AFRAID

“Ursula, you look ghastly,” said Tante Louisa at breakfast next morning, “and the whole house is full of your gaddings about.”

“Ursula,” said the Dowager, spilling her egg, “have I told you that Gerard is coming back?”

“Yes, she knows,” interposed the Freule, hastily. “I can assure you, Ursula, that the servants disapprove.”

“The servants!” echoed Ursula, with such immeasurable scorn of the speaker that the latter could not but feel somewhat ashamed.

“No one can afford to brave his servants’ opinion,” the Freule rejoined, with asperity. “No, not the bravest. Even CÆsar said he was glad to feel sure that all the servants thought well of Copernica. You will find out your mistake too late, if once the servants are against you.”

“Everybody is against me,” replied Ursula, bitterly.

“Now, Ursula, how unjust that is! I am sure, not to speak of myself, your dear mother here has always shown you the greatest consideration.”

“Oh, certainly, and my father, too!” exclaimed Ursula. “I was not thinking of them. And the villagers. And the people at the Hemel. They all love me, too.”

“It is for the Helmonts’ sake, then,” mumbled the Dowager. “They all love the Helmonts.”

“They don’t love you, and you know it,” said Freule van Borck, incisively. “As for me, of course I admire those who dare to confront popular hate. ‘Drive over the dogs!’ That would be my theory. I envy the woman who had the opportunity of saying it. All I advise is—take care.”

“I do,” replied Ursula, “of them all, as much as my limited means allow. And this is the way they repay me.”

“Ursula, my dear, your charities are all wrong. To give with as much discrimination as you do, you ought to be able to give much more. Only the very rich can afford to give judiciously.”

“Aunt Louisa, I believe that is very true,” replied Ursula, gravely.

“Of course it is. There are lessons, child, which only a gradual tradition ultimately develops. I am a Radical, of course. That is to say, I am an Imperialist. I believe in the Napoleons of history. But, genius apart, it takes half a dozen fathers and sons before you produce enough collective wisdom to float a family. And I have always declared you were a remarkable woman, Ursula; but I should hardly say of you, as your father-in-law once said of some celebrated artist: ‘Heredity? Nonsense! Why, Genius is a whole genealogy.’”

“Did Theodore say that?” cried the Dowager. “Now, I did not remember. But he was always scattering witty things, in bushels, like pearls before swine.”

“Thank you,” said Louisa, who had not learned in the least to bear with her sister’s infirmity.

“I don’t mean—Louisa, you must write that down for me. There is nothing that distresses me more than the thought how incomplete my work will be at the best.”

“Mynheer van Helmont is asking to see the young Mevrouw,” interposed a servant. Ursula rose hastily.

“Take my warning to heart,” Aunt Louisa called after her—“about the servants.”

“I am not afraid of servants,” replied Ursula, disappearing through the door.

“Again!” said the Baroness. “He comes here constantly, and at all hours. It is not yet half-past nine. Louisa, when he marries Ursula, we can go and live on the farm. Ce sera le comble.”

“I tell you,” replied Louisa, coolly, “that Gerard is going to marry Ursula, and then all will come right.”

“And I tell you,” echoed the Dowager, with an old woman’s insistence, “that Gerard is going to marry Helena, sooner or later. I have always known it.”

“Helena? Helena? Why, she’s married already. Really, CÉcile, I believe you are going crazy?”

“I know, I know,” replied the Dowager, in great confusion. “But her husband might die. Otto died.”

“Pooh!” said Tante Louisa, departing.

The Dowager also beat a hurried retreat. She sat down in her boudoir, and gathered poor grumpy rheumatic old Plush on to her lap.

“They’ll find me out,” she reflected. “If only I could hold on till Gerard comes.” And her chin shook.

“You are come so early,” said Ursula to Theodore, “that I suppose your news is especially disagreeable.”

“If so, it meets with a fitting welcome,” replied her visitor. “But you have guessed right. Ursula, you remember my telling you that the Hemel cottages by the Mill, the worst on the property, must come down, and you said they couldn’t?”

“You said they couldn’t,” interrupted Ursula. “Who was to pay for rebuilding them?”

“Well, whoever said it said wrong. They could. They have come down of themselves.”

“What?”

“One of the middle walls has given way during the night, and the three cottages are a wreck.”

“Oh, is any one hurt?” Ursula clinched her hands.

“Only you,” answered Helmont, with a sneer—not at her. “All the whole filthy rabble are encamped outside among their household goods swearing at you.”

Ursula sat silent for a moment. “They never paid any rent,” she said at last.

“No, of course not.”

“That is something to be grateful for. Theodore, I cannot help it. You know I cannot help it. Nor could Otto. How could we make good, in our poverty, the result of half a century’s profusion and neglect?”

“I did not say you could help it. And now we shall have the inspector, and the hovels will have to be put up again somehow. But how?”

“How?” repeated Ursula, vaguely. “Never mind. Wait a little. We shall see.”

“Wait!” exclaimed Theodore. “Twenty-four hours! Have you no more diamonds?”

“No. Theodore, I am beginning to feel that I can fight no longer. I owe it to you that you should receive the first warning. I am going to give up.”

He turned on her hotly. “What, frightened already?” he cried.

“Frightened?” she repeated, growing pale. “Why frightened?” A sudden light seemed to strike her. “Oh, you mean because of what they say against me in the village. What do they say against me in the village, Theodore?”

“If you know, I needn’t tell you,” replied Theodore, pale also under his ruddy glow, unconsciously wondering how much had reached her.

“They say that I used dishonorable means to secure my husband. There is not a word of truth in it, Theodore.”

“I know that,” he answered, much relieved. “If I didn’t know that, I should long ago—” He checked himself, as much from pride as from any gentler feeling.

“Have given it up,” she quietly concluded his sentence. “You are right. I have been making up my mind. I, too, give over.”

“Mynheer Noks is asking to see Mevrouw,” said the man-servant, once more disturbing her, in the same careless, impersonal voice.

Theodore started at the name. “Do nothing in a hurry,” he pleaded—“nothing to-day. As a personal favor to myself. I have a right to ask that. The villagers will say you are afraid.”

“I promise,” she answered, “for to-day. I have no right to refuse you. But I am not afraid of villagers.”

A moment later she stood opposite the notary.

“I have brought the deed of deposit, Mevrouw,” said that functionary. “And my witnesses are waiting in the hall. Have you the document ready?”

“No,” replied Ursula. “My good Notary, I owe you most ample apology, but I cannot help myself. I have been compelled to abandon the idea of making a will.”

The notary stared at her for a moment, too angry to speak. He was a rough man by nature, as she had seen, but not devoid of intelligence. At last he burst out, “Then go and—see ‘Rigoletto,’ Mevrouw, next time you visit at Drum.”

Ursula had never been to the opera in her life, Mynheer Mopius’s one attempt to take her having failed.

“I do not understand,” she said, “but I see you are angry. It is very natural. All I can say is, that I ask your forgiveness. I did not know, when I came to your house last night, that I could not leave my money away from my father.”

“But you knew when you left,” said the lawyer, surlily.

“True, but I had not had time to reflect. I see now that I must leave things as they are.”

“I, too, have had time to reflect, and I have come exactly to the opposite conclusion. You will probably survive the DominÉ; you say that you do not intend to marry again; then the best thing you can do is to draw up a will as you intended.”

Ursula looked down at the carpet pattern.

“I am an old friend of the Helmont family,” continued Mynheer Noks. “I do not deny, Mevrouw, that I was sorry to see this manor pass out of their hands. I should be still more sorry, and so would every one, to find the Mopius family ruling here.” He hesitated; then, with an effort, “Mevrouw,” he said, “you are, perhaps, the best judge of your own conduct; but, after your visit last night, you will pardon my calling it strange. I don’t know whether you came of your own free choice. I don’t know what tragedy is being played here. I don’t want to know. But something is happening: I can see that.” Almost involuntarily he pointed to Ursula’s wounded forehead. “All I say is, be careful. You acquired all this property by the merest accident. If any one could have proved that Mynheer Otto lived half an hour longer—there would be no question of any will of yours.”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Ursula. “Do you dare to accuse me—”

“I accuse nobody. I only say be careful. There are strange stories floating in the air, and your strange conduct can only augment them. It only wants an unscrupulous lawyer—”

“I am not afraid of lawyers,” said Ursula, standing calm and queenly. “I have humbly begged your forgiveness, Mynheer Noks; I can do no more. This interview is at an end.”

She swept to the window, looking out on the lawn, the near cottages, the far-spreading trees.

“I am afraid of myself,” she whispered.

Half an hour later the post brought her a letter from Uncle Mopius.

It was a complaining letter, full of the writer’s continual ill-health and all his sufferings and disappointments; but it had an unexpected wind-up.

“This year, once in a way,” wrote JacÓbus, “I am going to make you a birthday present, that you may be able to keep up the honor of the family in the face of those beggarly Helmonts, who, I hear, are abusing you everywhere. I hope you will use it for display. Show the naked braggarts that a wealthy burgher is a better man than they.”

The envelope contained a check for two thousand florins.

Ursula stood holding it contemplatively on the palm of her outstretched hand.

“He is wrong about the date,” she said to herself. “My birthday is next month—not that any one except father cares. But I will keep the money; it will do to rebuild the cottages.”

She wondered if Harriet knew of the gift; she fancied not. In reality it was entirely due to Harriet’s influence.

Ursula stood by the writing-table on which lay her dead aunt’s faded bit of bead-work: “No Cross, no Crown.” She recalled her father’s inversion of the words.

“Uncle Mopius has mistaken the date,” she said, aloud; “and to-day, of all days in the year, he sends this money. I accept the omen. I will not confess at this moment; I will not give up. No one shall say that my motive was either fear or despair. I will fight them all.”