THE FINGER OF SCORN

It was quite true that the days at the Horst were drab-colored. They seemed to be that even all through the long and brilliant summer, and their darkening could hardly be called perceptible when the northern sun sank from sight for seven slow months. Time appeared to lower over the house with the dumb threat of an approaching thunder-storm. And some people are fretful before a thunder-storm; and some hold their breaths.

The Bois-le-Duc Helmonts were settled at the Home Farm. The tranquil mother had said: Oh yes; she still knew how to milk cows; it would really be rather amusing! And she had spread her fat hands on her ample lap and smiled her good-natured smile. But Theodore had frowned. “Leave the cow-milking,” he had said, bitterly, “to the Baroness Ursula.” As soon as he got away from Ursula he felt that he hated her.

His temper did not improve during the first year of his new occupation. Work as he would—night and day—he could not make up for initial mistakes, nor could he victoriously combat increasing agricultural depression. The dispossessed farm-steward successfully harassed him on every hand. If Otto, the lord of the manor, had made himself unpopular by putting down abuses, what must be the fate of this stranger, with his perky, boyish face? The whole neighborhood, for miles round, was full of people with grievances, some deep down, of Otto’s inflicting, others freshly bleeding under Ursula’s hand. And a low tide of resentment was secretly swelling under smooth water against My Lady Nobody.

Ugly stories began to be told about her, diligently propagated by Meerman, the discarded agent. As if all her administrative sins were not sufficient, accusations had lately cropped up which appealed far more vividly to the popular imagination. Substantial housewives whispered behind her back “Fie! fie!” and young fellows winked to each other, grinning. No one knew whence these stories had suddenly sprung, but everybody had heard them. A patient inquirer might, perhaps, have traced their origin to Klomp’s cottage in the wood.

When they first reached the ear of the village constable that worthy portentously shook his head. It was in the tavern parlor of Horstwyk, where the lesser notables sat nightly, pipe in hand, waiting for each other to speak. The village constable was a great man, chiefly because he managed to keep clear of animosities, and his opinion carried weight. Every man present, leering up at him in the peculiar, deliberate peasant way, felt that he knew more than he deemed it wise to acknowledge, and they all approved his prudence. But nothing could more resistlessly have condemned the Lady of the Manor. The Law—mysterious Weigher of all men in secret balances—knew.

“There’s something written up against her,” they reflected, awe-struck. Juffers, the constable, merely said:

“The Lady Baroness is a very charitable lady. I wish you all good-night.”

He shook his head to himself all the way home, and in passing a particular spot, by a great elm-tree, on the road near the Manor-house, he flashed his dark-lantern across the ground, as if struck by a sudden doubt.

Just then—some two years after Otto’s death—there were plenty of rumors afloat to interest the village cronies. Quite recently lazy, good-for-nothing Pietje Klomp had come to grief, “as everybody had always expected she would,” in the usual “good-for-nothing” manner. Strangely enough, her equally lazy and worthless father had driven her forth from under his roof with unexpected energy—an abundance of oaths and blows—when, confident in his oft-proven affection, she ventured to confess her now hopeless disgrace. After half a night of hail and snow in the wood she had crept back to obtain admittance from the pitiful Mietje, but next morning her inflexible parent had once more turned her adrift. She had watched for an opportunity while he dozed, and then quietly slipped to her accustomed seat. During several days this singular duel had lasted, and ultimately, of course, the woman’s persistence had triumphed. Klomp only ejected the girl when he had to get up, anyhow. As long, therefore, as he remained on his bench by the stove she was safe. And Mietje, tearfully exerting herself, took care to anticipate all her father’s few wishes—for coffee, fuel, last week’s newspaper, et cetera—and to keep him “immobilized” during a great part of the day. He was not unwilling, provided he could scowl at Pietje in the pauses of his almost continuous snore.

Ursula, of course, heard from Freule Louisa what Freule Louisa had heard from her maid. So Ursula called to see the criminal. She had compromised with the ladies of her household, and only went to visit such patients as the doctor had certified free from any risk of infection. The village, knowing this, wrote her down a coward.

“May I come in?” asked Ursula at Klomp’s door.

No answer; for the door was locked, Klomp would not stir to open it, and Pietje dared not pass near her father. She cowered in her corner, stiller than any scratchy mouse.

Ursula rattled the lock in vain. Then she peeped through the window, darkening its dirt, and saw Pietje’s woful eyes staring out of the gloom from the floor. With the resolute movement she herself delighted in, she thrust up the low window from outside and stepped over the sill.

“Would you shut it, please, m’m, now you’re in?” said Klomp’s sleepy voice.

Ursula sat down in the middle of the room, facing Pietje’s dark corner.

“I’ve come to see you,” she said, very severely.

She could not help herself. She knew that it was every right-minded woman’s duty under these circumstances to be very, very severe.

Pietje moved a little uneasily, but did not rise. So, without delay, Ursula began her lecture. It was very conscientious and rather long, and all quite true and exceedingly severe. After the opening sentences Pietje’s head bent low, and about mid-way she began to cry. She had not cried much during the scenes with her father, and tears now seemed to come to her as a pleasurable relief. Entering into the spirit of the thing, she cried so very loud that Ursula’s lecture had to come to an abrupt conclusion, tailless, like a Manx cat. In how far Pietje calculated on this result none but she may presume to decide.

“So, of course, you must go to a reformatory,” said Ursula, firmly. “I am willing to help you on condition that you take my advice.”

“Don’t want to go to no performatory,” sobbed Pietje, with vague perplexities concerning circuses and ballet girls. “Father’ll keep me if I says I’m sorry.”

A grunt from the other end of the room.

“Pietje, you have behaved very badly,” continued Ursula. “It seems to me that you hardly understand the wickedness of your act. You only regret its unpleasant results. No, Pietje, you are”—she felt it her positive, painful duty to speak plainly—“a very wicked, guilty, evil-hearted girl.”

“Dear me, Mevrouw,” growled a voice half-choked against a sleeve, “can’t you leave the poor creature in peace?”

“No, Klomp,” replied Ursula, “’tis my duty to help you both. I understand and appreciate your righteous anger, but, fortunately, I can provide Pietje with a home. It is only natural you should not wish her to remain near Mietje.”

At this very moment Mietje came down-stairs.

“Father, here’s your li—yes, sister’s going to stay with me,” she said.

“Get you up-stairs again,” shouted Klomp, with a big oath, “and don’t come down till I call you.” He sat up, his listless face full of fire. “Now, Mevrouw,” he said, “you just kindly go back to the Manor-house, please. That’s where you belong—now—and thank your stars for it. And leave poor people like us to settle our troubles between us. Pietje’s a poor, ignorant girl, and she ’ain’t got the wit to go hunting for a husband—least of all in the papers. She just took the first villain that came fooling her way.”

“But, Klomp, I had understood—” began Ursula, rising with dignity.

“No, you hadn’t, m’m; there’s just the mistake. You hadn’t understood nothing, begging your pardon. Nor, in fact, you needn’t. There isn’t anything to understand.”

He actually got up, and, shuffling across to the door, he opened it. There could be no mistaking his exceptional earnestness now.

“Well,” said Ursula, gently, preparing to depart, “when you want me, when Pietje wants me, send up to the Manor-house, and I will do whatever I can.”

He bolted the door behind her.

“Father—” began Pietje, timidly.

“Hold your tongue,” he broke in. “I don’t want to know you’re there.” And he threw himself down violently on his bench.

Ursula had nearly reached home before the meaning of Klomp’s attack recoiled upon her brain. “Looking for a husband in the papers.” Suddenly she understood. It was the old story of the trysting-place cropping up again. Not for nothing had Adeline stayed with the Klomps! Her brow mantled, and with quite unusual hauteur she acknowledged the salute of two passing laborers.

The men looked at each other.

“Stuck up, ain’t she?”

“Yes”—with immediate oblivion of all former graciousness—“so she allus was.”

The old Baroness received her daughter-in-law in a tremble of pink-spotted excitement. There were letters from Acheen—exceedingly important letters! Ursula must sit down at once and listen. Gerard had been in action. Gerard had done something wonderfully brave. He had been just a little bit wounded in doing it—oh, nothing, the merest scratch; but it happened to be the right hand, so a comrade wrote for him. He was going to be rewarded in some magnificent manner—made a colonel?—and the deed had been so very brave he would probably soon be sent home again. That was the Dowager’s reward.

“Sent home?” repeated Ursula, motionless in her chair. “Mamma, did you say he was wounded?”

“Oh, the merest scratch,” replied the Dowager, testily. “He says so himself. Ursula, you always try to make people nervous. Gerard never lied to me. And, you see, he is coming back. If he were really hurt he would never undertake so long a journey. I remember my poor dear husband”—she always avoided, if possible, saying “papa” to Ursula—“once cut his hand with a bread-knife so badly that he couldn’t use it for nearly a month.”

“Oh yes,” admitted Ursula, hastily. “Yes—yes, I dare say it is nothing. I am glad, mamma, I am glad. I am proud of him.”

“You!” replied the old Baroness, quite rudely, in a tone altogether strange. “What is he to you? When he comes back, Ursula, he will take away the Horst.”

“I dare him to do it!” said Ursula, fiercely. She drew herself up, looking down on the poor little heap of ruffles by the writing-table. Some moments elapsed before she spoke again. “I found the letter you were looking for, mamma,” she said, and her voice had grown quite gentle; “it is one from the late Prince Henry to papa.”

“Thank you, Ursula. I am afraid I was rude to you just now. I have no wish to be rude to you, nor to any one. It is not in my nature to be rude. But this news from Acheen has excited me. I am not as young as I was”—she peered across, with a quick glance of anxiety, at her daughter-in-law—“yet I am thankful to reflect that Gerard, when he comes, will find me but very little changed.”

The Freule Louisa came in. “Have you heard?” she asked. “Now, that’s the kind of thing I like, and I never expected it of Gerard. I always thought Gerard was a bit of a coward, a curled darling of the drawing-room, like Plush. Didn’t you, Ursula?”

“No, indeed,” replied Ursula.

Freule Louisa giggled suddenly. “Well, I dare say you knew better,” she said. “Only I hope he won’t come back too soon.”

“Why? What?” exclaimed the Dowager. Ursula had left the room.

“Because Tryphena has just sent him out a large box of Javanese tracts to get distributed among the enemy. We feel that the Achinese should not be killed, but Christianized. Ursula’s father behaved very badly about the tracts. He said that the only way to get them ‘sent on’ would be for the soldiers to wrap their bullets in them. Scandalous, for a Christian minister, and so I told Josine.”

“Louisa—”

“And he says, besides, that the Achinese don’t know the language.”

“Louisa—”

“As if they couldn’t learn. I dare say there isn’t much difference.”

“Louisa, when Gerard comes he will send Ursula back to her father.”

“I doubt it. You know, I have always said—”

“Don’t say it again; it sounds like—like blasphemy.”

The Dowager seemed for the moment to recover all her intellectual force.

“He will take back the Horst—do you hear? They dare not refuse it him after what he has done. And he will marry money. Then nothing will be left me to do after I have seen him except to finish my Memoir before I depart in peace. I should like to tell Theodore that the Memoir was finished.”

“If he is going to prove so strong a man,” replied Aunt Louisa, “I think I shall leave him what little money I possess. But what is that? A mere drop in the ocean. I am a poor woman, CÉcile, as you know.”