“Done,” said Gerard, and they waited near the dark entry in silence, puffing.
Presently Popa came by.
“Damn my luck!” ejaculated the little officer, with great energy, somewhere deep down in his throat. He got up. “Well, it’s fairly earned, and I wish you joy. I hope you’ll have a chance to-morrow of getting near the blackguards. Meanwhile I must make myself as comfortable as I can.”
“Oh, as likely as not you’ll see me back before breakfast to-morrow. However, if there’s a fight on, of course I shall ask leave to stay.”
“Of course. Well, here are the despatches. And—by Jove! Helmont, I beg your pardon—here are your letters that Krayveld brought up with him. I quite forgot, thinking of other things. Well, I wish you joy, that’s all I can say.”
“Thanks. I suppose I had better be getting ready.”
“How many men will you take? Half a dozen?”
“A sergeant and six fusileers. I shall let the men volunteer. But I want a couple of natives for the sake of their ears and eyes.” Gerard went out and set to work at once, selecting the best men from among a swarm of candidates. Half an hour afterwards everything was ready; the eight dark figures filed through the purposely darkened gateway: who could saywhat eyes might be watching, alarmed by Streeling’s sudden blaze? Gerard came first, with the sergeant, their loaded revolvers in their hands. Popa brought up the rear.
Gerard reflected that he owed his good-fortune to Popa’s opportune appearance. “Well, I’ll take you,” he said. “You’re in want of something to cheer you up. But none of your pranks, mind.”
Popa saluted.
A clearing, as has been said, surrounded the Benting; immediately beyond that, however, the party plunged into the forest, and were obliged to advance along the narrow path in single file. They had about two miles to go.
The night hung heavy in the enormous trees and among the tangled masses of underwood. Stars there were none, and the air seemed to be full of gray floatings that veiled its usual transparency. So much the better.
It was very silent now. The whole line of them went creeping forward, with eyes to right and left, everywhere alert, every footstep hushed, as the dim trunks loomed through the darkness in continuous clumps. It was the custom of the Achinese to lurk by these pathways day and night, waiting with infinite patience for the rare chance of killing a single foe. At any moment their shriek might burst forth and their scimitars might flash. The air all around was full of indistinct movement, soft and sultry under the palms and waringin-trees.
“’St! What was that?” They all stood as granite, finger on trigger. Only some faint breath high above them touching the never-silent tjimaras.
“Confound them tjimaras, sir!” whispers the sergeant. “They’re every bit as bad, sir, as women’s tongues.”
“’St! Forward.” Every now and then Gerard halts and listens; his thoughts are of the precious packet sleeping on his breast.
In fact, it was madness, this night excursion along the most uncertain of foot-paths. Why couldn’t they send up their despatches earlier?
Krayveld had answered that they couldn’t send them before they got them. Gerard shrugged his shoulders in the dark.DespatchesfromGovernment were hardly likely, he thought, to be worth a single soldier’s life.
With a feeling of very real relief he reached the rice-fields beyond the wood. He stopped and counted his men. Rear-guard there all right? Forward. Who’s that making his poniard click?
Far in the distance, miles away, lay a couple of sleeping villages; those nearest had been razed to the ground; some brute was howling among the ruins. From the fort rang the beat of the hour, as struck by a sentry on a wooden block, breaking across the solitude with terrifying distinctness. Eleven.
Beyond the rice-fields, through the tall, still grass, and by the sickening marshes, with their reeds and sleeping water-fowl, then up again into the great forest, darkling, dangerous. Into the depths of the forest, deeper, deeper.
“Hist!” In a moment the men had formed round their leader, for the noise of crackling branches resounded in every ear. Again.
The enemy was upon them!
“Kalong. Kalong,” said one of the Amboinese.
“It’s the big bats, sir, out feeding,” echoed the sergeant.
“I know,” replied Gerard. “What’s all this row about? Single file. We shall have to be doubly careful.” And on they went, with that occasional breaking of twigs around them that was infinitely worse than the silence had been. It would now prove impossible immediately to distinguish an approaching assassin. The darkness seemed to thicken, as with a flood of ink.
At last they once more stood outside the jungle. Before them, with an open space intervening, lay the camp, black against the darkness of the plain. All around stretched the rapid ruin of a roughly widened clearing; the smell of roots and rotting plants and freshly-hewn logs was almost insupportable. It would have signalled the camp from afar. Every one who has slept in these clearings knows the odor. From time to time a rocket went up in silence, piloting the patrols.
“Halt!” said Gerard. “What’s wrong behind?”
“Rear man missing, sir.”
He turned sharply. “Impossible!” No one ventured to contradict him, but their silence did not alter the fact that Popa had dropped away.
“We must go back,” said Gerard. “He must have fallen. How did you not notice?”
“Please, Lieutenant, it was the crackling. I thought it was the Kalongs.”
They retraced their steps in glum anxiety, and searched back into the forest for nearly half a mile. At last Gerard dared go no farther; already his military conscience pricked him. The military conscience almost always pricks.
“I must take on the despatches,” he said. “After that we can see. I don’t understand at all. He can’t have fallen. You, Drok, surely we have gone far enough?”
“We have gone too far, Lieutenant,” replied the man in an awe-struck whisper. “I saw him farther on than this.”
“Very well; it can’t be helped. Forward.” In grave procession the little party reached the camp.
Having delivered up his despatches, Helmont asked first for leave to stay and see to-morrow’s operations, and secondly for a search-party to hunt up his missing man. It cannot be said that the Colonel jumped at the latter proposal.
The next day was to be an important one, and he wanted every soul that could to get a decent sleep.
“Depend upon it,” he said, “the fellow has been cut down by a marauder. They always cut down the last of the troop.”
“Yes, but I should like to find that marauder,” replied Gerard, “or the corpse. May I go back with my own men?”
“Oh, certainly,” said the commanding officer, a little testily. “You may go back all the way, if you like. Good-night.”
So the little troop slipped away from the encampment and back into the jungle again. They all considered it hard lines, but entirely unavoidable. And they peered the more closely into the dark.
Presently one of the native soldiers stopped on a slope and pointed to the bush close behind him. None of the Europeans could distinguish anything.
“Man gone down here,” he said; “there’s a track.” He knelt and began cautiously feeling along the ground. “Lieutenant, there’s a man gone down here,” he repeated; “gone into the Aleh-Aleh (the long grass); you could see if it wasn’t so black.”
A path of any kind there certainly was not; still, Gerard consented to reconnoitre a short distance, cautiously following the trail.
It turned abruptly, and after a few steps which rendered them clear of the trees, the little party stood enclosed in tall green spikes on every hand.
“’Tis along here to the right,” persisted the fusileer. Here, at least, the dark sky hung free above them, and the air was fresher than in the wood. Gerard hesitated. “We shall lose ourselves,” he said. But even as he spoke a faint purl of human voices reached them, evidently coming from some distance farther on down below. For a moment they crouched, with straining ears. Then “Forward,” said their leader, and they slunk through the labyrinth, with constant precaution lest any weapon should catch, pausing to hearken, seeking the sound.
Their pulses quickened as they realized that it was drawing nearer. After a slow descent, which seemed wellnigh endless, they could even distinguish a flow of sound in suppressed but eager torrent. It was impossible to distinguish words, yet suddenly each man’s heart asked the self-same, silent question: Why were these Achinese marauders, with whom they were on the point of colliding, conversing inMalay? The voice ceased.
The Aleh-Aleh broke off unexpectedly on the ridge of a steep incline. Gerard, slipping forward, sprang back under shelter, not a moment too soon. In the sudden opening he had descried above them, a little to the right, as the fusileer had foretold, a dozen of the enemy grouped on a narrow, bamboo-protected ledge round a tiny, low-burning lamp. Cautiously he now peeped forth, and by the feeble flicker recognized the wretched Popa, bound and stripped to the waist, in the centre of the group.
“There,” he said, pointing. “Forward.” Slipping and crawling along the edge, so as to keep clear of the swish of thegrass, the men followed him up. Under them the abyss fell straight.
On the skirts of the little plateau they stopped. They could now plainly perceive that Popa had a gaping klewang wound across his shoulder. What feeble light there was had been turned full upon the prisoner, the wild forms of his captors sinking away into the darkness. They have been arguing with him, reflected Gerard, trying to induce him, by the usual horrible threats, to desert. Judging by the man’s countenance, they had now accorded him time to consider.
Even while his comrades stood watching, waiting—to shoot were to imperil the central figure—the allotted moments must have run themselves out. One of the Achinese sprang to his feet, his big gold button twinkling, and with a hideous flash of his scimitar across the dilating stare of the soldiery, he swept off one of the prisoner’s ears. Another started up with a similar movement, but before he could fling himself forward a shrill chorus of shrieks overflowed on all sides. Somehow, he can never tell how, Gerard was up on the ledge, in the midst of them; Popa’s assailant had fallen, shot through the breast; a dozen distorted, yelling faces were seething around the drawn sword of the “Wolanda.”
Thirty seconds, swift, interminable, an unbroken clash of steel through the smoke and crash of the bullets—thirty seconds intervened before his soldiers, getting up to him, plunged fiercely forward, with bayonet and poniard, into the indistinguishable mass. The little lamp had immediately rolled over; the solemn darkness shook with a turmoil of oaths and outcries rising high above the clang of the fighting and the thud of the fallen. In a moment it was all over. Yet the trembling air still seemed to listen among the sudden silence of the tall tjimara-trees.
A heavy groan shuddered slowly forth. Then another. And again another in a different voice.
Gerard struck a match and lighted a pocket-lantern. Of his seven men, three, including Popa, still stood upright; a fourth rose, stumbling, from the dark confusion on the ground. Of the three remaining, two were already dead (one decapitated),and the third lay unconscious. Not one of the Achinese was able to continue the fray.
“Hurry up,” said Gerard, cutting Popa’s bonds. “No, I’m not wounded; it’s nothing but a scratch. We’re quite near the camp; the least hurt must help the others.”
The tomtom, the enemy’s well-known alarm, came thumping down the valley, re-echoed on every side from twenty watchful hiding-places.
“Hurry up for your lives!” cried Gerard. In shamefaced silence Popa pointed to an easier track. Slowly and laboriously the two badly wounded were passed down by the others; the trail was followed back again; the foot-path was reached. Near the entrance to the wood a patrol met them, sent out on the report of the firing.
“And you, Popa, speak,” said Gerard, after the tension was over.
“It is my crime, Lieutenant; the fault be on my head. I observed the trail as we went by; my thoughts were heavy for the murdered Adja. I wandered down it a few steps in my curiosity, knowing I could soon rejoin you. Suddenly one struck at me from the darkness through the grass.”
“And why did they not come after us?” questioned Gerard.
“You were gone on, up above; the grass is high. There were two of them only; I was alone, marauding.”
“You shall be shot to-morrow,” said Gerard.
“Lieutenant, it is right.”
But on the morrow nobody had any time to think of shooting Popa. At a very early hour, in the dewy silence of sunrise, the gates of the fortified camp were thrown back, and the stream of soldiers, solemnly emerging, went curling down into the rice-fields, with a long glitter of guns. All eyes were fixed on the farther frontier of forest, where stretched, half-hidden, the low, sullen line of the enemy’s defence. A couple of advance forts, whose small cannon were proving especially troublesome, had been marked out for the morning’s attack. Of late these operations had been greatly restricted, and the men nowsent out accepted gratefully a possibility of painless death. For the shadow of cholera lay lurid upon the camp.
Gerard was indeed in luck, as Streeling had said, after all these wistfully patient months. He had taken a sick man’s place, and was acting as a (mounted) captain.
In the slow splendor of the burning daybreak, across that vast expanse of increasing sun, the “right half of the seventeenth battalion,” separating from the main body, advanced with half a company of sappers, under cover of artillery, against the fortifications of Lariboe. They were barely within range when the enemy opened fire from his lilas or little cannon, almost immediately backing up the discharge with the flat bang of numerous blunderbusses and the rarer whistle of the breech-loader. The roar of his resistance now became continuous, and soon his intrenchments ran like a torrent of flame under rapidly thickening clouds.
At a distance of some two hundred and fifty paces the troops halted, momentarily, to send back a volley in reply. Then on they went again, silently filling up the gaps in their ranks, while, after the custom of Eastern warfare, a hailstorm of curses and abusive epithets now mingled with the deadlier missiles that poured into their midst. At fifty paces the order was given to charge.
The men, rushing forward to their special point of attack, found themselves arrested by an outer hedge of thick bamboo bushes, with a broad border of bamboo spikes. Once close up against this position they were somewhat more sheltered from the fire of the central line, and, moreover, protected by the artillery behind them; but the garrison of the fort did not leave them one moment unharassed. They were now compelled to unsheathe their knives, and, with the aid of the sappers, they began calmly carving a passage through the dense obstruction of the bamboos.
A few terrible minutes elapsed. Some of the soldiers, cut by the spikes, flung themselves in furious effort against this living wall; others recoiled for a moment, disheartened by the groans of the wounded around them, feeling hopelessly arrested between advance and retreat. Then, as death still continued toblaze down upon them, amid the taunts of the enemy, they rushed bravely to their task again, cheered by their officers, who well knew the strain of such an obstinate impediment. Every moment of delay was calamitous. Through an opening the fort became visible, lying well back behind a field, its ramparts vaguely crowded with brightly turbaned heads. And half-way between hedge and fort rose insolently the banner of Acheen’s Sultan, with its crescent and klewangs, over a stuffed doll, intended for a caricature of the idolized Dutch General, ignominiously hanging by the feet.
“THEY BEGAN CALMLY CARVING A PASSAGE THROUGH THE DENSE OBSTRUCTION”
“THEY BEGAN CALMLY CARVING A PASSAGE THROUGH THE DENSE OBSTRUCTION”
Not one man who was there but will remember with what a fury of reprisal this childish insult filled our breasts. Amid shouts of execration the attack on the breach was renewed; but at that moment, above the hacking and swearing, a dark mass, rushing swiftly from the background, rose mighty in mid-air, and at one leap—grown historic—Helmont’s horse cleared spikes, soldiers, and bamboos, and landed serenely on the farther side. Then, galloping up to the derisive effigy, Helmont rapidly cut it loose, bringing down the enemy’s flag along with it, and, flinging the colors of Acheen across his revolver, he fired through them five swift barrels at the clustering turbans which were concentrating their aim on this unexpected target. Then, holding the image superbly aloft, he began backing his horse—all in one exquisite instant of time—and fell heavily, horse, rider, and effigy rolling together amid a sudden rush of blood. Before and behind rose a mingling yell as of wild beasts wounded. A little brown Amboinese, his clothes and limbs torn and ensanguined, ran forward, having fought his way first through the aperture, and flung himself as a screen across the prostrate officer. Only a moment longer and the whole lot of them, with faces distorted and uniforms disordered, came pouring over the field under a fierce increase of projectiles. They swept upward in the madness of the storm, the brief pandemonium of shouts, shrieks, and imprecations, the whirlwind of firing and fighting, in a mystery of dust and smoke. And a cheer, leaping high above that hell, leaping high with a human note of gladness, announced that the fort had been carried, that victory was won. Up with ourown orange rag on the summit! Hark to the shrill blare of the bugle! Hurrah!
They disengaged Helmont from his dying charger and carried him away to the ambulance. In undressing him, cutting loose the clothes, the doctor came on his parcel of letters, and, a moment afterwards, on an old brown glove. The left hand still firmly clutched the hideously grinning doll. Popa would permit no one to force the fingers asunder—Popa, who, in spite of his shoulder-wound, had obtained leave that morning to get himself killed by the enemy if he could, and who certainly had done his best. The doctor gently put aside the relic and the opened letters. Gerard had still read them the night before. There had been one more, which he had read twice over, and had then burned carefully and ground to dust.
“Helmont,” cried the purple Colonel, hurriedly, stooping low by the young man’s unconscious ear. “Can’t you understand what I’m saying? I’ve only a moment. It’s the Military Cross. Gentlemen, surely that should call him to life again. Helmont, I swear, by the heavens above us, it’s bound to be the Military Cross!”
The Dowager looked up from her placid embroidery and smiled to Plush. Beyond the great gray window the sleepy twilight was softly sinking back into an unbroken veil of mist. “What a dull drab day it has been!” said the Dowager. “I wonder—” But she left her sentence unfinished. And the folds of the curtain hung dense. For an Angel of Mercy has drawn it across our horizon.
THE FINGER OF SCORN
It was quite true that the days at the Horst were drab-colored. They seemed to be that even all through the long and brilliant summer, and their darkening could hardly be called perceptible when the northern sun sank from sight for seven slow months. Time appeared to lower over the house with the dumb threat of an approaching thunder-storm. And some people are fretful before a thunder-storm; and some hold their breaths.
The Bois-le-Duc Helmonts were settled at the Home Farm. The tranquil mother had said: Oh yes; she still knew how to milk cows; it would really be rather amusing! And she had spread her fat hands on her ample lap and smiled her good-natured smile. But Theodore had frowned. “Leave the cow-milking,” he had said, bitterly, “to the Baroness Ursula.” As soon as he got away from Ursula he felt that he hated her.
His temper did not improve during the first year of his new occupation. Work as he would—night and day—he could not make up for initial mistakes, nor could he victoriously combat increasing agricultural depression. The dispossessed farm-steward successfully harassed him on every hand. If Otto, the lord of the manor, had made himself unpopular by putting down abuses, what must be the fate of this stranger, with his perky, boyish face? The whole neighborhood, for miles round, was full of people with grievances, some deep down, of Otto’s inflicting, others freshly bleeding under Ursula’s hand. And a low tide of resentment was secretly swelling under smooth water against My Lady Nobody.
Ugly stories began to be told about her, diligently propagatedby Meerman, the discarded agent. As if all her administrative sins were not sufficient, accusations had lately cropped up which appealed far more vividly to the popular imagination. Substantial housewives whispered behind her back “Fie! fie!” and young fellows winked to each other, grinning. No one knew whence these stories had suddenly sprung, but everybody had heard them. A patient inquirer might, perhaps, have traced their origin to Klomp’s cottage in the wood.
When they first reached the ear of the village constable that worthy portentously shook his head. It was in the tavern parlor of Horstwyk, where the lesser notables sat nightly, pipe in hand, waiting for each other to speak. The village constable was a great man, chiefly because he managed to keep clear of animosities, and his opinion carried weight. Every man present, leering up at him in the peculiar, deliberate peasant way, felt that he knew more than he deemed it wise to acknowledge, and they all approved his prudence. But nothing could more resistlessly have condemned the Lady of the Manor. The Law—mysterious Weigher of all men in secret balances—knew.
“There’s something written up against her,” they reflected, awe-struck. Juffers, the constable, merely said:
“The Lady Baroness is a very charitable lady. I wish you all good-night.”
He shook his head to himself all the way home, and in passing a particular spot, by a great elm-tree, on the road near the Manor-house, he flashed his dark-lantern across the ground, as if struck by a sudden doubt.
Just then—some two years after Otto’s death—there were plenty of rumors afloat to interest the village cronies. Quite recently lazy, good-for-nothing Pietje Klomp had come to grief, “as everybody had always expected she would,” in the usual “good-for-nothing” manner. Strangely enough, her equally lazy and worthless father had driven her forth from under his roof with unexpected energy—an abundance of oaths and blows—when, confident in his oft-proven affection, she ventured to confess her now hopeless disgrace. After half a night of hail and snow in the wood she had crept back to obtain admittance from the pitiful Mietje, but next morning her inflexible parent hadonce more turned her adrift. She had watched for an opportunity while he dozed, and then quietly slipped to her accustomed seat. During several days this singular duel had lasted, and ultimately, of course, the woman’s persistence had triumphed. Klomp only ejected the girl when he had to get up, anyhow. As long, therefore, as he remained on his bench by the stove she was safe. And Mietje, tearfully exerting herself, took care to anticipate all her father’s few wishes—for coffee, fuel, last week’s newspaper,et cetera—and to keep him “immobilized” during a great part of the day. He was not unwilling, provided he could scowl at Pietje in the pauses of his almost continuous snore.
“SUBSTANTIAL HOUSEWIVES WHISPERED BEHIND HER BACK, ‘FIE! FIE!’”
“SUBSTANTIAL HOUSEWIVES WHISPERED BEHIND HER BACK, ‘FIE! FIE!’”
Ursula, of course, heard from Freule Louisa what Freule Louisa had heard from her maid. So Ursula called to see the criminal. She had compromised with the ladies of her household, and only went to visit such patients as the doctor had certified free from any risk of infection. The village, knowing this, wrote her down a coward.
“May I come in?” asked Ursula at Klomp’s door.
No answer; for the door was locked, Klomp would not stir to open it, and Pietje dared not pass near her father. She cowered in her corner, stiller than any scratchy mouse.
Ursula rattled the lock in vain. Then she peeped through the window, darkening its dirt, and saw Pietje’s woful eyes staring out of the gloom from the floor. With the resolute movement she herself delighted in, she thrust up the low window from outside and stepped over the sill.
“Would you shut it, please, m’m, now you’rein?” said Klomp’s sleepy voice.
Ursula sat down in the middle of the room, facing Pietje’s dark corner.
“I’ve come to seeyou,” she said, very severely.
She could not help herself. She knew that it was every right-minded woman’s duty under these circumstances to be very, very severe.
Pietje moved a little uneasily, but did not rise. So, without delay, Ursula began her lecture. It was very conscientious and rather long, and all quite true and exceedingly severe. Afterthe opening sentences Pietje’s head bent low, and about mid-way she began to cry. She had not cried much during the scenes with her father, and tears now seemed to come to her as a pleasurable relief. Entering into the spirit of the thing, she cried so very loud that Ursula’s lecture had to come to an abrupt conclusion, tailless, like a Manx cat. In how far Pietje calculated on this result none but she may presume to decide.
“So, of course, you must go to a reformatory,” said Ursula, firmly. “I am willing to help you on condition that you takemyadvice.”
“Don’t want to go to no performatory,” sobbed Pietje, with vague perplexities concerning circuses and ballet girls. “Father’ll keep me if I says I’m sorry.”
A grunt from the other end of the room.
“Pietje, you have behaved very badly,” continued Ursula. “It seems to me that you hardly understand the wickedness of your act. You only regret its unpleasant results. No, Pietje, you are”—she felt it her positive, painful duty to speak plainly—“a very wicked, guilty, evil-hearted girl.”
“Dear me, Mevrouw,” growled a voice half-choked against a sleeve, “can’t you leave the poor creature in peace?”
“No, Klomp,” replied Ursula, “’tis my duty to help you both. I understand and appreciate your righteous anger, but, fortunately,Ican provide Pietje with a home. It is only natural you should not wish her to remain near Mietje.”
At this very moment Mietje came down-stairs.
“Father, here’s your li—yes, sister’s going to stay with me,” she said.
“Get you up-stairs again,” shouted Klomp, with a big oath, “and don’t come down till I call you.” He sat up, his listless face full of fire. “Now, Mevrouw,” he said,“you just kindly go back to the Manor-house, please. That’s where you belong—now—and thank your stars for it. And leave poor people like us to settle our troubles between us. Pietje’s a poor, ignorant girl, and she ’ain’t got the wit to go hunting for a husband—least of all in the papers. She just took the first villain that came fooling her way.”
“But, Klomp, I had understood—” began Ursula, rising with dignity.
“No, you hadn’t, m’m; there’s just the mistake. You hadn’t understood nothing, begging your pardon. Nor, in fact, you needn’t. There isn’t anything to understand.”
He actually got up, and, shuffling across to the door, he opened it. There could be no mistaking his exceptional earnestness now.
“Well,” said Ursula, gently, preparing to depart, “when you want me, when Pietje wants me, send up to the Manor-house, and I will do whatever I can.”
He bolted the door behind her.
“Father—” began Pietje, timidly.
“Hold your tongue,” he broke in. “I don’t want to know you’re there.” And he threw himself down violently on his bench.
Ursula had nearly reached home before the meaning of Klomp’s attack recoiled upon her brain. “Looking for a husband in the papers.” Suddenly she understood. It was the old story of the trysting-place cropping up again. Not for nothing had Adeline stayed with the Klomps! Her brow mantled, and with quite unusualhauteurshe acknowledged the salute of two passing laborers.
The men looked at each other.
“Stuck up, ain’t she?”
“Yes”—with immediate oblivion of all former graciousness—“so she allus was.”
The old Baroness received her daughter-in-law in a tremble of pink-spotted excitement. There were letters from Acheen—exceedingly important letters! Ursula must sit down at once and listen. Gerard had been in action. Gerard had done something wonderfully brave. He had been just a little bit wounded in doing it—oh, nothing, the merest scratch; but it happened to be the right hand, so a comrade wrote for him. He was going to be rewarded in some magnificent manner—made a colonel?—and the deed had been so very brave he would probably soon be sent home again.Thatwas the Dowager’s reward.
“Sent home?” repeated Ursula, motionless in her chair. “Mamma, did you say he was wounded?”
“Oh, the merest scratch,” replied the Dowager, testily. “He says so himself. Ursula, you always try to make people nervous. Gerard never lied to me. And, you see, he is coming back. If he were really hurt he would never undertake so long a journey. I remember my poor dear husband”—she always avoided, if possible, saying “papa” to Ursula—“once cut his hand with a bread-knife so badly that he couldn’t use it for nearly a month.”
“Oh yes,” admitted Ursula, hastily. “Yes—yes, I dare say it is nothing. I am glad, mamma, I am glad. I am proud of him.”
“You!” replied the old Baroness, quite rudely, in a tone altogether strange. “What is he to you? When he comes back, Ursula, he will take away the Horst.”
“I dare him to do it!” said Ursula, fiercely. She drew herself up, looking down on the poor little heap of ruffles by the writing-table. Some moments elapsed before she spoke again. “I found the letter you were looking for, mamma,” she said, and her voice had grown quite gentle; “it is one from the late Prince Henry to papa.”
“Thank you, Ursula. I am afraid I was rude to you just now. I have no wish to be rude to you, nor to any one. It is not in my nature to be rude. But this news from Acheen has excited me. I am not as young as I was”—she peered across, with a quick glance of anxiety, at her daughter-in-law—“yet I am thankful to reflect that Gerard, when he comes, will find me but very little changed.”
The Freule Louisa came in. “Have you heard?” she asked. “Now, that’s the kind of thing I like, and I never expected it of Gerard. I always thought Gerard was a bit of a coward, a curled darling of the drawing-room, like Plush. Didn’t you, Ursula?”
“No, indeed,” replied Ursula.
Freule Louisa giggled suddenly. “Well, I dare say you knew better,” she said.“Only I hope he won’t come back too soon.”
“Why? What?” exclaimed the Dowager. Ursula had left the room.
“Because Tryphena has just sent him out a large box of Javanese tracts to get distributed among the enemy. We feel that the Achinese should not be killed, but Christianized. Ursula’s father behaved very badly about the tracts. He said that the only way to get them ‘sent on’ would be for the soldiers to wrap their bullets in them. Scandalous, for a Christian minister, and so I told Josine.”
“Louisa—”
“And he says, besides, that the Achinese don’t know the language.”
“Louisa—”
“As if they couldn’t learn. I dare say there isn’t much difference.”
“Louisa, when Gerard comes he will send Ursula back to her father.”
“I doubt it. You know,Ihave always said—”
“Don’t say it again; it sounds like—like blasphemy.”
The Dowager seemed for the moment to recover all her intellectual force.
“He will take back the Horst—do you hear? They dare not refuse it him after what he has done. And he will marry money. Then nothing will be left me to do after I have seen him except to finish my Memoir before I depart in peace. I should like to tell Theodore that the Memoir was finished.”
“If he is going to prove so strong a man,” replied Aunt Louisa, “I think I shall leave him what little money I possess. But what is that? A mere drop in the ocean. I am a poor woman, Cécile, as you know.”
ARRESTED
That evening some household duty called Ursula into the unused up-stairs corridor, which as a rule she avoided. And as she passed the “Death-rooms” she very nearly came into collision with Hephzibah, issuing from them, eyelids downcast.
Ursula felt that the woman had been watching her, as usual. And although, as a rule, she resisted the feeling, to-day, by a sudden impulse, she turned like a dog at bay.
“If it makes you uncomfortable, why do you come here at all?” she said.
“Why do you?” retorted the woman, adding “Mevrouw.”
“I never do; I was only passing,” said Ursula.
“Ah, youdaren’t. But I must. I can’t help myself. I can’t rest down-stairs. I seem to hear it calling to me all the time. Mevrouw, itdragsme up. There’s guilt in this house. It won’t sleep.”
Ursula leaned up against the wall and closed her eyes.
“Have you anything you wish to say to me, Hephzibah?” she replied. “If so, say it.”
The woman hesitated.
“No, I’ve nothing to say to you,” she began, slowly. “I suppose it’s true, Mevrouw, that the Jonker is coming home?”
“Of course it’s true.”
Hephzibah began moving away.
“If you go in there, Mevrouw,” she said, “perhaps you’ll hear it to-night. It’s groaning and gasping worse than ever to-night.”
She ran down the long passage.
“O Lord! O Lord, have mercy!” she murmured.“I’ve done what I could to make amends. I thought, after what I’d done, I should never hear it again. O Lord, I’m not a bad woman! There’s those sit in high places is a great deal worse than me.”
“The creature is crazy,” said Ursula, aloud, as she pushed open the door of the antechamber.
In the inner room all was dark and still. Ursula shut herself in, and sank down by the bed.
“Otto, I have done my best,” she said.
An immense weight of guilt lay upon her. Gerard was grievously wounded, was dying; perhaps already dead. Who could tell what was happening out yonder, in the fatal sun-blaze? Before a message could be flashed across the waters his body would already lie rotting in the red-hot ground. And his soul, for all she knew, might be standing, even now, by her side.
“Gerard, I have done it for the best,” she whispered.
But the words brought her no relief. She knew that if this man died his life would be required at her hands. And if he returned alive, yet broken in health, mutilated, crushed, she would have to confront him ever after, reading in every furrow of his forehead the charge against herself.
“I have done right,” she gasped. “I could not do otherwise. I have done right.”
And her thoughts went back to Otto, dying here, gasping out with every successive stifle his last, his only appeal. For a long time she knelt there, her face upon her hands.
“If only some one would answer!” she thought. “If only one of them would speak!”
The place was very silent. She could hear the dog Monk sniffing and vaguely whining beyond the outer door.
“If only Otto would answer me! If only he would release me! What am I that I must bear this weight single-handed? If only I knew—if only I knew!”
A great agony fell upon her, such as was strange to her strong and steadfast nature. She wrung her hands, and, prostrate against the oaken, empty bedstead, in impotent protest, she moaned softly through the darkness.
Suddenly some one—something—struck her through the darkness, heavily; she fell back, losing consciousness, across the floor.
When she opened her eyes they rested on Hephzibah. The waiting-woman knelt, with a crazed expression on her white face, peering close down upon Ursula, by the faint glimmer of a night-lamp on the floor. Ursula shuddered, and dropped her eyes again.
“Not dead!” exclaimed Hephzibah, in a distinctly disappointed tone.
This touch of involuntary humor restored the invalid. She tried to sit up, and lifted one hand to her hair, which seemed to have grown oppressively warm and unsettled. She brought away her fingers covered with blood.
“I am bleeding still,” she said. “What has happened, Hephzibah? Help me, please.”
The woman pointed impressively to a clumsy carved ornament lying near her, which had fallen from among several others placed on the rickety canopy of the bed.
“Thatstruck you,” she said. “I thought it had killed you. ‘Judgment is mine,’ saith the Lord.”
Ursula staggered to her feet. She became conscious of the great dog standing close beside her—attentive, benevolent. His deep eyes met hers; they were overflowing with sympathy. Steadily gazing, he wagged his tail.
“Help me to my room,” commanded Ursula. “There is no necessity for saying anything more. Get me some water.” She gave her orders calmly, and the woman obeyed them. “Leave me,” said Ursula, at last, lying back on a sofa with a bandage over her brow.
As soon as she was alone she got up, still dizzy, and rang the bell.
“The brougham,” she said to the man.
He hesitated, in doubt if he could possibly have heard aright.
“The brougham,” she repeated. “Tell Piet to get it ready as soon as possible. I am going far.”
“Your nobleness is not hurt?” he stammered.
“No, no. Be quick.” She hastily found a hat and mantle—shehad recently laid aside her mourning—and then waited till the carriage was announced.
“To the notary,” she said. “Tell Mevrouw that I shall not be back till late.”
Mynheer Noks lived some way out, on the farther side of Horstwyk. The coachman, unaccustomed to any sudden orders, whipped up his horse in surly surprise, and reflected on the chances of meeting the steam-tram.
His mistress did not think of the steam-tram to-day, often as she recalled, in passing it, her wild drive with Otto, and Beauty’s cruel death. To-day she sat motionless in the little close carriage, watching the lamps go flashing across the road-side trees in a weary monotony of change.
“Ifit had killed me!” that was all her thought. She had never realized till this moment the possibility of immediate death. There would always be time, she had reasoned, for final arrangements, death-bed scenes. People did not die without an illness, however sudden. Besides, when she had risen from the long prostration of her early widowhood, “God has not permitted me to die,” she had said. “He knew I had a mission to fulfil.”
And now—supposing she had never regained consciousness?
She saw the lights of Horstwyk pass by, and wondered if she should never reach the notary’s, and reproached herself for her foolishness.
“The notary is in?” she asked, eagerly, at his door.
Yes, the notary was in. He was entertaining some friends at dinner. Ursula drew back. “Show me into an office, or some such place,” she said. The notary, convivial in dress and appearance, came to her in a little chilly back room, full of inkstains and dusty deeds.
“Nothing is wrong, I hope,” he began; then, noticing the queer bandage under Ursula’s dark-red bonnet, “You have had an accident?”
“No,” replied Ursula. “Mynheer Noks, I am sorry to disturb you just now, but I can’t wait. If I were to die to-night, who would be my heir?”
“That depends upon whether you have made a will,” replied the notary.
“I have not made a will.”
“In that case your father is your natural heir.”
“So I thought. Then, notary, I must request you—I am very sorry to trouble you—but I must request you to make my will to-night.”
“My dear lady, certainly. I presume you have brought your written instructions? Leave them with me, and to-morrow I will bring up a draft which we can talk over together.” Ursula stopped him by a gesture.
“I must have the document signed and sealed,” she said, “with its full legal value, to-night.”
The notary stared at her; then he looked ruefully down at his resplendent, though already much crumpled, dress-shirt.
“I can’t help it,” continued Ursula, desperately. “It will only take you a moment—”
“Only a moment! Dear madame, documents of such importance—”
“Yes, only a moment. Just two sentences. That is all.”
The notary sat down with a sigh, and drew forward a sheet of paper. “You wish to say?” he asked, and shivered—twice. The first shiver was real, the second ostentatious.
The second caused Ursula to disbelieve both.
“Only this: if I die without other arrangements—”
“Pardon me. I must already interrupt you. You cannot die ‘with other arrangements’—the expression is exceedingly faulty—if you make a will.”
“I can alter it, surely!” exclaimed Ursula.
“Only by another will.” The notary sighed and looked at the clock. Quarter-past ten.
“Very well. I wish everything I possess to pass unconditionally to my brother-in-law, the Baron van Helmont.”
The notary gave a visible start, and pricked his pen into the great sheet of paper. He nodded his head with complacent approval.
“Should he be dead,” continued Ursula, “I wish it to belong to his cousin, the Jonker Theodore. That is all.”
“Quite so,” said the notary.“Quite right. And now, Mevrouw, I have only one objection.”
“No objection,” interrupted Ursula, vehemently. “There is none. Surely you have understood me?”
“I have understood you, but the objection remains. The thing can’t be done. That is all.”
Ursula started up.
“Can’t be done!” she cried. “I am the best judge, Mynheer Noks, of what I choose to do with my own. I understand your being vexed at my disturbing your party; but if you refuse to draw up my will as I desire, I shall drive on till the horse drops, in search of another attorney.” She trembled from head to foot.
But the lawyer was also exceedingly angry. He had always, since Otto’s death, disliked and distrusted “My Lady.”
“You may drive to Drum, if you wish to,” he replied, “but you won’t find a lawyer who can alter the law. No, Mevrouw, nor can I, even though you disturb my party to get it done. Be sure thatI’ddraw up a deed of gift, if you chose, this minute; but the law’s stronger than you or I. And as long as your father lives he must come into half of your property.”
“My father!” repeated Ursula. “Do you mean that I cannot disinherit him?”
“You cannot. If you happen to die before him, half of your possessionsmustpass to him. That is the law of the land; and, as I remarked, the law is stronger than you or I.”
“It is stronger than justice,” said Ursula.
The notary shrugged his shoulders.
“The case is altogether exceptional,” he answered. Again he shivered, and looked at the clock. “So I suppose we may as well leave the will-making to a more convenient occasion,” he added, half rising.
“No,” replied Ursula, with an imperious movement; “make it at once, if you please, just as I said. Never mind its being illegal. You will be law, and my father justice.”
“It is exceedingly incorrect,” said the notary.
“A great race like that of the Van Helmonts cannot let itself be tied down by every paltry police regulation,” replied Ursula, proudly. How often had she said so to herself, remembering her first experience of Gerard’shauteurat the railway station,hammering the thought firmly into her “bourgeois” heart: the high-born are a law unto themselves! So Gerard had understood, so Otto, and so she herself.
“Write it down,” she said, “and leave the rest to us.”
“Now, at once?”
She clinched her hands to avoid stamping forth her impatience.
“Now, at once,” she said.
“But there must be witnesses, Mevrouw.”
“Must there? Well, there are the servants, if some one can hold the horse, and—” She stopped.
“Witnesses,” she repeated. “You mean people who must learn what I have just told you? Oh, but that is infamous! No, no! Do you hear? I will not have it. I don’t care for your infamous laws. What I have said is between you and me. As long as I live no ‘witnesses’ shall know it.”
“You wish to make a secret will,” replied the lawyer, coldly. “Well, there is no objection to that. I will write it out for you, and you can copy and seal it. Then I draw up a deed of deposit, and the witnesses only witness that deed. But all this will take time. My guests will be thinking of departing. My wife—”
“Draw up a form,” exclaimed Ursula; “I will copy it to-night. My father and Gerard will respect my plainly stated wishes, even if—something were to happen to-night.”
Her voice dropped.
The notary glanced sideways, as he wrote, at the tall figure pacing restlessly to and fro. She was not natural, not herself; and herself, in his eyes, was strange enough for anything. That bandage! How had she come by so sudden a wound? What was the meaning of this unseemly hurry? He wondered uneasily whether this strange woman was minded to make away with herself. He resolved to do what he could to prevent it—a Christian duty, if rather an unwilling one.
“Here is the paper,” he said, rising. “Nothing more can, with decency, be done to-night. It has, you will understand, not the slightest legal value.”
“Give it me,” she replied;“I shall expect you to-morrow morning with your clerks. Thank you; I am sorry I was obliged to disturb you. Mynheer Noks. Can I pass out unobserved?”
He unlocked the office entrance for her, holding up the oil-lamp. Under the little portico she looked back.
“I do believe,” she said, “you think I am going to kill myself.”
“Mevrouw!” he stammered, horrified, over the wine-stain on his shirt-front—“Mevrouw!”
“Set your mind at rest, my good notary. Only fools think they can kill themselves. God has not made life quite so easy as that.”
The carriage-lights came twisting round to the little side gate. As the footman held open the door there was a glitter of polished glass and a cosey vision of shaded silk.
“Come to-morrow morning early,” said Ursula, with her foot on the step, “and you shall have one of my poor father-in-law’s regalias.”
As soon as she knew herself to be out of sight she pulled the check-string and ordered the coachman to drive to the Parsonage.
“There goes eleven o’clock,” said Piet to his companion. “One would think there was truth in what people say.”
“What do people say?” asked the footman.
“Why, that Mevrouw likes being out by herself of nights. At the tavern they were calling her ‘night-bird.’”
“I know what theyusedto call her,” grinned the fresh-faced young footman. “It used to be Baroness Nobody.”
“Oh, every one knows that. But hold your tongue. The Jonker Gerard never would allow a whisper on the box. He seemed to hear you in the middle of the night.”
“The Jonker Gerard was a real gentleman,” replied the footman, crossing his arms.
Ursula, as the carriage neared her old home, looked out anxiously, seeking for the light above the hall-door. It was gone; yet she knew her father to be in the habit of sitting up late. She lifted the carriage-clock to the ray from one of the lanterns: a quarter-past eleven.
“Let me out,” she said; “I will go round to the back.”
For a moment she stood, in the chill night, by the study window, listening. She knew perfectly well that she was acting foolishly; but that seemed no reason for leaving off.
“I must do it to-night,” she said; “I cannot sleep until it is done.”
She knocked at the window, timidly, terrified at the prospect of meeting with no response. The soughing of the trees struck cold upon her heart.
“Father!” she cried, with a sudden note of pain. “Father! Father!”
Somebody moved inside, and soon the heavy shutters, falling back, revealed the Dominé’s mildly astonished face against the large French window.
Ursula brushed past him and threw herself into the faded old leather chair. She looked up into his questioning eyes for one long moment; then, as thehome-feelof it all came over her—the room, the books, the loving countenance—she dropped forward on her hands and broke into convulsive weeping.
“Don’t be frightened,” she stammered between her sobs. “Nothing has happened. It’s only—only—” She wept on silently. Presently she dried her eyes. “It’s only—nothing,” she said, smiling. “I am stupid. I have come to you for courage, Captain, as when I was a little girl.”
The Dominé laid his single hand upon his daughter’s head, and under his gaze she found it very difficult to keep to her brave resolve.
“No, no, you must scold me,” she said. “That is not the way.”
“You do the scolding yourself, child. It is only fair that one of us should attempt the comforting. Have you hurt your forehead?”
“Yes,” replied Ursula, quickly. “It is not much, but it has upset me. It has upset me, you see.”
“Ursula, Ursula, when a woman like you finds cause for tears, a bodily pain comes almost like a diversion. Dear child, I know your path is far from smooth. Sometimes I wonder whether we did right. It seems to me as if, with you, it would have been ‘No crown, no cross.’”
“You ought to be proud of my career,” said Ursula, still resolutely smiling.
“And, I know, the home-cross is the worst cross,” continued the Dominé, as his eyes involuntarily wandered to a simpering portrait of Josine upon his writing-table. “Attack is not so hard, as all young soldiers soon find out. It is standing patient under fire.”
“You pity me. You encourage me,” said Ursula, with sudden vehemence. “You think I am not to blame. But if I were to blame for my misfortunes? If I were wrong? If I had brought them on myself?” She looked up anxiously.
“I should pity you all the more.”
“Father”—Ursula rose—“do you think I could ever become a criminal?”
“Let him that standeth,” replied the Dominé, “take heed lest he fall.”
“And if he be fallen already?”
“There is no better posture for prayer.”
The little room, so warm, soanheimelnd, grew very still. At that moment, perhaps, Ursula would have confessed everything.
But before she could utter another word the door was thrown violently open, and Miss Mopius, in a red flannel bed-gown and nightcap, rushed over the threshold with a recklessness which entangled her in the Dominé’s paper-basket, and precipitated her, a brilliant bundle of color, on the hearth-rug.
“I wish you would knock!” cried the Dominé, irrational from sheer annoyance. Ursula had started back into the shade, and her aunt did not at first perceive her.
“Roderigue,” gasped Miss Mopius, “there are thieves in the house!”
Burglary was Miss Mopius’s most persistent bugbear.
“What? Again?” said the Dominé.
“Hush. Not so loud. This time I distinctly heard them.”
“You always do,” interrupted the Dominé, who was an angel, but angry.
“At the window just under me, as I awoke from a restless sleep, I heard them, Roderigue. And Isawthem. I saw two figures stealthily creeping. Ah!” Miss Mopius, who had hissed out all this from the landing, now clutched her brother-in-law’s arm. “We shall be murdered,” she sobbed. “Shut the door, Roderigue; lock it. I don’t know how I ever managed to summon up courage to come down.”
She gave a shrill scream as something moved behind her. Ursula stepped forward.
“Fear sees every danger double,” said the Dominé, with a smile to his daughter. “Go up-stairs again, Josine, and take some of your Lob.”
“Ursula!” cried Miss Mopius, in a fury—“Ursula, if I die, my blood will be on your head! I was ill enough, Heaven knows, this evening, and now I shall have a sleepless night.” She put her hand to her side. “Ah!” she said. “Ah!” Her face was deadly pale. “It is not enough that I devote my whole life to your poor old father, while you—live in luxury and pomp.”
“I am very sorry,” answered Ursula, lamely. “You have dropped all the Sympathetico on the carpet.”
It was too true, and this misfortune annihilated Josine. In her hand she held the bottle, from which the stopper had escaped as she fell.
“I had forgotten it,” she said. “I had to take some before venturing down. Now I sha’n’t get a wink of sleep. But I shouldn’t have got that, anyhow.” She shuffled towards the door. “Roderigue, would you mind watching me up the stairs? I certainly saw two men. But, of course, it is very dark. Is Ursula going to stay all night?” Up-stairs, at her bedroom door, she turned. “Nothing wrong, I suppose, at the Horst?”
“No,” called back the Dominé from the hall.
“Of course not—only mad pranks. Ursula’s behavior is criminal.”
The Dominé’s thoughts lingered over this last word as he returned to his daughter. “She did not even observe your bandage!” he said.
“The room is dark,” replied Ursula.“I am going now, but I just wanted to ask you this. I came to ask it. By-the-bye, Captain, did you know that if I were to die you would succeed to the Horst and the Manor of Horstwyk?”
“Yes, I knew,” replied the Dominé, gravely. “But you are young, and I am old.”
“Captain, dear, if ever you own the Horst, I want you to give it to Gerard.”
“Yes,” replied the Dominé, more gravely still.
“You will, won’t you?”
“Let me ask you another question: Why don’tyougive it to Gerard, then?”
She faced him. “Because I can’t,” she said. “Don’t ask me, father. It isn’t mine to give.”
“Ursula, that would be exactly my standpoint. Property is never ours; we are God’s stewards. And if I became owner of this great estate—God forbid, child, God forbid!—I should hardly deem it right to disannul my responsibilities by abandoning them to another man.”
“You think the property is better in other hands?” cried Ursula, eagerly.
“I do not wish to say that of Gerard,” replied the Dominé, gently. “Responsibility changes character; even the reckless Alcibiades felt as much. Still, I cannot help observing, Ursula, in what a marvellous, I might well say miraculous, manner the estate has passed away from Gerard, to fall into your hands. Surely, if ever man can trace Divine interference, it is here. No, Ursula, inexplicable as the course of events would be to me, I see God’s action in them too plainly to venture on resistance. Never should Idare, child, to return the estate to Gerard. God, in prolonging your child’s frail life for those few minutes,God himself took it from him.”
Ursula fell back to the door. “And afterwards?” she stammered. “Afterwards?”
“The afterwards is God’s. It is only when every soldier plays general that God’s war goes wrong. But, dear girl, you are young; I am old; we are all, young and old, in His hands.”
“Let me go away, father,” gasped Ursula, putting out her hands as if to keep him from her.“It is near midnight. I must go home. The servants won’t understand.”
He led her to the carriage, out into the night wind again.
“Obey orders,” he said, softly. “It’s so magnificently simple—like Balaclava. Says the private: The generalmaybe wrong, but I, if I obey,mustbe right. And our General cannot be wrong.” He leaned over the door of the brougham in closing it. “Be of good courage,” he whispered. “I have overcome the world.”
She caught at his hand and kissed it in the presence of her sleepily staring footman. Then she sank back among the cushions as the brougham rolled away.
“Divine interference,” she murmured—“Divine interference. Oh, my God! my God!”
The Dominé stood watching her away into the darkness.
“Ursula and Gerard!” he reflected. “Had Gerard but acted differently! How I wish it could have been! For to human perceptions the estate seems rightfully his. I trust I have entirely forgiven Otto the wrong he did my child!”
He had done so, fully; but a doubt of the fulness was one of his most constant troubles.