Chapter VIII: Part III: The Breaking of the Barriers (1)

Chapter Fourteen

It was very early, very dark, very cheerless, that most miserable hour of six o’clock in the morning, the very worst hour ever known in which to be routed out of bed in order that an unpleasant journey may be begun.

Without, it was faintly light; within, it was brightly gas. What is less cheerful than the aspect given a room by the gas burning high at six o’clock in the morning? Rosina’s room looked absolutely ghastly, for it was bare of everything but travelling apparatus, and they were all strapped and waiting. She herself sat before her untouched breakfast tray and watched Ottillie lace her boots, while she dismally went over for the two hundred and seventy-sixth time every detail of the night before the last.

There was a tap at the door and Jack came in. He was tanned with his recent trip and had a thrilling new travelling ulster with carved deer-horn buttons. He had bought the buttons at the Tagernsee and had had an ulster constructed in Vienna, just as a background for them. He looked at his cousin with a buoyant air that she felt to be bitterly unkind, all things considered, and exclaimed:

“You 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.”

“You must change in Bregenz.”

“We must change in Bregenz,” Jack called out.

By that time the German Venice was well behind, and the train was skirting the southern shore of the Bodensee. The sun was shining on the waves, and the woods upon the banks were spattered with red and yellow. And off to the north Constance was lying. Ah, Constance--the Stadtgarten--Huss’ Tower--the “Souvenir” of Vieuxtemps!

Rosina wept afresh.

“Oh, Ottillie,” she sobbed, forlornly, “_que je suis malheureuse aujourd’hui_!”

Ottillie opened her little bag and handed her mistress another fresh handkerchief; it was the only way in which she could testify to her devotion upon this especial day.

At Bregenz they descended, with the aid of a porter, at about half-past two. As they left the train it was borne in upon them that this change was not a change at all, but just another custom-house.

“What strange country have we run up against, I’d like to know!” Jack asked in amazement; and then the black cocks’ plumes in the _casquette_ of the _douanier_ revealed the information that he craved.

“How does Austria get to the Bodensee?” Rosina begged to know, having seen the cocks’ plumes as quickly as he had.

“I don’t know,” replied Jack, not at all pleased at the discovery as to where they were. “It does seem as if every country in Europe has a finger in this lake, though; or, if they haven’t, they keep a custom-house open on it just as a side line to their regular business.”

The porter led them into the great wooden shed, where some unplaned boards laid across boxes served as counters, Bregenz being in the throes of the erection of a new station.

“I bet they make it plain whether its _kronen_ or _gulden_,” said Rosina’s cousin as he threw his valise on top of the porter’s small mountain; “if I’d known that I was to come in connection with that vile money system again I’d have _schiffed_ it across the lake or walked around the northern shore before I’d ever have come this route.”

By this remark he testified to a keen recollection of his Viennese experiences and the double dealing (no pun intended) of the Austrian shopkeeper just at the present epoch in the national finance system of that country.

Behind the boards two uniformed officials paced up and down, and when all was neatly ranged before them the one bestowed his attention upon Rosina while the other turned his in among the infinity of boxes belonging to her party. He peeped into two or three of the valises and chalked them and all of their kind; then he demanded the opening of the largest dress-box. Ottillie unstrapped it and undertook to satisfy his curiosity to the fullest possible extent.

The object uppermost of all was a Russian leather writing-tablet. The official leapt upon that at once.

“On this you must pay thirty _centimes_,” he declared, grabbing it up.

“_Warum?_” said Jack. He found “_warum_” the most useful word in his German vocabulary, because by the very nature of things it always threw the burden of the conversation on to the shoulders of the other party.

“You cannot pretend that it is an article of wearing apparel for madame,” said the officer archly.

“I never said that it was an article of wearing apparel for any one,” Jack retorted hotly; “I asked why I had to pay thirty _centimes_ on it. It isn’t new and it isn’t dutiable, and I know that, and you know it too.”

“What is it, anyhow?” asked the man.

“It’s to write on.”

“Why does not madame write on paper, like everybody else?” inquired the witty fellow.

“There’s your six cents,” said Jack, in great disgust; “I reckon you take _pfennigs_, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Austrian, “we take everything.”

“Yes,” replied the American, “so I observed in Vienna.”

Then he turned away and the porter loaded up again.

They went out on the platform and were told that the train had just gone.

“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” asked the guard, taking pity on their consternation at being left high and dry so unexpectedly.

“Zurich.”

“Oh, then that wasn’t your train anyway; that train went to Rorshack. You take the Zurichbahn at half-past three.”

There was three-quarters of an hour to wait.

“Do you suppose that there is anything worth seeing in Bregenz?” the man of the party suggested.

“I don’t want to see it if there is,” his cousin replied.

“Well, I do want to see it, even if there isn’t,” he answered; “you and Ottillie can go into the waiting-room and I’ll be back in half an hour.”

So he went off whistling, his ulster floating serenely around him. Rosina established herself in a boarded-off angle which under existing circumstances was dignified by the title of “Warte-Saal,” and every nail that was driven into the new Gare of Bregenz pierced her aching heart and echoed in her aching head.

After the lapse of half an hour Jack turned up again, having thoroughly exhausted Bregenz and purchased a new cane most ingeniously carved with bears’ heads and paws interlaced.

He was not overpleased to be informed that the Zurichbahn was late, and that there was no probability of their leaving the dominions of Francis Joseph before four o’clock at the earliest.

“It’s an awful shame the way this world is put on,” he said, yawning and walking up and down; “it would be Paradise to Von Ibn to have the right to cart you and your bags around, and it’s h--l for me, and I’ve got it to do notwithstanding.”

“I never sent for you to take me home,” Rosina said in an outraged tone.

“Oh, I wasn’t blaming you,” he declared amicably.

“Oh,” she said coldly, “I thought that you were.”

The Zurichbahn was very late, and did not put in an appearance until half-past four. Then they went aboard with a tired feeling that would have done credit to an arrival in Seattle from New York.

“Do we change again?” Rosina asked with latent sarcasm, when the guard (a handsome guard, worthy to have been a first lieutenant at the very least) came through to tear some pages out of their little books.

“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” he asked, with a beaming smile.

“Zurich,” Jack sung out, with renewed vigor.

The guard opened the door leading into the next compartment, and then, when his exit was assured, he told them:

“Must in St. Margarethen change,” and vanished.

“He knows the time for disappearing, evidently,” Jack said; “I bet somebody that felt as I do threw him out of the window when he said that once. And I have a first-class notion of getting down and taking the next train straight back to Munich for the express purpose of murdering that fellow that started us out this morning.”

Rosina felt a deep satisfaction that none of his heat could be charged up to her; _she_ had offered no advice as to this unlucky day. She sat there silent, her eyes turned upon the last view of the Bodensee, and after some varied and picturesque swearing her cousin laid down and went to sleep again.

They arrived in St. Margarethen about half-past five, and night, a damp, chill night, was falling fast. The instant that the train halted a guard rushed in upon them.

“_Wo fahren Sie hin?_” he cried, breathlessly.

“Zurich, d---- you!” Jack howled. He was making too small a shawl-strap meet around too large a rug for the fifth time that day, and the last remnant of his patience had fled.

“Must be very quick; no time to lose,” said the man and hurried away.

That he spoke a deep and underlying truth was evidenced by the mad rush of passengers and porters which immediately ensued. They joined the crowd and found themselves speedily flung in some shape into Zurichbahn No. II., which moved out of the station at once.

Jack was too saturated with sleep to be able to try any more. He went through to the smoker’s compartment, and Rosina looked apathetically out upon the Lake of Zurich and reflected her same reflections over again and again. The moon, which had looked down upon the Isar rapids, rode amidst masses of storm clouds above the dark sheet of water, and illuminated with its fitful light the shadows that lay upon the bosom of the waves. She felt how infinitely darker were the shadows within her own bosom, and how vain it was to seek for any moon among her personal clouds.

“It’s a terrible thing to have been married,” she thought bitterly. “Before you’ve been married you’re so ready to be married to any one, and after you’ve been married you don’t dare marry any one.” Then she took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “Oh, dear,” she sobbed, “it doesn’t seem as if I could possibly be more wretched with him than I am without him!”

They reached Zurich in the neighborhood of nine o’clock. The end of a trip always brings a certain sense of relief to the head of the party, and Jack’s spirits rose prodigiously as he got them all into a cab.

“We’ll get something to eat that’s good,” he declared gayly, “and then to-morrow, after a first-class night’s sleep, we’ll go over the Gotthard, and be in Milan Monday. And then, ho for Genoa, Gibraltar, and joy everlasting!”

He seized Rosina’s hand and gave it a hard squeeze.

“Cheer up, you poor dear!” he cried; “you’ll come out all right in the end,--now you see!”

She pressed her lips tightly together and did not trust herself to say one word in reply.

She felt that she was beginning to really hate her cousin.

Chapter Fifteen

They stood at the summit of that double flight of marble steps which run up the right-hand side of the Milan Cathedral’s roof and down the left. There are one hundred steps on either side, and having just mounted the right-hand hundred Rosina looked down the left-hand hundred with an affright born of appreciative understanding.

“Oh, Jack,” she cried, “I never shall get down from here alive! What did you ever bring me up for?”

“I brought you up to talk,” said her cousin. “Come over here, and sit down on the ridge-pole beside me.”

The ridge-pole of the Milan Cathedral is of white marble, like all the rest of the edifice; it is wide and flat, and just the height for a comfortable seat.

The cousins placed themselves side by side thereon, and Jack lit a cigarette while he deliberated on just how he should proceed with the case in hand.

“Well,” he said at last, folding his arms, clearing his throat, crossing his legs, and in other ways testifying to the solemnity of what was forthcoming, “I want you to pay a lot of attention to what I’m going to say, Rosina, for I’m going to talk to you very seriously, and you must weigh my words well, for once let us get out to sea next week and it will be too late to ever take any back tacks as to this matter.”

She turned her sad eyes towards him; she was looking pale and tired, but not cross or impatient.

“Go on,” she said quietly.

“It’s just this: it’s four days now since we left Munich, and I can see that your spirits aren’t picking up any; instead, you seem more utterly done up every day. So I’ve made up my mind to give you one more chance. It’s this way: you know we’re all awfully fond of you and proud of you and all that, but you know too that no one can ever make you out or manage you--unless it’s me,” he added parenthetically; “and you always do what you please, and you always will do what you please, and the family share in the game generally consists in having to get you out of the messes that your own folly gets you into. You didn’t need to marry, you know, but you just would do it in spite of anything that any one could say, and all we could do was to be sorry for it, and sorry for you when you were unhappy, as we all knew that you would be beforehand. And that was the one mess that no one could get you out of. Well, then he died, and you had another show.” Jack paused and jarred his cigarette ash off with his finger-tip. “You know and I know just who there was waiting there at home, but you elected to turn them all down and come over here to travel around alone. And that was all right as long as you stayed alone, but terribly risky when,--well, when that letter was written in Zurich--”

“Ah,” she cried sharply, “then it _was_ from Zurich!”

“Yes, it was from Zurich,” he replied indifferently; “and it was perfectly natural under the circumstances that the letter should have been written. The letter was straightforward enough, only, of course, it necessitated Uncle John’s sending me over to--”

“But I hadn’t known him but three days then,” she interrupted.

“That wasn’t making any difference to him, evidently. And so I came over and looked up everything; and I even did more, I came there to Munich and went off with him on that trip so as to learn just everything that it was possible to learn, and it all comes to just what I’ve told you before: if you want to marry him, you can; if you don’t want to marry him, you needn’t; but for Heaven’s sake why do you persist in refusing him if it uses you up so awfully?”

Her mouth quivered and her eyes filled slowly.

“Have you been flirting?” he asked, with a very real kindness veiled in his voice, “or do you really love him?”

She lifted her wet eyes to his.

“I don’t know,” she said, with simple sincerity; and after a minute she added, “But I can’t make up my mind to marry just for the sake of finding out.”

Jack whistled softly.

“So that’s it!” he said at last.

They remained sitting quietly side by side for two or three minutes, and then he spoke again; his voice was gentle, but firm and resolved, and there was a sort of finality about his words which clinched into her heart like an ice-grip.

“Then the best thing to do is just what we’re doing; I know that you wanted to stay and see more of him, but, feeling as you do, that wouldn’t have been right to him or to yourself either. It seems tough on you, but you’ll get over it in a few months, and if it comes to a funeral for Von Ibn--why, it isn’t our funeral, anyway!”

He stood up as he spoke, and smiled and held out his hand to her. She rose, feeling as if some fearful ultimatum had been proclaimed above her head.

“It’s sort of hard, you know,” Jack said, as he assisted her carefully down the steep steps; “it’s _awful_ hard to travel with you and have you never smile and never say anything, and not be able to explain that you feel bad because you won’t marry a man who wants you and whom you want.”

“I married just such a man once upon a time,” she replied sadly.

“Yes,” said Jack; “but I didn’t like that man, and I do like Von Ibn.”

She drew a quick breath.

From the cathedral they returned directly to the hotel.

Chapter Sixteen

It was Genoa.

The end of all was at hand.

Rosina recollected the careless, callous manner with which in earlier, happier days she had spoken of this fated spot.

“Are you going home by the Southern Route?”

“Yes, we sail from Genoa;” or, “Do you leave at Naples?” “Oh, no, it’s Monte Carlo this time, so we shall get off at Genoa.”

Genoa!

Once she had thought its blue mountain masses most sublimely beautiful, now anything with hollows and shadows reminded her of those two misery-circled eyes, and she was led to wonder afresh if he, or she, would ever recover.

It is always astonishing how the port from which we sail partakes of our sailing sentiments. It’s a “jolly good place” or a “dull old hole,” just according to who is on the deck or who is on the dock. Handkerchiefs flutter gayly in the stolid face of Hoboken every day of the year, and many beside Marie Stuart have wept themselves out of sight of sunny France. It isn’t the place that counts when the anchor goes down or up, it’s the Who and the When; and in view of what has filled all the foregoing pages I trust that the reader will sympathize with Rosina and pardon my slang if I state that Genoa appeared to her upon this occasion very much more rocky than ever before.

Their arrival had not been auspicious, to begin with. The cab on its narrow way hotel-ward had collided energetically with another cab and had a wheel taken off. Jack was on the high side, and Rosina was only too anxious to have anything happen to her; but Ottillie, who had narrowly escaped being pitched out on her head, was quite perturbed, and feared that the accident was a bad omen for the voyage.

The following morning Rosina saw her cousin leave for the inevitable visit to Fratelli’s, and when he was safely out of the way she put on a walking-suit, veiled herself thickly, and, taking a carriage, went all alone to that grand eastern sweep of boulevard whose panorama of sea and city is so beyond the language of any pen to portray. At the summit she dismissed the carriage, and rested there alone, leaning against the iron balustrade, her eyes turned afar, her bosom riven by emotions as limitless as the horizon that lay before her. A sailing-vessel was spreading its wings for an Egyptian flight; in the port to her right the great white ocean liner was loading her cargo; overhead the gulls whirled, shrieking. But to all she was blind, deaf, unwitting.

For with the conversation upon the ridge-pole of the Milan Cathedral life had seemed to close for her. The finality of Jack’s ruling had barred the future out of her present forever. There is no more unmitigated grief for a woman than to be chained to the consequences begotten of her own way, and to have her judgment taken seriously and acted upon, to the end that all possible chance of change is swept forever beyond the reach of her will.

She hung there against the cold iron and knew no tears, because her wretchedness had outstripped their solace.

Her reasons had reached the pass where they craved to be overruled, and no one was going to overrule them. She did not state the facts to herself in so many words, but she felt her helplessness and moaned her pain.

Oh, that pain! the pain of one who sees the light too late, who divines the sun only by the splendor of the glow which it has left behind. What memories they hold to torture everlastingly! What reveries they nurse from thence on evermore!

If only more had been said, or less! If only more had been denied, or granted! There is forever imprinted on the brain some one especial look which time can never dim--some special word whose burden nor sleep nor wake will lighten.

There, at her feet, the Isar rushed, and through the myriad murmur of its rapids his voice came back to her. “_Tout est fini_,--all is finished!” he had said, with that enveloping mist of melancholy in which his spirit shrouded itself so easily. And then a wax taper flashed before the blackness that sheathed her vision, and she looked in heart-quivering agony upon the dumb appeal of those great, brown eyes, with their shadows doubled by the torturing of the hour.

“He felt perhaps as I feel now,” she thought, pressing her hand against her bosom; “I didn’t know then--I didn’t know!”

She turned to walk along the cliff.

“If I was sure,” she told herself, “I think that I would--” but there she paused, shuddered violently, and left the phrase unfinished.

At luncheon Jack was uncommonly cheerful. He asked her if she didn’t want to go to Nice and spend one of the two days before their departure. She shook her head.

“But why don’t you go?” she said; “you could just as well as not.”

“I don’t know but that I will,” he replied; “only I hate to leave you here alone.”

“Oh, I’ll do very well,” she assured him, smiling.

About four that afternoon he came into her room, where she was lying in a reclining-chair by the window, looking listlessly out and dreaming of Munich. He stood before her for a long time, contemplating her and the gown of lace and silk which foamed about her throat and arms, and then cascaded down to spread in billows on the floor.

“I declare,” he said suddenly, “it seems wasteful somehow for you to dress like that just to sit here alone.”

Her mouth curved a little.

“Is that a night-dress?” he inquired curiously.

“No, cousin, it’s a tea-gown.”

“Oh!”

He stood still beside her.

“They told me a funny thing at the steamship office this morning,” he said, after a while; “the man says that there’s never a steamer sails but that some one who has made their last payment down is obliged for some reason to stay behind.”

“Do they give them back their money?” she asked, trying to appear interested.

“Yes; and they always fill the room either at Naples or Gibraltar.”

And still he stood there.

“Why don’t you sit down?” she asked at last.

“Where’s Ottillie?” he said, without seeming to notice her question.

“I’ve sent her out to do some errands. Why, do you want anything done?”

“No;” he leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I do love you, Rosina,” he added, half joking, half serious; “I wonder what sort of a show I’d have had if I’d tried--ever?”

She shrank from him with a quick breath.

“Oh, Jack, I beg of you, don’t tease me these days.”

He straightened up and laughed, taking out his watch.

“It’s quarter after four,” he said, reflecting. “The mail must be in; I’ll see if there are any letters,” and he went out.

She remained by the window, twirling the shade-tassel with her idle fingers, and seeing, not the rattle and clatter of Italian street-life, but the great space of the Maximilian-Joseph Platz, with the doves pattering placidly over the white and black pattern of its pavement, and the Maximiliansstrasse stretching before her with the open arches of the Maximilianeum closing its long vista at the further end....

Quick steps in the hall broke in upon her day dream, and her cousin re-entered, an open letter in his hand and his face curiously drawn. He gave her one strange look and halted.

“What has happened?” she asked hastily and anxiously.

He went to the window and looked out, so that his back was turned towards her and his face concealed from her view.

“I’ve just heard from Von Ibn,” he said briefly.

“Is that letter from him?”

“No; he’s not writing any letters these days.”

“Oh--” she began, and then stopped.

He kept his back towards her, and then, after a short pause:

“He’s going all to pieces,” he said in a low tone, very slowly.

“Oh--” she exclaimed again, and again stopped.

“I reckon he’s pretty badly off; he’s got beyond himself. He’s--well, he’s--. Rosina, the long and short of it is, he’s gone crazy!”

She rose slowly out of her seat, her face deadly white, her finger-nails turned cruelly into her palms.

“Jack!” she stammered; “Jack!”

He continued to look from the window.

“I knew he’d take it awfully hard,” he said, in a voice that sounded strained, “but I didn’t think he’d give up so completely; he’s--”

Then she screamed, reaching forth and touching his hand.

“You’re not breaking it to me that he’s dead! You’re not telling me that he’s dead!”

He turned from the window at that, and was shocked at her face and the way that her hands were twisting.

“I know he’s dead!” she screamed again, and he sprang forward and caught her in his arms as she sank down there at his knees.

“He is _not_ dead!” he told her forcefully; “honestly, he is _not_ dead! But he’s in a bad way, and with it all just as it is, I don’t know what to do about you. If you don’t care, why, as I said before, it’s not our funeral; but if you do care, I--well, I--”

“Oh, Jack, can I go to him? I must go to him! Can’t you take me to him?”

She writhed in his arms as if she also was become a maniac.

“Do you really want to go to him? Do you know what that means? It means no more backing out, now or never.”

“I know, I understand, I’m willing! Only hurry! only telegraph that I will come! only--” she began to choke.

“I’ll tell you,” said he, putting her into the big chair again; “you shall go to him. Stay there a minute and I’ll get my railway guides and look it up right away. Collect yourself, be a good girl!”

He went out, and she folded her hands and prayed wildly:

“God, let him live! God, take me to him!” over and over again.

And then her impatience stretched the seconds into minutes, and she sought her cousin’s room, which was just across the hall from the suite given to herself.

She flung the door open without knocking and entered precipitately, expecting to find Jack and the railway guides. But Jack was not there.

There _was_ a man there, sitting by the window, twisting his moustache and biting his lips in raging impatience. To this man Jack had said three minutes before, “She’ll be in here in less than sixty seconds. I’m going to the steamship office,” and then the man had been left to wait, and his was not a patient disposition....

A tall man, a dark man, a man whose hair lay in loose, damp, wavy locks above his high forehead; a man whose eyes were heavy-circled underneath, and whose long, white hands beat nervously upon the chair-arms.

At the sound of the opening door the man looked up. She was there, staring as if petrified, by the door.

He made one bound. She was within his arms.

“_Alors tu m’aimes!_” he cried, and something mutual swallowed her reply and the consciousness of both for one long heaven-rifting minute.

“_Alors tu m’aimes?_” he said again, with a great quivering breath; “_tu m’aimes, n’est-ce pas?_”

“With my whole heart and soul and life,” she confessed.

And then he kissed her hastily, hungrily, murmuring:

“_Ma cherie!_ my angel, mine, mine!”

She cried a little and laughed a little, looked up a little and looked down a little, tried to draw away from him and found herself drawn yet nearer; was kissed, and kissed him; was looked upon and returned the look; felt the strength of his love and felt the strength of her own; feeling at last that the wavelets of Lucerne which had splashed softly up against the stones at Zurich, and murmured in her ears at Constance, had been swelled by the current of the Isar into a mighty resistless storm that here, this day, upon the rocky coast of the Mediterranean, had come resistlessly roaring upwards, and, sweeping away all barriers, carried her heart and her life out into its bottomless depths forevermore.

“_Attends!_” he said, after a minute, loosing her suddenly to the end that he might turn the key in Jack’s door; then he took her by the hand and led her to the chair where he had been sitting. It was one of those vast and luxurious _fauteuils_ which have prevented the Old World from ever importing the rocker. He installed her in its depth and placed himself upon the broad and cushioned arm.

“_Mon Dieu, que je suis heureux!_” he said, smiling down into her eyes; “_alors tu m’aimes vraiment_?”

“Jack told me that you were terribly ill,” she said, her eyes resting upon his face with a sort of overwhelming content.

“And you have care?”

“I thought that I should lose my mind!”

“_Ma cherie!_”

“But you really look as if you had been ill?”

“Not ill, but most _malheureux_. It has not been easy always to wait and believe that you shall love me yet.”

“But you always did believe it?”

He smiled his irresistible smile of eyes and lip.

“Your cousin has said to me in Tagernsee, ‘She will certainly marry you because she declares that she will not, and she always does do exactly _le contraire_;’ but, _Mon Dieu_, how could I trust to that?”

Rosina laughed ringingly.

“Dear Jack! I wish that I had known myself as well as he knows me.”

“He has been very good to me,” said Von Ibn, leaning above her and breaking his sentences in a manner that was perhaps only natural, all things considered; “he has kept me from--the real madness. But for him I was quite willing to shoot myself. It has never been anything so terrible for me as--when you enter the door of the _pension_ that night and shut it between us.”

She lifted up her hand and closed his big eyes with its soft touch.

“I loved you in Lucerne,” she declared to his blindness, “that first moment when I saw you walking on the Quai. I did not know why, but I felt that I _must_ know you.”

He snatched her hand away and laughed.

“_Voilà!_” he exclaimed; “what have I say to you that time in Munich, that the women are always _gênées_! You love in Lucerne, and insist not for all the summer after.”

Then they laughed together.

“Would you have liked me to have told you there on the Quai? would you have believed it?”

“Yes,” he said gravely; “I would have believed it very well, because I also knew the same. In the hotel I had seen you, and on the Promenade I said myself, ‘_Voilà la jolie Américaine encore une fois!_’ You see!”

She wondered how she had ever for a moment thought that his eyes were melancholy, they appeared so big and bright and joyous now.

“When did you come?” she remembered to ask after a long time.

“I am come yesterday morning.”

“Before we did?”

“Oh, yes; because I have very much here to do.”

“In Genoa?”

“Yes; and Jack and I have been out all this morning also.”

“And I never knew!”

He looked a little uneasy and rose to his feet.

“There is something very serious that I must say,” he said, standing before her.

She looked up in a little anxiety; a crowd of ordinary, every-day thoughts suddenly swarmed into her mind.

“Do not be _gênée_!” he implored parenthetically; “what I have to say is so most important.”

“I am not _gênée_,” she assured him.

“Then why do you not come and stand by me?” he asked. “If you love me and will not show it, I am to be very unhappy always.”

Rosina laughed; but she stood up and went close to him at once.

“I do love you,” she said, “and I am not at all afraid to show it. You see!”

He took her face between his hands and gazed down fondly upon her.

“Love is good, is it not?” he said. “There is a great joy to me to hold you so, and reflect upon those stairs at Munich.”

He paused--perhaps in consideration of the Munichian stairs--for a moment, and then said:

“I have heard that there is love so strong that it crushes; if I ever take hold of you so that your bones break, it is only that I think of the stairs in Munich.”

She laughed again.

“I will remember,” she said, not at all frightened.

He took her two hands tightly within his own.

“I must now say that very serious thing.”

“But I shall not run away.”

“No, but you may be surprised and unarrange yourself before I can hold you to stop.”

“Go on,” she begged.

“It is this: Jack and I have been out all this morning, because all must be very ready; I--” he stopped.

“You are going with us?” she exclaimed joyously.

“No; I--”

“You are not going before we do?”

He smiled and shook his head.

Then he drew her very closely and tenderly to him and kissed her eyes and forehead.

“It is that I am to be married to-morrow,” he told her softly, and held her tightly as the shock of his words ran quivering through her.

“And I!” she gasped, after two or three paralyzed seconds.

“Naturally you are to be married also.”

She stared mutely up into the reassurance of his smile.

“Jack and I find that best,” he said. “I have no time to go to America to bring you again, and all is quite good arranged. I have telegraphed to Dresden about a larger apartment, and those papers from the lawyers in New York waited here when you came. We may not marry like peasants, you and I, you know.”

She felt completely overcome.

“_To-morrow!_” she said, at last.

“Yes,” he said placidly; “I am much hasted to be again in the north, and we have arranged with the consuls--your consul and my consul--for to-morrow.”

“But my steamer passage!”

“Oh, that your cousin has given up; all the money has been returned. I think for a little that we will go with him as far as Naples, but I go and look at your stateroom this morning, and I have just a _centimétre_ more than the berth.”

Rosina was forced to laugh; her humor began to bubble riotously upwards at the notion of Von Ibn and Jack measuring the berth that morning. He did not know why she laughed, but he kissed her without caring.

“For me there is no comfort under two _métres_,” he declared vigorously.

Just then the owner of the room tried the door.

“This is my room,” he called through the crack.

They looked at each other, and she ran lightly to the door, unlocked it and let her cousin enter.

“You fearful liar!” she exclaimed, as he put his arm about her, and held out the spare hand to her lover. “Oh, Jack, you awful, _awful_ liar, what shall I say to you?”

“Say to him that you are most happy,” her lover suggested.

Jack was beaming.

“I never said a word that wasn’t true,” he declared. “You asked me if the letter was from him, and I said that he wasn’t writing any letters these days, and then I said that he was going crazy.”

“And that was most true,” the other man broke in; “I have no manner to think left in my head these later nights.”

“And you began to scream that you must go to him, and I told you that you could go; and I see that you went.”

Von Ibn crossed to the chimney-piece and picked up a cigarette and a match. He was smiling to himself.

“She consents to be married to-morrow,” he said, facing about.

“Yes,” said Rosina airily; “I see that conventionality and I are to be more two than ever henceforth, so I am going to yield up my own way at once.”

“You are a brave fellow,” Jack said to his friend; “I have always been able to do more with her than any one else, but, honestly, I tell you that I, even I, would never dare to undertake her forever.”

Von Ibn lit his cigarette and laughed.

“She will obey me,” he said easily; “she will have to. It will be a great good for her. I shall be very tender with her and most severe, that is what is best for a woman.”

“Oh, Rosina!” said Jack, and in his tone resounded a succession of many feelings each more indescribable than its predecessor.

“It is not needful that you kiss her,” the lover went on, coming back across the room; “I wish that you would not, that does me no pleasure to watch.”

“I don’t care anything about kissing her,” the cousin replied; “Rosina’s novelty in kisses was over for me before I was five years old. Don’t you remember--”

Some one rapped at the door.

“_Entrez!_” they cried in chorus.

It was a _garçon_ with a card.

“‘Madame La Francesca,’” said Rosina, reading. “Who is Madame La Francesca?”

The two men exchanged glances.

“Where is the lady?” Jack asked.

“She is gone at once to madame’s room,” the boy replied.

“You’d better go and see who’s in your room,” Jack suggested; “and you,” he added, turning to her _fiancé_, “you must come with me and attend to what yet remains to be done.”

Rosina hesitated, her hand upon the door-knob.

“I will come at once,” she told the boy, who was waiting, and then she looked towards the man by the chimney-piece.

“Never mind me,” said her cousin kindly; “I’ll look out of the window, if you wish.”

Von Ibn threw his cigarette into the grate.

“You need not look from the window,” he said, laughing; “you may look straight to us, and see two most happy.”

He put his hand on either side of her smile and took the smile to himself. Then she went out.

“I can’t tell you,” the American said warmly, “how glad I am for you both. I do honestly think that she’ll make you very happy. And I hope and pray that you’ll be good to her.”

“I shall be good to her,” said his friend seriously; “I know her well. She is very ‘_tendre_’ and I love her much; she will not have her own will always, but with her love she will do mine. It is that that makes the life so happy with us. We give much affection and little liberty; it is not well for you, because with you all is so different. In America it is all liberty, and no time for love.”

“Maybe not,” said Jack carelessly; “but we make a lot of money all the same.” He picked up his ulster with the deer-horn buttons. “You’re coming, aren’t you?” he said.

The other man sought an eminently correct overcoat and silk hat in the adjoining room.

“_Natürlich_,” he said, “you know that I am of at any rate an equal interest with you in what is to be to-morrow.”

Jack laughed.

“Perhaps if you knew your lady as well as I do--” he began, and then he stopped.

They went out to the staircase, and Von Ibn descended several steps in advance. Jack contemplated his back, and his lips twitched with the conquering of a rebellious smile.

“So there walks the end of all,” he said to himself. “Who would have thought it of Rosina! Poor girl, she is about over; in fact, I’m afraid that, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, ‘Rosina’ has already ceased to exist--knocked under for good, so to speak. Only to think of that particular girl choosing a thorough-bred European husband with a Tartar syllable in his name!” He paused and chuckled. “I’ve proved my truth to Carter, anyhow. I told him that there was but one man in America clever enough to marry my cousin, and now he’ll perceive that that man’s brains so far surpass the brains of all others, that, although capable of marrying her, he took precious good care to marry her to another fellow. Well, if they’re happy they owe it all to me; and if they’re miserable, they have no one but themselves to blame.”

Von Ibn had paused at the foot of the stairs and now looked up, smiling, into his friend’s eyes.

“I am this day so greatly rejoiced,” he said earnestly, “what life is to have for me, and for her, after this! You may not divine it, I think.”

Jack looked into the warm and shining light of his uplifted face.

“I hope you’ll both be just everlastingly happy,” he said sincerely.

“But that is certain,” the lover said, in a tone of deep feeling. “Did you look at her to-day? It is heaven she brings me with her. We were two in the great world, and Lucerne brought us to one. Then love did all the rest.”

“Oh, I say,” Jack remonstrated; “I certainly worked some too!”

Chapter Seventeen

When Rosina opened her door it was Molly who stood there; a gorgeous Molly, put forth by all that was uppermost in the Kärntnerstrasse of that year.

“Why, where ever did you come from?” she cried.