THE TRYST

The next day passed in an atmosphere of sombre expectation. Ursula and Harriet barely spoke to one another; the latter seemed to be holding aloof. Mynheer Mopius took his niece the round of the house amid a steady flow of self-laudation, and Ursula put in pleasing adjectives as full-stops. He showed her everything, even to the water-supply and the wine-cellar. There was but one exception, his wife’s store-cupboard; Mevrouw Mopius, to his annoyance, actually held out in refusing the key. But he found a compensation in unmitigated china and glass.

After a morning thus profitably spent, the afternoon brought a long drive and a visit to a flower show. The drive was merely an opportunity for parading Mynheer Mopius’s equipage among the beauties of nature, but that gentleman was made happy, after prolonged anxiety and craning, by meeting the very people he was desirous should see it. The visit to the exhibition, however, must be regarded as an act of kindness to his guest, for the committee had had the manifest stupidity to award Mynheer Mopius’s double dahlias a third prize.

In the gardens Ursula espied Gerard with his cousin Helena among a crowd of stylish-looking people, whom JacÓbus described as “swells.” She had received, that morning, the promised card for the Baroness van Trossart’s party, and she would gladly have sought an occasion of thanking the sender, but to this proposal her uncle, in a sudden fit of shyness, opposed resolute and almost rampant refusal.

“I don’t want to know the people,” he repeated, excitedly, his eyes fixed on the distinguished group by the central lake. “I don’t want to have anything to say to them. Ursula, you belong to my party. I desire you to stay where you are.”

“Oh, very well,” replied Ursula, offended; “though, of course, I should not have gone up to him as long as he was conversing with that violet-nosed old woman in blue.”

“That lady is the wife of the Governor, and I will thank you to speak of her with more respect.”

Ursula listened in amazement. She was not enough a student of human nature to explain her uncle’s change of front. She went and sat down on the bench beside her aunt, with a few kind words about the weather.

“Oh, beautiful!” gasped Mevrouw Mopius. “JacÓbus, don’t you think it is time we went home?”

JacÓbus assented, and in the midst of plans for to-morrow sought to impress upon Ursula the number and importance of his acquaintances as instanced by frequent salutes.

Ursula came upon her aunt alone in the drawing-room half an hour before dinner. The vast apartment was darkened to a mellow glow behind its yellow venetians. Mevrouw Mopius sat with closed eyes and cavernous cheeks before her unused frame. She stirred as the door opened, and beckoned her niece to her side.

“My dear,” she said in a faint voice, “come and sit by me for a minute. I have something to ask you.” Ursula obeyed. “Your uncle was speaking of the opera for to-morrow night. I want you to tell him you don’t care to go.”

“But I do care,” objected the girl. “I think it’s simply glorious. I’ve never been to the opera before.”

“My dear, I can assure you it’s not worth seeing. The singers make such a noise you can’t hear a word they say. Not that that matters, for they always say the same thing.”

“Oh, but I should like it,” repeated Ursula.

“Say, for my sake, that you don’t care to go.” Mevrouw Mopius’s manner became very nervous. “Ursula, I can’t go out at night. Have you set your heart on this performance?”

“Yes, aunt,” said the girl, frankly; “but, even if I hadn’t, I shouldn’t know of any valid excuse. However, I can very well go with Harriet and uncle. I’ll tell him you’d rather not.”

Mevrouw Mopius clutched her arm. “Hold your tongue,” she said, quite roughly. “I didn’t want to have you here. I tell you so honestly. I knew it would be like this. It was JacÓbus. Poor fellow, I suppose he felt how dull the house was getting.” She paused meditatively. “He’d never go without me; he wouldn’t enjoy himself.”

“I’m sure I didn’t ask to come,” protested Ursula, “but now I’m here, I can’t begin inventing a parcel of lies. You must tell uncle yourself, aunt, please.”

Mevrouw Mopius tightened her grip till the nails dug into the flesh. She turned her dull eyes full on Ursula. “Girl,” she gasped, “what are you, with your little pleasures or prejudices to come athwart such a sorrow as mine? I’ll tell you my secret, if it must be. Swear, first, that you’ll not breathe it to a living soul.”

Ursula was alarmed by her aunt’s earnest manner. “I can’t swear,” she said in a flurry, “but I’ll promise. I never swore in my life.”

“Swear,” repeated the other woman under her breath; unconsciously she tightened her grasp till Ursula shrieked aloud. “Hush! Are you mad? He’ll hear. Oh, is that it?” She relaxed her hold. “Fool, did you never feel pain?”

“I—I don’t know,” gasped Ursula, now thoroughly frightened, convinced that her aunt must have mad fits of which no one had spoken.

“Swear, I tell you. Say, so help me, God Almighty. Louder. Let me hear it. Now, listen. I’m ill, incurably ill. Never mind what the doctor calls the illness. Enough that he says I can’t live beyond two months. Perhaps he’s mistaken. They often are. Not that I want to live. Not in this agony, my God! Not except for him. Ursula, your uncle knows nothing. I don’t want him to know. I’d bear twice as much, if I could, so that he shouldn’t know. Poor fellow, he has his faults, perhaps, but he’s so soft-hearted, he can’t bear to see suffering, not even to hear of it. There, now, I have told you. I’ve never told a living soul, as I said. I can hide it from him, Ursula, if things go on as usual. But I can’t go taking long drives, or to flower-shows, and oh, Ursula, dear, I can’t go out at night.”

Ursula was dumb-struck with horror and pity. Still, she could not help feeling, even at that moment, that her visit to her uncle was becoming hopelessly perplexed. She had expected a round of gayeties, all the delights of a dÉbut.

“I’ll do whatever you wish me to,” she said, helplessly. “Oh, aunt, I’m so sorry, but I hope you’ll get better. Father says doctors never know.”

“Not about curing, they don’t,” replied her aunt, grimly. “Now, Ursula, remember, not a word. It’s a secret between you and me. I don’t think it’ll be for very long. Move away; I hear some one coming!”

Harriet entered the room with her novel under her arm. Presently she looked up at Mevrouw Mopius’s deathly countenance lying back as if asleep, and nodded meaningly to Ursula. Mynheer Mopius came in, and his wife sat up. “JacÓbus,” she said, “you were laughing at the blueness of my sky yesterday. I saw one in the exhibition aviary that was every bit as blue.”

“But did you look at the real article up above us?” questioned JacÓbus.

“No,” admitted Mevrouw Mopius, “I didn’t think of that.”

Harriet rose hurriedly from dessert. “Aunt is tired,” she said. “You must excuse us, uncle,” and she offered Mevrouw her arm. At the door she turned. “You don’t want me just now, I suppose?” she continued. “I am going out to get a breath of fresh air.”

“Yes,” added Ursula quickly, “Harriet and I are going for a walk.”

A moment later the two girls met on the bedroom-landing. Both were dressed to go out. Harriet had a white feather on her hat, and a red shawl over one arm. “Leave me alone, can’t you?” said Harriet. She spoke fiercely, and a gesture escaped her which was almost a menace.

“No, I’m going with you,” replied Ursula, quietly.

“Indeed you sha’n’t. What a fool I was to tell you. Women always are fools to ask sympathy from each other.”

“I shall not be in your way,” persisted Ursula, with coaxing decision. “Let me wait with you till he comes, if he comes, and then I can step aside.”

“Of course he will come,” said Harriet. Perhaps it was the thought of this certain triumph which induced her to forbear all further opposition to Ursula’s accompanying her.

“I bought this shawl,” began Harriet, as they walked through the shadowed streets. “I had to pawn my only brooch to get it.”

“Does uncle allow you no pocket-money?” asked Ursula.

“Ten florins a month,” replied Harriet, bitterly. “I spend most of it in scents and chocolate-creams. They are my one consolation. I adore chocolate-creams. Do you? We might get some now. I’ve got a florin left from the brooch-money.”

“Let me buy them this time,” suggested Ursula, sympathetically.

“Very well. I like the pink kind best.”

It was still light, but a veil had already fallen over the low-sinking sun. The hot, sleepy streets were waking up in the red glow of the fading day. People in the town, now that the glare had died from their eyes, were telling each other that the air was cool, and trying to believe it.

Outside, however, the assertion had more truth in it. A ripple of refreshment was slowly spreading up from the distant river. The shadows of the straight-lined trees lay across the brick road in great black stripes. The fields looked as if their dusty grass was turning green again beneath the darkening sky; in the dull ditches stood the cattle, dreamily content.

The girls walked on in silence till they reached a point where the road swerved off into a little thicket. This was the spot which Romeo must have had in his mind. It was very quiet and sequestered. They stood looking at each other, still in silence. Harriet’s pale cheeks were flushed.

Evening was now rapidly closing in; great folds of gray shadow seemed to come broadening over the landscape; not a sound was heard but the faint whiz of some tiny gnats.

Suddenly the clear chimes began to play from the slender ball-topped tower, which stood out black, like a monstrous ninepin, against the yellow western sky. The eyes of the watchers met. Eight slow strokes came trembling heavily across the hush of sunset. At the other end of the long, straight road a figure appeared, as yet quite indistinct. They watched. They could hear each other’s hearts beat.

When it drew nearer they saw that it was a woman. Harriet gave a great gasp of relief. A moment later it had come quite close to them. And both saw simultaneously that the woman wore a white feather and a scarlet shawl.

She passed them suspiciously; she was an independent-looking, weather-beaten female of some forty wintry winters—all angles and frost. After a moment she halted, and hesitatingly retraced her steps.

The last glow paled away from the horizon. In the ashen grayness it even seemed to Ursula that the little breeze from the marshes blew cold. The long road lay motionless, gradually shortening into night.

“A fine evening, young ladies,” said the red-shawled female, stopping abruptly near them, and suddenly opening an enormous parasol; “but it’s getting late.”

“It’s not much beyond eight,” replied Ursula, for want of an answer.

“Nine minutes,” said the female, with precision. “Nine full minutes past 8 P.M. Perhaps I may remark to you, ladies, that this spot is unhealthy after sunset—very particularly unhealthy. The back-sillies, as modern science calls them, come up from the water and produce injurious smells. If I were you I should be careful—very particularly careful.” She turned on one heel, but suddenly bethought herself.

“I,” she said, nodding her head—the white feather waved—“am compelled by the call of duty to remain. I am waiting for some one—an engagement.” She spoke the last word with triumphant pomposity. Its double meaning evidently furnished her extreme satisfaction. She repeated it twice, and jingled a small reticule depending from a cotton-gloved wrist.

“I know of a case,” she went on immediately, seeing that neither girl moved or spake, “when a young person (much of your age) spent an evening out here in this wood. Her reasons for doing so I distinctly decline to enter into. They were not laudable, you may be sure; no young girl’s would be. Well, she caught the myasthma and died. She died.”

All the time she was holding forth the speaker peered anxiously to right and left in the darkness.

“Duty,” she added, “as I told you, compels me to remain. But I do so at the risk of my health.”

“You lying old humbug!” said a deep voice behind her in the darkness. “Then what have you got that red shawl on for, eh?”

The victim to duty spun round as if shot.

“Oh, it’s you, is it, Maria?” she said. “I know what you’re here for. Spying, spying; that’s your errand, you nasty, envious thing.”

“Then you’re wrong, that’s all. I’m here on a fool’s errand of my own, like yourself.”

A short, fat woman stepped into the faint reflection of a distant lantern, and they saw that she also wore a red shawl! Not even courtesy could describe this lady as of “uncertain age.”

“Seems to me,” she continued, “you and I needn’t have been so mighty close with each other. Nor you needn’t have crowed over me as you did, Isabella. I don’t see that your lover was so much smarter than mine.”

“Oh, Harriet, come away,” whispered Ursula, breaking a long silence.

Harriet laughed hoarsely. “No,” she said, “I’m going to see this comedy out.”

“And as for those young ladies there,” Maria went on, “they’ve as much right to be here as we have—at least, the one with the red shawl over her arm has. Yes, my dear, you needn’t try to smuggle it away behind your neighbor. You’re here from a sense of duty, as much as ever my friend Isabella is. I wonder how many more of us have answered this advertisement?”

“One more has,” said a young voice, and a pretty, fair little creature, looking like a dress-maker’s assistant, stole from behind a tree into the ring.

“That makes five of us,” announced the fat woman, with a nod to Ursula. “It was mean of you yonder to be ashamed of your colors. Well, men were deceivers ever, and, girls, we’ve been once more deceived.”

“It was I advertised first, not he,” said the pretty girl, defiantly.

“So did I,” Harriet admitted. “We may as well be fair.”

“Well, so did I, if it comes to that,” declared the fat woman. “And so did you, Isabella; we needn’t ask you. And so did that featherless girl, I dare say. I don’t see that it makes much difference. And it was Romeo de Lieven, was it, as told you all to come here?”

“All,” said the whole chorus. They had gradually drawn nearer to one of the rare street lamps which make a dismal haze at far intervals along the dark road. They stood in a circle, with unconsciously uplifted parasols, and all around them was the soft night, and the little wind, and the damp smell of the water.

“Then the best thing you can do is to go home again. Come along, Isabella, you can sing me the praises of your lover as we go.”

“I solemnly swear,” said the sour spinster, in sepulchral tones, “never to trust a man again. Ah, I could tell you a story—”

“There’s no time for that now,” interrupted her friend, briskly. “As for solemnly swearing, I don’t object. Ladies, you see what they are, these men. Imagine what would have happened to you if this Romeo had come, and any of you’d married him. No, Romeo, we will not marry. Let us promise, each one of us, after to-night’s experience, to turn our backs on them forever.”

All of them, except Ursula, lifted their arms on high. In chorus they sang out, “We promise,” and even as they did so a vehicle suddenly loomed through the darkness, a high trap, devoid of carriage lights, occupied by three or four officers in uniform.

“Way there, please,” said a voice which Ursula recognized. The women scattered on one side, all looking up involuntarily. The dim light of the lantern fell full on their faces, and, for one instant, Gerard saw Ursula’s features quite plainly. She shrank back; how she hoped that he had not recognized her! She thought not.

The dog-cart passed down the road, and presently the young men were heard laughing heartily. This masculine hilarity seemed to exasperate the buxom Maria.

“Let us bind ourselves,” she said, “to meet together next year, at this spot and this hour, and to prove to each other that each has kept her word.”

“We promise,” said the others, in taking leave.

But, when the anniversary came round, be it noted here, Maria marched to her solitary vigil. The two younger women had broken their vow, and the weather-beaten spinster much wanted them to believe that she had broken hers.

Not a word was exchanged between the two girls on their homeward way. Ursula felt heartily relieved when she found herself once more safe in the drawing-room. Harriet had a headache, and Ursula poured out tea. Mynheer Mopius took an opportunity of praising her concoction as a set-off against Harriet’s.

“Of course it’s her fault,” he argued, “not that of the tea. How could it be?—best Java imported.”

“Uncle JacÓbus,” began Ursula, emboldened by this approval, “I don’t care about the opera to-morrow. I’d as lief stay at home.” Her hand trembled, and she blushed crimson.

Mynheer Mopius set down his teacup cautiously, for it was best Japan. “Well, of all the deceiving minxes!” he said. “And to hear her go on this afternoon in the carriage! Ursula, you are insincere.”

Mevrouw Mopius sat quite motionless. Her niece did not venture to glance her way.

“Well, of course,” said Mynheer, in the silence, “you must know. I’m not such a fool as to waste my money, and no thanks for my pains. After I’d sent round to the stationer’s, too, for the book of words you said you would like to have. I’m very much disappointed in you, Ursula. I can’t make it out.”

“Operas aren’t really good,” piped Mevrouw Mopius’s tremulous voice. “They’re not a bit like real life. I never had anything happen to me like an opera.”

Mynheer Mopius slapped his knee. “I have it,” he cried; “it’s some religious nonsense of your father’s. Well, if it don’t rise to the surface quicker, there can’t be much of it. Come along, wife, I can’t bear to think of her. Come along; let’s play and sing.”

Mevrouw Mopius staggered to her feet. Ursula remained in the half-light of the front room. Husband and wife spent the rest of the evening at the piano.

sang Mynheer Mopius. And Ursula listened. And Mevrouw Mopius played.