FOR LIFE OR DEATH

Ursula sat by herself in the veranda through the sweetly fading silence of the summer Sabbath evening. She had now been back in her tranquil home for more than four-and-twenty hours. It was good for her that her return had heralded the holy calm of that long, sunlight-flooded day of rest. She had slept as young twenty sleeps when worn out, whether from work or weeping; she had risen as young twenty rises, to a world that is bright again. The peace of the familiar village-round was upon her: the drowsy morning service, the droning Sunday-school, the empty afternoon “catechism.” Had her father’s text, she wondered, been inspired by the thought of his absent child at Drum! He had preached on “Keep yourself unspotted from the world.” She desired nothing more ardently. Here was she returned in time to point the moral.

Her hands lay idle in her lap, an emblem of the day’s repose. The whole village had folded its hands to watch the lengthening shadows. A few conspicuous white shirt-sleeves lolled against the church-yard wall. And somewhere a bullfinch was carolling, breaking the Sabbath in his own divinely appointed way.

“How hushed it all is,” thought Ursula, looking up to the far plumes of the motionless poplars. And the lull sank around her own soul. Why break our hearts over the scuffling and splashing of one or two swimmers? The river of God’s glory flows steadily on. She laid a tired head on its current; for a moment the waters were stilled.

She did not even care to penetrate the mystery concerning her Aunt Josine. The confidences of the preceding afternoon had been succeeded by an extreme reserve which the lady’s two companions almost provokingly respected. The pastor knew of nothing. At dinner, on the Saturday, he had been mildly astonished by an atmosphere of constraint, in the midst of which his sister-in-law had suddenly ejaculated,

“Well, Roderigue?” with the vehemence of a bomb-shell.

He had answered,

“Well, Josine? It certainly is much better than the last joint, though she will over-roast it,” a reply which did not seem to give full satisfaction to its recipient.

“He has gone, first of all, to obtain his father’s permission,” thought Miss Mopius. “I might have known. With the aristocracy a father is a very important personage.”

She retired early with a headache which not even the vegetable electricity could combat. It extended over the Sunday, as Miss Mopius’s headaches naturally would. She lay on her sofa and sighed at intervals. People would not be surprised at her lying on the sofa. Had she not sighed at intervals, Ursula would have risen to see what was wrong.

The church-clock had just struck seven; in the ensuing pause of expectancy its last note was still trembling away into nothing, when Ursula’s closed eyes became conscious that somebody was watching them. She started to her feet in confusion, a little ruffled and rumpled, before the admiring gaze of the Jonker Otto van Helmont.

“I must have been dozing off,” she said.

“You were asleep. I am sorry I woke you,” replied honest Otto, “but I came with a message from my mother. She is very anxious to speak to you. She—she wants you to come up to-night. If you would?”

Ursula hesitated. She saw the dog-cart standing by the gate, a village lad erect at the horse’s head. Continental Sabbaths are not like English; still, the DominÉ’s daughter was not accustomed to Sunday driving.

“She made me come,” continued Otto, apologetically; “but if you’d rather stay—”

“I will ask papa, and be ready in five minutes,” she answered, promptly. Her pulse quickened. Doubtless there was some fresh trouble about Gerard. If so, it was her duty to “go through.”

Presently Otto saw her coming down the garden path with her strong, brisk step, in straw hat and woolley wrap, all light and bright, among the thick gayety of the wall-flowers and the pink flare of the hollyhocks.

“Why, it’s Beauty!” she cried, as she drew near, recognizing the mare.

“Yes, none of the other horses were available, and none of the men were about, so I harnessed her myself and came away. I hope Gerard won’t object, for once. It couldn’t be helped.”

No one but Gerard, and Gerard’s particular groom, was allowed to touch Gerard’s particular mare. She was his prime favorite, and deservedly so, for neither of the saddle-horses could stand in her shadow. But most horses, unlike men, have one or two faults, and Beauty’s was nervousness.

“You know we expected Gerard this morning,” began Otto, as the dog-cart bowled along. “He was to have brought my cousin with him, you know. But in their stead comes a telegram this afternoon to say that Helena is ill. Mother worries to know what is really the matter, and she has sent for you to give her the latest news of them all.”

Ursula did not answer. She had expected further embroilment. And, somehow, she was growing to feel awkward in Otto’s presence despite, or perhaps partly on account of, her father’s praise. That morning during church she had been sensible of his quiet admiration, and had experienced, for the first time in her existence, not the blush of being stared at, but the glow of being discreetly observed.

Now, again, as she sat watching the horse’s head, she perceived, without seeing them, some long-drawn side glances. Her nostrils tingled, and she wished there had been a groom on the back seat.

“Well, and did you enjoy your uncle’s Indian stories?” queried Otto, breaking a silence that was becoming acute. “Did he tell you anything very dreadful this time? How often did he find a tiger under his pillow at Batavia?”

She laughed, and they talked lightly of Uncle JacÓbus, and of the life out yonder in the Indies, where everything is gigantic compared to little Holland, even the money-making, and also the mortality.

“So your mind is made up more firmly than ever,” he concluded. “You would never go out to Java on any account?”

“No,” she answered, flushing. “And, besides, remember my father! What would become of him if I were to leave him alone with”—she pulled up—“himself!” she said.

“True,” he replied, exceedingly gravely. Both were occupied with their thoughts for a minute or two, and then they began to talk of something else.

They had reached a spot along the lonely country road where it suddenly curved among a solitary cluster of cottages. On both sides it stretches away, very narrow and smooth, and almost treeless, between parallel ditches and far-extending fields. Two landaus could not pass each other with safety, but it is largely used in summer-time by overloaded hay-wains. For those who know Holland it is unnecessary to add that a tram-line occupies two-thirds of it.

This tram-line, which runs largely through desolation, has to twist round the curve of the cottages. Where it does so it has just emerged from a thicket; and the whole is so arranged by nature and science that the locomotive can flatten the cottage-children without their being alarmed by seeing its approach.

On this slumbrous Sunday evening the women were enjoying a brief period of repose. The smaller children were in bed; the bigger ones had gone plum-stealing. Fathers and mothers sat stolidly by the door with slow pipe or slower speech. As the dog-cart came racing along, the men raised their caps. One of them, however, shouted something.

“The tram!” exclaimed Ursula, half-rising. Otto had already set his teeth tight; both knew it was too late. Even as the cry went up, the great engine, silent and deadly, loomed in front of them like a hideous, falling rock. There was just room enough between the rails and the cottage-walls for it to graze their lateral splash-board in rushing by. But a carelessly projecting shutter rendered this escape impossible. As the mare sprang aside, the off-wheel caught the obstacle, and sent it clattering back against the wall. For an instant—the hundredth part of a second—the double crash all around seemed to stun her; then up went her ears, down went her neck; she was off.

The villagers ran round the corner, emptily shouting. The tram sailed serenely on.

“Sit still,” said the Jonker between his closed teeth. The advice was superfluous, for the girl had immediately sunk back again, clutching the hand-rail beside and behind her, frozen to calm. She did not answer, and the vehicle went rushing on.

Forward the naked road stretched, white and thin, between two dark lines of water; forward the horse flew, drinking, as it were, that road before it with pendent head—crashing onward in a cloud of dust and stones and sparks. There was nothing to confront or pass them as they tore through yielding infinity, except here and there a sleepy calf that tried to race them as children would a train. There was nothing but the wide lilac heaven all around, with the boundlessness of a horizon that ever recedes and a highway that ever lengthens out. It was the very delirium and terror of motion, such as few mortals can experience, the irresisted, irresistible forward rush of the whole being—the concentration of all thought into that one idea of a sweep through immensity. For one moment the laws of time and space were annulled; there was no distance, no limit, no measurement, nothing but an infinite impression of velocity. The high carriage sailed through the summer warmth like a bird. On—on—on! For ever and ever. Why, indeed, should it stop?

And then the conviction that stoppage is inevitable, is imminent, and that it may well mean—death.

All that, not in a succession of impressions, but in one long-drawn lightning flash, like the flash of the flying brute, only faster.

Ursula looked up once at Van Helmont. His face was carved in bronze; his arms were straining back; his feet had bent out the splash-board. In another moment it burst away from them in a wide crash of splinters, and threw him forward, silent still. He righted himself with a jerk, but it seemed as if the horse had received a new impetus from the slackening even of that illusory hold. She swept the ground from under her as the tall wheels appeared to stop revolving, in a constant blaze of starlight. Ursula fancied, from the height where she clung, that their progress carried with it a crimson glow through the swiftly receding dust. But it was all so short, though it seemed eternity, and yet she remembers, this very day, each sensation that rose and sank across her brain. Her hat was gone; her hair was flying. One minute of that wild, mad stress, and then—

“I must save you,” said Otto. “Don’t mind how.”

Even as he spoke, she suddenly remembered that the canal lay straight athwart their course. The canal, not level with the road, not clear, but fifteen feet lower, at the bottom of a stone embankment and landing-place for barges. The blood grew cold in her veins. During the brief frenzy of her alarm, the thought of the canal had not as much as occurred to her. It had been with Otto from the first.

And—even as he spoke—the violet line of the horizon deepened upon her eyes, where the white road struck dead against fields on the farther side. It turned at a right angle there, as she knew but too well, along the water.

“It’s as much as I can do to keep her head straight,” said Otto, almost in a whisper. “Another minute, and it will be too late! Ursula, can you help hold the reins for a moment without risk of falling out?”

“Yes!” she cried, vehemently, angry that he had not asked her five minutes sooner. For so the time seemed to her.

“It’s only for a moment,” he continued, “we’ve got beyond the side ditches now.” She saw that he was using the one hand he had freed to draw something from his trousers-pocket. Her grasp closed, near his other hand, on the reins: she thought that her arms were being drawn from their sockets, but she bit her white lips and held on. He knelt, as well as he could, on the carriage mat, bending over the broken splash-board, and she saw that he held a heavy revolver in his bleeding right hand. The glove was torn to ribbons.

“The instant I fire, drop the reins,” he said, quietly, “and hold on to the cart for dear life. It’s our only chance. God help me; we can’t—are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said, with staring eyes.

He had spoken the last question abruptly. In the still evening the line of the embankment already stood out. They were whirling towards it.

Again he bent forward, and fired. The shot missed, and as the report thundered around her and the reins fell loose on her sides, the mare seemed to rise into the air with the fierceness of her flight.

Immediately a second flash followed the first; the horse leaped up with a strain that snapped the shafts like two twigs, then fell, struck behind the right ear, a dead weight in the middle of the road.

Ursula, in dropping the reins as commanded, had flung her full weight on the back-rest behind her. For a moment the dog-cart, crashing forward, tossed her wildly to and fro. She saw Otto ejected, arms foremost, clean away over the dead mare’s head.

Another moment and she was kneeling beside him. Horse and cart lay a confused mass of harness and broken wood.

She had nothing at hand to help him. She could do nothing. She looked round wildly, vainly. Not being a hysterical maiden, she did not make up her mind he must be dead. But she knew he was insensible, and the extent of his injuries she was quite unable to determine.

She looked down at his resolute face, bronzed beneath its heavy mustache, and realized, quite newly, how good he was, how strong; this silent man who had seen so much of the world; this simple man, whom her noble-hearted father so greatly praised. The thought of Gerard flashed across her, Gerard, the beau ideal of her girlhood, all glory and glitter, a Stage-Baldur with the footlights out. How she longed for Otto to open those calm, blue eyes. She prayed confusedly, with unmoved stare, looking back along the lonely road for help.

Then she got up and hurried away to the side of the embankment, shudderingly realizing how near it was. She could not help leaving him. She was much shaken, yet she felt quite strong.

There was a barge moored by the little quay; a woman stood on its deck, startled and staring. She called to the woman, who came running up the stone steps.

“Is there no man?” cried Ursula.

“No, the men were gone to the nearest public-house.”

The girl waved off the barge-woman’s inquiries. She did not want sympathy, but help.

“You must hurry to the Horst,” she said, impatiently. “You know it? The large house behind those trees. They will pay you. You must explain that an accident has occurred, not fatal. And bring back assistance at once.”

She returned hastily to Otto. His eyes were open, and they smiled to welcome her. A terrible anxiety suddenly died out of them.

“Are you not hurt?” he said, faintly. “I’m not. I shall get up presently.”

She could not answer except by a shake of the head. A lump had risen in her throat which she was resolved to keep down.

“How sorry Gerald will be!” continued Otto.

She nodded again, and for a few minutes they were both quite silent. Then the Jonker raised himself on one arm.

“I am only dizzy,” he said. “I shall be all right in no time, I assure you. I’m sorry I frightened you. Why, there are some people coming along, are there not?”

It was true; the men from the cottages could be seen running towards them. Otto hesitated, as he sank back, gazing up into Ursula’s bent face.

“Ursula,” he said at last, calling her by her name for the second time in the course of that evening, “we very nearly went to our death together—and you wouldn’t even go to Java!”

There was a ripple in his voice and in his eyes. She held out her hand, and he pressed it to his lips.

“You have saved my life,” she said.

Presently the foremost runner reached them, breathing heavily. Otto staggered to his feet, and, as the others came up, began giving orders about the wreck and the poor dead beast.