CHAPTER VII

No one that has ever been in Dresden is likely to forget the beauties of the Bruehlsche Terrasse. The cool plash of waters from the Elbe come up invitingly; the green of the neighboring gardens is luscious, and there are nearly always strains of music in the air. Especially pleasing is the picture on a summer's evening.

In one of the concert gardens they give out on the Terrasse, there sat at a small round table, one dreamy midsummer evening, Mrs. Ware and her daughter, Dorothy. In front of them were small cups of coffee, and such appetising rolls as only the Conditors of the continent can make. The garden was in no wise different from a thousand others to be found in German cities; save only that it was especially happy in its location. There was a light, gravelly soil; a multitude of round tables; chairs occupied by a cosmopolitan crew of both sexes; at one end, in the shadow of huge lime trees, was the _Capelle_. Over all was the star-gemmed sky. The air was sweet with the song of the violins, and the cheery laughter of the many family parties came echoing along from time to time in musical accompaniment. There were German students, with the vari-colored caps and occasional sword-wounds on their faces; officers with clanking swords and clothes fitting in lines that suggested stays; English tourists, easily distinguishable by costumes they would not have dared to startle Hyde Park with; Americans with high pitched voices; and a few Russians, excessively polite of manner and cruel of eye.

Miss Dorothy Ware was engaged in munching at a roll that had been steeping in the strong coffee, when she suddenly turned to her mother with an eager exclamation.

"I declare, mamma," she said, "if there isn't Mr. Wooton coming this way. The idea of meeting him again at all. I'm sure I never thought we would; there are so many people away traveling about this time of the year, and there are so many places. He has just seen us, mamma, and he's coming over here. See he's lifting his hat. I'm glad we've got this vacant chair."

Wooton shook hands with them. "The old platitude about the world being a very small place seems to strike true," he said. "Do you know, it's a positive relief to talk to people of my own sort once more." He had sat down beside Dorothy, and placed his stick and gloves on the gravel beside him. He looked decidedly handsome; his small mouth seemed smaller than ever, and his face was paler than when he dictated the fortunes of the _Torch_. He was scrupulously dressed; every detail was so nicely adjusted that he would have successfully run the gauntlet of all the comment of Piccadilly and Broadway.

"I've just come from Berlin," he went on, "it was like an oven there. Nearly everybody was away; some of them in Heringsdorf, some in Switzerland, some down in this district. My compartment in the train was filled with a lot of officers on leave, and they talked army slang until my head swam, and I would have given gold for the sound of an American voice."

"You seem to rush about a good deal," ventured Mrs. Ware. "Didn't we meet you in Schwalbach?"

"Mamma forgets so," put in Dorothy, "she's been meeting so many people, I begin to think she jumbles them all up. But it was in Schwalbach, mamma; you're right. Don't you remember? We were sitting near the Stahlbrunnen, with the Tremonts--we used to set next to them at the Hotel d'Europe--when Mr. Wooton came up and said how-d'ye-do to the Tremonts, and they presented him to us. When Mrs. Tremont was at boarding-school, you know," she went on, turning to Wooton, "she and mamma were great chums. She was a Miss Alexander." She put her hand up to her hat and gave it a mysterious pressure, presumably to rectify some invisible displacement. She turned and looked out into the darkness whence came the sullen swish of the river. "It was delightful in Schwalbach," she said finally.

"It was horribly expensive," commented Mrs. Ware, sipping her coffee.

"But the waters did you good, I hope?" inquired Wooton, suavely solicitous.

"Oh, I guess so. But I don't seem to improve right along, as I should? But I shouldn't complain. I'm a good deal stouter than when I left home. Besides, Dorothy is having a right good time."

"Ah," smiled Wooton, to the girl, "you like it--the life here?"

"Yes; I like it. I don't say that I like it better than other things. But who could help liking that?" She swept her parasol around so that it pointed out toward the river. There was complete darkness there, lit up occasionally by the lights of passing steamers. Fog-whistles sounded occasionally; on the opposite shore there was a dim glow of yellow lights. The water sobbed ceaselessly; there was a mist rising, and the steamer lights began to seem hazier than ever, mere golden circles hanging in the dense darkness. The violins were playing something of Waldteufel's.

It was true; not even the most patriotic of Americans could have helped granting that all this was very pleasant. Dorothy Ware had certainly given up being half-hearted in her enthusiasm for European things; they had met so many people and had rubbed up against so much of cosmopolitanism that unconsciously she had come to see that to apply the narrow Lincolnville view to all the people she saw now was a trifle absurd. She gave herself candidly over to enjoy it all. That was what she had come for. And it must be confessed that, during this process of enjoyment, her memories of her former self became ghosts of ever-increasing vagueness. When she caught herself thinking of Dick Lancaster it was usually to wonder what sort of a girl he had married. She smiled when she thought of the things he had said to her before they parted. It didn't seem to touch her at all now, and she seemed sure that a man slips out of that sort of thing much earlier than the woman.

They met Wooton a good deal after that. He spent a good deal of time among the pictures, and when they visited the _Gruene Gwoeble_ they found him there. He was invariably bright and amusing; he offered to pilot them and smooth things for them generally; Mrs. Ware began to think he was tremendously nice. She remembered that Miss Alexander--now Mrs. Tremont--had always been one of the most aristocratic of girls; she recalled with something of a shudder, her own awe at her school-mate's lengthy dissertation upon blood and family and kindred subjects. So, she argued, if Wooton was in Mrs. Tremont's set in town, there was certainly not the vestige of a doubt concerning his being eminently the correct thing. She had lived in the country so long herself that she admitted she was no longer able to note the difference between good coin and bad; but she had infinite faith in Mrs. Tremont. Dorothy, too, got to feel that he was very charming; he was so handsome, and dressed so well. It was very pleasant to have him in the party; he added distinction. Wooton had admitted that he knew young Lancaster; he divined that she had liked the boy; he was wise enough to tell her only pleasant things about Dick. The only thing Dorothy objected to was that Wooton went about a good deal with the Tremonts. It seemed to her that he was quite devoted to Miss Eugenie.

"I don't like her a bit," she told him rather tactlessly, speaking of Miss Tremont, "she's so supercilious. I never know when she's laughing at me and when she's not listening to me. I suppose she thinks I'm a country chit and don't know anything. But I wouldn't be clever the way she's clever for anything in the world. Why does she have to sneer at innocence and goodness? Nobody ever accused her of either, did they?"

Which, Wooton thought to himself, was not half bad. As a matter of fact he enjoyed being with Eugene Tremont immensely. She was one of those intensely modern girls that the world is so unhappily rich in just now. She would talk about any subject under the sun. She declared that she had always cared more for male society anyway; she despised her own sex and said spiteful things about it. She pretended to be completely cognizant of all the wickedness there was in the world; and she went on the presumption that man was a sort of infernal machine that there was unlimited fun--the fun of danger--in handling. Men liked her at first invariably; there was something refreshing and stimulating in the nonchalance with which she tabooed no subject from her conversation; they said to themselves that this was a person, thank goodness, whom one did not eternally have to consider in the light of a sex, but rather of a sexless cleverness. But, somehow or other, her cleverness wearied presently; she palled as all surfaces must inevitably pall. Wooton, however, turned to her because she was of his own special calibre--all cleverness, and no apparent sharply defined system of conduct. With the Wares he was so perpetually on a grid-iron; he was afraid of saying something that would startle them. They amused him, these people, with their simplicity, their taking virtue for granted and vice for an abhorent mystery! To talk to them it was necessary to keep a constant check on his cynical; while with Eugene Tremont it was sword to sword, a sharp continuous fencing with verbal weapons.

So, when Dorothy Ware made the cutting little speech about Miss Tremont, Wooton told himself that there was something more than mere dislike for the Boston girl at the bottom of it. Considering the matter, he broke into a laugh. Was it possible, h'm. That would really be too rich.

He began to be seen with the Tremonts oftener than ever. He went with them to the opera, he took a seat in their landau. He went to Teplitz with them.

"They're more in the same set, I suppose," said Mrs. Ware, when Dorothy spoke of it. "He was at college with her brother, too; I guess they talk about him a good deal."

Dorothy guessed that she knew better; but she said nothing. Somehow, Dresden began to seem fearfully dreary. She began importuning her mother to pack up and go to Munich; they had some friends there. Dorothy declared Dresden made her homesick; she said it was all so small and pretty, anyway; it wasn't a metropolis, yet it tried to ape the real article. And then there were so many Americans--you couldn't talk English anywhere without having people understand you, which was distinctly annoying, because occasionally one likes to make personal asides about costumes and hats and complexions--and, well, what was the use of staying there any longer anyhow? But Mrs. Ware declared the climate agreed with her. She said she hadn't felt so well for ever so long, she wasn't going to try any other place as this one agreed with her. Did Dorothy want to see her die? No; Dorothy did not. She submitted, and went about looking dismal.

And then, one day, the sunshine came back into here face once more. It was not that the good fairies had remodeled the town of Dresden; it was not that all English-speaking people had suddenly deserted the place; in fact, it was hard to say just what made the difference. It was just possible that Wooton's return from Teplitz had something to do with the good humor in which Dorothy came back to her mother that noon, after a walk down to the Conditorei. She had almost cannoned into him, rounding a corner; they had shaken hands; he had avowed the pleasure he felt at seeing her again. It is just possible that the sight of this young man was a talisman for Miss Ware's temper; it is at least certain that her melancholia was gone.

He called on them, in a day or so, at their apartments in the Hotel Bellevue. Mrs. Ware was very glad to see him; she was more vivacious than she had yet shown herself. She proposed that they take their coffee out in the garden, on the river front, under the trees. They sat watching the boats, and the little boys paddling about barefooted; it was in the cool of sunset, and there were red bars slanting across the western horizon. It was very pleasant. The waiter moved about noiselessly; there were some children making merry in the swing set up at the far end of the garden.

"Is Teplitz very full?" asked Mrs. Ware.

"Yes; more people than usual, I believe. I should think the hot baths would do you good, too, Mrs. Ware?"

"Oh, I guess I'll stay here awhile yet. I'm getting to feel quite spry again. You left the Tremonts there?"

"Yes?"

Dorothy turned away from the river and looked at him a trifle reproachfully. "You must be awfully fond of those people," she said, trying to smile.

Wooton shrugged his shoulders carelessly.

"No," he replied, "I can't say that exactly. But Mrs. Tremont really insisted on my going; she said she had never been there before, and thought that as I knew the ropes of the place, it would be a small thing for me to play pilot for them for a while. What was I to do?" He looked at Dorothy appealingly.

Mrs. Ware was pushing a stray wisp of hair from her cheek.

"In Boston, Dorothy," she said, "I guess Mrs. Tremont is quite a society leader." She said it as if that was an assertion of crushing significance, intended to quiet any possible questionings as to why any young man should think it necessary to comply with the wishes of so great a personage.

"What if she is?" was Dorothy's quick reply; "that doesn't make her any better, does it? I don't see how you can go around with them so much, that's all, Mr. Wooton."

"Oh," he laughed, "I assure you I don't like them so very much myself; but I don't dislike them. And I hate to offend people. They asked me to go!"

They drank their coffee, and watched the twilight settling down. They talked lightly, and laughed a good deal.

"Miss Ware," Wooton asked presently, "you've never been down to Schandau, have you?"

"No. Is it worth while?"

"Immensely! You ought to make the trip."

"Oh, I simply can't begin to get mamma to move from this town. She's perfectly enchanted with it, somehow." She looked at her mother, and patted her on the arm. Mrs. Ware said nothing, only smiled back at her daughter, who went on, "but I'd like it mightily."

"I wish you'd let me show you the place," Wooton persevered. He looked over at Mrs. Ware in a hesitating way. "Perhaps--if Mrs. Ware would rather not stir from the hotel--there would be no objection to Miss Ware making the trip with me? The place is really pretty; the royal residence there is one of the sights. It's only half an hour or so by the steamer. You'd hardly notice our absence; I think she'd enjoy it." He wondered a little whether they would look at him in frigid horror, or take it as a proposition quite in accord with the conventions they were accustomed to. He knew perfectly well that most of the people he knew in the East would have considered him insane if he had ventured such a proposal; but, in regard to these people, and this girl in particular, he remembered that a friend of his had once used a phrase that had struck him at the time as rather good, and that was, perhaps, applicable. The man had declared, half in a spirit of banter, half in chivalrous defense, that the girl of the West paraphrased the old motto to read: "_Sans peur, sans reproche et sans chaperon_."

To his relief, Mrs. Ware's answer was merely a smile at her daughter, and a "You'll have to see what Dorothy thinks about it, I guess. It's her picnic. If she wares to go--." She left the sentence unfinished, as if to convey the impression that under the circumstances mentioned her own preference would be allowed lapse.

"I think," said Dorothy, with a little clasping together of her hands, "that it would be simply delightful! You wouldn't worry, would you, mamma? There are always so many waiters around and--dear, dear, I talk just as if we were going this very minute!" She looked gratefully at Wooton. Somehow or other, he felt himself blushing. He caught himself regretting the fact that he was no longer as genuine as this girl was. "I think it's simply perfect of you to ask me," she went on, "I'm sure I'll enjoy it ever so much."

"Then," he said, airily, "we'll consider that settled. It's very good of you to say you'll go, I'm sure. Suppose we say Wednesday?"