THE NEW LIFE
Ursula awoke from a long dream of suffering. The world was very
dark all around her, and she strove to lie still. But even while
she did so she knew by the steady pulse once more swelling in her
brain that the endeavor would prove fruitless. Alive again, she
must live.
Her husband and her child were dead. It was she who, despising
Otto’s fears of infection, had brought death into the house.
Something told her that Otto, had he survived, would tacitly have
laid the loss of the child at her door. And yet it was impossible
to say for certain. Death changes all our perspectives. Ursula’s
was not a nature to sink away into maudlin self-disparagement. She
did not dash the tears from her cheek, but she resolutely lifted
her head.
Nothing, however, makes us so tender towards those who loved us as
the thought that we have done them irreparable wrong. When Ursula
arose from her sick-bed, it was with the firm resolve to honor her
husband’s memory by the daily sacrifice of her whole self to that
which, but for her, might still have been his own life-task. She
took up his cross exactly where he had laid it down. That was all
she thought of--neither right nor wrong; neither God’s providence
nor her own unfitness--only to do exactly as Otto would have wished.
“I understand perfectly,” she said, sitting, cold, with the
blackness of her mourning about her. “I told you at the time,
Notary, exactly how it was. There is no ready money--not even
enough to pay the death duties. There is nothing except mortgages,
the interest on which only hard work can meet.”
[Illustration: “‘GOOD-BYE, MR. MOPIUS; MY COMPLIMENTS TO
MEVROUW!’”]
“You will have to sell some of the land,” replied the lawyer,
hopelessly. “You had better sell the whole place. You can’t keep it
up, anyhow. Not that present prices will ever pay off the mortgage.”
The widow remained silent for a moment; there was little of the
“nut-brown” color left in the stately face against the oaken chair.
“I shall never sell an inch,” she said, at last. “Never, as long as
I live.”
“That is a long time,” retorted the matter-of-fact man of business.
“A great deal may happen”--he glanced at his beautiful, beautified
client; “meanwhile, everything of value in the house belongs, I
understand, to the Dowager Baroness?”
“It does.”
“The Dowager Baroness, it appears to me, if I may venture to say
so, is lapsing into second childhood.”
No answer. The room was very lofty and empty. The far stretch of
naked country was very chill and bleak. The Notary got up to go.
“If I were you,” he said, “I should rid myself of the whole thing.
I should decline to inherit. It’s a hopeless thing from the outset.
Gerard will have his mother’s fortune to himself now, some day. He
is all the better off for having missed the dead weight which has
fallen on to your shoulders. It was a narrow squeak.”
She came up to him--quite suddenly, close. “You think that,” she
said, with thick utterance. “You understand that. Always remember
it. Do you hear?” A clear passion had overflowed the dull dark of
her eyes. Violently she mastered the trembling which shook her from
head to foot.
“Of course, my dear lady; it is evident. Your brother-in-law could
hardly have sold the property as you will. Yes, yes, as you will.
Never mind; take your time. It is an experiment.”
“No,” she said, “it is not an experiment. Good-day.”
Notary Noks considered himself a very shrewd man. He perfectly
comprehended the young Baroness’s resolution to play the fine
lady as long as she was able. “She’s been dem lucky,” reflected
the lawyer as he drove away; “but she’ll have to marry again, and
marry money if she wants to keep on. It’s a queer end of the Van
Helmonts.” He had known the pastor’s girl ever since she was a
baby; his opinion of the proud, pale woman from whom he had just
come away was distinctly unfavorable.
* * * * *
Ursula passed through the long, gray library, and, drawing a
curtain, softly entered the old Baroness’s rose-garlanded sanctum.
Through the south turret window the sunlight lay in an amber
bar. And, incased in the clear gold, like a fly, sat the little
black Dowager, surrounded by her papers, writing with the serene
concentration of a well-defined literary task. She looked up across
her glasses, pen in hand.
“I am busy,” she said, her tone full of mild annoyance. She was
always busy, the more so when Ursula disturbed her--endlessly busy
with the “Memoir,” noting down the same trifles over and over again.
“I know,” replied Ursula, meekly; “but I thought you would like to
have this, so I brought it you out of the hall.”
It was a letter from Gerard, away in Acheen, the first response to
the more explicit account of their common bereavement, coming back
to them across the wide void of five months’ illness and solitude.
The Dowager tore open the envelope. Ursula waited, uncertain how to
give least offence.
“There is a message for you,” said the Dowager when she had
finished reading; “but I shall not give it you. It is an absurd
message. It is an absurd letter in many ways. Poor Gerard, his
sorrows have turned his brain. Like mine. Like mine. Like mine.”
She gathered together her papers, aimlessly, scattering them as she
took them up.
“Stay with me, Ursula,” she said, querulously. “I have nobody to
help me with these important documents. There must be a letter
somewhere dated August the 5th, 1854. Or is it April--April, ’45?
It is a letter from a friend of your father-in-law; I forget his
name. I had it a moment ago. Or was it yesterday I had it? I was
reading it to cook. _She_ remembers things. She has been with me a
long time. She remembers my dear husband quite well.”
“I will look for it,” said Ursula, taking care not to disturb
Plush, who always made a bed for herself in the very midst of the
crackly confusion on the table. “Is this it?”
“No, indeed,” replied the Baroness, without glancing up to verify
her verdict. “You don’t know, Ursula. You are a new-comer. Cook is
right, though I told her some things are best left unsaid.”
She went on folding and sorting, muttering to herself with a quiet
little lady-like laugh.
“Gerard is ridiculous,” she presently broke out, with angry energy.
“He says he would have had to sell the place as well as you must
now, so where’s the difference? He is a fool. He would not have had
to sell it, no more than Otto. Did Otto want to sell it, Ursula?”
She sat back in her chair, glowering with her light blue eyes at
her daughter-in-law.
“No,” said Ursula, bending low over the writing-table.
“Aha! I thought you would try to deceive me. I forget a good many
things, but I remember this. Do you hear me, daughter-in-law? I
have never loved you; I had little reason to.”
Her voice rose shrill with quavery passion; she tried to steady her
feeble little frame with blue-veined hands on the massive arms of
her chair.
“But what does Gerard mean when he says--what does he say?--I
forget--he says I must be kind to you. What does he mean? I have
always been kind to you. But what right had you--better have plain
speaking--to come and steal away my house from my son? Eh?” She
started to her feet; the dog, disturbed by her cry, sprang up,
barking furiously. “What right?” she repeated. “It is Gerard’s--I
told him so. I told him to come and take it away from you. He
writes back, ‘No.’ He is a coward--a coward as they all are, for a
woman’s face.”
She sank back, whispering the final sentences, and began to cry,
with noiseless, unrestrained tears.
“Dear mamma, we will not sell it,” pleaded Ursula, though she knew
how uselessly. “You see, Gerard says again he would have done so.
Let us be glad, then, that he has not got it yet. Perhaps, some
day, when he thinks differently--meanwhile--in--trust--”
She stopped, not daring, nor caring, to proceed. But the Dowager
had only caught at one sentence.
“No, we will not sell it,” she repeated: “no, indeed. Attempt
such a thing and I appeal to the police! _You_ sell what belongs
to another! You! Listen, Ursula. I am not as strong as I was. I
forget things. I dare say you imagine I am growing childish. But
be sure of this: that however stupid I may seem to become, I shall
always know about the Horst. I shall watch over it for Gerard.
I have written to him to come back, and he will come. You alter
nothing--do you understand? Nothing. Oh, my God, I am a poor
defenceless old woman! Have pity upon me, and make my head keep
strong! Oh, if Theodore had only not died--not died! Oh, my God, my
God!”
She shrank together, like a lace shawl thrown aside, and the tears
trickled down among the trinkets of her watch-chain.
Ursula rose and went out into the deserted corridor. From one of
the stands by the distant hall-door a brown-tinged “Maréchal Niel”
fell to pieces with a heavy thud on the marble pavement.
“Monk!” cried the mistress of the mansion. “Monk!”
With great yelps of greeting the St. Bernard came bounding towards
her.