FORFEITS ALL ROUND

For the next three months Otto worked in a sugar-distillery at Boxlo, a little town among the wilds of Brabant. It was rough work, indeed, as the DominÉ had foretold. Night after night the Jonker stood, stripped to the waist, before the blazing furnaces; in the small hours he came home to his lodgings and strove to snatch from the daylight such sleep as he could. Fortunately he was very robust, but that, although an alleviation, can hardly be considered an excuse. Sometimes even he wondered whether such slaving, amid grime and oil-stench and sick throbs, was his natural fate, but his father had truly described him as animated by a passion of self-torture. Out-of-the-way horrors were probably one’s duty. Besides, what other career was open to him at the moment? Once in India, with his friend’s assistance, he would stand an excellent chance of making a fortune by sugar, as that friend had done before him, in half a dozen years.

So he worked, night after night, month after month, with set lips and still eyes. Occasionally he spent a Sunday at the Manor-house, as if a traveller traversing mountain solitudes had halted from time to time at a Parisian cafÉ. His father and mother accepted him without comment, adverse or otherwise; in the smooth design of their lives he was an arabesque run mad. During his stay the Baroness chiefly regretted Gerard.

The only person who stuck to him through it all, stanch and true, was Roderick Rovers. Once having accepted the duty of sacrifice, the DominÉ delighted in its pain. He rejoiced in proving to himself how, like the old soldier he was, he could probe his own wound without wincing.

“It is a great thing in Otto to go,” he said. “It is a great thing in me to let him take Ursula. Great souls do great things gladly.” Then he laughed at himself: “Pshaw,” he said, “‘Men always imagine the struggle of the moment, while they are engaged in it, to be the greatest that ever was.’ You will find that in Thucydides, Ursula. Thucydides was a very wise man.”

Ursula acquiesced a little impatiently. She did not want to go to Java. She thought Otto should have made known his intentions in time. Placed between the two, she immediately discarded her brand-new lover for the father on whose affection her whole life had been built up. In the sudden certainty of separation from the DominÉ, she discovered, with alarming unexpectedness, that she could very well have continued to exist without Otto. For several days their engagement dangled on a thread.

Her irritated hesitancy filled her lover with dismay, for it strengthened all his doubts of Gerard. An honest maiden’s accepted lover does not ask her if she loves another man. Indignantly Otto wiped the momentary film from the pure reflection he bore in his heart. But there are actions we barely commit, yet remember a lifetime.

It was the DominÉ, after all, who married Ursula to Otto, with deep commiseration for himself. His dear child’s filial loyalty, while it wakened all his pride, showed him his own path the more clearly. “A woman shall leave father and mother and shall cleave unto her husband,” he said. “Never shall I allow you to desert Otto for my sake. You do not know your own heart, child. Your magnanimity leads you astray.” Ultimately Ursula almost believed this. But she conditioned for a two years’ absence only.

“I, had such been my lofty mission, would have proved myself faithful unto death,” said Miss Mopius, to whom came outer echoes of the struggle. “A great love, like blazing sunlight, hides the whole world in its own bright mist. Van Helmont has dropped a diamond to play with a pebble. So like a man.” Miss Mopius, since her disappointment, had grown very romantic in her talk. According to the advertisements it was the Sympathetico Lob; according to her own account it was her mighty sorrow. “Ah, my dear, do not let us speak of it. Every woman’s heart is a sanctuary with a crypt.”

She snorted at Ursula’s heavy eyes. “Every man gets the wife he deserves,” she said. “With women that is not the case, their choice being limited.” Ursula was incapable of small, spiteful retorts; she made up her mind that she would prove to Aunt Josine and the world how worthily Otto had chosen.

So she set to work on her trousseau, and was very affectionate to her father. There was something exceedingly painful in this latter-day softness between two hitherto undemonstrative characters. When Ursula laid down a neglected needle to look across at the DominÉ, the old man would jump up with swift repression, and angrily bid her go on. The days shortened: perhaps that made them seem to pass so swiftly, and the appointed wedding-morn drew near.

Meanwhile another wedding was also announced as imminent, and various members of the Helmont family gnashed their teeth over the prospect. The whole of Drum, however, jabbered fairly good-natured approval, which is surely saying a good deal, and more than most young couples can hope for.

“Yes, Gerard, it is quite true,” said Helena van Trossart, stopping, in a crowded ballroom, a white vision among the glitter and hum. “You could have assured yourself it was true without insulting me by the question.” Her clear eyes flashed. “I am going to marry Willie van Troyen.”

Gerard was very hot—the room was hot. “No,” he said, thickly, “I should never have believed it, unless I had heard it from your own lips.” He drew a little aside, almost secure, yet not quite, among the restless throng.

“I cannot make you out at all,” he went on, in great agitation; “I—I don’t want to say anything, but—” He checked himself; his eyebrows twitched; his whole face grew troubled with suppressed meaning.

She understood him perfectly. For a few moments—perhaps half a minute—she remained quite silent, with eyes downcast, her bosom heaving, her graceful figure a-tremble, like her lips. At last, amid the rhythmic flow of gayety around, she lifted her solemn gaze to his, and spoke with slow distinctness. “I know what you would taunt me with,” she said. “You think me inconsistent. But in his case it doesn’t matter. I do not love him.”

And then the room swam round in a whirl, and she was gone.

After that they were more than ever unwilling to meet. Yet, in a little circle like theirs the thing was unavoidable, and Gerard had constantly to face what was almost more painful—the tacit misery of the fat Baroness, Helena’s comfortable aunt, who understood, with a woman’s insight in all such matters, that everything ought, somehow, to have been different to what it was.

The Baroness van Trossart complained to her husband, but the Baron said that the Van Troyens were as good a family as the Van Helmonts, and he didn’t see that it mattered.

“Personally,” he added, “I am unable to perceive much difference between the two young men. They are both fair-complexioned and gentlemanly, and ill-mannered, like their companions. I wonder that Nellie should have thought the exchange worth her while.”

The lady would have protested.

“My dear, I cannot help it. Had I been consulted I should have requested Helena to marry your three nephews Van Asveld. Their mother is pestering me to find the whole three of them places with a start of two hundred a year. The thing is impossible!” He coughed testily, and before his important eyes he held a blue-book upside down.

Equally bootless was the Baroness’s attempt to seek refuge in the sympathy of Mademoiselle Papotier. That impenetrable Frenchwoman only replied,

“Mon Dieu, Madame, le mariage n’est pas l’amour!” taking the name of three holy things in vain within one short sentence, after the manner of her race.

But one evening towards dusk, as Gerard was dressing for dinner, he heard some one enter his little front sitting-room, to whom he called out, into the heavy twilight,

“All right, old chap! Wait a minute till I get my shirt on. There’s some sherry and bitters on the sideboard.”

Presently he went forward with his fingers at his collar-stud. In the shadow stood a shawl-enfolded figure whom he thought he recognized.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said; “I told the landlady to send you up. If you don’t do the things better I must get some other woman. I believe you purposely wear holes in my underclothing.”

“Indeed, Monsieur,” came the reply in French, “I am most anxious to wash your dirty linen, but, Monsieur Gerard, you give your family almost too much of it.”

“By Jove!” replied Gerard. “I say, Mademoiselle, wait a minute till I—” He disappeared.

Mademoiselle Papotier smiled a supercilious smile. “Ah, que les hommes sont plaisants,” she murmured. “Mauvais plaisants!” she added. But when Gerard returned a few moments later she was boldly agreeable to him, with a smirk round her slightly mustachioed lips.

“To what am I indebted?” began the young officer.

She waved a little deprecatory hand in the neatest of gray gloves.

“A moment!” she said. “Can you not spare me a moment? I am fatigued. May I not repose myself?”

Gerard, ashamed and awkward, hurriedly pushed forward an arm-chair.

“Ah, but sit you down also,” she expostulated. “Only the disagreeable says itself standing.” Then, as he obeyed, she looked at him with an ogle. “What a handsome man you are!” she said. The words frightened Gerard excessively but unnecessarily; it was only part of Mademoiselle Papotier’s philosophy that you could put every man on earth into a good-humor by broadly praising his looks. If Red Riding-hood had said to the wolf “What fine teeth you have!” instead of “What big ones!” he would probably have abandoned his intention of eating her.

“No wonder the poor thing loved you,” immediately added the little governess, casting down her eyes. She was hung round with black jet indiscriminately, and she picked at it—now here, now there.

Gerard, as we know, was not a diplomatist. “Did she ask you to come and tell me that?” he cried, with irritable irony.

“Ah, Monsieur van Helmont,” replied the Frenchwoman, softly, and her swarthy face seemed to lose its vigor, “it is always like that; you men, you knock at a woman’s heart until it opens, and then you cry out in scorn at the open door!” She hesitated for a moment, still plucking at the jet. “First the beautiful Ursula,” she said, “and then my own sweet Helena. Aye, Monsieur, it is not right!”

“Ursula?” cried Gerard, in amazement.

“Yes, do you think no one knows? Oh, that is like you men again. You can always trust the woman you have wronged to keep your secret. You are safe. Not a word has the noble Helena spoken; but trust Papotier to see for herself.”

“It is not true,” said Gerard, with real fervor. “I have never wronged a hair of Ursula’s head.”

Mademoiselle Papotier blushed, actually blushed. “The word ‘wrongs,’” she said, “is not easily defined; it has a masculine and a feminine gender. Ah, there you behold the former governess! One thing, however, I can tell you, Monsieur van Helmont, it is Mademoiselle Ursula and her wrongs that have lost you your bride. I repeat, Helena has told me nothing; but Mademoiselle Rovers, and she alone, has broken off your engagement.” Then she went on to tell her astounded listener about the interview on the garden seat which she had watched from her staircase window.

“And after that,” she concluded, “there was an end of it. My Helena would not have the parson’s daughter’s leavings. And quite right.” She shut up her mouth with a snap.

But she opened it again immediately.

“Nevertheless,” she went on, “I consider she exaggerates. Especially because she cared for you, and your previous belle evidently did not. It is for that I am come. The step is absurd, perhaps, but what is that to me? I am come to say the marriage with this little rabbit-eye is a farce. It must be prevented. Go tell my Helena that there is nothing between you and the fiancÉe of your brother. Women are vain; who knows but what this Ursula has lied? You appear sincere. And I say one thing more, though I should not. Mark me. Helena will marry you if she can. She is proud, poor little thing, as she has a right to be, but—Ah, these men, these men! Then you will bid the little comrade go away home. I do not love you, Monsieur Gerard. I do not say these things for love of you. But they are true.”

She had spoken with suppressed vehemence, she now smiled a thin smile, and her lips trembled.

“I do not know what to say or think,” replied Gerard, greatly agitated. “Towards Ursula, at least, I am innocent. What interest can she have had in ruining my chance with Helena? Mademoiselle, you—you must really excuse me. I am going out to dinner. I shall be late as it is!” He started gladly to his feet.

She also rose, with a great rustle of scorn.

“Good-night, Monsieur,” she said. “A benevolent fairy—remember there are old fairies—has shown you the hole in the hedge; will you have the sense to creep through unscratched? Ah, be sure that I should rather have barred your path with my body, but that love cannot bear to see the whole life of the beauty benumbed in the wrong prince’s arms. Princes, forsooth!” She dropped him a courtesy and hurried away.

He had not even time to sit down and think it out. His excuse had been as imperative as it was inane. He flew off to his dinner-party and laughed and flirted, wondering all the time whether Ursula could possibly have had “a weakness” for him. That seemed to be the only possible explanation. Evidently it was Mademoiselle Papotier’s. Romance, exaggeration, these were probable; but he could hardly believe in intentional spite or untruth.

And yet—he was very much out of temper with Ursula for her capture of “that fool, Otto.” His rage against his brother, softened by time and a capital new horse, melted still more at the thought that he had wronged Otto regarding Helena. Ursula, then, was at the bottom of the mischief. Ursula, the designing intruder; the nobody who, one day, would rule at the Horst. She had always been a subject to him of kindly indifference. He was angry with himself for the violence of his new passion against her.

On returning home he found a note awaiting him. It contained only these two quotations, evidently from Papotier’s favorite seventeenth-century romances:

“Exactly,” said Gerard, sighing heavily. He was very miserable. And then he went to sleep.

Meanwhile Otto plodded on, unconscious of the sins laid to his charge and to Ursula’s. The story which Adeline had forced upon him in the public gardens at Drum he had folded away on a shelf in his memory. What else could he do? He was not the man to influence Gerard. We know it was not through him that the tale reached Ursula—or Helena.

His occupations called him away from Boxlo to Bois-le-Duc, the capital of Brabant. There he came into frequent contact with a cousin, of whom he had previously known very little—nothing personally—and regarding whom his parents would hardly have cared to enlighten any one. This was a young Van Helmont, who lived with a widowed mother, and supported himself as a post-office clerk. The Helmonts of the Horst did not object to his poverty, but to his mother. To Otto’s enthusiastic eulogies the Baroness listened bored. She was too polite to ask him to change the subject; besides, perhaps she felt that such a measure would have proved quite useless, for, whatever Otto might select to say, he bored her by his way of saying it. She could only love this son, not live with him. She rejoiced with exceeding joy when Gerard, whose character was incapable of vindictiveness, consented once more to sit opposite to Otto at table. Still, the brothers held aloof.

And the wedding-day drew near, overshadowingly near. One person delighted in that thought. Otto.