“No, indeed!” cried the young Freule, with warmth.
A little later Ursula was again alone on the garden seat. She had exchanged but a few distressful sentences with Gerard. He had reproached her with behavior he hardly cared or dared to analyze, and she had answered hastily, eager to vindicate herself, but still more firmly resolved to screen Harriet’s reputation. Even while she was explaining, lamely, she had understood the incredulous smile on his face. He had come out of the brief conflict as a champion of female modesty, leaving her helplessly, guiltily crushed.
A white figure glided through the dusk and sank down by her side. The evening was gentle as velvet, caressingly warm and soft. Over yonder shone the great yellow glare of the music and the moving shadows; on all sides gay, ghastly paper lanterns went breaking the solemn silence of the trees. This spot of Ursula’s choosing was dark and willow-sheltered, alone beneath the calm blue height of heaven.
“Juffrouw Rovers,” said the Freule, “what is this joke between you and Gerard? You see, I am curious. You must forgive a spoiled child. What did he mean about your showing the white feather?”
“Don’t ask me, Freule, please,” replied Ursula, shortly. “For I can’t tell you.”
“So Gerard says. It must be a very dreadful secret!” This was said laughingly.
Silence. From the tent came the strains of the “Liebchen Adé” gallop.
“Great Heaven, it must be a very dreadful secret!” The Freule half rose from her seat; her voice trembled. She caught Ursula’s arm.
“It can only be,” she said, steadying herself, “that Gerard made love to you formerly. That is rather like him. I am sorry. It was wrong. But you have made up your mind to forget him, have you not? He is so charming; no wonder women love him. Poor child, it was cruel of us, in our ignorance, to invite you to behold our happiness.” In a sudden impulse of womanly pity she put an arm round Ursula’s bare neck.
“It isn’t that,” gasped Ursula. “Don’t, please, say I love Gerard. Oh, Freule, it’s a great deal worse.”
She hardly knew what she was saying. She covered her face with her hands.
“A great deal worse!” repeated Helena, drawing away. Ursula started at the hardness which had come into the Freule’s voice. “That can only mean”—Helena got up and stood at the farther end of the seat. “I refuse to say it,” she continued. “I refuse to believe it. You two are mad.”
The dance-music came faster from the lawn. Ursula, her head bowed low upon her lap, felt that in her cup of unmerited bitterness not a drop was left undrunk.
“I want to know the truth,” Helena went on after a moment.“I have a right to know it to-night. If you still feel any love for Gerard, do him a good turn now. We are girls together. No one will hear you but I. Tell me exactly what there is to tell, and I will forgive him.”
“I have nothing to tell,” murmured Ursula.
The Freule stamped her foot.
“You are ruining his life,” she said. “I will never marry him till I know how much you have been to each other. What happens after marriage must be settled after marriage; but what happened before I will know now.”
“We have never been anything to each other,” whispered Ursula. “Oh, Freule, have pity, and let me alone!” But even as she spoke her mood changed. Why should she agonize to save this girl’s selfish happiness at the cost of her own honor, of an innocent victim’s peace? She lifted herself up. “Ask no confessions of me,” she said. “Ask them of your future husband. He is nothing to me. You have no right to assume that he ever was.”
Even in the shade she saw Helena change color. A long silence deepened between them. Somebody in another nook not far distant laughed shrilly. There was a clatter of glasses.
“What happened before I must know,” said Helena, at last. “I will never marry him until I do.”
“You do not mean that,” said Ursula, but the other took no notice.
“I understand,” she continued, “it is some other woman.” She tossed up her head. “I knew I wasn’t marrying a saint,” she said. “He warned me about that himself. But, of course, all you speak of is past.” Then she broke into sudden passion. “How dare you come and talk of such things to me?” she cried, advancing on Ursula. “How dare you do it?”
“But I have talked of nothing!” exclaimed the pastor’s daughter. “It is you who torment me—”
“I know. Never mind,” said the Freule, interrupting; “tell me one thing. This girl that you and Gerard are thinking of was—was—infamous?”
Again the silence which is dissent. The Freule broke into a cry. Fortunately the music drowned it. The “Liebchen Adé” gallop was finishing up fast and furious.
“Don’t tell me she was good like—like you and me! Don’t tell me; I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care. I know how the whole story runs; it’s in so many novels. All men do such things. And the girl goes on the stage!”
The music had stopped. The bright dancers were flowing out into the cooler grounds.
“You needn’t tell me anything,” said the Freule, hurriedly but quietly. “I have guessed it all. This girl is good and honest, and she hoped that Gerard would marry her. She hopes so still.You hope it.Of course there is a child—there always is. It is the stalest form of patheticfeuilleton, and, therefore, it comes true in my life. Good-bye, Juffrouw Rovers.”
She sank down on the seat again and waved away her companion, hiding her golden head on her arms against the back. It was very still now in this forgotten corner. Ursula stole off to the house without taking leave of any one, and, having recovered her cloak, went out into the desolate street, alone and on foot, amid the stupefied stares of the domestics.
Several minutes elapsed before Helena lifted her head. She stared from her bench into the night.
“Why not?” she said, half aloud; “I love him. All women do it. There was that creature at the church gate, with her brats, when Henri van Troyen was married.”
She gathered her white laces about her and shivered, as she rose to walk towards the house. On the stairs, at the same post by her dark window, like a spy, still stood the French governess.
“Ma vieille,” began Helena, “will you please tell mamma I have gone to my room with a very bad headache, and want nobody to disturb me—not even her or yourself.”
“But, my dear—”
“The romance is changing to a tragedy,” said Helena. “Good-night.”
“AN OLD MAID’S LOVE”
“Yes, uncle, I should like to go back to Horstwyk to-day,” Ursula was saying at breakfast. “I have had a letter from father, and Aunt Josine seems far from well.”
She had found the letter on her return from last night’s dissipation. It was a long and affectionate letter, full of praises of Otto, who came frequently to the Parsonage, enjoying the quiet strength of the minister’s talk. The letter certainly stated that Miss Mopius had been laid up with a feverish cold.
“Nonsense, Ursula,” cried Mynheer Mopius loudly. “Of course, Josine has been ill; it’s her solitary pastime. Why, your visit has hardly begun.”
“We want to hear all about last night,” interposed Harriet, in her sleepy tones. “You look quite worn out this morning; you must have enjoyed yourself immensely.”
“Oh, bother last night,” said Mopius. “We don’t care to know about the grandees. Were there many of them there?”
“Yes, there were a good many people,” replied Ursula, wearily, “most of them young. I didn’t enjoy myself so very much, because, you see, I don’t dance.”
“Was the Governor there, or his wife,” asked Mopius, “or the Burgomaster? I suppose you saw the Van Troyens?”
“And the Governor’s daughter?” added Harriet. “The pretty girl with the hazel eyes?”
“I remember a Mr. Van Troyen, an officer,” said Ursula, vaguely. “Uncle, may I send a telegram for this afternoon. I could always come back on Monday, you know.”
“Can’t you miss one of your father’s discourses? I should have thought Sunday was the one day you’d like to stay away. But I don’t see what you go out into society for, Ursula. At Batavia I danced with the Governor-General’s lady.”
“Always?” asked Harriet—her invariable question at this stage of the story.
“No, not always. I remember, just as I led her up, I saw there was a huge snake coiled round her arm.”
“How dreadful!” said Ursula, stolidly. She had heard thedénouementon former occasions, but forgotten it.
“A gold snake! Ha!-ha!-ha! Somebody snatched it off a few months afterwards. A brave man. Ha!-ha!-ha! And your aunt used to dance too. Do you remember, wife? You were really quite pretty in those days. We’ll dance to-night,” he added, “and teach Ursula. You dance, Harriet, don’t you?”
“Oh yes, to any one’s pipes,”[G]replied Harriet.
Nevertheless, it was decided, after some wrangling, that Ursula should return to Horstwyk, as she wished, for the present. Mynheer Mopius chose to be offended.
The girl was consumed by a feverish longing to get away out of this hot-house atmosphere into the pure repose of her country home. All morning she hid away in her room, afraid to look out on the little town, over which, to her excited fancy, an ominous thunder-cloud seemed to hang. What would happen next? How would Helena act? How Gerard? In her heart she hoped that justice would be done to the injured shop-girl, and yet dared not measure the result.
Just before luncheon a note was brought her. She sat down before opening it. Harriet laughed. “With due preparation,” said Harriet. “What is it? Another invitation to a dance?”
The letter contained only these words written by Helena:
“Keep my secret: I would have kept yours.”
“Keep my secret: I would have kept yours.”
They left her no wiser.
“My dear, come into my room for a moment,” said Mevrouw Mopius, with timid voice. The feeble little creature sniffed nervously. “Forget what I told you, Ursula,” she went on, assoon as they were alone. “And remember you are bound by oath. If Mopius ever hears, itmustbe through you.” She peered sternly at her niece.
“Yes, dear, I will remember,” replied Ursula. “But you are feeling better, aunt, are you not? You are not as bad as when I came.”
Mevrouw Mopius smiled. “I shall be better soon,” she said. Then she went to her particular old-fashioned mahogany “secretary,” and, after a good deal of fumbling and searching, extracted from one of many receptacles a small tissue-paper parcel, which she brought back to Ursula. “This is for you,” she said, thrusting it into the girl’s hand. “I’ve made it since you came, sitting up in bed these summer mornings.” Ursula opened the parcel, her aunt watching meanwhile with a certain pride.
It contained a small square bit of red wool-work, with the bead-embroidered device, “No cross, no crown,” the two substantives being presented pictorially.
“I could have taken more time to it,” pleaded Mevrouw Mopius, “but I had to wait for the daylight: a candle wakes your uncle; and, once up, I have to work at ‘Laban and Jacob.’ I am exceedingly anxious to get them ready before”—She stopped. “Good-bye, my dear,” she said. “I hope you like my work. You might use it under a lamp, or for the fire-irons, unless you disapprove of that on account of the words. I don’t think I should.”
So Ursula returned very quietly and humbly. There was no marshalling of porters, and she travelled second class. At the little market-town station her father met her; together they trudged the two miles side by side almost silently, for the girl’s few answers had soon convinced the Dominé that conversation had become for the moment, what he most detested, an ambuscade.
In the half-light of the calm, cool study, amid the well-known, stilly sympathetic books, she sat with her two hands in his one, on a footstool by the faded leather arm-chair, and, lifting those big brown eyes of hers to his steadfast response, she told himhow the city is full of wickedness incredible, and that Apollyon rules the world.
He listened to her very quietly, and yet he was greatly shocked. True, evil had few secrets for him; he had seen more of the world’s corruption than most men, in the red glare of the Algerian night, amid the devil’s dance of shrieking drunkenness and bare-breasted debauch. He had seen too much. He was one of those happy mortals who always think the world is better than it used to be. “In my day”—he would begin, and sigh cheerfully—“but we have greatly improved since then.” It was doubly sad, therefore, to hear that Gerard, the warrior, despite the weekly bugle-call to resistance, should have surrendered at discretion to so pitiful a cutthroat as Lustings. The Dominé had an ineradicable weakness for a brave soldier. Havelock and Hedley Vicars hung large against his peaceful wall, and between them a very different hero, Bugeaud.
“Well, my dear,” said the Dominé, while Ursula, having finished, sat heavy with sorrowful wrath—“Well, my dear, the farther we go the more we see of the battle-field. I am not sorry you should have reconnoitred a little. And I rejoice all the more now to think how mistaken I was about you and Gerard. You must know, my dear, that at one time, though I never mentioned it to you, I fancied you might be setting your affections on the Jonker. I spoke of it unwillingly to your aunt, for I had no other woman to confide in”—the Dominé’s voice grew reflective—“but she said it was all stuff and nonsense, at once, and you weren’t such a piece of vanity as that. Your aunt is not a woman of exceptional discrimination; still, I am glad to see she was right. It would have been a great mistake on your part, Ursula, and a cause of much useless regret.”
“I shall never love any man but you,” said Ursula, vehemently. “They’re all alike. No woman ought to marry.”
The pastor smiled, and passed his hand over her smooth head.
“I hope,” he said,“that you will never know a worthless love. A hopeless love, even a dead love, these may ennoble man or woman. But a love of the undeserving can only lure into animpasse.”
She smiled confidently.
“No; the Jonker van Helmont is not for such as us, Ursula,” continued the old man. “So much the better. My child, you will marry if God pleases and whom he pleases; but I hope it will be in your own station of life. Not that we must judge any class as such. There is Otto, for instance.Heis not a pleasure-seeker. We have seen much of him, my dear, in your absence. He most kindly came to comfort me. He has returned from the Indies as he went, the same pure lover of all that is good. Even in our day the Almighty leads some men untainted through the furnace.” And the simple-hearted pastor launched into praises of his favorite, unwittingly digging pitfalls on paths as yet untrod.
“And as for most men,” he said, “human nature is still much what it was in the days of Thucydides. What says Diodorus, the son of Eucrates, the Athenian? ‘All men are naturally disposed to do wrong; and no law will ever keep them from it.’ And that was the historian’s own view; he repeats it some chapters later. As for women, you remember what he makes Pericles say ofthem. It holds true, in spite of emancipation. ‘Great is the glory of her who is least talked of among the men, either for good or for evil.’ You remember that, Ursula?”
“Yes, indeed, Captain,” said Ursula, into whose whole life this maxim had been constantly woven.
“You might read the history through once more with the greatest advantage. No writer that I know will reveal to you more of the conflict of human passions, excepting, of course, John Bunyan.”
The good pastor did not know many writers. He was not by any means a literary man.
Miss Mopius sailed into the room unannounced, and interrupted their quiet conversation. Two little peculiarities of this lady’s—trifles, light as air—were a source of unending irritation to her brother-in-law. The one was her tacit refusal to prelude her invasions of his sanctum, the other was her persistent drawl of his soldierly name into a sound which was neither French nor English, nor anything but absurd. The Dominé was a brave man; he was exceedingly afraid of his dead wife’s sister,not so much on account of himself as on account of the use to which Diabolus put her in the great siege of the Dominé’s Mansoul.
By sheer force of will Miss Mopius had taught herself to admit that she was thirty-two years old, but she would never see forty again. She was endowed with a sallow complexion, to which she had added auburn ringlets and rainbow-colored raiment. To describe her as an entirely imaginary invalid would have been malevolent; nature had provided her with a tendency to nervous headaches which kindly fostering had developed into a vocation.
She had come to the widower as a thorn in the flesh. Limp and listless, absolutely unable to “resist” anything that attracted her, she devoted herself day and night to the harassing service of her own caprices. Being not entirely destitute of means, she might easily have enjoyed her nerves to the full in some boarding-house, but she knew her duty to her motherless niece.
“I should not stay withyou, Roderigue,” she was wont to say, “though Ursula, of course, will not marry for many years yet. When she does, I shall consider my mission is ended. I should not be wantedthen.”
She paused, expectant. But the Dominé never answered, for he held that, in the spiritual warfare, a falsehood is the easiest and most cowardly method of running away.
“Ursula, my dear,” began Miss Mopius, in a flow of sugared vinegar, “I have been suffering the greatest anxiety. I thought you had not returned. I suppose, however, the train was late.”
Ursula, rising hastily, confessed that the train had been punctual.
“Really! Well, I’m afraid I interrupted you. This conversation must have been of the greatest importance, or you would hardly have so entirely forgotten your poor old aunt.” Miss Mopius constantly used that appellation; of late she had sometimes wondered whether it was becoming unwise. She spoke in almost continuous italics; these, however, were mostly independent of sense.
“I suppose your father informed you,” she continued, settling herself in the Dominé’s chair,“that I have been exceedingly unwell since you left. Day after day I have dragged myself down-stairs, so as not to let him sit down to his dinner alone, but my nights were too terrible to speak of.” She paused, that Ursula might speak of them.
“I’m so sorry,” said Ursula, without any accent at all.
“Last night, for instance, I was in agony from twelve to three—in agony. I don’t know what I should have done without my vegetable electricity. I took it at three, and the pain vanished immediately.”
“Why didn’t you take it at once?” asked Ursula.
“Ursula, you have not the slightest comprehension of medicines. Fortunate child, it is your lack of experience. Medicines never act if taken at once.”
The Dominé had basely deserted his own fortress.
“Ursula, my dear,” said Miss Mopius, sitting up with quite unusual energy, “no wonder my health has suffered. Something very important has happened since you went away.”
“Really?” asked Ursula, wondering what the maid-of-all-work had broken.
“Yes, but it’s no use speaking of it to your father. Ursula, Otto van Helmont comes here every evening. Since you left, mind you. Now, I ask, what can that mean?”
“He had only four evenings before I left,” replied Ursula, with some spirit, “one of them was free, and he came.”
“Onedoesn’t count. That was a formal call,” replied Miss Mopius, loftily. “I ask, what does it mean? He sits and talks and talks. Nominally to your father. Ursula, I have watched him; he never speaks to me.” She sank back in her chair and began to count on her lanky fingers, without taking further note of her companion. “He never speaks to me—one. He never looks at me—two. But he brought me a nosegay—three. He said it was from his mother—four.” She roused herself from her reverie. “Ursula, my child,” she asked, “why does he bring me a nosegay, and say it is from his mother?”
“Because it is,” replied Ursula.
Miss Mopius scornfully shook her curls. “Does the Baroness send me roses in midsummer?” she inquired.“Dear girl, you are too young; I should have considered that. But there are moments in a woman’s existence when she craves for the sympathy of her sex. If only my dear elder sister were alive—she was so much my elder!—to help me now. Go, dear child, go; at some distant day your own turn will come, and then you will understand.”
“Yes, aunt,” said Ursula, gladly moving towards the door.
“Stay one instant,” cried the spinster. “Child, are you so eager to return to your diversions? He is good-looking, Ursula. I have watched him, as I said. His face is careworn and earnest; he is no mere beardless boy just dipping into life, but a man who has swum against the current. He has experience and judgment, and heknows. Ursula, I would not marry a beardless boy.”
“Aunt,” said Ursula, suddenly coming back into the room, “do you mean to say you want to marry Mynheer Otto van Helmont?”
“Silly child, does a woman say such things? Of course, I know, Ursula, as well as you do, that he is much older than I am. That is a matter I must seriously consider before I reply.”
“Do you mean to say he has actually asked you?” cried Ursula, clasping her hands in wonderment.
“Not directly. Child, how raw you are, and how rawly you put things. But I have my reasons for believing that he will do so to-night. That is why I was unwillingly compelled to speak to you on the subject. Be sure that otherwise I should never have done so.”
“But what have I to do with it?” queried Ursula, stupefied.
“Not to give your consent, you may be sure,” retorted Miss Mopius, snappishly. “When Otto comes to-night, as he certainly will, I want you, during ten minutes, to draw off your father. The poor fellow never gets a chance. He said as much yesterday, in departing. ‘The Dominé and I have so much to say to each other,’ he remarked, ‘that I never seem to have an opportunity of chatting with you, Miss Mopius.’ And with that he gave me a look. Ursula, I believe you take me for a fool. Do you?”
“Oh no, dear aunt,” exclaimed Ursula, hastily.
“One would say so, if you imagine I suck these things out of my thumb.[H]I assure you I have very good reason to know what I know. I am not a chit, like you, to fancy a man is in love because he looks at me.”
“There, there, go away,” she added. “The whole thing has greatly exhausted me. I am not strong; that is the worst. But so I shall honestly tell him.”
“You will accept him,” cried Ursula, preparing to vanish.
“That will depend upon various considerations,” replied Miss Mopius. “What is it, Drika? Ursula, hold your tongue, and let the servant pass.”
Ursula turned hastily in the open doorway.
“The Jonker Otto is in the drawing-room,” said the red-cheeked maid.
Miss Mopius turned pale, then red. “Go to him, child,” she said, pleadingly. “Amuse him till I come. And remember—”
Ursula did not go in to Otto. A sudden shyness was upon her; besides she felt no desire to meet any member just now of the Van Helmont family. So the Jonker paced up and down the little parlor till the Dominé was attracted in to him through the windows.
Juffrouw Josine spent twenty minutes over the secrets of her toilet. Her poor old heart beat wildly. “He cannot even wait till the evening,” she thought. “The densest fool would understand.” When at last she descended, arrayed in her best Sunday green-silk dress with the poppies, she was surrounded by odors of ess. bouquet and sal volatile.
She had to pause before the drawing-room door and steady herself. She entered. There was Otto, a great bunch of apricot-colored roses in one hand, bending over a map of Java with the Dominé. “That is my part,” he was saying. “One of the healthiest, I assure you, Dominé. All the men take their wives out there.”
“Ah!” thought Miss Mopius. She shook hands, and the Jonker rather awkwardly presented his flowers.
“From my mother,” he stammered, “to welcome Miss Rovers.”
“How kind of you to bring them,” replied Miss Mopius, sitting down on the sofa and sniffing. “I hope Ursula will be grateful.Iconsider it most exceedingly kind.”
She squinted across at the Dominé, who still bent over the map. There was a long wait, and Otto returned to the table.
“Roderigue,” said Miss Mopius, in desperation. “Ursula wants you. She wants you at once!”
The minister lifted a countenance of mild astonishment.
“Very well,” he said, remembering his daughter’s painful experiences of the last days, “I’ll be back in a moment, Otto. I want to ask you about that mission station you were telling me of.”
Otto seated himself near to the lady.
“Miss Rovers, I hear,” said Otto, “has safely returned.”
The lady bowed over her flowers.
“She came back earlier than she had intended,” continued the Jonker. “I suppose that she felt being away from what is doubtless a most happy home.”
“I try to make it happy,” murmured Miss Mopius.
“Could you do otherwise?” said Otto, fervently. And he added, in a tone that was almost sad, “It seems cruel to disturb your trefoil even for a day.”
And he looked at her meditatively.
Miss Mopius gasped for breath. She muttered something about “leaving and cleaving.”
Otto stared at her.
“Yes; it’s very hot,” he hazarded. “Shall I open the window?”
Miss Mopius somewhat recovered herself.
“Oh!” she replied, “but not as hot as Java, I suppose? Not nearly as hot as Java. I should enjoy Java. I like heat. I’m not strong, Mynheer van Helmont, but the hot weather always does me good. I’m sure I should feel much better in Java.”
“Yes,” he said, vaguely. “Would you prefer me, then, to shut the window again?”
“The window? Perhaps it would be better under the circumstances. The question you asked me just now is so momentous, Mynheer van Helmont, I do not know how to answer it. Oh, that my dear elder sister were with me still! She was very much my elder, very much so. I miss her guidance, her motherly advice.”
She hesitated, and her eyelids fluttered.
“Juffrouw Rovers’s mother?” said Otto. “I suppose she was very beautiful?”
“Well, I hardly know ifyouwould have called her beautiful. She was not at all like me.”
“Just so,” said Otto. “I suppose Juffrouw Rovers is like her?”
“Oh no; Ursula takes after her father’s family. The Mopiuses were always famous for their delicate skins.”
“Ah!” said Otto, shifting on his chair. “Well, I am a plain man; perhaps not much a judge of beauty—”
“Oh, don’t say that,” interposed the lady, smiling.
“But I know when I like a face, Miss Mopius. I think an honest face is of more importance than mere good looks.”
“Oh, of course,” assented the lady, reddening.
“I mean in a man. I trust, Miss Mopius, that you have no aversion to my face—or me.”
The lady tittered, and buried her nose in her bouquet.
“I wish I could flatter myself you even liked me. But that’s nonsense. I’m a conceited fool.”
“I do,” whispered the spinster, with downcast eyes—“a little.”
Otto got up and warmly clasped her disengaged hand.
“How good it is of you to say that,” he cried, heartily. “Then you will, won’t you? How awfully good of you.” And, with another energetic shake of those skinny fingers, he walked from the room.
Miss Mopius opened her eyes wide, very wide. Presently, however, she nodded her curls.
“Of course,” she murmured, “he has gone to speak with Roderigue.”
A soft flush spread over her pale cheeks, and she waited.
FOR LIFE OR DEATH
Ursula sat by herself in the veranda through the sweetly fading silence of the summer Sabbath evening. She had now been back in her tranquil home for more than four-and-twenty hours. It was good for her that her return had heralded the holy calm of that long, sunlight-flooded day of rest. She had slept as young twenty sleeps when worn out, whether from work or weeping; she had risen as young twenty rises, to a world that is bright again. The peace of the familiar village-round was upon her: the drowsy morning service, the droning Sunday-school, the empty afternoon “catechism.” Had her father’s text, she wondered, been inspired by the thought of his absent child at Drum! He had preached on “Keep yourself unspotted from the world.” She desired nothing more ardently. Here was she returned in time to point the moral.
Her hands lay idle in her lap, an emblem of the day’s repose. The whole village had folded its hands to watch the lengthening shadows. A few conspicuous white shirt-sleeves lolled against the church-yard wall. And somewhere a bullfinch was carolling, breaking the Sabbath in his own divinely appointed way.
“How hushed it all is,” thought Ursula, looking up to the far plumes of the motionless poplars. And the lull sank around her own soul. Why break our hearts over the scuffling and splashing of one or two swimmers? The river of God’s glory flows steadily on. She laid a tired head on its current; for a moment the waters were stilled.
She did not even care to penetrate the mystery concerning her Aunt Josine. The confidences of the preceding afternoonhad been succeeded by an extreme reserve which the lady’s two companions almost provokingly respected. The pastor knew of nothing. At dinner, on the Saturday, he had been mildly astonished by an atmosphere of constraint, in the midst of which his sister-in-law had suddenly ejaculated,
“Well, Roderigue?” with the vehemence of a bomb-shell.
He had answered,
“Well, Josine? It certainly is much better than the last joint, though shewillover-roast it,” a reply which did not seem to give full satisfaction to its recipient.
“He has gone, first of all, to obtain his father’s permission,” thought Miss Mopius. “I might have known. With the aristocracy a father is a very important personage.”
She retired early with a headache which not even the vegetable electricity could combat. It extended over the Sunday, as Miss Mopius’s headaches naturally would. She lay on her sofa and sighed at intervals.People would not be surprised at her lying on the sofa. Had she not sighed at intervals, Ursula would have risen to see what was wrong.
The church-clock had just struck seven; in the ensuing pause of expectancy its last note was still trembling away into nothing, when Ursula’s closed eyes became conscious that somebody was watching them. She started to her feet in confusion, a little ruffled and rumpled, before the admiring gaze of the Jonker Otto van Helmont.
“I must have been dozing off,” she said.
“You were asleep. I am sorry I woke you,” replied honest Otto, “but I came with a message from my mother. She is very anxious to speak to you. She—she wants you to come up to-night. If you would?”
Ursula hesitated. She saw the dog-cart standing by the gate, a village lad erect at the horse’s head. Continental Sabbaths are not like English; still, the Dominé’s daughter was not accustomed to Sunday driving.
“She made me come,” continued Otto, apologetically; “but if you’d rather stay—”
“I will ask papa, and be ready in five minutes,” she answered,promptly. Her pulse quickened. Doubtless there was some fresh trouble about Gerard. If so, it was her duty to “go through.”
Presently Otto saw her coming down the garden path with her strong, brisk step, in straw hat and woolley wrap, all light and bright, among the thick gayety of the wall-flowers and the pink flare of the hollyhocks.
“Why, it’s Beauty!” she cried, as she drew near, recognizing the mare.
“Yes, none of the other horses were available, and none of the men were about, so I harnessed her myself and came away. I hope Gerard won’t object, for once. It couldn’t be helped.”
No one but Gerard, and Gerard’s particular groom, was allowed to touch Gerard’s particular mare. She was his prime favorite, and deservedly so, for neither of the saddle-horses could stand in her shadow. But most horses, unlike men, have one or two faults, and Beauty’s was nervousness.
“You know we expected Gerard this morning,” began Otto, as the dog-cart bowled along. “He was to have brought my cousin with him, you know. But in their stead comes a telegram this afternoon to say that Helena is ill. Mother worries to know what is really the matter, and she has sent for you to give her the latest news of them all.”
Ursula did not answer. She had expected further embroilment. And, somehow, she was growing to feel awkward in Otto’s presence despite, or perhaps partly on account of, her father’s praise. That morning during church she had been sensible of his quiet admiration, and had experienced, for the first time in her existence, not the blush of being stared at, but the glow of being discreetly observed.
Now, again, as she sat watching the horse’s head, she perceived, without seeing them, some long-drawn side glances. Her nostrils tingled, and she wished there had been a groom on the back seat.
“Well, and did you enjoy your uncle’s Indian stories?” queried Otto, breaking a silence that was becoming acute.“Did he tell you anything very dreadful this time? How often did he find a tiger under his pillow at Batavia?”
She laughed, and they talked lightly of Uncle Jacóbus, and of the life out yonder in the Indies, where everything is gigantic compared to little Holland, even the money-making, and also the mortality.
“So your mind is made up more firmly than ever,” he concluded. “You would never go out to Java on any account?”
“No,” she answered, flushing. “And, besides, remember my father! What would become of him if I were to leave him alone with”—she pulled up—“himself!” she said.
“True,” he replied, exceedingly gravely. Both were occupied with their thoughts for a minute or two, and then they began to talk of something else.
They had reached a spot along the lonely country road where it suddenly curved among a solitary cluster of cottages. On both sides it stretches away, very narrow and smooth, and almost treeless, between parallel ditches and far-extending fields. Two landaus could not pass each other with safety, but it is largely used in summer-time by overloaded hay-wains. For those who know Holland it is unnecessary to add that a tram-line occupies two-thirds of it.
This tram-line, which runs largely through desolation, has to twist round the curve of the cottages. Where it does so it has just emerged from a thicket; and the whole is so arranged by nature and science that the locomotive can flatten the cottage-children without their being alarmed by seeing its approach.
On this slumbrous Sunday evening the women were enjoying a brief period of repose. The smaller children were in bed; the bigger ones had gone plum-stealing. Fathers and mothers sat stolidly by the door with slow pipe or slower speech. As the dog-cart came racing along, the men raised their caps. One of them, however, shouted something.
“The tram!” exclaimed Ursula, half-rising. Otto had already set his teeth tight; both knew it was too late. Even as the cry went up, the great engine, silent and deadly, loomed in front of them like a hideous, falling rock. There was just room enough between the rails and the cottage-walls for it to graze their lateral splash-board in rushing by. But a carelessly projecting shutter rendered this escape impossible. As the mare sprangaside, the off-wheel caught the obstacle, and sent it clattering back against the wall. For an instant—the hundredth part of a second—the double crash all around seemed to stun her; then up went her ears, down went her neck; she was off.
“‘THE TRAM!’ EXCLAIMED URSULA, HALF RISING”
“‘THE TRAM!’ EXCLAIMED URSULA, HALF RISING”
The villagers ran round the corner, emptily shouting. The tram sailed serenely on.
“Sit still,” said the Jonker between his closed teeth. The advice was superfluous, for the girl had immediately sunk back again, clutching the hand-rail beside and behind her, frozen to calm. She did not answer, and the vehicle went rushing on.
Forward the naked road stretched, white and thin, between two dark lines of water; forward the horse flew, drinking, as it were, that road before it with pendent head—crashing onward in a cloud of dust and stones and sparks. There was nothing to confront or pass them as they tore through yielding infinity, except here and there a sleepy calf that tried to race them as children would a train. There was nothing but the wide lilac heaven all around, with the boundlessness of a horizon that ever recedes and a highway that ever lengthens out. It was the very delirium and terror of motion, such as few mortals can experience, the irresisted, irresistible forward rush of the whole being—the concentration of all thought into that one idea of a sweep through immensity. For one moment the laws of time and space were annulled; there was no distance, no limit, no measurement, nothing but an infinite impression of velocity. The high carriage sailed through the summer warmth like a bird. On—on—on! For ever and ever. Why, indeed, should it stop?
And then the conviction that stoppage is inevitable, is imminent, and that it may well mean—death.
All that, not in a succession of impressions, but in one long-drawn lightning flash, like the flash of the flying brute, only faster.
Ursula looked up once at Van Helmont. His face was carved in bronze; his arms were straining back; his feet had bent out the splash-board. In another moment it burst away from them in a wide crash of splinters, and threw him forward, silent still. He righted himself with a jerk, but it seemed as if the horsehad received a new impetus from the slackening even of that illusory hold. She swept the ground from under her as the tall wheels appeared to stop revolving, in a constant blaze of starlight. Ursula fancied, from the height where she clung, that their progress carried with it a crimson glow through the swiftly receding dust. But it was all so short, though it seemed eternity, and yet she remembers, this very day, each sensation that rose and sank across her brain. Her hat was gone; her hair was flying. One minute of that wild, mad stress, and then—
“I must save you,” said Otto. “Don’t mind how.”
Even as he spoke, she suddenly remembered that the canal lay straight athwart their course. The canal, not level with the road, not clear, but fifteen feet lower, at the bottom of a stone embankment and landing-place for barges. The blood grew cold in her veins. During the brief frenzy of her alarm, the thought of the canal had not as much as occurred to her. It had been with Otto from the first.
And—even as he spoke—the violet line of the horizon deepened upon her eyes, where the white road struck dead against fields on the farther side. It turned at a right angle there, as she knew but too well, along the water.
“It’s as much as I can do to keep her head straight,” said Otto, almost in a whisper. “Another minute, and it will be too late! Ursula, can you help hold the reins for a moment without risk of falling out?”
“Yes!” she cried, vehemently, angry that he had not asked her five minutes sooner. For so the time seemed to her.
“It’s only for a moment,” he continued, “we’ve got beyond the side ditchesnow.” She saw that he was using the one hand he had freed to draw something from his trousers-pocket. Her grasp closed, near his other hand, on the reins: she thought that her arms were being drawn from their sockets, but she bit her white lips and held on. He knelt, as well as he could, on the carriage mat, bending over the broken splash-board, and she saw that he held a heavy revolver in his bleeding right hand. The glove was torn to ribbons.
“The instant I fire, drop the reins,” he said, quietly,“and hold on to the cart for dear life. It’s our only chance. God help me; we can’t—are you ready?”
“Yes,” she said, with staring eyes.
He had spoken the last question abruptly. In the still evening the line of the embankment already stood out. They were whirling towards it.
Again he bent forward, and fired. The shot missed, and as the report thundered around her and the reins fell loose on her sides, the mare seemed to rise into the air with the fierceness of her flight.
Immediately a second flash followed the first; the horse leaped up with a strain that snapped the shafts like two twigs, then fell, struck behind the right ear, a dead weight in the middle of the road.
Ursula, in dropping the reins as commanded, had flung her full weight on the back-rest behind her. For a moment the dog-cart, crashing forward, tossed her wildly to and fro. She saw Otto ejected, arms foremost, clean away over the dead mare’s head.
Another moment and she was kneeling beside him. Horse and cart lay a confused mass of harness and broken wood.
She had nothing at hand to help him. She could do nothing. She looked round wildly, vainly. Not being a hysterical maiden, she did not make up her mind he must be dead. But she knew he was insensible, and the extent of his injuries she was quite unable to determine.
She looked down at his resolute face, bronzed beneath its heavy mustache, and realized, quite newly, how good he was, how strong; this silent man who had seen so much of the world; this simple man, whom her noble-hearted father so greatly praised. The thought of Gerard flashed across her, Gerard, the beau ideal of her girlhood, all glory and glitter, a Stage-Baldur with the footlights out. How she longed for Otto to open those calm, blue eyes. She prayed confusedly, with unmoved stare, looking back along the lonely road for help.
Then she got up and hurried away to the side of the embankment, shudderingly realizing how near it was. She could not help leaving him. She was much shaken, yet she felt quite strong.
There was a barge moored by the little quay; a woman stood on its deck, startled and staring. She called to the woman, who came running up the stone steps.
“Is there no man?” cried Ursula.
“No, the men were gone to the nearest public-house.”
The girl waved off the barge-woman’s inquiries. She did not want sympathy, but help.
“You must hurry to the Horst,” she said, impatiently. “You know it? The large house behind those trees. They will pay you. You must explain that an accident has occurred, not fatal. And bring back assistance at once.”
She returned hastily to Otto. His eyes were open, and they smiled to welcome her. A terrible anxiety suddenly died out of them.
“Are you not hurt?” he said, faintly. “I’m not. I shall get up presently.”
She could not answer except by a shake of the head. A lump had risen in her throat which she was resolved to keep down.
“How sorry Gerald will be!” continued Otto.
She nodded again, and for a few minutes they were both quite silent. Then the Jonker raised himself on one arm.
“I am only dizzy,” he said. “I shall be all right in no time, I assure you. I’m sorry I frightened you. Why, there are some people coming along, are there not?”
It was true; the men from the cottages could be seen running towards them. Otto hesitated, as he sank back, gazing up into Ursula’s bent face.
“Ursula,” he said at last, calling her by her name for the second time in the course of that evening, “we very nearly went to our death together—and you wouldn’t even go to Java!”
There was a ripple in his voice and in his eyes. She held out her hand, and he pressed it to his lips.
“You have saved my life,” she said.
Presently the foremost runner reached them, breathing heavily. Otto staggered to his feet, and, as the others came up, began giving orders about the wreck and the poor dead beast.
A SATISFACTORY SETTLEMENT
“Ursula,” began the Dominé, with shaking voice. He went back to the door and pressed his hand against it to make sure that it was properly closed. “My dear child, I have Otto van Helmont with me in the study. I am utterly amazed; I don’t know what to say. You will be more astonished even than I am. The Jonker has come to ask my permission—God bless my soul, Ursula, he wants to have you for his wife!”
Ursula bent over her needle-work; she was sewing buttons on her father’s shirts.
The Dominé sat down opposite her and gasped. “It takes my breath away,” he explained, apologetically. “He calls it love at first sight. I should think so. I should call it love at single sight, and so I told him.”
Ursula looked up quickly. “Oh no,” she said, “we have met quite a number of times.”
“Why, you hussy, do you want me to accept him?”
“Oh, I did not say that, papa. Please don’t say I said anything of the kind. I only meant—”
“I know what you meant. Why, you hussy, do you want me to refuse him?”
“You know best, papa,” said Ursula, demurely.
“Then, of course, I shall send him about his business. Imagine the thing. The future Baroness van Helmont, and my child Ursula!”
“I am not such a child,” replied Ursula, blushing and drawing herself up.
“Consider, my dear, the match would be an ill-assorted one. Personally, I cannot say I look upon it—no, I won’t say that, either. But, dear me, dear me; I am quite taken aback. Ursula, my dear, what is your attitude?”
“Oh, I haven’t got an attitude,” cried Ursula, strenuously threading her needle. “Oh, don’t say another word about it, please. Go away, dear Captain, do, and leave me in peace.”
“But, Ursula, this is childish. Otto—”
Suddenly, while he was speaking, the Dominé’s brow cleared; he thought he understood the situation. It turned upon his selfishness and his daughter’s self-denial.
“Ursula,” he said, “you must forgive your poor old father. I am selfish, and of course there are difficulties. But I see that Otto van Helmont has somehow already succeeded in gaining your heart, so I suppose I must go back and tell him so. Or would you prefer to do it yourself?”
“Don’t, father,” cried Ursula. “Nobody has ever possessed my heart but you. I hate all men, as I said the other day. See how I liked and admired Gerard—for years, ever since I could think—and now! I could almost have cut off the fingers his touch had soiled! I don’t want to marry any one.”
“How beautiful,” thought the Dominé, not without a twinge of self-condolence, “are the unconscious workings of a maiden’s heart. The dear child lays bare her love and doesn’t know she possessed it! It is my duty to prevent a most fatal mistake. Poor motherless one; I must take a mother’s place to-day!” Like many old-fashioned people, the Dominé believed that when “a good woman” says she doesn’t love a man, thisalwaysmeans she does. So he abstained from useless questions.
“Ursula,” he said, heroically, “Otto van Helmont is not one of these men you dread. Dear child, I know him well. He is a good and upright gentleman. I should be glad to think, my dear”—the Dominé flung himself headlong upon the altar—“glad to think that when I am gone my daughter will have such a strong defender. The world is evil, dear, and I am old. At any moment I may leave you unprotected.”
She laid down her needle-work, and sat looking out of the window.
“I don’t think I quite love him,” she said, slowly.“Not like you.” Something in her solemn face filled him with sudden misgiving, although the last three words were reassuring.
“But, my dear,” he suggested, gently, “you admire him very much—do you not? You think he is a splendid man?”
“Yes,” she answered, still with that far-away look, “I admire him very much. I think he is a splendid man. I—I like to see him, father, and to hear him talk.”
“Trust me, my dear child, you are very much in love with him,” said the Dominé, sententiously, “as much as any maiden ought to be. Go in and tell him so.”
She was willing to believe him; still, she hesitated. Uppermost in her heart, all these days, was a passion of pure scorn. It cast over Otto’s honest figure the glory of an aureole.
“Father,” she began again, “do you—would you really be happy to know I had accepted him?”
“You could not easily find a better husband,” replied the Dominé, evasively.
She knitted her brows, as was her wont in moments such as this.
“It would not make you sad, but happy,” she insisted.
“Sad—no, no,” cried the Dominé, eagerly. “To think of it—sad!”
“But—Java?” she said, faintly.
“My dear, you willnotgo to Java,” exclaimed the Dominé, very loud. “That you must tell him at once. You will stay in Holland. I may be very selfish, but I don’t care.”
He suddenly felt there were limits.
Ursula rose.
“Yes,” she said, softly, “I must go to him myself. It is a very terrible resolve.”
The Dominé smiled, with a tear in his eye.
“‘It is ever from the greatest hazards,’” he quoted, “‘that the greatest honors are gained.’ Pericles said that. It is a good motto for this day.”
Ursula went straight to the study, where Otto was tramping up and down. His face brightened as he saw her enter.
“Are you bringing me the answer yourself?” he asked, coming forward with outstretched hands.
“You saved my life,” she replied, simply. “It is yours.”
“Josine,” said the Dominé, “are you well enough to listen to me for a moment?” He spoke with unmistakable impatience, eying the limp bundle on the sofa.
“Roderigue, how can you be so unkind?” came the plaintive answer. “After the terrible escape our dear Ursula has had, my weak nerves are still naturally unstrung. I cannot bear to think of it. All night I seemed rushing through space with her and—him. What musthenot have suffered?”
“Well, it’s over now,” replied the Dominé, “and he’s thinking of other things. In fact, that’s what I came in about. He has just been asking me to consent to his engagement.”
“I knew it,” said Miss Mopius, and sank back on the sofa-cushion.
The Dominé started. “What!” he cried. “Did he speak to you first?”
“Roderigue,” replied the lady, with spirit, “I am old enough—I mean I am not so young that his speaking to me could be considered improper.”
“No, indeed,” began the puzzled Dominé.
“I gave him the answer of my heart, as I doubt not he told you. You will give us your blessing, my brother?”
The Dominé rose to his feet.
“Hearing you talk,” he said, testily, “one might conclude it was you had made the match.”
At this monstrous accusation the poor creature burst into tears. “To think,” she sobbed, “that my poor Mary’s husband should say such a thing of me. Roderigue, I wonder that dear saint did not teach you what a woman’s feelings are!”
Of all means by which Josine unconsciously tormented the pastor there was none like her allusions to his departed wife. Moments could be produced in the widower’s calm day when that brave soldier might have felt it in him to strike a woman.
Only to slap her.
“Well, I can’t help it,” he said, still in the same irritatedtone. He was disappointed in his future son-in-law. “Ursula and Otto must just settle it between them.”
“Ursula is a child,” replied the spinster. “She will be pleased to get so charming an uncle.”
“Hey?” said the pastor, stopping very short. Then it all dawned upon him as when a curtain is drawn away.
“Otto has asked Ursula to marry him, and she has consented,” he said, gruffly. For some forms of human weakness the man had not an atom of pity. Poor Miss Mopius received the blow straight in her face. She “never forgave” her brother afterwards for striking out. Striking a woman, after all.
She rose to the occasion, sitting up at once, tremulous but dignified.
“There is some mistake,” she said. “Youhave misunderstood orIhave been duped. In one case the man is a fool; in the other he is a villain. No gentleman makes love to two women at a time. I will thank you to leave me alone for the present, Roderigue.”
“So be it, Josine,” answered the Dominé, “but, remember, it was Will-be-Will made darkness in the town of Mansoul.” Then his heart smote him for too great severity. “My dear,” he said, in a kindly voice, “it is the old story with us all. Still Prince Emmanuel answers Mr. Loth-to-Stoop: ‘I will not grant your master, no, not the least corner to dwell in. I will have all to myself.’”
When the last uncertainty had faded from Miss Mopius’s soul, she merely said to Ursula, “He might be your father.Idon’t think it’s nice for a young girl to marry an old man.”
Ursula did not reply “For an old woman to marry a young man is worse.” She only thought it. We can all be magnanimous in victory. But Ursula could even have been so, if required, in defeat. Her faults were never little ones.
To her confidential spinster friends Miss Mopius remarked,“She is very plain. I can’t imagine what he sees in her. So brown! But, then, of course, he is past the heyday of youth, and a littleusé. Well, some women like to get their lovers second-hand.”
“I shouldn’t,” remarked one mittened crony.
“No, indeed,” replied Miss Mopius.