AFRAID
“Ursula, you look ghastly,” said Tante Louisa at breakfast next morning, “and the whole house is full of your gaddings about.”
“Ursula,” said the Dowager, spilling her egg, “have I told you that Gerard is coming back?”
“Yes, she knows,” interposed the Freule, hastily. “I can assure you, Ursula, that the servants disapprove.”
“The servants!” echoed Ursula, with such immeasurable scorn of the speaker that the latter could not but feel somewhat ashamed.
“No one can afford to brave his servants’ opinion,” the Freule rejoined, with asperity. “No, not the bravest. Even Cæsar said he was glad to feel sure that all the servants thought well of Copernica. You will find out your mistake too late, if once the servants are against you.”
“Everybody is against me,” replied Ursula, bitterly.
“Now, Ursula, how unjust that is! I am sure, not to speak of myself, your dear mother here has always shown you the greatest consideration.”
“Oh, certainly, and my father, too!” exclaimed Ursula. “I was not thinking of them. And the villagers. And the people at the Hemel. They all love me, too.”
“It is for the Helmonts’ sake, then,” mumbled the Dowager. “They all love the Helmonts.”
“They don’t love you, and you know it,” said Freule van Borck, incisively.“As for me, of course I admire those who dare to confront popular hate. ‘Drive over the dogs!’ That would be my theory. I envy the woman who had the opportunity of saying it. All I advise is—take care.”
“I do,” replied Ursula, “of them all, as much as my limited means allow. And this is the way they repay me.”
“Ursula, my dear, your charities are all wrong. To give with as much discrimination as you do, you ought to be able to give much more. Only the very rich can afford to give judiciously.”
“Aunt Louisa, I believe that is very true,” replied Ursula, gravely.
“Of course it is. There are lessons, child, which only a gradual tradition ultimately develops. I am a Radical, of course. That is to say, I am an Imperialist. I believe in the Napoleons of history. But, genius apart, it takes half a dozen fathers and sons before you produce enough collective wisdom to float a family. And I have always declared you were a remarkable woman, Ursula; but I should hardly say of you, as your father-in-law once said of some celebrated artist: ‘Heredity? Nonsense! Why, Genius is a whole genealogy.’”
“Did Theodore say that?” cried the Dowager. “Now, I did not remember. But he was always scattering witty things, in bushels, like pearls before swine.”
“Thank you,” said Louisa, who had not learned in the least to bear with her sister’s infirmity.
“I don’t mean—Louisa, you must write that down for me. There is nothing that distresses me more than the thought how incomplete my work will be at the best.”
“Mynheer van Helmont is asking to see the young Mevrouw,” interposed a servant. Ursula rose hastily.
“Take my warning to heart,” Aunt Louisa called after her—“about the servants.”
“I am not afraid of servants,” replied Ursula, disappearing through the door.
“Again!” said the Baroness. “He comes here constantly, and at all hours. It is not yet half-past nine. Louisa, when he marries Ursula, we can go and live on the farm. Ce sera le comble.”
“I tell you,” replied Louisa, coolly, “that Gerard is going to marry Ursula, and then all will come right.”
“And I tell you,” echoed the Dowager, with an old woman’s insistence, “that Gerard is going to marry Helena, sooner or later. I have always known it.”
“Helena? Helena? Why, she’s married already. Really, Cécile, I believe you are going crazy?”
“I know, I know,” replied the Dowager, in great confusion. “But her husband might die. Otto died.”
“Pooh!” said Tante Louisa, departing.
The Dowager also beat a hurried retreat. She sat down in her boudoir, and gathered poor grumpy rheumatic old Plush on to her lap.
“They’ll find me out,” she reflected. “If only I could hold on till Gerard comes.” And her chin shook.
“You are come so early,” said Ursula to Theodore, “that I suppose your news is especially disagreeable.”
“If so, it meets with a fitting welcome,” replied her visitor. “But you have guessed right. Ursula, you remember my telling you that the Hemel cottages by the Mill, the worst on the property, must come down, and you said they couldn’t?”
“You said they couldn’t,” interrupted Ursula. “Who was to pay for rebuilding them?”
“Well, whoever said it said wrong. They could. They have come down of themselves.”
“What?”
“One of the middle walls has given way during the night, and the three cottages are a wreck.”
“Oh, is any one hurt?” Ursula clinched her hands.
“Only you,” answered Helmont, with a sneer—not at her. “All the whole filthy rabble are encamped outside among their household goods swearing at you.”
Ursula sat silent for a moment. “They never paid any rent,” she said at last.
“No, of course not.”
“That is something to be grateful for. Theodore, I cannot help it. You know I cannot help it. Nor could Otto. How could we make good, in our poverty, the result of half a century’s profusion and neglect?”
“I did not say you could help it. And now we shall have the inspector, and the hovels will have to be put up again somehow. But how?”
“How?” repeated Ursula, vaguely. “Never mind. Wait a little. We shall see.”
“Wait!” exclaimed Theodore. “Twenty-four hours! Have you no more diamonds?”
“No. Theodore, I am beginning to feel that I can fight no longer. I owe it to you that you should receive the first warning. I am going to give up.”
He turned on her hotly. “What, frightened already?” he cried.
“Frightened?” she repeated, growing pale. “Why frightened?” A sudden light seemed to strike her. “Oh, you mean because of what they say against me in the village. What do they say against me in the village, Theodore?”
“If you know, I needn’t tell you,” replied Theodore, pale also under his ruddy glow, unconsciously wondering how much had reached her.
“They say that I used dishonorable means to secure my husband. There is not a word of truth in it, Theodore.”
“I know that,” he answered, much relieved. “If I didn’t know that, I should long ago—” He checked himself, as much from pride as from any gentler feeling.
“Have given it up,” she quietly concluded his sentence. “You are right. I have been making up my mind. I, too, give over.”
“Mynheer Noks is asking to see Mevrouw,” said the man-servant, once more disturbing her, in the same careless, impersonal voice.
Theodore started at the name. “Do nothing in a hurry,” he pleaded—“nothing to-day. As a personal favor to myself. I have a right to ask that. The villagers will say you are afraid.”
“I promise,” she answered, “for to-day. I have no right to refuse you. But I am not afraid of villagers.”
A moment later she stood opposite the notary.
“I have brought the deed of deposit, Mevrouw,” said that functionary.“And my witnesses are waiting in the hall. Have you the document ready?”
“No,” replied Ursula. “My good Notary, I owe you most ample apology, but I cannot help myself. I have been compelled to abandon the idea of making a will.”
The notary stared at her for a moment, too angry to speak. He was a rough man by nature, as she had seen, but not devoid of intelligence. At last he burst out, “Then go and—see ‘Rigoletto,’ Mevrouw, next time you visit at Drum.”
Ursula had never been to the opera in her life, Mynheer Mopius’s one attempt to take her having failed.
“I do not understand,” she said, “but I see you are angry. It is very natural. All I can say is, that I ask your forgiveness. I did not know, when I came to your house last night, that I could not leave my money away from my father.”
“But you knew when you left,” said the lawyer, surlily.
“True, but I had not had time to reflect. I see now that I must leave things as they are.”
“I, too, have had time to reflect, and I have come exactly to the opposite conclusion. You will probably survive the Dominé; you say that you do not intend to marry again; then the best thing you can do is to draw up a will as you intended.”
Ursula looked down at the carpet pattern.
“I am an old friend of the Helmont family,” continued Mynheer Noks. “I do not deny, Mevrouw, that I was sorry to see this manor pass out of their hands. I should be still more sorry, and so would every one, to find the Mopius family ruling here.” He hesitated; then, with an effort, “Mevrouw,” he said, “you are, perhaps, the best judge of your own conduct; but, after your visit last night, you will pardon my calling it strange. I don’t know whether you came of your own free choice. I don’t know what tragedy is being played here. I don’t want to know. But something is happening: I can see that.” Almost involuntarily he pointed to Ursula’s wounded forehead. “All I say is, be careful. You acquired all this property by the merest accident. If any one could have proved that Mynheer Otto lived half an hour longer—there would be no question of any will of yours.”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Ursula.“Do you dare to accuse me—”
“I accuse nobody. I only say be careful. There are strange stories floating in the air, and your strange conduct can only augment them. It only wants an unscrupulous lawyer—”
“I am not afraid of lawyers,” said Ursula, standing calm and queenly. “I have humbly begged your forgiveness, Mynheer Noks; I can do no more. This interview is at an end.”
She swept to the window, looking out on the lawn, the near cottages, the far-spreading trees.
“I am afraid of myself,” she whispered.
Half an hour later the post brought her a letter from Uncle Mopius.
It was a complaining letter, full of the writer’s continual ill-health and all his sufferings and disappointments; but it had an unexpected wind-up.
“This year, once in a way,” wrote Jacóbus, “I am going to make you a birthday present, that you may be able to keep up the honor of the family in the face of those beggarly Helmonts, who, I hear, are abusing you everywhere. I hope you will use it fordisplay. Show the naked braggarts that a wealthy burgher is a better man than they.”
The envelope contained a check for two thousand florins.
Ursula stood holding it contemplatively on the palm of her outstretched hand.
“He is wrong about the date,” she said to herself. “My birthday is next month—not that any one except father cares. But I will keep the money; it will do to rebuild the cottages.”
She wondered if Harriet knew of the gift; she fancied not. In reality it was entirely due to Harriet’s influence.
Ursula stood by the writing-table on which lay her dead aunt’s faded bit of bead-work: “No Cross, no Crown.” She recalled her father’s inversion of the words.
“Uncle Mopius has mistaken the date,” she said, aloud; “and to-day, of all days in the year, he sends this money. I accept the omen. I will not confess at this moment; I will not give up. No one shall say that my motive was either fear or despair. I will fight them all.”
THE HOME-COMING OF THE HERO
The rebuilding of the cottages was undertaken without delay, and, chiefly to comply with Mynheer Mopius’s injunction, an entertainment was organized by Ursula in honor of her birthday. It was a feast of the usual kind, in the village school-room, with dissolving views, and still more rapidly dissolving cakes. The whole village criticised the various good things provided, especially the patently didactic slides, and went home replete and grumbling. Furthermore, last year’s potato-crop having failed, the village demanded provisions. These also Ursula distributed, especially in the Hemel, as far as the two thousand florins could possibly be made to stretch. Even elasticity has natural limits, and presently dissatisfaction rumbled forth again.
That spring, however, remains memorable in the annals of the Hemel. In April its oldest inhabitant died. He had been breaking up all through the winter, and his gradual decline had been watched by every man, woman, and child in the place. For, firstly, he was the only one among them who could be described as “pretty well off;” secondly, he was a childish bachelor; and, thirdly, every household in the hamlet laid claim to some form of connection with “Uncle Methuselah,” as they called him, though nobody wished him that patriarch’s tale of years.
Uncle Methuselah having died intestate on the seventh day of April, every able-bodied adult in the Hemel, not to mention the children, stood outside Notary Noks’s little office-door on the morning of the eighth. There was much jostling and jesting, also some affectation of sorrow by those who considered that laughs should be taken in disproof of relationship.
The raggedest of the ragged troop, fat Vrouw Punter, hadactually concealed an onion under her tattered shawl. Her face was so resolutely jovial that she fancied the lachrymose vegetable might prove useful in her interview with the man of law; for she had heard, and devoutly believed, that if you but held such a thing in your hand, at an emergency, your eyes were certain to overflow. Most of the others poured forth riversad libitum, scorning artificial assistance.
But Notary Noks put a stop to that. “Come up in succession,” he said, “and those who feel bad take a turn outside.”
A list was made out of some seventy claimants, and then a period of darkest anxiety and suspicion began for the Hemel. Every day, as it slowly wore itself out, deepened the agonizing conviction that “the judges” were cutting their slices off the communal cake. “Humpy Jack,” who could fluently read words of three syllables, gave voice to the general sentiment. “A legacy in the lawyers’ hands,” he said, “is just like a lump of ice on a red-hot stove.”
Pessimists shook their heads and expressed an opinion that “nobody would get nothing.”
In a fortnight the excitement reached fever-heat. Meanwhile, numerous members of the community regularly visited—and called upon—Ursula.
At last, on a beautiful spring day, full of promise and hope, all the heirs, or their legal representatives, obeyed a summons to fetch each man his share. Not a soul but was amazed by the vagaries of “the judges,” and annoyed by their rapacity. The people who received a couple of hundred florins were almost as angry as those who stared down on half a dozen silver pieces in a grimy palm. Yet surely the queer fractions and subdivisions should have convinced the unconvincible.
But after the return of the anxiously expected gold-seekers, a general appeasement settled upon the whole clan. Then followed a brief period of frizzling and frying, of dancing and shouting, and the children’s cheeks were shiny and the parents’ breath was strong. And the voices of the singer and the swearer were abundantly heard in the land. Then the flame burned low, like a dying “Catherine-wheel,” and fell away.Seven days after the visit to “the judges” not a penny of Uncle Methuselah’s inheritance was left in the Hemel.
On the eighth day several woe-begone faces appeared at the kitchen entrance of the Horst. Not one of these faces, according to information freely vouchsafed, belonged to “a cousin” of the patriarch.
Horstwyk, as always, pulled up its collective nose. “Can anything good come out of the Hemel?” it asked. Besides, Horstwyk had other matters to interest it. Scandal about Ursula had become more general than ever, and to this was soon added the all-engrossing topic of “the Baron’s” return. He came back as soon as the chill Dutch summer could feebly be counted on to cherish this hero-son of the soil; he came back, enfolded in wraps and coverings, with the imprint of wearying pain on his white but unchangeably handsome face.
“Your rooms are quite ready at the Manor-house,” said Ursula, having gone with the Dowager to greet him on his arrival in Amsterdam. The Dowager could only sit silent with her hand in his; it had been her intention to ask him if really he had been wounded, but she had got sufficient answer before the question could be put.
“Thank you,” said Gerard, “I am going to stay a few days with the Trossarts, and I shall be glad to come and see you from Drum. I am thinking of settling down for the present at the Hague.”
Ursula bit her under-lip. The Dowager’s pale eyes flashed fire. “For the present.” Of course. The best legal advice, she supposed, could be obtained at the Hague.
“Gerard,” she said, and her eyes grew soft again as she filled them with his presence, “what is the use of letters that only tell half the truth?”
“It is a fair average,” he answered, gayly. “Why, even before the introduction of the penny-post man had discovered that the object of speech is to dissemble. A dumb man with expressive eyes would tell all his secrets. And there has been since the creation of the world no greater multiplier of falsehood than the penny-post.”
“A man who daren’t answer straight is bound to take refuge in nonsense,” replied the Dowager, feeling quite young and clever again. “I wasn’t speaking of the penny-post. What you say there is so like your father, Gerard. Don’t you remember how he used to declare that the breeding of centuries, after having come triumphant out of the French Revolution, had been killed in fifty years’ time by the railway and the penny-post? I have got that down in the Memoir. You remind me so much of your father, Gerard. I must show you what I have written since you went away.”
And then they began talking of many tender memories, and Ursula left them alone.
Gerard had resolved from the first to avoid anything that could have the appearance of a home-coming to Horstwyk. This sentiment Ursula, of course, understood. But there are no more powerless creatures in the world than its rulers, big or little. It was a case of the driver driven. For the population of the whole neighborhood made up its heavy mind to do honor to “the Hero,” as everybody seemed agreed to call him. It was an excellent opportunity of protesting against Ursula’s government, of glorifying theancien régime, and of saluting the national flag; also it gave a great many nonentities a notable chance of displaying their importance: there would be speeches, and favors, and, best of all, wide-spread good cheer. Once a committee had been formed and subscriptions gathered, both Gerard and Ursula saw that resistance would be vain. So they gave in, separately and simultaneously, each with the best possible grace, and the Lady of the Manor promised flowers and a collation, and invited the gentry for several miles round. Also she drove with the Dowager to inspect the triumphal arches in course of erection at the distant limit of the Commune, on Horstwyk village square, at the Manor-house gates.
The appointed day dawned white with early heat, rippling over as the sun rose higher into the color-glories of triumphant June. The splendor of the cloudless morning lay almost like an oppression upon the drowsy pastures and the dusty roads. The washed and smartened crowds by the park gates and near the church shone visibly with heat and happiness. As alwaysat the beginning of every public holiday, “the temper of the crowd was excellent:” the local reporter of theDrum Gazetteremembered that stereotyped phrase without requiring to make a note of it.
The Manor-house carriage with Ursula inside met the train at the market-town station, and, by an irony of fate, she had to drive along the highway seated next to her brother-in-law. It was still stranger, perhaps, that this should be the single occasion on which she appeared since her widowhood, before all the country-side, in the rôle of Lady of the Manor. The “county families”—her cousins by marriage—gathered around her with abundance of malevolent curiosity.
Gerard was very silent and reserved; she saw how distasteful the whole ceremony was to him. He still looked ill, in dark clothing, with his military cross on his breast.
At the first triumphal arch, where a white stone marked the extreme limit of Horstwyk, the simple reception commenced. It had been distinctly arranged that only the returning soldier was to be honored as such. The Burgomaster’s welcoming speech, therefore, was all glory and gunpowder, and could hurt no one, not even Ursula, though she might have drawn her own conclusions, had that been necessary, from the silence which had attended her solitary drive to the station. Loud cries of “Long live the Baron!” now resounded on all sides; they broke out afresh as the carriage halted by the church, where the school-children sang a couple of patriotic anthems, and the Dominé, wearing his Cross of the Legion of Honor, held a second discourse. The village band having played a military march, the carriage drove off to the Horst. It was unattended, a sore point with the tenantry, whose proposal to get up a mounted guard of honor had been met by Gerard’s unhesitating rebuff.
Everybody he cared about (and a good many other people) had assembled to welcome him on the Manor-house lawn. The Van Trossarts were there, and the Van Troyens; and Helena, a fond though fitful mother, had brought her baby girl. A big luncheon was served in the house for the guests, and another outside for the members of the committee and the numerousvillage notables. Ursula sat calculating the cost all through her father’s toast, which was necessarily rather a repetition of his speech, a glorification of bravery, secular and religious. Nobody could doubt that Gerard was utterly miserable.
Nor could any one ignore the delight of the Dowager. She stood by her son’s side, bowed yet beaming, all through the sweltry afternoon. It was her feast-day. She drank in with eagerly upturned countenance the unceasing flow of banal compliments, seeming to derive some personal satisfaction from the clumsy praises of the peasantry. For, after luncheon, while the children’s sports were in progress, the returned warrior endured a congratulatory levee. Farmer after farmer came up, red-hot with clumsy good feeling; farmer after farmer remarked:
“Now, Jonker, you’ve kept up the honor of Horstwyk, say.”
Gerard, rousing himself, found a kind word of recognition and interest for each. Ursula, as she watched him from afar, saw on the altered features the old smile.
Once she drew near to him suddenly. “How much you must have suffered!” she said. “I had no idea—I—”
He looked at her gravely.
“Not as much as you,” he answered. “I would not have exchanged my fight for yours.”
“Gerard, you do not mean that,” she said, quickly, avoiding his gaze. “Now that you see the old place again, after all these months, you are glad it is still there, still—ours. You would not willingly now have lost a rood of it. Say so—say so,now.”
Her voice grew desperately pleading.
Gerard waited long before he answered. “I am glad it is yours,” he said at last, “as you seem to care. I should not care for it to be mine.”
She sprang back as if he had stung her. For the rest of the time she remained with Theodore, trying to believe that she did not observe the “county people’s” impertinences. She felt Helena’s eyes upon her constantly, and was surprised by their benignity. That woman must be a worse woman than Helena Van Troyen who can receive, immutable, a little child from God.
All through the sultry splendor of that long-drawn summerday the peasantry enjoyed themselves in their own peculiar manner. Towards five o’clock a slate-colored bank of cloud began slowly to border the far horizon, as if rising to meet the yet lofty sun. One carriage after another emerged from the stables, and the local grandees drove away. Then the people gathered for a final cheer, before melting in groups towards their respective neighborhoods to finish the evening, many of them, alas, in drink.
“THE CARRIAGE HALTED BY THE CHURCH”
“THE CARRIAGE HALTED BY THE CHURCH”
“Hurrah,” cried the Burgomaster, “for the hero of Acheen! Hurrah!”
“And now,” said Gerard’s clear tones in the ensuing silence, “a cheer forthe giver of this whole entertainment, the Lady of the Manor! Hurrah!”
It was a mistake, but Gerard knew nothing of Ursula’s unpopularity. His chivalrous impulse met with but feeble response. A strident voice—one of those voices you hear above the crowd—even cried out, though hesitatingly, “Down with all thieves!” A murmur of approbation from the immediate surrounders saluted the words. Ursula overheard them, and, looking up, saw a pair of villanous eyes fixed evilly on hers. “Who is that man? Do you know?” she said, turning to Theodore.
“That man,” he answered, with studied carelessness. “Oh, nobody. A writer that the notary has lately taken on. His name is Skiff.”
“Stay to dinner,” said Ursula. “We shall be quite a small party. Immediately afterwards Gerard goes back to Drum with the Van Trossarts. I want you to see them to the station.”
“Very well. There is a thunder-storm coming up.”
“Is there? I don’t mind thunder-storms. But this one is several hours off. You will be able to get back in time.”
It was about ten o’clock. The great curtain of deepening blue had crept steadily upward, sweeping its broad rim like a mass of cotton-wool across sun and sky, and gradually mingling with night in one unbroken heaviness. The black weight now lay low on the thick, expectant air. The summer evening was pitchy dark and threatening.
Inside the Manor-house everything was once more quiet, withthe numbness that follows on a long day’s fatigue. A light glimmered here and there in the big, dim building. In the basement the servants were busy washing up. From time to time a distant yell of drunken merrymaking or sheer animal excitement came faintly ringing through the solemn denseness of the trees.
Ursula sat alone in her room, thinking of many things, especially of Gerard’s reply to her question regarding the Horst. On her side that question had assumed the importance of a supreme appeal. How coldly he had pushed it aside!
“I know not what to do,” she reflected. “I cannot advance or retreat. Merciful Heaven, how he has suffered! And the suffering has taught him nothing.”
The noise from the village beat vaguely against her ear. It was growing louder, coming nearer, but she did not remark it. She looked up as from a trance, when Hephzibah broke, unannounced, into the room.
“Mevrouw, they are coming!” shrieked the waiting-woman, her white face still whiter from terror. “Save yourself! Escape by the terrace!”
“Silence! Keep calm,” answered Ursula, long ago accustomed to recognize the poor creature’s insanity. “If you can calm yourself, tell me what is wrong.”
“There’s no time,” burst out Hephzibah, “for calmness. They are coming—the people, up the avenue! They swear they will murder you, or burn down the castle! Save yourself! Save yourself! Down by the stables.”
Ursula, hearkening, distinguished indeed the fierce roar of an approaching mob.
“Hush!” she said, white to the lips. “Go up-stairs to Freule Louisa. Tell her to reassure the Baroness. Nothing will happen—do you hear me?—if you all keep calm.” She spoke slowly and impressively. “But if there is to be shrieking and screaming, I cannot answer for the consequences.”
Then, brushing past the momentarily paralyzed servant, she went out into the entrance hall. Its white pillars shone dimly in the insufficient lamplight, half hidden behind gay patches of flowers. The house had not been decorated for the occasion,but the stands had been refilled and freshened up, and a floral “Hail to the Hero!” of the head-gardener’s fabrication, still hung unfaded over the great dining-room door.
The loud menace of the swiftly approaching danger rolled up with increasing distinctness under the lowering heavens. Ursula could plainly distinguish enthusiasm for the rightful Van Helmont and denunciation of the usurper. “After all, they are right,” she thought, bitterly; “they little know how right.” Somehow the reflection seemed to bring her assurance. She now remembered, without bitterness, all the manifold charities which the usurper, unlike the rightful lords, had constantly dispensed, as bread from her own mouth, to both deserving and undeserving poor.
She went out on to the wide steps and stood waiting; the hot air struck her pallid face, and the clouds seemed to sink yet lower.
In another moment the cries all around her struck a yet crueler blow. A dark mass, yelling and drunken, was surging vaguely across the blackness of the lawn—the lowest rabble of the purlieus of Horstwyk, and all the aristocracy of the Hemel.
“Down with the usurper!” “Down with the tyrant!” “We won’t have any thieves in Horstwyk!” “Long live the hero of Acheen!” “Down with the parson’s daughter!” And, cruelest of all, “Down with the light o’ love!”
For one instant, as those mad words reached her, Ursula shrank back, and a torrent of crimson swept over her cheeks. Juffers, the constable, had supplemented Adeline’s stories, telling how, even in her early widowhood, Mevrouw had despised all decorum.
At sight of the single light-robed figure standing there in the dull radiance from the hall, the shrieking, struggling conglomeration swerved back. There came a lull; then the wild shouts went up anew.
“As no Helmont’s to have it, let’s burn down the house!” cried a dominating twang, which Ursula recognized. A yell of approval swelled high around the words. The logic of this tribute to the family immediately enchanted every one; and all the half-grown boys and raw youths in the horde howled withdelight at the prospect of so grand a conflagration. The tumult for some time, however, rendered action of any kind impossible. Then followed the inevitable ebb.
“There is no necessity for burning anything,” said Ursula, in far-reaching tones; “the house is full of defenceless women. I am here. What do you want?”
Another roar answered her, and, with re-echoing cries of “Burn it!” the mob swayed forward to the steps.
Suddenly the fierce note of fury changed to a shrill surprise. Ursula felt a hand upon her arm. Removing her eyes for the first time from the turmoil in front of her, she saw the little Dowager standing by her side.
“Go in, mamma—go in,” she whispered, hurriedly. But the little Dowager did not remove the hand.
“Hurrah for the old Baroness?” screamed a drink-sodden voice. The response was lost in an uproar of terror, as the darkness momentarily vanished, and the whole scene—the massive building, the soaring beeches, the upturned distorted faces, the two figures on the threshold—all stood out white for one brilliant instant before the opening heavens crashed down the full weight of their pent-up derision in torrents of mingling rain and thunder on the wasps’ nest beneath them which men call the world.
Mechanically the two women fell back under shelter. The rush of water poured past them like a falling curtain amid the tumult of the elements. The startled and blinded crowd, as flash followed flash, sought an insecure refuge under the great trees of the park, still restrained by that pair of locked and steadfast women from roughly invading “the House.” The whole place was wrapped as in a whirlpool of contending fire and water. Vaguely the half-sobered drunkard realized that the young Baroness stood inviolable, girdled by God.
House and park were black and still in a widespread drip and shine of water, when Theodore van Helmont, drenched to the skin, sprang from his flecked and foaming steed and rang softly at a side-door. He ran to the corridor, where Ursula met him, lamp in hand.
“That I should have been too late!” he gasped. “O God! Forgive me, Ursula, that I should have been too late!” The tears sprang forward as he looked at her, and rained down his cheeks.
“Don’t,” she said. “You hurt me.” She had never seen a man shed tears before. “Of course you were too late. How could you help it?”
He mastered himself with an effort. “How pale you are!” he said.
“Well, of course, it is hardly a pleasant experience. It was my own fault for encouraging conviviality. It is over now, Theodore. Be comforted; you could have done nothing had you been here.”
“I could at least have died first,” he muttered. And he went away without saying good-night.
When Hephzibah had carried the alarm to Freule Louisa, the latter had run screaming to the Dowager.
“And where is Ursula?” the old lady had asked, gasping and trembling.
“Ursula has gone out to meet them, like the mad creature she is. Dear Heaven, we shall all be murdered! Come away with me, Cécile—come away! We can get out at the back and take refuge at the gardener’s. Come immediately—come away!”
The Dowager rose, tottering, from her easy-chair.
“I am going to Ursula,” she said.
“To Ursula? Oh, mercy! Cécile, have you turned crazy, too? Let her get herself killed if she wants to; what business is it of yours? Oh, Heaven, I’m so frightened, I daren’t stay a second longer. Come with me! You surely don’t care so remarkably for Ursula?”
“That may be,” replied the Dowager, with one foot already on the stair; “but I am going to her now.”
THE FATAL KNIFE
Mynheer Mopius was slowly dying. He amused himself with playing the part and schooling Harriet, little realizing that her willingness to accept the fiction found its source in her certitude of the fact.
“Harriet has become quite docile,” reflected Jacóbus; “she will make an excellent wife for my old age. I had always a gift for managing women. Look at Sarah, my first, whose character was fundamentally selfish. Love, based upon obedience, that is the secret of wedded bliss. But it would never do to let the women know it. When a woman knows a secret there’s no secret left to know.”
Mynheer Mopius spent much of his time in bed, especially the daytime. At night he would gasp for breath and have to be helped to an easy-chair, and Harriet nursed him, carefully balancing her strength.
“Two invalids are no use to any one,” she said, when stipulating for repose in an adjoining apartment.
“My first wife—” began Mopius, but Harriet stopped him.
“That subject’s tabooed,” she said. “Why, Jacóbus, it is months since you mentioned her. Your first wife died. What would you do if, at this moment, I were to die?”
“Marry again,” replied Jacóbus, coughing against his pillows, and looking exceedingly yellow and bilious and unwholesome.
“It takes two to do that,” said Harriet, coloring, as she spoke, under the reproach of her own acceptance.
“Does it?” answered Mopius, clinking his medicine-bottles.
“Jacóbus, we have never quarrelled. Don’t let us begin now. There is only one question I should like to ask you without requiring an answer. How many people did you propose to when left a widower before you got down to me?” She left the room abruptly, and in the passage she struck her white hand across her face.
Not very hard.
Jacóbus sat up and adjusted his nightcap. “Ah, you see, she ran away,” he said. “A year ago she’d have braved it out. I shall still make something of Harriet.”
She came back presently with a bundle of papers. It was part of her daily task to read aloud all the official documents connected with the government of Drum, which were sent to the caged Town Councillor. Jacóbus fretted incessantly at the thought how everything was going wrong.
“The people in the streets look just as usual,” said Harriet; but that consideration afforded her husband no comfort. She yawned patiently over endless statistics regarding gas and drains. It was her ignorance which caused her to wonder whether the town would not have been governed far better without a council, and especially without an official printing-press.
“It is time for my medicine,” said Mopius, who, by saying this five minutes too early, constantly succeeded in suggesting an omission on Harriet’s part. “Well, what says the Burgomaster concerning the market dues? He is a fool, that Burgomaster. And so are the aldermen. Heigho! I wonder what will become of this poor town when I am gone! It is strange how greatly I have attached myself to it. Almost as much as if it had been my birthplace. But I had always ‘une nature attachante.’ It is a great mistake.”
“Not necessarily,” said Harriet.
“Yes, yes. Life is too short: here to-day, gone to-morrow. Ah, well! Is that idiot going to lower the rent for market stands?”
“I don’t know,” said Harriet, wearily, turning over her pile of documents; “I’ll read you the whole lot; you can see for yourself.” And she did read, monotonously, for an hour and a half, Mopius following everything with eager interest, interrupting, gesticulating, nodding approval or, more frequently, dissent.
“Right, right,” said Jacóbus, in high good-humor over somebody’s opposition to the powers that be in Drum. “Give it them well. I never approved of knuckling under to grandees. You gain nothing but kicks by bowing to ‘My Lord.’ Ah, they’ll miss me when I’m dead, Harriet, and so will you.”
“Yes, I shall miss you,” replied his wife. “Dear me, Jacóbus, what shall I do with my time all day?”
“First you will cry,” said Jacóbus, with ghastly enjoyment of a far-off possibility; “and then you will get tired of crying.” He waited a little ruefully for a disclaimer. “And then you will begin to enjoy your money.”
“By-the-bye, that is a subject we have never spoken about since the marriage settlement,” said Harriet, holding one of the stiff yellow papers against her cheek. “At least,Ihave never spoken about it. Of course, you tell me twenty times in a week that you will leave me a lot of money; but that counts for nothing. I believe you used to say the same thing to Ursula. Seriously, Jacóbus, have you ever made a will?”
“I have,” said Jacóbus, enjoying his importance.
“I thought people who had been notaries always died intestate. If you had died intestate, Jacóbus, I suppose Ursula would have had all your money?”
“Ursula and that foolish Josine. Ursula, Baroness van Helmont, of Horstwyk and the Horst. This conversation appears to me unpleasing, Harriet.”
“Unavoidable conversations almost always are.” Harriett’s face was entirely hid by the “Report on Sewage.” “Has this will of yours really appointed me your heir?”
Mynheer Mopius fell back and gasped. “Can you not wait a little longer?” he said—“a very little longer?”
“Jacóbus, I am only repeating what you have told me over and over again. I want to know, if you please, whether you have really left your whole fortune to me.”
She drew near to the bed.
Mynheer Mopius sat up again, and looked askance at his wife anxiously. “I’m getting better,” he said.“I feel a great deal better to-day.”
“I’m so glad. You look better. And now, Jacóbus, answer my question, on your honor.”
“Harriet, I do believe you want me to die. I don’t think I shall last much longer; still, don’t reckon too much on my speedy demise. I heard the other day of a man who was buried and resuscitated, and lived forty years afterwards.”
“Nonsense,” replied Harriet, unsympathetically. “If you were buried, I should hardly be asking about your will. Now tell me.”
“What if I don’t?”
Harriet shrugged her handsome shoulders. “I suppose the truth is you have left me nothing,” she said, walking away, “and you don’t want to avow your life-long lies. One can never trust your boastings. Perhaps there isn’t so much to leave.”
“You will be a rich woman, Harriet,” answered Mynheer Mopius, solemnly, “a very rich woman. Yes, I have left you all, on condition that you never marry again.”
“A foolish condition,” said Harriet, once more applying the “Report.” “Should the question present itself, I would certainly not be influenced by considerations of that kind.”
“Hum!” said Jacóbus. “Well, now I have told you. So let’s talk of something else. I wish you would give me my jelly.”
She got it for him. “And if I marry, everything goes to Ursula, I suppose,” she persisted. “Well, so much the better for Ursula.”
A sudden jealousy flashed into his orange-green eyes. “I believe, if I died, you would marry the doctor,” he said.
Her face flushed protest; her heart thumped assent. “You have no right to say that, or anything like it,” she cried. “I have been a faithful wife to you, Jacóbus. Keep your dirty money.”
Her rising violence always cowed him. “Tut, tut,” he said; “so I shall. For many a long year, perhaps, and after that you may have it.”
“Not on those conditions.” She turned away from him altogether. “Make your will over again,” she said.“Do you hear me? And leave your money to Ursula, whose, in fact, it is by right. I am content with my settlement, as I told you at the time. You will remember that I told you to leave your money to Ursula. Money, with me, is not the one thing worth living for and talking about. But I wanted, in honesty, to warn you. You had better send for the lawyer to-night.”
“What nonsense!” he cried, angrily. “To hear you talk, one would think I hadn’t a week left to live. Is that what the doctor thinks, pray? The wish is father to the thought.”
Harriet controlled herself forcibly. She came close to the bed. “You needn’t make it to-night,” she said, softly. “But you had better make it soon.”
About a fortnight later Mynheer Jacóbus Mopius was buried with all the pomp he had himself prescribed. All his virtues and dignities were engraved upon his tombstone, so that his first wife’s adjoining one looked very bare by comparison. His last words had been, in a tremulous, squeaky sing-song: