A Woman's Will
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“Do you play the piano also?”
“Only what I must. Sometimes I must, you know. Then I say to my hands, ‘You shall go here, you shall go there!’ and they go, but very badly.”
She looked straight at him with a curious dawning in her eyes.
“I wonder, shall we ever make any music together?” she murmured.
“Much,” he said tritely.
She was conscious of neither wonder nor resistance, as if the music had cast a spell over her self-mastery.
“I want to hear you play,” she said, with an echo of entreaty.
He shook his head, brushing a lock of hair off of his temple as he did so. There was a sort of impatience in each movement.
“Not these days; no! I played once after I saw you first, but only once. Since that the case is locked; the key is here.” He interrupted himself to draw out his keys, and separating one from the rest held it up to her. “Let us hope that in Munich, perhaps.”
The waitress had returned with their ices. He watched her arrange them, and she watched him. The heavy circle under his eyes was especially noticeable this night, the eyes themselves especially laughless.
“You are glad that I go?” he asked suddenly as he picked up his spoon and plunged it into the saucer before him; “yes?”
“I shall be more glad when I know that you are really gone.”
“But this time it is sure. This time it is really a true going.” He stopped and broke a piece of cake into tiny morsels, pushing them together into a neat little pile. “Why were you unhappy in your husband?” he asked slowly.
“He drank,” she replied.
“Perhaps he was unhappy?”
“Perhaps.”
“And you?”
“Beyond a doubt.”
He took another bit of cake and crumbed that up as he had the first.
“Don’t do that.”
“Why shall I not?” with an air of surprise.
“It isn’t right.”
“But I shall pay for it,” he said remonstrantly.
“It’s bad manners, anyhow.”
“What does it matter if I like, and pay for it too?”
“Well, then, if you must know, it makes me horribly nervous!”
He looked at her quickly.
“Are you nervous?”
“Yes, when people waste cake like that.”
He sighed and stopped his play.
“Did you ever love after?” he asked presently.
“No, never! Good Heavens, once was enough!”
“Was your husband so very bad?”
“He wasn’t bad at all; he was only disagreeable.”
“Perhaps he made you nervous?” he queried.
“Perhaps,” she answered dryly.
There was a long, long pause. The band now played “Doch Einer Schoner Zeit,” and some peasants in the native costume sang the words.
Finally he pushed his plate away and crossed his arms upon the table; his eyes were very earnest.
“Once I loved,” he said; “I have speak of that to you before.”
She made no reply.
“It was no passion of a whole life, but for a boy, as I was then, it was much. I was quite young, and, Gott! how I did love! She was such a woman as says, ‘I will make this man absolutely mad;’ and she did so. She made me crazy —tout-à-fait fou; and then, when I could only breathe by her eyes, she showed me that she was uncaring!”
He stopped, stared sightlessly out at the black water beyond, and then turned towards her.
“Is it so in your mind towards me?” he asked, and in his voice and eyes was that heartrending pathos which once in a lifetime a man’s soul may come to share with childhood’s heavy sorrows.
She drew a quick breath. The pointed roofs of the Inselhaus off there beyond the trees printed themselves darkly and forever upon her brain; the scattered lights in the windows, the inky spots where the ivy trailings were massed thickest, – all those details and a dozen others were in that instant photographed upon her spirit, destined to henceforth form the background to the scene whose centre was the face opposite to her, all of the expression of which seemed to have condensed itself into the burning gaze of those two great eyes, so vastly sad.
“Oh, monsieur,” she said, with a tone of deep appeal, “believe me, I have never done so cruel a thing as that in all my life!”
“Are you to all men as to me?”
“I hope so.”
“That American in Zurich! when you met him again was it as to meet me again?”
“But he is no especial friend of mine.”
“And am I especial? – Am I? – Yes?”
“Yes,” she said slowly, “I feel as if I had known you all my life.”
“Yes,” he answered quickly, “just so I feel also.”
He put up his hand and again brushed the loose lock of his wavy hair back from his forehead.
“Vraiment,” he exclaimed, “I begin to feel that it is impossible that I go to-morrow.”
“Oh, but you must,” she cried, much alarmed.
“We are so happy; why can we not let this pleasure last?”
“You must go!” she reiterated with decision.
“We understand so well,” he went on, without noticing her words; “you understand, I understand. I wish nothing of you, I require nothing of you, only the friendship – only these good hours that we know together, only the joy of our sympathy. Why can I not be where you are everywhere? Warum nichts?”
“It isn’t possible!” she said firmly.
He turned about in his seat and called for the reckoning. After it was paid they went together back towards the hotel.
“You have told me that you will never marry again,” he said presently, “and I have told you that I also intend never. But – ” he stopped short. The hotel court was there before them, and the scent of some night flowers came on the evening breeze from those beds of riotous color which fill the central space of the old Cloister.
“Let us walk once around the Kreuzgang,” he suggested, “and after that we will go in.”
She assented, and they followed the vivid outline of Constance’s history as portrayed in the large frescoes upon the inner wall of the vaulted passage.
“I do not breathe here,” he said suddenly; “come into the garden with me once again. But for a moment? I beg – I pray!”
They went out on to the terrace, passing through the Refectory, now thick with smoke and scintillating with beer-steins.
“You say that you will never marry,” he said again, as they encircled the base of Huss’ Tower, “and I tell you that I also have the idea to never marry. But – ”
He paused again, just by that bit of the old monastery wall which extends out towards the bathing-houses.
“But if —if,” he emphasized the monosyllable with marked emphasis, – “if I asked you to marry me, what would you say?”
Rosina did not stop for an instant’s consideration.
“I should say ‘no.’”
He received the blow full in his face.
“Why?” he asked.
“I do not want another husband. I don’t like husbands. They are all alike.”
“How?”
“You can’t tell a thing about them beforehand; they always change, and are different after marriage from what they were before.”
“I shall never change,” he declared positively.
“They all say that.”
“But I speak truth!”
“They all say that too.”
“But with me it will arrive;” then he added, “with me it will arrive that I shall never change, because I shall never marry.”
His remark was such a complete surprise to her that she could hardly master her shock for a moment.
“If that was the point that you were leading up to,” she said finally, “I’m certainly glad that I did not say ‘yes.’”
He surveyed her, smiling.
“I particularly said ‘if,’” he reminded her; “I said, ‘if I asked you to marry me,’ you know?”
Rosina felt a strong inclination to bring the evening to a close. She wanted to be alone and think.
“We must go in,” she said.
“I also feel it,” he answered.
So they went in. The hall and staircase were quite deserted. He walked with her to the top of the first flight.
“Do we leave good-bye here?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said smiling; “I think so.”
He stood looking at her, and out of the depths of his nature various phantoms strove into shape.
“It is well that I go,” he said seriously; “after all, we are not children, you and I, and however we laugh it is always that, that we really are not children.” He put out his hand and took hers. “I shall be away, and the time will be long, and – ” he paused abruptly.
Her eyes almost closed beneath the unbearable heat of his gaze.
“Shall you remember me?” she asked, faintly this time.
“Yes, much.”
Then she opened her eyes and withdrew her hand.
“For how long?” she said as before.
He was still staring down at her.
“Who can say!”
“For three weeks? for four? for six?”
“Je ne sais pas,” he said briefly; “if I think too much I must come back, and that will not be wisely.”
“We must not stand here,” she said suddenly; “adieu, au revoir!”
“Yes,” he replied sombrely, “we must part now.”
He looked at her, and his eyes locked hers hard and fast for a long minute. She felt ill, faint, her breath seemed failing her. Then —
He seized her hand and pressed it so strongly against his lips that his lips parted and she felt his teeth against her flesh.
“Je vous aime!” he whispered, almost inaudibly. “Adieu!”
Part II
THE BEATING OF THE WAVES
Chapter Ten
IT was September in Munich. They stood together on the Maximilianbrücke, and, looking down into the gray and black turbulence of the Isar, felt themselves to be by contrast most tranquil and even-tempered. The little river rushed beneath them, forming a wealth of tiny whirlpools above its stone-paved way, its waters seeming to clash and struggle in a species of mimic, liquid warfare, and then, of a sudden, victor and vanquished fled wildly on together, giving place to other waves with their other personal scores to settle.
The banks on either side were beginning to show some touches of autumnal scarlet among those masses of vine whose ends trailed in the water below, and among the shrubs of the Promenade the same blood stain betrayed the summer’s death at the hands of the merciless frost king. The Peace Monument was there, piercing heaven with its golden wings; the Lucaskirche towered to the east; above them all sat the lofty Maximilianeum, that open-work crown of Munich, whose perfectly curved approach and double arcaded wings must joy the soul of every artist-nature that lingers near it.
“How old are you?” the man said suddenly.
Rosina jerked her consciousness up out of the bed of the Isar.
“No gentleman at home would ask a lady that,” she told him, thus showing great presence of mind.
He smiled and twisted his moustache.
“But I am not a gentleman at home,” he said pleasantly, “I am a gentleman travelling.”
“How old are you?”
“I have thirty-three years.”
“Well, I haven’t,” she said with decision; “you might think that I was forty, but that is only because I have had so much experience.”
He looked at her in a dubious, troubled way.
“I did not think that you had forty: I did not get that just perhaps. You have not truthfully forty, have you?”
Rosina laughed in unfeigned amusement.
“No, monsieur, I am not thirty even. I told you that if I seemed to be forty, it was because I had had so much experience.”
“So much experience?”
“Yes.”
“You feel that you have had experience?”
“I know it.”
“Experience as, par exemple, me?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her and smiled, shaking his head.
“Oh, madame, you say that, not at all knowing how much experience I have had.”
She raised her eyebrows slightly and turned to walk on. He followed at her shoulder, and when they came to the little stone stair that leads down to the Promenade, he halted and glanced expressively off among the paths and shade.
“There isn’t time,” she said, shaking her head now.
He went down two steps alone, and then held out his hand with that irresistible smile; she hesitated, looked helplessly around, and then, like all women who hesitate, was forthwith lost, swallowed up, in the maze of those wandering paths. Von Ibn secured his cane well beneath his arm and lit a cigarette.
“Do I ever now ask you ‘may I’?” he said.
“You never did ask me ‘might you?’” she replied.
He drew two or three satisfied puffs.
“It is good to be so friends,” he commented placidly, and then he took his cane into his right hand again and swung it with the peculiarly vigorous swing which in his case always betrayed the possession of an uncommon degree of bonne humeur. “And now for your experience?” he asked after a little. “It is that which I will to hear.”
“Did you ever go to a masked ball?”
“Mais, naturellement.”
“Well, so did I.” She paused to note the effect.
He threw a quick glance of undefined question at her.
“Masked?” he demanded.
“Oh, dear no! thickly veiled, and ’way upstairs in a gallery.”
“Were you greatly amused ’way upstairs in your gallery?”
“Yes, really; there were ever so many men there that I knew.”
“Did they come upstairs in the gallery?”
“No indeed, no one knew that I was there. But it interested me to see whom I knew – ”
“Was I there?” he interrupted.
“Oh, it wasn’t here! it was ever so long ago, while my husband was alive.”
“Did you see your husband?”
“Yes,” she said flushing, “and he was just like all the other men. He wore no mask, and he did not care one bit who might recognize him.”
“You had been better not gone,” said the man decidedly.
“Yes, I think so; I lost all my love for my husband that night, and killed all my faith in mankind forever.”
“Why did you be possessed to go?”
“I went because I did not want to be deceived in the way that many women are deceived.”
Von Ibn laughed.
“You know now all of everything, you think?”
“I know more than most other women do.”
“You would have known much more yet if you had worn a mask,” he told her very dryly.
She did not reply, and after a few minutes he continued:
“And now, when you know everything, and can no more be deceived, are you so most happy?”
“I do not know,” she said slowly.
“How have you lost your faith?” he inquired; “what in especial can no more deceive you?”
“I don’t believe in men,” she declared; “I don’t believe in anything that they say, nor in anything that they promise. And I don’t believe one bit in love!”
The man stopped by an empty bench.
“We have walked so long,” he remarked parenthetically; and she sat down, parenthetically also, so to speak.
“That is sad,” he said, digging in the gravel with his cane, “not to believe in love, or in the truth of a man! and you are a woman, too! Then there is no more truth and love for you.”
Rosina felt disheartened. A ready acquiescence in her views is always discouraging to a woman. What is the use of having views, if they are just tamely agreed to at once?
“I think perhaps men really mean what they say when they say it,” she began; “but, oh dear, they can’t stick to it afterwards. Why, my husband told me that my lightest wish should be his law, and then what do you think he did?”
“He did perhaps kiss you.”
“No, he went and bought a monkey!”
“What is a monkey?”
“Don’t you know what a monkey is?”
“If I know I will not trouble you to ask.”
“C’est un singe, – affe; now you know.”
“Oh, yes; I was thinking of a monk, and of how one told me that you had them not with you.”
Then he scraped gravel for a long time, while her mind wandered through a vista of monks and monkeys, and finally, entering the realm of the present day, paused over the dream of a hat which she had seen that morning in the Theatinerstrasse, a hat with a remarkably clever arrangement of one buckle between two wings; it was in the store that faced —
“I am an atheist,” said her companion, rising abruptly from his seat.
“Apropos of what?” she asked, decidedly startled, but rising too, – “apropos of the monkey?”
“Comment?” he said blankly.
“Nothing, nothing!” quickly.
They walked on slowly among the shadows which were beginning to gather beneath the trees; after a while he spoke again.
“I tell you just now that I am an atheist, and that is very true. Now I will make you a proposal and you shall see how serious I mean. I will change myself and believe in God, if you will change yourself and believe once more in men.”
“Can you believe in God or not just as you please?” she asked wonderingly.
“I am the master of myself,” he replied straitly; “if I say that I will pray to-night, I will pray. And you must say that you will believe,” he insisted; “you must again have a faith in men, and in their truth, and in honor.” Then he paused lengthily. “And in love?” he continued; “say that you will again believe in love? – you will, will you not? yes?”
“I don’t know that I can do it, even if I want to,” she said musingly; “looking on at life is so terribly disheartening, especially with us in America, you know.”
“Oh,” he said quickly, “but I do not want you to believe in love in America; I talk of here in Munich.”
“I suppose you mean yourself?”
“Yes,” he said most emphatically, – “me.”
She could not help laughing a little.
“You do really amuse me so much,” she apologized.
A workman in a dirty blouse and a forlorn, green Tyrolese hat, the cock’s plume of which had been all too often rained upon, passed close beside them. Von Ibn, nothing daunted, seized her gloved hand and pressed it to his lips; she freed it quickly and swept all their environage with one swift and comprehensive glance.
“If any one that knew us should see you!” she exclaimed.
He calmly gazed after the now distant workman.
“I did not know him,” he said; “did you?”
Then she was obliged to laugh again.
“You are always so afraid of the world,” he continued, remonstrating; “what does it make if one do see me kiss your hand? kissing your hand is so little kissing.”
He paused a moment and smiled whimsically.
“I did really laugh alone in my room the other night. I sit there smoking and thinking what a bad fright you have always when I will to take your hand and kiss it – you fear ever that some one shall not be there to see. Then I think, if I would give you a true kiss, that would be to your mind so awful, – the fear of a seeing, you know, – that we must then go in a cellar and bolt nine doors first, probably.”
He laughed, but she did not.
“When I go into a cellar with you,” she said coldly, “and allow nine doors bolted, you may kiss me, and I pledge you my word not to scream.”
A dead silence followed her remark, and lasted until Von Ibn broke it, saying abstractedly:
“One does go underground to visit the breweries;” after which he meditated some while longer before adding, “but they never would bolt the doors, I think.”
Rosina felt any comment on these words to be unnecessary and continued upon the even tenor of her way. They were close by the Luitpoldbrücke now, and she went towards the bridge, which lay upon their homeward route. Von Ibn followed her lead placidly until they were upon the opposite bank, when he suddenly halted.
“Have you lost something?” she asked, stopping also.
“No, but I asked you some question just now and you have never reply.”
“What was it?”
“About believing.”
“But I am going so soon,” she objected.
“How soon?”
“In December.”
“It is then all settled?” he inquired, with interest.
“Yes.”
“But you can unsettle it?” he reminded her eagerly.
“I don’t want to unsettle it – I want to go.”
He stared at her blankly.
“How have I offended you?” he asked after a while.
“You have not offended me,” she said, much surprised.
“But you say that you want to go?”
“That is because I feel that I must go.”
“Why must you go? why do you not stay here this winter? – or, hold! why do you not go to Dresden? Later I also must go to Dresden, and it would be so gemüthlich, in Dresden together.”
“It will be gemüthlich for me to get home, too.”
“Do you wish much to go?”
“Yes; I think that I do.”
Then she wondered if she was really speaking the truth, and, going to the edge of the bank, looked abstractedly down into the rapid current.
“What do you think?” he asked, following her there.
She turned her face towards him with a smile.
“I cannot help feeling curious as to whether, when I shall really be again in America, I shall know a longing for – for the Isar, or not?”
“I wonder, shall I ever be in America,” he said thoughtfully; “and if I ever should come there, where do you think would be for me the most interesting?”
“Chez moi,” she laughed.
He smiled in amusement at her quick answer.
“But I shall never come to America,” he went on presently; “I do not think it is a healthy country. I have an uncle who did die of the yellow fever in Chili.”
“There is more of America than Chili; that’s in South America – quite another country from mine.”
“Yes, I know; your land is where the men had the war with the negroes before they make them all free. I study all that once and find it quite dull.”
“The war was between the Northern and Southern States of North America – ” she began.
“Ça ne m’intéresse du tout,” he broke in; “let us walk on.”
They walked on, and there was a lengthy pause in the conversation, because Rosina considered his interruption to be extremely rude and would not broach another subject. They went a long way in the darkness of a heavily clouded September twilight, and finally:
“Where did he buy it?” he asked.
“Where did he buy what? where did who buy what?”
“The monkey.”
“Oh! I don’t know, I’m sure.”
Then there was another long silence.
“To-morrow,” he announced, “I am going to the Tagernsee, and – ”
“I’m not,” she put in flatly.
He turned his head and stared reprovingly.
“How you have say that! not in the way of good manners at all.”
“No,” she said, with an air of retort, “I am with you so much that I am beginning to forget all my good manners.”
“Am I so bad mannered?”
“Yes, you are.”
“How?”
“You interrupt, and you are frank to a degree that is always impolite, and sometimes really awful.”
“And you,” he exclaimed eagerly, “how bad you also are! you never even try to be agreeable, and when I speak with great seriosity you are often more amused than before, even.”
Rosina tried to look sorry, but found it safer, even in the twilight, to look the other way.
“The truth is,” he went on vigorously, “I am very much too good with you! I have never taken my time to an American before, and I am always fearful. I have been a fool. I shall not be a fool any more.”
“How do you intend to begin to grow wise?”
“You will see.”
The threat sounded dire, but they were now at the corner by the Maximiliansstrasse, and supper was too near for her to feel downcast.
“I hope that we are to have potato salad to-night,” she said cheerfully.
He continued to meditate moodily.
“Oh, we are much too much together,” he announced at last.
“Well,” she replied, “if you go to the Tagernsee to-morrow that will give us a little mutual rest.”
“I may miss the train,” he added thoughtfully; “if I do – ”
“You can take the next one,” she finished for him.
He looked at her witheringly.
“If I do miss the train, I will carry my violin to you and we will make some music in the evening.”
Rosina stopped, fairly paralyzed with joy.
“Oh, monsieur,” she cried, “will you really?”
“Yes, that is what I will; if I miss the train.”
They had entered beneath the long arcade, which was dark and altogether deserted except for one distant figure.
“I almost want you to miss your train,” she said eagerly. “You do not know how very, very anxious I am to hear you play.”
“I can miss it,” he said thoughtfully; “it is very simple to miss a train. One can sleep, and then here in Munich one may say the cabman a wrong Gare. If I say ‘Ostbahnhof’ when I must go from the Starnberg, I shall surely miss the train, you know.”
He looked at her gravely and she burst out laughing at the picture he had drawn for her mind, because there is all of three or four miles between those two particular stations.