THE DUTY OF A PARENT

Next morning, so it happened, the DominÉ awoke to a moderately disagreeable task. While dressing, he grumbled over the speck in his tranquil sky, as mortals will do when unaware of the storm-cloud fringing their horizon.

The DominÉ had a parishioner who caused him more annoyance than the rest. This sheep of the flock was, however, not a black sheep. It was serenely white. It never wandered, for it never even got up. Its name was Klomp, and its nature was unmitigated indolence.

This man Klomp inhabited a little cottage of his own, lost among the woods. He shared it with two daughters, aged respectively twelve and eighteen. Like its owner, the cottage lived on, disgraceful but comfortable. Theoretically, it ought to have been pulled down.

Klomp knew better. All summer he lazed over a hedge which mysteriously bore his weight; all winter he dozed by the stove. If any remnant of useless ornamentation fell away from the cottage, the proprietor never winked an eye, but should a tile drop whose fall let in the rain or wind, Klomp would scramble up on the roof and replace it. He was a philosopher.

He never ill-treated his daughters unless they let the fire go out in winter. To keep it lighted during seven months of the year was their whole earthly duty, for house-keeping had long been reduced to an almost imperceptible minimum. The entire family lived on next to nothing very cheerfully, and was a disgrace to the neighborhood.

Vices the father had none. As has already been hinted, he was negatively virtuous. He drowsed at peace with himself and with all the world above and below him, except when the DominÉ came to make trouble.

The DominÉ was making trouble just now. By a stroke of unexpected good-fortune an opportunity had occurred of “doing something for those poor girls,” whose one desire was that nothing should be done either for them or by them. Freule van Borck, it must be known, occasionally took a philanthropic interest in the village at her brother’s castle-gates, an interest which manifested itself in spasmodic bursts of tidying up neglected corners. She had suddenly disapproved of that long-standing eyesore, the Klomps’ cottage, and had made a beginning of improvement by getting an energetic person in the north to accept of Pietje, the elder girl, as a possible servant, wages five pounds per annum, all found. This good news had been communicated to Pietje by Hephzibah, the Freule’s maid. Pietje had merely answered, “Let the Freule go herself,” but that retort got modified on its way to Louisa.

So now the DominÉ went to try his hand. He especially disliked all intercourse with Klomp, because, during their interviews, one of the two invariably lost his temper, and that one was never the parishioner. That was the worst of Klomp; he had no temper to lose.

To-day, however, the parson rejoiced in notable compensations; these occupied his thoughts as he swung with large steps through the woodlands. After the first shock of abandonment which every parent feels in a daughter’s sudden rapture, he had settled down to complacent contemplation of an eligible son-in-law. For the DominÉ, as we know, had never made a secret of his attachment to Otto. And he lacked the requisite affectation to convince himself that the secondary consideration of the young man’s social position was altogether beneath the notice of a humble clergyman like himself.

His darling Ursula would flit from the nest—that is true—but only to another close by, where he still could hear her singing. The DominÉ smiled gratefully over this linked perfection of prosperity: wife to the heir of the Horst, and wife to Otto van Helmont.

“Lord God, I thank Thee,” said the DominÉ, out aloud, among the fragrance of the solitary lane. His path wound in sandy whiteness beneath the heat-mist of the fir-trees; there was a buzz on all sides of a myriad nothings, invisibly swelling the morning air.

The cottage lay prone upon the ground, asleep. It had sunk as low as it could, and had pulled the ragged branches of the trees over its ears, comfortably hiding in the cool, long shadows, naked and unashamed.

The owner of the cottage lay prone upon the ground also; he had the advantage of the house in that he was consciously—and conscientiously-drowsing. “I sleep, but my heart waketh.” Klomp knew he was not awake. Man has few pleasures here below; has he any to equal that sensation?

“Good-morning, Klomp,” said the parson’s bright, brisk voice at his ear. Klomp did not start; he merely half opened one eye and answered, “DominÉ,” which was his abbreviated form of salutation. “Save your breath to spare your life,” was one of his axioms.

“Klomp, I’ve come about Pietje,” continued the DominÉ, with that loudness which, in him, was nervousness escaping. “I’ve heard about the place the Freule has found for her. What a splendid opportunity! And so kind of the Freule!”

Klomp nodded assent. Like most country parsons, the DominÉ was very sensitive to disrespect. “You might get up, Klomp,” he said, sharply.

“Oh, if you wish it, sir, of course,” replied the man, shuffling to his feet, with an air of contempt for the other’s stupidity. He immediately lounged up against the wall, sinking both hands in his pockets. “Them’s my sentiments to a T,” he ejaculated, and jerked his head in the direction of a paper nailed against the dilapidated shutter, white on the dirty green.

The parson, advancing curiously, read the following sentences in an illiterate scrawl:

Klomp nodded again, as the DominÉ turned with a jump. “How dare you put a Bible tag under such nonsense as this?” cried the DominÉ, sniffing like a warhorse.

“Yes, yes, the Bible knows,” replied Klomp, imperturbably. “It’s word of Holy Scripture, DominÉ, so you can’t say it isn’t true.”

“Word of holy scribbling!” cried the indignant clergyman. “It’s no more in God’s Bible, Klomp, than you are in God’s fold. And you haven’t even got it correct, for it ends ‘And death is the best of all.’”

Suddenly a dark cloud seemed to spread across the sunlit landscape. The surrounding larch-trees shivered, with a long-drawn sigh.

“I wish you would move a little on one side, DominÉ,” said Klomp, querulously, though he had never heard of Diogenes. “Thank you. Well, a peddler-man that came showed it me in a book, and he said it was in the Bible, and if it isn’t, it ought to be. Them’s my sentiments. Morning, DominÉ.”

His feet slipped forward under the weariness of this long discourse; he recovered himself with a shuffle. Broad as the concluding hint had been, the DominÉ ignored it.

“You never do anything, Klomp,” he said, angrily.

“Then I never do anything wrong, DominÉ. I don’t drink. I don’t even smoke. I’m too poor.”

“Poverty is not disgraceful to confess,” replied the DominÉ, quoting Pericles, “but not to escape it by exertion, that is disgraceful.”

Every child in the parish had heard the quotation.

Klomp yawned: “‘Peace and potatoes is better than a pother and a cow.’ That’s in the Bible, at any rate,” he replied, and suddenly he collapsed again upon the grass before the startled parson’s backward skip.

“Could I see Pietje and speak to her? Perhaps she will listen to reason,” hazarded the DominÉ, controlling his wrath. The father pointed to the cottage door; then, suddenly remembering the vague possibility of future poor-relief, as yet not required, he faintly called his elder daughter’s name.

She crept out with a half-pared potato in her hand. She was a ruddy-faced girl, not uncomely in her slovenliness, like an apple that has fallen from the tree.

“Well, Pietje,” began DominÉ Rovers, patiently, “so you are going to Groningen to a nice home and useful work. It is very kind, indeed, of the good lady who is willing to teach you.”

“Yes, DominÉ,” said Pietje.

“Ah, that’s right,” cried the DominÉ, with pleased surprise. “I’m glad to see you’ve come to your senses. So you’re going, like a good girl?”

“No, DominÉ,” said Pietje.

“What do you mean, you impertinent creature?” exclaimed the minister, exceedingly irate. “Not going when you said you were. Not—”

“No, DominÉ,” repeated Pietje, sitting down on the window-sill.

DominÉ Rovers turned upon the recumbent father. Of course he had lost his temper; he had known all along that he would do so the consciousness of losing hold caused him to let go all the faster.

“I appeal to you,” he cried—“you, the responsible guardian of this child. Her lot is in your hands to-day for life-long weal or woe. She is incapable of choosing, and unfit to do so. It is only your selfishness, Klomp, that is ruining your daughters’ lives. You say you want them with you, I hear. A pretty excuse.”

“Yes; I love them,” murmured Klomp, sentimentally.

“And what would Mietje do?” interposed Pietje, looking up from vague contemplation of the pendent potato-peel. Mietje was the child of twelve.

This objection not being easy to meet, the DominÉ ignored it. “Fine love, indeed,” he shouted to the father. “When a parent loves his child, he sacrifices any inclinations of his own to that child’s real welfare. The parent who doesn’t do that, doesn’t love. Do you understand me?”

“Oh yes,” said Klomp.

“Then take this to heart. If you don’t send Pietje to Groningen, and make her go, you don’t love her. There!”

“Would the DominÉ send Juffrouw Ursula to Groningen?” asked Pietje, askance.

“Indeed I should,” replied the DominÉ, triumphantly, thinking of the Horst. “Never should I allow my own interests to influence me. Be sensible, Klomp.”

But at this moment a welcome diversion occurred. Mietje, the child, came running round the cottage with pitiful cries.

“Pussy!” she screamed from afar; “oh, father, pussy! The rope broke, and she’s dropped into the well!”

She was sobbing and shrieking; nobody scolded her for her mischief-making. Pietje started up with eager words of comfort.

“Father would get the ladder. Father would go down into the water. Father would fish out pussy.”

Klomp was already up and away. The two girls hurried after him. The DominÉ was left alone.

“Well, I have done my duty,” he mused, retracing his steps. “The best of us can do no more.” He was a very good man. He had a good man’s weakness for consciously doing his duty.

As he turned into a little brown hollow all checkered with sunlit tracery, he saw Otto van Helmont come vaulting over a stile.

“Ah, DominÉ, I was looking for you,” said Otto. Then they walked on side by side, and gradually an embarrassing silence settled down between them. The DominÉ broke it.

“It is a very fine day,” said the DominÉ.

“Yes,” replied Otto. “DominÉ, when Ursula and I are married, we must go back to Java.”

“Never,” said the DominÉ, and with a sweep of his walking-stick he knocked down a thistle.

“I—I am aware that perhaps I have hardly acted quite fairly,” began Otto, speaking with some agitation. “It has all come so suddenly; I have allowed myself to be overwhelmed. Apart from her general condemnation of India, which I have never treated quite seriously, the subject has not yet been mooted between us. I wished first to speak of it to you. I feel that I am asking—”

The DominÉ had stopped in the middle of the narrow path.

“It was the condition,” he interrupted, hoarsely. “She made it the condition. Never.”

“No, indeed, we have not spoken of it,” cried Otto, in distress.

The DominÉ stamped his foot. “Women always forget everything,” he said.

Otto hurried on. “I want to explain,” he continued, eagerly. “I hope you will let me explain. It is a most painful thing for all of us. I cannot stay at the Horst, DominÉ; that is quite out of the question. In fact, the sooner I leave it the better.”

“Why?” broke in the DominÉ, vehemently. “What nonsense! Of course you can stay at the Horst!”

“I cannot bear the idea of earning my living in this country; you yourself have always discouraged it. Besides, I must earn much more than my living. That is imperative. Especially now.” He checked himself; he was not going to speak to the DominÉ of the Baroness’s shattered hopes. But Ursula’s father understood.

Involuntarily both men’s eyes wandered away across the fields towards the chimneys of the Horst embedded in foliage. Then their glances met.

“Never. Never. Never,” repeated the DominÉ, passionately.

“In a few years I shall probably want money,” declared Otto, decisively. “I shall want a good deal of money, I expect. I must do what I can to earn it. You will say, perhaps, like my father, that till now I have tried and failed. All the more reason to try again.”

“No, I don’t say that,” responded the DominÉ, honestly. “You know I don’t. But, Otto, I can’t let my Ursula go to Java.”

Otto did not immediately return to the charge. Presently he began again, in quite a low voice, almost a whisper, under the laughing blue sky,

“More than fifteen years ago a young man came to you, complaining bitterly that he was sick of his empty, meaningless existence. He was tired of life, he said. And you answered, ‘Go and work. The people who work have no time to get tired.’”

“But I never said, ‘Go and amass money,’” interrupted the old man, lifting a shaky arm.

“You said, ‘Spend your own money.’ How well I remember your saying that the night I came to you! ‘You are a grown man. Don’t spend any one’s money but your own.’ It came to me like a revelation. It was so directly opposed to what I had been taught from my youth. In my world they say, ‘Only don’t earn money. You may do anything except that.’”

“Well, you have obeyed that precept,” replied the DominÉ, a little bitterly. Then he repented immediately.

“Otto, you’re a good fellow. I can’t let my Ursula go away to Java.”

“I was wrong, perhaps,” said Otto, “to demand so great a sacrifice. I ought to have spoken more plainly of my intentions beforehand—”

“You ought, indeed,” interjected the DominÉ, glad of every vent. “You have behaved exceedingly badly.”

“So be it. Well, I leave the matter in your hands. Personally, of course, I consider I ought to return. I have a fresh offer—a really advantageous opening on a sugar plantation, a large distillery—”

The DominÉ looked at him.

“That means rough work,” said the DominÉ.

“But you must decide,” continued Otto, evasively. “If you distinctly prefer it, I shall look for occupation in Holland. Only in no case can I remain at the Horst.”

“You can,” cried the DominÉ, quite angrily.

Otto had stopped. His eyes were following a distant swallow’s trackless dips.

“And even if I could,” he said, slowly, “my wife could not—Ursula could not.”

The DominÉ’s eyes sought his in long inquiry.

“With Gerard,” said Otto at last.

“Ah!”

Then the DominÉ cried, “Stuff and nonsense! stuff and nonsense! I don’t believe a word of it. Nor do you.”

“I leave the decision in your hands,” repeated Otto. “Some employment of some kind in some Dutch town, if you so wish.”

The DominÉ leaned up against a tree; he closed his eyes; his bronzed face was quite white. The wood seemed to hold its breath under the sneering sky.

“When a father loves his child,” began the DominÉ; then his voice broke. “My Ursula,” he said. “God have mercy on me! The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” He stopped.

Otto, thoughtfully wending his way homeward, reached a spot where the Manor-house burst into view all at once through the park. Unconsciously he stood still. The moments passed by; he remained without moving; a yellow butterfly came foolishly hovering among the bushes; he did not see it.

Suddenly a single tear lay heavy on his cheek.