GERARD’S SHARE
So the old Baron slept in the church-yard under the shadow of the
“Devil’s Doll,” which he himself had erected on the grave of his
children. Opposite, outside the chancel-wall, shone dully the
great slab which marked the entrance to the family vault, heavy
with the single name “De Horst.” The word suggested a “dépendance”
of the Manor-house; hither came for more permanent residence the
successive sojourners at the larger hostel. It was the widow who,
waking from her lethargy, had demanded separate sepulture for her
dear, dead lord, to Otto’s tacitly disapprobatory regret.
She had summoned her elder son into the dusk of her silenced
chamber, and speaking softly from amid the solemn blankness of her
loss, “I want your father to lie in the sunshine,” she said, “and
I wish them to make the--the--in such a manner that every possible
sunbeam shall fall straight across it.”
Then, before Otto’s unspoken demur: “He always had a horror of the
vault; he never would enter it once during his whole lifetime. And,
Otto, all his life long he detested cold. In the end it has killed
him.” She began to cry. Her children had found her greatly changed,
quite broken down and feeble.
“Cécile cannot even take comfort by contemplating the beauties
of adversity,” said Freule van Borck, crossly. “Surely she might
understand, in the midst of her legitimate tears, that sorrow is a
great educator. She perversely persists in eluding the blessings.”
The Freule did not understand that her sister’s soul was a plant of
God’s conservatory, a blossom which could only drop off before the
east wind.
Work had to be done, however, and some one must do it. Otto soon
recognized, with anticipated acquiescence, that his father’s
affairs had been left in utter confusion. The confusion, however,
was of the orderly kind. There had been a certain amount of method
in the Baron’s madness; only, unfortunately, there had been a good
deal more madness in his method. He had evidently entertained to
the full an honest gentleman’s distrust of all commercial and
industrial undertakings, and had added thereto a contempt for all
usury and money-lending. To paper investments he would have nothing
to say. Every penny he possessed he had sunk in land or curios.
Also he had made a will, an unwise thing for any man to do. In that
entanglement of spoliation which we have glorified by the beautiful
name of “jurisprudence,” any personal effort towards equity is only
another welcome knot to the lawyer’s hand.
The Baron’s will disinherited his younger and favorite son so far
as Dutch law permits parents to disinherit, which means that Gerard
would be entitled to exactly one-third of the property as against
two-thirds for Otto. Furthermore, the testator expressed a hope
that his wife would allow all her claims on his estate to be met
by an equivalent transfer of art treasures, and that she would
preserve these unsold.
The dead man’s object was plain enough; while unable to stint
himself, he yet desired to achieve the retention, after his
decease, of the _status quo_. That is not an easy thing in Holland,
where modern law, following the Napoleonic precedent, aims at the
destruction of hereditary wealth. The Baron openly avowed his
intentions in the last sentence of his brief testament; “I hope,”
he wrote, “that my children will always retain the Horst intact as
I leave it. Otto must do this; I believe he has it in him. I have
ultimately succeeded, after infinite pains, in restoring the whole
property as it was at its largest in 1672. I trust that neither
Otto nor Gerard will ever consent to part with a rood of it. They
will rather suffer privation, as I have done.”
The Baron’s way of “restoring” had been a simple one. Whenever
opportunity offered, he had bought such alienated lands as fell
open, often paying a fancy price, the money for which he procured
by mortgaging other property. Nominally, therefore, his landed
estate was a very large one, much of it being encumbered, more
depreciated. As for “suffering privation”--he had never bought a
Corot.
Evidently he had distrusted Gerard, and felt confidence in
intractable Otto. The strangest thing about it all was that he,
with his fear of death, should ever have summoned up courage to
make a will at all. To Otto this fact, more than anything else,
revealed how intensely his seemingly shallow father must have loved
the home of his race.
And the discovery brought them nearer now in their separation, the
dead lord and the new one. Baron Theodore’s ambition was one such
as this son could appreciate; the sudden self-reproach of undue
contemptuousness caused Otto to veer round to the other extreme of
veneration. He resolved, under this first impulse, that, come what
may, his father’s decree should be to him a holy trust.
“Of course,” said the Dowager Baroness, relapsing immediately into
her continuous mood of mournful indifference. But Gerard demurred.
“I must have _my_ share in money,” said Gerard. “I can’t help
myself. Besides, what did father mean? The property can’t be said
to remain intact if one man owns two-thirds of it and another man
the remaining third. Enough of the land must be sold to give me my
share in cash.”
“None of the land can be sold,” replied Otto. He wore his dogged
face. The two brothers were together by the library table. In the
distant bay-window of the smoking-room Aunt Louisa had fallen
asleep over a book.
“Keep the land, if you like, or know how. I don’t mind as long as I
get my money. You are executor, Otto; pay me my share.”
“Do you wish,” asked the young Baron, just a trifle dramatically,
“to ignore our dead father’s commands?”
“No, indeed. No more than you,” replied Gerard, with honest
disdain. The tinge of melodrama irritated him. The unfairness of
his treatment irritated him. But the inherent absurdity of the
testamentary instructions was what tormented him most.
“Father’s wish was to let me have as little as possible,” he
continued. “So be it. But your wish is evidently to let me have
nothing at all.” Both of them waited a moment, in bitterness.
“And”--Gerard ground his heel energetically. “I’m not going to
stand that.” Then he said, in quite a different tone, “Simply, to
begin with, because I can’t.”
“Of course you have debts,” said Otto, sitting down by the
writing-table.
“Of course,” repeated Gerard, with a pardonable sneer at his
immaculate brother. “But it’s not that, all the same--at least, not
so much.”
He paced half-way down the room and back again. Suddenly both
brothers heard the ticking of the clock.
“You wrong me, Otto, as usual,” said Gerard, in a broken voice. “I
am as anxious as you are to do whatever’s right. But I can’t help
myself. I may as well make a clean breast of it. I must have the
money. You’ll think me an unmitigated fool, but, then, you think
that already.”
He hesitated a moment; Otto did not move.
“Two years ago,” Gerard went on, huskily, “I became surety for a
chum of mine--never mind his name; he’s dead, poor chap--and I’ve
got to pay.”
“Surety! Surety!” stammered Otto. “How? What? What kind of surety?”
“It was a debt of honor, between gentlemen. And I’ve got to pay.”
“Of course--a card debt. I understood as much,” said Otto,
self-righteously.
“It was not _my_ card debt,” retorted Gerard, feeling his
wrongs more acutely than ever, for, as we are aware, he was
not a gambler. “It happened playing with strangers, and quite
unexpectedly it grew into an enormous sum. For him, next morning,
it meant pay or shoot yourself. He wanted it to mean ‘Shoot
yourself,’ but I stopped that just in time and made it mean
‘pay--some day or other.’ So pay we must. The responsibility is
mine.”
He stopped, staring with solemn eyes, back through the misty past,
into what had been, till now, the most dramatic occurrence of his
life. He remembered his awakening, the day after the gambling-bout,
to the troubled consciousness that he must hurry at once to his
friend. He remembered the room as he burst into it: the table with
the despondent figure sitting there, the pistol waiting, ready
loaded. These things were sacred; he was not going to speak of them
to Otto.
“I cannot understand any human being accepting your security;” the
elder brother’s tone was sceptical to a degree of provocation.
“But, at any rate, the other man and his people must pay.”
“He is dead,” repeated Gerard, gently. “Had he lived, he would
have been perfectly well able to do so; we both knew that, or I
don’t think he would ever have allowed me to incur the risk. It
wasn’t much of a risk, as I told him at the time. He was sole heir
to a stingy old aunt; he died before her, and all her money’s
gone to charities. So you see I’m fully liable. It’s exceedingly
unfortunate, but it can’t be helped.”
“Even admitting all this,” began Otto, feeling his unwilling way,
“you are not really liable. The law does not recognize gambling
liabilities. They are not recoverable.” He stumbled over his
sentences, thinking aloud.
“Law!” exclaimed Gerard. “Law! I was thinking of the other
extreme--honor.”
“And you were a minor at the time, besides. Neither legally,
nor should I say morally, responsible. It must been an act of
madness.” He gazed in front of him, troubled, questioning, full of
incertitude.
“I thought you understood,” said Gerard, haughtily, “that it was
an affair between gentlemen. It has nothing to do with moral or
legal responsibility.” He stood still. “I bound myself to meet
this claim, if able, when called upon. The trust is a sacred one.
By accepting it I saved my dead friend’s life.” Even amid the deep
seriousness of his mood he smiled at the Irishism, just as his
father would have done. “I am not going to desert him now.”
“Gerard, God knows I don’t want you to do anything ungentlemanly,”
cried Otto, despairingly. “I am only thinking. Let me think. You
say the sum is an enormous one. What do you call enormous?” His
voice trembled with apprehension.
“It’s ninety thousand florins, if you want to know,” replied
Gerard, in a moody murmur. The sombre room grew very silent.
Outside the window nearest them a sparrow was pecking, pertly, at
the sill.
“I thought so,” said Otto, scornfully, “I thought you had ruined
yourself; it seemed so natural. I understood it at once, and that
made me look round for the tiniest loophole of possible escape.
Gerard, it seems to me you have but the choice of dishonors.
Against the memory of your friend I pit that of your father. You
cannot possibly do justice to both.” He was desperate, feeling the
hopelessness of compromise.
“The will is absurd!” burst out Gerard--“absurd! He cannot have
meant it absolutely, only as far as was practicable. Do you really
want to make out that he intended both of us to starve, in the
midst of our acres of corn-fields? I won’t believe it; and if he
did, why, poor father must have been under some momentary delusion!
Wills are always taken to be binding so far as circumstances will
allow. Our father meant us not to sell more of the land than was
absolutely necessary. He meant us--”
Otto faced round. “I understand perfectly what our father meant,”
he said, and there was a roll of suppressed thunder through his
patient words. “To me his aspirations do not seem unreasonable or
absurd. They are my own.”
“I dare say,” cried Gerard. “You are the lord of the Horst, and the
larger the property is, the pleasanter for you!”
“Gerard, you may accuse me of the most sordid--”
“I accuse you of nothing. Pray let us have no recriminations; we do
not understand each other well enough for anything of that kind.
All I say is this, and I shall stick to it--I must have my share in
ready money. Can’t you _see_ I must? If I were to go to the other
fellow--the fellow that won--and say, ‘My father won’t have any of
the land sold,’ he’d think I was shirking, after all these years.
Imagine that! He’d think I was shirking! The time would have come
for _me_ to decide between ‘paying or shooting.’ Otto, if father
were alive, he’d understand that better than you do. Oh, I wish
I could explain it to him; he’d want only half a word. He’d be
the first to say, ‘Settle the matter at once.’” The young man was
violently agitated. He tried vainly to steady his features. He had
loved his father with ready, easy affection. It was a cruel wound
to him to bear the appearance of showing less filial piety than
Otto!
“Ninety thousand florins,” repeated the elder brother, as if not
heeding the other’s passion. “You were mad. You _never_ could have
raised the money till father’s death. What a speculation!”
“Who knows,” replied Gerard, stung to the quick. “At this moment,
but for you, the sum might have seemed to me a trifle. Do not you,
of all persons, reproach me with my poverty. I should have been a
rich man at this moment but for you.”
“But for me?” exclaimed Otto, in blank amazement.
“Yes, but for you,” Gerard continued, wildly. “It was you who told
Ursula about Adeline, as if any man ever betrayed another, even his
enemy, to a woman! But your ideas about honor and dishonor, which
you bring forward so frequently, are certainly not mine.” Gerard
stopped, eying his brother curiously. “Is it possible you don’t
know,” he said, “that Ursula told Helena?”
“As you allude to the disgraceful story yourself,” replied Otto, in
a dull voice, “I may as well assure you that I have never spoken of
it to any one. Ursula knows nothing about it. Nor am _I_ to blame
if Helena does.”
However Gerard might have misunderstood his brother, he implicitly
believed him. All his anger turned against the woman who had ruined
his matrimonial prospects, while herself grabbing, by any means,
even including advertisement, at the first husband she could catch.
“Then it was Ursula, and Ursula alone,” he said, “who would not
let me marry Helena.” He forcibly curbed himself on the brink of
accusation, true to the chivalry he had just enunciated; but
his brow grew dark with meaning. And, seeking sudden relief in
permissible insult, “My Lady Nobody!” he cried, with an impudent
laugh.
Otto rose. “Our discussion ends here,” he said. “Leave the room. I
will get you the money somehow.”
He sank back a moment later, listening to Gerard’s retreating
footsteps. Gerard, then, had been about to marry Helena, and Ursula
had told Helena something which had prevented the match. It must
have been something very serious indeed.
He shook off the thought. How should he meet his brother’s claim.
It is easy enough to say, “I shall pay.”
Why not sell a large part of the land, which, after all, was
Gerard’s and not his? Let Gerard do what he liked with his own.
Theoretically, that was plain enough. But when it came to deciding
what to abandon--and a good deal would have to go--common sense
began to look strangely impossible in the new Baron’s eyes. He
_could_ not cut up the property. He wished his father had not made
him executor.
He judged his young brother not only harshly, but unfairly. He
could feel nothing for the generous impulse which had brought down
upon itself such magnificent ruin. Most of us imagine we recognize
virtue when we see it; in reality we only recognize our own
peculiar form.
“There _is_ no money,” said Otto, fiercely, and he groaned aloud.
Aunt Louisa came gliding in through the open smoking-room door. Her
features were sharper than ever in her smooth black dress.
“That is a very bad story, indeed, about Adeline,” she said,
speaking in a series of bites. Otto looked up interrogatively.
“Oh, of course I know all about it,” continued the Freule, who
had known nothing up to this hour. “Adeline is an actress, or
singer, or something low. Nevertheless, I think Helena van
Trossart has behaved like a fool. A strong woman lives down all
her husband’s love-stories.” She blinked her eyes. “Any woman can
manage any man,” she said. “_I_ never considered the game worth
playing”--which was true.
“But it’s best to know about these things beforehand,” she went on.
“That’s why I told you about Ursula and Gerard. Afterwards they
come as an unpleasant surprise, while, before marriage, one simply
laughs at them. Helena ought to have thanked Ursula for frankly
confessing to a passing flirtation with Gerard. Instead of that,
she goes and breaks off her engagement. Inane! We can’t all marry
first affections, as your poor mother thinks she did. But Helena
van Trossart was always a poor, weak, fanciful creature.”
“It is not that,” thought Otto. “Women never object to a _prior_
flirtation.” He looked up again, dumbly, to see whether his aunt
would continue to use her gimlet.
“However, there’s no help for it now,” cried the Freule Louisa,
changing her tone. “The marriage would have been the best thing for
all parties, and that’s why it’s not to take place. So don’t let’s
talk of it. But the money must be found at once. So let’s talk of
that.”
“It can’t be found,” muttered Otto, wishing his aunt wouldn’t
interfere, and very angry with her for eavesdropping.
“‘Can’t’ is a man’s word,” replied the Freule van Borck. “Your poor
father used to say it whenever he didn’t want to do anything. You
say it when you want to do anything very much. The symptoms are
different, but the disease is the same--masculine incapacity. A
woman says, ‘I will.’”
“Then I wish some woman would say it,” retorted Otto.
His aunt smiled. “You are so literal,” she said. “You never can
enjoy the plastic beauty of a theory. And, Otto, in one thing
I entirely disagree with you. Gerard’s action was a great one.
However unfortunate for us, it deserves our abstract admiration.
Yes, I know what you are going to say; but you are wrong.
Few natures in our little world are capable of such splendid
recklessness. I, for one, applaud it--from a distance. Imagine, in
this nineteenth century, a man who will sacrifice his all for a
friend!”
“He hasn’t ruined you, Aunt Louisa,” said Otto.
“I am not worth ruining,” she answered, quickly, meekly. “But,
Otto, I was coming to that. I am poor, as you know--very poor.” She
grew suddenly nervous and sat down, trembling, in a big leathern
chair. “But I have this advantage over you rich people, that my
money is where I can get at it, in the funds. I’m not going to give
it to Gerard,” she said, racing off sharp and fast. Her cheeks grew
pink. She was exceedingly frightened, as many women are whenever
they allude to finance. “I couldn’t do that and starve, now could
I? But I’ll lend it to you on the property, Otto, to pay him off.
You’ll fasten it on the property and give me a pawn-ticket, won’t
you? And I’ll let you have it on easy terms, because I admire
Gerard’s action and--and yours also. I’m proud of my nephews.” She
paused, out of breath, and aimlessly stroked her dress.
“Thank you,” said Otto, with his reflective reserve. But the fervor
of his tone quite satisfied Aunt Louisa.
“Yes,” she went on, preparing to hurry away. “The estate must be
kept together. I insist upon that. For I can’t have other people
intruding upon my Bilberry Walk, and that would be the first to go.
But, Otto, you must let me have some interest, or else I shouldn’t
be able to pay you my ‘keep.’” Thereupon the Freule departed,
fluttered with the consciousness of a heroic atmosphere all round
and but little discomfort to herself. She had, indeed, behaved
bravely, for scraping was the sole diversion of her life, and she
imagined somehow that a mortgage at four per cent. was a very great
sacrifice indeed. In common with many people who greatly admire
great deeds, she liked to do her own great deeds small.
At any rate, Otto felt immensely relieved for the moment by the
certainty that the money would be forthcoming. He went in search
of Ursula, whom he found playing on a sofa with his father’s great
smooth St. Bernard. Ursula’s opening days were long in this new
home of which she had become the mistress. Everything was as yet
in the listless uncertainty of a not-disorganized transition. The
Dowager Baroness had nowise resigned the keys, while occupying
herself with nothing in the privacy of her own bereavement.
“Dearest,” said Otto, “why did you not tell me about Helena and
Gerard?”
Ursula blushed.
“Because it was a secret,” she replied, hotly. “I told nobody,
Otto.”
“Nobody?”
“Nobody but my father. Has Gerard spoken of it? How much has he
told you?”
She looked at him anxiously, scarlet with the soilure of Gerard’s
sin.
He misread her distress.
“Oh, very little,” he said. “Make yourself easy. I don’t want to
know any more.”
She sprang forward to him, the great dog entangled in her skirts.
“Otto,” she said, pleadingly, “you’ll let by-gones be by-gones,
won’t you--now?”
She was thinking of the reconciliation between the brothers for
which her whole heart yearned.
She frightened him.
“Yes,” he cried. “Yes, if Gerard goes away. That is all I demand.
_You_ must ask Gerard to go away.”
“I?” She drew herself up. “No, indeed,” she said. “You are lord of
the Horst. It is you who must forbid your brother the house, if you
wish him to leave it.”
As he turned to go she ran after him, and laid her hand on his arm.
“Only don’t let it be for my sake, dear,” she pleaded, recalling
Gerard’s initial insult, and continuous cold hostility, to herself.
“Do not, I entreat you, let me be the cause of further discord
between you. Gerard will forget the past, and I will ignore it. And
even if do not, I am strong now, in your love, to face the future
with confidence. Otto, I implore you, do not send him away for my
sake.”
“Oh no, for my own,” exclaimed Otto, and broke away from her.
She came back to the dog, completely unconscious of all
complications except the old quarrel between her husband and his
brother.
It weighed upon her; she regretfully felt that she, in her
innocence, was chiefly to blame for it. Gerard had deeply
resented, and still continued to resent, the marriage of the
head of the house to the parson’s daughter. Compared to this,
the quarrel about the horse was only a passing cloud, and even
that would not have arisen but for her. Men of the world, she
felt bitterly, could desert Adelines, but they could not marry
Ursulas. It is true; more than that--only she did not know it--men
of the world can offer to marry Adeline, and never forgive their
brother for marrying Ursula. We can do all that, we men. It is our
privilege, because we are thinking creatures.
Just now, Ursula felt that her only duty in the great house was
to comfort the dog. Monk was an institution at the Manor; he had
been that ever since the old Baron had brought him back from
the desolate monastery which is all sunshine within, and all
snow without. By this time surely he had forgotten his native
Alpine frosts--if dogs ever forget--among the mists of Holland.
He had basked for years in the master’s smile, unassuming, as no
man would ever have remained, under the dignified repose of his
assured position. All the household had honored Monk; many with
time-service only. This he had understood; he had loved his master
alone. He knew that the Baroness endured him; perhaps there was a
little jealousy between the two. And on the day of the old man’s
death he had wandered about, disconsolate, gradually beginning
to realize a change. Ursula found him a forsaken favorite, not
mourning his fall--again, how unhuman!--but his friend. She
looked into his big soft eyes, and the hunger died out of them.
Immediately the two understood each other, forever. “I accept of
you in my empty heart,” said Monk.
In the old Baroness’s boudoir the fat ball of white silk on its
crimson cushion opened one eye with lazy discontent and scowled
across at its mistress. It was disgusted with the selfish
irregularity of its meals. The little old woman in the easy-chair
near the autumn fire did not even notice it, in spite of the
oft-repeated sighs by which it strove to attract attention.
Occasionally slow tears would now roll down the widow’s sunken
pink-and-white cheeks, and glitter amid the jewels of her folded
hands. She had reached that milder stage when we begin to feel our
sorrow. Oh, God, that in this world of agony, men should find cause
to be thankful for consciousness of pain!
“Plush” considered the state of affairs most disgracefully
disagreeable.