LE PREMIER PAS—QUI COÛTE
“Gird up your loins!” cried the Dominé, striking his only hand into the pulpit-cushion. The peasant congregation, with bodies huddled awry in wondrously diversified angles of drowsiness, nodded lower under the accustomed storm. One red-faced yawner, opening misty eyes, stared vaguely through the heat-cloud, and with some far perception of the preacher’s meaning, hitched up his trousers before sinking back into his seat.
“For the city of Mansoul is taken, is taken while the garrison slept!” In the Manor-house pew, under the glitter of armorial gaudery against sombre oak, sat their Baronial Highnesses, all except Gerard, who, coming down too late, had found himself compelled to elect between breakfast and church. Their Highnesses preserved an exemplary attitude of erect attention. It is even quite possible that the Freule Louisa was listening.
To Otto the little barn-like building, in its white unchangedness, had brought that sudden quietude of soul which comes upon us when the rush of life has briefly cast us back into a long-remembered harbor. It was good to be here. It was good to find nothing altered, neither the gaunt externals of the service, nor the inharmonious music, nor even the long discourse. It was good to breathe the atmosphere of dutiful curiosity which played about the heir until at last it also sank, half-sated, beneath the all-oppressive heat. The crimson farm-wives sat perspiring under their great Sunday towers of gold-hung embroidery. There was not a cool spot in the building, except Ursula’s muslin frock.
As his eye rested there, Otto felt that one change at leastmade itself manifest. Where a little lonely child had formerly faced the Manor-house pew, a maiden now sat, calm and self-possessed, her gaze neither seeking nor avoiding his own. And suddenly he realized that he was growing old.
He realized it all the more when, presently, he found himself walking back by the side of the parson’s daughter, through wide stretches of sun-soaked corn. The older people had passed ahead, unconsciously hurried forward by the sweeping stride of the Dominé. In that opening search for words which always disturbs the meeting of long-acquainted strangers, Otto’s soul swelled anew with wrath against the brother whose indiscretion had doubly tied either tongue.
“Yes, everything is exactly as it used to be,” he replied to Ursula’s perfunctory question, when it ultimately blossomed forth from the marsh of their embarrassment. “That struck me more especially this morning in church. The people are pretty much the same, of course; at least, they look it. And so is the whole appearance of the place, and the odor of the fustian and the service.”
“And the sermon?” she laughed, lamely, thinking also of Gerard’s banter, and annoyed by her annoyance.
But his face clouded over. She noticed this, and it put her still less at her ease. She hurriedly added something about her father’s “coincidence,” thereby causing her companion to write her down insincere.
“Nevertheless,” she continued, desperately, feeling all the while that she might just as well, and far better, keep silence, “twelve years seems to me a most tremendous time.”
“That is because you are young.”
“Young or not, people change in twelve years.”
Gerard would have availed himself of this palpable opportunity to suggest something pretty; clumsy Otto merely made answer, “My grandfather is dead.” The most tragic words can somehow sound funny, and Ursula, in her nervousness, very nearly laughed.
“I miss him,” continued Otto, quite unconsciously. “He wasn’t—childish, you know, when I went away. How the poor old man would have enjoyed some talks about my tiger-hunts. He was such a splendid shot.”
“‘GIRD UP YOUR LOINS!’ CRIED THE DOMINÉ”
“‘GIRD UP YOUR LOINS!’ CRIED THE DOMINÉ”
“Have you really shot tigers?”
“Yes.” A man always feels foolish under such a question as that.
“Many?”
“That depends on your ideas of proportion. Tigers must not be confounded with rabbits. I have shot enough to be able to beg your father’s acceptance of a skin when my boxes come.”
They walked on for some minutes in silence, awkward silence, she flicking at the corn ears with her white parasol. Then she said, “I feel sorry for the tiger.”
He answered, dryly, “The parents of his final supper did not take that view.”
“But,” he added, “I dare say you don’t quite understand about wild beasts, or heathen countries. I shouldn’t wonder, Juffrouw Rovers, if you had never even crossed the frontier.”
“No, I haven’t,” she answered, shortly, much put out by his innocent patronage, “and I am glad I haven’t. I should hate to come back as people do, finding all things small at home. And, above all, I should hate to go to India—a horrible place with spiders as big as my sunshade, and a python curled up, perhaps, under one’s pillow of nights. You needn’t laugh; I may have forgotten the dreadful creatures’ names, but I know they’re there, for my Uncle Mopius told me.”
“Ah, yes, your Uncle Mopius. He was out in Java, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he was notary there, and he tells the most awful stories.”
“Then don’t believe them. So you would never go to India?”
“Never.”
“Well, it’s a good thing there’s no necessity. I had to, you see. People even face pythons, when theymust. And there’s always the fun of killing them.”
She shuddered. “The fun of killing,” she repeated,“I cannot understand at all. We are speaking different languages, Mynheer van Helmont. I hate the idea of killing anything. And do you know what I hate still more? It is what you call ‘a splendid shot.’ Gerard is a splendid shot, like his grandfather; the finest, they say, in the province. Yes, I can’t help it; I’ve often told him.” She plunged headlong. “I dare say you’re a splendid shot. But it’s just my hobby. To go creep, creeping through God’s creation, a gun in one’s hand, seeking some innocent life you may slay for the pleasure of slaying! Or, still worse, to sit in a chair and have the poor fluttering wretches driven in quantities on to one’s barrels! It’s the one thing that spoils the country for me, and only in the autumn I long to get away from Horstwyk. There’s no shooting in towns.”
“I was thinking of real sport,” he answered, with provoking meekness, “but I dare say you are right.”
“Oh, I know what real sport means!” she cried, and her eyes flashed. “Hallooing after some little palpitating victim with beagles or harriers or hounds! You may think me very stupid—I dare say you do—but I wouldn’t shake hands, if I could help it, with a man whom I knew to have voluntarily ‘hunted’ anything. As for women, I can’t believe they do it.” She broke off, in that nervous “unstrungness” which only comes to the gentler sex, hardly knowing, after her sudden burst of eloquence, whether to laugh or to cry.
“You are quite right, quite right,” he said again; but in his grave regard she only read approval of her callow softness. They had reached a little well-known wicket, and he stopped. The path went twisting away at this spot from the yellow fields into the deep recesses of the park.
“I think we separate here?” he said, and to her amazement she caught a touch of regret in his tone.
“Yes, as a rule. But papa has gone on—in honor of you, I suppose.”
“Then you cannot do better than follow.” He held open the gate for her to pass. “I think you must forgive me,” he said, with downcast eyes. “It was only once. In Ireland. And we didn’t kill the fox.”
“Because you couldn’t,” she answered, fiercely. “Or do people keep foxes, like stags, to uncart?”
Her hand, in its long “Suède” glove, closed almost viciouslyon the filmy folds of her frock. Not another word was exchanged between them as they threaded the shady mazes of suddenly delicious green, but she felt that he was watching her all the time out of the corners of his eyes. A good man enjoys the arousing a womanly woman’s righteous indignation. Her heart beat till he saw it. He liked that.
“Ah, Dominé, there was sense in your sermon!” cried the Freule van Borck, haranguing everybody in a group on the lawn. “What I enjoy in your preaching is the protest against latter-day flabbiness”—the Freule van Borck had read and misunderstood Carlyle. “Where are the heroes of old?” she cried, pointing her “church-book” at the imperturbable Gerard, who had come strolling out, cool in the coolest of flannels, to greet the clergyman. “Where, as you asked them, are Gideon and Moses and Joshua the son of Nun, that was never afraid?”
“We give it up,” said Gerard, gravely. “Did the congregation know?”
“Be silent, Gerard. Your conduct is bad enough already. Instead of remaining to scoff, you should have gone to pray.” It was the Baron who spoke, looking up from his great St. Bernard.
“I bow to your command, sir, especially on a Sunday. But Aunt Louisa should not propound conundrums when the answers appear to have got beyond her control.”
“I was not speaking to you; I was speaking seriously,” replied the Freule, with lofty scorn. “And I thoroughly agree with the Dominé, that the age of troubadours is dead.”
The Dominé writhed. “Yes, yes,” he said—“undoubtedly. Though I should hardly, myself, have employed the names you mentioned as examples of fearlessness”—He stopped in despair. The Freule was grabbing, with her handkerchief in front of her, at a wasp which serenely buzzed behind. Mevrouw van Helmont, on a garden seat, against a great flare of MacMahons that looked, among their gold-rimmed leaves, like a mayonnaise of lobster—Mevrouw van Helmont seemed entirely engrossed by the interest of sticking her parasol into a fat bundle before her which wriggled and kicked. The Dominé sighed. Thiswas “the Family.” These were the temporal lords of his spiritual domain. He turned, wistfully, to watch his daughter coming across the sward, by Otto’s side, between gay patches of color.
“You two have been renewing your acquaintance,” he said. “Or was there none left to renew?”
“Indeed, we are already old friends,” replied Otto, “for Juffrouw Rovers has been scolding me vigorously; and ladies, I believe, never scold mere acquaintances?” Ursula bit her under-lip. “I understand that Juffrouw Rovers objects to the killing of animals—all animals?” His heavy mustache hung unmoved as he looked across.
“Oh, that is a fad of Ursula’s,” broke in Gerard. “You should teach her her Bible better, Dominé. She admits that Nimrod may have been a mighty hunter, but never ‘before the Lord.’”
“Gerard,” said the Dominé, with a grave flash of his eyes on the prodigal, “the Bible is a holy book. Some day, perhaps, you will learn, with regard to holiness, that ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’” The rebuke was almost a fierce one, from gentle lips. In the painful silence Gerard, flushing, took it like a man.
The Baron’s mild voice intervened. “The daughter of a hero,” said the Baron, smiling and bowing, “can afford to appear soft-hearted. Ursula preaches peace, and her father preaches war. ButI, were I Otto, should be most afraid of Ursula.”
“Mynheer van Helmont,” answered that young lady, goaded almost beyond endurance, “I am going next Wednesday to my Uncle Mopius, to stay with him for a week or two.”
“Coming to Drum!” cried Gerard, whose regiment was quartered in the small provincial town. He checked himself. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “You were about to speak?”
“Oh, it’s nothing!” cried the Baroness across from her seat. “Your father was only going to observe something about eclipses of the sun. You know you were, Theodore. It has done duty a dozen times before.”
“My dear, do I deny it?” replied the Baron, sadly.“We have lived too long together. You know all my little jokes, Cécile. You are tired of my compliments. And yet, after more than forty years of marriage, I still address ninety per cent. to yourself.”
“But none of the new ones,” replied the Baroness, pouting before the whole circle like a girl.
“The new ones are an old man’s compliments, and, therefore, insincere.” He went across to her, followed by the dog, and the gray couple sat laughing and flirting, like any pair of lovers.
“Ah, Dominé, you needn’t look sour,” said the Freule, her own angular face like skim-milk. “Surely, by this time, you no longer expectsobrietyat the Manor-house of Horst.”
“I was only thinking,” replied the Dominé, softly, and his eyes seemed to pierce beyond the couple on the seat.
The Freule gave a smart snap—meant not unkindly—to her “church-book” clasp.
“But your wife is in heaven,” she rejoined, “and much better off, unless sermons mean nothing, than anybody here below.”
The Dominé started, and an old scar came out across his cheeks, as if a whip-lash had struck him. “Yes, yes,” he said, hurriedly. “Thank God. Ursula, I think it is time we were going.”
But the spinster laid a detaining hand upon her pastor’s arm. “Surely you must admit,” she persisted, “that you Christians are strangely illogical. What, to a Christian, is the King of Terrors? We should speak, not of Mors, but of Morphia!”
This sentence was taken from the Freule’s favorite periodical, theVictory, in which, however, the concluding word had been printed “Morpheus.”
“Yes, yes, exactly,” replied the Dominé, pulling away. “You remember what Thucydides said, Freule Louisa? I mean, Thucydides says it’s no use discussing a subject unless men are agreed on the meaning of the terms they employ. Ursula, we must really be going. Your aunt has such a dislike to irregular hours.”
“Juffrouw Mopius?” exclaimed Otto.“I didn’t see her in church. I hope she is well?”
Gerard burst out laughing. “Have you been away so long,” he said, “that you have forgotten Miss Mopius’s Sunday headache?”
The Dominé, who could fightmen, looked as if he would have liked to answer something about Gerard’s Sunday ailments, but he refrained, evidently feeling that he had already said enough.
The two young men stood watching father and daughter as they swung away into the woodland shadows. “It will be rather a bore,” yawned Gerard. “Ursula’s coming to Drum. I shall have to show the poor creature all over the place. I don’t think she ever spent a night outside Horstwyk before.” He lounged away to the Baroness. “Mother, Otto is very much smitten with Ursula, in spite of her lamentable lack of style. I suppose he doesn’t notice that, after India. Has he been making any terrible confessions yet about other brown damsels out there?”
The Freule van Borck shot a keen glance at her elder nephew’s solemn face. “Yes, Otto,” she said, “it can’t be helped. Gerard’s humor is part of your home-coming.”
Meanwhile the Dominé went scudding through the corn as if the very wind of panic were after him. Presently his daughter ventured to hint that the day was rather warm.
“Ursula”—the Dominé’s cowardice had put him out of temper with all around him—“Ursula, I heard you remark to the Jonkers that you were exceedingly fond of your uncle Mopius. Now, Ursula, surely that was untrue.”
“It was irony, father,” the girl made answer rather testily, screening her tormented face.
“Irony? I do not understand irony. There is no room for irony in the Christian warfare. It is a sort of unchivalric guerilla. I’m afraid you are not always quite honest and straightforward. Always, in everything, be quite honest and straightforward, my dear.”
When Ursula was safe in her own room she sat down to cry. She had never, from her earliest recollections upward, enjoyed the luxury of rational grief; an altogether causeless outpouring, such as this, could, therefore, but increase her irritation againstherself. What did it matter, after all, if she made a good impression on people? She was self-conscious. With angry energy she dabbed her blazing cheeks and went down to luncheon.
“Ursula, my dear child, your face is all blotchy,” said Miss Mopius. “I make no doubt you are going to have the measles; they are very prevalent in the village. Did you sneeze during service? Roderigue, did you notice if Ursula sneezed during service? No, you are no good in church; you only think of your sermon. Well, Ursula, I must give you some Sympathetico Lob. You may be thankful you have an aunt whose own health is so bad that she doesn’t care at all about infection.”
The Dominé looked up uneasily. His coffee tasted bitter, like remorse.
“Or is it hay-fever,” said Miss Mopius, “that begins with sneezing? I must get my little Manual and see.”
UNCONSCIOUS RIVALS
Three days later Ursula started for Drum.
Looking down the straight vista of her shaded past, she could not have discovered, within measurable distance, an event to compare with this departure from home. Hitherto her world had been Horstwyk, and mundane greatness had been the Horst.
In those three days of delicious preparation she had nevertheless seen a good deal of the new arrival. His affection for the Dominé was palpable to all men, and he seemed to slip away, almost gladly, down the long road from the Manor to the Parsonage. All Monday evening they had sat over their teacups in the green veranda, and the Dominé, roused thereto by the guest’s brief descriptions of daring, had leisurely recalled his own stories of Algerine lion-hunts. Ursula, looking up from her work at Otto’s earnest attention, wondered if twelve years of absence could really suffice to efface the ofttold tale.
On Tuesday a great dinner at “The House” had fêted the return of the first-born. The Dominé had made a speech, and enjoyed himself notwithstanding. But Ursula considered the entertainment had been rather a failure, for amid the due honoring of dowagers and heiresses, nobody but the Baron had found time to say a civil word to herself. Helena van Trossart, the Helmonts’ wealthy cousin, had looked lovely, though bored, in the seat next to Otto, assigned her by the Baroness; she had brightened up visibly when the younger son joined her for an endless flirtation in the drawing room.
Ursula now stood waiting and mildly reviewing last night’s disappointments, on this, to her, eventful Wednesday morning.Gerard, who was returning to his regiment, had promised to call for her on his way to the station.
“Ten minutes too soon!” she said in surprise, running to the door as the sound of wheels became audible. But it was Otto who called to her from the box.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she cried, half-way down the garden path. “But Gerard—I thought you would know?”
“I know nothing of Gerard’s arrangements,” answered Otto with cold annoyance. “Never mind; I have brought your father’s tiger-skin. Is there any one here could hold the horse?”
“Why, of course,” she said, springing forward.
“You? I fancied you would be afraid of horses.” Otto began tugging at a brown-paper parcel wedged under the seat. As the carriage swayed forward the animal, grown restless, plunged.
“Naturally,” replied Ursula, one firm hand at its mouth. She flushed. “Hatred of cruelty stands, with an average man, for cowardice.”
“Don’t. You hurt one,” cried Otto, turning, with altered voice. She calmed down immediately.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “Hector knows me longer and better than you. Your father often lets me drive him.”
“This is it,” replied Otto, tearing back a strip of covering. A tawny mass of fur, broken suddenly loose, poured down into the dusty road.
“Oh, what a beauty!” exclaimed Josine, who had ventured out in a wrap beneath the laughing sky.
And, “Oh, what a beauty!” echoed Ursula.
“These are for you,” he continued, in the eager delight of giving, as he bundled out two gorgeous Indian shawls. “I thought you would like to wear them to church on Sundays”—he stopped, before the ripple on Ursula’s face. “You like them, don’t you?” he asked, dismayed. “You like them, don’t you, Miss Mopius?”
“They are exquisite,” replied the latter lady, affectedly, with a scowl at her niece. “My dear Mynheer van Helmont, you have inherited all your father’s charming taste.” Ursula murmured something about“a beautiful drapery.”
“All modern girls are alike,” thought Otto, “everything for ornament.” He was almost relieved to see Gerard’s trap come rattling up.
“You here!” cried the younger brother, looking down from his height. “Oh, I see! What a hurry you’re in to bestow your gifts!”
“I came here to conduct Juffrouw Rovers to the station,” answered Otto. “The message I sent appears not to have reached her.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Ursula stood distressful, by the little green gate, in her dust-ulster, the rainbow cloth over one arm. At her feet lay the white-fanged brute with gleaming eyes and distended maw. Otto climbed slowly back into his old-fashioned wagonette. By his side the smart dog-cart jingled and creaked. “Hurry, Ursula!” cried its driver. “We haven’t any time to spare!” Otto whipped up Hector almost savagely. “It’s of no account,” he said, “of no account at all.”
“Gerard, I’m afraid we shall miss the train,” said Ursula, as the trees went flying past them.
“Possibly,” answered Gerard. “You don’t mind my cigarette?”
“Gerard, my uncle will never forgive me.”
“Oh yes, he will. Dozens of damned people have said they would never forgive me, but they always did. You would have missed the train with Hector, anyway.”
“But if I had started with your brother, you would have taken me on.”
“No, indeed,” replied Gerard, with deep conviction. “Once with Otto, always with Otto.” He looked down into her face through half-closed eyelids. “Once with Otto, always with Otto,” he repeated, “and so you would have missed your train.”
She laughed. “Well, I’d much rather go with you,” she answered, gayly. He made her a mock little bow of acknowledgment.
“For, you see, you take me all the way to Drum.”
“Thank you.If.Gently, Beauty, gently; it’s only a bit of paper in the middle of the road. I like you for not being nervous, Ursula. My mother wouldn’t sit behind a horse that shied.”
“‘OH, I’M SO SORRY,’ SHE CRIED”
“‘OH, I’M SO SORRY,’ SHE CRIED”
“I want to catch my train,” responded Ursula.
“Don’t be so peevish. Is this all the reward I get for allowing your box to scratch the paint off my dog-cart?”
“Oh, Gerard, will it do that?”
“Of course it will. But make yourself easy. I’m going to have the cart repainted, anyway. The green spikes were well enough two years ago, but I’ve seen another shade I like better.”
“Gerard, you are horribly extravagant.”
“So my father says each time he gets himself some new plaything. By George! I believe we really are too late.”
With a shout to the groom he leaped from his seat, and was lost in the interior of the station; as Ursula hurriedly followed, a whistle of departure pierced straight through her heart.
“Quick, you stupid,” she heard Gerard’s voice saying to somebody. The train had stopped again. She was bustled in. They were off!
“Now that never happened to me before,” said Gerard. “The man is an ass. But, in fact, it is all your fault.”
Ursula sat staring at her hero in unmixed awe. Her infrequent railway journeys had always been occasions of flurry and alarm. Never had she realized that any son of man could influence a station-master.
“Yes,” she answered, meekly.
“Of course it is. I should just have jumped in. But they had to stop the train for you. And now they will make us pay a monstrous fine for travelling without a ticket.”
“Is that also my fault?” asked Ursula, more meekly still.
“No, it was Beauty’s. I’ve a great mind to deduct the money from her oats. Only that would make her do it over again.” He laughed once more, a jolly, self-satisfied laugh.
“But, oh, whatshouldwe have done,” said Ursula, presently, “if the station-master hadn’t listened to you?”
“Stopped the train myself, of course; and Santa Claus would have forgotten to send that man cigars.”
“Gerard, you wouldn’t have dared!”
Her innocent amazement drove him on.
“You have a poor idea of my desire to oblige you,” he made answer. “It would have cost me a pair of gloves, I suppose, and a lot of depositions at the end, and a fine. It would have been a great bore; I do not pretend to deny that.”
She relapsed into silence, reflecting. She thought Gerard was youthfully overbearing. But she also saw he was in earnest. To her it had always seemed in the village of Horstwyk that the powers in authority—the Beadle, the Squire—were made to be implicitly obeyed. Submission, in the Dominé’s system, stood forth as an article of faith. In the great world outside she felt it must be the same, only still more resistlessly. Order and Law, however erroneous, were always ex officio infallible.
But for great people, evidently, the world was otherwise. The Irrevocable possessed no barriers which rank and insolence could not laughingly push aside. The railways in their courses obeyed these rulers of men. For the first time in her recollection she envied—perhaps with last night’s discomfiture rising uppermost—she envied “the Great.”
She sat furtively watching her companion behind his newspaper. He was handsome, with his light mustache and strong complexion, well-dressed, well-groomed, completely at his ease. She felt that the world belonged to him. She felt exceeding small.
At the little town of Drum she was able to continue her studies. Porters naturally selected Gerard to hover round; every one seemed anxious to please him. Whatever he desired was immediately “Yes, my lord” ed. He gave double the usual number and double the necessary quantity of tips. He insisted upon personally seeing Ursula to her uncle’s door and overpaying the cabman. “I have a reputation,” he said, merrily, “to keep up in Drum.” He turned back as she stood on the door-step.
“And your uncle has a reputation, too,” he called, waving his hat.
Ursula knew her uncle by more than reputation, and her courage began to ooze after Gerard’s retreating figure. Immediately she pressed a resolute finger on the leak; she was come to enjoy herself, and Gerard had promised to help her.
Villa Blanda, the residence of Mynheer Jacóbus Mopius, stood in a good-sized garden, some way back from the street. The garden was very brilliant, very brilliant indeed. The first impression it used to make was that of the hideous conglomeration of colors which children saw in former days through so-called kaleidoscopes; after a time you perceived that its complex disharmony was principally produced by a mal-assortment of flowers. These received some assistance, it must be confessed, from a glittering “Magenta” ball, two terra-cotta statuettes of fat children with baskets, and other pleasing trifles of similar origin.
The whole house had manifestly cost a great deal of money; it was its single duty to proclaim this fact, and it did its duty well. A hundred flourishes of superfluous ornament showed upon the face of it that the terra-cotta man and the gilder, and the encaustic-tile people, and the modeller of stucco monstrosities, had all sent in lengthy bills. The bills had been paid.
Yes, Mynheer Jacóbus Mopius owed no man anything—not even courtesy, not even disregard. He button-holed you to inform you how much more important a personage he was than yourself. If you tried to escape him you were lost.
Inside, the house was, as outside, a record of wealth misspent. Money, they say, buys everything; it is certainly wonderful to consider what hideous things money will buy.
Ursula was shown into the drawing-room, where her aunt came forward to greet her. “How are you, my dear?” said Mevrouw Mopius, in a tone whose indifference precluded reply. Mevrouw Mopius was a washed-out-looking lady in a too-stiff black silk. She immediately returned to her low chair and her Berlin woolwork frame. For Mevrouw Mopius still worked on canvas. She preferred figures—Biblical scenes. She was now busy on a meeting between Jacob and Laban, in which none of the gorgeously robed figures were like anything that has ever been seen on earth.
Ursula seated herself, unasked, on a purple plush settee. The room was large and copiously gilded. From the farther end of it a girl approached—a pale girl in a plain dark gown.
“Oh, I forgot,” said Mevrouw Mopius, pausing with uplifted needle. “My step-niece Harriet. Harriet, this is Ursula Rovers.”
“Will you come and take off your things?” said the dark girl. “Shall I show you your room?” Ursula rose, with a spring of relief, and began hastily to explain about the loss of her luggage as she moved towards the door. Just before she reached it her aunt spoke again.
“Harriet has come to live with us, you remember, since her father died.” Mevrouw Mopius always conversed in after-thoughts, when she troubled herself to converse at all.
“You won’t be able to change your clothes,” said the pale girl, as the two went up-stairs together.
“No. Does it matter?”
“Matter? No. What does matter? Certainly not Uncle Mopius.”
“What a fine house this is, is it not? I was never on the second floor before, though I’ve sometimes been to lunch.”
“Oh yes, it is charming, charming in every way,” said the pale girl, with a sneer. “This is your room, the second best guest-chamber. I’m afraid I can’t lend you much for the night. I’ve three night-gowns; one’s in the wash, and one’s torn. Uncle Mopius gave me them.”
She went and stood at the window while Ursula hurriedly washed her hands. “Are you ready?” she asked, presently. “Then come down-stairs again. Better tell Uncle Mopius you admired your room. The washing-things, for instance, they are English. Cost thirty-six florins. Come along.” Ursula shuddered under the continuous sneer of the girl’s impassive tones.
As soon as they opened the drawing-room door Mevrouw Mopius’s voice was heard exclaiming, “Harriet, get me my Bible immediately, Harriet.” She sat up quite awake and alert, her needle unused beside her. “I’ve been waiting,” she continued. “What a long time you’ve been. Ursula, I hope you’re not vain. It’s a bad thing in a pastor’s daughter to be vain of her appearance.” After a minute’s silence she became aware of the proximity of her other niece, who stood waiting beside her, Bible in hand. “And in all other girls,” she added,“for the matter of that;” but Harriet, having missed the discourse, lost the application as well.
“It was on the table in the next room,” said Harriet.
“I know. Did you expectmeto get it?”
The lady took the sacred volume, which immediately fell open at the story of Jacob and Rebecca, much bethumbed. In the midst of her search she paused, to cast a sharp look at Ursula. “And not much to be vain of, anyway,” she said. She could not possibly have authenticated this remark, but she chose to consider it “judicious.”
“Here is the place,” she continued. “You see, it says Leah had ‘tender eyes.’ Now, what, I wonder, is the color of tender eyes?”
“I always thought it meant ‘watery,’” hazarded Ursula.
“Do you really think so?” Mevrouw Mopius reflected, sitting critically back from her screen, and surveying her cherry-colored Orientals. “Really,watery. Ursula, I wonder if that view is correct?”
“Like a perpetual cold in her head,” volunteered the dark girl, listlessly. “I know such people.”
Mevrouw Mopius sniffed unconsciously.
“In that case I should have to make them red,” she said. “I had just decided on dove color.”
“You couldn’t make red show against the cheeks,” said Harriet. “Hadn’t you better send round and ask Mevrouw Pock’s opinion?”
Mevrouw Mopius smiled immediate approval.
“A very sensible suggestion,” she said. Mevrouw Pock was the wife of her favorite parson. “You have plenty of sense if only you were always good-tempered. Get me my escritoire from the table over there. No; writing letters fatigues me”—she couldn’t spell—“you must run across after dinner, and get Mevrouw to consult her husband as to what it says in the Greek.”
“But I shall have to change my dress again,” protested Harriet.
“Well, and what of that? So much the better. There’s few things a girl likes more than changing dresses. I’m sure you ought to be thankful you’ve dresses to change.”
Without further reply the girl dropped away into her corner and resumed her interrupted reading. Ursula sat with her hands in her lap. Mevrouw began sorting wools, but presently remembered the guest.
“Harriet,” she called, “why don’t you come and amuse Ursula? You waste all your time over novels. I can’t imagine what you find in them. What’s this you’re reading now? A novel, of course?”
The girl came forward, lazily. “Yes, aunt,” she said.
“What is it? What’s it about?”
“It’s a historical romance calledNuma Pompilius, translated from the German. Everybody’s reading it just now.”
“I can’t understand what you find in them. And they’re all alike. It always ends in Pompilius marrying Numa.”
Before Ursula had stopped laughing behind Mevrouw Mopius’s back her uncle came in. Harriet did not laugh.
Mynheer Mopius, though a very secondary personage in this story of the Van Helmonts, would be mortally offended did we not give him a chapter to himself.
HARRIET’S ROMANCE
“Amusing yourselves?” said Mynheer Mopius. “That’s right. That’s what you’ve come for, Ursula. I’m glad your aunt’s been amusing you.”
Translated, this meant that Mynheer Mopius considered his wife had been taking a liberty. For, although Mynheer Mopius despised wit or humor of any kind, and but rarely condescended to utter what he considered a joke, yet he somehow believed his conversation to be a source of constant refreshment to his family. And he felt annoyed at their making merry without him.
“I’m sure, if Ursula’s laughing it’s no fault of mine,” said Mevrouw. “I was merely telling Harriet—where’s Harriet?”
“Gone up to dress. You had better follow her example, Ursula. Dinner at 6.30. We dress for it here, at least the women do. So do I when there’s company. It’s a custom I brought with me from Batavia. Must show the natives here what’s what.”
“I’ve nothing but this,” said Ursula, in some confusion. “My box hasn’t come, and I haven’t got much in the way of evening frocks anyhow.”
“I’ll give you one. I gave Harriet hers. That girl’s fallen nose foremost into fat[B]if ever girl did. Hasn’t she, wife?”
“She doesn’t know it,” replied Mevrouw Mopius, picking at Laban’s goggle eyes.
“Then she’s a greater fool than I take her for. She’d have been a nurse-maid, sure as fate. And now she’s as good as a rich man’s daughter.”
“And I’m a mother to her that was motherless,” grunted Mevrouw complacently, “and because she’s poor and no real relation I allow her to call me ‘aunt.’”
“Besides which, if she behaves herself, who knows what may happen to her!” Mynheer Mopius jingled the loose cash in his trousers-pockets and looked askance at Ursula.
Ursula looked back at him, peacefully unconscious.
“I might leave her my money,” said Mynheer Mopius.
“Oh, that would be splendid!” cried Ursula.
Her uncle looked at her again. “Sly little thing!” he thought, but he said nothing. Only Jacóbus Mopius could have called Ursula little. His greatness caused him to see all things small.
He was a stunted, pompous man, with a big head and yellow cheeks. He had made his money in the Dutch Indies, as a notary.
Harriet came back in a fawn-colored frock with a pink rosebud pattern, made of some kind of nun’s veiling, high in the throat. Mynheer Mopius gazed at it in admiration.
“Looks well, doesn’t she?” he said to Ursula in a loudsotto voce. “You shall have just such another; but Harriet’s a devilish good-looking girl.”
The subject of this comment did not appear to hear it, but Ursula fancied she? saw her aunt wince. Harriet was helping the faded woman to put things together. In the hall a gong was sounding a hideous bellow at the door.
“Late as usual,” remonstrated Mynheer Mopius. “Hurry up, my dear. Gracious goodness, how awkward you are getting!” The frail little creature in the stiff silk caught hold of Harriet’s arm with one skinny hand, and Ursula, as she watched her movements, understood something of her unwillingness to exert herself.
For his own use Mynheer Mopius never bought anything cheap, and all the appointments of the dinner-table were excellent. Of course he communicated prices to the new arrival, and Ursula, soon discovering that she was expected constantly to admire, entered into the spirit of the thing, and asked the cost of the silver candlesticks. Her uncle ascended into regions ofunusual good humor, and ordered up a bottle of sweet Spanish wine for her, “such as you ignorant females enjoy,” he said. He grew very angry with his wife for refusing to have any. “But the doctor forbids it.” “Oh, damn your doctor. Never have a doctor till you’re dead; that’s my advice. Then he can’t do any harm.”
Mevrouw Mopius meekly swallowed a little of the liquid, her long nose drooping over the glass. Her husband sat tyrannically watching her. “Drink it all,” he said; “you want a tonic. You shall have some every day.” And she drank it, although she implicitly believed in the doctor, and the doctor, a teetotaler, had told her it meant death.
“Doctors are all scoundrels,” said Mynheer Mopius. “Hey, Harriet?”
The girl’s dead father had been a medical man.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “Only lawyers are honest. That’s why doctors die poor.”
Mynheer Mopius laughed heartily. “I like your cheek,” he said. “Make hay while your sun shines, Harriet. A man can’t stand it from an old woman.”
Mevrouw Mopius sniffed.
“We must have some fun, hey, wife, while Ursula’s here? We might give a dinner-party, and show the grandees what’s what.”
“But the grandees don’t come to our dinner-parties,” objected Mevrouw Mopius.
“No, they don’t, hang ’em. But they’d hear from the people who do. Your Dominé Pock knows ’em all. We’ll have Pock to dinner. He’s always asking for money for something or other, but he’s a good judge of victuals. Trust a parson to be that, and a poor judge of wine. At least the Evangelicals. And he’ll tell every one I’ve the best venison in the city. I get my venison from Brussels, Ursula, and it’s better, they’ll all say, than the Baron van Trossart’s, who shoots his himself.”
“The Baron van Trossart!” said Ursula.“That is the guardian of the Van Helmonts’ cousin, Helen, the heiress. I am to go to a party there. Gerard promised me an invitation.”
Mynheer Mopius’s face grew very dark.
“Look here,” he said, “are you staying with me or in barracks? If with me, you must allow me to amuse you. I won’t hear anything about your Barons Gerard. And I won’t have nothing to say to them.”
“Gerard isn’t the Baron,” replied Ursula, hotly. “That’s his father. Not that it matters.”
“No, I shouldn’t think it did. I won’t hear anything about them. What did you say the father’s name was?”
“Theodore, Baron van Helmont van Horstwyk en de Horst,” rolled forth Ursula, proudly.
“Yes, poor Roderick likes that sort of thing. Is ‘the Horst’ the name of the house? Is it grander than this?”
Ursula laughed. “It’s quite different,” she said.
“Well, I dare say. But I won’t hear another word about them. That kind of people are all a mistake.”
Harriet lifted her indolent eyes, and fixed them on Ursula’s face.
“Do you like your wine?” she said. “Mind you deserve it.”
For the rest of the meal Mynheer Mopius talked of the entertainments he would organize for Ursula. He refused to let her accompany Harriet on the theological errand concerning Leah’s eyes.
“No, no,” he said, “come into the drawing-room and amuse us. Do you play? Do you sing? Harriet does neither. We do both.”
Ursula played well. She gave them a Concert of Liszt, and Mynheer did not talk till Mevrouw dropped her scissors and asked him, after a wait, to pick them up for her. As soon as he could, he got hold of the piano himself, and called out to his wife to join him. He had been possessed of a fine bass twenty years ago, and had enjoyed much admiration in Batavian society. It now stopped somewhere down in his stomach, and only a rumble came out. His wife rose wearily to play his accompaniments, and he kept her chained to the piano for the rest of the evening, though Ursula could not help seeing that the playing seemed to cause her physical pain.
He sang only love-songs of the ultra-sentimental kind, allabout broken hearts and lovely death and willing sacrifice. Many of them were of a by-gone period when everybody pretended—at least in verse—to be absolutely ill with affection.
Harriet came back and poured out tea. When her uncle said it was bad she shrugged her shoulders.
“It always is,” she replied.
“Yes, Harriet, it is, though I get it direct from the East,” he rejoined. His whole attitude betokened reproof.
“The East,” interposed Mevrouw, from her tambour-frame. “Quite so. I wonder, when Laban welcomed Jacob, do you think he gave him tea?”
“Coffee, rather, I should fancy,” replied Mopius.
“Do you really believe they drank coffee, Jacóbus?[C]I wish I was sure”—for the fiftieth time that day (as every day) she fell to contemplating her work with arrested needle. “I could so well fill up this corner with a little table, and put on the rolls and cups and things.”
“And work an ‘L’ in the napkin corner,” suggested Harriet.
Mevrouw Mopius gazed suspiciously into her niece’s face, but Harriet’s expression was perfectly serious.
“And—work—an—‘L’—into—the—napkin—corner,” repeated Mevrouw Mopius, very slowly. “Well, I think that might be nice.”
Ursula had just extinguished her light, and was dozing off into a dream-land of Mopiuses and Jonkers, when the door opened and Harriet entered hurriedly, candle in hand, a white wrap flung loosely about her.
“I didn’t knock,” she said. “Knocks are heard all over a house at night.”
She threw herself into an easy chair by the bed. “Finished already!” she said. “Youdon’t make much work of your beauty.”
“It’s so little, I should be afraid of killing it with over-care,” replied Ursula, smiling.
But Harriet frowned. “Don’t tell lies,” she said. “You must know you’re lovely. You are. Am I lovely too?”
“I think you look very nice,” replied Ursula, hesitatingly.
“Thank you. I understand.” She tossed back her black locks from her sallow cheeks, and her sad eyes flashed. “But see here, I didn’t come to talk about looks.” She pushed forward the candle so that its light fell full on Ursula’s sleepy face. “Wake up for a minute, can’t you? You and I may as well understand each other at once.” She leaned back, and folded her bare white arms, from which the loose sleeves fell away.
“Uncle Mopius is always telling me that you are his natural heir,” she said. “He tells me whenever he wants to make himself disagreeable, which is not infrequently. I dare say you know.”
Ursula sat up. “No, indeed I don’t,” she said, “and I don’t want to. Once my Aunt Josine said something about it, a couple of years ago, and father called me into his study and said he didn’t think I should ever get a penny of Uncle Jacóbus’s money, and he earnestly hoped not. I’ve never thought of it since.”
Harriet jerked up her chin. “Your father must be a peculiar sort of man,” she said, “if sincere. Did he mean it?”
Ursula blew out the candle. “I’m going to sleep,” she said. “Good-night. I don’t want to be rude to you.”
But Harriet quietly drew a box of matches from her pocket. “I like that,” she said, leisurely. “I wish I had somebody to stick up for. But I came to say this—Uncle Mopius is sure to bring up the subject constantly in your presence. He’ll taunt me, as is his habit, especially now you’re here, with your good-luck in being his own sister’s child. Now, I want you fully to understand”—she leaned forward her big dark face till Ursula struggled not to shrink back—“that I—don’t—care. I don’t care a bit. I’m not like men. And if you think you’re enjoying a cheap triumph, you’re mistaken, that’s all. And if you imagine it’s bravado on my part, because I can’t help myself, you’re mistaken too. I don’t want his dirty money. I’m sick of it. I want something better. I’m not going to hate you for nothing. In fact, I rather like you. So he can go on as much as ever he chooses, and if you enjoy it you’re free to do so.”
“But I don’t,” cried Ursula, with hot cheeks. “I don’t a bit. You know I don’t. And, in fact, uncle talked quite differently this afternoon. I thought you—”
The other girl stopped her with a gesture.
“Don’t,” she said, “I won’t hear it. I’m sick of the whole business. Be sure that, whatever he said, it was a lie.” She got up and began pacing the room, her limbs quivering under the light folds of her gown. Suddenly she stood still, looking down at Ursula. “Shall I tell you what will really happen? Do you care to know? It’s easy enough.” Ursula did not answer, but Harriet went on, unheeding, “Aunt will die, and he will marry again as soon as he can. That’s all. There.” Ursula’s continuous silence seemed to goad her companion. “You think he may die before aunt? He may; but when a chimney falls down into the street, it usually manages to hit a better man. You watch aunt. Good-night.” She was departing, but again reflected, and came back to the bed. “You poor thing,” she said, “I believe you really would have liked me to get the money. Why?”
“Oh, I should indeed,” replied Ursula, earnestly, “though it looks a long way off. You seem so lonely and—will you mind my saying it?—so unhappy, Harriet.” To her amazement her visitor fell forward on the bed and hugged her. A moment afterwards, however, Harriet again sat in the big chair. “You are quite mistaken,” she said, arranging her draperies with downcast eyes, “I am not at all unhappy.” There followed a moment’s agitated silence, and then:
“Ursula, I like you. I want to tell you something. You’ll listen for a moment, won’t you? I’ve nobody else to tell it to.” Without further consideration the girl pushed one hand between the loose folds about her throat, and from the snowy recesses of her bosom drew forth a paper which she hurriedly thrust in front of Ursula. “There, read that,” she said, excitedly. “It never leaves me lesttheyshould find out.” Still sitting up, with one elbow on the little table beside her, Ursula read a printed advertisement, a scrap from a newspaper:
“H. V. Meet me on Thursday next at eight o’clock in the Long Walk outside the West Gate. Wear a white feather and, if possible, a red shawl. Carry your parasol open,in any case. Dearest, I am dying to see you, but can’t come before then. Your own Romeo.”
“Well?” queried Ursula, but immediately her voice changed. “Harriet, you don’t mean to tell me that this is an entanglement of yours?”
“You choose a strange word,” replied Harriet, loftily. “There is no entanglement. But I hope there is going to be. As yet there is merely an answer to an advertisement. Yes, the advertisement was mine. Oh, Ursula, isn’t it delightful? He says he is dying to see me. Imagine that. And he doesn’t even know me yet.”
“That surely makes his eagerness less delightful,” replied Ursula, dryly.
“Oh, but I gave him a very accurate description, tall, luminous eyes, dark locks, ivory skin. I told him I was of distinctly prepossessing appearance. Yes, in spite of your opinion, I ventured to tell him that. Uncle informs me so frequently that I am very good-looking, and aunt repeats so consistently that I am exceedingly plain, I feel I have a double right to be satisfied with my beauty. Besides, every woman’s glass declares to her that her appearance is prepossessing; it is the one reason why I fancy, on the whole, women’s lives must be happier than men’s.”
“Did you put all that in the advertisement?” asked Ursula, still staring stupidly at the scrap of paper on the bed.
“I—I wrote him a letter, just one.”
“Addressed to ‘Romeo’?”
“To ‘Romeo de Lieven.’[D]Isn’t it a charming name?”
“It’s an assumed name. Imagine a Dutchman called Romeo!”
“Of course, it’s a pseudonym, like Carmen Sylva. I wasn’t clever enough to think of one; besides, I hate subterfuges. So I just put my own name, H. V.—Harriet Verveen.”
“Harriet, you don’t mean to say that you wrote a signed love-letter you don’t in the least know to whom?”
“Love-letter, no. I told him who I was and what I wanted. Besides, I shall know him to-morrow.”
“You’re not going.”
Once more Harriet assumed her almost defiant attitude.
“Yes, I’m going,” she said. “So there!”
“What do you think?” she suddenly burst out. “It’s all very well for you comfortable, sheltered girls, at home. What’s to become of the likes of me if we don’t look out for ourselves? Nobody’ll help to find me a husband or a hiding-place. Nobody’ll ever do anything for me except abuse me because I do things for myself.”
“ButIhaven’t had a lover found for me,” interposed Ursula. “It seems so unwomanly—”
“Womanly! There we have the word—womanly!”
Harriet’s words came stumbling and tossing; she thrust out her limbs and the muslin fell away from them. “It’s womanly to live on day by day in bitterness, with every womanly feeling hourly insulted and estranged; after a year more, perhaps, of this, to go to some fresh situation and look after other people’s children, and when you are worn out at last, to die, soured and in want. That’s honest independence, that’s womanly modesty. Well, then, I’m immodest. Do you understand me?” She threw herself wildly forward. “I’m immodest. I want love. I told you just now I didn’t want the old scoundrel’s money. I don’t. But I want love. I want love. And I mean to have it. A woman has a right to love and be loved. I won’t be some lazy rich woman’s substitute, with brats I don’t care for. I want to love children of my own. Children that love me when I kiss them. I love my own body.” She fell back again, and her eager voice died into a pensive murmur; while speaking, she softly stroked her rounded arm. “I love it, and I want others to love it also. I want it to belong to some one besides my lonely self. Great Heaven, don’t you understand?”—her tone grew shrill again—“one’s youth goes—goes. But you don’t understand.” She stopped abruptly, just in time, and hid her face in her hand.
Ursula knew not how to speak or act. There was only one thing she wanted to do; so she did it. She put an arm round Harriet’s neck and kissed her. But the girl shook herself free, and, without another word, hurried away.
THE TRYST
The next day passed in an atmosphere of sombre expectation. Ursula and Harriet barely spoke to one another; the latter seemed to be holding aloof. Mynheer Mopius took his niece the round of the house amid a steady flow of self-laudation, and Ursula put in pleasing adjectives as full-stops. He showed her everything, even to the water-supply and the wine-cellar. There was but one exception, his wife’s store-cupboard; Mevrouw Mopius, to his annoyance, actually held out in refusing the key. But he found a compensation in unmitigated china and glass.
After a morning thus profitably spent, the afternoon brought a long drive and a visit to a flower show. The drive was merely an opportunity for parading Mynheer Mopius’s equipage among the beauties of nature, but that gentleman was made happy, after prolonged anxiety and craning, by meeting the very people he was desirous should see it. The visit to the exhibition, however, must be regarded as an act of kindness to his guest, for the committee had had the manifest stupidity to award Mynheer Mopius’s double dahlias a third prize.
In the gardens Ursula espied Gerard with his cousin Helena among a crowd of stylish-looking people, whom Jacóbus described as “swells.” She had received, that morning, the promised card for the Baroness van Trossart’s party, and she would gladly have sought an occasion of thanking the sender, but to this proposal her uncle, in a sudden fit of shyness, opposed resolute and almost rampant refusal.
“I don’t want to know the people,” he repeated, excitedly, his eyes fixed on the distinguished group by the central lake.“I don’t want to have anything to say to them. Ursula, you belong to my party. I desire you to stay where you are.”
“Oh, very well,” replied Ursula, offended; “though, of course, I should not have gone up to him as long as he was conversing with that violet-nosed old woman in blue.”
“That lady is the wife of the Governor, and I will thank you to speak of her with more respect.”
Ursula listened in amazement. She was not enough a student of human nature to explain her uncle’s change of front. She went and sat down on the bench beside her aunt, with a few kind words about the weather.
“Oh, beautiful!” gasped Mevrouw Mopius. “Jacóbus, don’t you think it is time we went home?”
Jacóbus assented, and in the midst of plans for to-morrow sought to impress upon Ursula the number and importance of his acquaintances as instanced by frequent salutes.
Ursula came upon her aunt alone in the drawing-room half an hour before dinner. The vast apartment was darkened to a mellow glow behind its yellow venetians. Mevrouw Mopius sat with closed eyes and cavernous cheeks before her unused frame. She stirred as the door opened, and beckoned her niece to her side.
“My dear,” she said in a faint voice, “come and sit by me for a minute. I have something to ask you.” Ursula obeyed. “Your uncle was speaking of the opera for to-morrow night. I want you to tell him you don’t care to go.”
“But I do care,” objected the girl. “I think it’s simply glorious. I’ve never been to the opera before.”
“My dear, I can assure you it’s not worth seeing. The singers make such a noise you can’t hear a word they say. Not that that matters, for they always say the same thing.”
“Oh, but I should like it,” repeated Ursula.
“Say, for my sake, that you don’t care to go.” Mevrouw Mopius’s manner became very nervous. “Ursula, Ican’tgo out at night. Have you set your heart on this performance?”
“Yes, aunt,” said the girl, frankly;“but, even if I hadn’t, I shouldn’t know of any valid excuse. However, I can very well go with Harriet and uncle. I’ll tell him you’d rather not.”
Mevrouw Mopius clutched her arm. “Hold your tongue,” she said, quite roughly. “I didn’t want to have you here. I tell you so honestly. I knew it would be like this. It was Jacóbus. Poor fellow, I suppose he felt how dull the house was getting.” She paused meditatively. “He’d never go without me; he wouldn’t enjoy himself.”
“I’m sure I didn’t ask to come,” protested Ursula, “but now I’m here, I can’t begin inventing a parcel of lies. You must tell uncle yourself, aunt, please.”
Mevrouw Mopius tightened her grip till the nails dug into the flesh. She turned her dull eyes full on Ursula. “Girl,” she gasped, “what are you, with your little pleasures or prejudices to come athwart such a sorrow as mine? I’ll tell you my secret, if it must be. Swear, first, that you’ll not breathe it to a living soul.”
Ursula was alarmed by her aunt’s earnest manner. “I can’t swear,” she said in a flurry, “but I’ll promise. I never swore in my life.”
“Swear,” repeated the other woman under her breath; unconsciously she tightened her grasp till Ursula shrieked aloud. “Hush! Are you mad? He’ll hear. Oh, is that it?” She relaxed her hold. “Fool, did you never feel pain?”
“I—I don’t know,” gasped Ursula, now thoroughly frightened, convinced that her aunt must have mad fits of which no one had spoken.
“Swear, I tell you. Say, so help me, God Almighty. Louder. Let me hear it. Now, listen. I’m ill, incurably ill. Never mind what the doctor calls the illness. Enough that he says I can’t live beyond two months. Perhaps he’s mistaken. They often are. Not that I want to live. Not in this agony, my God! Not except forhim. Ursula, your uncle knows nothing. I don’t want him to know. I’d bear twice as much, if I could, so that he shouldn’t know. Poor fellow, he has his faults, perhaps, but he’s so soft-hearted, he can’t bear to see suffering, not even to hear of it. There, now, I have told you. I’ve never told a living soul, as I said. I can hide it from him, Ursula, if things go on as usual. But I can’t go taking long drives, or to flower-shows, and oh, Ursula, dear, Ican’tgo out at night.”
Ursula was dumb-struck with horror and pity. Still, she could not help feeling, even at that moment, that her visit to her uncle was becoming hopelessly perplexed. She had expected a round of gayeties, all the delights of a début.
“I’ll do whatever you wish me to,” she said, helplessly. “Oh, aunt, I’m so sorry, but I hope you’ll get better. Father says doctors never know.”
“Not about curing, they don’t,” replied her aunt, grimly. “Now, Ursula, remember, not a word. It’s a secret between you and me. I don’t think it’ll be for very long. Move away; I hear some one coming!”
Harriet entered the room with her novel under her arm. Presently she looked up at Mevrouw Mopius’s deathly countenance lying back as if asleep, and nodded meaningly to Ursula. Mynheer Mopius came in, and his wife sat up. “Jacóbus,” she said, “you were laughing at the blueness of my sky yesterday. I saw one in the exhibition aviary that was every bit as blue.”
“But did you look at the real article up above us?” questioned Jacóbus.
“No,” admitted Mevrouw Mopius, “I didn’t think of that.”
Harriet rose hurriedly from dessert. “Aunt is tired,” she said. “You must excuse us, uncle,” and she offered Mevrouw her arm. At the door she turned. “You don’t want me just now, I suppose?” she continued. “I am going out to get a breath of fresh air.”
“Yes,” added Ursula quickly, “Harriet and I are going for a walk.”
A moment later the two girls met on the bedroom-landing. Both were dressed to go out. Harriet had a white feather on her hat, and a red shawl over one arm. “Leave me alone, can’t you?” said Harriet. She spoke fiercely, and a gesture escaped her which was almost a menace.
“No, I’m going with you,” replied Ursula, quietly.
“Indeed you sha’n’t. What a fool I was to tell you. Women always are fools to ask sympathy from each other.”
“I shall not be in your way,” persisted Ursula, with coaxingdecision. “Let me wait with you till he comes, if he comes, and then I can step aside.”
“Of course he will come,” said Harriet. Perhaps it was the thought of this certain triumph which induced her to forbear all further opposition to Ursula’s accompanying her.
“I bought this shawl,” began Harriet, as they walked through the shadowed streets. “I had to pawn my only brooch to get it.”
“Does uncle allow you no pocket-money?” asked Ursula.
“Ten florins a month,” replied Harriet, bitterly. “I spend most of it in scents and chocolate-creams. They are my one consolation. I adore chocolate-creams. Do you? We might get some now. I’ve got a florin left from the brooch-money.”
“Let me buy them this time,” suggested Ursula, sympathetically.
“Very well. I like the pink kind best.”
It was still light, but a veil had already fallen over the low-sinking sun. The hot, sleepy streets were waking up in the red glow of the fading day. People in the town, now that the glare had died from their eyes, were telling each other that the air was cool, and trying to believe it.
Outside, however, the assertion had more truth in it. A ripple of refreshment was slowly spreading up from the distant river. The shadows of the straight-lined trees lay across the brick road in great black stripes. The fields looked as if their dusty grass was turning green again beneath the darkening sky; in the dull ditches stood the cattle, dreamily content.
The girls walked on in silence till they reached a point where the road swerved off into a little thicket. This was the spot which Romeo must have had in his mind. It was very quiet and sequestered. They stood looking at each other, still in silence. Harriet’s pale cheeks were flushed.
Evening was now rapidly closing in; great folds of gray shadow seemed to come broadening over the landscape; not a sound was heard but the faint whiz of some tiny gnats.
Suddenly the clear chimes began to play from the slender ball-topped tower, which stood out black, like a monstrous ninepin, against the yellow western sky. The eyes of thewatchers met. Eight slow strokes came trembling heavily across the hush of sunset. At the other end of the long, straight road a figure appeared, as yet quite indistinct. They watched. They could hear each other’s hearts beat.