BARON VAN HELMONT
So Otto and Ursula were married with all the customary
paraphernalia of vulgar exposure--paraphernalia which cause a
sensible man to resolve, as he runs the gantlet on his way back
from the pillory, that the first time in his case shall certainly
be the last. Theirs was as quiet a wedding as unselfish people can
get--which means that it was not a quiet wedding.
Their honeymoon trip was but an introduction to the longer journey;
at Genoa the big Java steamship would meet them; meanwhile,
creeping down the Riviera, they lingered for a fortnight in that
Paradise of Snobbery, Cannes. Cannes is a beautiful garden, planted
with princes; what more can be desired by the millionaire, or by
the numerous curs to whom the far scent of the millionaire is as
sausage on the breeze? Other towns contain elements manifold,
paltry and noble; exquisite, sun-wrapped Cannes has nothing but the
worship of gold by glitter, and the worship of glitter by gold.
The young couple, therefore, passed through it unperceived. It
was only natural that they should appear in the “Strangers’ List”
as Monsieur et Madame de Holmani. They held out their hands to
nobody, and nobody held out his hands to them, a kind of negative
Ishmaelism, which has its advantages, even outside a honeymoon.
To Ursula, crossing simultaneously the frontiers of Holland, home,
and maidenhood, this fortnight never assumed the cool colors of
reality. Before it could do that it was over. She was back at
Horstwyk again, like an awakened dreamer in the dusk of a troubled
morning.
While the trip lasted--on the Paris Boulevards, among the
orange-groves of La Croisette--the farewell peep of home hung heavy
before her eyes. She seemed to see them all photographed on the
steps of the Manor-house--the Baroness, firm set and still, the
Baron coughing and sneezing, not from emotion, but from the sudden
effects of a violent cold which should have kept him away from
the ceremony. And her father, his one arm drawn tight across the
“Legion” on his breast, his eyes fixed not on his daughter’s last
appeal for a farewell benison, but on some far beyond of sunlight
after storm.
The thought of Otto blended with the thought of her father, and
over these, which were her thoughts of love, lay ever the thought
of separation. Sadness is not a good beginning for a young wife who
“respects and admires.” The Sabines, under similar circumstances,
actually consented to live with their parents-in-law.
“Yes, it is very beautiful,” she said, looking across the bay to
the blue-black of the sunset Esterel. They were on the terrace of
their hotel at Californie. “Oh yes, it is very beautiful,” she
said. She spoke with that admission which is a protest. There are
times when we think that nature, like some women, would be all
the better for a little less flamboyant beauty, and a little more
homeliness.
“Java is far more beautiful still,” said Otto, encouragingly.
“There is nothing in all Europe to compare with Batavia.”
And then, for the twentieth time, Ursula resolutely enjoyed these
anticipated glories of the Indies, for the soreness and the
separation were in her own soul, deep down.
Had Otto been more of a Mopius, he would never have guessed at
their existence. Hearts like Ursula’s understand that a woman weds
her husband’s life.
Nor can it be denied that the novelty of the prospect, by its very
terror, attracted and pleasantly excited her. Still, unfortunately,
by nature she was stay-at-home and cat-like. Besides, she had not
left her father to himself, but to Aunt Josine.
So while she was telling herself how unearthly must be a scene that
was even more beautiful than this stage effect of palm-trees and
white buildings against the blue Mediterranean flare, even while
she was schooling herself to this idea, her whole life suddenly
changed with the fall of a curtain. The play stopped at the very
opening, and the audience went home again. All the worry and the
expectation and the screwing-up had been superfluous. How many of
us discover that, even when the lights go out at the conclusion of
the fifth act, instead of in the middle of the first.
“Poor people are not poor in India; that is one great advantage,”
Otto was saying. “There is always plenty of space about one, in
house and garden, and even the mendicant, if a white, drives a
trap. But I don’t suppose there really are any white beggars.
You will see how comfortable we shall be in the great veranda of
evenings, with all the pretty things around us, while I sit telling
you how sugar prices are going up. Ursula, it will be delightful to
think we are working for the dear old place at home, which is yours
too now, and must _never_ belong to any one but a Helmont.” His
face grew square as he sat staring at the black ridge of distant
mountains, and then, suddenly, with a man’s embarrassment, “There’s
the little steamer,” he said, lightly, “coming back from the
Lérins.”
The hotel concierge was going his round on the terrace, leisurely
seeking out an occasional lounger in the still, perfume-laden
sunset, and distributing a bundle of letters. They watched him
coming towards them, from their seat by the balustrade, between two
bowls of geranium.
“C’est tout,” he said, holding out one letter.
“It’s too bad of them not to write!” exclaimed Ursula, as everybody
always does on the useless, idle Riviera.
Otto was looking at the envelope, holding it across his
outstretched palm, between middle finger and thumb. It was
addressed in his Aunt Louisa’s handwriting to “Otto, Baron van
Helmont.”
“Well?” said Ursula, with the impatience of the non-recipient.
But Otto, Baron van Helmont, sat staring at the superscription.
The first bell for the _table d’hôte_ broke loose, with a sudden
continuous clang. Ursula rose. “I’m going up-stairs for a
minute,” she began. “If it isn’t from home, I suppose it’s of no
importance.”
Otto shook himself.
“Wait,” he said, and broke the seal.
The note was brief enough. “Dear Otto,--Your father died this
morning at half-past five, from pneumonia. You know he was ailing
when you left, but the lungs were attacked only two days ago.
We are expecting you back. Your mother is very unhappy. Aunt
Louisa.--P. S. Your mother asked me to telegraph, but I consider it
better to write.”
Even by the road-side of our selfish daily wanderings we cannot
hear the voice of death calling a stranger from his field-work
without mentally crossing ourselves, suddenly shocked and sobered.
What, then, if he enter the court-yard of our hearts? Although,
perhaps, he pause before the inner door, every chamber, in the
horror of his presence, becomes to us as the innermost.
Ursula and Otto looked at each other with solemn eyes, speaking
little. The Riviera evening fell suddenly, with its wiping-out
of warmth, like the transition of a Turkish bath. The whole gray
seaboard lay bleak and chill in a shudder of autumnal decay.
“Aunt Louisa,” said Otto, presently, “has a prejudice against
telegrams, chiefly, I fancy, on account of the expense.”
Ursula was angry with the Freule van Borck. “She might have
prepared you a little,” said Ursula.
“Oh, that is her way. ‘Simple and strong,’ you know. But you are
mistaken. She _did_ prepare me.” He held out the envelope to his
wife.
Ursula blushed scarlet. There seemed to her in this brutal fact
something strangely painful and insulting both to them and to the
dead. She could not meet her husband’s gaze. She shivered. “Let us
go in, Otto,” she said, softly.
As they walked across the terrace he murmured aloud, “‘Your mother
is very unhappy.’ Ursula,” he added, “this alters everything. We
must go back to-morrow as early as we can.”
“Yes,” she answered, unemotionally, “I understand.”
He did not say anything more till they had reached their own room.
Then, as he struck a light in the dark, he began, with averted
face, looming large against the shadows:
“You will like that, at least, among all the sorrow--the going
back!”
She tried to answer him, not knowing what, and unexpectedly burst
into tears.
* * * * *
Well, it’s a good thing that women can weep. Their feelings are
often too complicated for words. The woman who knows herself
incapable of tears is surely one-third inarticulate. But, alas,
that the act of weeping should be so positively ugly! From a
purely æsthetic point of view there is nothing more regrettable in
connection with the Fall of Man.
* * * * *
No further news from home reached the young Baron and Baroness
during their hurried flight northward. They themselves were quite
incapable of fathoming, even from the most materialistic point
of view, the magnitude of the change which had come over their
prospects. Otto trembled to think in what condition he might find
his father’s affairs. Only, he felt certain that the Indian plan
would have to be definitely abandoned on account of the estates at
home.
The Dominé met the pair at the little Horstwyk station, and as
Ursula put her arm round her father’s neck, she dimly realized that
selfishness is man’s sole virtue, as, in fact, it is his only vice.
She could realize it all the more in the shuttered mansion,
which seemed to lie as a waste round that one locked door of the
widow’s boudoir. In the dining-hall, surrounded by candles, stood
the coffin, awaiting the heir. All the house and the village and
their surroundings seemed full of a subdued eagerness to bury the
past and welcome the present. The library table was covered with
carefully addressed letters and cards.
Gerard was absent. Only the Freule van Borck came forward, with
hushed step, to greet them in the gray loneliness of the flowerless
hall.
“My dears,” she said, sententiously, “you might have spared
yourselves the shame of running away.”
FOOTNOTE:
[I] The fortnight preceding the ceremony.