“‘GOOD-BYE, MR. MOPIUS; MY COMPLIMENTS TO MEVROUW!’”
“‘GOOD-BYE, MR. MOPIUS; MY COMPLIMENTS TO MEVROUW!’”
“You will have to sell some of the land,” replied the lawyer, hopelessly. “You had better sell the whole place. You can’t keep it up, anyhow. Not that present prices will ever pay off the mortgage.”
The widow remained silent for a moment; there was little of the “nut-brown” color left in the stately face against the oaken chair. “I shall never sell an inch,” she said, at last. “Never, as long as I live.”
“That is a long time,” retorted the matter-of-fact man of business. “A great deal may happen”—he glanced at his beautiful, beautified client; “meanwhile, everything of value in the house belongs, I understand, to the Dowager Baroness?”
“It does.”
“The Dowager Baroness, it appears to me, if I may venture to say so, is lapsing into second childhood.”
No answer. The room was very lofty and empty. The far stretch of naked country was very chill and bleak. The Notary got up to go.
“If I were you,” he said, “I should rid myself of the whole thing. I should decline to inherit. It’s a hopeless thing from the outset. Gerard will have his mother’s fortune to himself now, some day. He is all the better off for having missed the dead weight which has fallen on to your shoulders. It was a narrow squeak.”
She came up to him—quite suddenly, close. “You think that,” she said, with thick utterance. “You understand that. Always remember it. Do you hear?” A clear passion had overflowed the dull dark of her eyes. Violently she mastered the trembling which shook her from head to foot.
“Of course, my dear lady; it is evident. Your brother-in-law could hardly have sold the property as you will. Yes, yes, as you will. Never mind; take your time. It is an experiment.”
“No,” she said, “it is not an experiment. Good-day.”
Notary Noks considered himself a very shrewd man. He perfectly comprehended the young Baroness’s resolution to play the fine lady as long as she was able.“She’s been dem lucky,” reflected the lawyer as he drove away; “but she’ll have to marry again, and marry money if she wants to keep on. It’s a queer end of the Van Helmonts.” He had known the pastor’s girl ever since she was a baby; his opinion of the proud, pale woman from whom he had just come away was distinctly unfavorable.
Ursula passed through the long, gray library, and, drawing a curtain, softly entered the old Baroness’s rose-garlanded sanctum.
Through the south turret window the sunlight lay in an amber bar. And, incased in the clear gold, like a fly, sat the little black Dowager, surrounded by her papers, writing with the serene concentration of a well-defined literary task. She looked up across her glasses, pen in hand.
“I am busy,” she said, her tone full of mild annoyance. She was always busy, the more so when Ursula disturbed her—endlessly busy with the “Memoir,” noting down the same trifles over and over again.
“I know,” replied Ursula, meekly; “but I thought you would like to have this, so I brought it you out of the hall.”
It was a letter from Gerard, away in Acheen, the first response to the more explicit account of their common bereavement, coming back to them across the wide void of five months’ illness and solitude.
The Dowager tore open the envelope. Ursula waited, uncertain how to give least offence.
“There is a message for you,” said the Dowager when she had finished reading; “but I shall not give it you. It is an absurd message. It is an absurd letter in many ways. Poor Gerard, his sorrows have turned his brain. Like mine. Like mine. Like mine.”
She gathered together her papers, aimlessly, scattering them as she took them up.
“Stay with me, Ursula,” she said, querulously.“I have nobody to help me with these important documents. There must be a letter somewhere dated August the 5th, 1854. Or is it April—April, ’45? It is a letter from a friend of your father-in-law; I forget his name. I had it a moment ago. Or was it yesterday I had it? I was reading it to cook.Sheremembers things. She has been with me a long time. She remembers my dear husband quite well.”
“I will look for it,” said Ursula, taking care not to disturb Plush, who always made a bed for herself in the very midst of the crackly confusion on the table. “Is this it?”
“No, indeed,” replied the Baroness, without glancing up to verify her verdict. “You don’t know, Ursula. You are a new-comer. Cook is right, though I told her some things are best left unsaid.”
She went on folding and sorting, muttering to herself with a quiet little lady-like laugh.
“Gerard is ridiculous,” she presently broke out, with angry energy. “He says he would have had to sell the place as well as you must now, so where’s the difference? He is a fool. He would not have had to sell it, no more than Otto. Did Otto want to sell it, Ursula?”
She sat back in her chair, glowering with her light blue eyes at her daughter-in-law.
“No,” said Ursula, bending low over the writing-table.
“Aha! I thought you would try to deceive me. I forget a good many things, but I remember this. Do you hear me, daughter-in-law? I have never loved you; I had little reason to.”
Her voice rose shrill with quavery passion; she tried to steady her feeble little frame with blue-veined hands on the massive arms of her chair.
“But what does Gerard mean when he says—what does he say?—I forget—he says I must be kind to you. What does he mean? I have always been kind to you. But what right had you—better have plain speaking—to come and steal away my house from my son? Eh?” She started to her feet; the dog, disturbed by her cry, sprang up, barking furiously. “What right?” she repeated. “It is Gerard’s—I told him so. I told him to come and take it away from you. He writes back, ‘No.’ He is a coward—a coward as they all are, for a woman’s face.”
She sank back, whispering the final sentences, and began to cry, with noiseless, unrestrained tears.
“Dear mamma, we will not sell it,” pleaded Ursula, though she knew how uselessly. “You see, Gerard says again he would have done so. Let us be glad, then, that he has not got it yet. Perhaps, some day, when he thinks differently—meanwhile—in—trust—”
She stopped, not daring, nor caring, to proceed. But the Dowager had only caught at one sentence.
“No, we will not sell it,” she repeated: “no, indeed. Attempt such a thing and I appeal to the police!Yousell what belongs to another! You! Listen, Ursula. I am not as strong as I was. I forget things. I dare say you imagine I am growing childish. But be sure of this: that however stupid I may seem to become, I shall always know about the Horst. I shall watch over it for Gerard. I have written to him to come back, and he will come. You alter nothing—do you understand? Nothing. Oh, my God, I am a poor defenceless old woman! Have pity upon me, and make my head keep strong! Oh, if Theodore had only not died—not died! Oh, my God, my God!”
She shrank together, like a lace shawl thrown aside, and the tears trickled down among the trinkets of her watch-chain.
Ursula rose and went out into the deserted corridor. From one of the stands by the distant hall-door a brown-tinged “Maréchal Niel” fell to pieces with a heavy thud on the marble pavement.
“Monk!” cried the mistress of the mansion. “Monk!”
With great yelps of greeting the St. Bernard came bounding towards her.
“MRS. GERARD”
Ever since Otto’s sudden death the Freule Louisa had felt stirred to practical philanthropy. Something about “redeeming the time” had got wedged in one of her ears. With her own fair hand she had concocted during Ursula’s long illness uneatable messes for the invalid, and, mindful of the poor thing’s former overtures to herself, she had very nearly brought on a recurrence of delirium by insisting on reading Carlyle’sFrench Revolutionat the bedside. Routed by the doctor, she had extended her uncertain assistance to the village; but her efforts were much hampered by the steadfast resolution that neither personally, nor through the medium of her maid, would she incur any risk of infection. When the turnpike-woman’s little boy went up to the Manor-house for a promised bottle of wine the Freule rolled it across to him, her smelling-bottle held tight to her nostrils, over the broad slab before the open door. And somehow the little boy was awkward or frightened, and the bottle rolled away down the steps in crimson splashes and a puddle. All the village heard the story with a burst of derisive reproach. “Which seeing it was afterconfinement,” said the bottle-nosed turnpike-man, “a thing about which the Freule couldn’t be expected to know.”
“You can never be quite sure with these people, Hephzibah,” explained Freule Louisa, anxiously. “There is always a possibility of your catching something they haven’t got.”
“What you catch soonest is what you can’t catch afterwards,” replied Hephzibah, who meant fleas. Personally, the handmaid had a weakness for domiciliary visits, which afforded her an agreeable opportunity of telling the people of her ownclass—her inferiors, as she called them—how entirely they themselves were to blame for any misfortunes they might happen to have had.
On the gusty day which brought Gerard’s letter the Freule, accompanied by her faithful attendant, had departed to the Parsonage. Every Wednesday afternoon through the silent winter months the “ladies” of the village met in Josine’s drawing-room, and sewed innumerable nondescript garments for tropical converts from nudity to the inspiring strains of long-drawn letters monotonous with sickness and privation. Of this little Horstwyk Society the Freule from the Manor-house was Honorary President. It had taken to itself the appellation “Tryphena, Rom. xvi. 12,” and had gloriously fought and conquered the opposition “Tryphosa” which the doctor’s wife had rashly started—without Honorary President, but with a mission-field that could boast two genuine murders. Some of the Tryphena people rather regretted the annihilation of Tryphosa. It had formed such a fruitful theme when the missionary letters gave out.
“My dear Josine, I have got a most interesting report,” said the Freule, eagerly, taking off her heavy boots in the little Parsonage passage. The President and Secretary hated each other like poison. “The man at Palempilibang has lost two more children from dysentery—isn’t it dreadful?—and his wife has been so very bad they will have to take her up to a hill station for change of air.”
“I cannot understand it,” argued Josine, as they advanced to join the others; “I packed plenty of medicine in the box we sent out last Christmas. I wrote to Leipsic on purpose so as to make sure it should be genuine. And with me, when I have symptoms, Sympathetico—”
“My dear, I should not imagine it of any use in actual disease,” replied the Freule, hurriedly taking refuge from her own temerity in the bosom of “Tryphena.”
“Ladies, I have a most interesting report for this day’s meeting,” she began, with the common eagerness to promulgate calamity.“I shall not spoil it by picking out the best bits beforehand, but I must just tell you, because you will be so sorry to hear it, that Jobson, of Palempilibang, has lost two of his remaining seven children from dysentery, and his wife is so exceedingly weak the doctor says she cannot remain at the station. Isn’t it very, very sad? Ah, Juffrouw Pink, I am glad to see your cold is better.”
All the ladies looked at each other, and nodded sympathetically. The Freule’s news was quite in keeping with the ancient order of things. “Out yonder” was very far away, and people always died there. When they died you had a vague conception that you were getting your money’s worth. Juffrouw Pink, the very fat wife of a church-warden, and a recent member, sat helplessly entangling the fateful disease, in her woolly mind, with the crime of Non-conformity. Mevrouw Noks, the notary’s angular consort, laid down the little garment she had been engaged on.
“Sothatwill no longer be necessary,” she said, deliberately. Josine, who liked to be noticeably sentimental, murmured, “Fie!”
Meanwhile, Hephzibah, in the kitchen, was overawing the little Parsonage maid. But the thing was easy, soon effected, oft repeated, and she yearned for bolder game. Presently the drawing-room bell rang, and Hephzibah rose, aware that her weekly deliverance was come.
Every Wednesday afternoon the Freule Louisa would check the Secretary’s report-droning to remark, “My dear secretary, I am sure you will excuse me, but might I ring just one moment for my maid?” Somebody would, of course, hasten to comply with the noble President’s request—the interruption was far from unwelcome to the gossip-loving community—and the Freule Louisa would compliment herself on again having invented a pretext to make sure of Hephzibah’s obedience to orders. Practically, the pretexts were but three: a handkerchief from the winter mantle, a forgotten letter for the post, and the drying of the Freule’s boots. And Hephzibah, having made her cross-grained appearance, immediately sallied out on errands of her own. For the Freule never rang twice—lest she should make the discovery she dreaded.
Hephzibah was not afraid of dirt or disease. Both she knewto be the outcome of human wickedness, and with human wickedness Hephzibah Botster had little to do. She feared only one thing in this world, or the other world, the Intangible—consolidated and incorporated for her in a great overshadowing conception—the Devil. Hephzibah believed overwhelmingly in the Devil. Her existence was full of him. And therefore, strong-minded saint though she was, she did not like to find herself alone in the dark.
As a rule, she spent her Wednesday afternoons with Klomp, the lazy proprietor of the tumble-down cottage in Horstwyk wood. Klomp was what she chose to call “a sort of a distant connection of hers,” he being disreputable, and a cousin-german. This disreputable man she had, however, made up her mind to marry, for her chances were infinitesimal, and she felt that the tidying him up would be a glory and a joy.
As she now went zigzagging along the road, crooked in feature and movement, through the sloppy haze of dull-brown bareness, she came across a shy urchin who was gathering forbidden firewood. Him she immediately accosted, like the Bumble she was.
“Do you know, you boy, who comes for children that steal?”
“Jesus,” stammered the frightened culprit, giving the invariable answer of all Dutch children to any question that savors of the Sunday-school.
“The Devil! The Devil! The Devil!” reiterated Hephzibah, with impressive vociferation. “Do you understand me? The Devil.” She attempted, ignoring physical impossibilities, to fix both her eyes in one soul-searching stare. But the little boy lifted his own pale-blue orbs in saucer-sized reproach.
“It’s very wrong to swear,” he said, gravely.
So Hephzibah continued her way, for “Answer not a fool,” she reflected, “according to his folly.” She saw, through the gaunt glitter of the trees, Klomp’s half-detached shutters hanging forlorn. She wondered who had opened them on this usually deserted side. Certainly not Klomp. She smiled grimly. She would put things to rights, as was her custom, and scold him.
She heard voices inside the house, an unknown woman’svoice, and laughter—actually laughter from Klomp, whose utmost exertion in her presence hardly attained to a smile. She pushed open the door and entered, indignant. Some chipped crockery was spread over the crippled table, and behind an odorous paraffine-stove and coffee-pot sat a frowzy female of spurious pretensions to elegance—a female with whom Hephzibah was not acquainted, but whose name was Adeline Skiff. The virtuous Abigail immediately wrote down the stranger “a bad lot,” and less virtue would have sufficed thus correctly to apprise her.
“‘DO YOU KNOW, YOU BOY, WHO COMES FOR CHILDREN THAT STEAL?’”
“‘DO YOU KNOW, YOU BOY, WHO COMES FOR CHILDREN THAT STEAL?’”
“Company! Dearie me!” cried Hephzibah, in a whole gamut of spinsterly suspicion. “And where, pray, are Pietje and Mietje, John?”
Klomp yawned.
“Wednesday, is it?” he said. “So much the worse.” After which uncourteous allusion he subsided.
“Let me introduce myself to the lady,” interposed Adeline, all mince and simper. “I am a cousin of Mynheer Klomp’s, and I have come to stay with him for a week or two.”
“Cousin!” repeated Hephzibah, in a tone of flat denial. She stalked to the table, and sat down square. “Now, John, I’m a distant connection of yours, and I know all about your family. And what cousin may you be, mum, pray, and on which side?”
“Oh, I never can remember those genesises!” cried Adeline, with a charming laugh, as she hastened to arrange her fringe.
“Dirty hands!” reflected Hephzibah.
“My name is Botster,” she said, aloud, “and one thing I know for certain, madame, that you never were a cousin of mine.”
Adeline looked surprised at this open aggression; but Adeline had never liked disagreeables of any kind.
“Have some coffee?” she asked. “There is a little—a little taste from the coating of the coffee-pot, whatever it may be, that gives quite a peculiar flavor, as I was just telling Klomp.”
She laughed again, and the sluggard smiled contentedly.
“Oh, nobody ever rinses it out,” he said. “I boiled some ratsbane in it the other day.”
Adeline shrieked.
“Of course, you are a stickler for neatness, Juffrouw—Juffrouw?” cried Hephzibah, furiously, letting one of her eyes travel down the soiled ribbons of the visitor’s tawdry dress. “I like people to be tidy, not like you, Cousin John. Cleanliness is a great virtue, Juffrouw. Perhaps you know it is placed next to godliness.”
“Yes, I see it is,” replied Adeline, with a gesture of sudden malice—“sitting side by side.”
To such levity Hephzibah could allow no recognition. She was burning to find out the intruder’s name, and, after some futile strategy, which deepened the mystery, she boldly demanded it.
“Why, Klomp,” replied Adeline—“Klomp, of course. Isn’t it, Cousin John?” She winked at Hephzibah’s relation impudently.
“I don’t believe it,” said Hephzibah.
“Well, if it isn’t, I’ll make it so. Some day, perhaps, I’ll tell you more, and some day, perhaps, I sha’n’t. If you were going to have a new white dress, what color would you have it trimmed?”
“If I, or any other decent person of our class, were going to have a white dress, it would be a night-dress,” retorted Hephzibah, “and she wouldn’t have it trimmed at all.”
At this Adeline giggled and Hephzibah glared.
“Any one can see,” said Juffrouw Skiff, “that you’re a thrifty body and don’t waste your money on personal adornment. Married, I dare say, eh?—ah?—and a large family to look after.”
Both Klomp and Adeline roared.
“I’m maid at the Manor-house,” said honest Hephzibah, proudly; “own maid to the Freule van Borck.”
“You don’t say so!” Adeline’s manner had grown suddenly serious. “Now that’s a remarkable coincidence. I’m very much interested in your Manor-house, Juffrouw Potster. I know your people.”
“Really?” replied Hephzibah, politely.“I don’t remember seeing you at any of our dinners. Did you come alone, or did you bring your cousin Klomp?”
This time Adeline flushed scarlet, but she was resolved to avoid a quarrel with a servant from the Horst. Deserted, for the time at least, by her husband, she had heard of Ursula’s great good-fortune, and had made up her mind to come and find out some means of extorting money from the Helmonts. Her plan of campaign was as yet undetermined; meanwhile she had taken the cheapest of lodgings with Klomp, who was, of course, in no wise a relation. “It will look better to say we are connected,” she had suggested, intent upon “keeping dark” at first. “You can have the room for ninepence,” had been Klomp’s only reply. “No attendance, mind.”
She now got up and walked to the window, with a glance at her reflection against the greasy pane. “There are your girls, Klomp,” she said, “with the child. The poor darling can never have enough of that dear little porker. Hear him shriek with delight. Areyoufond of children, Juffrouw Boster?”
Klomp sauntered out to his affectionate Pietje and Mietje, now strapping young women, both. Immediately Hephzibah came up behind the smiling stranger by the open door. She had not much time to lose.
“Look here, you!” she said, hoarsely. “What have you come here for? After no good, I’ll be bound. But you leave this man, mind you. Cousin or no cousin, he’s my man, not yours.” She was desperate at the thought of her lessening only chance.
The other turned tauntingly in the doorway.
“Your man?” she repeated. “What d’ye mean? Can’t you take a joke, you fool? You don’t imagine, do you, that I want to marry Klomp?”
Hephzibah shivered with horror and spite. Visions of King Solomon’s impudent-faced fair ones rose up before her. “Jezebel,” she said, inconsistently, but with commendable candor.
“Tut, tut!” answered Adeline, looking away. “Your dress is a shocking bad fit. I’ll alter it for you. I had no idea you came here courting, Juffrouw Boster—and in such a dress as that!”
Hephzibah longed to strike the woman, but she only stupidly repeated, “What did you come for?” amid the laughter andcries of the others close by. Then suddenly she stamped her foot.
“Go away, or I’ll make you.”
“You!” retorted Adeline, fairly roused. “What next, you Poster? Know that you are speaking to your betters. Imagine the insolence of it! I and Klomp! I! The insolence of it! Klomp and you; yes, that is another matter. Here, Baby! Baby!” A sudden resolve seemed to seize upon her. Her little boy of some three or four raw summers came unwillingly towards the house, diverted from his course by continual grabs at the porker’s wispy tail. “Do you see this child?” asked Adeline, catching hold of a faded blue mantle, and turning up a pretty though mealy little face. “This is my child, my only one.” She had shrewdly left the infant at Drum.
Hephzibah started, and vainly pretended to have slipped. “Well?” she said.
“His name is Gerard.”
Slowly the faithful servant lifted her crossed eyes to the other’s better-favored face. “Hussy!” she said, deliberately, with all an honest woman’s slow pressure on the term.
Adeline burned with the immediate umbrage of a girl who feels her ears boxed. At a leap she resolved to rejoice in the rôle which had long allured her.
“Menial,” she said, loftily, “know your place. You are speaking to Mevrouw van Helmont.”
“Well,” reflected Hephzibah, pausing for breath on her hurried walk back to the Parsonage, “I am glad that Itoldher she was a liar. Still—”
Queer stories about the Jonker Gerard had been rife in the servants’ hall. The domestics of the Trossart household had added their occasional items. It was pretty well known that Helena would have married her cousin but for some sudden impediment. Judging by appearances and gossip, there was nothing absolutely improbable in Adeline’s story. In fact, Adeline very nearly believed it herself. Hephzibah wished that vigorous denial could prove it untrue.
And then the child! Hephzibah screwed her wrinkledface up till it looked like an enormous spider. That woman Lady of the Manor!Thatwoman! Hephzibah shook her head as she hurried along. “Who is thine handmaid,” she said, aloud, “that she should do this thing?”
She was late, and she found the Freule waiting, shawled and gaitered and exceedingly nervous, in the dim drawing-room, amid driblets of unwilling conversation with Juffrouw Josine. Louisa looked vehement reproaches, and longed for courage to speak them; but Hephzibah was too violently excited by her afternoon’s adventure to notice such trifles as these. The pair marched off through the damp twilight.
“Red Riding-hood and the Wolf,” said Josine.
“Hephzibah,” began the Freule presently, in a trembling voice, “I wish you would walk on the other side of the road. One can’t tell where you may have been.”
Hephzibah obeyed with silent protest.
“Hephzibah,” hazarded the Freule a few minutes later, unable to bear any longer the gray atmosphere of disapproval, “what is this terrible secret you said you would tell me the other day? You have alluded to it several times lately, and always declared you dared not mention it in the house. Well, we are alone now, on the road.”
“Oh, it’s of no account,” muttered Hephzibah. “And I couldn’t shout it across, besides,” she added, in a lower key.
“Well, come a little nearer, if you like, but not nearer, mind you, than the middle.”
“It’s nothing,” said the maid, gruffly.
“Oh, but it is. Coming out, you told me it was most important. Now, Hephzibah, you are in a bad temper because your conscience reproves you.”
“My conscience!” exclaimed the immaculate maid. “My conscience reproves me a hundred times a day!”
“So much the better. Then tell me your secret.”
A struggle was going on in the handmaid’s bosom. She prolonged it for some distance, perhaps unnecessarily; but then she rather enjoyed a moral struggle. At last she said, in a dull, dissembling voice:
“I’m sure now, Freule, that Anne Mary steals cook’s perquisites. I can prove it.”
“Pooh! Is that all?” cried the disappointed Freule. “You’ve talked about that before, and I don’t care a brass farthing, Hephzibah. A nice secret to make secrets of! Go along to the other side of the road—do!”
Hephzibah obeyed, looking very wise.
THE DEAD-AWAKE
“Supposing I had told my secret?” reflected Hephzibah, peeping through the key-hole. “Supposing I had told my secret? If I hadn’t met that woman at Klomp’s I believe I really should have told the Freule this time. Wonderful are the ways of Providence! Imagine the slatternly creature established here at the Manor-house playing the mistress over—me!” Hephzibah peeped down again. “She in there’s bad enough, the parson’s daughter. But at least she leaves a body alone.” Then Hephzibah shuffled away on velvet slippers, the only soft thing about her.
The key-hole which had attracted her was Ursula’s. My Lady sat at her nightly task by the lamp. Her forefinger was inked, her earnest forehead was puckered, yet the figures would not add up right. She was learning book-keeping by double entry; twice a week a master came from Drum.
She sighed, and pushed her hand in among her rumpled hair. Romance is romance; alas, that in real life it should so seldom be romantic! There was less money even than in Otto’s time. Therefore, things went even worse with everybody than they had gone in Otto’s time. She sighed, returning to her distasteful task.
All the villagers disliked her, and she knew it. They considered it a slight upon themselves that their parson’s daughter should usurp, by a fluke, the ancient throne of the Van Helmonts.
Ursula would not have minded this, however, had she known how to pay her succession duty and make both ends meet.
As she sat thus, working and worrying, the door was suddenlythrown wide open, and, without any warning, Hephzibah walked in.
Her face shone white; her whole manner and expression were as of one sick with alarm.
“Come up-stairs, Mevrouw,” she said, in a shrill whisper; and when Ursula hesitated she caught her by the sleeve. “Come up-stairs,” she reiterated, leading the way, but refusing any further explanation. Ursula mechanically followed. Gasping for breath, the woman ran along a dim corridor, and then stopped in the dark of an unused room.
“Hark!” she said, with uplifted finger.
“What?” answered Ursula, impatiently. “I hear nothing. Do you?”
For only answer Hephzibah passed behind her and closed the door, through which a faint glimmer of light had come stealing. They were then in absolute darkness.
“Well, what now? What is the matter?” repeated the young Baroness, with some anxiety in her tone. In the obscurity she yet perceived that Hephzibah had uplifted a finger.
“Hush!” said the maid. “You will hear it presently. There! There it is!” She bent forward, clutching at her companion. “There it is! What do you say now?”
Ursula fell back and tore open the door again, but the light thus admitted only showed looming shapes.
“I hear nothing,” she said, faintly, dazed, alone with this mad-woman. She had always had an undefined dread of the crooked-eyed maid.
“Oh, my God, I had an idea that if you came it would stop!” cried Hephzibah. “Oh, never mind the door. Door or no door, it won’t stop now. I’ve heard it before, several times. It’s like a man gasping. In there.” She pointed to the closed entrance leading to an inner chamber. “Mevrouw, dare you really say you hear nothing at all?”
Ursula shuddered. They were standing in the deserted nursery; the room adjoining was that in which Otto had died. Both were now disused.
“Come, Hephzibah,” she said, soothingly.“There is nothing here; you are mistaken. Come down-stairs. You are distressed, poor thing, by the terrible memory of your nursing in this very room. Do not think of it. I cannot trust my own thoughts to dwell on those days.”
“‘COME UP-STAIRS,’ SHE REITERATED”
“‘COME UP-STAIRS,’ SHE REITERATED”
But the waiting-woman took no heed. She had fallen on her knees, and remained thus, her face averted towards the closed door of the inner chamber.
“O God, have mercy!” she wailed. “Shedoesn’t hear it! What haveIdone? If I have done wrong, my fault is as nothing compared to her sin! She must hear it. Surely she must hear it.” She paused a moment, and in a calmer tone, “It isn’t fair,” she said.
Ursula had clutched her by the shoulder.
“What do you mean? What do you know?” asked Ursula, resolutely.
Still the woman did not seem to hear her.
“Hush!” said Hephzibah, falling, with uplifted finger, into her earlier attitude of intentness. “Listen. A sobbing, choking noise, as of a man gasping for breath. I often hear it there. Not always. If I always heard it it might be fancy.”
“What do you know?” repeated Ursula, with persistent stress.
Hephzibah hesitated. Before her rose the image of Adeline, fringe and all, giving orders in the store-room. She turned suddenly.
“Know, Mevrouw?” she said. “What should I know? A great deal less than you, anyway. I’m only a poor servant. I suppose it’s some of Satan’s doing. Ah, he’s mighty strong, is Satan—mighty strong!” She slipped away towards the glimmer from the passage, muttering, “Mighty, mighty strong,” and so stole from the room.
Ursula made no effort to retain her. The door fell to, and the black silence seemed to thicken. Ursula stood quite still. Involuntarily she listened, scornful of herself. Something creaked in the next room, or near her—her heart leaped into her throat. With an exclamation of impatience she threw open the intervening door.
She had not entered these two death-chambers since her illness. The inner one was empty and damply chill. Here theshutters were thrown back, and through the gaunt window a bluish grayness fell across the deeper dark. Ursula’s figure struck against the dim twilight in a great black bar.
After a moment’s hesitation she walked to the window and gazed up into the night. Amid a confusion of tumbled clouds an occasional star lay peeping, like a diamond through black lace. One of them, close above her, seemed to be watching steadily.
“Otto,” said Ursula, in a firm whisper, “I am doing my best. I am trying to keep my promise. I don’t know how God judges me. I don’t know. Otto, I am doing my best.”
She stood for some time thinking. Then she shivered, as if suddenly realizing the clammy cold all about her, and hurried away.
In the corridor, just as the cheerful lamplight was broadening to greet her, she met Aunt Louisa, who emerged in a great hurry from her own private sitting-room. Aunt Louisa was evidently in one of her “sinful fits,” as Hephzibah called them. (Hephzibah called “sinful” whatever was distasteful to herself.) The Freule’s left hand held a letter, and her right hand an envelope. She cried out as soon as she caught sight of Ursula:
“Ursula, Imusthave my interest! I didn’t ask you back for the capital—not even when Otto died. But, Ursula, I must have my interest.”
Ursula paused. The Freule’s whole face quivered with pink excitement. Both her extended hands shook.
“I don’t understand, Aunt Louisa!” said Ursula, dizzily. “What is it?”
“Now, Ursula, don’t say that. You know how nervous money matters make me. And I’m afraid it was very foolish of me to give my money to Otto, and I didn’t ask it back, not even when you got it all.”
“It’s a good mortgage,” interrupted Ursula, “and, besides, you couldn’t ask it back.”
“Now don’t throw those law terms at my head,” cried the Freule, in a tremulous screech,“for I don’t know what they mean. But I do know that it’s very ungrateful of you to speak like that, Ursula, after what I’ve done for you all. And I left the money in your hands because I think you are strong, and altogether it is a very interesting experiment. But I must have my interest. I can’t do without my interest. Here’s my man of business writes that Noks has prepared him”—the Freule referred to the paper which crackled between her fingers—“for the possibility of there being some delay in the payment of the next instalment. Now, Ursula, I pay my board and wages punctually, and I can’t have that.”
“When is the next payment due?” asked Ursula.
“On the first of next month. Now, Ursula, don’t look like that. It is you who are to blame, not I. Never have I been twenty-four hours too late, though poor Theodore used to leave the money lying about for days. But your mother-in-law once truly said that, at any rate, you had this of royalty about you—you could do no wrong! Well,thatis strong, and I have no objection. By-the-bye, your mother-in-law meant it ironically. But strong people should, above all, be honest, Ursula, and it’s dishonest to take advantage of the helplessness of a poor ignorant spinster like me.”
“You will have your interest,” said Ursula, by the stair-head, under the full glare of the lamp. “Noks was wrong.” And she went slowly down into the vestibule. She felt that she must get away for the moment from this suffocating house.
She took a hat and passed forth into the night. A cold little wind was curling in and out among the trees. Everywhere spread the grimness, the bare, black hardness of March, shrouded in darkness and indistinctly threatening. Ursula’s yearning went out, in this absolute solitude, to the husband whose strong love had lifted her up and placed her thus terribly high. Even a servant still heard his voice in its dying agony. Had she, then, the wife, already forgotten him? No, indeed; more closely than during his lifetime their existences were interwoven in her faithful fulfilment of his charge. She was possessed with a sudden foolish desire to hear that kind voice, that earnest voice again—aye, even the last gasp, as did Hephzibah. She hurried in the direction of the church-yard, of the vault wherehelay. He had loved her—loved her, lifted her up—the simple village girl—to be my Lady Nobody. She wanted him again. She wanted him.
All at once, as she was hastening on, the memory struck her, like a new thought, of how he had doubted her honor. She stopped, stock-still, in the middle of the road. Then, like a smitten flower from the stem, she dropped by the side of a broad elm-tree, and for the first time since her widowhood gave way to a passion of tears.
“What’s this?” said a rough voice, close in front, and a dark lantern flashed out its hideous wide circle. “What are you doing here? Now, then, look sharp!”
The Baroness staggered to her feet.
“It is I,” she stammered—“Mevrouw van Helmont;” and then, recognizing the local policeman, “I am not well, Juffers; help me home.”
The man escorted her in amazed if deferential silence. He could understand even a Baroness being suddenly taken ill, but he could not understand a Baroness being out there alone at this time of night. It was not difficult for her to read his thoughts as he tramped on, lantern in hand; she gladly dismissed him, with an unwisely large gratuity, as soon as the lights of the house came in sight.
“Well!” he mused, standing, clumsily respectful, with the broad silver piece on his open palm, “she isn’t too ill to walk, anyway. Straight as a dart. Blest if I didn’t think it was Tipsy Liza! I wish thatshe’dmarch as easy when I takes her to the lock-up.”
Hephzibah came forward as the young Baroness entered the house. With unusual politeness, but with averted eyes, she took that lady’s hat. And Ursula, returning to her room, where her copy-books lay patiently, painfully waiting, felt that henceforth she was, more or less, in this silent servant’s power.
“I will go on,” she said, doggedly, settling down to “debtor” and “creditor,” “with God’s help or without.”
POLITICS
Next day, the spring weather being mild and clawless, like a couchant cat, Mynheer Mopius arrived at Horstwyk station. He wore a silk neckerchief and new galoshes, for Harriet was a careful wife to him in a way. He had not felt in good health of late, and his leathery cheek had deepened to gamboge.
“Be very cautious what you eat, Jacóbus,” Harriet had said as he was preparing to depart. “If you partake of anything greasy, you are sure to be ill again.”
“I don’t care,” replied Jacóbus, recklessly. “I’d rather die than not eat. What’s the use of living if there’s nothing left to live for? I’d rather die at once than vegetate for thirty years on slops. Pass me the pickles. I could wager that you make believe I’m the baby that hasn’t come!”
Harriet smiled thinly. The greatest disappointment which can befall a woman lay upon her. Stowed away up-stairs were a pink berceaunette and a quantity of little garments that had never been used.
“There’s not much chance of my getting rich food at the Horst,” continued Mopius. “Ha! See? I should think they weigh out their butter there.”
“Poor Ursula!” said Harriet, softly. After a few moments of silence, she added, “It was such a pretty little boy.”
“Huh?”
“Jacóbus, how late will you want the carriage?”
“I sha’n’t want the carriage.”
“Not want the carriage?” Harriet well knew how he enjoyed driving away from the railway station amid an admiring crowd of acquaintances who walked.
“No, I shall come home on foot. Go you for a drive, Harriet; it’s rather a nice day. It’ll put some color in your pale cheeks.”
She looked across at him gratefully.
“Law!” he said, “to think how you’ve gone off of late. Who’d have thought it? You were a deuced fine woman, Harriet, in days gone by.”
“Oh, I’m a fine woman yet,” she answered. “You must leave me a little time.” She got up and walked to the window. “Willem is waiting,” she said. “Good-bye. Mind you don’t sit in a draught.”
Upon arriving at Horstwyk, Mopius went straight to the Parsonage, whence he could most conveniently order a fly for the Horst. The Dominé came out into the garden, and gave his brother-in-law a hearty greeting. Nevertheless, he hastened to cut off any risk of a tête-à-tête.
“Josine will be delighted,” he said. “Let us go in to her. We have not seen you for a long time, Jacóbus. Not since—” The Dominé threw open the sitting-room door.
“Not since the funeral,” supplemented Jacóbus, standing in the middle of the floor. “Ah, that was a very sad business. Good-morning, Josine.” He shook his head mournfully. Jacóbus was of opinion that social events should be made to yield their full meed of emotional enjoyment.
“Ah me!” replied Miss Mopius, heaving an enormous sigh. The whole apartment was littered with varicolored tissue-paper in sheets and strips and snippets. Miss Mopius was fabricating artificial flowers. Her whole face assumed an expression of deeply dejected resignation.
“How do you do, Jacóbus?” she said. “I’m glad to see you. I hope you are better. Sad, indeed. Did you say ‘sad’?”
“I did,” responded her brother, sitting down.
“Some people say ‘sad,’” explained Josine, in the same tone of aggrieved acquiescence, “and some people say ‘bad.’ I say ‘bad.’”
The Dominé, who had remained standing near, emitted what sounded like a slight grunt of impatience.
“Yes, Roderigue, you may object,” continued Miss Mopius, carefully studying the pink paper frill between her delicate fingers, “but nothing will deter me from doing my duty. And it is my duty to point out distinctly that our dear Ursula has committed what I do not hesitate to qualify as acrime. It may be painful to you as a father—”
“Oh no, not any longer,” interrupted the Dominé.
“I am inexpressibly grieved to hear you say so. But it is all the more incumbent upon me to show that I, at least, am not blinded by affection—or, let me openly declare, by prejudice. I am devotedly attached to my niece, but, as I regretfully confessed to Mevrouw Noks, and—and one or two other people, with tears—aye, with tears I said it”—Miss Mopius selected a wire and planted it in the heart of her flower—“dear Otto was murdered; inadvertently, of course, yet none the less wilfully murdered.” She shut her thin lips with a snap, and twirled a wisp of green paper round the wire.
“The weather is nice and mild,” said Mopius, “and for the time of year I should call it seasonable.”
“I notice an occasional crocus,” said the Dominé.
“He deserved a better fate,” said Josine.
She shook her red ringlets and put up a thin hand to her head. “My heart aches,” she said, “to think how easily it might all have been avoided. Ursula was a child. Poor Otto! he wanted a woman of more experience—not a plaything, but a helpmate. He might have lived forty years longer. Ah, he deserved—”
“You,” interrupted Jacóbus, fiercely, with a sneer, his habitual form of humor. She bored him.
Miss Mopius rose to the occasion. Slowly she smoothed out her crimson-figured wrapper. “Yes,” she said. “Me, if you like, or any other woman past thirty. Jacóbus, you are unkind. Now you are here, you might as well give me some money for ‘Tryphena.’ We are sending out a box. I am making these flowers for it.”
“Flowers!” growled Mopius. “What—to sell?”
“No, no—to send. Freule Louisa has knitted seventy-three little tippets for the school-children—that’s the useful part, Jacóbus. And I make these flowers for their Christmas treat—that’s the ornamental. I must admit,” cried Josine, with a simper, “that Ialwaysprefer the ornamental!”
“Where’s your missions?” queried Mopius. “I dare say they’ve got flowers enough out there. Better than those.” He contemptuously pointed a fat finger at a whole cluster of bright-colored balls.
“In Borneo, Jacóbus, among the wild Dajaks, the head-hunters, Jacóbus.” She rested her work in her lap. “So you despise my poor flowers? They will have, I feel confident, their message to those savage hearts.”
“Bosh!” said Jacóbus.
“What, do you not believe in the civilizing influences of refinement?” Josine spoke with sudden asperity. “What are you but a Dajak?”—Jacóbus lifted his big bald head indignantly—“as the President of the Missionary Conference so beautifully said—”
“I? What does he mean? Who talked about me?” burst in Jacóbus, furiously. “If my candidature for Parliament exposes me—”
“You, I, everybody. What are we but Dajaks clothed and in our right minds? I feel confident that when the innocent children hang up my roses on the rude walls of their dwellings, their fathers will take down the hideous heads of victims which now form their only decoration. Jacóbus, could you leave a rosebud lying next to a skull?”
“Josine, you’re a fool,” answered Jacóbus. “I wonder how Roderick can find patience to live with you.”
The Dominé sighed, then coughed hastily, blushing.
“What do the city missionaries say?” persisted Miss Mopius, who was accustomed to having the last word: “‘Beautify the home,’ ‘Put up a picture in your room.’ Mine is the same principle. Jacóbus, after thus rudely abusing me, you might give me a contribution.”
“Oh, well—there!” replied Jacóbus, fingering out a gold piece from his waistcoat-pocket. “But I don’t believe in missionaries. They’re all dashed nonsense and lies.”
The Dominé started by the window, like a war-horse thathears the bugle-call. “Don’t say that, Jacóbus,” he interposed. “You shouldn’t say that.”
“Shouldn’t? Shouldn’t? I know more about missionaries than you do. A set of guzzling do-nothings, living on the money of silly spinsters like her.” He pointed to his sister, who immediately put her hand to her head.
“You forget that I also have seen something of heathen countries,” replied the Dominé, with somewhat heightened intonation; “and I, who was then a soldier of the sword, I delight to pay my tribute of humblest admiration to the soldiers of the Cross. Theirs is a certain daily sacrifice without possibility of fame or reward; and you, Jacóbus—forgive me that I say it—you people who have gone in search of money, where they go in search of souls, you, on your return, should at least have the grace to be silent about their occasional delinquencies, as they are about your continuous atrocities. Of course I am speaking collectively. I have not the slightest intention to insinuate—”
“Abuse Josine,” cried Jacóbus, floundering to his feet; “I see my cab has come. Begad! why don’t you pitch into Josine?”
“Josine is a woman,” replied the Dominé, shamefacedly, following his retreating brother-in-law down the passage. “I always feel that we are at a great disadvantage with regard to the gentler sex, though I freely admit that Josine—”
“Well, you needn’t work your steam off on me, and that when I so seldom come to see you! By Jove! it’s too bad. Look here, Rovers, I am going on to Ursula. I wanted to have spoken to you about serious matters, instead of wasting my time on missionaries. You know, I’m the Radical candidate for Horstwyk. Of course you’ll support me, and Ursula will take her cue from you.”
“I have no politics,” replied the Dominé, resting his armless sleeve on the gate-post; “and Ursula will judge for herself.”
“You mean to oppose me?” cried Jacóbus, suddenly filling the fly-window with his big orange face.
“No; I never vote—I do not consider it a part of a pastor’s work. But I certainly shall not influence Ursula.”
“Oh, be hanged to you!” retorted Mopius, immensely put out. “But I’ll undertake to manage Ursula without any influence of yours. Drive on, coachman—to the Horst.”
The Dominé crept away to his sanctum with slow shakes of the head. He reflected that Mopius might have been right about “letting off the steam.” But what can one do? Has Pericles not said that, “He who knows a thing to be right, but does not clearly explain it, is no better than he who does not know.” Again the Dominé shook his head, and, with a mechanical glance at the foxed engraving of Havelock, he hurried to his easy-chair and his Bible.
Mopius meanwhile was hastening to his second and far more important interview. Gradually his ruffled feathers smoothed down, and he smiled with a certain complacence. Rovers had always been a wrong-headed fellow, and therefore obstinate. “Head-strong and head-wrong” was a favorite formula with Mopius, who, of course, considered himself to be neither. He had disapproved of Mary’s marriage, although not knowing Captain Rovers at the time. Mary was handsome, he said, and might have done better. Besides, some exceptionally important people disapprove of all their relations’ marriages on principle.
Mopius was now the official candidate of the Radical party. He had explained that he was uncle to the Baroness van Helmont of the Horst, and everybody had immediately understood his fitness for the post he coveted. For the influence of the Lady of the Manor must be all-decisive. It wanted but a word passed round to the tenants, and the election was secure. Was Mynheer Mopius assured of his niece’s support? So many of these high-born ladies had a weakness for religion. It was old-fashioned, of course, and the worse for wear, but they inherited it, like the family jewels, or gout.
Mynheer Mopius shrewdly closed his eyelids. The movement was eloquent of quiet strength. If that was all they wanted, he could set them at rest. He had his little plan.
Well, that was all they wanted. He need only bring them a signed declaration from Ursula, and they would recognize him. So he started for the Horst to fetch it. Meanwhile—suchthings leak out—he was practically their candidate already.
Only the Baron van Trossart had been disagreeable and exacting. But he was notoriously an ill-tempered man. He had muttered stupid insinuations about wolves in sheep’s clothing. And he had finally insisted upon a written obligation from Mopius—“quite between you and me, of course”—that the latter would always and unconditionally vote with the Liberal party.
“Why, of course, Mynheer the Baron,” Jacóbus had said, eagerly. “You must have misunderstood me when we met in Mynheer van Troyen’s smoking-room. ‘Always and unconditionally vote with the Liberal party.’ Where shall I sign it? I have not the slightest objection. You will support me, I hope?”
“Yes, and be damned to you,” said the Baron van Trossart.
When Mopius arrived at the Manor-house Ursula was again closeted with the notary. She rose with a swift impulse of relief as soon as her uncle’s name reached her ear. She looked harassed. “You must excuse me, Mynheer Noks,” she said, going to the door. “We can talk it over again another time.”
“When?” said the notary.
“One of these days. To-morrow, perhaps. No, the day after.”
The notary followed her, inflexible.
“Mevrouw,” he said, “we can’t put off quarter-day. There is the interest, and there is that bill I spoke of. Three thousand florins are still wanting to make up the sum. In ten days’ time youmusthave them.”
“Must!” repeated Ursula, haughtily, drawing herself up.
“Yes. Must. It’s not my ‘must,’ but the law’s. The law knows nothing of great ladies. High or low, must is must.” Ah, thought the irritated notary, Mejuffrouw Rovers, I had you there!
“Mynheer Noks, I cannot keep my uncle waiting.”
Mopius was standing in the small drawing-room with the Guicciardi ceiling, his fishy eyes unappreciatively fixed on a Florentine inlaid cabinet full of cameos and signets.
“A lot of money here,” he said, by way of greeting, as Ursula entered. “And what rubbish outside a museum! Why, my terra-cottas at Blanda are ten times as effective.”
“The things belong to the Dowager Baroness,” replied Ursula.
“Why, you’re the Dowager Baroness now, ain’t you?” objected Mopius. “Harriet said so when we sent our cards. Who’d have thought it of Mary’s child? Not that I care a brass farthing for barons or princes of any kind. You couldn’t make a greater mistake, Ursula, than to imagine that I felt in any way proud about your elevation; so don’t ever come offering to do me any service of any kind.”
“It is the last thing I should wish to do,” replied Ursula. “Won’t you sit down?”
“Quite right, though I can’t say you put it very prettily. However, in this family, it’s I that confer benefits. I’ve come here with that object now. You’re a mighty fine lady, Ursula; but you may be glad of a burgher uncle with a well-filled purse.”
Ursula waited, wondering.
“I’m going to offer you money,” said her uncle, bluntly.
Ursula dropped her eyes to the floor. “You are doubly mistaken, Uncle Jacóbus,” she answered in her coldest manner. “I am not a fine lady, nor am I a beggar.”
“Hoity-toity! Not a beggar? H’m. No money wanted? Ha!” Mopius got up, in all the splendor of his well-clothed portliness. “How about that bill which falls due on the first? Ah, you see, I know. How about that, my Lady of the Horst?”
Ursula rose also. She was not too proud to accept assistance. But of some of our friends we know at once that their seeming favors cannot really be to our advantage. It is only a question of finding out.
“Does everybody in Drum know all about my affairs?” asked Ursula, her pale face turning very red.
“Everybody? Fie! am I everybody? Ursula, I can never forget that you are my own sister Mary’s only child.”
“No,” replied Ursula, “I suppose not.”
“But a good many people do know, undeniably. And that must end. It hurts my feelings. I am not a windbag of a noble. I am a simple gentleman, a hater of shams. I like money to ring clear on the counter, full weight.” Jacóbus patted his waistcoat-pocket. “So, Ursula, this is what I have to propose: Things can’t go on in the present manner, nor can I have my niece sold up. I offer to make you an annual payment of five thousand florins—”
“Uncle Jacóbus!”
Mynheer Mopius smiled with contented deprecation.
“That is your side of the matter. As long as I represent the district of Horstwyk in Parliament. That is mine.”
“But you may never represent Horstwyk in Parliament?”
Mynheer Mopius sat down again.
“That depends upon my Lady of the Horst,” he said. “So you see it is very simple. You intimate to your tenants that you wish them to vote for Mopius, and I pay in to your bankers the sum I have just named.”
Ursula remained silent, thoughtful.
“It is pure generosity on my part,” continued her uncle; “for, anyway, you surely wouldn’t have instructed them to vote on the other side. But that’s my way. I don’t mind. And I’m glad to help my sister Mary’s child.”
Ursula seemed slowly to have understood the very simple transaction. Her uncle watched her with a trace of anxiety in his unhealthy eyes. Surely there was nothing in his offer dishonest or dishonorable?
“There is one little objection to the arrangement you propose,” said Ursula, at last.
“Of course,” replied Mopius; “women always have one little objection to every arrangement—it is their way of getting the last word.”
“I mean one objection which renders all others superfluous. You are the Liberal candidate, and my sympathies are with the Clericals.”
Mynheer Mopius sat back, puffing and snorting.
“Nonsense!” he said—“Ursula, nonsense! What do women know about politics? Your father confessed he knew nothing, so he can’t have taught you. And Otto, I was given to understand—”
“Let us leave Otto out of the question, please,” interrupted Ursula, with some asperity. “In this matter, at least, I am my own mistress.”
“But the traditions of the Van Helmont family—”
“The traditions of the Van Helmont family are, of course, Conservative, and Conservatism is dead. At this moment I, a woman, have to choose, according to my feeble lights, between State atheism and a persecuted sect.”
“And lose,” said Mopius, “the five thousand florins.”
But that was a stupid move. Ursula’s eye kindled in the silence which ensued.
“Ursula,” exclaimed Jacóbus in despair, for he saw his chances fading, “you are utterly unreasonable! How dare you suggest that I am an atheist, that I have any objection to religion? I distinctly approve of religion. It is a praise-worthy and highly respectable thing, and I always allow the servants to go to church. Your aunt Josine is right: you are nothing but a foolish child. What do you know about politics?”
“Very little,” replied Ursula, calmly; “but it seems to me that the less one knows about politics, the better one can choose between principles. And I choose the principle of liberty to worship God.”
Jacóbus flourished his big hand till he almost touched her face. “Hang your quiet way!” he cried. “There’s no talking to a woman like you. So you mean to tell me your mind’s made up, you fool? Instead of living here in luxury and splendor, all settled and comfortable, as I suggest, you’ll let this over-mortgaged place come under the hammer, and go home to your old father without clothes to your back?”
Ursula stood, black and tall, by the desolate hearth. “Uncle Mopius, I don’t want the money, but I’m very sorry not to be able to do as you wish. This is my sole opportunity, my single bit of influence, so to say, in my new position, and I must use it as I think best.”
Tears of spite swam across Mynheer Mopius’s vision. “Ursula,” he said,“you—you idiot, why didn’t you tell me you had political opinionsbefore?”
“I didn’t know you cared—but what difference would that have made?” she answered, innocently.
He caught up his hat with an indignant swoop. “Never again,” he said, “shall you touch a penny of mine. You are ruining my prospects and your own, from sheer caprice. I shall never, now, be a member of Parliament. But I’ll pay you out. And to think that you have done this—you, who are my own sister Mary’s child.”
“Yes,” replied Ursula, grimly. “I always was.”