“AN OLD MAID’S LOVE”

“Yes, uncle, I should like to go back to Horstwyk to-day,” Ursula was saying at breakfast. “I have had a letter from father, and Aunt Josine seems far from well.”

She had found the letter on her return from last night’s dissipation. It was a long and affectionate letter, full of praises of Otto, who came frequently to the Parsonage, enjoying the quiet strength of the minister’s talk. The letter certainly stated that Miss Mopius had been laid up with a feverish cold.

“Nonsense, Ursula,” cried Mynheer Mopius loudly. “Of course, Josine has been ill; it’s her solitary pastime. Why, your visit has hardly begun.”

“We want to hear all about last night,” interposed Harriet, in her sleepy tones. “You look quite worn out this morning; you must have enjoyed yourself immensely.”

“Oh, bother last night,” said Mopius. “We don’t care to know about the grandees. Were there many of them there?”

“Yes, there were a good many people,” replied Ursula, wearily, “most of them young. I didn’t enjoy myself so very much, because, you see, I don’t dance.”

“Was the Governor there, or his wife,” asked Mopius, “or the Burgomaster? I suppose you saw the Van Troyens?”

“And the Governor’s daughter?” added Harriet. “The pretty girl with the hazel eyes?”

“I remember a Mr. Van Troyen, an officer,” said Ursula, vaguely. “Uncle, may I send a telegram for this afternoon. I could always come back on Monday, you know.”

“Can’t you miss one of your father’s discourses? I should have thought Sunday was the one day you’d like to stay away. But I don’t see what you go out into society for, Ursula. At Batavia I danced with the Governor-General’s lady.”

“Always?” asked Harriet—her invariable question at this stage of the story.

“No, not always. I remember, just as I led her up, I saw there was a huge snake coiled round her arm.”

“How dreadful!” said Ursula, stolidly. She had heard the dÉnouement on former occasions, but forgotten it.

“A gold snake! Ha!-ha!-ha! Somebody snatched it off a few months afterwards. A brave man. Ha!-ha!-ha! And your aunt used to dance too. Do you remember, wife? You were really quite pretty in those days. We’ll dance to-night,” he added, “and teach Ursula. You dance, Harriet, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, to any one’s pipes,”[G] replied Harriet.

Nevertheless, it was decided, after some wrangling, that Ursula should return to Horstwyk, as she wished, for the present. Mynheer Mopius chose to be offended.

The girl was consumed by a feverish longing to get away out of this hot-house atmosphere into the pure repose of her country home. All morning she hid away in her room, afraid to look out on the little town, over which, to her excited fancy, an ominous thunder-cloud seemed to hang. What would happen next? How would Helena act? How Gerard? In her heart she hoped that justice would be done to the injured shop-girl, and yet dared not measure the result.

Just before luncheon a note was brought her. She sat down before opening it. Harriet laughed. “With due preparation,” said Harriet. “What is it? Another invitation to a dance?”

The letter contained only these words written by Helena:

They left her no wiser.

“My dear, come into my room for a moment,” said Mevrouw Mopius, with timid voice. The feeble little creature sniffed nervously. “Forget what I told you, Ursula,” she went on, as soon as they were alone. “And remember you are bound by oath. If Mopius ever hears, it must be through you.” She peered sternly at her niece.

“Yes, dear, I will remember,” replied Ursula. “But you are feeling better, aunt, are you not? You are not as bad as when I came.”

Mevrouw Mopius smiled. “I shall be better soon,” she said. Then she went to her particular old-fashioned mahogany “secretary,” and, after a good deal of fumbling and searching, extracted from one of many receptacles a small tissue-paper parcel, which she brought back to Ursula. “This is for you,” she said, thrusting it into the girl’s hand. “I’ve made it since you came, sitting up in bed these summer mornings.” Ursula opened the parcel, her aunt watching meanwhile with a certain pride.

It contained a small square bit of red wool-work, with the bead-embroidered device, “No cross, no crown,” the two substantives being presented pictorially.

“I could have taken more time to it,” pleaded Mevrouw Mopius, “but I had to wait for the daylight: a candle wakes your uncle; and, once up, I have to work at ‘Laban and Jacob.’ I am exceedingly anxious to get them ready before”—She stopped. “Good-bye, my dear,” she said. “I hope you like my work. You might use it under a lamp, or for the fire-irons, unless you disapprove of that on account of the words. I don’t think I should.”

So Ursula returned very quietly and humbly. There was no marshalling of porters, and she travelled second class. At the little market-town station her father met her; together they trudged the two miles side by side almost silently, for the girl’s few answers had soon convinced the DominÉ that conversation had become for the moment, what he most detested, an ambuscade.

In the half-light of the calm, cool study, amid the well-known, stilly sympathetic books, she sat with her two hands in his one, on a footstool by the faded leather arm-chair, and, lifting those big brown eyes of hers to his steadfast response, she told him how the city is full of wickedness incredible, and that Apollyon rules the world.

He listened to her very quietly, and yet he was greatly shocked. True, evil had few secrets for him; he had seen more of the world’s corruption than most men, in the red glare of the Algerian night, amid the devil’s dance of shrieking drunkenness and bare-breasted debauch. He had seen too much. He was one of those happy mortals who always think the world is better than it used to be. “In my day”—he would begin, and sigh cheerfully—“but we have greatly improved since then.” It was doubly sad, therefore, to hear that Gerard, the warrior, despite the weekly bugle-call to resistance, should have surrendered at discretion to so pitiful a cutthroat as Lustings. The DominÉ had an ineradicable weakness for a brave soldier. Havelock and Hedley Vicars hung large against his peaceful wall, and between them a very different hero, Bugeaud.

“Well, my dear,” said the DominÉ, while Ursula, having finished, sat heavy with sorrowful wrath—“Well, my dear, the farther we go the more we see of the battle-field. I am not sorry you should have reconnoitred a little. And I rejoice all the more now to think how mistaken I was about you and Gerard. You must know, my dear, that at one time, though I never mentioned it to you, I fancied you might be setting your affections on the Jonker. I spoke of it unwillingly to your aunt, for I had no other woman to confide in”—the DominÉ’s voice grew reflective—“but she said it was all stuff and nonsense, at once, and you weren’t such a piece of vanity as that. Your aunt is not a woman of exceptional discrimination; still, I am glad to see she was right. It would have been a great mistake on your part, Ursula, and a cause of much useless regret.”

“I shall never love any man but you,” said Ursula, vehemently. “They’re all alike. No woman ought to marry.”

The pastor smiled, and passed his hand over her smooth head.

“I hope,” he said, “that you will never know a worthless love. A hopeless love, even a dead love, these may ennoble man or woman. But a love of the undeserving can only lure into an impasse.”

She smiled confidently.

“No; the Jonker van Helmont is not for such as us, Ursula,” continued the old man. “So much the better. My child, you will marry if God pleases and whom he pleases; but I hope it will be in your own station of life. Not that we must judge any class as such. There is Otto, for instance. He is not a pleasure-seeker. We have seen much of him, my dear, in your absence. He most kindly came to comfort me. He has returned from the Indies as he went, the same pure lover of all that is good. Even in our day the Almighty leads some men untainted through the furnace.” And the simple-hearted pastor launched into praises of his favorite, unwittingly digging pitfalls on paths as yet untrod.

“And as for most men,” he said, “human nature is still much what it was in the days of Thucydides. What says Diodorus, the son of Eucrates, the Athenian? ‘All men are naturally disposed to do wrong; and no law will ever keep them from it.’ And that was the historian’s own view; he repeats it some chapters later. As for women, you remember what he makes Pericles say of them. It holds true, in spite of emancipation. ‘Great is the glory of her who is least talked of among the men, either for good or for evil.’ You remember that, Ursula?”

“Yes, indeed, Captain,” said Ursula, into whose whole life this maxim had been constantly woven.

“You might read the history through once more with the greatest advantage. No writer that I know will reveal to you more of the conflict of human passions, excepting, of course, John Bunyan.”

The good pastor did not know many writers. He was not by any means a literary man.

Miss Mopius sailed into the room unannounced, and interrupted their quiet conversation. Two little peculiarities of this lady’s—trifles, light as air—were a source of unending irritation to her brother-in-law. The one was her tacit refusal to prelude her invasions of his sanctum, the other was her persistent drawl of his soldierly name into a sound which was neither French nor English, nor anything but absurd. The DominÉ was a brave man; he was exceedingly afraid of his dead wife’s sister, not so much on account of himself as on account of the use to which Diabolus put her in the great siege of the DominÉ’s Mansoul.

By sheer force of will Miss Mopius had taught herself to admit that she was thirty-two years old, but she would never see forty again. She was endowed with a sallow complexion, to which she had added auburn ringlets and rainbow-colored raiment. To describe her as an entirely imaginary invalid would have been malevolent; nature had provided her with a tendency to nervous headaches which kindly fostering had developed into a vocation.

She had come to the widower as a thorn in the flesh. Limp and listless, absolutely unable to “resist” anything that attracted her, she devoted herself day and night to the harassing service of her own caprices. Being not entirely destitute of means, she might easily have enjoyed her nerves to the full in some boarding-house, but she knew her duty to her motherless niece.

“I should not stay with you, Roderigue,” she was wont to say, “though Ursula, of course, will not marry for many years yet. When she does, I shall consider my mission is ended. I should not be wanted then.”

She paused, expectant. But the DominÉ never answered, for he held that, in the spiritual warfare, a falsehood is the easiest and most cowardly method of running away.

“Ursula, my dear,” began Miss Mopius, in a flow of sugared vinegar, “I have been suffering the greatest anxiety. I thought you had not returned. I suppose, however, the train was late.”

Ursula, rising hastily, confessed that the train had been punctual.

“Really! Well, I’m afraid I interrupted you. This conversation must have been of the greatest importance, or you would hardly have so entirely forgotten your poor old aunt.” Miss Mopius constantly used that appellation; of late she had sometimes wondered whether it was becoming unwise. She spoke in almost continuous italics; these, however, were mostly independent of sense.

“I suppose your father informed you,” she continued, settling herself in the DominÉ’s chair, “that I have been exceedingly unwell since you left. Day after day I have dragged myself down-stairs, so as not to let him sit down to his dinner alone, but my nights were too terrible to speak of.” She paused, that Ursula might speak of them.

“I’m so sorry,” said Ursula, without any accent at all.

“Last night, for instance, I was in agony from twelve to three—in agony. I don’t know what I should have done without my vegetable electricity. I took it at three, and the pain vanished immediately.”

“Why didn’t you take it at once?” asked Ursula.

“Ursula, you have not the slightest comprehension of medicines. Fortunate child, it is your lack of experience. Medicines never act if taken at once.”

The DominÉ had basely deserted his own fortress.

“Ursula, my dear,” said Miss Mopius, sitting up with quite unusual energy, “no wonder my health has suffered. Something very important has happened since you went away.”

“Really?” asked Ursula, wondering what the maid-of-all-work had broken.

“Yes, but it’s no use speaking of it to your father. Ursula, Otto van Helmont comes here every evening. Since you left, mind you. Now, I ask, what can that mean?”

“He had only four evenings before I left,” replied Ursula, with some spirit, “one of them was free, and he came.”

“One doesn’t count. That was a formal call,” replied Miss Mopius, loftily. “I ask, what does it mean? He sits and talks and talks. Nominally to your father. Ursula, I have watched him; he never speaks to me.” She sank back in her chair and began to count on her lanky fingers, without taking further note of her companion. “He never speaks to me—one. He never looks at me—two. But he brought me a nosegay—three. He said it was from his mother—four.” She roused herself from her reverie. “Ursula, my child,” she asked, “why does he bring me a nosegay, and say it is from his mother?”

“Because it is,” replied Ursula.

Miss Mopius scornfully shook her curls. “Does the Baroness send me roses in midsummer?” she inquired. “Dear girl, you are too young; I should have considered that. But there are moments in a woman’s existence when she craves for the sympathy of her sex. If only my dear elder sister were alive—she was so much my elder!—to help me now. Go, dear child, go; at some distant day your own turn will come, and then you will understand.”

“Yes, aunt,” said Ursula, gladly moving towards the door.

“Stay one instant,” cried the spinster. “Child, are you so eager to return to your diversions? He is good-looking, Ursula. I have watched him, as I said. His face is careworn and earnest; he is no mere beardless boy just dipping into life, but a man who has swum against the current. He has experience and judgment, and he knows. Ursula, I would not marry a beardless boy.”

“Aunt,” said Ursula, suddenly coming back into the room, “do you mean to say you want to marry Mynheer Otto van Helmont?”

“Silly child, does a woman say such things? Of course, I know, Ursula, as well as you do, that he is much older than I am. That is a matter I must seriously consider before I reply.”

“Do you mean to say he has actually asked you?” cried Ursula, clasping her hands in wonderment.

“Not directly. Child, how raw you are, and how rawly you put things. But I have my reasons for believing that he will do so to-night. That is why I was unwillingly compelled to speak to you on the subject. Be sure that otherwise I should never have done so.”

“But what have I to do with it?” queried Ursula, stupefied.

“Not to give your consent, you may be sure,” retorted Miss Mopius, snappishly. “When Otto comes to-night, as he certainly will, I want you, during ten minutes, to draw off your father. The poor fellow never gets a chance. He said as much yesterday, in departing. ‘The DominÉ and I have so much to say to each other,’ he remarked, ‘that I never seem to have an opportunity of chatting with you, Miss Mopius.’ And with that he gave me a look. Ursula, I believe you take me for a fool. Do you?”

“Oh no, dear aunt,” exclaimed Ursula, hastily.

“One would say so, if you imagine I suck these things out of my thumb.[H] I assure you I have very good reason to know what I know. I am not a chit, like you, to fancy a man is in love because he looks at me.”

“There, there, go away,” she added. “The whole thing has greatly exhausted me. I am not strong; that is the worst. But so I shall honestly tell him.”

“You will accept him,” cried Ursula, preparing to vanish.

“That will depend upon various considerations,” replied Miss Mopius. “What is it, Drika? Ursula, hold your tongue, and let the servant pass.”

Ursula turned hastily in the open doorway.

“The Jonker Otto is in the drawing-room,” said the red-cheeked maid.

Miss Mopius turned pale, then red. “Go to him, child,” she said, pleadingly. “Amuse him till I come. And remember—”

Ursula did not go in to Otto. A sudden shyness was upon her; besides she felt no desire to meet any member just now of the Van Helmont family. So the Jonker paced up and down the little parlor till the DominÉ was attracted in to him through the windows.

Juffrouw Josine spent twenty minutes over the secrets of her toilet. Her poor old heart beat wildly. “He cannot even wait till the evening,” she thought. “The densest fool would understand.” When at last she descended, arrayed in her best Sunday green-silk dress with the poppies, she was surrounded by odors of ess. bouquet and sal volatile.

She had to pause before the drawing-room door and steady herself. She entered. There was Otto, a great bunch of apricot-colored roses in one hand, bending over a map of Java with the DominÉ. “That is my part,” he was saying. “One of the healthiest, I assure you, DominÉ. All the men take their wives out there.”

“Ah!” thought Miss Mopius. She shook hands, and the Jonker rather awkwardly presented his flowers.

“From my mother,” he stammered, “to welcome Miss Rovers.”

“How kind of you to bring them,” replied Miss Mopius, sitting down on the sofa and sniffing. “I hope Ursula will be grateful. I consider it most exceedingly kind.”

She squinted across at the DominÉ, who still bent over the map. There was a long wait, and Otto returned to the table.

“Roderigue,” said Miss Mopius, in desperation. “Ursula wants you. She wants you at once!”

The minister lifted a countenance of mild astonishment.

“Very well,” he said, remembering his daughter’s painful experiences of the last days, “I’ll be back in a moment, Otto. I want to ask you about that mission station you were telling me of.”

Otto seated himself near to the lady.

“Miss Rovers, I hear,” said Otto, “has safely returned.”

The lady bowed over her flowers.

“She came back earlier than she had intended,” continued the Jonker. “I suppose that she felt being away from what is doubtless a most happy home.”

“I try to make it happy,” murmured Miss Mopius.

“Could you do otherwise?” said Otto, fervently. And he added, in a tone that was almost sad, “It seems cruel to disturb your trefoil even for a day.”

And he looked at her meditatively.

Miss Mopius gasped for breath. She muttered something about “leaving and cleaving.”

Otto stared at her.

“Yes; it’s very hot,” he hazarded. “Shall I open the window?”

Miss Mopius somewhat recovered herself.

“Oh!” she replied, “but not as hot as Java, I suppose? Not nearly as hot as Java. I should enjoy Java. I like heat. I’m not strong, Mynheer van Helmont, but the hot weather always does me good. I’m sure I should feel much better in Java.”

“Yes,” he said, vaguely. “Would you prefer me, then, to shut the window again?”

“The window? Perhaps it would be better under the circumstances. The question you asked me just now is so momentous, Mynheer van Helmont, I do not know how to answer it. Oh, that my dear elder sister were with me still! She was very much my elder, very much so. I miss her guidance, her motherly advice.”

She hesitated, and her eyelids fluttered.

“Juffrouw Rovers’s mother?” said Otto. “I suppose she was very beautiful?”

“Well, I hardly know if you would have called her beautiful. She was not at all like me.”

“Just so,” said Otto. “I suppose Juffrouw Rovers is like her?”

“Oh no; Ursula takes after her father’s family. The Mopiuses were always famous for their delicate skins.”

“Ah!” said Otto, shifting on his chair. “Well, I am a plain man; perhaps not much a judge of beauty—”

“Oh, don’t say that,” interposed the lady, smiling.

“But I know when I like a face, Miss Mopius. I think an honest face is of more importance than mere good looks.”

“Oh, of course,” assented the lady, reddening.

“I mean in a man. I trust, Miss Mopius, that you have no aversion to my face—or me.”

The lady tittered, and buried her nose in her bouquet.

“I wish I could flatter myself you even liked me. But that’s nonsense. I’m a conceited fool.”

“I do,” whispered the spinster, with downcast eyes—“a little.”

Otto got up and warmly clasped her disengaged hand.

“How good it is of you to say that,” he cried, heartily. “Then you will, won’t you? How awfully good of you.” And, with another energetic shake of those skinny fingers, he walked from the room.

Miss Mopius opened her eyes wide, very wide. Presently, however, she nodded her curls.

“Of course,” she murmured, “he has gone to speak with Roderigue.”

A soft flush spread over her pale cheeks, and she waited.