THE NEW LIFE

Ursula awoke from a long dream of suffering. The world was very dark all around her, and she strove to lie still. But even while she did so she knew by the steady pulse once more swelling in her brain that the endeavor would prove fruitless. Alive again, she must live.

Her husband and her child were dead. It was she who, despising Otto’s fears of infection, had brought death into the house. Something told her that Otto, had he survived, would tacitly have laid the loss of the child at her door. And yet it was impossible to say for certain. Death changes all our perspectives. Ursula’s was not a nature to sink away into maudlin self-disparagement. She did not dash the tears from her cheek, but she resolutely lifted her head.

Nothing, however, makes us so tender towards those who loved us as the thought that we have done them irreparable wrong. When Ursula arose from her sick-bed, it was with the firm resolve to honor her husband’s memory by the daily sacrifice of her whole self to that which, but for her, might still have been his own life-task. She took up his cross exactly where he had laid it down. That was all she thought of—neither right nor wrong; neither God’s providence nor her own unfitness—only to do exactly as Otto would have wished.

“I understand perfectly,” she said, sitting, cold, with the blackness of her mourning about her. “I told you at the time, Notary, exactly how it was. There is no ready money—not even enough to pay the death duties. There is nothing except mortgages, the interest on which only hard work can meet.”

“You will have to sell some of the land,” replied the lawyer, hopelessly. “You had better sell the whole place. You can’t keep it up, anyhow. Not that present prices will ever pay off the mortgage.”

The widow remained silent for a moment; there was little of the “nut-brown” color left in the stately face against the oaken chair. “I shall never sell an inch,” she said, at last. “Never, as long as I live.”

“That is a long time,” retorted the matter-of-fact man of business. “A great deal may happen”—he glanced at his beautiful, beautified client; “meanwhile, everything of value in the house belongs, I understand, to the Dowager Baroness?”

“It does.”

“The Dowager Baroness, it appears to me, if I may venture to say so, is lapsing into second childhood.”

No answer. The room was very lofty and empty. The far stretch of naked country was very chill and bleak. The Notary got up to go.

“If I were you,” he said, “I should rid myself of the whole thing. I should decline to inherit. It’s a hopeless thing from the outset. Gerard will have his mother’s fortune to himself now, some day. He is all the better off for having missed the dead weight which has fallen on to your shoulders. It was a narrow squeak.”

She came up to him—quite suddenly, close. “You think that,” she said, with thick utterance. “You understand that. Always remember it. Do you hear?” A clear passion had overflowed the dull dark of her eyes. Violently she mastered the trembling which shook her from head to foot.

“Of course, my dear lady; it is evident. Your brother-in-law could hardly have sold the property as you will. Yes, yes, as you will. Never mind; take your time. It is an experiment.”

“No,” she said, “it is not an experiment. Good-day.”

Notary Noks considered himself a very shrewd man. He perfectly comprehended the young Baroness’s resolution to play the fine lady as long as she was able. “She’s been dem lucky,” reflected the lawyer as he drove away; “but she’ll have to marry again, and marry money if she wants to keep on. It’s a queer end of the Van Helmonts.” He had known the pastor’s girl ever since she was a baby; his opinion of the proud, pale woman from whom he had just come away was distinctly unfavorable.

Ursula passed through the long, gray library, and, drawing a curtain, softly entered the old Baroness’s rose-garlanded sanctum.

Through the south turret window the sunlight lay in an amber bar. And, incased in the clear gold, like a fly, sat the little black Dowager, surrounded by her papers, writing with the serene concentration of a well-defined literary task. She looked up across her glasses, pen in hand.

“I am busy,” she said, her tone full of mild annoyance. She was always busy, the more so when Ursula disturbed her—endlessly busy with the “Memoir,” noting down the same trifles over and over again.

“I know,” replied Ursula, meekly; “but I thought you would like to have this, so I brought it you out of the hall.”

It was a letter from Gerard, away in Acheen, the first response to the more explicit account of their common bereavement, coming back to them across the wide void of five months’ illness and solitude.

The Dowager tore open the envelope. Ursula waited, uncertain how to give least offence.

“There is a message for you,” said the Dowager when she had finished reading; “but I shall not give it you. It is an absurd message. It is an absurd letter in many ways. Poor Gerard, his sorrows have turned his brain. Like mine. Like mine. Like mine.”

She gathered together her papers, aimlessly, scattering them as she took them up.

“Stay with me, Ursula,” she said, querulously. “I have nobody to help me with these important documents. There must be a letter somewhere dated August the 5th, 1854. Or is it April—April, ’45? It is a letter from a friend of your father-in-law; I forget his name. I had it a moment ago. Or was it yesterday I had it? I was reading it to cook. She remembers things. She has been with me a long time. She remembers my dear husband quite well.”

“I will look for it,” said Ursula, taking care not to disturb Plush, who always made a bed for herself in the very midst of the crackly confusion on the table. “Is this it?”

“No, indeed,” replied the Baroness, without glancing up to verify her verdict. “You don’t know, Ursula. You are a new-comer. Cook is right, though I told her some things are best left unsaid.”

She went on folding and sorting, muttering to herself with a quiet little lady-like laugh.

“Gerard is ridiculous,” she presently broke out, with angry energy. “He says he would have had to sell the place as well as you must now, so where’s the difference? He is a fool. He would not have had to sell it, no more than Otto. Did Otto want to sell it, Ursula?”

She sat back in her chair, glowering with her light blue eyes at her daughter-in-law.

“No,” said Ursula, bending low over the writing-table.

“Aha! I thought you would try to deceive me. I forget a good many things, but I remember this. Do you hear me, daughter-in-law? I have never loved you; I had little reason to.”

Her voice rose shrill with quavery passion; she tried to steady her feeble little frame with blue-veined hands on the massive arms of her chair.

“But what does Gerard mean when he says—what does he say?—I forget—he says I must be kind to you. What does he mean? I have always been kind to you. But what right had you—better have plain speaking—to come and steal away my house from my son? Eh?” She started to her feet; the dog, disturbed by her cry, sprang up, barking furiously. “What right?” she repeated. “It is Gerard’s—I told him so. I told him to come and take it away from you. He writes back, ‘No.’ He is a coward—a coward as they all are, for a woman’s face.”

She sank back, whispering the final sentences, and began to cry, with noiseless, unrestrained tears.

“Dear mamma, we will not sell it,” pleaded Ursula, though she knew how uselessly. “You see, Gerard says again he would have done so. Let us be glad, then, that he has not got it yet. Perhaps, some day, when he thinks differently—meanwhile—in—trust—”

She stopped, not daring, nor caring, to proceed. But the Dowager had only caught at one sentence.

“No, we will not sell it,” she repeated: “no, indeed. Attempt such a thing and I appeal to the police! You sell what belongs to another! You! Listen, Ursula. I am not as strong as I was. I forget things. I dare say you imagine I am growing childish. But be sure of this: that however stupid I may seem to become, I shall always know about the Horst. I shall watch over it for Gerard. I have written to him to come back, and he will come. You alter nothing—do you understand? Nothing. Oh, my God, I am a poor defenceless old woman! Have pity upon me, and make my head keep strong! Oh, if Theodore had only not died—not died! Oh, my God, my God!”

She shrank together, like a lace shawl thrown aside, and the tears trickled down among the trinkets of her watch-chain.

Ursula rose and went out into the deserted corridor. From one of the stands by the distant hall-door a brown-tinged “MarÉchal Niel” fell to pieces with a heavy thud on the marble pavement.

“Monk!” cried the mistress of the mansion. “Monk!”

With great yelps of greeting the St. Bernard came bounding towards her.