MASKS AND FACES

The day after his wife’s funeral Mynheer Mopius sat in the gilded drawing-room of Villa Blanda. His demeanor was properly, pleasantly chastened, for the cud of the pompous exequies lay sweet upon his tongue.

Harriet, busy with her own thoughts at the evening tea-table, said, “Yes, it had all been very nice.”

“But the tea was cold, Harriet,” grumbled Mynheer Mopius, for the dozenth weary time. “It’s a very bad thing in a woman when she can’t make tea.”

“Of course,” replied Harriet, gazing down at her sable garments, and wondering how soon the cheap material would get rusty.

“My mother could make excellent tea,” prosed Mynheer, with a melancholy nod. “She could do everything excellently, could my mother.”

“A woman ought to,” said Harriet, “and when she’s done it, she ought to die.”

“She ought. She ought.” While Mynheer Mopius spoke, his thoughts were dwelling on DominÉ Pock’s oration by the grave. How well the reverend gentleman had alluded to the charities of our dear brother afflicted! “The consolation which a noble heart can always find in wiping other eyes the while its own are streaming!”

Mynheer blew his nose.

“This cheap cloth won’t last, uncle,” said Harriet, briskly.

He pretended not to hear her. She bored him. She had been all very well while his wife dragged on, but now—! And, why, after all, should he be saddled with this sharp-tongued girl? She was no relation of his, though she called him “uncle.” Mevrouw Mopius’s childless sister had been the first wife of Harriet’s father, Dr. Verveen.

“Yes,” he repeated, mechanically, “everything my mother produced was first-rate of its kind.”

“Especially her son,” said Harriet, with a sneer that positively fizzled.

Mynheer Mopius’s yellow face grew a shade healthier in color. He accepted his third cup in thoughtful silence; then he said, “And now, my dear young lady, what do you mean to do?”

She looked at him, across the steaming urn.

“Go to bed,” she replied.

“Quite so. And after?”

“Why, sleep, of course. What do you mean, uncle?”

She flushed scarlet.

“My dear Harriet, I fear you are too fond of sleeping. Surely you understand that you can no longer remain an inmate of this house, now that—that I am a lonely widower? Much as I regret—ahem!—you will admit, I feel confident, that you cannot remain under present circumstances.”

“Not under present circumstances,” answered Harriet.

She waited for one long second, her black eyes aflame, full on his face. Then the balance in which her fate hung snapped suddenly. She sat, self-possessed, amid the collapse of all her hopes.

“I shall always take an interest in you,” said Mynheer Mopius, adjusting his neat white mourning-tie; “and I mean to act very generously, to begin with. I shall take lodgings for you for one month, paying your board. I should have added a little cash for current expenses, but you aunt’s legacy has made that superfluous.”

“Aunt Sarah left me a hundred florins and her Bible,” said Harriet.

“Dear woman, she did! She always thought of others. You are welcome to the money, Harriet; fully, frankly welcome. But the Bible! That is a memento of her I would fain have retained.”

“Buy it of me?” said Harriet. “How much will you give for it? Ten florins?”

“Harriet, I am shocked,” replied Mynheer Mopius, hastily. “The month’s board will leave you ample time to look out for a situation.”

“To look out for another situation,” said Harriet.

“Quite so,” exclaimed Mynheer Mopius, delighted at her good sense.

Harriet threw back her arm with a jerk that rattled the tea-equipage.

“And to think,” she cried, “that only last week I rejected the doctor.”

“More fool you!” replied Mynheer Mopius, coolly. “You’ll have to be more careful of the Chinese porcelain in a strange house, Harriet, and it probably won’t be anything like as good.”

“I rejected the doctor,” continued Harriet, roughly, “because I didn’t care for him. I couldn’t live with a young man I didn’t care for. Uncles are different.”

“Harriet, I am not really your uncle, you must remember, though I am willing to behave as such. If your father—”

“Yes, I know. Well, I shall try to get something in a month’s time, and if I can, I’ll repay the board and lodging, dear uncle.”

“That is not necessary. You can place an advertisement, Harriet, not mentioning names, of course. You don’t know enough for a governess, and, besides, you are too good-looking. You had better try to become a companion. If your father—”

“Quite so. Yes, I shall try to become a companion—to a gentleman.”

“Harriet! I do not see that it is a laughing matter. To an invalid lady. Not that you have any experience of invalids; for my dear Sarah enjoyed excellent health till almost the last.”

“To a gentleman,” persisted Harriet, coolly. “It is no laughing matter, Uncle Jacob. When I leave this house, which at least afforded me some miserable sort of protection, I shall advertise for a husband. I dare say something nice will turn up. I want a husband I can be really fond of. Somehow I have faith in his turning up.”

She spoke to herself, but she rejoiced in scandalizing the hateful humbug opposite.

“Harriet, my dear,” said the widower, solemnly, “all this is very much out of place. You should have more respect for the holiness of sorrow, Harriet.”

“Oh, dear, no, you needn’t trouble about that,” she interrupted him. “I’m in deadly earnest, I assure you. I’ve printed an advertisement before, but it came to nothing. I mean to look out better this time.”

Her accent belied the outer calm of her attitude; she began washing the cups.

“Printed an advertisement from my house? From Villa Blanda? If so, I have nourished a—”

“No.”

“I am extremely agitated, Harriet. You are my cherished Sarah’s step-niece. I cannot imagine that any member, any step-member, of my dear wife’s family would demean herself in the manner you describe.”

He got up and began to walk about, enjoying his brand-new mourning. “For any one, of however humble origin—and Sarah’s sister married beneath her—to enter into relations of—of an amorous description with a stranger! Harriet, I am horrified. We are not in India, Harriet. You are not a black woman, though you may think and act like one. I appeal to you to remember that you are connected, however distantly, with an honorable family. You are not free, Harriet, as you might have been before your father’s first marriage.”

He spoke with almost desperate energy, for there were some things he had learned to discriminate in his intercourse with Harriet Verveen. He knew when she meant what she said.

“Pooh!” replied Harriet. “Good-night, dear uncle. You give me a month’s board, without wages, and notice to quit. I am very grateful, dear uncle; but henceforth you must allow me to fashion my own life as I choose.”

They stood facing each other. There was no noise and no recrimination. Each knew it would be useless.

“I have nourished a serpent in my bosom,” said Mynheer Mopius, triumphantly getting out his quotation after all. “I can’t keep you here a day longer, Harriet, though you seem to be annoyed about going. It wouldn’t be proper, and, besides, I may have other plans. I treat you generously. Whatever you may elect to do I hope you will repay me by henceforth dropping all pretended relationship to myself. That must be an understood thing. Such conduct as you propose—clandestine love affairs, anonymous love affairs—I consider most scandalous. All the world considers it scandalous. I cannot allow a breath of ill-odor to sully the unspotted name of Mopius. Harriet, I hope you fully agree to that suggestion. If not I should consider myself compelled to retract.”

“Oh, most willingly,” again interrupted Harriet. She steadily sought her uncle’s shifty glances. “I break all relation between us as completely as—I crush this cup!” The costly porcelain fell to the ground in shell-like fragments. Mynheer Mopius darted forward with a shriek. Meanwhile Harriet slipped from the room, her right hand bleeding, her mood somewhat relieved.

Next morning she left the house. After the night’s consideration of circumstances she was not sorry to go. She believed, with a desperate woman’s pertinacity, in the ultimate success of the wide choice she had allowed herself. She would take a husband after her own heart. Already she pictured him to herself, good-looking, with a fair mustache.

In the great city close to Drum—a city which may as well remain nameless—a modest variety may be found of those public entertainments which constitute, to the many, a principal criterion of civilization. In the nineteenth-century march of mind—which, after all, is but the advance of ’Arry—a town with no permanent music-hall troupe is voted “slow.” Drum was distinctly “slow.” Its big sister aspired, in spasms, to be reckoned “fast.”

Occasionally, therefore, when the fit was upon her, the big sister clutched, gasping, at some Parisian form of diversion; a river fÊte with fireworks, horse-races, or, in winter, a bal costumÉ et parÉ. The latter was decidedly a bad spasm, for northern nations can make nothing of the “Veglione.” Still, every season a couple of these picturesque gayeties were organized by indefatigable impresarii (in rose-colored spectacles), the price of admission being fixed at a florin for gentlemen, ladies free. No respectable person over thirty was supposed to attend.

One of the least unsuccessful costume-balls the city has ever seen came off just before Christmas, in the year we are describing. Willie van Troyen was there as Paris, with another Helen, this being a delicate joke on the part of the woman whose rule was to end next week. As she accurately pointed out, the right Helen was, after all, the wrong love.

Only Gerard’s deep mourning had prevented his presence. Somebody had suggested, behind his back, that he might go as a Mute. The gay band he lived among agreed unanimously that “it was high time that Gerard got over his parent’s demise.” He was not a success in the rÔle of the impecunious orphan.

Willie van Troyen on this festal occasion was drunk, and from his place in a stage-box, between two sirens, he was roaring with laughter at the antics of a goose in the pit. The whole floor of the small theatre had been cleared for perambulation, while those who meant dancing could retire to the stage. Most of the masks, however, preferred to walk about and make believe they were funny, in a half-annoyed jostle of ungracious familiarity, under the critical contemplation of the humbler amphitheatre side-tables, and of the champagne-sodden boxes up above. Every now and then some ambitious buffoon, excited by the continuous spur of the music, would suddenly leap at facile applause. There would be a sweep of the crowd in his direction and an outburst of meaningless laughter, every one exclaiming that the joke was good, while thinking it rather tame.

But even the numerous laughers who were only pretending to amuse themselves agreed in recognizing the very real drollery of the Goose. He—it was evidently a masculine goose, as distinguished from a gander—he trotted about in the stupidest manner, a great yellow-beaked ball of white and black feathers with unreasonably protruding quills. Just now he had got hold of a stout and solemn gentleman in red velvet, who evidently represented a potent, grave, and reverend Signior. This dignified personage looked exceedingly out of place—not to speak of a false nose through his mask—in so foolish a company of mummers.

The Goose had a nasty talent for cackling with the extravagant clatter of his big wooden beak, and he kept up this deafening music incessantly as he ran round and round the fat gentleman in velvet, who turned helplessly hither and thither amid volleys of merriment. Every now and then the cruel bird, as it ran, would draw the pointed quills from under its feathers and therewith prick the reverend signior in unexpected places, causing him to wriggle and twist. Just then there was a pause in the programme; the whole theatre shook with this unexpected fun.

“Why can’t you leave me alone?” hissed the unfortunate senator, in streaming suspense. But the Goose made no reply. Stopping his mad race for a moment, he actually began chalking up ribaldry with one of his quills on the senator’s pendent mantle, chattering all the while. In vain the proud aristocrat wrestled and protested. The Goose, holding the mantle firmly, chalked a huge note of interrogation upon it, and wrote under this sign, amid breathless interest, the question, “What does your Worship here?” A renewed outburst greeted this sally. Willie van Troyen, unsteadily prominent, pelted the witty bird with hot-house grapes.

“Go along, you hypocrite, I know you,” said the Goose in his victim’s ear. “I’ve chalked up your real name behind.”

At this the crimson noble, breaking down, began to cry real tears of shame and spite. “You’ve ruined me, then,” he exclaimed. “And I can’t for the life of me imagine why!”

“Boh,” said the Goose, and resumed his clatter more heartily than ever.

But at this juncture a Goose-girl stepped unexpectedly into the arena. She drove off the Goose with some well-directed blows, and, taking the arm of the red-velvet gentleman, led him disconsolate away.

“It’s your own fault for coming,” squeaked the Goose-girl. “Let’s go and talk it over in a private box.”

“No, indeed; private boxes are very expensive. My dear creature, for Heaven’s sake, let me sit down on this settee. I—I—anxious to obliterate”—he began, violently rubbing his back against the cushions of the sofa. “I am quite at a loss to understand,” he said; “but tell me, my dear, you didn’t—eh?”

“Yes, indeed,” replied the maiden. “Your style and title, Mynheer the Councillor, were written there in full.”

He broke into an oath. “Not my name,” he sobbed. “You—you didn’t see my name?”

The Goose-girl sat down beside him. She used a small instrument to disguise her voice. “Why did you come here, you horrid old man?” she said. “I saw you flirting with Little Red Riding-hood. I saw you dancing with that atrocious Bacchante. ‘Clandestine love-affairs,’ ‘Anonymous engagements.’ And your wife not five weeks dead! Oh, Uncle Jacob—Uncle Jacob!” Harriet dropped into her natural voice, letting fall both her mask and her manner.

“Harriet!” exclaimed Mopius, “this exceeds—”

“Indeed it does,” she interrupted, coolly. “Don’t speak so loud, dear uncle, or the Goose will be coming back.”

Mynheer Mopius started to his feet.

“This is some conspiracy to ruin me,” he said, speaking like one dazed. “I’m ruined already. I’m going—”

“Wait a moment,” objected his tormentor. “It isn’t true that your name was written up; I prevented that in time. So, you see, you have a good deal to thank me for. But, uncle, that Goose is a writer on the staff of the Drum Independent; he is one of their leading men, and a very great friend of mine. His quills are very real quills. He is anxious to tell—when the by-election comes on next week, which is to render you Right Worshipful—an amusing little story of a highly respectable candidate who, barely a month after his dear wife’s death, danced with a charming Bacchante at a charming masked ball.”

“What do you want of me, Harriet?” shrieked the wretched widower. “Do you want money? I can let you have a little, if you like.”

“Hush. Let’s talk it over quietly in this quiet corner, Uncle Jacob. I am pitiless. Understand that at once. No compounding. You must surrender absolutely. Better do it with a good grace.”

“I know you want to marry me,” answered Mopius, sulkily; “and I don’t mind so very much, though it’s hard to have it forced on one. I’d rather have had a woman with a softer tongue; but I’ve been looking about me, and one has this fault and another has that; I always said you were good-looking, Harriet. I’ll marry you, if you like, though I’d rather have had a lady-born.”

“Marry you!” she blazed out at him. “No, indeed, I’m going to marry a man whose boots you daren’t lick, unless he let you. A good man, beautiful as good, and clever as he is beautiful—a man who will some day be great, and I—love—him. He is poor, and the whole world is before him, and I love him. Marry you!”

“Well, you wanted to a month ago,” muttered Mopius.

“Let me speak. If you want to hush up this disgraceful story you must give my love”—her voice caressed the delicious word—“two thousand florins. He will be satisfied with that; then he can pay off his debts, and we can start our humble house-keeping.”

“Harriet, it’s a mean trick. I should never have thought that you with your pride—”

“Silence, you!” she exclaimed under her breath, crushing down her own misgivings with reckless vehemence. “How dare you question his good pleasure, or I? You obey, so do I. Only two thousand florins. He is very moderate. He might have demanded ten. But I told him I didn’t want your dirty money. Love can be happy in a garret. Come, let’s have done with the whole horrid business. I promised to call him, and then you can go.” The Goose-girl put a whistle to her lips, and immediately her obedient bird came clucking up from among the motley crowd. As he came his weary din gradually assumed the shape of “Ja-cob! Ja-cob! Ja-cob!” with terrible, reiterated distinctness.

“Hush, please, darling,” pleaded Harriet, her voice full of soft entreaty, “uncle is willing to give the two thousand florins, as I propose.”

“To further his candidature,” said the Goose, bowing low. “It is clearly understood that the money is paid to further his candidature. I am proud, sir, to make your acquaintance.”

The Goose saluted, with silly flap.

“And now he had better go,” exclaimed Harriet.

“My dear child, what are you thinking of?” protested the Goose, as Mynheer Mopius hastily rose to render ready obedience. “I have only just had the pleasure of meeting your uncle. I am sure he will do us the favor of being present at a little champagne supper in one of the up-stairs boxes—as host.”

“Oh no,” began the Goose-girl, and checked herself, meeting the Goose’s eye.

“I shall be willing,” stammered Mopius, “if necessary, to pay—”

The Goose interposed.

“My dear sir, what are you thinking of?” he said, loftily. “Is this the way such matters are managed among men of honor? Harriet, take your uncle’s arm!”

Together the trio ascended to the grand tier. Mynheer Mopius’s supper, as ordered by the Goose, was exquisite; the host finished by enjoying it himself, and drinking too much wine. Willie van Troyen insisted on rolling in from the adjoining box to shake the Goose by the hand. He also drank to the health of the recumbent masked gentleman in shabby red velvet who was singing sentimental songs in an undertone, with unpremeditated shrieks—

The Goose informed Willie that the Senator was a retired Indian Viceroy, who had given many such a magnificent entertainment in his day. Willie put his finger to his nose, and immediately invited His Excellency to his wedding six days hence. Upon which His Excellency burst out crying, and said that the word reminded him of the best of departed wives. Harriet sat staring down into the now almost deserted pit.

The cold December dawn had not yet achieved more than the hope of its forthcoming when the Goose took away Mynheer Mopius in a cab to a quiet hotel. Behind them still echoed the loud talk of the young officers. They passed, in the fearsome streets, a troop of roysterers from a gin-shop. “We won’t go home till morning!” rang hideous on the patient night. Here and there a window shone out, fully lighted, with its message of suffering or suspense.

Up above—far, far above—stood, silent, God’s eternal stars; watchful, serenely waiting, in the darkness whence we come and whither we return.

Three days after the ball Mynheer Mopius paid up like a man, and three days after he had paid up, Mynheer Mopius was sitting one evening in his accustomed arm-chair, reflecting on his loneliness and the unexpected rarity of charming claimants for his hand. In fact, during this month, with his indecent precipitancy, he had exposed himself to a couple of very painful rebuffs. Of course, he was exceedingly angry with Harriet. But, really, all that he cared for was himself, his own comfort, his own glory, an audience, especially for his evening songs.

In the midst of his reflections Harriet walked in. She cast off her wrap, sans gÊne, upon the nearest sofa.

“I’ve come to marry you, after all,” she said, quite collectedly.

Mynheer Mopius jumped.

“Harriet,” he replied, “this is—go away! After your conduct of last week, go away!”

“I forgive your conduct,” said Harriet, unmoved.

“And the—the Goose you were in love with?” inquired Mynheer Mopius, not without some satisfaction.

“He was unworthy,” replied Harriet, with level eyebrows. “He has thrown me over.”

“As soon as he had the money,” said Mynheer Mopius, rubbing his palms between his knees.

“Yes, as soon as he had the money,” admitted the girl, quite simply. “It appears there is another woman in the business. All that is dead and gone. All my money’s gone. I haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday morning. Never mind that. But my decision’s taken. I’ve come back to marry you. And I mean to.”

“You can’t against my will, Harriet,” said Mynheer Mopius, beaming. “Go away.”

“Look here, Uncle Jacob, you’re going to marry me, or—don’t make me say the alternative. I’d rather think you married me without the alternative. It’s not very nice, anyway, but I don’t intend to starve. And, as I don’t believe in men any more, it really doesn’t matter much. Now ring for the servants, and tell them you’re going to marry me.”

“Harriet, go away!”

Harriet crossed to the bell-rope and pulled it. “What does your Worship here?” she said, incoherently. “You asked me a week ago, and I said no. You don’t ask me to-day, and I say yes. Such is woman. Better than man, at his worst.”

The footman answered the bell. For a moment Harriet’s courage failed her before his severe expectancy. “Bring some biscuits,” she said.

“Harriet,” began Mynheer Mopius, thoroughly cowed, like the bully he was, “you must allow at least another month to intervene before the thing can be even mooted. I always admitted, Harriet, you know, that you were a very good-looking girl. But, before I say another word, I must insist on you going down on your bended knees and humbly begging my pardon for your disgraceful conduct of the other night.”

Harriet Verveen understood the antagonist she had vanquished. The proud girl actually knelt on the carpet, and slowly repeated the humiliating words.

“Very good!” said Mynheer Mopius, in high good-humor, “and, Harriet, I won’t marry you till you succeed in matching that cup you broke.” He smiled to himself in the glass, the future Town Councillor! “You are very poor, Harriet,” he continued, “and of humble origin. It is a great thing for you to become Madame Mopius. I hope you feel that.”

“Oh yes,” replied Harriet, meekly. She had got up from the floor. Meanwhile the footman had brought in a tray of biscuit. She fell on them ravenously.

“Well, Harriet, if ever I make you my wife—and I don’t say I shall, mind—I hope you will be a good and obedient consort, like the faithful creature I have lost.”

“Oh yes,” said Harriet again. Soon after she went back to her lodgings, with a little money in her purse. She turned in the hall door of Villa Blanda.

“Won’t I pay you out for this!” she said aloud. Never till the day of her death could she look down at her knees without seeing dust upon them. Mopius had cause to remember his triumph, though she made him a good wife on the whole.

That evening, far into the night, the miserable woman lay at the open window of her garret, with her forehead knocking the sill. Her neighbor, a poor, blind seamstress, sat up in bed trembling, awe-struck by the sobs that seemed to shake the flimsy house. It was winter, bitterly, frostily cold. On the window-sill, bent, pressed back again, clammy with kisses, stuck a stupid bit of pasteboard—the smirking photograph of a man.