THE GREAT PEACE

The Christmas party at the Manor-house broke up not over-pleasantly. Everybody seemed to realize the vague clouds that hung over the dark end of the year. Some particulars regarding the German visitor’s sudden indisposition had, of course, oozed forth into the half-light, bewilderingly indistinct. Helena departed in high dudgeon, frequently repeating to her husband that whatever had happened—and she didn’t want to know—was undoubtedly Ursula’s fault. Mynheer Mopius said that “the higher classes of this country were hopelessly depraved.”

Count Frechenfels slipped away to his native land in silence, and the military authorities took no cognizance of the affray. Of his own free will, therefore, Gerard asked to be transferred to a fighting regiment in the Indies, and very quietly and quickly he got ready to embark. He was eager to go, to escape from duns and the narrowness of his present hampered existence. And also to fly from a vague new sensation which, whenever he turned to it, caused his heart to leap up with dismay.

“I cannot understand why,” said the poor Dowager, feebly; “but, somehow, I seem not to be able to understand anything any more. It all used to be so different. Gerard, the whole world cannot have altered because your father died?” She gazed at him as if half expecting to hear that it had. “And I wanted you to help me with the Memoir,” she continued. “You remember about the old, bright days. Otto doesn’t know. And now you also are going away.”

She began to cry, looking so white and fragile, with the snoring dog upon her lap.

“I couldn’t sell your father’s collections, Gerard, could I?” she complained. “He wanted me not to. Still”—a long pause; her face lighted up—“if that would keep you from going to that horrible place, I—I think I could venture. I think he would understand if I explained, when we meet again.”

“No, no, let me go,” said the young man, in a choked voice. “I shall come back to you, mother, with a ‘position.’ You will be proud of me.”

The Baroness shook her head.

“I am that already,” she said. “It is so uncomfortable here, I do not wonder you have enough of it. Otto is always ‘busy’ with ‘business,’ like a shopkeeper, and Ursula doesn’t even love him.”

“Mother!” cried Gerard.

“Not as I understand love—not as I loved your father. But, as I admitted, I no longer know. Sometimes I think I shall end like poor grandpapa, my head gets so tired; only I am still so much younger than he was, Gerard. Oh, Gerard, your father died too soon! God has been very hard on me. I never say any clever things now, as I used to do.”

In the hall, Gerard, still stunned and heart-sore, was waylaid by Tante Louisa.

“I have got a little present for you,” began that lady, in her most nervous falsetto. “It has cost me a great deal of privation, Gerard. What with the increase of expenses everywhere—I have twice already felt obliged to raise my ‘pension,’ although Otto pretends to object—I really can hardly afford it. But, then, it is a farewell gift.”

Gerard took the envelope she proffered him, gratefully, wondering whether it contained ten florins or twenty-five.

“And I should like to say, Gerard,” subjoined the Freule in a flutter, “that I highly approve of your conduct in going, and also of your fighting the German. He was insufferable. Hephzibah has told nobody but me.”

“Hephzibah,” said the Freule, in her own room. “In my youth I could have married a Prussian. We met him at Schlangenbad. But I loved my country.”

Gerard, opening his envelope, extracted a bank-note for one thousand florins.

When the younger son had sailed away, with his strange new uniform, to the land of falling cocoanuts and cannon-balls, the waves of emotion at the Manor-house settled down into a disagreeable ground-swell. Otto had made up his mind to “forgive and forget,” a combination foredoomed to failure; Ursula walked straight on by her husband’s side, with a gloved hand in his. It was useless to talk about forgetting. She would never do that. Not as long as a proud woman’s heart beat under her wifely bosom. With scrupulous tenderness she smoothed the daily deepening furrows upon the Baron’s careworn brow.

And the months passed on, exceedingly like each other, excepting that Baron Otto made himself fresh enemies with every fresh act of justice. He was stern, and, necessarily, stingy. It was true that his honest impulse to discuss his suspicions with Ursula’s father had cost him the last friend he possessed in Horstwyk. He clung the more tenaciously to his life’s object. And he idolized his child.

On this point, at least, there could be sympathy between husband and wife. Little Otto was querulous over his infantine troubles. He disliked teething, and going to sleep, and cold water, and hot water, and eczema. He did not take kindly to existence. It is that class of children which, universally forsaken, hang on, by the nails, to their parents’ hearts. There was no danger of Ursula’s heart becoming atrophied. In one thing she did not obey her husband; she slipped in and out among the poor a great deal more than Otto knew.

But, having no money, she came with empty hands, and her visits were rarely appreciated, except by the purely imaginary poor person, who thought a glimpse of her bonnie face better than a sixpence any day.

Winter was coming round again when Otto one morning received a letter from a person who signed herself “Adeline Skiff.” The person spoke of great wrongs she had suffered from Gerard, of present distress, and of possible assistance. Otto had never heard of Adeline Skiff, but with his usual thoroughness he took the next train to Drum, and unexpectedly called upon the lady. He knew her again when he saw her, although she was very much changed.

Adeline lived in a blind alley, among odds and ends. She was the only inhabitant who wore a fringe, and this fact afforded her daily satisfaction. Otherwise, her reputation was dubious, and her slovenliness undoubted.

She received the Baron in a small front room, filled by a sewing-machine and two children. She hastened to explain that her husband, who was not over-kind to her, had lost his last place in a lawyer’s office on account of his stubborn integrity; she got a little dress-making, not much; she had hoped that Mynheer the Baron might be moved to do something for her or her children. She pushed forward two dirty-faced boys; Otto started, involuntarily, at sight of the elder. Adeline smiled knowingly.

“I cannot verify your story,” said Otto.

Adeline looked up quickly. “Can’t you, really, Mynheer the Baron?” she retorted.

“And my brother, did he not give you money?”

“Yes, he gave me three thousand florins,” replied Adeline, frankly, “and my husband spent them.”

“I cannot help that,” said Otto.

No, he was not willing to assist her. She appealed but little to his sympathy.

He could not believe she belonged to the “deserving poor,” and he told her so. How had she got hold of her worthless husband?

“By advertisement,” replied Adeline, offended. “The same way your worthy lady tried to get hers.”

“What do you mean? You are insolent,” said Otto, haughtily.

“Oh, of course, Mynheer the Baron; poor people always are when they speak the truth. But when the Baroness was advertising for a husband she couldn’t be sure that she’d get such a good one as you.”

“If you mean anything except insult,” said Otto, frowning, “tell me the truth, and I will pay you.”

Whereupon Adeline told, with slight embellishment. Ursula had answered advertisements, Gerard’s among the number. She had “wanted” a husband. So, of course, she had accepted Otto’s proffered hand.

“A mÉsalliance is a mistake, after all. There is something in blood,” thought Otto, in the train. He went home quite quietly. But that evening, to Ursula’s wonderment, he dropped, for the first time, his good-night kiss.

That year’s winter opened dully. Otto had let the shooting; it was a sacrifice of which he could not trust himself to speak. No one came to the house in the absence of battues. Gerard wrote home regular letters to his mother, bright letters, but the Baroness, bored to death, was growing somnolent and slow.

Bad accounts of Gerard—mostly false—occasionally reached the Manor-house. People said he was exceedingly wild and devil-may-care. Rumor told, moreover, that he had got himself entangled, on the journey out, with the governess of an English family.

“Thank God, we have the boy,” said Otto.

One evening, late in October, the father came into the nursery, where Ursula was trying to make “Ottochen” balance himself against a chair.

“Ursula,” began the Baron, hurriedly, “where have you been this afternoon?”

Ursula slowly lifted her eyes to his excited face.

“At the ‘Hemel,’” she said, firmly. “Vrouw Zaniksen was ill again. And her baby, too. They were absolutely destitute. So I went.”

“The baby is dead,” burst out Otto. “It is a case of malignant diphtheria. I met the doctor just now. He warned me.” The father sprang forward, placing himself between wife and child. “Leave the room!” he cried. “Don’t come back to-day. Leave the child to me!” He caught the boy so violently to his breast that Ottochen began to cry. Ursula hurried away, unresisting, with that wail in her ears.

A few hours later, when they were alone together, she said, very meekly, “Forgive me, Otto.”

He looked up wearily.

“I forgive you this,” he answered. Then, with an effort as of one who breaks through a hedge, “But not,” he added, “the having married me when you did not love me.”

She was a very proud woman, yet in this moment of his misery she knelt down by his side. “Dear husband,” she said, “if I wronged you it was in innocence. How, except by loving, can a woman’s heart learn love?”

Otto sighed, crushing down the accusation that she had learned the lesson since, but from another teacher.

“Ursula,” he said, “there is a foreboding in my heart to-night of coming trouble. God grant it prove only a foolish fancy. But, if not, then let us at least lighten each other’s load. Ursula, look into my eyes. Tell me, dearest, that it is not true, this story of your hunting for a husband, of your marrying me because others had drawn back!”

“It is not true,” she said, bitterly, still kneeling, but with scornfully averted glance.

“Tell me it is not true that you have ever loved any one else.”

This time she faced him fully. “It is not true,” she repeated.

“Ursula, God knows I have never wronged you by a word.”

“I have never wronged you by a thought,” she answered, rising to her feet, and he felt that, whatever time might alter, one shadow must remain.

“I love you,” he said. “I have loved you from the first. I shall always love you through all my weakness and all my wrong.”

She put her arm round his neck and kissed him.

Twice during the night Ursula slipped away from her room to listen at the nursery door. She crept back gratefully amid the perfect silence. The slight irritation in her own throat was what people always feel, she told herself, at the bare mention of diphtheria. Yet all next day she kept away from little Otto.

She was sitting at the piano, when her husband came in to her, with a white scare on his bronzed face.

“The child is not well,” he said, hoarsely. “I have sent for the doctor.”

Ursula started up. “Oh, Otto,” she cried, “is it the throat?” Otto nodded. “Then I can go to him,” she said, “now,” and ran from the room.

The white spots were there; she saw them despite the little creature’s struggles, and her heart sank. But she also had a few white spots. There was so much false diphtheria.

The doctor, however, looked grave, and muttered, “Angina pellicularis.” He was angry with Ursula. “I shall stay,” he said, and she cowered down by the little bed.

Then followed an evening of unbroken anxiety. The child grew rapidly worse, and the parents could do nothing but watch its gaspings. Towards midnight the doctor performed the horrible, unavoidable operation which gave it a little more air.

In the lull of suspense Ursula’s gaze fell upon Otto. “And you!” she said, suddenly, “you are ill! You, too! Doctor!”

Otto sank back in responsive collapse.

“It’s no use holding out any longer,” he panted. “Doctor, I’m afraid there’s something wrong with me too.”

“Let me look at your throat,” said the Doctor, harshly. “Here’s a pretty bit of business,” he added, turning to Ursula.

Very shortly after there were two sick-rooms opening out of each other, and the whole household trod softly under the near terror of Death. All through the silent morning Ursula passed from bed to bed, her own pain gone, feeling nothing but the dull agony of useless nursing. Hephzibah had quietly installed herself as an assistant. The child’s usual attendant was too full of personal alarm. Tante Louisa came to the door with persistent whisper. Miss Mopius left a bottle of fluid electricity and ten globules of Sympathetico Lob.

The doctor, who had been away for his rounds, came back in the afternoon and inserted a tube in the father’s throat also. Ursula did not dare to question his solemnly sullen face.

One thought seemed chiefly to occupy Otto as he lay choking. He had written on a piece of paper—finding no rest till they gave it to him—the following words: “I must die before the child. Tell the doctor to make him live so long. Or kill me. Never Gerard, Ursula. Never, never. You first. For another Helmont!”

She had read the message in her deep distress, and understood it. Dutch law no longer admits entail. If Otto died childless, his mother and brother were his legal heirs. But Ursula would be heir to her fatherless son.

She clasped her husband’s hand in response to the hunger of his eyes, and when the doctor came she put the question which was straining through them.

“Doctor, he wants me to ask it. If—if this were to be fatal”—she went on bravely—“which do you think—first?”

“How do I know?” replied Dr. Lapperpap, roughly. “Pray to God for both. Both of them need your prayers.”

Once again Otto signified his wish to write, in the short-lived winter day.

“Never Gerard,” he scrawled. “You will help. By every means. Only not Gerard. Promise.”

She bowed her head, but he pressed his finger on the final word. In his dying eyes there was a passion of eagerness she could not resist. Promise! promise!

“I promise,” she said. And it grew slowly dark.

Presently Ursula came through the intervening door into the nursery. Hephzibah looked up.

“Mevrouw,” she said, “it’s no use trying to deceive you. The baby is dying. It can’t last many minutes. It’s the Lord’s doing. Blessed be the terrible name of the Lord!”

Ursula knelt down and calmly kissed the little congested forehead. What did the danger matter? Perhaps she was courting death.

Then she went back to her husband, and gazed deeply upon his terrible struggle. She could do nothing to help him. But she felt that this agony, also, was approaching its end.

Hephzibah knocked gently. “Mevrouw,” she whispered, “Mevrouw, it is over. The poor little thing is at rest.”

Some moments elapsed before Ursula appeared. Then her face stood out, in the dusk, hard and set.

“Go down-stairs,” she said. “Go away, and leave me alone with my dead.” She pushed forth the waiting-woman, and locked the nursery door behind her. For a moment she waited by the cot; then she returned to the inner room. It was now quite dark. A quick shuffling made itself heard in the passage. Somebody tried the lock. Ursula took no notice.

Half an hour later she opened the door and passed out into the hall. An oil-lamp was burning there. She shaded her eyes from its glare.

On the staircase she met Aunt Louisa. “Come into the dining-room, aunt,” she said. “There is something I must tell you.” She sank down on the nearest chair, by the glitter of the untouched dinner-table. “Dearest Aunt Louisa,” she said, “you mustn’t mind too much. God has taken Otto to Himself. And—and He has taken baby also.”

Aunt Louisa began to cry.

“Don’t cry,” said Ursula, almost impatiently; “I don’t cry.”

“Otto and baby!” sobbed the Freule—“oh, Ursula, Otto and baby!”

“Yes, doesn’t it seem strange?” said Ursula, staring in front of her.

After a moment’s pause she added, “Aunt Louisa, somebody must go at once, I suppose, for the doctor, and also for the notary. Mustn’t they?” She went across and rang the bell.

“Anton,” she said, “two messengers must be off instantly, one to the doctor, one to the notary. No time must be lost. Anton, your master is dead. And the Jonker is dead also.”

The man’s face grew white, and his eyes overflowed. Ursula turned hastily away.

The notary was the first to arrive. The widow received him alone. After the usual preliminaries of condolence he told her that Otto had left no will.

“I am sure of it,” said the notary, “for he talked the matter over with me. Before the child’s birth he was anxious to disinherit the old Baroness, his mother. When I told him that this would be quite impossible, he said there was no use in his making a will.”

“The Baroness has no claim on the property now,” said Ursula. “She is very nearly childish, as you are aware.” The Baroness would mean Gerard.

“If Mynheer the Baron died after your little boy,” said the notary, as gently as he could, “then his mother and brother are his heirs. But, Mevrouw, if the Baron died first, then your little boy inherited the property at that moment, and you, being a widow, are the only person entitled to any estate left by your child.”

“My husband died first,” said Ursula.

Notary Noks rose in his agitation. “Then, madame,” he said, “you are the owner of the Manor-house. Henceforth you are the Lady of Horstwyk and the Horst.”

Ursula looked into the lawyer’s face. “It is an inheritance of debt,” she said.