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“Who is that yellow-frock among the yellow flowers?” asked Otto
van Helmont. “But, of course, I can guess,” he added, immediately.
“That was the parsonage we just passed. The ‘nut-brown maid’ must
be Ursula Rovers.”
“Ursula? Was she there still?” replied Gerard, flicking a fly from
the horse’s flank. “She seems to live in the garden. Doesn’t care
tuppence about her complexion.”
“She is very remarkably beautiful.”
“Do you think so? I never noticed. You see, I have known her all my
life. She is just the parson’s daughter. I suppose she reminds you
of your own Javanese.”
Otto flushed, and the two drove on, side by side, in silence.
They were very unlike to look at; there must have been, as Dominé
Rovers had said, from fifteen to twenty years’ interval between
them. The young man was spruce and slender, carelessly elegant in
appearance and attitude, the elder brother, the planter, sat square
and stalwart, with ruddy skin and tawny beard. He was coming home
for rest, weary of the jaded splendor of the tropics. As they drove
on, he turned right and left, with eager, misty eyes. The salute of
the passing peasants delighted him; he watched, in quiet ecstasy,
their long-drawn glances of inquiry or semi-acknowledgment. This
was better than the humbly crouching savages under the cocoa-trees.
This was recognition; this was home.
The avenue was home, the white house behind the trees was home, and
the clasp of his mother’s arms--no, _that_ was home. Never mind,
for one moment, the rest.
* * * * *
“You have gray hairs here and there, Otto,” said the Baroness van
Helmont, fondly. “I never knew I was an old woman before.”
Otto’s father bent down quickly and kissed her slender hand.
“My dear, you will never grow old,” he said. “You belong to the
things of beauty, and you remember what the English poet said of
_them_.”
The little porcelain lady laughed among the laces of her
morning-gown.
“Yes, but the French poet said just the reverse, and in matters of
beauty the Frenchman is the better judge.”
“Well, let Otto be umpire. He is best able to decide. Otto, do you
find that your mother has grown a day older since you left?”
The old Baron looked towards his big son with what, on his easy
features, was almost an anxious expression.
“Yes, she is older,” said Otto.
The Baroness laughed again.
“My dear,” she said, “he is as impossible as ever. Leave him. He,
at least, has not changed.”
Mynheer van Helmont dropped his eyelids with a quick movement of
vexation, and walked from the room.
Mother and son were left together. They went into the Baroness’s
little turret-chamber, a rounded _bonbonnière_, all pale flowered
silk and Dresden china, with a long window overlooking the park.
“Sit down, child,” said the Baroness. “Are you glad to be home
again?”
A lump in the strong man’s throat prevented immediate reply.
Presently he took his mother’s jewelled fingers in his own. “And
what have you been doing all this time?” he said.
“Doing? But, my dear, we have been living. What else should we do?
It is you who have shot the tigers. Nothing has happened here.”
“Grandpa is dead,” said Otto, meditatively.
“Ah, yes, grandpapa is dead. That is very sad, but he had been
childish for years. He lived up-stairs in the blue-room and never
came out of it. He did not know us. He used to mistake me for some
horrid recollection of his youth, and call me Niniche. It was very
embarrassing.”
They were both silent.
“Your father said it was a great compliment,” added the Baroness,
gravely.
“And his pension? What has become of that? How did you manage? I
have often wanted to ask.”
“Well, of course, his pension went. Your father had always said it
would make a tremendous difference. I cannot say I find it has.”
“But it must,” persisted Otto.
“Of course. My dear boy, have you still your old liking for
business? I beg of you, do not begin talking of it just yet.”
Otto smiled.
“Come, lean your head on my lap as you used to do. Wait a minute;
you will spoil my dress.”
She spread out a flimsy piece of cambric which could have protected
nothing, and sat softly stroking the dark hair from his face, as he
lay on the rug.
“You have come back heart-whole?” she said, presently, but there
was not much interrogation in her voice.
“Yes, mother.” The tone excluded doubt; not that any one ever
thought of doubting Otto.
“Gerard was always prophesying that you would bring back a
‘nut-brown’ wife.”
The words seemed to strike home strangely to Otto, like an echo.
“Gerard appears very lively,” he said. “He always had exceedingly
high spirits as a boy. But, of course, I hardly know him.”
“He is brightness itself,” said the Baroness. “He is like a
constant sunbeam. Dear boy, I hope he will make an advantageous
settlement. And you too, dear Otto, I wish you would marry
and”--her voice grew tremulous--“stay at home.”
“But, mother, I must first find a wife.” He spread out his
fingers contemplatively on the white plush beneath him, among the
gold-embroidered lilies.
“That is a woman’s work, not a man’s. It is a mother’s, and I could
easily manage it. A man should find all his loves for himself,
except the one he marries in the end.”
“But would you look for a consort, mother, or merely for a mule
with money-bags?”
“Otto, how rudely you put things! Contact with black people has
not improved you. I should look for an angel, worthy of my boy--an
angel with golden wings.” She paused, and played shyly with the
velvet at her wrist. “Indeed, I hope you will marry a little
money,” she added, looking away. “You father expects it. And,
besides, you must.”
He did not answer. “Gerard is going to,” she added, blushing
over the pink-and-white tints of her delicate cheek. “He quite
understands it is necessary. He is doing his best.”
“How commendable!” cried Otto, sitting up. “He deserves, indeed,
that his gilt-feathered seraph should bear him to a matrimonial
heaven.”
The Baroness looked placidly alarmed. “My dear,” she said, “don’t,
I beg of you, go spoiling your brother. He takes a much simpler
view of duty than you. You have always complicated existence, poor
child. You were a steel-clanging knight, Otto, in search of ogres;
he is a troubadour under Fortune’s window. And he never plays out
of tune.”
And then again there was silence between them, while she drew down
his head once more. But their thoughts were conversing still.
“Marrying for money,” he continued at last, and his voice was black
with scorn.
“Marrying money and marrying for money are two very different
things,” rejoined the Baroness, patiently, “as you know. I should
not like Gerard to marry for money, nor you. You never will. But
you can do as your father did.”
The turret-chamber was cool, yet the glowing sun from outside
seemed to penetrate to the cheeks of both mother and son.
“My father is a lucky man,” said Otto. “But supposing you had not
turned out to be _you_?”
“Then there would not have been money enough. As it is, we had
a little love and a little money; that is the best blend on the
whole, to commence housekeeping with. Both, I suppose, should go on
increasing; with us, only one has done that.”
“Nobody has ever missed the money,” interposed Otto, smiling
pitifully down on the costly rug at his feet.
“Ah, you say that! But I have often regretted that mamma’s fortune
was not larger. Papa, you remember, had squandered his share. Your
poor father might have got many things he had set his heart upon,
and which now he is compelled to go without.”
“Yes,” said Otto, “the house would have been twice as full again.”
“Exactly. For instance, he has always longed, passionately, to
possess a ‘Corot.’ He has never been able to procure one. There is
a very good ‘Daubigny’ in the small drawing-room. By-the-bye, it
is new; you must go and have a look at it presently. But the poor
man has never ventured to buy a ‘Corot.’ I cannot help feeling it
is almost my fault. Certainly grandpapa’s. Yet he was always so
considerate to grandpapa after we took him to live with us, never
reproaching him with word.”
Otto did _not_ ask, What is a ‘Corot’? He lay stroking his mother’s
hand. Presently he started to his feet and walked towards the
window.
“How beautiful it is!” he cried; “how lovely! Oh, mother, the
sun-heat across the park!”
The little lady came dancing after him. “Yes, is it not exquisite?”
she cried, standing close beside him. “Look at the patch of yellow
color there, in the break between the beeches. Why, Otto, since
when do you notice the merely beautiful? Do you see that far line
of white roof with the sun full upon it? That is the gallery round
the new Italian garden. Well, not exactly new, only you have been
away such a very long time!”
She pressed his arm. “Now go down to your father,” she added,
softly. “Ask him to show you the ‘Daubigny.’ And don’t talk to him
of business. You know he doesn’t like it.”
“A fortune for a picture,” said Otto to himself as he closed his
mother’s door, “while I was out in Java growing tea!”
He passed along a corridor which was hung with arms of all times
and nations, into the large entrance-hall, a museum of old oak and
heraldry among the masses of summer flowers.
There he found his father pacing impatiently to and fro. The
old Baron, whose life motto had been “Tout s’arrange,” was only
impatient about things of no importance. He was now eager to show
his son the acquisitions of the last twelve years. He knew that the
display would be productive of pleasure neither to himself nor to
his heir, but he remained eager all the same.
The returned exile--his heart soft with the morning’s
impressions--resolved at once to take an interest in everything.
“Mother was speaking of a new picture,” he began, “a
daub--daub-something. She said I must be sure and ask to see it.”
The Baron smiled. “The Daubigny,” he replied. “I suppose the
name has not penetrated to India yet. With us, you know, he has
made himself a little reputation.” He led the way into a small
drawing-room, but stopped before pointing to his treasure. “Do you
notice any change here?” he asked. “Anything new in the arrangement
of the whole?”
Otto hesitated. He was horribly ill at ease, and afraid of making a
fool of himself. It was the old sensation of twelve years ago. He
felt like a shy man that doesn’t know a cob from a charger suddenly
called upon to judge of a horse.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said the Baron. “Only the ceiling’s been
painted. It was done by Guicciardi, the same who decorated the
last Loggia in the Prelli Palace just before the poor prince went
smash. That was a magnificent finale, Otto. Poor old Prince Luigi
knew that he couldn’t possibly hold out much longer--not a hundred
thousand francs to the good, I am told. And he gave a commission
to Guicciardi to paint the place with that last hundred thousand,
just finished the thing and left an immortal whole to his country,
and then--pwhit!” The Baron snapped his fingers lightly. “Pooh,”
he said, “I know you don’t care for that kind of thing. I beg your
pardon. I didn’t mean to give you offence. That is the ‘Daubigny.’”
Otto stood staring at the little golden landscape. He was seeking
hard for something sensible to say. He could not talk of art as his
brother Gerard did, while knowing nothing about it, trustful to
Fate to make his talk no greater nonsense than that of those who do
know.
“It didn’t cost me very much,” said the Baron, a little
shamefacedly. “It is not, of course, a first-rate specimen, though
I flatter myself it is by no means bad.”
“It is very pretty,” said Otto. “The sky is something like a
Javanese sunrise.”
“Really? That reminds me, I have some beautiful ivories in the west
room, if you care to see them. Japanese, but they were bought at
Batavia. What wonderful opportunities you must have had, had you
only known!” He looked wistfully at his son. “Dirt cheap, I dare
say.”
“I don’t think anything’s dirt cheap anywhere,” replied Otto. “And
dirt seems the most expensive of all--in the end.”
He shrank back, with a sudden misgiving of his own meaning; but, if
the speech were discourteous, the Baron quite misunderstood it. “I
hope you have got into no entanglements,” said the Baron, sharply.
“Although, true, it is not the expensive ones that are the most
dangerous. We expect you to marry now, Otto, and settle down. Your
mother is very anxious you should marry a little money. I sincerely
hope you will.”
“There is time still, father,” said Otto; “I’m only just back.”
“Well, I don’t know. You are nearly forty. And you have wasted a
great many years, after all. Here have you been toiling in Java,
working hard the whole time, and with what result? The same as in
Germany before. You might just as well have lived leisurely at
home, and better. Your cheeks would have been less brown, and your
manners no worse.”
He faced his son; he had been bracing himself for this, and he was
astonished to find it came so easily. “After all, I think you must
admit, Otto, that we easy-going people understand life better than
you.”
“I have no wish to deny it, sir.”
“Well?”
“Well? I have tried to do my duty--the nearest duty.”
“Java! It seems to me your duty was a very far one. Well, well, we
are heartily glad to have you back. Come into the smoking-room, and
we will smoke a really good cigar.”