“If thy dear hand but lift the fatal kni-i-ife,I smile, I faint, and bid sweet death ‘All hail!’”
“If thy dear hand but lift the fatal kni-i-ife,I smile, I faint, and bid sweet death ‘All hail!’”
TRIUMPHANT
The day after the attack on the Manor-house Ursula came down to breakfast as usual.
“Has Monk not been found yet?” she asked.
In the servant’s face she read disaster. She had not missed any of the menials in the hour of danger, presuming them to be hidden away under bedsteads up-stairs, but she had been astonished by the prolonged absence of the dog.
“Yes, Monk had been found,” said the servant, uneasily.
She cast a quick glance at his shifty eyes; then, without further question, she went down to the basement, straight to the mat where the St. Bernard slept. Monk was lying there, in a great huddled mass of brown and white wool, motionless. Before she had come near she knew he was dead. She stood for a moment by his side. Already the limbs were stiffened, the eyes rolled back. She understood that he had been decoyed the day before, and poisoned.
She knelt down and kissed the soft, white head.
“I used to think I was alone,” she said, as she rose.
A maid came towards her.
“Yes, it’s a pity, Mevrouw, is it not?” said the maid. “The old Mevrouw sent me to ask you to go to her in her boudoir.”
Ursula obeyed the summons. As she entered, the Dowager rose to meet her.
“My dear,” said the old lady, trembling very much,“you saved the house last night. I’m afraid I have not always been fair to you. I am old, Ursula; you must forgive an old woman’s prejudices. But you are worthy to be a Van Helmont. Your father-in-law would have appreciated your conduct, my dear.”
Henceforth there was one recent event on which the Dowager’s mind remained perfectly clear. Its fierce terror seemed to have burned it in. Much that had happened since the old Baron’s death was a blank or a muddle, but she was always ready to talk of the attack. And she spoke, therefore, with far greater kindness of the heroine.
“Yes, Ursula is strong,” assented Tante Louisa.
Presently came the tidings of Uncle Mopius’s death, and very soon after that a letter from Harriet. She told Ursula quite frankly that she intended to marry again, as soon as her period of mourning was over, so that there would be no use in first pretending to ignore the fact. “Therefore,” she wrote, “I can only lay claim to the ten thousand[M]a year of my marriage settlements, and, barring a handsome legacy to Josine, you are your uncle’s heiress.”
Ursula dropped the letter on her writing-table and sat thinking, till disturbed by one of Theodore’s frequent business calls. These unavoidable discussions were rarely agreeable.
“First, I can tell you,” he began, “that Juffers has been dismissed.”
“Good,” replied Ursula. “That is only right. It would be foolish to pity him.”
“Secondly, nothing will result, I fear, from the judicial inquiry as regards either the attack on the house or the murder of the dog.”
“That, too, is natural. It was a drunken outburst. Still, somebody must have been the deliberate instigator, or the dog would not have lost his life. I am sorry they can’t find out who did that.”
“I think I know. That new clerk of Noks’s has some grudge against you. Would you like Monk’s murderer punished, Ursula?”
A responsive flame shot into her eyes. They met Theodore’s.
“Oh no,” she said, quickly. “No, no. Leave the man alone, Theodore.”
“Thirdly—the usual worries. The old refrain, ‘Money! money!’ Money wanted for the expenses of Gerard’s reception. Money wanted for the completion of the cottages. Money wanted for a new roof on the Red-dyke Farm. If only we had more money, Ursula, all would be well. As it is—”
She interrupted him. “There is money,” she said. “I am a rich woman, Theodore.”
He smiled an annoyed little smile. “Very funny,” he said, “if only—”
“It is quite true.”
“Oh,” he exclaimed, suddenly understanding. “Has that precious uncle of yours disinherited his wife?”
She colored angrily. “My uncle’s wife is quite able to manage her own affairs,” she said. “Be thankful, you, that henceforth there will be money enough and to spare.”
“How much do you think?” he questioned, with a man’s curiosity to know the figure.
“Some twenty-five to thirty thousand florins a year, Theodore. We shall be able to carry out all your improvements—all Otto’s improvements—all that he used to say he would do if he could—all he could have done if he had married his cousin Helena. And I shall have a chance of trying my charity schemes. We must build an Institute. You must help me, Theodore; there will be heaps to do. We must do it all—all!” She spoke hurriedly, feverishly, as one who crushes down a tumult in her heart.
Theodore stood looking at her, his face puckered and puzzled. “All the fun of the thing is gone,” he said.
“The fun?”
“Yes, the fun. Can’t you understand? I can’t explain. There’s nothing more for to-day. Good-morning.”
“Theodore, I wonder whether thirty thousand florins will suffice to purchase their affection?” She paused. “Their armed neutrality,” she slowly said.
But when left alone her manner changed. She sank down by the window—looking out, looking out. The other day in her supreme appeal she would have abandoned everything to Gerard on his coming home; she had hoped against hope.And what had been his reply? “I am glad you have it, if you like it. I would not have exchanged my struggle for yours.” The words came to her now with superficial meaning; long afterwards she learned to fathom their sorrowful compassion.
“It is God’s doing,” she pleaded, still gazing away upon the landscape, “God’s answer. He confided these hundreds of human beings to my care, and now gives me the means to help them. I dare not abandon them to Gerard—to ruin. Right is an abstract idea. It were wrong to do right.”
The next two days brought Ursula a strange medley of emotions. Gerard had telegraphed immediately after the riot, offering his services; but she begged him not to come over just yet. She dreaded all contact with him. She dreaded his pale face.
He, on his part, gladly held aloof. He was looking for a small house at the Hague, where he expected his mother to come and live with him. The Dowager meanwhile waited patiently. Gerard had only been back a fortnight. To her it seemed one brief yesterday.
Meanwhile the news of Ursula’s accession to wealth filled the province. In one moment the tide turned completely, and the waters of adulation came running from all sides to her feet. Tenants and tradespeople vied with each other in denouncing those who had wronged her. Demands for improvements and repairs poured in hourly; petitioners of all kinds jostled accredited beggars on the Manor-house steps. A rumor had gone forth that the young Baroness really intended to spend her wealth on the property, and when early requests received a hearing, and vague projects got bruited, then enthusiasm knew no bounds. Not more than a week after the attack on the Manor-house Ursula was compelled to exert herself, amid a storm of delation, to prevent both a criminal trial and a lynching of scape-goats by lesser offenders. She would have extended small mercy to the poisoner of her dog had not a story recently reached her ears, after going the round of the neighborhood, to the effect that the notary’s new clerk had been found one evening, not far from his home, lying in the road unconscious, with the coat thrashed off his back.
Ursula, a little dazed amid this sudden revulsion, could even smile at the faces that beamed upon her and serenely decline the honors of a swift counter-demonstration after the manner of Gerard’s reception. She could make every excuse for the fawning of those whose daily bread lies in a master’s hand, but what hurt her to the quick was the sudden melting of the “cousins,” who poured down upon her like icicles suddenly struck by the beams of a belated sun. They could not understand her shivering in the bath of their congratulatory condolence. Ursula pushed the Barons and Baronesses aside.
But the rush of popularity was pleasing, even when correctly estimated; the importance was pleasing; and the possibility of fulfilment—the sudden nearness of life-long ideals—was most pleasing of all. It was all so sudden, so unexpected. Ursula, triumphant, gasped for breath.
One morning, three days after the news reached her, Ursula rang the bell and sent for Tante Louisa’s maid.
“Hephzibah,” she said, “if you are so wretched in this house—and your face proves it—why do you remain?”
Hephzibah began to whimper.
“Klomp won’t have me,” she said; “not unless I bring him enough money to support me. He can’t but just support himself, he says. And Pietje and her child would have to be boarded out.”
“You shall have the money. You can go and tell him so—that is settled.”
But Hephzibah lingered with her apron to her face.
“Forgive me, Mevrouw,” she said; “I never meant no harm to you—but we’re all poor, guilty sinners; and that woman Skiff, the insolent liar, pretending to be wife to honest folks, and then bringing along another husband of her own!”
“You have done me no wrong that I know of,” replied Ursula, calmly; “but I see you are uncomfortable here, and I am willing to help you. Do you hear your foolish voices still?”
Hephzibah shuddered; then she said, enigmatically,
“No, I don’t. Notafter—Nevertheless, repentance comes too late. I’m not as bad as other people, but I’m doomed to be unhappy; privileged, I should say.”
“You can go,” said Ursula.
Hephzibah turned by the door.
“Why don’t you marry the Jonker?” she began, suddenly; “I know he loves you. He loved you when he didn’t ought to, and I know he loves you still.”
“Peace, woman!” exclaimed Ursula, rising fiercely. “The Jonker does not love me, nor I him. Go you, and marry your clod.”
A few hours later, as Ursula was sitting alone, thinking—“Why,” asks Freule Louisa, “does Ursula always sit thinking, since her inheritance came? Is she counting up her money? Oh, fie!”—as Ursula sat alone thinking, a stone flew suddenly through her open window, alighting almost at her feet. It had a paper attached to it, and the paper bore these words:
“Beware of Adeline Skiff and her husband. They will work your downfall, if they can.”
She turned the paper over and over. She had no doubt that it came from Hephzibah, whom she—and the world generally—believed to be mildly crazy. She knew that Hephzibah had suspicions regarding many things, but she also had always known these to be harmless. Nobody would attach any importance to Hephzibah’s mutterings.
Ursula smiled sadly.
The paper lay in her lap. And now, unexpectedly, as she gazed down, a great fear fell upon her, she could not have told whence. For the first time she was frightened, afraid of a secret enemy, afraid of discovery, exposure. Who was this man Skiff, the notary’s clerk? What did he know? What could he do? She started up.
To be forced, against her own will, to surrender! To be compelled to do what she would so gladly have done of her own accord, if she had but known how! She set her teeth tight.
An hour later, in the early fall of the slow August evening, Ursula knocked at Skiff’s humble door. Adeline opened it, and immediately tossed her head. “And what may you please to want of me?” she asked.
“I wish to speak to your husband,” replied Ursula.
“Find him, then,” said Adeline, and banged the door.
The insult did Ursula good in this hour of universal adulation. It braced her.
She took a few steps down the lonely lane, reflectively, and then remembered the public-house at the end. She wondered she had not thought of it before. She called to a child at play, gave it a penny, and bade it tell Skiff he was wanted at home immediately.
“Wanted at home, you hear!” she cried after it, as she hastily retreated.
The urchin scampered off and burst into the bar-room. “My lady Baroness wants Mynheer Skiff!” he screamed. “She’s waiting in the middle of the road.”
This bomb-shell, at least, had its desired effect, which a quieter summons from Adeline might easily have missed. Amid general but silent astonishment, and much arching of eyebrows, Skiff started up and stumbled out.
“I wonder he ain’t afraid of another beating,” said one of the topers.
“He gets drunk so as not to be afraid,” replied another.
Ursula’s heart almost failed her when she saw the miserable little creature come lurching down the lane. Oh, the humiliation of condescending to such a low hound as this! At this moment, standing awaiting his approach, she touched the lowest depth in all her long descent of suffering.
She had not made up her mind what to do. She had no plan. Only she was resolved, in accordance with her character, immediately to face uncertainty.
He slouched up and jerked his hat, “And what can I do for you, ma’am?” he said.
She sickened at his manner, feeling as if a snail were creeping across her hand. “Answer a simple question,” she replied. “What do you want of me?”
He swayed to and fro, passing his hand across his eyes. “I’m a poor man,” he said, “a very poor man. A little money never comes amiss.”
“Money?” she echoed.“What should I give you money for? Drink? You will get no black-mail out of me!” Her gorge rose; she felt her pulse grow steady again.
“Now, ma’am, best be civil,” remonstrated Skiff, with tipsy ferocity. “Black-mail isn’t the word, yet there’s stories enough about you to make a little hush-money worth your while. You’d better pay up, my lady; you’d better pay up!”
“Threats! And to me!” exclaimed Ursula, scornfully. But at this moment the cottage door was thrown open and Adeline came running out.
“Don’t let her off too easy!” cried Adeline. “Skiff, you fool, how much did you say? It shall be five thousand florins if it’s a penny, my lady. Or we’ll show you up, Baroness Helmont of the Horst!”
With Gerard’s return Adeline had grown utterly reckless in her fierce hatred of Ursula.
“I am glad you speak so plainly,” said Ursula, coldly. “In this manner you will certainly never get a penny out ofme.”
For only answer Adeline poured out a flood of accusation, sprinkled with foul language, from which Ursula gathered for the first time what tales had been circulated against her in the village.
She stood frozen to marble—to marble splashed with mud that no current of years would ever again remove. “That is all?” she said at length, when Adeline paused for breath.
“All!” shrieked the woman. “Skiff, d’ye hear my lady? She don’t think it’s enough! I wonder what your two lovers’ll say, madam, Theodore and Gerard!”
“Hold your tongue,” growled the man, shamefacedly, “or I’ll make you. She has such a temper, my lady, she goes off her head at times. I hope your nobleness’ll forgive her and remember I’m a poor man.”
Ursula had understood, as the torrent swept down upon her, that these people knew nothing—absolutely nothing. They could not hurt her, except by such vague slander as any man may speak. Her secret was still her own, entirely her own, shared by none but a half-crazy creature, whose tardy story, if told, would never carry conviction. And now her set face grew gentle, and the floodgates of her charity opened.
“‘IT SHALL BE FIVE THOUSAND FLORINS IF IT’S A PENNY, MY LADY’”
“‘IT SHALL BE FIVE THOUSAND FLORINS IF IT’S A PENNY, MY LADY’”
“I will arrange for your emigrating to Canada,” she said, “if you promise to sign the pledge.”
“Oh, I’ll sign it, and willingly,” answered Skiff. “If I may make so bold, how much would you make it, my lady?”
“That will depend on many things,” replied Ursula, and turned to go. “I will have no money wasted.”
Adeline stood in the path, looking as if she would fain have struck her successful rival.
Ursula paused.
“You poor thing,” she said, “I cannot understand what you have against me. I am in no way responsible for your ruin. Believe me, I did all in my power to persuade Baron van Helmont to make you his wife.”
No other words the Baroness could have uttered would have enraged Adeline more than these. The woman stood foaming at the mouth with the hysterical passion of her class.
“You! You!” she sobbed out. “He askedme to marry him, do you hear, like the true-hearted gentleman he was! And I threw him over for Skiff! What I said later was a lie, as you know; but I’d have kept up the game if the child hadn’t died, as it did last year, more’s the pity! And Icouldhave been Baroness van Helmont, if I’d chosen. So there! You can take my leavings, madame.”
Ursula came a step closer; her face seemed to alter suddenly. “Answer before God,” she said; “did Gerard van Helmont offer you marriage before your child was born?”
“Yes, I tell you—yes!” laughed back Adeline, impudently. “There; you didn’t expect that, did you? There’s pleasant news for my lady so proud! Take Miss Adeline’s leavings, do!”
The man, who had stood watching them, stumbled forward.
“Go in, d’ye hear?” he said, roughly, “or I’ll give you another taste of yesterday’s dinner.” He turned to Ursula with a leer he intended for a smile. “You must forgive her, Mevrouw,” he said, bowing. “She’s a bit fantastical, as I said, but I know how to manage her. I hope that Mevrouw will kindly remember the arrangement she has just made with myself.”
A WIFE FOR GERARD
Ursula walked back through the darkening fields. She knew herself now to be safe, yet she hung as one trembling in the recoil from the flash across a sudden abyss.Supposingshe had discovered that these horrible creatures held her in their power? Would she have flung herself down into degradation unspeakable? She hoped not; she trusted not. Yet the oppression of wrong-doing was upon her, the fatal closing of successive links, the terror of the “might have been.”
Then every other reflection died away, and one thought only spread large in falling shadows across the clear blue sky.
How greatly had she wronged Gerard through all the silent years! It was but a single point—this question of Adeline’s ruin; it was “no business of Ursula’s”—oh, pure sisters of the impure!—yet how deeply had it influenced her womanly heart in all her thoughts of him! She could understand, in her own pride, his haughty shrinking from self-assertion before the bar of her complacency. How many err as he! How few make good their error! She saw things more calmly now than in that ignorant girlhood which seemed to lie so far behind her. Her thoughts dwelt sweetly on the companion of her childhood; his happy, noisy youth, his early manhood, now so steadfast in its slow endurance. And her strong eyes grew dim beneath the dying day.
On the steps of the Manor-house a gay party were assembled, laughing and talking, in a bouquet of bright dresses. Helena van Troyen ran forward to meet her.
“We have been waiting to see you,” she cried.“I have brought Toddlums—the baby—and also some one I knew would interest you all—Gerard’s Colonel from Acheen.”
“How delighted mamma will have been!” said Ursula, a little hypocritically, as she advanced to be introduced to a tall gentleman, all brick-dust and mustache.
“Colonel Vuurmont’s descriptions of Gerard’s bravery are too charmingly thrilling,” said Helena. “Dear Gerard! And so romantic! Tell Mevrouw van Helmont, Colonel, about that bit of brown glove.”
“Mevrouw, Mevrouw, that is a kind of a sort of a secret,” expostulated the Colonel, looking slightly bored.
“A secret! when half a dozen men saw it produced, and all Kotta Radja knew and teased him about it afterwards! Nonsense! Ursula, you must know that when Gerard was so terribly wounded—terribly wounded, it appears, and in four different places—they found an old brown kid glove on his breast. Isn’t that delicious? I hadhopedthe glove was mine, but Gerard says it wasn’t. There, nurse has let Toddlums upset herself again. Come, Ursula; I can’t bear to hear the child scream like that.”
The two men remained on the steps. “You must know, Van Troyen,” said the Colonel, “that Helmont maintains there is no love-story connected with that glove at all; only it would be a pity to spoil your wife’s amusement. He says that the glove saved his life in a duel, through his adversary slipping on it, and that he wore it as a kind of talisman.”
“I certainly remember about a duel,” replied Willie, “with a foreign officer, who had said, I believe, that Dutch soldiers were wanting in courage.”
“Helmont was just the right man to say that to,” remarked the Colonel, quietly.
“Ursula, I have got a wife for Gerard at last,” said Helena, fondling her baby. “On the whole, I think, she is suitable, though it has cost me a lot of trouble to admit it. But I am growing old, and have a baby, and one learns to see things differently. I have talked to him about it all, and I think he understands.”
“Really!” replied Ursula, much interested in Toddlums.
“But men are so contrary! He pretends that he is going to live in the Hague with his mother, and never marry. Gerard never marry! ‘Ah, quel dommage d’un si bel homme!’ I have explained all about it to aunt. She is rather exacting, but, on the whole, I believe she agrees with me.”
“Has this young lady means of her own?” asked Ursula.
“Fie! what a question! The very last I should have expected from you! Yes, the lady has means of her own. She has recently come into a fortune. They will be able to live in some style, as the Baron and Baroness van Helmont should.”
“And you think Gerard consents?”
“Oh yes, I feel sure he will. To begin with, he says he won’t, which is always a very good sign. And then there are others. I suppose you have no idea who the lady is?”
Helena looked up sharply, with petulant good-will, into Ursula’s grave face.
“I? No; how should I tell? Do I know her?”
“Oh yes, better than I ever did. But, really, we must be going; we have missed our train as it is. I was so anxious to tell you about this coming marriage of Gerard’s, and to express my admiration of your bravery last week, that, for the first time since her birth, I have neglected Toddlums. Colonel Vuurmont admires you awfully, Ursula. He says he wishes he had had you out in Acheen.”
“He had Gerard,” replied Ursula, simply.
That evening the young Baroness’s “family circle” gathered, as usual, round the shaded lamp. Ursula tried hard to bestow due attention on Tante Louisa’s prattle; the Dowager had sunk to sleep over a bundle of letters which she had been laboriously sorting, first according to their writers, and then, all over again, according to their dates.
The month’sVictorylay spread out before Tante Louisa, who was holding forth in Batavo-Carlylese.
“Napoleon was the world’s ruler by right of power,” said Louisa. “Kings are they who can rule. An hereditary king is a puppet.”
“But the other day you sang the praises of heredity,” suggested Ursula, politely.
“Did I? Well, that also was consistent. We praise things for the good in them; we blame for the bad. There is nothing so consistent as inconsistency.”
A tap at the terrace-window awoke the Dowager. The Dominé stood outside with Josine. Ursula started up in delight, for her father’s visits were of the rarest.
The Freule immediately took possession of the pastor, while Josine considerately settled down by the Dowager to tell her of recent successes gained by Sympathetico in arresting mental decline.
“I disagree utterly,” broke out the Dominé, as soon as he had heard a few words of Louisa’s jargon. “The world is not ruled by human strength, forsooth! but by the power of God. In big things and little, it is we who make trouble by not marching straight. If only we would do the moment’s duty, leaving the responsibility to the Commander-in chief! To do a great right, do a little wrong!” exclaimed the Dominé, spluttering in his energy. “It is the worst lie ever invented! It is the curse of a little evil conscientiously done that wrong must breed wrong forever. Satan himself is nearer than a Jesuit to the kingdom of God!”
Suddenly Ursula looked up from her work. “Is that not putting it rather strongly, papa?” she said.
“It is the simplest of Christ’s teachings,” cried the excited Dominé. “It is the deepest conviction of my heart. Never was good got out of a false start! To deny that is the confusion of all distinctions—the death of all discipline. Ursula, would you make of the Lord’s army a company of free-shooters? Right is right; wrong is wrong; shout it out upon the house-tops! If you don’t know, for the moment,whatis right, ask God to help you.Whenyou know, do it. That is all philosophy and all religion. Sufficient for the day is the duty thereof!”
He had got up, pacing the room with rapid stride, and waving his empty sleeve.
“I’m excited, ladies,” he said, wiping his forehead.“This afternoon I heard the dying confession of a man who has ruined his whole life and his brother’s by a generous lie told in his youth. It is not to remain a secret; I will tell the story to you some day. Well, Mevrouw, that is a pretty child of Helena van Troyen’s!”
“Captain, listen.” Ursula followed her father out on to the terrace after he had taken leave. “Do you really mean it all?”
He did not ask what she alluded to, but answered straight: “From the bottom of my heart. You know I mean it. Remember our talk about Gerard. And you, too, mean it. Did you not go down last week, like a soldier’s daughter, to face the mob!”
“Papa—” began Ursula.
“Why are the Helmonts going away?” asked Josine’s voice behind her. “I shall miss Theodore’s mother very much. She is a good, plain, sensible body, and not above taking judicious advice.”
“Going away? How do you mean?” asked Ursula.
“Yes, going away. Don’t you know? How odd! She told me that Theodore had come in this afternoon, after having met the Van Troyens, and had said in his disagreeable way (though she didn’t call it that, but I think him very disagreeable), ‘Mother, our work here is done; we are going back to Bois-le-Duc.’ She couldn’t get anything more out of him. He went away and banged the door. So selfish.”
“Josine!” called the Dominé on ahead.
“Coming! coming, Roderigue. How odd, Ursula, that you didn’t know that!”
Ursula stood looking after her father’s vanished figure. “To-morrow I shall tell him,” she said.
FACE TO FACE WITH HERSELF
She stood on the terrace, amid the gloom of the placid, moonless night. The great house gleamed dully white behind her, and the wealth of foliage that embowered it stretched in black masses beyond.
“It is the end,” she said, clutching at the flimsy folds about her throat. “What a pitiful little end it is!”
Fronting the facts calmly, as was her manner, she knew everything she had striven for to be now fully in her power. At last every enemy was silenced, every danger averted; with the money just inherited she could begin her great work of regenerative charity; in fulfilling her dead husband’s ideals she could accomplish her own.
Had she desired greatness for herself, now was the moment to grasp it firmly as it lay in her hand. “No, I have not desired it for myself,” she said aloud.
She had done her evil deed for Otto’s sake, for the sake of all these Helmonts. She had done it with the desperate self-persuasion that the wrong she was committing was better than all right. She had taught herself fiercely to believe it so, strengthened again and again in the teeth of growing conviction, by Gerard’s recklessness, by Otto’s dying entreaty, by her own invigorating failures, dangers, sudden deliverances. She had struggled to believe that God Himself was helping her in this self-appointed mission—the saving of Horstwyk and all its dependencies under her righteous rule.
She knew now that the truth was otherwise. She had known it long, with a gathering clearness that broke in sunlight through the fogs of her own calling up; but now, in the suddenhush of the contest, the falling away of all adverse winds to dead calm, she saw God’s reality of right as she had not beheld it before. Right is right. Little wrongs do not bring forth great blessings. Her father, in his simplicity, spoke true.
She herself—what had she called up in the hearts of these people around her, by the sense of the great wrong done to Gerard, but a foolish, fruitless hate, to be bought off now by the vilest of all persuaders—gold? She loathed—suddenly—this filthy popularity she had thought pleasant for the moment. Better, a thousand times better, the frank rebellion against her stern and sterile righteousness, better thanthis. And for her own heart—she knew that her sin had brought her own heart no profit. Far from it. With loathing she remembered Hephzibah and Adeline and Skiff, and all the possibilities of shame. Oh, her father was right, a thousand times. The outcome of evil is evil, the outcome of sin is sin.
She had been resolved ever since the day of Gerard’s return to Horstwyk, though she was not aware of her own resolve, to give up the Manor to its rightful lord. Resolved to do it, come what may, leaving the further development of events to Him whose the end will most certainly be if only the beginning be His.
She would have done it at all costs, but now God, in His mercy, made the duty yet plainer. The moment was come to which she had ever looked forward, when the Manor would be safe in Gerard’s hands. He was about to unite himself in marriage to some wealthy woman. He would be able, as Helena had unwittingly pointed out, to fulfil the duties of his position.
So far, so good. She could reason calmly; she could even face the shame of her confession. She could see herself pointed at, hooted by all. She would be punished, she supposed, when the crime got abroad. Even if the Van Helmonts were merciful—as why should they be?—Government punished such criminals as she. She would be sentenced, in open court, to a long period of solitary confinement or of penal servitude—she did not know which—as a common convict. That was inevitable. She stopped for one moment in her rapid walk along the terrace. Pooh, she had judged that issue so many times already!When a citizen commits a crime, the State must attempt to check him. The State punishes crime, and God punishes sin. The two have but little in common. So far, so good.
But now! now! She pressed both hands to her forehead, staring out wildly into the darkness. She loved Gerard. She knew that she loved him. She loved him since his return; but Adeline’s confession had opened the floodgates of her heart’s admiration for the man she had wronged. She was one of those women who fancy there can be no love without respect; she had taught her own soul that early lesson. But now she knew that she loved him. She had honored Otto and dutifully admired him, but this—now at last she recognized it—was love. She loved his manliness, his uprightness, his chivalry; the pale face she herself had discolored, the form she had wounded, the glory her guilt had called forth. Aye, she even loved the memory of youthful errors courageously atoned for.
God punishes sin. Perhaps, if she had let all things take their natural course, Gerard might in due time have made her his wife. However that be, now, at any rate, nothing need have kept them apart. For she knew that Gerard also loved her, in spite of this unwilling marriage to which his womankind were pressing him. And between her and him arose up, for all eternity, the shadow of her crime. She herself must speak the word, crushing down his righteous love into a pool of scorn.
She sank by the parapet, with her face on the stone, and then nothing disturbed the breathless silence but one sudden, suddenly arrested moan.
When Ursula came down next morning there were circles under her eyes. Yet she had slept peacefully enough towards dawn. It must have been the merest accident that Aunt Louisa noticed—for the first time, she declared—some faint suggestion of gray about her niece’s brown ripple of hair.
“I am going to town on business,” said Ursula, “so I shall want the carriage, if you please.”
“Dear me, how annoying!” exclaimed Tante Louisa.“I had been wanting to drive across to Mevrouw Noks, and arrange about Tryphena. You’re sure you couldn’t select another day?”
“Quite sure,” answered Ursula, cutting bread. “It is business which can’t be put off.”
“Well, that’s very provoking. But if you’re going to town you must bring me some floss-silk from the Berlin-wool shop.”
“I am going to the Hague,” answered Ursula.
“The Hague? Oh, you’re sure to be able to match it there. I must give you a bit to take with you.” Tante Louisa felt aggrieved, for did she not pay her “pension”?
Ursula, alone in her compartment between Horstwyk and Drum, could not but reflect on her first railway journey with Gerard. “The great of this earth are above the common law.” She smiled bitterly at the thought of the error. There may be two social laws for high and humble; there may be even two civic laws for rich and poor—there are no two laws of right and wrong with the Judge of all the Earth.
But at Drum acquaintances got in, and she had to talk of the weather. She said it was very fine, though a little too warm. It was a pity, she said, that the days were growing so short already.
Arrived at the Hague, she thought she had better begin by hunting for Aunt Louisa’s silk. She tried several shops without success. At last she found herself compelled regretfully to desist.
She hailed a passing tram-car, which took her to Gerard’s lodgings. As she lifted an unfaltering hand to the bell the door was suddenly drawn back, and Gerard himself appeared, coming out. Both of them started aside for the moment.
“You here?” exclaimed the Baron. “We very nearly missed each other. I had no idea you were coming.”
“Nor had I,” she replied, “till I came. I want to speak to you, Gerard.”
“Yes,” he assented, without inviting her to enter. “Can I walk on with you? I am due at the Ministry in half an hour. You have connections, if I remember right, in the Hague?”
“I was coming to you,” she answered. “Let me go into your room for a moment. I shall not keep you.”
Reluctantly he led the way.
The thud of the closing door crashed down upon her heart; in the sudden stillness and shutting-out she realized that the crisis was come: her courage sank. And while leaning against some unnoticed support she was angry with the pride within her which could not as much as ask for a glass of water. The room swam past her eyes in a swift recognition of many familiar objects—mementos of her child-life with the owner—among a recent glitter of gaudy trophies and gleaming swords. As he threw back his coat she noticed, with dull indifference, that he was dressed for some Ministerial mid-day reception. Somehow she connected this fact with his life in society, his search for a suitable wife. She sank into a large arm-chair, shielding her brow for one instant with both hands.
Gerard waited, standing by his writing-table. The room seemed very subdued after the glare of the noisy street.
Presently she lifted her still white face—as a vessel might right herself, suddenly becalmed.
“Gerard,” she said, “I have come to tell you something I have long been wanting to tell you; but I didn’t tell you, and that makes it all the worse. I have wronged you very cruelly.”
She rose and remained standing before his stern attitude, grown suddenly rigid, his crossed arms, and relentlessly downcast gaze.
“I am not come to ask forgiveness,” she went on, hurriedly. “I am come to make confession and then to leave you. There is nothing to be done but to confess. Gerard, when Otto died, and Baby, it all depended, you remember, upon the question who died first. I said that it was Otto who died, and I inherited the property from Baby.”
She paused with a gasp. He neither spoke nor moved.
“It was Baby who died before Otto, Gerard, and you were Otto’s heir.”
A faint flush crept over Gerard’s firm-set cheeks. It was the only proof that he had understood.
“That is all I have to say,” she went on, in the silence closing round her. “But I wanted to say it to you first before repeating it to strangers.”
Then, suddenly, amid that deepening stillness, she felt thatshe must get away, must escape, and she hurried towards the door.
“Ursula!” said Gerard’s voice behind her, quite gently.
She turned; he had lifted his eyes, and his steadfast gaze met hers.
“Have you really nothing to say?” he continued. “No explanation? No extenuation of such conduct?Noexcuse?”
She drew herself up. “What would be the use of all that?” she answered, coldly. “Who listens to a criminal’s perversions? I have told you now, and you know.”
“I knew before,” he said.
When the words had struck her ear, an instant of expectation intervened. Then she caught at the wall beside her, saw him, as she did so, check a futile impulse to spring forward, and once more stood outwardly calm.
“I learned the news some weeks ago,” he continued. “On the night before the battle, as it happened. I got a letter from—some one who knew.”
“From Hephzibah,” said Ursula. “But then—when you came back—why—”
“When I came back I told her to await my good pleasure. I myself was waiting for this moment, Ursula. God only knowshowI have waited for it, hoped for it—” He broke off.
“Then be thankful it has come,” she answered, in the bitterness of her righteous abandonment.
“Yes, it has come. And now there is nothing else to say?”
“No, there is nothing else to say.”
She fancied she caught a strange flicker in his firmly fixed eyes.
“And of what use will the Manor-house be to a poor beggar like myself?” he went on. “You had much better have kept it—you, who are rich.”
She flushed scarlet under the taunt.
“May I go?” she asked, almost meekly, under the pain at her heart. “You will do what you like with the Manor. Perhaps you will sell it. Though Helena van Troyen tells me you are going to marry a rich wife of her choosing—and your own.”
“Did Helena van Troyen tell you that?” he asked, uncrossinghis arms, and the brightness of his nature seemed to come flowing back from all sides.