AN INDELIBLE STAIN

The next day dawned for Ursula in unclouded brightness. Those few of us who remember a youth no longer ours will forgive her the excess of an expectancy she was unable to curb by experience. She was going to an entertainment at one of the great houses of Drum. She had never been to anything so magnificent before. And Gerard, whom she had known all her life, was to be there to make things smooth for her. A slight difficulty about a chaperon had been most pleasantly removed. The Freule van Trossart had on the preceding afternoon left a card for Juffrouw Rovers, with a note saying that if she cared to come and dine before the party, she could be present at it afterwards as a house guest, under the Baroness’s wing. Ursula had accepted gladly, by no means impervious to so much condescension, and, altogether, she felt very well satisfied indeed. The night before she had written a glorious letter to her father; she had said nothing of her aunt’s ill health.

At 9 A.M. there was tranquil jubilation, at 10 A.M. there was sudden dismay. “I can’t wear it like this,” Ursula was saying to Harriet, with whom she had come to terms on a basis of mutual oblivion. She sat on the floor, a brown heap of perplexity. Her simple evening dress lay on the bed, with a round stain, as of grease, distressingly displayed upon its breast. It was a frock of crushed-strawberry crepon, with ripe-strawberry silk ribbons.

“No, you can’t,” asserted Harriet, full of interest and sympathy. Harriet was in her element. “You must manage to get some more of that crimson lace for the front. How can it have happened, Ursula? Something must have oozed out in your trunk.”

“But colored lace is so difficult to match,” wailed Ursula.

“So it is. Never mind. We must try.” And the two girls sallied forth on that most hopeless of errands, the only form of shopping no woman enjoys, “the matching” of colors. In every shop they entered their little scrap was held up against an incongruous variety of tints, and they were informed by the assistant that it was “exactly the shade.” One especially truthful person qualified her recommendation of a moderate scarlet by the statement that “really it was as near as you could get.” But all, without exception, were pertly offended when the girls crept hopelessly, though resolutely, away.

“It’s no use,” said Harriet at last, as they retraced their steps. But even while she spoke a sudden inspiration struck her. “Do you know what you’ll have to do, Ursula? It’s V-shaped now; well, you’ll have to make it into a low-neck.”

“Oh, I don’t like that,” cried the pastor’s daughter, reddening.

“There’s no choice left to you. How stupid of me not to think of it before. It’ll look much nicer, too.”

“But supposing we matched the ribbons?” suggested Ursula, holding out.

“You never could in this primitive place. They’re a very peculiar color. Besides, if you covered up all that space with ribbon, you’d look like a prize cow. No, the top’ll have to come off, and we must see about a dress-maker at once. There’s no time to lose.”

They turned down a by-street.

“Let us cross to the square,” said Harriet. “It’s no use taking the little woman that works for me; we must get the best help we can.”

A few moments later they entered—not without a feeling of awe, especially on Harriet’s part—the largest establishment of its kind in Drum.

“Call Miss Adeline,” said the smart personage who had listened to their piteous tale. “We don’t usually alter garments not made by ourselves. Still—”

Both of the girls gave a sudden gasp, for in the person of Miss Adeline, who came forward at this moment from far-back recesses, both simultaneously recognized the fair little maiden of the tryst.

“Mynheer Mopius, Villa Blanda,” said the black-silk manager. “Very well. Perhaps Miss Adeline had better accompany you at once. There certainly is no time to be lost.”

With feelings utterly indescribable the three walked off together.

A few moments later, Harriet having fled, Ursula sat helping the dress-maker in the oppressive silence of the “second best spare room.” The click of the scissors was becoming insupportable. Even the occasional rustle of the pendent frock seemed a relief.

“I think we have met before,” said Ursula, at last, very gently.

“Really, Juffrouw? A great many ladies come to our place,” replied the girl, bending over her work.

For a moment Ursula felt nonplussed, but her pity rose paramount.

“You know what I mean,” she said, rather sternly. And then she went on to talk about the folly and wickedness of female initiative in matters matrimonial, and her little lecture broadened into its third well-rounded sentence—

“And you,” burst in the girl, fiercely, “a rich young lady in a fine house, well looked after. You!”

So Ursula had to incriminate her absent friend, lest her moral go awry. She found a politely incredulous listener, and began to realize that, with her, it was a case of “caught together, hung together,” as the Germans say. If only Gerard had not observed her!

“I can assure you,” she said, continuing her homily, though rather disconcerted by the sudden change of front, “that I should never lift a finger to get married for the sake of being married. Every woman may rejoice if God sends her an honest lover and enables her to love that lover. But merely to be able to say ‘I am somebody’s wife!’ I cannot understand any woman wanting that”—this under the stress of her own inculpation—“I cannot understand what for.”

She opened her big dark eyes, and looked innocently interrogative.

“Can’t you, Juffrouw?” said the kneeling dress-maker, taking the pins from between her lips. “Well, I can. There’s reasons would make a girl willing to be any man’s wife as long as she was only married. And one of them’s mine.” She spoke bitterly, and shut her lips with a snap, as she rose from fitting on the frock.

Suddenly Ursula understood.

She was not given to emotion, still less to showing it; perhaps her nerves had been wrought on by the previous strain; now, quite unexpectedly to herself, she burst into tears.

The girl quivered, stared, and, sinking on to a cane-bottomed chair, began crying too, but in a soft, self-pitying way, while speaking all the time.

“You think me a bad, wicked creature,” she sobbed, “but I’m not, I’m not. I didn’t know, and he promised to marry me. There was never any doubt of his marrying me. I’m not as bad as you think, and I was certain he loved me. And I was desperate, and I put in the advertisement. I wish I were married or dead.” She stopped crying for a moment. “When the time comes,” she said, earnestly, “I shall be one or the other.” And then she fell to sobbing afresh.

Ursula had dried her eyes.

“My dear,” she said, “if he promised to marry you, perhaps he will.”

“Oh no, he won’t. I know now, and understand things different. He’s a gentleman. He’d marry me if he was not.”

“For I’m sure he loved me,” she added, softly.

Ursula was trembling from head to foot. Shielded and sheltered through all her simple girlhood, she had never come into contact, whether by actual experience or in literature, with any such vision of shame as this. She compared her own happy, unshadowed life with the struggle of the girl before her. And, full of compassion, she thanked God for the difference. For, to the very backbone which held her erect, she was womanly and pure.

She had forgotten all about the pressing needs of her toilet, but the dress-maker had not. Adeline caught up the frock, and began silently, sullenly sewing.

“If I could but do anything for you,” said Ursula, meditatively.

“You can’t. Only don’t gibe at me. Gibe at the men of your own class. This one, they tell me, is going to be married. I dare say you’d marry him if you could.”

“Never! never!” said Ursula, with quiet passion.

“Well, I don’t care whom he marries. It won’t be me. I’ll tell you how I know for certain. You seem to be good, you do, and you mean well. It’s not me alone he’s ruined. Do you know”—she laid down her work on her lap—“I believe it was he who brought us all together the other night. I believe he is Romeo de Lieven.”

“But why?” asked Ursula, incredulously. “Certainly, the young lady down-stairs—”

“Oh, don’t tell me, Juffrouw. We all deny. Women always do. But you remember a carriage passing along the road? There were officers in it. It flashed across me at once that they had come to see their handiwork. And he was driving.”

The room swam round before Ursula’s eyes. She closed them hastily, and leaned back in her easy-chair. She could think of nothing distinctly; but she could hear the clock ticking solemnly on. She longed for some one to stop it. As for herself, she knew that she was incapable of moving, body or soul. In a lightning flash she had realized two facts undreamed before—the first, that she was very fond of Gerard van Helmont; the second, that she scorned him forth from her heart forever.

When at last she opened her eyes she saw the other girl intently watching her. There was a quiet sneer in the dress-maker’s gaze before which Ursula shrank affrighted. She understood immediately how her elaborate self-exoneration had crumbled away. This creature had perceived that Gerard was personally known to her. In the wretched girl’s estimation she was doubtless one rival out of many. She shuddered.

“Yes,” said Mademoiselle Adeline, “we all deny. I think, Miss, if you left me to myself, I could finish this dress a great deal better.”

Ursula dragged herself together and crept from the room.

While this uncomfortable interview was in progress, the chief subject of its interest was complacently installed among the thousand elegances of his cousin’s sitting-room, on a low stool almost at her feet. He looked a little more extensively red than usual, and his blue eyes were restless; but otherwise he showed no signs of trepidation. Yet he had resolved that this day should decide his fate. His mother’s by-play about Otto was becoming a nuisance.

That morning he had risen, after tranquil sleep, and carelessly studied himself in the glass. Of course, he was good-looking—very good-looking. Experience had taught him that quite as much as ocular demonstration. It was the perfect grace of his gracelessness which made women adore him.

He had eaten a hearty breakfast as usual, but he had drunk two more cups of tea and a glass of brandy. That is a man’s way of realizing that the crisis has come.

“My dear Gerard,” said Helena, “you are dull, while the rest of the family are flurried. People talk about the day after the festival; my ‘Katzenjammers’ come ten hours before. I shall ring for Mademoiselle Papotier; she always amuses me.”

“Do,” said Gerard, surlily, glad of any postponement.

“That is charming. You could not have said that ‘do’ more naturally had we been husband and wife. Do I bore you? Then amuse yourself elsewhere. But don’t even expect me to ring the bell.” She jumped up lightly as she spoke and ran past him to the bell-pull.

“I don’t like Mademoiselle Papotier,” said Gerard. “She has taught you a number of things you needn’t have known. If you read books like that”—he pointed to Une Vie upon the table—“it’s her doing. I wish you wouldn’t, Helena. Men don’t like it.”

She came back to her seat: “Oh, but that is still more charming,” she said, “especially from your lips. You would have me restrict my reading so that I might the better enjoy your conversation. I won’t hear a word against my dear Papotier. She brightened my youth with eighteenth-century romances, and she cheers my old age by nineteenth-century novels. She is a dear.”

Undeniably, the heiress’s education had been a peculiar one. Her governess’s tissue-paper rosette of a soul had never given forth more natural odors than patchouly. The Baroness van Trossart could have told you how, when Helena was an eight-year-old little girl, she had come upon the child slapping her ball up and down in the court-yard, and occasionally muttering the same words over and over again.

“What on earth are you saying, my dear?” the Baroness had inquired.

And Helena had looked up with sparkling eyes: “And his beautiful head,” she had spouted, without stopping her ball-bumping, “went bounding three times across the marble, while repeating three times the sweet name of ‘ZaÏre’! Isn’t it lovely? He was dead, you know; they had just cut it off.” And she had run away.

The Baroness had shaken her head. “It sounds like ScudÉry,” she had said. But she was comfortable. She was not going to object to Mademoiselle Papotier.

“I shall read what I like,” repeated the heiress, provokingly. “And when I am married, I shall go to what plays I choose. I like impropriety on paper. Paper or boards. And so do you, Gerard, et plus que ÇÀ. You, of all people! I believe you are laughing at me.”

“No, by thunder, I’m not,” he cried, violently. “I don’t pretend to be a saint—far from it; but there’s not a lover in the world would like to remember that the girl he’s engaged to has read Maupassant.”

She looked at him for a moment with that sweet mixture of mocking tenderness which a man’s eyes can never assume; then she said to her maid, who had answered the bell,

“No, thank you; I want nothing. I rang by mistake.”

“But you are not”—she began, and checked herself. “So Otto is coming to my party to-night,” she said.

She enjoyed his responsive scowl.

“No, Otto is not coming,” he answered. “His Highness has gone off in a huff. About that hoax of Willie’s, I imagine, but his huffs are not easy to classify. Mind you, I don’t defend the trick. I think it was rather a low thing to do.”

“To Van Troyen it merely represented so much champagne,” she replied. “I like Otto; he is eminently estimable and—and worthy. He, at least, would never have told me not to read Maupassant.”

“No,” sneered Gerard, “he would never have heard of him.”

“Just so. There is nothing more delightful than a husband who is absolutely ignorant of everything. With him, at least, one runs a chance, even in this age, of unreasoning jealousy. And unreasoning jealousy must be delightful. Like mustard. What is the use of a man who keeps saying, ‘The vices are my share; the virtues are yours. And each of us has got what he ought to have’? Gerard, rather than a husband who said to me, ‘Of course, I am faithless; let us talk of something else,’ I would have a husband who said, ‘You are faithless. I am going to kill you,’ and did it.”

“It could only be done once,” replied Gerard, languidly. “My dear child, you have been to Verdi’s ‘Othello.’ Evidently you want to be worshipped not wisely but too well. I don’t think Otto would tell you that you are faithless. I fancy you’d have to jog him a bit.”

“Otto! I wasn’t thinking of Otto. I believe you are jealous of Otto.”

“Yes, I am. I’ll tell you why, if you like, immediately. I have a note here from my mother, received this morning; shall I read it to you?”

“If it concerns me,” she said, negligently.

“It concerns you very nearly. My mother tells me to ask whether you would care to come down to the house with me to-morrow, and stay for a few days. You understand what that means, Helen, as well as I do!”

“Yes, I understand,” she answered, and with a sudden impulse she caught up the “Maupassant” at her elbow and flung it into a corner of the room.

“So that, knowing the comedy you are expected to take part in, you can foresee and forego the conclusion. I should say, if it is to be only farce, why act it at all?”

She popped out the tips of her little feet and looked down at them.

“The best way to avoid all complications,” he went on, “would be to arrive at the Manor-house—engaged.”

She lifted her eyes from the ground and fixed them steadily on his face.

“Let me telegraph to my mother that you are coming engaged.” His voice broke down.

“But how will you know?” she asked, laughing.

“Let me know first.” He bent forward. “Oh, my darling, my beauty.” He caught her two hands, and, like the passionate young fool he was, covered them with kisses. “My darling, how happy they will all be at home.”

Even at that moment the naÏve selfishness of this last exclamation amused her. She said nothing, however, prolonging the sweetest silence a woman ever knows.

“Gerard,” she said, some minutes later, looking up at him as he bent over her. “You have forgotten that the girl you are engaged to has read Maupassant.”

“Yes,” he answered, “I have forgotten. I shall never remember.”

He went back to his rooms to dress for dinner, highly delighted. He was very much attached to his cousin. And she was the greatest heiress in the province.