A Woman's Will

Ottillie brought her wraps and adjusted her hat.

“Will madame take supper here?” she asked.

“Je le pense, oui.”

The maid muffled a sigh; she would have made Von Ibn a conquering hero indeed, if her heartfelt wishes could have given him the victory. And apropos of this subject, it would be interesting, very interesting, to know how many international marriages have been backed up by a French femme-de-chambre burning with impatience to return to her own continent.

Rosina went to the salon and found her hero looking at a “Jugend” with a bored expression. When he saw her he sprang to his feet and sought his hat and umbrella forthwith.

Then they went down the three flights of stairs to the street, and found it wet indeed.

“We cannot go on the Promenade,” he said, after casting a comprehensive glance about and afar. “I think we will go by the Hofgarten and walk under the arcade there; there will it be dry, n’est-ce pas?”

“Yes, surely it will be dry there,” she acquiesced. “It is always dry under cover in Europe, because your rain is so quiet and well behaved; it never comes with a terrible gale, whirling and twisting, and drenching everything inside and outside, like our storms.”

“Why do your storms be so?”

“We haven’t found any way of teaching them better manners yet. They are like our flies; our flies are the noisiest, most intrusive, most impertinent creatures. You don’t appreciate your timid, modest little flies.”

“I do not like flies.”

“Yes,” she laughed, “that is the whole story. You ‘do not like flies,’ while we go crazy if there is one around, and have our houses screened from cellar to garret.”

“I do not find this subject very amusing,” he said; “let us speak of another thing.”

Rosina glanced up at the prison-like façade which they were passing.

“I find the architecture of the Hoftheater terribly monotonous,” she said warmly. “Why do you not have a more diversified style of windows where so many must be in a straight row?”

“Munich is not my city,” he responded, shrugging his shoulder; “and if you will to find fault with the way those windows go, you must wait to meet the shade of Klenze in the after-world. He made it all in 1823.”

“When I get among the Bavarian shades,” she said thoughtfully, “I want to meet King Louis more than any one else. I think that he is the most interesting figure in all the history of the country.”

“Perhaps he will be there as here, and not care to meet any one.”

“Oh, no,” she said hopefully; “he was crazy here, but he will be sane there and – ”

“Mon Dieu, madame, have a care!” he cried in a low tone, glancing apprehensively about.

“What is it?” she asked, alarmed.

He lowered his voice to an almost inaudible pitch.

“It is that we do not discuss our kings in public as you are habited to do. Voyons donc,” he continued, “if I said, ‘Oh, je trouve l’Empereur très-bête!’ (as I well might say, for I find him often bête enough); if I say that, I might find a sergeant-de-ville at my elbow, and myself in prison almost as the words were still in the air.”

Rosina looked thoroughly frightened.

“And what would they do to you?” she asked, looking up at him with an expression which brought a strange answering look into his own eyes.

“That would depend on how bête I had found the emperor,” he declared, laughing; “but, madame, do not be so troubled, because no one has heard this time.”

They were walking at a good pace, the puddles considered, and came now to the arched entrance into the Hofgarten, where a turning brought them beneath the arcades. The south side was crowded, thanks to the guide-book recommendation to examine the frescoes there on a day when it is too wet to “do” other sights about the city; but the west side, where the frescoes are of landscapes only, and sadly defaced at that, was quite deserted, and they made their way through the crowd to the grateful peace of the silence beyond. It was a pleasant place to walk, with the Hofgarten showing its fresh green picture between the frames of the arcaded arches. The façade of the Hof formed the background to all – a background of stone and marble, of serried ranks of windows marshalled to order by lofty portals and balconies.

“Why are women always like that?” he asked, when they had paced in silence to the other end and turned to return.

“Like what?”

He threw a quick glance of exasperation at her.

“When I say a question, it is always with another question that you reply!”

“Well,” she said, “we were talking of the emperor, and now you say ‘why are women always like that?’ and I ask ‘like what?’”

He looked more exasperated than before.

“I have all finished with the emperor,” he said, as if outraged by her want of comprehension as to his meaning. “Is it likely that I will wish to talk of the emperor when on the nineteenth you sail from Genoa?”

She felt her eyes moistening afresh at this recurrence to her departure, and made no answer. He slashed along vigorously for two or three yards, cutting a wide swathe with his umbrella, and then his grievance appeared somewhat appeased, and he explained in a milder tone:

“I ask you why are women like that, – like that, that they never will like to be kissed?”

Rosina halted in astonishment.

“What is it now?” he asked, turning because he missed her. “Have I not yet made myself plain?”

“The idea – after all this while – of your going back to that subject!”

“I have not go back to it,” he said coolly; “I have thought of no other thing while you were booting yourself or now. Why do women say ‘No’? Why do you say ‘No’?”

“Let me see,” she said thoughtfully. “I think it is like this: if I allowed you to, you would naturally feel that hereafter you could, whereas I very much prefer that you should know that you can’t.”

He looked in a despair so complete as to be almost ludicrous.

“Oh, say slower,” he pleaded, earnestly. “It is so very important to well understand.”

She laughed at his serious face. For the moment Jack and Genoa were both forgotten, and nothing but the pleasure of good company and an atmosphere breathing the perfume that follows rain where there are flowers, were left to joy her.

“It isn’t worth repeating slower,” she said, with a smile. “It was a positive negative which even if developed in a dark room would make a proof that I did not want to be kissed.”

They went the entire length of the arcade while he endeavored to work out the solution of her second riddle, and then he shrugged his shoulders, remarking:

“I have never interest myself in a kodak any,” and appeared to regard the subject as finished.

They came back up the arcade, and, the sidewalks being now fairly dry, went out under the stairway at the corner, into the Galleriestrasse.

“Do you like this country?” he asked presently.

“Bavaria? Immensely.”

“I mean, do you like the Continent – Europe?”

“Yes.”

“What do think about it?”

“I think Europa showed great good taste in getting down from the bull just where she did.”

“Then you like this land?”

“I love it! It hurts me whenever I hear my countrymen malign it.”

They were in the Ludwigsstrasse, and the scene was like a holiday in America. Every one was out after the rain and all faces reflected that exuberant gayety which seems to be born about five o’clock in each continental city. People in carriages, people in cabs, people on horseback, people on bicycles, people walking, people leading dogs, people wheeling babies, people following children, all one laughing, bowing, chattering procession, coming and going ceaselessly between the Feldherrnhalle and the Siegesthor, with the blue Bavarian sky blessing all the pleasure, and the tame doves of Munich under the feet of each and every one.

Von Ibn stopped to watch the brilliant scene; Rosina stood beside him.

“What ill can one say of us?” he asked, after a while. “How can a place be better than this?”

“I never said that any place could be better than this,” she asseverated; “but I am uncommon in my opinions. The average American is born in a land overflowing with steam-heat, ice-water, and bath-tubs, and he suffers when he has to lose the hyphens and use the nouns separately.”

Von Ibn frowned.

“You amuse yourself much with queer words to-day,” he said discontentedly. “I wish I have stayed with Jack. I was much pleasured with him.”

“But you said that you had to return because of some business,” she reminded him.

He raised his eyebrows, and they went on again. After a little she turned her eyes up to his and smiled.

“Don’t say that you wish you were with Jack. I am so glad that you are here.”

He returned the smile.

“I have no wish to be with your cousin,” he said amicably; “I find you much more agreeable.”

Then a little dog that a lady was leading by a long chain ran three times around his legs and half choked itself to death, and the lady screamed, and it was several minutes before all was calm again.

“I find it bête to have a dog like that,” he said, looking disgustedly over his shoulder at the heroine of the episode, as she placidly continued on her way. “It was grand merci that I am not fallen, then. What was about my feet I could not fancy, and also,” – he began to laugh, – “and also it was droll, for I might not kick the dog.”

Rosina laughed too.

“But in America,” he went on, suddenly recurring to their earlier topic, “have you no art?”

“Oh, yes; but nothing to compare with our sanitary arrangements. Our president’s bath-tub is cut out of one solid block of marble,” she added proudly.

“That is not so wonderful.”

“Isn’t it? The head-lines in the papers led me to think that it was. But I’ll tell you what I think is a disgrace to America,” she went on with energy, “and that is that the American artists who come to study abroad must pay duty on their own pictures when they take them back.”

“Is that really so?” he asked.

“Yes, that is really so. And it is very unjust, for the musician and surgeon and scientist can bring all the results of their study in duty free.”

“They have them within their heads.”

“Yes; but they have them just the same.”

“Everything costs a great deal with you, n’est-ce pas?”

“I should say it did. No one ought to blame us for telling what things cost, because everything costs so much. A carriage is six to ten marks an hour.”

“C’est assez cher!” he said, laughing.

“C’est un peu trop!” she rejoined warmly. “But the well-to-do certainly do revel in griddle-cakes and hot-water faucets, and when I meet an American man in Europe I am forced to believe that they are the only really worthy ambitions to be striven for.”

“I could not live there, I think,” he exclaimed.

“I’m afraid not,” said she sadly. “You don’t play golf or drink, and men of leisure have almost no other careers open to them with us.”

“I have my music.”

“But you could never enjoy that there,” she cried, shivering involuntarily. “Every one talks during music, and some cough, and gentlemen clear their throats – ”

“And does no one hiss them?” he interrupted, wide-eyed.

“Hiss them? Never! The idea!”

He stopped and lit a cigarette.

“But one can travel?” he suggested.

“Yes, surely there is plenty of room for that,” she said dryly; “but you don’t see many ruined castles or historic battlefields en route. And the dust, oh, la, la! And the steam coils under your seat – and the air – and the ventilation – and the nights – and the days.”

“You would better stay here,” he remarked.

“Oh, I think so,” she responded frankly; “it’s so jolly getting your gloves cleaned for two cents a pair; but if we don’t change the subject I shall cry.”

He looked at her quickly.

“That is the University there,” he told her, pointing to their left; “shall we go there?”

“What for?”

“To look upon it.”

“Why, I’ve seen it dozens of times.”

He took his cigarette out of his mouth, examined it carefully, and replaced it between his lips.

“But one washes here,” he said presently.

“One – washes – ” she stammered blankly; and then it flashed across her that it was the bath-tub that was rankling in his soul, and she gasped, adjusted herself, and answered:

“Of course one washes here. But in America it is all made so convenient, and is regarded as less of an event.”

“It is no event to me to wash,” he said indignantly; “I find no excitement in washing.”

“I never said you did; I was comparing quite another class of society with their equals in the other country.”

“But to shave,” he went on, “that I find terrible.”

“It’s no worse than having a coiffure to make.”

“But I have no coiffure to make.”

“No; but I have.”

He threw his cigarette into the street.

“It is not so bad as shaving.”

“It takes longer.”

“Yes; but shaving you may cut yourself.”

Rosina laughed; he heard her and turned suspiciously.

“Why do you laugh?”

“Because.”

“What amuses you?”

“You do.”

He smiled and they walked one or two blocks in silence. They were now in the suburb of Schwabing, far out by the western end of the Englischergarten. The street was very uninteresting and comparatively deserted.

“Do you see my cravat?” he asked.

She was wondering if they had not better be returning towards home.

“I know that you have one on,” she said; “I can’t say that I notice anything especial about it.”

“I will show you something very curious about it.”

“You’re not going to take it off, are you?”

“I will show you how I tie it.”

“I know how to tie that kind myself.”

“Not as I tie it.”

Then he deliberately handed her his umbrella and untied his cravat, and proceeded to turn one end up and fold the other across and poke a loop through and draw an end under, and thus manipulate the whole into a reproduction of the same tiny bowknot as before. She held the umbrella and contemplated the performance with an interest which was most flattering to his labor.

“I don’t see how you ever do it,” she exclaimed when the job was complete and he took the umbrella again.

“I will teach you some day,” he said readily. “I have myself invented four cravats,” he added with pride.

“Will you teach me all the four?”

“Yes; I have thought, if I shall ever be poor, to go to Paris and have a cab and drive about from house to house each morning and tie cravats pour les messieurs. You can see how many would pay for that.”

“Yes; but when you arrived and they were not ready, – were still in bed, you know, – what would you do then?”

He reflected, and then shrugged his shoulders.

“I would put on the collar, tie the cravat, and leave monsieur to sleep again.”

Rosina’s marital past presented her mind with a lively picture of one of the cravat-tier’s clients struggling to bring his shirt into proper connection with the chef d’œuvre, when he should arise to attire himself for the day. She laughed outright. Then she grew sober and said:

“We ought to go back; it must be after five.”

He took out his watch.

“No, it is not.”

“Yes, it is; it was after four when we left the pension. I know it’s after five now.”

“It is not after five,” he declared calmly; “it is not after five because it is after six.”

She laughed again; he looked at her, smiling brightly himself.

“It is good together, n’est-ce pas?” he said, putting his hand upon her arm as they turned back upon their steps. There was in his eyes the happy look that dispelled every trace of the usual shadow on his face. “We are again those same children,” he went on, “children that the same toy amuses both. What pleasures you always makes joy for me also.”

Something came up in her throat as she listened. It might have been a choke, but she was so positive that it was only Genoa that she swallowed it at once and looked in the opposite direction. He had kept his hand upon her arm, and now he bent his head a little and said, his voice lowering:

“I think – ”

The dusk was gathering heavily. The Siegesthor loomed blackly great against the lights of the city beyond. It was no longer quiet about them, but the hum and buzz of all the bees swarming home was in the air, on the pavement, along the trolley wires.

“I think,” – he said, his fingers closing about her arm, – “I think that we might be always very happy together.”

She looked up quickly, and then down yet more quickly.

“Why do you speak that way when you know that I am going so soon?”

“Let us turn here,” he said eagerly; “by here it will be quiet. Do walk so,” he added pleadingly, as she hesitated, “we have not long to be together. Il faut me gâter un peu. There is but a week left for us.”

She started.

“A week! If we sail the nineteenth we need not leave here until the fourteenth surely.”

“But your cousin will leave on the eighth.”

She looked up at him, and by the light of a street lamp which they were just passing, he saw the great tears starting in her eyes, tears of helplessness, the tears of a woman who feels and cannot speak. It was a very quiet little street, that into which they had turned, with lines of monotonous gray houses on either side, and certainly no better place for tears was ever invented. Rosina’s appeared to know a good thing when they saw it, and rolled heavily downward, thus proving in their passage the sincerity of both her nature and her color. Her companion drew her hand within his own, pressing her fingers hard and fast. He did not say one word, and finally she wiped her eyes, smiled through the mist that hung upon her lashes, and said with simple directness:

“I don’t want to go.”

“I know.”

“But they want me to, and I must.”

There was another long silence, and then he said:

“You would not stay for me?”

His voice was wonderfully soft and persuasive, and for a single instant she admitted the possibility into her mental future; but the instant after it found itself driven violently forth again.

“No, no,” she cried, forcibly, “I will not – I cannot. I never want another husband.”

He hesitated one step in his gait and then went on as before.

“I do not say that all would be as you wished,” he said slowly, with pauses between, “or that I would live only to joy your life. That would be very untrue. To be with you this week I put aside as it would not be right for me to put aside again. These days I have throw away because I will not say all in my after life that I did not try.” He stopped and his voice changed strangely. “I must try with all my strength,” he continued, drawing each breath as if in great pain; “I must, because to me with my work it is what does not trouble, what gives me sympathy, that is the most large of all. I have never marry because I know that so well. How could I ever do my work if a single discord is there to fret – fret – fret? As well ask me to play in concert on an untuned instrument. To my ear the untune is agony; to my music, a discord in my day is death to what would have been written that day. It is so that I have come to expect to never marry. My music must be first, and how can I risk – ” he stopped his speech and his steps. She tried to move on but he held her still. “But,” he said, very low but with an accent the intensity of which cut into her very heart, “but now I know that better work would be if you were there; I should have greater force; I should – I – if you loved – ”

He trailed his speech helplessly, faltered, and was silent. The night had come heavily down and they learned the fact by the discovery that they could no longer look into the eyes of one another. The quiet little street had led them down to the borders of the Englischergarten, and its forest rose up before them. He led her straight towards it.

“It will be wet,” he said, in reply to the resistance in her arm; “but we must be alone until I have finished all that I will to say. The trees about us are best; we do not want cabs and streets just now.”

She felt blindly, miserably wretched.

“I don’t want to be married again,” she declared in a voice that was thick with more tears; and then she gathered her skirt well into her hand and they plunged together into the darkness beyond.

The park was dusk with night’s downfall and heavily misted by the day’s rain. Its paths, usually like hard gray cement, were a slippery mosaic of clay and brown leaves, and on either hand arose a stockade-like effect of tree-trunks knowing no light beyond. Wind there was none to rustle the leaves, nor sound of bird or beast. An utter and complete silence echoed the footfalls of these two who had come into the solitude, to the end that they might search there for a solution of themselves.

At the first forking of their way, Rosina said timidly:

“We must not go too far; it is so lonely, I am afraid.”

Von Ibn stopped short, drew one of her arms behind his back, caught her firmly to his bosom, and approached his face so close to hers that his breath came and went against her lips.

“Are you frightened?” he asked.

“No,” she said, wrapt in a sort of awe at the wonder of her own sensations, “I have the utmost faith in you.”

He loosed her instantly, and walked a little way off for a moment.

“I felt that you wished not,” he said, bitterly, “and so I held myself back. Mon Dieu, how good I am to you, – how cruel to myself, – and no thanks.”

Her heart was wrung.

“Oh, let us go back and go home,” she cried; “all this is of no use. It makes me glad to go away, because I see now that for me to go will be better for you.”

“And for you?” he asked, returning to her side.

“I said ‘for you,’” she answered gently.

“Then not at all for you too?” – he laid his hand insistently upon her arm, – “not at all for you too?” he repeated.

She was silent.

“It was there in Lucerne,” he went on presently; “I knew it at first – the first time I see you; and when I found that it was you who had sent for me – I – I dared to hope that you too felt something, even then, even so at the very first. Have you never known that feeling?” – he exclaimed, his breath rising passionately, “has such storm never swept within you? – and you have no other life for a while but its longing, – no sleep but the stupid fatigue when one cannot think more? What has my existence been since that day on the Quai by the Vierwaldstattersee? —Je ne peux rien faire!– To the world I am dead. – There is perhaps no future for me because I have learned to love and have not learned to be loved.”

His voice broke utterly; he loosed her arm, walked apart once more, and was once more silent.

Then her agitation suddenly found voice and to her own intense horror she heard herself laughing – laughing a loud hysterical laughter, that resounded hideously and was beyond her own control.

“You are amused,” he exclaimed, and his mood took on a justifiable tone of outraged anger; “you laugh. You have made me like this and now you laugh. If you were suffering and I had made you so, I should be ashamed and sorry; but a woman laughs. You are as that other,” he continued, impetuously, “and it will be the same some time after. When she had made me wild, then she laughed. When I heard her laugh, I grew quite cold, I cared no more, never more. Then, when I cared no more, she learned to care, she grew to love, she wrote me many letters, she became most miserable; but for me nothing mattered. Because I could not care more.”

Her laughter continued spasmodically in spite of her struggles to check it. But between the paroxysms she gasped:

“I never tried – to make you love me. I never wanted you to come where I did – ”

“But now that I am all yours,” he interrupted, “now that nothing is left for me, but you – ” He paused. “What will I do now?” he added, asking the question with a simplicity at once boyish and heartrending.

She was silent; her laughter had ceased. He came close to her and took her hand again within his own. And then in the darkness beside him he suddenly heard the bursting misery of her sobs.

“You weep,” he cried.

“No,” she whispered faintly, “no.”