FACE TO FACE WITH HERSELF

She stood on the terrace, amid the gloom of the placid, moonless night. The great house gleamed dully white behind her, and the wealth of foliage that embowered it stretched in black masses beyond.

“It is the end,” she said, clutching at the flimsy folds about her throat. “What a pitiful little end it is!”

Fronting the facts calmly, as was her manner, she knew everything she had striven for to be now fully in her power. At last every enemy was silenced, every danger averted; with the money just inherited she could begin her great work of regenerative charity; in fulfilling her dead husband’s ideals she could accomplish her own.

Had she desired greatness for herself, now was the moment to grasp it firmly as it lay in her hand. “No, I have not desired it for myself,” she said aloud.

She had done her evil deed for Otto’s sake, for the sake of all these Helmonts. She had done it with the desperate self-persuasion that the wrong she was committing was better than all right. She had taught herself fiercely to believe it so, strengthened again and again in the teeth of growing conviction, by Gerard’s recklessness, by Otto’s dying entreaty, by her own invigorating failures, dangers, sudden deliverances. She had struggled to believe that God Himself was helping her in this self-appointed mission—the saving of Horstwyk and all its dependencies under her righteous rule.

She knew now that the truth was otherwise. She had known it long, with a gathering clearness that broke in sunlight through the fogs of her own calling up; but now, in the sudden hush of the contest, the falling away of all adverse winds to dead calm, she saw God’s reality of right as she had not beheld it before. Right is right. Little wrongs do not bring forth great blessings. Her father, in his simplicity, spoke true.

She herself—what had she called up in the hearts of these people around her, by the sense of the great wrong done to Gerard, but a foolish, fruitless hate, to be bought off now by the vilest of all persuaders—gold? She loathed—suddenly—this filthy popularity she had thought pleasant for the moment. Better, a thousand times better, the frank rebellion against her stern and sterile righteousness, better than this. And for her own heart—she knew that her sin had brought her own heart no profit. Far from it. With loathing she remembered Hephzibah and Adeline and Skiff, and all the possibilities of shame. Oh, her father was right, a thousand times. The outcome of evil is evil, the outcome of sin is sin.

She had been resolved ever since the day of Gerard’s return to Horstwyk, though she was not aware of her own resolve, to give up the Manor to its rightful lord. Resolved to do it, come what may, leaving the further development of events to Him whose the end will most certainly be if only the beginning be His.

She would have done it at all costs, but now God, in His mercy, made the duty yet plainer. The moment was come to which she had ever looked forward, when the Manor would be safe in Gerard’s hands. He was about to unite himself in marriage to some wealthy woman. He would be able, as Helena had unwittingly pointed out, to fulfil the duties of his position.

So far, so good. She could reason calmly; she could even face the shame of her confession. She could see herself pointed at, hooted by all. She would be punished, she supposed, when the crime got abroad. Even if the Van Helmonts were merciful—as why should they be?—Government punished such criminals as she. She would be sentenced, in open court, to a long period of solitary confinement or of penal servitude—she did not know which—as a common convict. That was inevitable. She stopped for one moment in her rapid walk along the terrace. Pooh, she had judged that issue so many times already! When a citizen commits a crime, the State must attempt to check him. The State punishes crime, and God punishes sin. The two have but little in common. So far, so good.

But now! now! She pressed both hands to her forehead, staring out wildly into the darkness. She loved Gerard. She knew that she loved him. She loved him since his return; but Adeline’s confession had opened the floodgates of her heart’s admiration for the man she had wronged. She was one of those women who fancy there can be no love without respect; she had taught her own soul that early lesson. But now she knew that she loved him. She had honored Otto and dutifully admired him, but this—now at last she recognized it—was love. She loved his manliness, his uprightness, his chivalry; the pale face she herself had discolored, the form she had wounded, the glory her guilt had called forth. Aye, she even loved the memory of youthful errors courageously atoned for.

God punishes sin. Perhaps, if she had let all things take their natural course, Gerard might in due time have made her his wife. However that be, now, at any rate, nothing need have kept them apart. For she knew that Gerard also loved her, in spite of this unwilling marriage to which his womankind were pressing him. And between her and him arose up, for all eternity, the shadow of her crime. She herself must speak the word, crushing down his righteous love into a pool of scorn.

She sank by the parapet, with her face on the stone, and then nothing disturbed the breathless silence but one sudden, suddenly arrested moan.

When Ursula came down next morning there were circles under her eyes. Yet she had slept peacefully enough towards dawn. It must have been the merest accident that Aunt Louisa noticed—for the first time, she declared—some faint suggestion of gray about her niece’s brown ripple of hair.

“I am going to town on business,” said Ursula, “so I shall want the carriage, if you please.”

“Dear me, how annoying!” exclaimed Tante Louisa. “I had been wanting to drive across to Mevrouw Noks, and arrange about Tryphena. You’re sure you couldn’t select another day?”

“Quite sure,” answered Ursula, cutting bread. “It is business which can’t be put off.”

“Well, that’s very provoking. But if you’re going to town you must bring me some floss-silk from the Berlin-wool shop.”

“I am going to the Hague,” answered Ursula.

“The Hague? Oh, you’re sure to be able to match it there. I must give you a bit to take with you.” Tante Louisa felt aggrieved, for did she not pay her “pension”?

Ursula, alone in her compartment between Horstwyk and Drum, could not but reflect on her first railway journey with Gerard. “The great of this earth are above the common law.” She smiled bitterly at the thought of the error. There may be two social laws for high and humble; there may be even two civic laws for rich and poor—there are no two laws of right and wrong with the Judge of all the Earth.

But at Drum acquaintances got in, and she had to talk of the weather. She said it was very fine, though a little too warm. It was a pity, she said, that the days were growing so short already.

Arrived at the Hague, she thought she had better begin by hunting for Aunt Louisa’s silk. She tried several shops without success. At last she found herself compelled regretfully to desist.

She hailed a passing tram-car, which took her to Gerard’s lodgings. As she lifted an unfaltering hand to the bell the door was suddenly drawn back, and Gerard himself appeared, coming out. Both of them started aside for the moment.

“You here?” exclaimed the Baron. “We very nearly missed each other. I had no idea you were coming.”

“Nor had I,” she replied, “till I came. I want to speak to you, Gerard.”

“Yes,” he assented, without inviting her to enter. “Can I walk on with you? I am due at the Ministry in half an hour. You have connections, if I remember right, in the Hague?”

“I was coming to you,” she answered. “Let me go into your room for a moment. I shall not keep you.”

Reluctantly he led the way.

The thud of the closing door crashed down upon her heart; in the sudden stillness and shutting-out she realized that the crisis was come: her courage sank. And while leaning against some unnoticed support she was angry with the pride within her which could not as much as ask for a glass of water. The room swam past her eyes in a swift recognition of many familiar objects—mementos of her child-life with the owner—among a recent glitter of gaudy trophies and gleaming swords. As he threw back his coat she noticed, with dull indifference, that he was dressed for some Ministerial mid-day reception. Somehow she connected this fact with his life in society, his search for a suitable wife. She sank into a large arm-chair, shielding her brow for one instant with both hands.

Gerard waited, standing by his writing-table. The room seemed very subdued after the glare of the noisy street.

Presently she lifted her still white face—as a vessel might right herself, suddenly becalmed.

“Gerard,” she said, “I have come to tell you something I have long been wanting to tell you; but I didn’t tell you, and that makes it all the worse. I have wronged you very cruelly.”

She rose and remained standing before his stern attitude, grown suddenly rigid, his crossed arms, and relentlessly downcast gaze.

“I am not come to ask forgiveness,” she went on, hurriedly. “I am come to make confession and then to leave you. There is nothing to be done but to confess. Gerard, when Otto died, and Baby, it all depended, you remember, upon the question who died first. I said that it was Otto who died, and I inherited the property from Baby.”

She paused with a gasp. He neither spoke nor moved.

“It was Baby who died before Otto, Gerard, and you were Otto’s heir.”

A faint flush crept over Gerard’s firm-set cheeks. It was the only proof that he had understood.

“That is all I have to say,” she went on, in the silence closing round her. “But I wanted to say it to you first before repeating it to strangers.”

Then, suddenly, amid that deepening stillness, she felt that she must get away, must escape, and she hurried towards the door.

“Ursula!” said Gerard’s voice behind her, quite gently.

She turned; he had lifted his eyes, and his steadfast gaze met hers.

“Have you really nothing to say?” he continued. “No explanation? No extenuation of such conduct? No excuse?”

She drew herself up. “What would be the use of all that?” she answered, coldly. “Who listens to a criminal’s perversions? I have told you now, and you know.”

“I knew before,” he said.

When the words had struck her ear, an instant of expectation intervened. Then she caught at the wall beside her, saw him, as she did so, check a futile impulse to spring forward, and once more stood outwardly calm.

“I learned the news some weeks ago,” he continued. “On the night before the battle, as it happened. I got a letter from—some one who knew.”

“From Hephzibah,” said Ursula. “But then—when you came back—why—”

“When I came back I told her to await my good pleasure. I myself was waiting for this moment, Ursula. God only knows how I have waited for it, hoped for it—” He broke off.

“Then be thankful it has come,” she answered, in the bitterness of her righteous abandonment.

“Yes, it has come. And now there is nothing else to say?”

“No, there is nothing else to say.”

She fancied she caught a strange flicker in his firmly fixed eyes.

“And of what use will the Manor-house be to a poor beggar like myself?” he went on. “You had much better have kept it—you, who are rich.”

She flushed scarlet under the taunt.

“May I go?” she asked, almost meekly, under the pain at her heart. “You will do what you like with the Manor. Perhaps you will sell it. Though Helena van Troyen tells me you are going to marry a rich wife of her choosing—and your own.”

“Did Helena van Troyen tell you that?” he asked, uncrossing his arms, and the brightness of his nature seemed to come flowing back from all sides.

“Yes; but do not be afraid. She mentioned no names. Besides, it is no business of mine. I do not know whom she means.”

“I am sorry it is no business of yours,” replied Gerard, coming boldly forward, “for, Ursula, she means yourself.”

“She—she—” stammered Ursula.

“And so do I.” Very quietly he put his arm around her, and drew down the tired head upon his breast. “We have both of us suffered quite enough,” he said.

The tears came swelling across her eyes.

“Through my fault,” she whispered—“my fault.”

“Let me find the criminal’s extenuations, Ursula. Do you really think, you poor, noble creature, that I do not understand?”

“I must confess to my father,” she continued, in the same tremulous whisper. “To my father and the world.”

“To your father, if you will. But the world has not been injured by anything you have done, and you owe it no reparation. It is not our function to supply the world with the empty scandals it delights in. Suffering is a holy but a very awful thing. We will have no more superfluous suffering, Ursula.”

“It shall all be as you wish,” she humbly answered, her head at rest upon his shoulder. She closed her eyes. “Gerard, I am not afraid of them. I was never afraid of them. But from the very first, I think, I was afraid of God.”

“God be thanked for it!” said Gerard, softly. And a flood of sunlight, falling leisurely around them, lighted into sudden brilliance the cross upon his breast.

THE END