is so easy to marry an American when one desires but her money, but when one has also money and desires to marry, voilà ce qui est difficile. It was for that that I go to the Gare with that man of Zurich, – ah, he has surely serve us well, that Zuricher man, – and I get of him the address of your uncle, and then I may write to that uncle and beg that one be sent over who will have full power to arrange for you, if I can ever bring you to say ‘Yes.’” He stopped and his voice sank. “I could not be sure that you would say ‘Yes’ ever,” he continued softly; “but in your eyes, even at first, I have thought to find a hope.”
“Go on,” she whispered, touching his lips very lightly with her own.
“I am cabled to Leipsic that your cousin will arrive at Hâvre, and we meet there.”
Rosina’s head flew upward suddenly.
“You met Jack!”
“But certainly. We go together to Dinard that he may meet all my family, and then we go to Cassel, where there is a castle to us, and to hunt in the Schwarzwald, and then he has written to America that I am quite rich and most honest, and of a real love for you; and when there has come an answer of your uncle, then I return to Munich to you.”
“And I never knew a thing about any of it!”
“Ah, ma chérie, pour l’instant on n’avait pas besoin de toi,” he reminded her, smiling.
“Go on!”
“Jack is very sure that all goes well at the end, and I am full of hope when – ”
“But if you knew him, why did you strike him that night in front of the Regierung?”
“But I did not know him there in the dark, and that he should kiss you there in the street, that did me great surprise. And you have scream so, naturally I have not think but of a stranger; one would not expect a cousin of such a scream.”
“And you went off with him the very next day; why didn’t you let him go alone?”
“He has say you were better left. Mon Dieu, but I have been the angel these past months! I must despair, you are so much decided; and when I despair the most, Jack will always say, ‘Wait and you shall see that she sails never from Genoa.’ But I was most unhappy. And my work, my work that should have gone so greatly out to the world this summer! Perdu– lost – lost!”
She laid her cheek softly against his.
“But that music is not really gone,” she whispered; “it will find a voice again, a better voice, because – ”
She kissed him fondly.
“Oh, of a surety,” he said, returning the kiss twofold; “do not think that I repent me of one second lost in your winning. Mon Dieu, what life was left me if I had get you not? That I will never bear to remember for a second. But you must now say that you forgive the man who did write the letter from Zurich. You will, will you not?”
“Yes,” she declared fervently; “I forgive him for ever and always. I even,” she smiled into his eyes, – “I even feel obliged to him for the trouble that he took. But,” she added, “I truly never expected to learn in the end that ours was simply a ‘mariage des convenances’ after all!”
“It was as the marriage of a queen,” he laughed, taking her hand within his own and raising it reverently to his lips; “with such a marriage every one knows, everything is quite well ready, the lawyers are done, all the papers are signed, and then it is last of all that they go to the queen, and the queen does then say ‘Yes.’”