THE DUTY OF A PARENT
Next morning, so it happened, the Dominé awoke to a moderately
disagreeable task. While dressing, he grumbled over the speck
in his tranquil sky, as mortals will do when unaware of the
storm-cloud fringing their horizon.
The Dominé had a parishioner who caused him more annoyance than the
rest. This sheep of the flock was, however, not a black sheep. It
was serenely white. It never wandered, for it never even got up.
Its name was Klomp, and its nature was unmitigated indolence.
This man Klomp inhabited a little cottage of his own, lost among
the woods. He shared it with two daughters, aged respectively
twelve and eighteen. Like its owner, the cottage lived on,
disgraceful but comfortable. Theoretically, it ought to have been
pulled down.
Klomp knew better. All summer he lazed over a hedge which
mysteriously bore his weight; all winter he dozed by the stove. If
any remnant of useless ornamentation fell away from the cottage,
the proprietor never winked an eye, but should a tile drop whose
fall let in the rain or wind, Klomp would scramble up on the roof
and replace it. He was a philosopher.
He never ill-treated his daughters unless they let the fire go out
in winter. To keep it lighted during seven months of the year was
their whole earthly duty, for house-keeping had long been reduced
to an almost imperceptible minimum. The entire family lived on next
to nothing very cheerfully, and was a disgrace to the neighborhood.
Vices the father had none. As has already been hinted, he was
negatively virtuous. He drowsed at peace with himself and with all
the world above and below him, except when the Dominé came to make
trouble.
The Dominé was making trouble just now. By a stroke of unexpected
good-fortune an opportunity had occurred of “doing something for
those poor girls,” whose one desire was that nothing should be done
either for them or by them. Freule van Borck, it must be known,
occasionally took a philanthropic interest in the village at her
brother’s castle-gates, an interest which manifested itself in
spasmodic bursts of tidying up neglected corners. She had suddenly
disapproved of that long-standing eyesore, the Klomps’ cottage, and
had made a beginning of improvement by getting an energetic person
in the north to accept of Pietje, the elder girl, as a possible
servant, wages five pounds per annum, all found. This good news had
been communicated to Pietje by Hephzibah, the Freule’s maid. Pietje
had merely answered, “Let the Freule go herself,” but that retort
got modified on its way to Louisa.
So now the Dominé went to try his hand. He especially disliked
all intercourse with Klomp, because, during their interviews, one
of the two invariably lost his temper, and that one was never the
parishioner. That was the worst of Klomp; he had no temper to lose.
To-day, however, the parson rejoiced in notable compensations;
these occupied his thoughts as he swung with large steps through
the woodlands. After the first shock of abandonment which every
parent feels in a daughter’s sudden rapture, he had settled down to
complacent contemplation of an eligible son-in-law. For the Dominé,
as we know, had never made a secret of his attachment to Otto. And
he lacked the requisite affectation to convince himself that the
secondary consideration of the young man’s social position was
altogether beneath the notice of a humble clergyman like himself.
His darling Ursula would flit from the nest--that is true--but only
to another close by, where he still could hear her singing. The
Dominé smiled gratefully over this linked perfection of prosperity:
wife to the heir of the Horst, and wife to Otto van Helmont.
“Lord God, I thank Thee,” said the Dominé, out aloud, among the
fragrance of the solitary lane. His path wound in sandy whiteness
beneath the heat-mist of the fir-trees; there was a buzz on all
sides of a myriad nothings, invisibly swelling the morning air.
The cottage lay prone upon the ground, asleep. It had sunk as low
as it could, and had pulled the ragged branches of the trees over
its ears, comfortably hiding in the cool, long shadows, naked and
unashamed.
The owner of the cottage lay prone upon the ground also; he
had the advantage of the house in that he was consciously--and
conscientiously-drowsing. “I sleep, but my heart waketh.” Klomp
knew he was not awake. Man has few pleasures here below; has he any
to equal that sensation?
“Good-morning, Klomp,” said the parson’s bright, brisk voice at
his ear. Klomp did not start; he merely half opened one eye and
answered, “Dominé,” which was his abbreviated form of salutation.
“Save your breath to spare your life,” was one of his axioms.
“Klomp, I’ve come about Pietje,” continued the Dominé, with that
loudness which, in him, was nervousness escaping. “I’ve heard
about the place the Freule has found for her. What a splendid
opportunity! And so kind of the Freule!”
Klomp nodded assent. Like most country parsons, the Dominé was
very sensitive to disrespect. “You might get up, Klomp,” he said,
sharply.
“Oh, if you wish it, sir, of course,” replied the man, shuffling
to his feet, with an air of contempt for the other’s stupidity. He
immediately lounged up against the wall, sinking both hands in his
pockets. “Them’s my sentiments to a T,” he ejaculated, and jerked
his head in the direction of a paper nailed against the dilapidated
shutter, white on the dirty green.
The parson, advancing curiously, read the following sentences in an
illiterate scrawl:
“Standing is better than walking,
Sitting is better than standing,
Lying is better than sitting,
And sleep is the best of all.”
1 Corinthians xix., 7.
Klomp nodded again, as the Dominé turned with a jump. “How dare you
put a Bible tag under such nonsense as this?” cried the Dominé,
sniffing like a warhorse.
“Yes, yes, the Bible knows,” replied Klomp, imperturbably. “It’s
word of Holy Scripture, Dominé, so you can’t say it isn’t true.”
“Word of holy scribbling!” cried the indignant clergyman. “It’s no
more in God’s Bible, Klomp, than you are in God’s fold. And you
haven’t even got it correct, for it ends ‘And death is the best of
all.’”
Suddenly a dark cloud seemed to spread across the sunlit landscape.
The surrounding larch-trees shivered, with a long-drawn sigh.
“I wish you would move a little on one side, Dominé,” said Klomp,
querulously, though he had never heard of Diogenes. “Thank you.
Well, a peddler-man that came showed it me in a book, and he said
it was in the Bible, and if it isn’t, it ought to be. Them’s my
sentiments. Morning, Dominé.”
His feet slipped forward under the weariness of this long
discourse; he recovered himself with a shuffle. Broad as the
concluding hint had been, the Dominé ignored it.
“You never do anything, Klomp,” he said, angrily.
“Then I never do anything wrong, Dominé. I don’t drink. I don’t
even smoke. I’m too poor.”
“Poverty is not disgraceful to confess,” replied the Dominé,
quoting Pericles, “but not to escape it by exertion, that is
disgraceful.”
Every child in the parish had heard the quotation.
Klomp yawned: “‘Peace and potatoes is better than a pother and a
cow.’ That’s in the Bible, at any rate,” he replied, and suddenly
he collapsed again upon the grass before the startled parson’s
backward skip.
“Could I see Pietje and speak to her? Perhaps _she_ will listen to
reason,” hazarded the Dominé, controlling his wrath. The father
pointed to the cottage door; then, suddenly remembering the vague
possibility of future poor-relief, as yet not required, he faintly
called his elder daughter’s name.
She crept out with a half-pared potato in her hand. She was a
ruddy-faced girl, not uncomely in her slovenliness, like an apple
that has fallen from the tree.
“Well, Pietje,” began Dominé Rovers, patiently, “so you are going
to Groningen to a nice home and useful work. It is very kind,
indeed, of the good lady who is willing to teach you.”
“Yes, Dominé,” said Pietje.
“Ah, that’s right,” cried the Dominé, with pleased surprise. “I’m
glad to see you’ve come to your senses. So you’re going, like a
good girl?”
“No, Dominé,” said Pietje.
“What do you mean, you impertinent creature?” exclaimed the
minister, exceedingly irate. “Not going when you said you were.
Not--”
“No, Dominé,” repeated Pietje, sitting down on the window-sill.
Dominé Rovers turned upon the recumbent father. Of course he had
lost his temper; he had known all along that he would do so the
consciousness of losing hold caused him to let go all the faster.
“I appeal to you,” he cried--“you, the responsible guardian of this
child. Her lot is in your hands to-day for life-long weal or woe.
She is incapable of choosing, and unfit to do so. It is only your
selfishness, Klomp, that is ruining your daughters’ lives. You say
you want them with you, I hear. A pretty excuse.”
“Yes; I love them,” murmured Klomp, sentimentally.
“And what would Mietje do?” interposed Pietje, looking up from
vague contemplation of the pendent potato-peel. Mietje was the
child of twelve.
This objection not being easy to meet, the Dominé ignored it. “Fine
love, indeed,” he shouted to the father. “When a parent loves his
child, he sacrifices any inclinations of his own to that child’s
real welfare. The parent who doesn’t do that, doesn’t love. Do you
understand me?”
“Oh yes,” said Klomp.
“Then take this to heart. If you don’t send Pietje to Groningen,
and make her go, you don’t love her. There!”
“Would the Dominé send Juffrouw Ursula to Groningen?” asked Pietje,
askance.
“Indeed I should,” replied the Dominé, triumphantly, thinking of
the Horst. “Never should I allow my own interests to influence me.
Be sensible, Klomp.”
But at this moment a welcome diversion occurred. Mietje, the child,
came running round the cottage with pitiful cries.
“Pussy!” she screamed from afar; “oh, father, pussy! The rope
broke, and she’s dropped into the well!”
She was sobbing and shrieking; nobody scolded her for her
mischief-making. Pietje started up with eager words of comfort.
“Father would get the ladder. Father would go down into the water.
Father would fish out pussy.”
Klomp was already up and away. The two girls hurried after him. The
Dominé was left alone.
“Well, I have done my duty,” he mused, retracing his steps. “The
best of us can do no more.” He was a very good man. He had a good
man’s weakness for consciously doing his duty.
As he turned into a little brown hollow all checkered with sunlit
tracery, he saw Otto van Helmont come vaulting over a stile.
“Ah, Dominé, I was looking for you,” said Otto. Then they walked on
side by side, and gradually an embarrassing silence settled down
between them. The Dominé broke it.
“It is a very fine day,” said the Dominé.
“Yes,” replied Otto. “Dominé, when Ursula and I are married, we
must go back to Java.”
“Never,” said the Dominé, and with a sweep of his walking-stick he
knocked down a thistle.
“I--I am aware that perhaps I have hardly acted quite fairly,”
began Otto, speaking with some agitation. “It has all come so
suddenly; I have allowed myself to be overwhelmed. Apart from her
general condemnation of India, which I have never treated quite
seriously, the subject has not yet been mooted between us. I wished
first to speak of it to you. I feel that I am asking--”
The Dominé had stopped in the middle of the narrow path.
“It was the condition,” he interrupted, hoarsely. “She made it the
condition. Never.”
“No, indeed, we have not spoken of it,” cried Otto, in distress.
The Dominé stamped his foot. “Women always forget everything,” he
said.
Otto hurried on. “I want to explain,” he continued, eagerly. “I
hope you will let me explain. It is a most painful thing for all of
us. I cannot stay at the Horst, Dominé; that is quite out of the
question. In fact, the sooner I leave it the better.”
“Why?” broke in the Dominé, vehemently. “What nonsense! Of course
you can stay at the Horst!”
“I cannot bear the idea of earning my living in this country; you
yourself have always discouraged it. Besides, I must earn much more
than my living. That is imperative. Especially now.” He checked
himself; he was not going to speak to the Dominé of the Baroness’s
shattered hopes. But Ursula’s father understood.
Involuntarily both men’s eyes wandered away across the fields
towards the chimneys of the Horst embedded in foliage. Then their
glances met.
“Never. Never. Never,” repeated the Dominé, passionately.
“In a few years I shall probably want money,” declared Otto,
decisively. “I shall want a good deal of money, I expect. I must do
what I can to earn it. You will say, perhaps, like my father, that
till now I have tried and failed. All the more reason to try again.”
“No, I don’t say that,” responded the Dominé, honestly. “You know I
don’t. But, Otto, I can’t let my Ursula go to Java.”
Otto did not immediately return to the charge. Presently he began
again, in quite a low voice, almost a whisper, under the laughing
blue sky,
“More than fifteen years ago a young man came to you, complaining
bitterly that he was sick of his empty, meaningless existence. He
was tired of life, he said. And you answered, ‘Go and work. The
people who work have no time to get tired.’”
“But I never said, ‘Go and amass money,’” interrupted the old man,
lifting a shaky arm.
“You said, ‘Spend your own money.’ How well I remember your saying
that the night I came to you! ‘You are a grown man. Don’t spend any
one’s money but your own.’ It came to me like a revelation. It was
so directly opposed to what I had been taught from my youth. In my
world they say, ‘Only don’t earn money. You may do anything except
that.’”
“Well, you have obeyed that precept,” replied the Dominé, a little
bitterly. Then he repented immediately.
“Otto, you’re a good fellow. I can’t let my Ursula go away to Java.”
“I was wrong, perhaps,” said Otto, “to demand so great a sacrifice.
I ought to have spoken more plainly of my intentions beforehand--”
“You ought, indeed,” interjected the Dominé, glad of every vent.
“You have behaved exceedingly badly.”
“So be it. Well, I leave the matter in your hands. Personally,
of course, I consider I ought to return. I have a fresh offer--a
really advantageous opening on a sugar plantation, a large
distillery--”
The Dominé looked at him.
“That means rough work,” said the Dominé.
“But you must decide,” continued Otto, evasively. “If you
distinctly prefer it, I shall look for occupation in Holland. Only
in no case can I remain at the Horst.”
“You can,” cried the Dominé, quite angrily.
Otto had stopped. His eyes were following a distant swallow’s
trackless dips.
“And even if I could,” he said, slowly, “my wife could not--Ursula
could not.”
The Dominé’s eyes sought his in long inquiry.
“With Gerard,” said Otto at last.
“Ah!”
Then the Dominé cried, “Stuff and nonsense! stuff and nonsense! I
don’t believe a word of it. Nor do you.”
“I leave the decision in your hands,” repeated Otto. “Some
employment of some kind in some Dutch town, if you so wish.”
The Dominé leaned up against a tree; he closed his eyes; his
bronzed face was quite white. The wood seemed to hold its breath
under the sneering sky.
“When a father loves his child,” began the Dominé; then his voice
broke. “My Ursula,” he said. “God have mercy on me! The Lord gives
and the Lord takes away.” He stopped.
Otto, thoughtfully wending his way homeward, reached a spot where
the Manor-house burst into view all at once through the park.
Unconsciously he stood still. The moments passed by; he remained
without moving; a yellow butterfly came foolishly hovering among
the bushes; he did not see it.
Suddenly a single tear lay heavy on his cheek.