[Illustration: “HE STUDIED HIMSELF IN THE GLASS”]
MY LADY NOBODY
A Novel
BY
MAARTEN MAARTENS
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1895
Copyright, 1895, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
Dedication
_God’s Angel of Human Love sat alone in the garden of lilies. Her
arms hung listless among the blooms she had gathered into her lap.
For her eyes--sole mirrors of the Inapproachable Presence--were
gazing steadfastly down upon the darkness, deep down where the
black bar of sorrow strikes across the wide radiance of eternity,
down on the sin-laden star that still hastens athwart the shadow. A
single teardrop stole out upon her cheek, and, falling, crept away
into a milk-white chalice. Suddenly, with a movement of ineffable
pity, she flung forth all the flowers upon her lap, into the world
below._
_Into my bosom, O Beloved, is fallen the flower with the tear at
its heart. Unto thee, O fair among God’s flowers, white among his
angels, strong among his saints, unto thee, with the thorn in thy
side, and the star on thy forehead, unto thee do I dedicate this
ray from a life of which thou art the light._
CONTENTS
Part I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. URSULA 1
II. THE DOMINÉ 6
III. HOME 10
IV. THE VAN HELMONTS 18
V. LE PREMIER PAS--QUI COÛTE 25
VI. UNCONSCIOUS RIVALS 34
VII. HARRIET’S ROMANCE 43
VIII. THE TRYST 53
IX. OTTO’S WOOING 63
X. AN INDELIBLE STAIN 74
XI. ONE HOUR OF HAPPINESS 83
XII. “AN OLD MAID’S LOVE” 94
XIII. FOR LIFE OR DEATH 105
XIV. A SATISFACTORY SETTLEMENT 113
XV. DONNA É MOBILE 119
XVI. A FOOL AND HIS FOLLY 127
Part II
XVII. BROTHERLY HATE 136
XVIII. THE DUTY OF THE PARENT 142
XIX. FORFEITS ALL ROUND 151
XX. MYNHEER MOPIUS’S PARTY 159
XXI. BARON VAN HELMONT 169
XXII. GERARD’S SHARE 174
XXIII. TOPSY REXELAER 187
XXIV. MASKS AND FACES 195
XXV. CORONETS AND CROSSES 208
XXVI. FREULE LOUISA 216
XXVII. PEACE AND GOOD-WILL 224
XXVIII. THE SECOND MRS. MOPIUS 231
XXIX. THE BLOT ON THE SNOW 236
XXX. CHRISTMAS EVE 243
XXXI. “WHOSOEVER SHALL SMITE THEE--” 250
XXXII. THE GREAT PEACE 257
Part III
XXXIII. INTRIGUE 267
XXXIV. THE NEW LIFE 276
XXXV. “MRS. GERARD” 281
XXXVI. THE DEAD-AWAKE 291
XXXVII. POLITICS 297
XXXVIII. THE OLD BLOT 308
XXXIX. THE COUNSELLOR 316
XL. THE NEW BAILIFF 323
XLI. THUNDER IN THE TROPICS 335
XLII. THE FINGER OF SCORN 351
XLIII. ARRESTED 358
XLIV. AFRAID 371
XLV. THE HOME-COMING OF THE HERO 377
XLVI. THE FATAL KNIFE 388
XLVII. TRIUMPHANT 393
XLVIII. A WIFE FOR GERARD 402
XLIX. FACE TO FACE WITH HERSELF 407
ILLUSTRATIONS
“HE STUDIED HIMSELF IN THE GLASS” _Frontispiece_
“‘CONFOUND YOU! GET OUT OF THE WAY, CAN’T YOU?’” _Facing page_ 4
“‘GIRD UP YOUR LOINS!’ CRIED THE DOMINÉ” “ “ 26
“‘OH, I’M SO SORRY,’ SHE CRIED” “ “ 36
“THE GIRLS WALKED ON IN SILENCE” “ “ 58
“‘THE TRAM!’ EXCLAIMED URSULA, HALF RISING” “ “ 108
“‘THERE HAS BEEN NO QUARREL THAT I KNOW OF, MEVROUW’” “ “ 120
“‘NO ONE MORE SORRY THAN YOURSELF!’ BURST IN GERARD” “ “ 138
“HE WENT FORWARD WITH HIS FINGERS AT HIS COLLAR-STUD” “ “ 156
“‘IT SEEMS TOO CRUEL TO DIE AND LEAVE IT ALL’” “ “ 168
“THERE WAS SUCH A CROWD IN THE CENTRAL ROOM” “ “ 192
“‘OH, THEY ARE ALL THAT,’ CRIED OTTO, FACING ROUND” “ “ 212
“‘I SHOULD WISH TO--PAY SEVEN FLORINS MORE PER WEEK’” “ “ 222
“SHE SANK DOWN BESIDE THE CRADLE, HIDING AWAY FROM
HIM” “ “ 238
“GERARD THRUST THE GLOVE INTO HIS POCKET” “ “ 254
“‘GOOD-BYE, MR. MOPIUS; MY COMPLIMENTS TO MEVROUW!’” “ “ 276
“‘DO YOU KNOW, YOU BOY, WHO COMES FOR CHILDREN THAT
STEAL?’” “ “ 284
“‘COME UP-STAIRS,’ SHE REITERATED” “ “ 292
“‘I SUPPOSE YOU DON’T REMEMBER ME, MADAME’” “ “ 314
“THEY BEGAN CALMLY CARVING A PASSAGE THROUGH THE
DENSE OBSTRUCTION” “ “ 348
“SUBSTANTIAL HOUSEWIVES WHISPERED BEHIND HER BACK,
‘FIE! FIE!’” “ “ 352
“THE CARRIAGE HALTED BY THE CHURCH” “ “ 382
“‘IT SHALL BE FIVE THOUSAND FLORINS IF IT’S A PENNY,
MY LADY’” “ “ 400
“‘I AM COME TO MAKE CONFESSION AND THEN TO LEAVE
YOU’” “ “ 412
MY LADY NOBODY
Part 1.--CHAPTER I
URSULA
It was a white-hot July morning. Long ago the impatient earth had
cast aside her thin veil of summer twilight; already she lay, a
Danae, in exultant swoon beneath the golden sun. Yet the bridegroom
had barely leaped forth to the conquest; his rath kisses were still
drinking the pearly freshness from the dawn, while the loud birds
filled the resonant heavens with the tumult of their bridal song.
It was still so early, and already so immovably warm; all wide
earth and deep sky agasp in the naked blaze. Ursula drew forward
her broad-brimmed straw hat, where she stood picking pease among
the tall lines of pale-green, blossom-speckled tangle.
“Oof!” she said. Not as your burly farmer says it, but with
the prettiest little high-pitched echo of the louder note. And
she buried her soft brown cheeks in the cool moisture of her
half-filled basket. Then she gravely resumed her work, and a
great, big, booming bumblebee, which had thought to play hide and
seek with Ursula’s nose, sailed away in disgust that on such a
sun-soaked morning any of God’s creatures should bend to toil in
his sight.
Ursula Rovers was not one of those who serve their Maker with
dancing and a shout. Yet she sang to herself, very sedately, as she
broke off each bursting pod, amid the fiercer jubilation of the
passion-drunk blackbirds and finches,
“Stand then with girded loins, and see your lamps be burning;
What though the sun lie fair upon your paths to-day,
Who reads the evening sky? Who knows if winds be turning?
The night comes surely. Watch and pray!”
The prim vegetable garden, with its ranks of gay salads and pompous
cabbages, lay serenely roasting, as vegetable gardens delight to
do, in unabated verdure. About Ursula’s corner the lattice-work
of creepers put forth some faint attempt at a stunted shadow.
Dominé Rovers came down the walk, his coat-flaps brushing the
currant-bushes.
“Who reads the evening sky? Who knows if winds be turning?”
“Ursula!”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Come in and shell your pease, while I recite you my sermon.”
“But I must pick them first, father!”
“True. What I love best in you, Ursula, is that you are as logical
as if you were not a woman.”
The pastor drew nearer to the scaffolding of greenery, and strove
vainly to shelter his tall figure in its shade. He was a spare,
soldierly-looking man, with an honest complexion and silvery hair.
You knew he had a very gentle countenance until you gave him cause
to turn a wrathful look upon you.
“I might as well begin at once,” he said, and, proud though she
was of her father’s preaching, the girl’s soul rose in momentary
protest on behalf of the birds and flowers. “I have chosen a text
for to-morrow, Ursula, which has troubled my thoughts all through
the week. All through the week, I couldn’t understand it. And when
I came to look it out, it wasn’t there at all.”
Ursula’s dutiful lips said, “I see.”
“I imagined the verse to be as follows: ‘Flee from youthful lusts
that war against the soul.’ But I see the word used is ‘Abstain.’ I
could not believe it of St. Peter that he would have instructed any
man to run away in battle. You will find the ‘flee’ in Timothy, my
dear, but the connection is not the same.”
Dominé Rovers paused and stood tenderly watching his natty daughter
in her cool print dress. Suddenly he burst out quite impetuously,
“Resist! Resist! That is the true Bible language. Resist the devil.
Resist temptation. And so I shall tell them to-morrow morning.
‘Dearly beloved,’ I shall say, ‘life is a--’”
“War,” cried Ursula, facing round. A bold blackbird had alighted on
one of the stakes, and sang loudly of peace and good-will.
“Don’t interrupt me, child”--the Dominé’s eyes grew vexed--“I know
I have said it before; they cannot hear the truth too often. Life
is a battle, dearly beloved. Against the city of Mansoul all the
powers of evil band themselves together. But in the vanguard march
ever the lusts of the flesh. You cannot escape the conflict. And
therefore”--the speaker lifted an energetic arm--“remember what
said the Corinthians--the grandsires of St. Paul’s Corinthians--to
the Spartans, their allies, ‘He that, for love of pleasure, shrinks
from battle, will most swiftly be deprived of those very delights
which caused him to abstain.’ My subject divides itself--Ursula,
you are not attending--into seven natural parts: the enemy, the
weapons, the--”
Nobody listened. All God’s creation, busy with its individual loves
and pleasures, luxuriously lapped in the sensuous sunlight and
rejoicing in universal allurement, was twittering and fluttering
and blushing and blooming in clouds of perfume and pollen. The
great All-father smiled down upon his manifold children--and
shrivelled them up.
Ursula was not listening. Her father was a dear, dear man, but she
had heard it all so often before! And fortune had pity upon her and
upon the sleepily staring marigolds, and created a diversion ere
the sermon was ten sentences old.
Shrill shrieks of childish protest under punishment arose from
beyond the garden-wall. The pastor of an unruly flock immediately
ran to peer over the bushes. And Ursula followed more slowly,
flitting into the full morning glow.
Out on the gleaming high-road a peasant-woman was belaboring an
eight-year-old urchin in a whirlwind of dust. “I’ll teach you to
use bad words,” she was screaming. “Damn me, I can’t make out, for
the life o’ me, what taught the child to swear!”
Ursula, leaning one round arm on the top of the garden-wall, turned
spontaneously to her father, all her serious young face a swift
ripple of fun; but the Dominé counted not a pennyworth of humor
among his many militant virtues. He pressed his thin lips tight,
under his Wellington nose. He was not going to reprove a mother in
the presence of her son.
“Discipline first,” said the Dominé. “One thing I note gratefully,
Ursula, that the wretched habit of swearing is now confined to the
lower classes in this country. In my time even gentlemen would
swear--”
A dog-cart had turned the sharp angle at the back, where the road
breaks off to the Manor-house. In the dust and the skirmish it
pulled up with a jerk, and a clear voice was heard crying,
“Confound you! Get out of the way, can’t you? Scuffling in the
middle of the road!”
The dog-cart was a very smart dog-cart, and the mare was a
high-stepping mare. She fretted under the sudden restraint, amid an
appetizing jingle and smell and glitter of harness. There was not
so much promiscuous dust but that the speaker could instantaneously
perceive the two heads over the low brown wall.
He lifted his cap. “Good-morning, Dominé! Good-morning, Ursula!” he
said, with nonchalance. “Awfully hot already, isn’t it?”
The Dominé raised a flashing eye. The woman and boy had slipped
away. “Gerard,” said the Dominé, “why do you swear at our people?
How often must I remind you of our joint responsibility? We must
lead them to what is right; I by my precept, you by your example.”
“Oh, Dominé, I’ll exchange, if you’re agreeable,” retorted the
young man, with a quick smile. The Dominé looked away.
“You are going to the station to fetch your brother, Gerard?”
interposed Ursula, carelessly cracking the pods in her basket.
[Illustration: “‘CONFOUND YOU! GET OUT OF THE WAY, CAN’T YOU?’”]
“Yes, at your service,” replied the young man, as he loosened the
reins.
“How strange it will be for you to meet Mynheer Otto again after
all these years!”
Gerard turned quickly from his prancing steed. “Are you going to
call Otto ‘Mynheer’?” he asked.
She blushed with annoyance, in an overflow of innocent confusion.
“Oh, very well,” he went on. “Only, of course, you will have to
call me Mynheer Gerard.”
He raced off, laughing. “I _know_ you,” she stammered; but the
words were lost in the dog-cart’s departing rattle. She appealed
to her father in dismay. “Why, father,” she cried, “I have known
Gerard all my life!”
Together they stood watching the dust-enfolded vehicle disappear
into the far blue sunshine. Its occupant was young, light-hearted,
and handsome. Evidently a cavalry officer: you could see that by
the way in which his tweeds and he conjoined without combining.
CHAPTER II
THE DOMINÉ
“Let us go in to breakfast,” said the Dominé. Father and daughter
passed up between the stiff stalks of the gooseberry-bushes, among
the sallow, swollen fruit. Both of them walked with a straight
step, the figure erect, and a little self-reliant.
The pastor fell back a few paces with meditative gaze. He was wont
to rejoice tremulously in Ursula’s physical health, in the easy
carriage of the head, the light swing of the hips. He rejoiced
in the clear brown of her complexion and the calm depth of her
brave brown eyes. No weak woman in blood or brain, this stately,
strong-limbed maiden. He thanked God mournfully, ever reminiscent
of the pervading sorrow of his life, the loss of the frail young
creature who had dropped by the road-side wellnigh twenty years ago.
It was that affliction which had made a cleric of Captain Roderick
Rovers. By nature he was a soldier, recklessly brave and almost
devil-may-care. A man who thought straight, if not far, and struck
straight in the front. He had escaped from the inertia of the long
Batavian peace to the red-hot tumult of Algerian desert war, and
had come back, early bronzed and silvered, _plus_ the Legion of
Honor and _minus_ an arm. He had married a pure white clinging
thing, like a lily, that twined every tendril round his sturdy
support, and then dropped from the stem. She was a good woman. To
him she had come as a revelation. “I have fought the good fight,”
she had whispered in dying. He, with the medals on his breast and
the memory of not a few killed and wounded--could he have said as
much face to face with death?
He began to comprehend something of that battle which is not to the
strong. On their wedding-day the bride had given her soldier-husband
Bunyan’s _Holy War_--a Dutch translation--substituting it on his
table for the weather-beaten little Thucydides which had been his
companion in all his campaigns. He had demanded back the Greek
historian. He now took up the spiritual conflict, and fought the
powers of darkness, as he had ever met an enemy, at arm’s-length.
His mutilation having incapacitated him from active service, he
took orders, henceforth to do battle with his country’s inmost foes
in the heart of every parishioner. The old militant spirit flamed
in him still, and he led his slow flock like a regiment under the
banner of the great Captain. On the high days of the Church he wore
his Cross of the Legion in the pulpit. His clerical superiors had
objected: he dared them to object. It was gained, he said, like
their reverend titles, in honorable war.
He had cherished the solitary treasure of his heart, but his care
had been free from coddling; he had even combated the enervating
influence of his sister-in-law, who kept house for him. “Coolness
and cold water” was one of his maxims in any sudden emergency; late
into the autumn you could have seen the gaunt father and the little
solemn-featured girl wending their way towards the river for a
swim. The bathless villagers watched and wondered. They judged the
good man to be a little daft, no doubt, but they loved his cheery
helpfulness. Dozing on the battle-field, they caught, between two
yawns, the stir of his _réveillé_, and its clarion note passed like
a breeze through the foulness of their sleeping-ditch.
Then they turned in the trenches and fell asleep again.
Ursula learned early that life was no dream-garden. “Duty, like a
stern preceptor,” often pushed himself unpleasantly to the fore
in her young existence and extinguished the sunlight, provoking
thunder-storms. Not that these were by any means the rule; her
father loved her too tenderly for that; he kissed her leisurely
upon the forehead. “Be sober,” he said, “be vigilant.” Her aunt
gave her sweets.
Yet Ursula, from a two-year-old baby, loved her father best. Even
when, once, he chastised her because she had told a lie.
“Gerard will be late for the train,” said the pastor. “Headlong, as
usual. Either he will get there too late or he will drive too fast.”
“He will drive too fast,” replied Ursula, quietly. “Tell me,
father, about this elder brother of his. How strange it will seem!
A new son at the house whom nobody knows. I wish he were not
coming.”
“I have told you before, Ursula, but women are so resolutely
curious. A man’s curiosity is impulse, a woman’s is method.
Besides, you remember him yourself; he was here twelve years ago.”
“I don’t remember much, only a quiet, kind-looking gentleman who
seemed afraid of children. What had he been doing in Germany,
Captain?”
“Earning his daily bread, no more and no less.”
“And what has he been doing these twelve years in Java?”
“Earning his daily bread, not less, but no more.”
“I know,” mused Ursula, with feminine inconsistency. “It seems so
ridiculous, a Van Helmont earning his living.”
But this was a red rag to a bull. “It is never ridiculous!” cried
the pastor. “Give us this day our daily bread; that means: we would
accept it, Lord, from no other hands than Thine!”
“As manna?” queried Ursula.
“No, child, as the harvest of toil. By-the-bye”--the old man
stood still on the veranda steps, his limp sleeve hanging against
his long black coat--“it is a strange coincidence, my preaching
to-morrow’s sermon, and Otto coming home to-day. The Sabbath before
he first started for Germany I preached on resisting the devil.”
Ursula smiled, a harmless little smile, all to herself.
“I remember it as if it were yesterday,” continued the Dominé,
thoughtfully watching a wheeling swallow. “Do you know, Ursula, why
Otto van Helmont went away?”
“No,” she responded, quickly inquisitive. “Tell me why.”
“I suppose you think it was some love-story?”
“No,” she said again. “Why should I think? I don’t know.”
“You are not like other girls, Ursula. Most women think everything
is a love-story. Come, let us go in.”
“But he is quite old now?” she persisted, with her hand on his arm.
“He is what children call old. I believe he is seventeen years
older than Gerard. I have always liked Otto exceedingly, little as
I know of him. He is a true, simple-hearted gentleman, is Otto.”
“I don’t doubt it,” replied the girl, with a shade of petulance;
“but it will be so awkward, a stranger at the house!”
“I wish you would close the veranda door, Roderigue,” said a
querulous voice from inside. “You are letting in all the heat.”
The occupant of the room came forward, a little yellow lady, with
red ringlets, in a red wrapper. This was Miss Mopius, the Dominé’s
sister-in-law, and an invalid.
“I had kept down the temperature so beautifully,” she complained,
during the performance of the usual perfunctory pecks. “What’s the
use of my scolding the servant if she sees that you don’t care?
Look at the thermometer, Ursula; it was under 65°.”
Ursula obediently reported that it was now nearing 67°.
“You see,” said Miss Mopius. She said nothing else, but the words
dragged down upon the little room a fearful weight of guilty
silence, from which Ursula fled to wash her hands.
As the girl was coming down-stairs again, she heard the rumble
of returning wheels. She could not resist a swift run to the
veranda, where she had abandoned her basket. As she caught it up
the dog-cart came flying past. The two brothers were in it now.
The elder turned sideways, started, hesitated, took off his hat.
Ursula remained watching them, a symphony in yellow and brown,
with the marigolds at her feet in a lake of golden orange, and
the pink-tipped honeysuckle all around her, against the staring
sunflowers loud and bold.