THE DEAD-AWAKE

“Supposing I had told my secret?” reflected Hephzibah, peeping through the key-hole. “Supposing I had told my secret? If I hadn’t met that woman at Klomp’s I believe I really should have told the Freule this time. Wonderful are the ways of Providence! Imagine the slatternly creature established here at the Manor-house playing the mistress over—me!” Hephzibah peeped down again. “She in there’s bad enough, the parson’s daughter. But at least she leaves a body alone.” Then Hephzibah shuffled away on velvet slippers, the only soft thing about her.

The key-hole which had attracted her was Ursula’s. My Lady sat at her nightly task by the lamp. Her forefinger was inked, her earnest forehead was puckered, yet the figures would not add up right. She was learning book-keeping by double entry; twice a week a master came from Drum.

She sighed, and pushed her hand in among her rumpled hair. Romance is romance; alas, that in real life it should so seldom be romantic! There was less money even than in Otto’s time. Therefore, things went even worse with everybody than they had gone in Otto’s time. She sighed, returning to her distasteful task.

All the villagers disliked her, and she knew it. They considered it a slight upon themselves that their parson’s daughter should usurp, by a fluke, the ancient throne of the Van Helmonts.

Ursula would not have minded this, however, had she known how to pay her succession duty and make both ends meet.

As she sat thus, working and worrying, the door was suddenly thrown wide open, and, without any warning, Hephzibah walked in.

Her face shone white; her whole manner and expression were as of one sick with alarm.

“Come up-stairs, Mevrouw,” she said, in a shrill whisper; and when Ursula hesitated she caught her by the sleeve. “Come up-stairs,” she reiterated, leading the way, but refusing any further explanation. Ursula mechanically followed. Gasping for breath, the woman ran along a dim corridor, and then stopped in the dark of an unused room.

“Hark!” she said, with uplifted finger.

“What?” answered Ursula, impatiently. “I hear nothing. Do you?”

For only answer Hephzibah passed behind her and closed the door, through which a faint glimmer of light had come stealing. They were then in absolute darkness.

“Well, what now? What is the matter?” repeated the young Baroness, with some anxiety in her tone. In the obscurity she yet perceived that Hephzibah had uplifted a finger.

“Hush!” said the maid. “You will hear it presently. There! There it is!” She bent forward, clutching at her companion. “There it is! What do you say now?”

Ursula fell back and tore open the door again, but the light thus admitted only showed looming shapes.

“I hear nothing,” she said, faintly, dazed, alone with this mad-woman. She had always had an undefined dread of the crooked-eyed maid.

“Oh, my God, I had an idea that if you came it would stop!” cried Hephzibah. “Oh, never mind the door. Door or no door, it won’t stop now. I’ve heard it before, several times. It’s like a man gasping. In there.” She pointed to the closed entrance leading to an inner chamber. “Mevrouw, dare you really say you hear nothing at all?”

Ursula shuddered. They were standing in the deserted nursery; the room adjoining was that in which Otto had died. Both were now disused.

“Come, Hephzibah,” she said, soothingly. “There is nothing here; you are mistaken. Come down-stairs. You are distressed, poor thing, by the terrible memory of your nursing in this very room. Do not think of it. I cannot trust my own thoughts to dwell on those days.”

But the waiting-woman took no heed. She had fallen on her knees, and remained thus, her face averted towards the closed door of the inner chamber.

“O God, have mercy!” she wailed. “She doesn’t hear it! What have I done? If I have done wrong, my fault is as nothing compared to her sin! She must hear it. Surely she must hear it.” She paused a moment, and in a calmer tone, “It isn’t fair,” she said.

Ursula had clutched her by the shoulder.

“What do you mean? What do you know?” asked Ursula, resolutely.

Still the woman did not seem to hear her.

“Hush!” said Hephzibah, falling, with uplifted finger, into her earlier attitude of intentness. “Listen. A sobbing, choking noise, as of a man gasping for breath. I often hear it there. Not always. If I always heard it it might be fancy.”

“What do you know?” repeated Ursula, with persistent stress.

Hephzibah hesitated. Before her rose the image of Adeline, fringe and all, giving orders in the store-room. She turned suddenly.

“Know, Mevrouw?” she said. “What should I know? A great deal less than you, anyway. I’m only a poor servant. I suppose it’s some of Satan’s doing. Ah, he’s mighty strong, is Satan—mighty strong!” She slipped away towards the glimmer from the passage, muttering, “Mighty, mighty strong,” and so stole from the room.

Ursula made no effort to retain her. The door fell to, and the black silence seemed to thicken. Ursula stood quite still. Involuntarily she listened, scornful of herself. Something creaked in the next room, or near her—her heart leaped into her throat. With an exclamation of impatience she threw open the intervening door.

She had not entered these two death-chambers since her illness. The inner one was empty and damply chill. Here the shutters were thrown back, and through the gaunt window a bluish grayness fell across the deeper dark. Ursula’s figure struck against the dim twilight in a great black bar.

After a moment’s hesitation she walked to the window and gazed up into the night. Amid a confusion of tumbled clouds an occasional star lay peeping, like a diamond through black lace. One of them, close above her, seemed to be watching steadily.

“Otto,” said Ursula, in a firm whisper, “I am doing my best. I am trying to keep my promise. I don’t know how God judges me. I don’t know. Otto, I am doing my best.”

She stood for some time thinking. Then she shivered, as if suddenly realizing the clammy cold all about her, and hurried away.

In the corridor, just as the cheerful lamplight was broadening to greet her, she met Aunt Louisa, who emerged in a great hurry from her own private sitting-room. Aunt Louisa was evidently in one of her “sinful fits,” as Hephzibah called them. (Hephzibah called “sinful” whatever was distasteful to herself.) The Freule’s left hand held a letter, and her right hand an envelope. She cried out as soon as she caught sight of Ursula:

“Ursula, I must have my interest! I didn’t ask you back for the capital—not even when Otto died. But, Ursula, I must have my interest.”

Ursula paused. The Freule’s whole face quivered with pink excitement. Both her extended hands shook.

“I don’t understand, Aunt Louisa!” said Ursula, dizzily. “What is it?”

“Now, Ursula, don’t say that. You know how nervous money matters make me. And I’m afraid it was very foolish of me to give my money to Otto, and I didn’t ask it back, not even when you got it all.”

“It’s a good mortgage,” interrupted Ursula, “and, besides, you couldn’t ask it back.”

“Now don’t throw those law terms at my head,” cried the Freule, in a tremulous screech, “for I don’t know what they mean. But I do know that it’s very ungrateful of you to speak like that, Ursula, after what I’ve done for you all. And I left the money in your hands because I think you are strong, and altogether it is a very interesting experiment. But I must have my interest. I can’t do without my interest. Here’s my man of business writes that Noks has prepared him”—the Freule referred to the paper which crackled between her fingers—“for the possibility of there being some delay in the payment of the next instalment. Now, Ursula, I pay my board and wages punctually, and I can’t have that.”

“When is the next payment due?” asked Ursula.

“On the first of next month. Now, Ursula, don’t look like that. It is you who are to blame, not I. Never have I been twenty-four hours too late, though poor Theodore used to leave the money lying about for days. But your mother-in-law once truly said that, at any rate, you had this of royalty about you—you could do no wrong! Well, that is strong, and I have no objection. By-the-bye, your mother-in-law meant it ironically. But strong people should, above all, be honest, Ursula, and it’s dishonest to take advantage of the helplessness of a poor ignorant spinster like me.”

“You will have your interest,” said Ursula, by the stair-head, under the full glare of the lamp. “Noks was wrong.” And she went slowly down into the vestibule. She felt that she must get away for the moment from this suffocating house.

She took a hat and passed forth into the night. A cold little wind was curling in and out among the trees. Everywhere spread the grimness, the bare, black hardness of March, shrouded in darkness and indistinctly threatening. Ursula’s yearning went out, in this absolute solitude, to the husband whose strong love had lifted her up and placed her thus terribly high. Even a servant still heard his voice in its dying agony. Had she, then, the wife, already forgotten him? No, indeed; more closely than during his lifetime their existences were interwoven in her faithful fulfilment of his charge. She was possessed with a sudden foolish desire to hear that kind voice, that earnest voice again—aye, even the last gasp, as did Hephzibah. She hurried in the direction of the church-yard, of the vault where he lay. He had loved her—loved her, lifted her up—the simple village girl—to be my Lady Nobody. She wanted him again. She wanted him.

All at once, as she was hastening on, the memory struck her, like a new thought, of how he had doubted her honor. She stopped, stock-still, in the middle of the road. Then, like a smitten flower from the stem, she dropped by the side of a broad elm-tree, and for the first time since her widowhood gave way to a passion of tears.

“What’s this?” said a rough voice, close in front, and a dark lantern flashed out its hideous wide circle. “What are you doing here? Now, then, look sharp!”

The Baroness staggered to her feet.

“It is I,” she stammered—“Mevrouw van Helmont;” and then, recognizing the local policeman, “I am not well, Juffers; help me home.”

The man escorted her in amazed if deferential silence. He could understand even a Baroness being suddenly taken ill, but he could not understand a Baroness being out there alone at this time of night. It was not difficult for her to read his thoughts as he tramped on, lantern in hand; she gladly dismissed him, with an unwisely large gratuity, as soon as the lights of the house came in sight.

“Well!” he mused, standing, clumsily respectful, with the broad silver piece on his open palm, “she isn’t too ill to walk, anyway. Straight as a dart. Blest if I didn’t think it was Tipsy Liza! I wish that she’d march as easy when I takes her to the lock-up.”

Hephzibah came forward as the young Baroness entered the house. With unusual politeness, but with averted eyes, she took that lady’s hat. And Ursula, returning to her room, where her copy-books lay patiently, painfully waiting, felt that henceforth she was, more or less, in this silent servant’s power.

“I will go on,” she said, doggedly, settling down to “debtor” and “creditor,” “with God’s help or without.”