Nancy Part 13

Then feeling rather ashamed of my peevishness--"Never mind me!" I say, with a dusty smile; "I am quite happy! I--I--like looking out."

The day falls, the night comes. On, on, on! There is a bit of looking-gla.s.s opposite me. I can no longer see any thing outside. I have to sit staring at my own plain, grimed, bored face. In a sudden fury, I draw the little red silk curtain across my own image. Thank G.o.d! I can no longer see myself. Sir Roger ceases to try his eyes with the print of the _Westminster_, and closes it.

"I wonder," say I, pouring some eau-de-cologne on my pocket-handkerchief, and trying to cleanse my face therewith, but only succeeding in making it a muddy instead of a dusty smudge--"I wonder whether we shall meet any one we know at Dresden?"

"I should not wonder," replies Sir Roger, cheerfully.

"Is the Hotel de Saxe the place where most English go?" inquire I, anxiously. "Ah, you do not know! I must ask Schmidt."

"Yes, do."

"I hope we shall," say I, straining my eyes to make out the objects in the dark outside. "We have been very unlucky so far, have not we?"

"Are you so anxious to meet people? are you so dull already, Nancy?" he asks, in that voice of peculiar gentleness which I have already learned to know hides inward pain.

"Oh, no, no!" cry I, with quick remorse. "Not at all! I have always _longed_ to travel! At one time Barbara and I were always talking about it, making plans, you know, of where we would go. I enjoy it, of all things, especially the pictures--but do not you think it would be amusing to have some one to talk to at the _tables d'hote_, some one English, to laugh at the people with?"

"Yes," he answers, readily, "of course it would. It is quite natural that you should wish it. I heartily hope we shall. We will go wherever it is most likely."

After long, _long_ hours of dark rushing, Dresden at last. We drive in an open carriage through an unknown town, moonlit, silent, and asleep.

German towns go to bed early. We cross the Elbe, in which a second moon, big and clear as the one in heaven, lies quivering, waving with the water's wave; then through dim, ghostly streets, and at last--at last--we pull up at the door of the Hotel de Saxe, and the sleepy porter comes out disheveled.

"There is no doubt," say I, aloud, when I find myself alone in my bedroom, Sir Roger not having yet come up, and the maid having gone to bed--addressing the remark to the hot water in which I have been bathing my face, stiff with dirt, and haggard with fatigue. "There is no use denying it, I _hate_ being married!"

CHAPTER XI.

We have been in Dresden three whole days, and as yet my aspirations have not met their fulfillment. We have met no one we know. We have borrowed the Visitors' Book from the porter, and diligently searched it. We have expectantly examined the guests at the _tables d'hote_ every day, but with no result. It is too early in the year. The hotel is not half full.

Of its inmates one half are American, a quarter German, and the other quarter English, such as not the most rabidly social mind can wish to forgather with. At the discovery of our ill-success, Sir Roger looks so honestly crestfallen that my heart smites me.

"How eager you are!" I say, laying my hand on his, with a smile. "You are far more anxious about it than I am! I begin to think that you are growing tired of me already! As for me," continue I, nonchalantly, seeing his face brighten at my words, "I think I have changed my mind.

Perhaps it would be rather a _bore_ to meet any acquaintance, and--and--we do very well as we are, do not we?"

"Is that true, Nancy?" he says, eagerly. "I have been bothering my head rather with the notion that I was but poor company for a little young thing like you; that you must be wearying for some of your own friends."

"I never had a friend," reply I, "_never_--that is--except _you_! The boys"--(with a little stealing smile)--"always used to call you my friend--always from the first, from the days I used to take you out walking, and keep wishing that you were my father, and be rather hurt because I never could get you to echo the wish."

"And you are not much disappointed _really_?" he says, with a wistful persistence, as if he but half believed the words my lips made. "If you are, mind you tell me, child--tell me every thing that vexes you--_always_!"

"I will tell you every thing that happens to me, bad and good," reply I, quite gayly, "and all the unlucky things I say--there, that is a large promise, I can tell you!"

I am no longer dusty and grimy; quite spick and span, on the contrary; so freshly and prettily dressed, indeed, that the thought _will_ occur to me that it is a pity there are not more people to see me. However, no doubt some one will turn up by-and-by. The weather is serenely, evenly fine. It seems as if no rain _could_ come from such a high blue sky. It is late afternoon or early evening. Since dinner is over--dinner at the G.o.dless hour of half-past four--I suppose we must call it evening. Sir Roger and I are driving out in an open carriage beyond the town, across the Elbe, up the shady road to Weisserhoisch. The calm of coming night is falling with silky softness upon every thing. The acacias stand on each side of the highway, with the delicate abundance of their airy flowers, faintly yet most definitely sweet on the evening air.

I look up and see the crowded blooms drooping in pensive beauty above my head. The guelder-rose's summer snow-b.a.l.l.s, and the mock-orange with its penetrating odor, whiten the still gardens as we pa.s.s. The billowy meadow-gra.s.s, the tall red sorrel, the untidy, ragged robin, all the yearly-recurring May miracles! What can I say, O my friends, to set them fairly before you?

Under the trees the townsfolk are walking, chatting low and friendly. A soldier has his arm round a fat-faced Madchen's waist, an attention which she takes with the stolidity engendered by long habit. Dear, willing, panting dogs, are laboriously dragging the washer-women's little carts up-hill.

"Vick," say I, gravely, "how would you like to drag a little cart to the wash?"

Vick does not answer verbally, but she stretches her small neck over the carriage-side, and gives a disdainful yet inquisitive _smell_ at her low brethren. No words could express a fuller contempt for a dog that earns his own living.

The driver is taking his horses along very easily, but we do not care to hurry him. I have not felt so happy, so at ease, so gay, since I was wed.

"This _is_ nice," say I, making a frantic s.n.a.t.c.h at a long acacia-droop; "_how_ I wish they were _all_ here!"

Sir Roger laughs a little, and raises his eyebrows slightly.

"Do you mean _with us_--_now_--_in the carriage_? Should not we be rather a tight fit?"

"Rather," say I, laughing too. "We should be puzzled how to pack them all, should not we? We would be like the animals in a Noah's ark."

A little pause.

"General," say I, impulsively, "it has just occurred to me, are not you sometimes deadly, _deadly_ tired of hearing about the boys? I am sure I should be, if I were you. Confess! I will try not to be any angrier with you than I can help; but do not you sometimes wish that Algy and Bobby, and the Brat--not to speak of Tou Tou--were drowned in the Red Sea, or in the horse-pond, at home?"

"At least you gave me fair warning," he says, with a smile. "Do you remember telling me that whoever married you would have to marry all six?"

"I wish you would not remind me of that," say I, reddening.

It was quite the broadest hint any one ever gave. The evening is deepening. We have reached Weisserhoisch. Now our faces are turned homeward again. As we pa.s.s the entrance to the Gardens of the Linnisches Bad, we see the lamps springing into light, and the people gayly yet quietly trooping in, while on the soft evening air comes the swell of merry music.

"Stop! stop!" cry I, springing up, excitedly. "Let us go in. I _love_ a band! It is almost as good as a circus. May we, general? Do you mind?

Would it bore you?"

Five minutes more, and we are sitting at a little round table, each with a tall green gla.s.s of Mai-Trank before us, and a brisk Uhlanenritt in our ears. I look round with a pleasant sense of dissipation. The still, green trees; the cl.u.s.ter of oval lamps, like great bright ostrich-eggs; the countless little tables like our own; the happy social groups; the waiters running madly about with bif-tecks; the great-lidded goblets of amber-colored Bohemian beer; the young Bavarian officers, in light-blue uniforms, at the next table to us--stalwart, fair-haired boys--I should not altogether mind knowing a few of them; and, over all, the arch of suave, dark, evening sky.

"What shall we have for supper?" cry I, vivaciously. "I never can see anybody eating without longing to eat too. _Blutwurst!_ That means black-pudding, I suppose--certainly not _that_--how they do call a spade a spade in German! By-the-by, what are the soldiers having? Can you see?

I think I saw a vision of _prawns_! I saw things sticking out like their legs. I _must_ find out!"

I rise, on pretense of getting a little wooden stool from under an unoccupied table close to the object of my curiosity, and, as I stoop to pick it up, I fraudulently glance over the nearest warrior's shoulder.

My sin finds me out. He turns and catches me in the act, and at the same time a young man--_not_ a warrior, at least not in uniform, but in loose gray British clothes--turns, too, and fixes me with a stony, British stare. I am returning in some confusion, having moreover incidentally discovered that they were _not_ prawns, when to my extreme surprise, I hear my husband addressing the young gentleman in gray.

"Why, Frank, my dear boy, is that you? Who would have thought of seeing _you_ here?"

"As to that," replies the young man, stretching out a ready right hand, "who would have thought of seeing _you_? What on earth has brought _you_ here?"

Sir Roger laughs, but with a sort of shyness.

"Like the man in the parable, I have married a wife," he says; then, putting his hand kindly on the young fellow's shoulder--"Nancy, you have been wishing that we might meet some one we knew, have not you? Well, here is some one. I suppose that I must introduce you formally to each other. Lady Tempest--Mr. Musgrave."

Despite the searching, and, I should have thought, exhaustive examination of my appearance, that my new friend has already indulged in, he thinks good to look at me again, as he bows, and this time with a sort of undisguisable surprise in his great dark eyes.

"I must apologize," he says, taking off his hat. "I had heard that you were going to be married, but I am so behind the time, have been so out of the way of hearing news, that I did not know that it had come off yet."

He says this with a little of that doubtful stiffness, which sometimes owes its birth to shyness, and sometimes to self-consciousness; but he seems in no hurry to return to his friends, the big, blond soldiers. On the contrary, he draws a chair up to our table.