CHAPTER XXXII

“GERARD THRUST THE GLOVE INTO HIS POCKET”

“GERARD THRUST THE GLOVE INTO HIS POCKET”

Ursula knew not what to say or think. Slowly she dropped the remaining glove on the ground at her brother-in-law’s feet; slowly she raised her faithful eyes to the level of his own. In that moment, quite unexpectedly, as by a revelation, he saw how very beautiful she was. He stood before her dismayed, his heart full of yesterday’s conversation, of this morning’s experiences. “Ursula,” he stammered, “I—I am going to Acheen—at once!”

“I thank God,” she said, with solemn bitterness, and left him.

Meanwhile the wretched husband shrank back behind his dressing-room curtains. It was true that he had begun to spy on his wife. He hated himself for doing it. He despised himself for believing the clear testimony of his eyes.

He went down to breakfast; somebody said he was looking ill. “It is the worry at the close of the year,” he told his mother; “this time I can certainly not make both ends meet.” Mopius had a business-man’s suspicion of financial complications. Under the influence of the sacred season and the baronial splendor around him, he offered his “nephew Otto,” just before going to church, a considerable loan, free of interest. The Baron courteously declined it. “If Mopius were but a gentleman!” he reflected, with a sigh.

So the Dominé preached his festival sermon to various inattentive ears. Gerard had disappeared, suddenly recalled to Drum; Helena was wondering what had become of Count Frechenfels. Willie would have been fast asleep but for Aunt Louisa’s persistent pokes; the Dowager was trying to remember whether it was in ’42 or ’43 that her husband had broken his arm out shooting three days before Christmas. “Note,” said the Dominé, “that the message of peace is brought by the hosts, that is, armies, of heaven. It is always so in the history of the Church, as of each individual Christian. Nowhere is this truth made more consistently manifest:Si vis pacem, para bellum.” That was what the peasants of Horstwyk admired most in their pastor. He quoted the New Testament at them in the original Hebrew.

When the service was over, Otto remained behind to speak to his father-in-law. The preacher’s last words still hovered about the deserted pulpit: “Not till the city has surrendered does Emmanuel issue his proclamation of peace and good-will.” Otto went into the vestry where the Dominé was resting in his arm-chair, the Cross showing bright on his ample black gown.

“I can’t bear it any longer!” exclaimed Otto. “I must speak of it to some one. I must speak of it toyou.”

“What is your trouble, my son?” said the Dominé, gently. “If we confess our sins to each other, it often helps us to confess them to God.”

Otto started back. “How do you know that it is a sin?” he asked.

“Our troubles usually are, are they not?” said the Dominé, simply.

“It is a sin, and it is not a sin. I cannot resist it. It is stronger than I.”

“I will help you all I can.” The Dominé’s face grew very pitiful. “In most of our troubles men can help, God in all.”

“But I have proof,” cried Otto, hastily. “So much proof—too much proof. Only listen, father.”

He began speaking of his doubts, and the old man shrouded his face with one hand—his only one—white and transparent.

When Otto ceased speaking, a long silence ensued. At last the Dominé removed his hand, and Otto stared in horrified amazement. The minister’s clear face had become dark purple; veins stood out on his forehead which Otto had never perceived before. He began speaking, in a very low voice, but that voice also was new to the hearer:

“Go,” he said, “I have nothing to answer you.”

“But, father,” cried Otto, “speak to me. Pity me! For pity’s sake, don’t let me lose the only friend I have!”

The Dominé rose to his full height, in his long robes, pointing to the door.

“Go,” he repeated. “God forgive you. I cannot. Not at this moment.My Ursula!Go!”

And Otto, stalwart and sunburned, crouched to slink away.

THE GREAT PEACE

The Christmas party at the Manor-house broke up not over-pleasantly. Everybody seemed to realize the vague clouds that hung over the dark end of the year. Some particulars regarding the German visitor’s sudden indisposition had, of course, oozed forth into the half-light, bewilderingly indistinct. Helena departed in high dudgeon, frequently repeating to her husband that whatever had happened—and she didn’t want to know—was undoubtedly Ursula’s fault. Mynheer Mopius said that “the higher classes of this country were hopelessly depraved.”

Count Frechenfels slipped away to his native land in silence, and the military authorities took no cognizance of the affray. Of his own free will, therefore, Gerard asked to be transferred to a fighting regiment in the Indies, and very quietly and quickly he got ready to embark. He was eager to go, to escape from duns and the narrowness of his present hampered existence. And also to fly from a vague new sensation which, whenever he turned to it, caused his heart to leap up with dismay.

“I cannot understand why,” said the poor Dowager, feebly; “but, somehow, I seem not to be able to understand anything any more. It all used to be so different. Gerard, the wholeworldcannot have altered because your father died?” She gazed at him as if half expecting to hear that it had. “And I wanted you to help me with the Memoir,” she continued. “Youremember about the old, bright days. Otto doesn’t know. And now you also are going away.”

She began to cry, looking so white and fragile, with the snoring dog upon her lap.

“I couldn’t sell your father’s collections, Gerard, could I?” she complained. “He wanted me not to. Still”—a long pause; her face lighted up—“if that would keep you from going to that horrible place, I—I think I could venture. I think he would understand if I explained, when we meet again.”

“No, no, let me go,” said the young man, in a choked voice. “I shall come back to you, mother, with a ‘position.’ You will be proud of me.”

The Baroness shook her head.

“I am that already,” she said. “It is so uncomfortable here, I do not wonder you have enough of it. Otto is always ‘busy’ with ‘business,’ like a shopkeeper, and Ursula doesn’t even love him.”

“Mother!” cried Gerard.

“Not as I understand love—not as I loved your father. But, as I admitted, I no longer know. Sometimes I think I shall end like poor grandpapa, my head gets so tired; only I am still so much younger than he was, Gerard. Oh, Gerard, your father died too soon! God has been very hard on me. I never say any clever things now, as I used to do.”

In the hall, Gerard, still stunned and heart-sore, was waylaid by Tante Louisa.

“I have got a little present for you,” began that lady, in her most nervous falsetto. “It has cost me a great deal of privation, Gerard. What with the increase of expenses everywhere—I have twice already felt obliged to raise my ‘pension,’ although Otto pretends to object—I really can hardly afford it. But, then, it is a farewell gift.”

Gerard took the envelope she proffered him, gratefully, wondering whether it contained ten florins or twenty-five.

“And I should like to say, Gerard,” subjoined the Freule in a flutter, “that I highly approve of your conduct in going, and also of your fighting the German. He was insufferable. Hephzibah has told nobody but me.”

“Hephzibah,” said the Freule, in her own room. “In my youth I could have married a Prussian. We met him at Schlangenbad. But I loved my country.”

Gerard, opening his envelope, extracted a bank-note for one thousand florins.

When the younger son had sailed away, with his strange new uniform, to the land of falling cocoanuts and cannon-balls, the waves of emotion at the Manor-house settled down into a disagreeable ground-swell. Otto had made up his mind to “forgive and forget,” a combination foredoomed to failure; Ursula walked straight on by her husband’s side, with a gloved hand in his. It was useless to talk about forgetting. She would never do that. Not as long as a proud woman’s heart beat under her wifely bosom. With scrupulous tenderness she smoothed the daily deepening furrows upon the Baron’s careworn brow.

And the months passed on, exceedingly like each other, excepting that Baron Otto made himself fresh enemies with every fresh act of justice. He was stern, and, necessarily, stingy. It was true that his honest impulse to discuss his suspicions with Ursula’s father had cost him the last friend he possessed in Horstwyk. He clung the more tenaciously to his life’s object. And he idolized his child.

On this point, at least, there could be sympathy between husband and wife. Little Otto was querulous over his infantine troubles. He disliked teething, and going to sleep, and cold water, and hot water, and eczema. He did not take kindly to existence. It is that class of children which, universally forsaken, hang on, by the nails, to their parents’ hearts. There was no danger of Ursula’s heart becoming atrophied. In one thing she did not obey her husband; she slipped in and out among the poor a great deal more than Otto knew.

But, having no money, she came with empty hands, and her visits were rarely appreciated, except by the purely imaginary poor person, who thought a glimpse of her bonnie face better than a sixpence any day.

Winter was coming round again when Otto one morning received a letter from a person who signed herself “Adeline Skiff.” The person spoke of great wrongs she had suffered from Gerard, of present distress, and of possible assistance. Otto had never heard of Adeline Skiff, but with his usual thoroughness he took the next train to Drum, and unexpectedly called upon the lady. He knew her again when he saw her, although she was very much changed.

Adeline lived in a blind alley, among odds and ends. She was the only inhabitant who wore a fringe, and this fact afforded her daily satisfaction. Otherwise, her reputation was dubious, and her slovenliness undoubted.

She received the Baron in a small front room, filled by a sewing-machine and two children. She hastened to explain that her husband, who was not over-kind to her, had lost his last place in a lawyer’s office on account of his stubborn integrity; she got a little dress-making, not much; she had hoped that Mynheer the Baron might be moved to do something for her or her children. She pushed forward two dirty-faced boys; Otto started, involuntarily, at sight of the elder. Adeline smiled knowingly.

“I cannot verify your story,” said Otto.

Adeline looked up quickly. “Can’t you, really, Mynheer the Baron?” she retorted.

“And my brother, did he not give you money?”

“Yes, he gave me three thousand florins,” replied Adeline, frankly, “and my husband spent them.”

“I cannot help that,” said Otto.

No, he was not willing to assist her. She appealed but little to his sympathy.

He could not believe she belonged to the “deserving poor,” and he told her so. How had she got hold of her worthless husband?

“By advertisement,” replied Adeline, offended. “The same way your worthy lady tried to get hers.”

“What do you mean? You are insolent,” said Otto, haughtily.

“Oh, of course, Mynheer the Baron; poor people always are when they speak the truth. But when the Baroness was advertising for a husband she couldn’t be sure that she’d get such a good one as you.”

“If you mean anything except insult,” said Otto, frowning, “tell me the truth, and I will pay you.”

Whereupon Adeline told, with slight embellishment. Ursula had answered advertisements, Gerard’s among the number. She had “wanted” a husband. So, of course, she had accepted Otto’s proffered hand.

“Amésallianceis a mistake, after all. There is something in blood,” thought Otto, in the train. He went home quite quietly. But that evening, to Ursula’s wonderment, he dropped, for the first time, his good-night kiss.

That year’s winter opened dully. Otto had let the shooting; it was a sacrifice of which he could not trust himself to speak. No one came to the house in the absence of battues. Gerard wrote home regular letters to his mother, bright letters, but the Baroness, bored to death, was growing somnolent and slow.

Bad accounts of Gerard—mostly false—occasionally reached the Manor-house. People said he was exceedingly wild and devil-may-care. Rumor told, moreover, that he had got himself entangled, on the journey out, with the governess of an English family.

“Thank God, we have the boy,” said Otto.

One evening, late in October, the father came into the nursery, where Ursula was trying to make “Ottochen” balance himself against a chair.

“Ursula,” began the Baron, hurriedly, “where have you been this afternoon?”

Ursula slowly lifted her eyes to his excited face.

“At the ‘Hemel,’” she said, firmly. “Vrouw Zaniksen was ill again. And her baby, too. They were absolutely destitute. So I went.”

“The baby is dead,” burst out Otto. “It is a case of malignant diphtheria. I met the doctor just now. He warned me.” The father sprang forward, placing himself between wife and child. “Leave the room!” he cried. “Don’t come back to-day. Leave the child to me!” He caught the boy so violently to his breast that Ottochen began to cry. Ursula hurried away, unresisting, with that wail in her ears.

A few hours later, when they were alone together, she said, very meekly, “Forgive me, Otto.”

He looked up wearily.

“I forgive you this,” he answered. Then, with an effort as of one who breaks through a hedge, “But not,” he added,“the having married me when you did not love me.”

She was a very proud woman, yet in this moment of his misery she knelt down by his side. “Dear husband,” she said, “if I wronged you it was in innocence. How, except by loving, can a woman’s heart learn love?”

Otto sighed, crushing down the accusation that she had learned the lesson since, but from another teacher.

“Ursula,” he said, “there is a foreboding in my heart to-night of coming trouble. God grant it prove only a foolish fancy. But, if not, then let us at least lighten each other’s load. Ursula, look into my eyes. Tell me, dearest, that it is not true, this story of your hunting for a husband, of your marrying me because others had drawn back!”

“It is not true,” she said, bitterly, still kneeling, but with scornfully averted glance.

“Tell me it is not true that you have ever loved any one else.”

This time she faced him fully. “It is not true,” she repeated.

“Ursula, God knows I have never wronged you by a word.”

“I have never wronged you by a thought,” she answered, rising to her feet, and he felt that, whatever time might alter, one shadow must remain.

“I love you,” he said. “I have loved you from the first. I shall always love you through all my weakness and all my wrong.”

She put her arm round his neck and kissed him.

Twice during the night Ursula slipped away from her room to listen at the nursery door. She crept back gratefully amid the perfect silence. The slight irritation in her own throat was what people always feel, she told herself, at the bare mention of diphtheria. Yet all next day she kept away from little Otto.

She was sitting at the piano, when her husband came in to her, with a white scare on his bronzed face.

“The child is not well,” he said, hoarsely. “I have sent for the doctor.”

Ursula started up. “Oh, Otto,” she cried, “is it the throat?” Otto nodded. “Then I can go to him,” she said, “now,” and ran from the room.

The white spots were there; she saw them despite the little creature’s struggles, and her heart sank. But she also had a few white spots. There was so much false diphtheria.

The doctor, however, looked grave, and muttered, “Angina pellicularis.” He was angry with Ursula. “I shall stay,” he said, and she cowered down by the little bed.

Then followed an evening of unbroken anxiety. The child grew rapidly worse, and the parents could do nothing but watch its gaspings. Towards midnight the doctor performed the horrible, unavoidable operation which gave it a little more air.

In the lull of suspense Ursula’s gaze fell upon Otto. “And you!” she said, suddenly, “you are ill! You, too! Doctor!”

Otto sank back in responsive collapse.

“It’s no use holding out any longer,” he panted. “Doctor, I’m afraid there’s something wrong with me too.”

“Let me look at your throat,” said the Doctor, harshly. “Here’s a pretty bit of business,” he added, turning to Ursula.

Very shortly after there were two sick-rooms opening out of each other, and the whole household trod softly under the near terror of Death. All through the silent morning Ursula passed from bed to bed, her own pain gone, feeling nothing but the dull agony of useless nursing. Hephzibah had quietly installed herself as an assistant. The child’s usual attendant was too full of personal alarm. Tante Louisa came to the door with persistent whisper. Miss Mopius left a bottle of fluid electricity and ten globules ofSympathetico Lob.

The doctor, who had been away for his rounds, came back in the afternoon and inserted a tube in the father’s throat also. Ursula did not dare to question his solemnly sullen face.

One thought seemed chiefly to occupy Otto as he lay choking. He had written on a piece of paper—finding no rest till they gave it to him—the following words: “I must die before the child. Tell the doctor tomakehim live so long. Or kill me. Never Gerard, Ursula. Never, never. You first. For another Helmont!”

She had read the message in her deep distress, and understoodit. Dutch law no longer admits entail. If Otto died childless, his mother and brother were his legal heirs. But Ursula would be heir to herfatherlessson.

She clasped her husband’s hand in response to the hunger of his eyes, and when the doctor came she put the question which was straining through them.

“Doctor, he wants me to ask it. If—if this were to be fatal”—she went on bravely—“which do you think—first?”

“How do I know?” replied Dr. Lapperpap, roughly. “Pray to God for both. Both of them need your prayers.”

Once again Otto signified his wish to write, in the short-lived winter day.

“Never Gerard,” he scrawled. “You will help. By every means. Only not Gerard. Promise.”

She bowed her head, but he pressed his finger on the final word. In his dying eyes there was a passion of eagerness she could not resist. Promise! promise!

“I promise,” she said. And it grew slowly dark.

Presently Ursula came through the intervening door into the nursery. Hephzibah looked up.

“Mevrouw,” she said, “it’s no use trying to deceive you. The baby is dying. It can’t last many minutes. It’s the Lord’s doing. Blessed be the terrible name of the Lord!”

Ursula knelt down and calmly kissed the little congested forehead. What did the danger matter? Perhaps she was courting death.

Then she went back to her husband, and gazed deeply upon his terrible struggle. She could do nothing to help him. But she felt that this agony, also, was approaching its end.

Hephzibah knocked gently. “Mevrouw,” she whispered, “Mevrouw, it is over. The poor little thing is at rest.”

Some moments elapsed before Ursula appeared. Then her face stood out, in the dusk, hard and set.

“Go down-stairs,” she said. “Go away, and leave me alone with my dead.” She pushed forth the waiting-woman, and locked the nursery door behind her. For a moment she waited by the cot; then she returned to the inner room. It was nowquite dark. A quick shuffling made itself heard in the passage. Somebody tried the lock. Ursula took no notice.

Half an hour later she opened the door and passed out into the hall. An oil-lamp was burning there. She shaded her eyes from its glare.

On the staircase she met Aunt Louisa. “Come into the dining-room, aunt,” she said. “There is something I must tell you.” She sank down on the nearest chair, by the glitter of the untouched dinner-table. “Dearest Aunt Louisa,” she said, “you mustn’t mind too much. God has taken Otto to Himself. And—and He has taken baby also.”

Aunt Louisa began to cry.

“Don’t cry,” said Ursula, almost impatiently; “Idon’t cry.”

“Otto and baby!” sobbed the Freule—“oh, Ursula, Otto and baby!”

“Yes, doesn’t it seem strange?” said Ursula, staring in front of her.

After a moment’s pause she added, “Aunt Louisa, somebody must go at once, I suppose, for the doctor, and also for the notary. Mustn’t they?” She went across and rang the bell.

“Anton,” she said, “two messengers must be off instantly, one to the doctor, one to the notary. No time must be lost. Anton, your master is dead. And the Jonker is dead also.”

The man’s face grew white, and his eyes overflowed. Ursula turned hastily away.

The notary was the first to arrive. The widow received him alone. After the usual preliminaries of condolence he told her that Otto had left no will.

“I am sure of it,” said the notary, “for he talked the matter over with me. Before the child’s birth he was anxious to disinherit the old Baroness, his mother. When I told him that this would be quite impossible, he said there was no use in his making a will.”

“The Baroness has no claim on the property now,” said Ursula. “She is very nearly childish, as you are aware.” The Baroness would mean Gerard.

“If Mynheer the Baron died after your little boy,” said thenotary, as gently as he could, “then his mother and brother are his heirs. But, Mevrouw, if the Baron died first, then your little boy inherited the propertyat that moment, and you, being a widow, are the only person entitled to any estate left by your child.”

“My husband died first,” said Ursula.

Notary Noks rose in his agitation. “Then, madame,” he said, “you are the owner of the Manor-house. Henceforth you are the Lady of Horstwyk and the Horst.”

Ursula looked into the lawyer’s face. “It is an inheritance of debt,” she said.

INTRIGUE

“Ursula van Helmont is better,” announced Willie, dawdling into his wife’s boudoir; “they say she will live.”

Helena glanced up from her book, not without a slight shade of impatience.

“Who told you?” she asked. “Will you have some tea? It’s quite cold.”

“Much obliged. Oh, everybody told me—they were talking it over at the Club.”

“And supposing she had died,” continued Helena, carelessly, “of this diphtheria or brain fever, or whatever she had, then I suppose Dominé Rovers would have reigned at the Horst?”

“I suppose so,” replied Willie, eating a great hunch of plum-cake; “but you mustn’t ask me, because I don’t understand. However, it’s so idiotic that I dare say it’s law.”

Helena smiled.

“Really, Willie,” she said, “you are growing quite intelligent.”

“Oh, it’s not me,” confessed honest Willie. “Everybody was saying it.”

A tinge of disappointment stole over Helena’s mobile face.

“And doesn’t it seem utterly ridiculous and unjust that if Ursula Rovers marries again all the Helmont property will go to that Smith or Jones, or whatever his name may be? It’s shamefully hard on Gerard.”

“Of course Ursula will marry again,” said Helena. “People who have been married like that always do.”

“Like what?”

“Willie, you are insufferable. Surely, ‘le secret d’ennuyer, c’est de tout demander.’ Like that. Neither happily nor unhappily. They have had a glimpse of possibilities. It is like gambling without a decisive turn of luck either way; one goes on.Ishould marry again.”

“If I give you a chance,” grinned Willie, who understoodthat.

“Which you are not gallant enough to do. Unless you seriously object, Willie, I should like to go on with my book.”

He walked across and took it out of her hand.

“La Terre!” he said. “Really, Nellie, your tastes are catholic.”

“Have you read it?” she asked, with a faint blush.

“Yes. Somebody told me it was Zola’s dirtiest, so I looked at it once in a way.”

“Ah, there, you see, lies the difference. You read it for the dirt. Yes, undeniably, Zola is dirty, but he is not immoral. However, I think he is dull. He photographs caricatures, and that is in itself absurd. One photographs realities; caricatures should be drawn. No, I am not speaking to you, Willie; I am speaking to somebody as an audience: one has to sometimes. I’ll throw away this book, if you like.” She looked up at her husband almost entreatingly.

Willie hesitated, standing in the middle of the room.

“Oh no,” he said. “After all, it’s your business, not mine.”

“All right. Don’t eat too much cake.”

Helena returned to her volume, but not to her reading. Between her eyes and the printed page there settled, immovable, a vision of a handsome, animated, angry face, and once more she saw a blue-paper novel flying into a corner of the room. “No man that really loves a woman would like to think of her as reading such a book as that.”

She turned away, on her couch, and stared hard at the pink-embroidered rosebuds on the wall.

“What! Crying?” exclaimed Willie, in great distress, coming round from the window. “Why, Nellie, what’s the matter? Is your toothache bad again?”

“Yes, very bad,” she sobbed, breaking down.“Do go, Willie, and send me Mademoiselle Papotier with the little bottle of laudanum.”

Mademoiselle Papotier had remained at the Van Trossarts’, but she frequently came to spend a few days with Helena. She now duly appeared, summoned by loud cries from her host.

“Papotier,” said Helena, thoughtfully, “if ever I have a daughter, I shall not educate her as you educated me.”

“That is a reproach, my dear,” replied the French governess, serenely, knitting on steadily with mittened hands.

“No, it is a compliment. You developed the heart. You did right. But I should kill it.”

“My child, I could not have killed your heart; it was too large.” The little old doll laid down her work, to gaze affectionately at her former pupil.

“Why has God sold us to men that we must live with them?” cried Helena, passionately. “He should have given us to angels or to brutes. We could have been happy with either of those.”

“Fi, donc, ma chérie,” said Mademoiselle. “The good God knows his business better than you.”

“Ah, my dear Papotier, you are an orthodox Christian. You enjoy all the consolations of religion and neglect all its duties. It is a very advantageous arrangement to be an orthodox Christian.”

“It is,” replied the Frenchwoman, with a quick gleam of malice. “For we Christians, although we do wrong like other people, at least occasionally have the grace to leave off.” She dropped her eyelids, and her needles clicked.

“Yes, when you are tired of it,” retorted Helena, who perfectly understood the allusion to her penchant for her cousin. “And then your priest gives you absolution. I would not buy off the flames of hell at the rate of a florin per fagot.” She paused, meditatively. “And feel them burning just the same,” she added. Then she laughed. “Papot,” she said,“you do not know that I have got a new admirer? No, I do not mean Willie, though he certainly is more considerate than he used to be. My admirer is old, and fat, and yellow; his name is Mopius, and he is uncle to the Queen of the Horst. I met him there the Christmas before last. Him and his—charming young wife.”

“Yes?” assented Mademoiselle, listlessly. “My dear, you have many admirers. Fortunately they are platonic”—she sighed a little sigh—“as were mine.”

“This one is obstreperous,” persisted Helena, glancing at the clock. “He presented me with a big bouquet last night at the Casino ball, making a fool of me before everybody. And he asked permission to call without his wife. Such things should be done without asking. I am expecting him even now.”

“My dear, what will you do with him?”

“I don’t know. Be revenged on him, some time, for last night’sJocrissiade.”

Mevrouw van Troyen shut down her teapot with a vigorous snap.

“There he is,” she said, as the bell rang.

“My dear, your tea is not drinkable.”

“What does that matter? Is it not for an admirer?”

Mynheer Mopius entered, looking as smart as a blue-speckled yellow waistcoat could make him. His thin hair was observably neat; he bowed off the retreating Papotier with a grace which bespoke his familiarity with the saloons of the aristocracy.

“I am come, Mevrouw,” he said to the mistress of the mansion, “to express my condolence. I assure you I felt for you last night.”

“Really? You surprise me,” said Helena, meaningly. “Certainly, I deserved your pity. And every one else’s. But these mixed entertainments are always a bore.”

“I was alluding,” replied Mynheer Mopius, solemnly, “to the tragic death of our cousin Otto.”

“Oh, were you? But that’s several weeks ago. I don’t think I can claim much sympathy on account of the death of my cousins. Please don’t, Mynheer Mopius. Besides, he was your nephew—wasn’t he?—so you can condole with yourself.”

“He was.” Mynheer Mopius thoughtfully stroked his hat. “We are a—kind of connection, Mevrouw.”

“Ursula and you? So I understood,” retorted Helena, hastily.“I hope Mevrouw Mopius is well? It was very kind of her to send me those flowers last night.”

“How delicate! How high-bred!” reflected Mopius. “Oh, Mevrouw,” he stammered, “it was nothing. The merest trifle—”

“But she must never do it, or anything like it, again.”

Mynheer Mopius was doubly charmed. Whenever he made a fool of himself, he was tempted thereto by the belief that ladies found him irresistible. Some few men develop that fancy. Surely, in Mynheer Mopius’s case, his first wife was more to blame than he himself.

“The unfading roses are yours,” he said, simpering and bowing.

“Have another cup of tea,” interrupted Helena, sharply.

The old Indian, as we know, was a great connoisseur; he had gulped down two bowls of hot water already, imagining that it would not be proper to refuse. He meekly accepted a third, but its tepid unsavoriness aroused his native assumption.

“If I may make so free,” he said, “I should like to ask where you get—ahem!—this, Mevrouw”—he tapped his cup—“and what you pay for it?”

“Two and ninepence, I believe,” replied the lady, sweetly. “If you wish, I’ll ring and ask the cook. I’m glad you like it. There’s plenty more.”

“Only two and ninepence!” exclaimed Mopius, horror-stricken. “That’s the worst of it; you Europeans fancy you can get things without paying for them. I was in the East myself for twenty years;Iknow what good tea is—nobody better. I was famous for my tea at Batavia, Mevrouw, as Mevrouw Steelenaar told me, the Viceroy’s wife. ‘Mynheer Mopius,’ she said to me, ‘where do you get this delicious mixture?’ But I wouldn’t tell her. However, I’ll send you some. ’Pon my soul I shall. You shall know what tea is. I’ll send you a pound to-morrow. I’ll send you ten pounds.”

Helena bent forward from her listless couch; a lily of the valley dropped away among the laces of her gown, and Mynheer Mopius caught at it with eager, fat fingers.

“Mynheer, you will send me nothing,” said Helena, gravely.“Did I not make my meaning plain enough just now?” Then, not wishing to go too far, “I cannot receive presents, thank you.” And, unconsciously, the twinkle in her angry eyes wandered away to a big portrait of her florid Willie.

“Ah!” said Mopius, and put the lily in his button-hole. He did it fondly, lingeringly. He understood that young husbands are jealous, however unreasonably, of experienced, intelligent men of the world. His manner exasperated her. “I am sorry,” he said, flicking the flower. “I should have been only too glad, had there beenanythingI could have done for Mevrouw van Troyen.”

Mevrouw van Troyen burst out laughing. “Really?” she cried, “even leaving me when I must go and dress for dinner? Mynheer van Trossart dines with us to-night; he is going to take me to the theatre.” She rose.

Mopius rose also, but hung back. “Ah, the Baron van Trossart,” he said. “Just so! I am very anxious to make his acquaintance. Some day, perhaps, I hope—” He hesitated, looking wistfully at Helena.

Suddenly his manner, his tone, his expression explained the whole thing to her. It was not her young beauty that had attracted this poor creature. She remembered having heard some one speak of the town-councillor’s ambition. There was a vacancy in Parliament—

“You can stay and meet him now, if you like,” she said, ungraciously, but grasping at vengeance swift and sure. “Oh yes, he is well enough, thanks; only rather worried about this approaching election for Horstwyk. They can’t find, I am told, a desirable candidate.”

She paused by the door. One look at Mopius’s face was sufficient. “I don’t take much interest in politics,” she continued; “but, of course, my godfather does. He has so much influence. And he tells me that at Horstwyk they want a moderate man, one that would go down with many of the Clericals—a Conservative, in fact. Such people are so difficult to find nowadays. Everybody is extreme.”

“But—but—excuse me,” stammered Mopius.“One moment, I beg. I had always understood that the Baron van Trossart was a Liberal—”

“A Liberal? Oh, dear, no. He would be a Conservative if there were any Conservatives left. As it is, he would never espouse the cause of an extremist. He sympathizes with the Clericals in many things. And now I must really go up-stairs. I will send my husband in to amuse you. Don’t talk politics to him, Mynheer Mopius. He knows no more about them than I.”[J]

Mynheer Mopius, left alone, wiped his blotchy, perspiring forehead. It was a master-stroke to have insinuated himself thus into the graces of this great lady whom he had been lucky enough to meet at the Horst. He felt very friendly towards Ursula.

“Ah, Jacóbus,” he said to himself in the glass, “you will be ‘high and mighty’[K]yet.” And he smiled at the vanity of women.

Willie came lounging in obediently, and carried off the worshipful town-councillor to the smoking-room.

“A fine house, Mynheer van Troyen,” said the conciliatory Mopius. “Exceedingly tasteful.”

“Oh, it’s well enough,” assented loose-tongued Willie. “But the money’s my wife’s, you know. And, by Jove! don’t she keep it under lock and key!”

Having reached the tether of his conversation, the young officer fell a-yawning, and soon suggested a little quietécarté.

“There’s half an hour more, at least,” he said.

Did Mynheer Mopius know the game? Yes, Mynheer Mopius had played it twenty years ago in India. Ah, indeed; they play for high stakes there! Willie suggested fifty florins. He played better than Mynheer Mopius. Twenty years is a long time. When Baron van Trossart joined the two gentlemen, Mynheer Mopius had lost five hundred florins, but he found himself on quite familiar terms with Willie, and in the sameroom with Baron van Trossart. He bowed pompously, patronizing the man who had just plucked him. “His wife would have accompanied him,” he said, “but that interesting circumstances—” and he smiled knowingly to the great noble before him, on whose haughty features the look of chronic moroseness sat so well.

A little preliminary awkwardness was deepened by his praising, all astray, the amiability of the Baron’s “charming daughter,” but presently the tide flowed swiftly into its preconcerted channel, Helena herself having entered, resplendent with a couple of diamond stars, to direct its course.

“No, Mynheer van Trossart,” said Mopius, nervously hurried, “I should never feel in sympathy with extremists. What we need nowadays, as I take it, is moderation, pacification—the old Conservative spirit, in fact.”

“Ah, yes, ah!” said the Baron. He was rather interested in Mopius, having heard of him as one of those men who are willing and able to spend money in a good cause, if thereby they can further their own. “Just the person, perhaps, for a candidate,” he said to himself.

“Only,” continued Mopius, ingenuously, “such people are so difficult to find. Everybody is extreme, and that frightens off the undecided voters. Now, I cannot help sympathizing with the Clericals in many points. We have wronged them. Undoubtedly, we have wronged them. Each man, Mynheer van Trossart, ought to be permitted to serve God in his own way.”

“Oh, undoubtedly,” said the Baron, a little uneasily, nevertheless.

“Personally, for instance, I take a great interest in the movement on behalf of confessional schools. I am speaking, of course, of private initiative.” He hesitated; Helena nodded encouragement across the Baron’s meditative study of his cigar. “I would go even a little further. I consider that some well-proportioned concessions—The development of Atheism, Mynheer van Trossart, is not one that I contemplate with satisfaction.”

The Government functionary turned in dismay.“Why, Mynheer,” he exclaimed, “I had been quite given to understand you were a Liberal?”

Helena’s voice broke the ensuing silence. “We really must go in to dinner, papa. We shall be late for the theatre. Good-bye, Mr. Mopius; my compliments to Mevrouw!” She took the Baron’s arm and drew him away. “I like a fat fool,” she said on the stairs; “your lean fool is only half a fool. He can’t look the part.”

THE NEW LIFE

Ursula awoke from a long dream of suffering. The world was very dark all around her, and she strove to lie still. But even while she did so she knew by the steady pulse once more swelling in her brain that the endeavor would prove fruitless. Alive again, she must live.

Her husband and her child were dead. It was she who, despising Otto’s fears of infection, had brought death into the house. Something told her that Otto, had he survived, would tacitly have laid the loss of the child at her door. And yet it was impossible to say for certain. Death changes all our perspectives. Ursula’s was not a nature to sink away into maudlin self-disparagement. She did not dash the tears from her cheek, but she resolutely lifted her head.

Nothing, however, makes us so tender towards those who loved us as the thought that we have done them irreparable wrong. When Ursula arose from her sick-bed, it was with the firm resolve to honor her husband’s memory by the daily sacrifice of her whole self to that which, but for her, might still have been his own life-task. She took up his cross exactly where he had laid it down. That was all she thought of—neither right nor wrong; neither God’s providence nor her own unfitness—only to do exactly as Otto would have wished.

“I understand perfectly,” she said, sitting, cold, with the blackness of her mourning about her. “I told you at the time, Notary, exactly how it was. There is no ready money—not even enough to pay the death duties. There is nothing except mortgages, the interest on which only hard work can meet.”

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