“THERE WAS SUCH A CROWD IN THE CENTRAL ROOM”
“THERE WAS SUCH A CROWD IN THE CENTRAL ROOM”
“My word is passed to your father,” he said, tremulously. “You ask me to disgrace myself in the eyes of every decent man.”
“Oh no! not that! not that!” She spoke almost wildly. “But, oh, my God! what am I to do? Mynheer van Helmont, don’t think me too much of a coward. I believe I could nerve myself to one great sacrifice; it is the daily bickering and nagging which I cannot endure. Never mind, I am ashamed of myself.” She dashed her hand across her eyes—but too late. “Good-bye, and forget me. It doesn’t matter.”
He bent low over her hand.
“It shall be as you wish,” he said, very firm and soldierly.
Once more she looked up at him, her eyes full of far-away tenderness.
“I cannot help myself,” she whispered. “I shall never love—again.”
Gerard found the Judge in the coffee-room. And with the best face possible—which was a bad one—he confessed that he had reconsidered his proposal of the morning, and must withdraw it. Difficulties had intervened.
“Really?” said the little Judge, coffee-cup in hand. “This is very extraordinary. Of course, if you wish, there is an end of it. But—really, Mynheer van Helmont, you must excuse me—for a moment.” He sidled to the entrance, in wild yearning for his better half, who fortunately met him there, having gathered that something was wrong.
“My dear,” whispered the Judge, “Mynheer van Helmont has changed his mind about marrying Topsy. He isn’t going to.”
“Nonsense, Frederick!” ejaculated Mevrouw Elizabeth. “Tell him it’s all right. Tell him to go and ask her at once.”
The little Judge went back into the desolate refreshment-room. His substantial consort lingered near the door.
“Mynheer van Helmont,” said Frederick, “it’s all right. You had better go and ask her at once.”
“Mynheer van Rexelaer,” replied Gerard, scarlet as a poppy,“I thought I had made myself understood. I abandon all further idea of proposing to your daughter.”
Frederick fell back to the door. In her eagerness Mevrouw put through her big heliotrope-crowned head. “My dear, hewon’task her,” breathed Frederick.
“What?” cried the lady, casting furious glances towards the young officer, erect and helpless in the middle of the bare, blazing room. “Go to him, Frederick, at once! Tell him he’s a coward and no gentleman! Tell him you’ll horsewhip him! No, you can’t do that, you’re a Judge. Tell him one of her brothers will horsewhip him! Guy ought to. I’llmakehim do it!” She pushed forward her small husband, who reluctantly returned to the charge.
“You have behaved very badly, Mynheer,” he began. “You must permit me to say that.” He looked round nervously. Mevrouw Elizabeth, distrusting the atmosphere of calm, had come forward into the full light, and was unconsciously straining nearer. “That your conduct is ”—he raised his voice—“not such as one has a right to expect from a gentleman. And here the matter must end.” He turned hastily; Mevrouw Elizabeth stood close behind him.
“Say it is blackguardly,” she hissed.
“I won’t!” replied Frederick van Rexelaer, in a funk.
“It is blackguardly, Mynheer,” cried the matron, pushing past. “You are a coward, Mynheer, and no gentleman.”
Gerard retreated towards the gas-smitten wall, looking, in his tight-fitting blue-black hussar uniform, like an Apollo in utter disgrace. He wondered, for a moment, whether the woman was going to strike him.
“My son shall speak to you, Mynheer, as you deserve,” shrieked Mevrouw Elizabeth. “My son! I will send you my son, sir, to settle this matter.”
“Oh, do, Mevrouw, do!” eagerly exclaimed Gerard, in a sudden rush of relief.
MASKS AND FACES
The day after his wife’s funeral Mynheer Mopius sat in the gilded drawing-room of Villa Blanda. His demeanor was properly, pleasantly chastened, for the cud of the pompous exequies lay sweet upon his tongue.
Harriet, busy with her own thoughts at the evening tea-table, said, “Yes, it had all been very nice.”
“But the tea was cold, Harriet,” grumbled Mynheer Mopius, for the dozenth weary time. “It’s a very bad thing in a woman when she can’t make tea.”
“Of course,” replied Harriet, gazing down at her sable garments, and wondering how soon the cheap material would get rusty.
“My mother could make excellent tea,” prosed Mynheer, with a melancholy nod. “She could do everything excellently, could my mother.”
“A woman ought to,” said Harriet, “and when she’s done it, she ought to die.”
“She ought. She ought.” While Mynheer Mopius spoke, his thoughts were dwelling on Dominé Pock’s oration by the grave. How well the reverend gentleman had alluded to the charities of our dear brother afflicted! “The consolation which a noble heart can always find in wiping other eyes the while its own are streaming!”
Mynheer blew his nose.
“This cheap cloth won’t last, uncle,” said Harriet, briskly.
He pretended not to hear her. She bored him. She had been all very well while his wife dragged on, but now—! And, why, after all, should he be saddled with this sharp-tonguedgirl? She was no relation of his, though she called him “uncle.” Mevrouw Mopius’s childless sister had been the first wife of Harriet’s father, Dr. Verveen.
“Yes,” he repeated, mechanically, “everything my mother produced was first-rate of its kind.”
“Especially her son,” said Harriet, with a sneer that positively fizzled.
Mynheer Mopius’s yellow face grew a shade healthier in color. He accepted his third cup in thoughtful silence; then he said, “Andnow, my dear young lady, what do you mean to do?”
She looked at him, across the steaming urn.
“Go to bed,” she replied.
“Quite so. And after?”
“Why, sleep, of course. What do you mean, uncle?”
She flushed scarlet.
“My dear Harriet, I fear you are too fond of sleeping. Surely you understand that you can no longer remain an inmate of this house, now that—that I am a lonely widower? Much as I regret—ahem!—you will admit, I feel confident, that you cannot remain under present circumstances.”
“Not under present circumstances,” answered Harriet.
She waited for one long second, her black eyes aflame, full on his face. Then the balance in which her fate hung snapped suddenly. She sat, self-possessed, amid the collapse of all her hopes.
“I shall always take an interest in you,” said Mynheer Mopius, adjusting his neat white mourning-tie; “and I mean to act very generously, to begin with. I shall take lodgings for you for one month, paying your board. I should have added a little cash for current expenses, but you aunt’s legacy has made that superfluous.”
“Aunt Sarah left me a hundred florins and her Bible,” said Harriet.
“Dear woman, she did! She always thought of others. You are welcome to the money, Harriet; fully, frankly welcome. But the Bible! That is a memento of her I would fain have retained.”
“Buy it of me?” said Harriet. “How much will you give for it? Ten florins?”
“Harriet, I am shocked,” replied Mynheer Mopius, hastily. “The month’s board will leave you ample time to look out for a situation.”
“To look out for another situation,” said Harriet.
“Quite so,” exclaimed Mynheer Mopius, delighted at her good sense.
Harriet threw back her arm with a jerk that rattled the tea-equipage.
“And to think,” she cried, “that only last week I rejected the doctor.”
“More fool you!” replied Mynheer Mopius, coolly. “You’ll have to be more careful of the Chinese porcelain in a strange house, Harriet, and it probably won’t be anything like as good.”
“I rejected the doctor,” continued Harriet, roughly, “because I didn’t care for him. I couldn’t live with a young man I didn’t care for. Uncles are different.”
“Harriet, I am not really your uncle, you must remember, though I am willing to behave as such. If your father—”
“Yes, I know. Well, I shall try to get something in a month’s time, and if I can, I’ll repay the board and lodging, dear uncle.”
“That is not necessary. You can place an advertisement, Harriet, not mentioning names, of course. You don’t know enough for a governess, and, besides, you are too good-looking. You had better try to become a companion. If your father—”
“Quite so. Yes, I shall try to become a companion—to a gentleman.”
“Harriet! I do not see that it is a laughing matter. To an invalid lady. Not that you have any experience of invalids; for my dear Sarah enjoyed excellent health till almost the last.”
“To a gentleman,” persisted Harriet, coolly.“It is no laughing matter, Uncle Jacob. When I leave this house, which at least afforded me some miserable sort of protection, I shall advertise for a husband. I dare say something nice will turn up. I want a husband I can be really fond of. Somehow I have faith in his turning up.”
She spoke to herself, but she rejoiced in scandalizing the hateful humbug opposite.
“Harriet, my dear,” said the widower, solemnly, “all this is very much out of place. You should have more respect for the holiness of sorrow, Harriet.”
“Oh, dear, no, you needn’t trouble about that,” she interrupted him. “I’m in deadly earnest, I assure you. I’ve printed an advertisement before, but it came to nothing. I mean to look out better this time.”
Her accent belied the outer calm of her attitude; she began washing the cups.
“Printed an advertisement from my house? From Villa Blanda? If so, I have nourished a—”
“No.”
“I am extremely agitated, Harriet. You are my cherished Sarah’s step-niece. I cannot imagine that any member, any step-member, of my dear wife’s family would demean herself in the manner you describe.”
He got up and began to walk about, enjoying his brand-new mourning. “For any one, of however humble origin—and Sarah’s sister married beneath her—to enter into relations of—of an amorous description with a stranger! Harriet, I am horrified. We are not in India, Harriet. You are not a black woman, though you may think and act like one. I appeal to you to remember that you are connected, however distantly, with an honorable family. You are not free, Harriet, as you might have been before your father’s first marriage.”
He spoke with almost desperate energy, for there were some things he had learned to discriminate in his intercourse with Harriet Verveen. He knew when she meant what she said.
“Pooh!” replied Harriet. “Good-night, dear uncle. You give me a month’s board, without wages, and notice to quit. I am very grateful, dear uncle; but henceforth you must allow me to fashion my own life as I choose.”
They stood facing each other. There was no noise and no recrimination. Each knew it would be useless.
“I have nourished a serpent in my bosom,” said Mynheer Mopius, triumphantly getting out his quotation after all. “I can’t keep you here a day longer, Harriet, though you seem to be annoyed about going. It wouldn’t be proper, and, besides, I may have other plans. I treat you generously. Whatever you may elect to do I hope you will repay me by henceforth dropping all pretended relationship to myself. That must be an understood thing. Such conduct as you propose—clandestine love affairs, anonymous love affairs—I consider most scandalous. All the world considers it scandalous. I cannot allow a breath of ill-odor to sully the unspotted name of Mopius. Harriet, I hope you fully agree to that suggestion. If not I should consider myself compelled to retract.”
“Oh, most willingly,” again interrupted Harriet. She steadily sought her uncle’s shifty glances. “I break all relation between us as completely as—I crush this cup!” The costly porcelain fell to the ground in shell-like fragments. Mynheer Mopius darted forward with a shriek. Meanwhile Harriet slipped from the room, her right hand bleeding, her mood somewhat relieved.
Next morning she left the house. After the night’s consideration of circumstances she was not sorry to go. She believed, with a desperate woman’s pertinacity, in the ultimate success of the wide choice she had allowed herself. She would take a husband after her own heart. Already she pictured him to herself, good-looking, with a fair mustache.
In the great city close to Drum—a city which may as well remain nameless—a modest variety may be found of those public entertainments which constitute, to the many, a principal criterion of civilization. In the nineteenth-century march of mind—which, after all, is but the advance of ’Arry—a town with no permanent music-hall troupe is voted “slow.” Drum was distinctly “slow.” Its big sister aspired, in spasms, to be reckoned “fast.”
Occasionally, therefore, when the fit was upon her, the big sister clutched, gasping, at some Parisian form of diversion; a river fête with fireworks, horse-races, or, in winter, abal costumé et paré.The latter was decidedly a bad spasm, for northern nations can make nothing of the “Veglione.” Still, every season a couple of these picturesque gayeties were organized by indefatigableimpresarii(in rose-colored spectacles), the price of admission being fixed at a florin for gentlemen, ladies free. No respectable person over thirty was supposed to attend.
One of the least unsuccessful costume-balls the city has ever seen came off just before Christmas, in the year we are describing. Willie van Troyen was there as Paris, with another Helen, this being a delicate joke on the part of the woman whose rule was to end next week. As she accurately pointed out, the right Helen was, after all, the wrong love.
Only Gerard’s deep mourning had prevented his presence. Somebody had suggested, behind his back, that he might go as a Mute. The gay band he lived among agreed unanimously that “it was high time that Gerard got over his parent’s demise.” He was not a success in the rôle of the impecunious orphan.
Willie van Troyen on this festal occasion was drunk, and from his place in a stage-box, between two sirens, he was roaring with laughter at the antics of a goose in the pit. The whole floor of the small theatre had been cleared for perambulation, while those whomeantdancing could retire to the stage. Most of the masks, however, preferred to walk about and make believe they were funny, in a half-annoyed jostle of ungracious familiarity, under the critical contemplation of the humbler amphitheatre side-tables, and of the champagne-sodden boxes up above. Every now and then some ambitious buffoon, excited by the continuous spur of the music, would suddenly leap at facile applause. There would be a sweep of the crowd in his direction and an outburst of meaningless laughter, every one exclaiming that the joke was good, while thinking it rather tame.
But even the numerous laughers who were only pretending to amuse themselves agreed in recognizing the very real drollery of the Goose. He—it was evidently a masculine goose, as distinguished from a gander—he trotted about in the stupidest manner, a great yellow-beaked ball of white and black feathers with unreasonably protruding quills. Just now he had got holdof a stout and solemn gentleman in red velvet, who evidently represented a potent, grave, and reverend Signior. This dignified personage looked exceedingly out of place—not to speak of a false nose through his mask—in so foolish a company of mummers.
The Goose had a nasty talent for cackling with the extravagant clatter of his big wooden beak, and he kept up this deafening music incessantly as he ran round and round the fat gentleman in velvet, who turned helplessly hither and thither amid volleys of merriment. Every now and then the cruel bird, as it ran, would draw the pointed quills from under its feathers and therewith prick the reverend signior in unexpected places, causing him to wriggle and twist. Just then there was a pause in the programme; the whole theatre shook with this unexpected fun.
“Why can’t you leave me alone?” hissed the unfortunate senator, in streaming suspense. But the Goose made no reply. Stopping his mad race for a moment, he actually began chalking up ribaldry with one of his quills on the senator’s pendent mantle, chattering all the while. In vain the proud aristocrat wrestled and protested. The Goose, holding the mantle firmly, chalked a huge note of interrogation upon it, and wrote under this sign, amid breathless interest, the question, “What does your Worship here?” A renewed outburst greeted this sally. Willie van Troyen, unsteadily prominent, pelted the witty bird with hot-house grapes.
“Go along, you hypocrite, I know you,” said the Goose in his victim’s ear. “I’ve chalked up your real name behind.”
At this the crimson noble, breaking down, began to cry real tears of shame and spite. “You’ve ruined me, then,” he exclaimed. “And I can’t for the life of me imagine why!”
“Boh,” said the Goose, and resumed his clatter more heartily than ever.
But at this juncture a Goose-girl stepped unexpectedly into the arena. She drove off the Goose with some well-directed blows, and, taking the arm of the red-velvet gentleman, led him disconsolate away.
“It’s your own fault for coming,” squeaked the Goose-girl. “Let’s go and talk it over in a private box.”
“No, indeed; private boxes are very expensive. My dear creature, for Heaven’s sake, let me sit down on this settee. I—I—anxious to obliterate”—he began, violently rubbing his back against the cushions of the sofa. “I am quite at a loss to understand,” he said; “but tell me, my dear, you didn’t—eh?”
“Yes, indeed,” replied the maiden. “Your style and title, Mynheer the Councillor, were written there in full.”
He broke into an oath. “Not my name,” he sobbed. “You—you didn’t see my name?”
The Goose-girl sat down beside him. She used a small instrument to disguise her voice. “Why did you come here, you horrid old man?” she said. “I saw you flirting with Little Red Riding-hood. I saw you dancing with that atrocious Bacchante. ‘Clandestine love-affairs,’ ‘Anonymous engagements.’ And your wife not five weeks dead! Oh, Uncle Jacob—Uncle Jacob!” Harriet dropped into her natural voice, letting fall both her mask and her manner.
“Harriet!” exclaimed Mopius, “this exceeds—”
“Indeed it does,” she interrupted, coolly. “Don’t speak so loud, dear uncle, or the Goose will be coming back.”
Mynheer Mopius started to his feet.
“This is some conspiracy to ruin me,” he said, speaking like one dazed. “I’m ruined already. I’m going—”
“Wait a moment,” objected his tormentor. “It isn’t true that your name was written up; I prevented that in time. So, you see, you have a good deal to thank me for. But, uncle, that Goose is a writer on the staff of theDrum Independent; he is one of their leading men, and a very great friend of mine. His quills are very real quills. He is anxious to tell—when the by-election comes on next week, which is to render you Right Worshipful—an amusing little story of a highly respectable candidate who, barely a month after his dear wife’s death, danced with a charming Bacchante at a charming masked ball.”
“What do you want of me, Harriet?” shrieked the wretchedwidower. “Do you want money? I can let you have a little, if you like.”
“Hush. Let’s talk it over quietly in this quiet corner, Uncle Jacob. I am pitiless. Understand that at once. No compounding. You must surrender absolutely. Better do it with a good grace.”
“I know you want to marry me,” answered Mopius, sulkily; “and I don’t mind so very much, though it’s hard to have it forced on one. I’d rather have had a woman with a softer tongue; but I’ve been looking about me, and one has this fault and another has that; I always said you were good-looking, Harriet. I’ll marry you, if you like, though I’d rather have had a lady-born.”
“Marry you!” she blazed out at him. “No, indeed, I’m going to marry a man whose boots you daren’t lick, unless he let you. A good man, beautiful as good, and clever as he is beautiful—a man who will some day be great, and I—love—him. He is poor, and the whole world is before him, and Ilovehim. Marryyou!”
“Well, you wanted to a month ago,” muttered Mopius.
“Let me speak. If you want to hush up this disgraceful story you must give my love”—her voice caressed the delicious word—“two thousand florins. He will be satisfied with that; then he can pay off his debts, and we can start our humble house-keeping.”
“Harriet, it’s a mean trick. I should never have thought that you with your pride—”
“Silence, you!” she exclaimed under her breath, crushing down her own misgivings with reckless vehemence. “How dare you question his good pleasure, or I? You obey, so do I. Only two thousand florins. He is very moderate. He might have demanded ten. But I told him I didn’t want your dirty money. Love can be happy in a garret. Come, let’s have done with the whole horrid business. I promised to call him, and then you can go.” The Goose-girl put a whistle to her lips, and immediately her obedient bird came clucking up from among the motley crowd. As he came his weary din gradually assumed the shape of “Ja-cob! Ja-cob! Ja-cob!” with terrible, reiterated distinctness.
“Hush, please, darling,” pleaded Harriet, her voice full of soft entreaty, “uncle is willing to give the two thousand florins, as I propose.”
“To further his candidature,” said the Goose, bowing low. “It is clearly understood that the money is paid to further his candidature. I am proud, sir, to make your acquaintance.”
The Goose saluted, with silly flap.
“And now he had better go,” exclaimed Harriet.
“My dear child, what are you thinking of?” protested the Goose, as Mynheer Mopius hastily rose to render ready obedience. “I have only just had the pleasure of meeting your uncle. I am sure he will do us the favor of being present at a little champagne supper in one of the up-stairs boxes—as host.”
“Oh no,” began the Goose-girl, and checked herself, meeting the Goose’s eye.
“I shall be willing,” stammered Mopius, “if necessary, to pay—”
The Goose interposed.
“My dear sir, what are you thinking of?” he said, loftily. “Is this the way such matters are managed among men of honor? Harriet, take your uncle’s arm!”
Together the trio ascended to the grand tier. Mynheer Mopius’s supper, as ordered by the Goose, was exquisite; the host finished by enjoying it himself, and drinking too much wine. Willie van Troyen insisted on rolling in from the adjoining box to shake the Goose by the hand. He also drank to the health of the recumbent masked gentleman in shabby red velvet who was singing sentimental songs in an undertone, with unpremeditated shrieks—
“Dear love, for thee I would lay down my li-i-fe:For, without thee, what would that life avail?”
“Dear love, for thee I would lay down my li-i-fe:For, without thee, what would that life avail?”
The Goose informed Willie that the Senator was a retired Indian Viceroy, who had given many such a magnificent entertainment in his day. Willie put his finger to his nose, and immediately invited His Excellency to his wedding six days hence. Upon which His Excellency burst out crying, and said that theword reminded him of the best of departed wives. Harriet sat staring down into the now almost deserted pit.
The cold December dawn had not yet achieved more than the hope of its forthcoming when the Goose took away Mynheer Mopius in a cab to a quiet hotel. Behind them still echoed the loud talk of the young officers. They passed, in the fearsome streets, a troop of roysterers from a gin-shop. “We won’t go home till morning!” rang hideous on the patient night. Here and there a window shone out, fully lighted, with its message of suffering or suspense.
Up above—far, far above—stood, silent, God’s eternal stars; watchful, serenely waiting, in the darkness whence we come and whither we return.
Three days after the ball Mynheer Mopius paid up like a man, and three days after he had paid up, Mynheer Mopius was sitting one evening in his accustomed arm-chair, reflecting on his loneliness and the unexpected rarity of charming claimants for his hand. In fact, during this month, with his indecent precipitancy, he had exposed himself to a couple of very painful rebuffs. Of course, he was exceedingly angry with Harriet. But, really, all that he cared for was himself, his own comfort, his own glory, an audience, especially for his evening songs.
In the midst of his reflections Harriet walked in. She cast off her wrap,sans gêne, upon the nearest sofa.
“I’ve come to marry you, after all,” she said, quite collectedly.
Mynheer Mopius jumped.
“Harriet,” he replied, “this is—go away! After your conduct of last week, go away!”
“I forgive your conduct,” said Harriet, unmoved.
“And the—the Goose you were in love with?” inquired Mynheer Mopius, not without some satisfaction.
“He was unworthy,” replied Harriet, with level eyebrows. “He has thrown me over.”
“As soon as he had the money,” said Mynheer Mopius, rubbing his palms between his knees.
“Yes, as soon as he had the money,” admitted the girl, quitesimply. “It appears there is another woman in the business. All that is dead and gone. All my money’s gone. I haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday morning. Never mind that. But my decision’s taken. I’ve come back to marry you. And I mean to.”
“You can’t against my will, Harriet,” said Mynheer Mopius, beaming. “Go away.”
“Look here, Uncle Jacob, you’re going to marry me,or—don’t make me say the alternative. I’d rather think you married me without the alternative. It’s not very nice, anyway, but I don’t intend to starve. And, as I don’t believe in men any more, it really doesn’t matter much. Now ring for the servants, and tell them you’re going to marry me.”
“Harriet, go away!”
Harriet crossed to the bell-rope and pulled it. “What does your Worship here?” she said, incoherently. “You asked me a week ago, and I said no. You don’t ask me to-day, and I say yes. Such is woman. Better than man, at his worst.”
The footman answered the bell. For a moment Harriet’s courage failed her before his severe expectancy. “Bring some biscuits,” she said.
“Harriet,” began Mynheer Mopius, thoroughly cowed, like the bully he was, “you must allow at least another month to intervene before the thing can be even mooted. I always admitted, Harriet, you know, that you were a very good-looking girl. But, before I say another word, I must insist on you going down on your bended knees and humbly begging my pardon for your disgraceful conduct of the other night.”
Harriet Verveen understood the antagonist she had vanquished. The proud girl actually knelt on the carpet, and slowly repeated the humiliating words.
“Very good!” said Mynheer Mopius, in high good-humor, “and, Harriet, I won’t marry you till you succeed in matching that cup you broke.” He smiled to himself in the glass, the future Town Councillor! “You are very poor, Harriet,” he continued, “and of humble origin. It is a great thing for you to become Madame Mopius. I hope you feel that.”
“Oh yes,” replied Harriet, meekly. She had got up fromthe floor. Meanwhile the footman had brought in a tray of biscuit. She fell on them ravenously.
“Well, Harriet, if ever I make you my wife—and I don’t say I shall, mind—I hope you will be a good and obedient consort, like the faithful creature I have lost.”
“Oh yes,” said Harriet again. Soon after she went back to her lodgings, with a little money in her purse. She turned in the hall door of Villa Blanda.
“Won’t I pay you out for this!” she said aloud. Never till the day of her death could she look down at her knees without seeing dust upon them. Mopius had cause to remember his triumph, though she made him a good wife on the whole.
That evening, far into the night, the miserable woman lay at the open window of her garret, with her forehead knocking the sill. Her neighbor, a poor, blind seamstress, sat up in bed trembling, awe-struck by the sobs that seemed to shake the flimsy house. It was winter, bitterly, frostily cold. On the window-sill, bent, pressed back again, clammy with kisses, stuck a stupid bit of pasteboard—the smirking photograph of a man.
CORONETS AND CROSSES
Meanwhile, untouched by the bustle and slush of the market-town, or the still greater turmoil and filth of its more distant metropolis, the little village and wide demesne of Horstwyk lay serene under their mantle of unsullied snow. Surely each additional myriad of inhabitants deepens the vulgarity of their place of abode, as when ink-drops fall measured into a glass of pure water. The country has its full share of vices—every anchorite’s cave has that. The country has snobbishness, perhaps, more than the town. But it has not vulgarity.
Snobbishness, be it observed, is by no means a marked characteristic of the Dutch. There was little of that element in the heart-felt and healthy veneration which the surrounding countryside offered as natural tribute to the lord of the manor. The lord was a legitimate and very actual centre of interest for miles around, radiating wisely diversified influence to all parts of the horizon. Can any thoughtful man dispute that God had willed it so? The pursuit of rank is one thing. Of that the Horstwykers knew very little. The perception of proportion is another; it is still existent, though moribund, because the masses confuse it with humility, or, still more blunderingly, with humiliation. The Horstwykers were not humble—the Dutch peasant is not—but they were self-respecting. It is the man who dearly loves a lord, and can’t get near enough, that wants to see him hung up on a lantern-post.
To many hundreds of simple souls the reigning Baron van Helmont was the one visible manifestation of human greatness.
The Divine is intangible, and, at any rate, non-comparable. The gleam of the Horst through its ancestral trees was a daily reminder of Rule.
The change, therefore, in the King one feels—whom we all have, even Emperors—convulsed the whole community, at first, with much more than curiosity. The old Baron had lolled on the throne for so many easy years. The old Baron had never lifted his sceptre. All his influence—great as it was—had been automatic.
Everybody liked him, for he had never, by doing anything, given cause for offence. And everybody liked Gerard, destined, by the veryinsoucianceof his open-handed condescension, to conquer all simple hearts. This new lord was an unknown quantity. Men lifted their heads, expectant, not decided as yet in what direction to shake them.
Ursula, of course, they all knew from her infancy, but as one more or less of themselves. She had lived rather a sequestered life, keeping much to herself and to her father; yet they had always benignly approved of the parson’s daughter, chiefly on account of her absolute freedom from all forms of assumption and self-assertion, such as clerical womankind too often affects. But, as Baroness van Helmont, her character seemed out of drawing. It must readjust itself to their ideas, if such a thing were ever possible. On the whole, the peasantry of the countryside did not approve of Baron Otto’s choice; there was something incongruous in this too human link between earth and heaven. Pharaoh should marry his sister, not his kitchen-maid.
Even the Dominé had felt this, though he knew himself to be a gentleman. Perhaps on that account.
Pharaoh, settling himself in his unaccustomed seat, might well have wished for a Joseph. His predecessor’s years had been years of fatness, agricultural prosperity, but there had been no storing in granaries to stint the full-bellied kine. There had been plentitude everywhere, and plenteous hunger. The hunger remained. Pharaoh resolved to be his own Joseph, but, face to face with famine, Joseph comes too late.
By the united assistance of the two old ladies Gerard’s claim had been met. The Freule van Borck had been very particular about the legal part and the mortgage, holding long consultations with her notary. In all business matters women, startingfrom the conviction that their defencelessness is sure to be imposed upon, insist on driving bargains of granitic hardness. When four per cent. represents a fair rate of interest, a woman demands six, ultimately resigning herself to accepting five, because a woman, you know, can’t hold out against men, as she querulously tells you ever afterwards. The notary was compelled to restrain the Freule’s fervor of self-sacrificial money-getting. As the weeks crept on she became more and more resolved to assist her nephew advantageously. And, when everything had at last been arranged, the estate was left saddled with a heavy annual payment it could barely sustain.
“Never mind,” said Otto, looking round on the costly treasures he mightn’t sell and didn’t want. That had become the brave refrain of his resolve. “Never mind,” and then he set his teeth hard. It was very different from thetout s’arrangeof his race.
He steeled himself, doggedly, and a little dogmatically, to “putting things right.” That process, of course, annoys the numerous persons who don’t care to be told that things were wrong before. Besides, no adjustment is possible—especially not a rectilinear one—without knocks and shoves in all directions.
First and foremost, Otto had to do battle with his mother. The widow resented as an insult the suggestion that anything could need alteration.
“Things have always been like that in your father’s time,” she said over and over again. “And, Otto, I cannot understand all this talk of yours about income and expenditure. Of course, people have income and expenditure. Surely your father must have had them, too; but he never worried about them as you do.”
Otto knew this. It had been a favorite maxim of his father’s—not, perhaps, an altogether incorrect one—that only small incomes need balance to a hair. “Rich men,” the Baron used to say, “have other resources besides their revenues.”
“But your father always told me that you were a bad manager because over-anxious to be a good one,” the Dowager would murmur, querulously.“The excellence of management, he always said, was moderation, and, dear me, Otto, you manage more in a month than your father in all his lifetime. But you don’t sell the art collections, mind. They belong to me. Your father always said you would sell them.”
She even insisted on finishing the costly decoration of the west room, to Otto’s bitter annoyance. “Would you leave it unfinished?” she asked, with a flash of her old bright spirit. It was almost fortunate for Otto that she had never completely recovered from the shock of her husband’s death. For hours she would sit, silent and motionless, in the boudoir she had filled with his portraits from all parts of the house. And when the Baron entered, she would quote his father at him.
“Iwillspend less than my income,” repeated Otto, grinding his heel into the carpet. It sounds easy in a big house, but, in fact, it is easier in a small one. He retrenched, and made the whole family most increasingly uncomfortable. When, at last, he extinguished the great, wasteful fire in the hall, there was a palace revolution. The butler gave notice. “For I’m too old,” he informed Mynheer the Baron, letting him have a bit of his mind, “to expose my life at my age in them draughty passages.”
“Very well, go,” said Otto, fiercely. But he didn’t like it. The man had been with them for years. The Dowager-Baroness cried at thought of his leaving. All the servants looked sullen and demonstratively blue-nosed. For weeks the new master had been causing them successive annoyance. Some kind of chivalry taught him to screen his young wife.
“Let me do it, dear,” pleaded Ursula, when Otto complained that he must speak to the cook. “Surely that is my department.”
“Oh yes, it is,” he said, looking out of the window. “Oh yes.”
“Well, then, what has she done? She seems to me a nice, pleasant-spoken person.”
“Oh, they are all that,” cried Otto, facing round, with sudden eloquence.“They are all nice, all pleasant-spoken! My father’s people always were. Imagine, Ursula, that this woman, whom mamma has had in her service for fifteen years, daily—mind you, daily—writes down a pound of meat more than the butcher brings, and divides the profits with him!”
“How can she?” objected Ursula, who had not yet got accustomed to a household in which such things were possible, and even proper.
“How? Don’t ask me how. I suppose she calls it ‘perquisites.’ I met an English marquess once, who told me that in his father’s time the annual beer-bill had touched two thousand pounds. His was three hundred. It’s all a question of authorizing theft by silence. Keep your fingers off the tap. That’s all.” He laughed.
“I’ll weigh the meat to-morrow myself,” cried Ursula, rising already to do it. “That will stop them at once. We weigh it at home; that’s to say, Aunt Mopius often does. And I’ve had to scold Oskamp’s boy before. I should never have thought it of Oskamp. I suppose, Otto, your mother never weighs the meat?”
Otto smiled.
“So that will be all right. Don’t worry, dear, I’ll see to it myself.”
“No, I think you had better not,” reasoned Otto, gravely. “I—I think I had better do it. My mother, you see, Ursula, will take anything of that kind more easily from me.”
He hurt her cruelly, for it was by no means the first time she had thus been checked in the well-meant endeavor to assume her legitimate duties. She turned away in silence, and took up some needle-work.
Somehow he realized, helplessly, that things were again uncomfortable. “My dear child,” he explained, “it is only because I am anxious to shield you.”
But she stopped him.
“I don’t want to be shielded,” she said, quickly; “at least, notalways.”
And she beat back her emotion, looking away, with trembling lip.
He stood, uncertain, gazing at her, and his eyes grew half-reproachful.
“Oh, of course, you don’t understand!” she exclaimed, unwillinglyreading his thoughts. “You have married a plaything, Otto. You cannot comprehend my wanting to be a wife.”
“‘OH, THEY ARE ALL THAT,’ CRIED OTTO, FACING ROUND”
“‘OH, THEY ARE ALL THAT,’ CRIED OTTO, FACING ROUND”
“My dear child”—he began.
He too constantly called her that. She detested the name. She knew well enough how much he was her elder.
“I am not a child,” she cried, passionately. “I am a woman, and your wife.”
“Yes,” he replied, sternly, reading discontent in her pent-up vehemence, and perhaps a little assumption; “you are now the Baroness van Helmont.”
“I am not. I am not!” she cried, recklessly, and dropped her work in her agitation. “I mean I am not that only. I am sick of merely being that. I am your wife, Otto. I have a right to be recognized as such.”
Otto paced down the large room and up again.
“I am sorry,” he said, stiffly, “that you consider yourself slighted by any one, but I cannot ask my mother to leave the house. There are difficulties, of course, in your position. I am the first to admit them. We all have difficulties. Often they are unavoidable. Yours seem so to me.”
She looked at him, her brown eyes dilated with horror; then suddenly, very sweetly, her tenderness flowed across them.
“Oh, Otto,” she said, softly, “why do we so constantly misunderstand each other? It is you by whom I want to be recognized as your wife—nobody else!”
Then he caught her to his breast, and kissed her seriously, as they kiss who love deeply, but apart.
“I want to take my share of your work,” she continued, caressingly, “and, especially, my share of your worry. I am so tired, Otto, of sitting in the big drawing-room. To you, atleast, I want not to be ‘My Lady Nobody.’ I didn’t marry you for that.”
“What did you marry me for,” he questioned, playfully.
“Certainly not for that,” she replied, gravely, and the answer fell cold on his heart, for all that it left unsaid. A moment afterwards she added, “Of course, because I love you.” She thoughtfully spoke her conscientious verity; but love is quicker than thought.
He left her, with a kind little pat of encouragement, and she sank down beside the dog, hiding her sunny brown head in the softly responsive fur. She could feel Monk’s great heart beating gravely. The room was very large and empty, the house was very large.
Yes, though he did not realize it, Otto van Helmont had married his wife for her face—a sweet apparition, bright and fresh among the home-flowers, a suggestion of the dear fatherland, a dream of wholesome Dutch girlhood. He had married for that most unsatisfactory of all reasons: “because he had fallen in love.” Not even a fortnight—be it remembered—had elapsed between his first sight of Ursula and their engagement. A man must either know his wife before he learns to love her, or else he must never need to love her, or else he will certainly never learn to know her. That last eventuality, the rarest, is surely the most desirable, but only if the love be mutual, and exceedingly great.
Otto, then, had never penetrated into a character whose reserve was so like his own that he could not understand it. He loved his young wife, and kissed her; and he fancied, like so many men, that his consciousness of loving her was sufficient for all her wants. As for her position in the house, in the family, if it was uncomfortable, could he help that? Was not he himself weighed down by his difficulties, his responsibilities, the worry of universal deepening displeasure? What were the pinpricks she complained of compared to his wounds? Her mamma-in-law was inconsiderate; his mother was unkind. Her dependants were not always courteous, his own people hardened their countenances against him. He could not help thinking that much of her petulant soreness—well, she was young—was provoked by mortification because of the scant dignity or authority her sudden elevation had brought her. Had she not said to him, “I will not be My Lady Nobody; at least, let me not be it to you?”
She was annoyed, then, at being it to him, and to all. The combination vexed her. She had hoped, as My Lady, to be Somebody indeed.
He sighed from irritation. It was not his fault. Yet he wasa little disappointed in Ursula. He had thought hers was an essentially gentle nature, unassuming, unaspiring. Even not desiring to meddle and share in her husband’s affairs, because that, for a young girl, is impossible. A thoroughly womanly woman, who cried out in horror at thought of men’s work, such as sheep-slaughtering, or of men’s play, such as a fox-hunt; a woman who could be tacitly brave, on occasion, able to endure though unable to act. Thus had she revealed herself to him in the week of his swift immersion, his model woman, in a word. That is the worst of tumbling into love. You marry your model woman and have to live with your wife. Now, Ursula was far superior to Otto’s ideal. There is nothing more hopeless in human relationships.
He turned impatiently from himself and went down to the room where his bailiff was waiting. All that morning he had been weighed down by the prospect of this interview. No, he was not the man, in his gentleness of heart, to “set things right.”
“You can do as you like,” he cried, starting up from the other’s excuses and tergiversations. “You can go or you can stay. But never again, if I live”—his heart throbbed wildly as he bent that cruel, hated look of his on the sullen retainer—“never again, by God, shall you charge one and eight for a laborer’s wages while paying him one and five!”
FREULE LOUISA
In the gray loneliness of Ursula’s married life there was, however, very little solitude. The house contained too many various elements for that. And county society, which was plentiful, took a great interest in her on account of the romance of her courtship. By the coincidence of the old Baron’s immediately subsequent death, she had come face to face with her whole circle of acquaintance, during the days of her début at the Manor-house, through the medium of that most trying of social functions, the visit of condolence. All these people knew her from her birth; many of them called her by her Christian name; it seemed to her, and to them, that she was masquerading. She was nobody’s cousin.
And the Matres Familias who looked regretfully at Otto—there were many such—could hardly be expected to look benignly on Ursula. But they all patronized her most amiably, and patted her on the back, and showed that they were trying to “make her feel quite like one of us.” And Ursula, who could not be unnatural, nevertheless strove hard to be natural—if any one fathoms what is meant by that combination of miseries! The whole lot of them studied her attitude, and compared her with what she was before her marriage, and endeavored to accentuate a difference. One dear old lady told her kindly “that she really did very well.” Another took her aside: “Do not be self-conscious, dear Ursula,” she said. “Just be yourself, my dear, just as you were formerly. We like you best like that.” Surely, there was no cause for the historic Lady Burleigh to “take on” so; before her marriage she had not resided in Stamford-town.
The Dowager-Baroness was far too well-bred to mortify her young rival intentionally; she was far too well-bred not to do so daily without intention. The Dominé’s daughter must now take precedence? Impossible. Mevrouw van Helmont retained her seat at the head of her table. The servants came to Mevrouw for orders; not that Ursula cared at all about this, or wished in any way to domineer, but her clear nature shrank from the discomfort of hourly confusion. “Oh, what does it matter!” thought Otto, harassed by the real troubles of his own administration. His wife did not complain to him. She retired to the big drawing-room, with empty hands, and found solace for hours at her beloved piano. It was a superb Steinway grand of the old Baron’s buying, very different from the little cottage instrument at the Parsonage. For years it had been the object of Ursula’s secret envy, and now it was the one acquisition she heartily rejoiced in among all the grandeurs of the great house which were not even hers.
“Does Ursula always play the piano?” asked the Dowager, wearily, when her son came in to visit her. “Did she never doanythingelse in her old home?”
“She is such a first-rate musician, mamma,” apologized Otto. “That requires a great deal of constant practice.”
“I suppose so. In my day nobody was a first-rate musician, except the professionals.”
“So much has changed,” said Otto, patiently.
“Perhaps.” The Dowager was making a spring-coat for Plush, what the French call ademi-saison; she laid down the sky-blue scrap upon her heavy crape. “Still, Otto, I wish things could be arranged a little differently. Does it not strike you as rather incongruous, with an eye to the servants and the tradespeople, that this house of mourning should resound with dance-music from daybreak to dark?”
Otto went to his wife. “I like the playing very much indeed,” he said. “But a little solemn music would make a delightful change. Do you always prefer dances, Ursula?”
“This is a scherzo, Otto, out of one of Beethoven’s symphonies.”
“Is it? I wish it sounded a little less—gay.”
Ursula struck the piano a violent crash, and then ostentatiously dragged, banging through the same composer’s “Marche Funèbre.” Towards the end she looked up defiantly at her husband standing in the embrasure of a window with folded arms. Suddenly she broke away from the music, and threw herself on his breast.
“I am sorry,” she said.
The Freule van Borck was the member of the household—an unimportant member—who took most interest in the new-comer. Otto’s fondness seemed devoid of investigation, like his mother’s apathy, but Aunt Louisa looked upon the fresh factor in her old maid’s life of fuss-filled monotony as a worthy subject of scientific experiment. Was Ursula—or was she not—quelqu’un? That, said the Freule van Borck, is the question.
Louisa van Borck had created for herself a peculiar position in her sister’s family. Some twenty years ago her tiresome existence with her old father in the Hague had come suddenly to an end through the conclusive collapse of Mynheer van Borck’s financial operations. He was about seventy at the time, and she thirty-eight. She had never wanted to marry, nor had she ever had an opportunity of wanting. Her ambition had always been to live with herself, occupying, enlarging, and fully inhabiting her own little entity, as few of us find time to do. That nothing much came of it was hardly her fault. She had a lot of little fads and fancies with which she dressed up her soul for want of better furniture.
“We must go and live with the Van Helmonts,” Louisa had said to her protesting parent. “It is unavoidable.”
“But, Louisa, your money, your share of your mother’s money—”
“Cannot support us both. Besides, I don’t intend to die in a workhouse.”
So the old gentleman had to turn his back upon the sweets of the “Residency,” and die away into the wilderness. Of course, the Van Helmont’s made room for their relatives. “So that’s settled,” said the lord of the Horst.Tout s’arrange.But grandpapa’s brain soon got clogged, in the still country atmosphere,from inertia and want of winding up. For many years his body vegetated in an upper room, with an attendant and a box full of toys. Nobody objected to him, nor was any one ever unkind. Besides, he had still his pension of four hundred a year, which made a welcome addition to the family revenues. Yet it was he they regretted mildly when he died.
Freule Louisa could not honestly be accused of unthriftiness. “I know nothing about money matters,” she was wont to exclaim, with pink-spotted agitation. “You mustn’t talk to me about money. I haven’t got any to spend.” Nobody knew how much of her private fortune was still in her possession, or how much she had possibly lost by investments. “You will see,” Baron Theodore had always prophesied, “Louisa will die a pauper.” His wife doubted it.
She had insisted upon making an arrangement with her relations which was especially antipathetic to their temperament. She paid a “pension” price for herself and maid of so much per diem, with deduction of one-half for board during absences of at least a week. In addition to this, she paid for the use of the carriage each time she drove out, according to a scale of her own careful concocting. So much per hour, so much per horse, so much if nobody else went with her. The whole thing was just like a hotel bill, and she enjoyed it immensely. “I am not going to sacrifice my independence,” she said. The Baron, of course, considered the business “disgusting”; but he never pushed his objections beyond a certain limit of opposing vehemence. He simply refused to have anything to do with the Freule’s laborious computations, and the Baroness was obliged to receive and receipt the monthly payments, which would sometimes remain on a side-table for days. Once or twice a dishonest servant took a gold piece without any one being the wiser.
The Freule did not approve of her sister’s domestics. Her own maid was perfection: angular (like herself), middle-aged, cross-eyed, cross-grained, and crossed in love (so she sometimes told Louisa), one of those bony asperities whose every word, like their every contact, cuts. The name this person gloried in was Hephzibah, and she belonged to a religious sect which wassupposed to embrace exclusively the elect, although these, in the opinion of each individual member, were represented by a minority numbering one.
Nobody in the house knew half as much about himself or about any other member of the family as Hephzibah. Her mind was a daily chronicle up to date, with all the back numbers neatly filed. Fortunately, her exceeding taciturnity limited the circulation.
“Hephzibah, I am watching my niece,” the Freule remarked from time to time. “She has an interesting part to play in the comedy of life.”
“Yes, Freule,” replied Hephzibah, who thought life was a tragedy.
“Will she rise to the height of her position? I love my sister and I love Gerard, but I should like to see Otto conquer them both, and Ursula conquer all three.”
“Yes, Freule,” said Hephzibah. She hated the young Baroness, for Ursula had attempted to show kindness to Louisa, whose forlorn inanity called for pity. The Freule’s sharp eyes were far-sighted and weak; she liked being read to for hours together, and she frequently complained of her maid’s incapacity for pronouncing or punctuating anything, even Dutch.
“Iwill read French to you with pleasure, Aunt Louisa,” said Ursula.
“Oh no, my dear, no.” The Freule took her aside in great agitation. “I could not be so inconsiderate to Hephzibah, I could not. Oh no.”
Still, in a hundred small ways, too wearisome to relate, Ursula filled up her time with attentions to the little old maid. It was a relief to find some one she could do something for. She learned a lot of Rossini’s opera airs on purpose, because the Freule had stated that she “adored Rossini.”
“Otto,” said the Freule one morning, “I should like to speak to you.”
He stopped, with his hand on the door-knob.
“Yes?” he answered, his thoughts intent on the morning’s disagreeable work.
“Otto, I have considered, and”—the Freule fidgeted—“under present circumstances I should wish to—pay seven florins more per week for my board.” The Freule gasped.
“Why?” asked the Dowager, sharply, from the top of the breakfast-table.
“Don’t interfere, Cécile. I see in the paper that prices everywhere are being raised.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Otto, turning away.
“Well, I intend to do it, so now you know. And, Cécile, you need not make any difference.”
“Difference?”
“Yes, in the menus.”
“I should think not, indeed,” exclaimed the Dowager.
How difficult is the path of virtue made for most of us by our relations. During the whole of the Freule van Borck’s terrestrial pilgrimage she never committed another action worthy to rank with this voluntary conquest of her ruling passion. Yet nobody understood it.
“Van Helmont of the Horst,” she said to herself, “shall remain Van Helmont of the Horst.” And she deducted the thirty pounds from her already meagre charities.
No one at the Manor-house had ever been prodigal in almsgiving. The old Baron had reckoned the poor a public nuisance; the Baroness provided them with systematically indiscriminate pennies; Gerard flung away an occasional hap-hazard shilling. And the new lord was by no means generally generous. He had very definite ideas on the subject. Charitable help must be strictly limited to the “deserving poor,” whatever that may mean—onlythe deserving, andallthe deserving. The word was his shibboleth. On paper it looks exceedingly well.
Also, he never gave money where he could give work, and he never gave work where he could give advice as to work elsewhere. He was forty when enabled and called upon to put into practice his carefully elaborated theories regarding pauperism. All the paupers of the neighborhood, to a man, resented a charity which had lost the charm of the happy-go-lucky. But to no one came more bitter disappointment than to Ursula, o’er the sun of whose crescent benevolence her husband’s theories spread in tranquil clouds.
How often had she not pictured to her father the wide use she would make of an expanded scope and increasing opportunities! Shall we venture to say that the constant thought had been a comfort, or at least an encouragement, through the months of her love-making? She had always worked fairly hard, with her limited means, in her father’s parish, nothing exaggerating, and setting nobody down in malice.
“And you will find sympathetic support in your husband,” declared the Dominé. “I know that he suffers greatly under his father’s bright indifference”—the Dominé sighed—“for instance as regards the Hemel.”
The Hemel—so it is still inappropriately called; the word means “Heaven”—was at that time a small hamlet outside the Dominé’s jurisdiction which had long been notorious in the whole province for the wild and profligate character of its consanguineous population. The people were mostly Roman Catholics, but, even had this not been the case, their pastor would hardly have paid them much attention. He was a very different man from Roderick Rovers. “The poor ye have always with you,” he repeated. And to his colleague he would have said, “Hands off!” Ursula rejoiced to realize her new position as lady of the Hemel as well as of the Horst. Oh, the cruel disappointment of discovering that the poor of the Hemel were not deserving. They were everything and anything but that.
“Be just before you are generous,” said Otto. “First, we must pay our way, dear Ursula, and that, in a landed proprietor’s life, includes an immense amount of unconscious, and even unintentional, philanthropy. What we have left we will gladly give away, but let us be careful to confine ourselves to worthy recipients of our bounty.”
Never mind, there is plenty of good to be done, as Ursula knew, without almsgiving.
“I wish you would not go to the Hemel,” pleaded Otto in the face of her efforts; “you would do me a great favor, Ursula. Mother has so many causes of complaint against me already, and she is dreadfully afraid of infection. Besides, it is altogether useless. They only make a fool of you. Nothing good ever came, or can come, from that horrible place.”