A SATISFACTORY SETTLEMENT

“Ursula,” began the DominÉ, with shaking voice. He went back to the door and pressed his hand against it to make sure that it was properly closed. “My dear child, I have Otto van Helmont with me in the study. I am utterly amazed; I don’t know what to say. You will be more astonished even than I am. The Jonker has come to ask my permission—God bless my soul, Ursula, he wants to have you for his wife!”

Ursula bent over her needle-work; she was sewing buttons on her father’s shirts.

The DominÉ sat down opposite her and gasped. “It takes my breath away,” he explained, apologetically. “He calls it love at first sight. I should think so. I should call it love at single sight, and so I told him.”

Ursula looked up quickly. “Oh no,” she said, “we have met quite a number of times.”

“Why, you hussy, do you want me to accept him?”

“Oh, I did not say that, papa. Please don’t say I said anything of the kind. I only meant—”

“I know what you meant. Why, you hussy, do you want me to refuse him?”

“You know best, papa,” said Ursula, demurely.

“Then, of course, I shall send him about his business. Imagine the thing. The future Baroness van Helmont, and my child Ursula!”

“I am not such a child,” replied Ursula, blushing and drawing herself up.

“Consider, my dear, the match would be an ill-assorted one. Personally, I cannot say I look upon it—no, I won’t say that, either. But, dear me, dear me; I am quite taken aback. Ursula, my dear, what is your attitude?”

“Oh, I haven’t got an attitude,” cried Ursula, strenuously threading her needle. “Oh, don’t say another word about it, please. Go away, dear Captain, do, and leave me in peace.”

“But, Ursula, this is childish. Otto—”

Suddenly, while he was speaking, the DominÉ’s brow cleared; he thought he understood the situation. It turned upon his selfishness and his daughter’s self-denial.

“Ursula,” he said, “you must forgive your poor old father. I am selfish, and of course there are difficulties. But I see that Otto van Helmont has somehow already succeeded in gaining your heart, so I suppose I must go back and tell him so. Or would you prefer to do it yourself?”

“Don’t, father,” cried Ursula. “Nobody has ever possessed my heart but you. I hate all men, as I said the other day. See how I liked and admired Gerard—for years, ever since I could think—and now! I could almost have cut off the fingers his touch had soiled! I don’t want to marry any one.”

“How beautiful,” thought the DominÉ, not without a twinge of self-condolence, “are the unconscious workings of a maiden’s heart. The dear child lays bare her love and doesn’t know she possessed it! It is my duty to prevent a most fatal mistake. Poor motherless one; I must take a mother’s place to-day!” Like many old-fashioned people, the DominÉ believed that when “a good woman” says she doesn’t love a man, this always means she does. So he abstained from useless questions.

“Ursula,” he said, heroically, “Otto van Helmont is not one of these men you dread. Dear child, I know him well. He is a good and upright gentleman. I should be glad to think, my dear”—the DominÉ flung himself headlong upon the altar—“glad to think that when I am gone my daughter will have such a strong defender. The world is evil, dear, and I am old. At any moment I may leave you unprotected.”

She laid down her needle-work, and sat looking out of the window.

“I don’t think I quite love him,” she said, slowly. “Not like you.” Something in her solemn face filled him with sudden misgiving, although the last three words were reassuring.

“But, my dear,” he suggested, gently, “you admire him very much—do you not? You think he is a splendid man?”

“Yes,” she answered, still with that far-away look, “I admire him very much. I think he is a splendid man. I—I like to see him, father, and to hear him talk.”

“Trust me, my dear child, you are very much in love with him,” said the DominÉ, sententiously, “as much as any maiden ought to be. Go in and tell him so.”

She was willing to believe him; still, she hesitated. Uppermost in her heart, all these days, was a passion of pure scorn. It cast over Otto’s honest figure the glory of an aureole.

“Father,” she began again, “do you—would you really be happy to know I had accepted him?”

“You could not easily find a better husband,” replied the DominÉ, evasively.

She knitted her brows, as was her wont in moments such as this.

“It would not make you sad, but happy,” she insisted.

“Sad—no, no,” cried the DominÉ, eagerly. “To think of it—sad!”

“But—Java?” she said, faintly.

“My dear, you will not go to Java,” exclaimed the DominÉ, very loud. “That you must tell him at once. You will stay in Holland. I may be very selfish, but I don’t care.”

He suddenly felt there were limits.

Ursula rose.

“Yes,” she said, softly, “I must go to him myself. It is a very terrible resolve.”

The DominÉ smiled, with a tear in his eye.

“‘It is ever from the greatest hazards,’” he quoted, “‘that the greatest honors are gained.’ Pericles said that. It is a good motto for this day.”

Ursula went straight to the study, where Otto was tramping up and down. His face brightened as he saw her enter.

“Are you bringing me the answer yourself?” he asked, coming forward with outstretched hands.

“You saved my life,” she replied, simply. “It is yours.”

“Josine,” said the DominÉ, “are you well enough to listen to me for a moment?” He spoke with unmistakable impatience, eying the limp bundle on the sofa.

“Roderigue, how can you be so unkind?” came the plaintive answer. “After the terrible escape our dear Ursula has had, my weak nerves are still naturally unstrung. I cannot bear to think of it. All night I seemed rushing through space with her and—him. What must he not have suffered?”

“Well, it’s over now,” replied the DominÉ, “and he’s thinking of other things. In fact, that’s what I came in about. He has just been asking me to consent to his engagement.”

“I knew it,” said Miss Mopius, and sank back on the sofa-cushion.

The DominÉ started. “What!” he cried. “Did he speak to you first?”

“Roderigue,” replied the lady, with spirit, “I am old enough—I mean I am not so young that his speaking to me could be considered improper.”

“No, indeed,” began the puzzled DominÉ.

“I gave him the answer of my heart, as I doubt not he told you. You will give us your blessing, my brother?”

The DominÉ rose to his feet.

“Hearing you talk,” he said, testily, “one might conclude it was you had made the match.”

At this monstrous accusation the poor creature burst into tears. “To think,” she sobbed, “that my poor Mary’s husband should say such a thing of me. Roderigue, I wonder that dear saint did not teach you what a woman’s feelings are!”

Of all means by which Josine unconsciously tormented the pastor there was none like her allusions to his departed wife. Moments could be produced in the widower’s calm day when that brave soldier might have felt it in him to strike a woman.

Only to slap her.

“Well, I can’t help it,” he said, still in the same irritated tone. He was disappointed in his future son-in-law. “Ursula and Otto must just settle it between them.”

“Ursula is a child,” replied the spinster. “She will be pleased to get so charming an uncle.”

“Hey?” said the pastor, stopping very short. Then it all dawned upon him as when a curtain is drawn away.

“Otto has asked Ursula to marry him, and she has consented,” he said, gruffly. For some forms of human weakness the man had not an atom of pity. Poor Miss Mopius received the blow straight in her face. She “never forgave” her brother afterwards for striking out. Striking a woman, after all.

She rose to the occasion, sitting up at once, tremulous but dignified.

“There is some mistake,” she said. “You have misunderstood or I have been duped. In one case the man is a fool; in the other he is a villain. No gentleman makes love to two women at a time. I will thank you to leave me alone for the present, Roderigue.”

“So be it, Josine,” answered the DominÉ, “but, remember, it was Will-be-Will made darkness in the town of Mansoul.” Then his heart smote him for too great severity. “My dear,” he said, in a kindly voice, “it is the old story with us all. Still Prince Emmanuel answers Mr. Loth-to-Stoop: ‘I will not grant your master, no, not the least corner to dwell in. I will have all to myself.’”

When the last uncertainty had faded from Miss Mopius’s soul, she merely said to Ursula, “He might be your father. I don’t think it’s nice for a young girl to marry an old man.”

Ursula did not reply “For an old woman to marry a young man is worse.” She only thought it. We can all be magnanimous in victory. But Ursula could even have been so, if required, in defeat. Her faults were never little ones.

To her confidential spinster friends Miss Mopius remarked, “She is very plain. I can’t imagine what he sees in her. So brown! But, then, of course, he is past the heyday of youth, and a little usÉ. Well, some women like to get their lovers second-hand.”

“I shouldn’t,” remarked one mittened crony.

“No, indeed,” replied Miss Mopius.