FOR LIFE OR DEATH
Ursula sat by herself in the veranda through the sweetly fading
silence of the summer Sabbath evening. She had now been back in
her tranquil home for more than four-and-twenty hours. It was good
for her that her return had heralded the holy calm of that long,
sunlight-flooded day of rest. She had slept as young twenty sleeps
when worn out, whether from work or weeping; she had risen as young
twenty rises, to a world that is bright again. The peace of the
familiar village-round was upon her: the drowsy morning service,
the droning Sunday-school, the empty afternoon “catechism.” Had her
father’s text, she wondered, been inspired by the thought of his
absent child at Drum! He had preached on “Keep yourself unspotted
from the world.” She desired nothing more ardently. Here was she
returned in time to point the moral.
Her hands lay idle in her lap, an emblem of the day’s repose.
The whole village had folded its hands to watch the lengthening
shadows. A few conspicuous white shirt-sleeves lolled against the
church-yard wall. And somewhere a bullfinch was carolling, breaking
the Sabbath in his own divinely appointed way.
“How hushed it all is,” thought Ursula, looking up to the far
plumes of the motionless poplars. And the lull sank around her own
soul. Why break our hearts over the scuffling and splashing of one
or two swimmers? The river of God’s glory flows steadily on. She
laid a tired head on its current; for a moment the waters were
stilled.
She did not even care to penetrate the mystery concerning her
Aunt Josine. The confidences of the preceding afternoon had been
succeeded by an extreme reserve which the lady’s two companions
almost provokingly respected. The pastor knew of nothing. At
dinner, on the Saturday, he had been mildly astonished by an
atmosphere of constraint, in the midst of which his sister-in-law
had suddenly ejaculated,
“Well, Roderigue?” with the vehemence of a bomb-shell.
He had answered,
“Well, Josine? It certainly is much better than the last joint,
though she _will_ over-roast it,” a reply which did not seem to
give full satisfaction to its recipient.
“He has gone, first of all, to obtain his father’s permission,”
thought Miss Mopius. “I might have known. With the aristocracy a
father is a very important personage.”
She retired early with a headache which not even the vegetable
electricity could combat. It extended over the Sunday, as Miss
Mopius’s headaches naturally would. She lay on her sofa and sighed
at intervals. People would not be surprised at her lying on the
sofa. Had she not sighed at intervals, Ursula would have risen to
see what was wrong.
* * * * *
The church-clock had just struck seven; in the ensuing pause of
expectancy its last note was still trembling away into nothing,
when Ursula’s closed eyes became conscious that somebody was
watching them. She started to her feet in confusion, a little
ruffled and rumpled, before the admiring gaze of the Jonker Otto
van Helmont.
“I must have been dozing off,” she said.
“You were asleep. I am sorry I woke you,” replied honest Otto, “but
I came with a message from my mother. She is very anxious to speak
to you. She--she wants you to come up to-night. If you would?”
Ursula hesitated. She saw the dog-cart standing by the gate, a
village lad erect at the horse’s head. Continental Sabbaths are not
like English; still, the Dominé’s daughter was not accustomed to
Sunday driving.
“She made me come,” continued Otto, apologetically; “but if you’d
rather stay--”
“I will ask papa, and be ready in five minutes,” she answered,
promptly. Her pulse quickened. Doubtless there was some fresh
trouble about Gerard. If so, it was her duty to “go through.”
Presently Otto saw her coming down the garden path with her strong,
brisk step, in straw hat and woolley wrap, all light and bright,
among the thick gayety of the wall-flowers and the pink flare of
the hollyhocks.
“Why, it’s Beauty!” she cried, as she drew near, recognizing the
mare.
“Yes, none of the other horses were available, and none of the men
were about, so I harnessed her myself and came away. I hope Gerard
won’t object, for once. It couldn’t be helped.”
No one but Gerard, and Gerard’s particular groom, was allowed to
touch Gerard’s particular mare. She was his prime favorite, and
deservedly so, for neither of the saddle-horses could stand in her
shadow. But most horses, unlike men, have one or two faults, and
Beauty’s was nervousness.
“You know we expected Gerard this morning,” began Otto, as the
dog-cart bowled along. “He was to have brought my cousin with him,
you know. But in their stead comes a telegram this afternoon to
say that Helena is ill. Mother worries to know what is really the
matter, and she has sent for you to give her the latest news of
them all.”
Ursula did not answer. She had expected further embroilment.
And, somehow, she was growing to feel awkward in Otto’s presence
despite, or perhaps partly on account of, her father’s praise.
That morning during church she had been sensible of his quiet
admiration, and had experienced, for the first time in her
existence, not the blush of being stared at, but the glow of being
discreetly observed.
Now, again, as she sat watching the horse’s head, she perceived,
without seeing them, some long-drawn side glances. Her nostrils
tingled, and she wished there had been a groom on the back seat.
“Well, and did you enjoy your uncle’s Indian stories?” queried
Otto, breaking a silence that was becoming acute. “Did he tell you
anything very dreadful this time? How often did he find a tiger
under his pillow at Batavia?”
She laughed, and they talked lightly of Uncle Jacóbus, and of
the life out yonder in the Indies, where everything is gigantic
compared to little Holland, even the money-making, and also the
mortality.
“So your mind is made up more firmly than ever,” he concluded. “You
would never go out to Java on any account?”
“No,” she answered, flushing. “And, besides, remember my father!
What would become of him if I were to leave him alone with”--she
pulled up--“himself!” she said.
“True,” he replied, exceedingly gravely. Both were occupied with
their thoughts for a minute or two, and then they began to talk of
something else.
They had reached a spot along the lonely country road where it
suddenly curved among a solitary cluster of cottages. On both sides
it stretches away, very narrow and smooth, and almost treeless,
between parallel ditches and far-extending fields. Two landaus
could not pass each other with safety, but it is largely used in
summer-time by overloaded hay-wains. For those who know Holland it
is unnecessary to add that a tram-line occupies two-thirds of it.
This tram-line, which runs largely through desolation, has to twist
round the curve of the cottages. Where it does so it has just
emerged from a thicket; and the whole is so arranged by nature
and science that the locomotive can flatten the cottage-children
without their being alarmed by seeing its approach.
On this slumbrous Sunday evening the women were enjoying a brief
period of repose. The smaller children were in bed; the bigger ones
had gone plum-stealing. Fathers and mothers sat stolidly by the
door with slow pipe or slower speech. As the dog-cart came racing
along, the men raised their caps. One of them, however, shouted
something.
“The tram!” exclaimed Ursula, half-rising. Otto had already set his
teeth tight; both knew it was too late. Even as the cry went up,
the great engine, silent and deadly, loomed in front of them like a
hideous, falling rock. There was just room enough between the rails
and the cottage-walls for it to graze their lateral splash-board
in rushing by. But a carelessly projecting shutter rendered this
escape impossible. As the mare sprang aside, the off-wheel
caught the obstacle, and sent it clattering back against the wall.
For an instant--the hundredth part of a second--the double crash
all around seemed to stun her; then up went her ears, down went her
neck; she was off.
[Illustration: “‘THE TRAM!’ EXCLAIMED URSULA, HALF RISING”]
The villagers ran round the corner, emptily shouting. The tram
sailed serenely on.
“Sit still,” said the Jonker between his closed teeth. The advice
was superfluous, for the girl had immediately sunk back again,
clutching the hand-rail beside and behind her, frozen to calm. She
did not answer, and the vehicle went rushing on.
Forward the naked road stretched, white and thin, between two dark
lines of water; forward the horse flew, drinking, as it were, that
road before it with pendent head--crashing onward in a cloud of
dust and stones and sparks. There was nothing to confront or pass
them as they tore through yielding infinity, except here and there
a sleepy calf that tried to race them as children would a train.
There was nothing but the wide lilac heaven all around, with the
boundlessness of a horizon that ever recedes and a highway that
ever lengthens out. It was the very delirium and terror of motion,
such as few mortals can experience, the irresisted, irresistible
forward rush of the whole being--the concentration of all thought
into that one idea of a sweep through immensity. For one moment
the laws of time and space were annulled; there was no distance,
no limit, no measurement, nothing but an infinite impression of
velocity. The high carriage sailed through the summer warmth like a
bird. On--on--on! For ever and ever. Why, indeed, should it stop?
And then the conviction that stoppage is inevitable, is imminent,
and that it may well mean--death.
All that, not in a succession of impressions, but in one long-drawn
lightning flash, like the flash of the flying brute, only faster.
Ursula looked up once at Van Helmont. His face was carved in
bronze; his arms were straining back; his feet had bent out the
splash-board. In another moment it burst away from them in a wide
crash of splinters, and threw him forward, silent still. He righted
himself with a jerk, but it seemed as if the horse had received
a new impetus from the slackening even of that illusory hold. She
swept the ground from under her as the tall wheels appeared to stop
revolving, in a constant blaze of starlight. Ursula fancied, from
the height where she clung, that their progress carried with it a
crimson glow through the swiftly receding dust. But it was all so
short, though it seemed eternity, and yet she remembers, this very
day, each sensation that rose and sank across her brain. Her hat
was gone; her hair was flying. One minute of that wild, mad stress,
and then--
“I must save you,” said Otto. “Don’t mind how.”
Even as he spoke, she suddenly remembered that the canal lay
straight athwart their course. The canal, not level with the
road, not clear, but fifteen feet lower, at the bottom of a stone
embankment and landing-place for barges. The blood grew cold in her
veins. During the brief frenzy of her alarm, the thought of the
canal had not as much as occurred to her. It had been with Otto
from the first.
And--even as he spoke--the violet line of the horizon deepened upon
her eyes, where the white road struck dead against fields on the
farther side. It turned at a right angle there, as she knew but too
well, along the water.
“It’s as much as I can do to keep her head straight,” said Otto,
almost in a whisper. “Another minute, and it will be too late!
Ursula, can you help hold the reins for a moment without risk of
falling out?”
“Yes!” she cried, vehemently, angry that he had not asked her five
minutes sooner. For so the time seemed to her.
“It’s only for a moment,” he continued, “we’ve got beyond the side
ditches _now_.” She saw that he was using the one hand he had freed
to draw something from his trousers-pocket. Her grasp closed, near
his other hand, on the reins: she thought that her arms were being
drawn from their sockets, but she bit her white lips and held on.
He knelt, as well as he could, on the carriage mat, bending over
the broken splash-board, and she saw that he held a heavy revolver
in his bleeding right hand. The glove was torn to ribbons.
“The instant I fire, drop the reins,” he said, quietly, “and hold
on to the cart for dear life. It’s our only chance. God help me; we
can’t--are you ready?”
“Yes,” she said, with staring eyes.
He had spoken the last question abruptly. In the still evening
the line of the embankment already stood out. They were whirling
towards it.
Again he bent forward, and fired. The shot missed, and as the
report thundered around her and the reins fell loose on her sides,
the mare seemed to rise into the air with the fierceness of her
flight.
Immediately a second flash followed the first; the horse leaped up
with a strain that snapped the shafts like two twigs, then fell,
struck behind the right ear, a dead weight in the middle of the
road.
Ursula, in dropping the reins as commanded, had flung her full
weight on the back-rest behind her. For a moment the dog-cart,
crashing forward, tossed her wildly to and fro. She saw Otto
ejected, arms foremost, clean away over the dead mare’s head.
Another moment and she was kneeling beside him. Horse and cart lay
a confused mass of harness and broken wood.
She had nothing at hand to help him. She could do nothing. She
looked round wildly, vainly. Not being a hysterical maiden, she
did not make up her mind he must be dead. But she knew he was
insensible, and the extent of his injuries she was quite unable to
determine.
She looked down at his resolute face, bronzed beneath its heavy
mustache, and realized, quite newly, how good he was, how strong;
this silent man who had seen so much of the world; this simple man,
whom her noble-hearted father so greatly praised. The thought of
Gerard flashed across her, Gerard, the beau ideal of her girlhood,
all glory and glitter, a Stage-Baldur with the footlights out.
How she longed for Otto to open those calm, blue eyes. She prayed
confusedly, with unmoved stare, looking back along the lonely road
for help.
Then she got up and hurried away to the side of the embankment,
shudderingly realizing how near it was. She could not help leaving
him. She was much shaken, yet she felt quite strong.
There was a barge moored by the little quay; a woman stood on its
deck, startled and staring. She called to the woman, who came
running up the stone steps.
“Is there no man?” cried Ursula.
“No, the men were gone to the nearest public-house.”
The girl waved off the barge-woman’s inquiries. She did not want
sympathy, but help.
“You must hurry to the Horst,” she said, impatiently. “You know it?
The large house behind those trees. They will pay you. You must
explain that an accident has occurred, not fatal. And bring back
assistance at once.”
She returned hastily to Otto. His eyes were open, and they smiled
to welcome her. A terrible anxiety suddenly died out of them.
“Are you not hurt?” he said, faintly. “I’m not. I shall get up
presently.”
She could not answer except by a shake of the head. A lump had
risen in her throat which she was resolved to keep down.
“How sorry Gerald will be!” continued Otto.
She nodded again, and for a few minutes they were both quite
silent. Then the Jonker raised himself on one arm.
“I am only dizzy,” he said. “I shall be all right in no time, I
assure you. I’m sorry I frightened you. Why, there are some people
coming along, are there not?”
It was true; the men from the cottages could be seen running
towards them. Otto hesitated, as he sank back, gazing up into
Ursula’s bent face.
“Ursula,” he said at last, calling her by her name for the second
time in the course of that evening, “we very nearly went to our
death together--and you wouldn’t even go to Java!”
There was a ripple in his voice and in his eyes. She held out her
hand, and he pressed it to his lips.
“You have saved my life,” she said.
Presently the foremost runner reached them, breathing heavily. Otto
staggered to his feet, and, as the others came up, began giving
orders about the wreck and the poor dead beast.