“MRS. GERARD”
Ever since Otto’s sudden death the Freule Louisa had felt stirred
to practical philanthropy. Something about “redeeming the time”
had got wedged in one of her ears. With her own fair hand she had
concocted during Ursula’s long illness uneatable messes for the
invalid, and, mindful of the poor thing’s former overtures to
herself, she had very nearly brought on a recurrence of delirium
by insisting on reading Carlyle’s _French Revolution_ at the
bedside. Routed by the doctor, she had extended her uncertain
assistance to the village; but her efforts were much hampered by
the steadfast resolution that neither personally, nor through the
medium of her maid, would she incur any risk of infection. When
the turnpike-woman’s little boy went up to the Manor-house for a
promised bottle of wine the Freule rolled it across to him, her
smelling-bottle held tight to her nostrils, over the broad slab
before the open door. And somehow the little boy was awkward or
frightened, and the bottle rolled away down the steps in crimson
splashes and a puddle. All the village heard the story with a burst
of derisive reproach. “Which seeing it was after _confinement_,”
said the bottle-nosed turnpike-man, “a thing about which the Freule
couldn’t be expected to know.”
“You can never be quite sure with these people, Hephzibah,”
explained Freule Louisa, anxiously. “There is always a possibility
of your catching something they haven’t got.”
“What you catch soonest is what you can’t catch afterwards,”
replied Hephzibah, who meant fleas. Personally, the handmaid had a
weakness for domiciliary visits, which afforded her an agreeable
opportunity of telling the people of her own class--her inferiors,
as she called them--how entirely they themselves were to blame for
any misfortunes they might happen to have had.
On the gusty day which brought Gerard’s letter the Freule,
accompanied by her faithful attendant, had departed to the
Parsonage. Every Wednesday afternoon through the silent winter
months the “ladies” of the village met in Josine’s drawing-room,
and sewed innumerable nondescript garments for tropical converts
from nudity to the inspiring strains of long-drawn letters
monotonous with sickness and privation. Of this little Horstwyk
Society the Freule from the Manor-house was Honorary President. It
had taken to itself the appellation “Tryphena, Rom. xvi. 12,” and
had gloriously fought and conquered the opposition “Tryphosa” which
the doctor’s wife had rashly started--without Honorary President,
but with a mission-field that could boast two genuine murders.
Some of the Tryphena people rather regretted the annihilation of
Tryphosa. It had formed such a fruitful theme when the missionary
letters gave out.
“My dear Josine, I have got a most interesting report,” said the
Freule, eagerly, taking off her heavy boots in the little Parsonage
passage. The President and Secretary hated each other like
poison. “The man at Palempilibang has lost two more children from
dysentery--isn’t it dreadful?--and his wife has been so very bad
they will have to take her up to a hill station for change of air.”
“I cannot understand it,” argued Josine, as they advanced to
join the others; “I packed plenty of medicine in the box we sent
out last Christmas. I wrote to Leipsic on purpose so as to make
sure it should be genuine. And with me, when I have symptoms,
Sympathetico--”
“My dear, I should not imagine it of any use in actual disease,”
replied the Freule, hurriedly taking refuge from her own temerity
in the bosom of “Tryphena.”
“Ladies, I have a most interesting report for this day’s meeting,”
she began, with the common eagerness to promulgate calamity. “I
shall not spoil it by picking out the best bits beforehand, but
I must just tell you, because you will be so sorry to hear it,
that Jobson, of Palempilibang, has lost two of his remaining seven
children from dysentery, and his wife is so exceedingly weak the
doctor says she cannot remain at the station. Isn’t it very, very
sad? Ah, Juffrouw Pink, I am glad to see your cold is better.”
All the ladies looked at each other, and nodded sympathetically.
The Freule’s news was quite in keeping with the ancient order of
things. “Out yonder” was very far away, and people always died
there. When they died you had a vague conception that you were
getting your money’s worth. Juffrouw Pink, the very fat wife of
a church-warden, and a recent member, sat helplessly entangling
the fateful disease, in her woolly mind, with the crime of
Non-conformity. Mevrouw Noks, the notary’s angular consort, laid
down the little garment she had been engaged on.
“So _that_ will no longer be necessary,” she said, deliberately.
Josine, who liked to be noticeably sentimental, murmured, “Fie!”
Meanwhile, Hephzibah, in the kitchen, was overawing the little
Parsonage maid. But the thing was easy, soon effected, oft
repeated, and she yearned for bolder game. Presently the
drawing-room bell rang, and Hephzibah rose, aware that her weekly
deliverance was come.
Every Wednesday afternoon the Freule Louisa would check the
Secretary’s report-droning to remark, “My dear secretary, I am
sure you will excuse me, but might I ring just one moment for my
maid?” Somebody would, of course, hasten to comply with the noble
President’s request--the interruption was far from unwelcome to the
gossip-loving community--and the Freule Louisa would compliment
herself on again having invented a pretext to make sure of
Hephzibah’s obedience to orders. Practically, the pretexts were but
three: a handkerchief from the winter mantle, a forgotten letter
for the post, and the drying of the Freule’s boots. And Hephzibah,
having made her cross-grained appearance, immediately sallied out
on errands of her own. For the Freule never rang twice--lest she
should make the discovery she dreaded.
Hephzibah was not afraid of dirt or disease. Both she knew to
be the outcome of human wickedness, and with human wickedness
Hephzibah Botster had little to do. She feared only one thing in
this world, or the other world, the Intangible--consolidated and
incorporated for her in a great overshadowing conception--the
Devil. Hephzibah believed overwhelmingly in the Devil. Her
existence was full of him. And therefore, strong-minded saint
though she was, she did not like to find herself alone in the dark.
As a rule, she spent her Wednesday afternoons with Klomp, the lazy
proprietor of the tumble-down cottage in Horstwyk wood. Klomp was
what she chose to call “a sort of a distant connection of hers,”
he being disreputable, and a cousin-german. This disreputable man
she had, however, made up her mind to marry, for her chances were
infinitesimal, and she felt that the tidying him up would be a
glory and a joy.
As she now went zigzagging along the road, crooked in feature and
movement, through the sloppy haze of dull-brown bareness, she came
across a shy urchin who was gathering forbidden firewood. Him she
immediately accosted, like the Bumble she was.
“Do you know, you boy, who comes for children that steal?”
“Jesus,” stammered the frightened culprit, giving the invariable
answer of all Dutch children to any question that savors of the
Sunday-school.
“The Devil! The Devil! The Devil!” reiterated Hephzibah, with
impressive vociferation. “Do you understand me? The Devil.” She
attempted, ignoring physical impossibilities, to fix both her eyes
in one soul-searching stare. But the little boy lifted his own
pale-blue orbs in saucer-sized reproach.
“It’s very wrong to swear,” he said, gravely.
So Hephzibah continued her way, for “Answer not a fool,” she
reflected, “according to his folly.” She saw, through the gaunt
glitter of the trees, Klomp’s half-detached shutters hanging
forlorn. She wondered who had opened them on this usually deserted
side. Certainly not Klomp. She smiled grimly. She would put things
to rights, as was her custom, and scold him.
She heard voices inside the house, an unknown woman’s voice,
and laughter--actually laughter from Klomp, whose utmost exertion
in her presence hardly attained to a smile. She pushed open the
door and entered, indignant. Some chipped crockery was spread
over the crippled table, and behind an odorous paraffine-stove
and coffee-pot sat a frowzy female of spurious pretensions to
elegance--a female with whom Hephzibah was not acquainted, but
whose name was Adeline Skiff. The virtuous Abigail immediately
wrote down the stranger “a bad lot,” and less virtue would have
sufficed thus correctly to apprise her.
[Illustration: “‘DO YOU KNOW, YOU BOY, WHO COMES FOR CHILDREN THAT
STEAL?’”]
“Company! Dearie me!” cried Hephzibah, in a whole gamut of
spinsterly suspicion. “And where, pray, are Pietje and Mietje,
John?”
Klomp yawned.
“Wednesday, is it?” he said. “So much the worse.” After which
uncourteous allusion he subsided.
“Let me introduce myself to the lady,” interposed Adeline, all
mince and simper. “I am a cousin of Mynheer Klomp’s, and I have
come to stay with him for a week or two.”
“Cousin!” repeated Hephzibah, in a tone of flat denial. She stalked
to the table, and sat down square. “Now, John, I’m a distant
connection of yours, and I know all about your family. And what
cousin may you be, mum, pray, and on which side?”
“Oh, I never can remember those genesises!” cried Adeline, with a
charming laugh, as she hastened to arrange her fringe.
“Dirty hands!” reflected Hephzibah.
“My name is Botster,” she said, aloud, “and one thing I know for
certain, madame, that you never were a cousin of mine.”
Adeline looked surprised at this open aggression; but Adeline had
never liked disagreeables of any kind.
“Have some coffee?” she asked. “There is a little--a little taste
from the coating of the coffee-pot, whatever it may be, that gives
quite a peculiar flavor, as I was just telling Klomp.”
She laughed again, and the sluggard smiled contentedly.
“Oh, nobody ever rinses it out,” he said. “I boiled some ratsbane
in it the other day.”
Adeline shrieked.
“Of course, you are a stickler for neatness, Juffrouw--Juffrouw?”
cried Hephzibah, furiously, letting one of her eyes travel down the
soiled ribbons of the visitor’s tawdry dress. “I like people to be
tidy, not like you, Cousin John. Cleanliness is a great virtue,
Juffrouw. Perhaps you know it is placed next to godliness.”
“Yes, I see it is,” replied Adeline, with a gesture of sudden
malice--“sitting side by side.”
To such levity Hephzibah could allow no recognition. She was
burning to find out the intruder’s name, and, after some futile
strategy, which deepened the mystery, she boldly demanded it.
“Why, Klomp,” replied Adeline--“Klomp, of course. Isn’t it, Cousin
John?” She winked at Hephzibah’s relation impudently.
“I don’t believe it,” said Hephzibah.
“Well, if it isn’t, I’ll make it so. Some day, perhaps, I’ll tell
you more, and some day, perhaps, I sha’n’t. If you were going to
have a new white dress, what color would you have it trimmed?”
“If I, or any other decent person of our class, were going to have
a white dress, it would be a night-dress,” retorted Hephzibah, “and
she wouldn’t have it trimmed at all.”
At this Adeline giggled and Hephzibah glared.
“Any one can see,” said Juffrouw Skiff, “that you’re a thrifty body
and don’t waste your money on personal adornment. Married, I dare
say, eh?--ah?--and a large family to look after.”
Both Klomp and Adeline roared.
“I’m maid at the Manor-house,” said honest Hephzibah, proudly; “own
maid to the Freule van Borck.”
“You don’t say so!” Adeline’s manner had grown suddenly serious.
“Now that’s a remarkable coincidence. I’m very much interested in
your Manor-house, Juffrouw Potster. I know your people.”
“Really?” replied Hephzibah, politely. “I don’t remember seeing
you at any of our dinners. Did you come alone, or did you bring
your cousin Klomp?”
This time Adeline flushed scarlet, but she was resolved to avoid
a quarrel with a servant from the Horst. Deserted, for the
time at least, by her husband, she had heard of Ursula’s great
good-fortune, and had made up her mind to come and find out some
means of extorting money from the Helmonts. Her plan of campaign
was as yet undetermined; meanwhile she had taken the cheapest of
lodgings with Klomp, who was, of course, in no wise a relation.
“It will look better to say we are connected,” she had suggested,
intent upon “keeping dark” at first. “You can have the room for
ninepence,” had been Klomp’s only reply. “No attendance, mind.”
She now got up and walked to the window, with a glance at her
reflection against the greasy pane. “There are your girls, Klomp,”
she said, “with the child. The poor darling can never have enough
of that dear little porker. Hear him shriek with delight. Are _you_
fond of children, Juffrouw Boster?”
Klomp sauntered out to his affectionate Pietje and Mietje, now
strapping young women, both. Immediately Hephzibah came up behind
the smiling stranger by the open door. She had not much time to
lose.
“Look here, you!” she said, hoarsely. “What have you come here for?
After no good, I’ll be bound. But you leave this man, mind you.
Cousin or no cousin, he’s my man, not yours.” She was desperate at
the thought of her lessening only chance.
The other turned tauntingly in the doorway.
“Your man?” she repeated. “What d’ye mean? Can’t you take a joke,
you fool? You don’t imagine, do you, that I want to marry Klomp?”
Hephzibah shivered with horror and spite. Visions of King Solomon’s
impudent-faced fair ones rose up before her. “Jezebel,” she said,
inconsistently, but with commendable candor.
“Tut, tut!” answered Adeline, looking away. “Your dress is a
shocking bad fit. I’ll alter it for you. I had no idea you came
here courting, Juffrouw Boster--and in such a dress as that!”
Hephzibah longed to strike the woman, but she only stupidly
repeated, “What did you come for?” amid the laughter and cries of
the others close by. Then suddenly she stamped her foot.
“Go away, or I’ll make you.”
“You!” retorted Adeline, fairly roused. “What next, you Poster?
Know that you are speaking to your betters. Imagine the insolence
of it! I and Klomp! I! The insolence of it! Klomp and you; yes,
that is another matter. Here, Baby! Baby!” A sudden resolve seemed
to seize upon her. Her little boy of some three or four raw summers
came unwillingly towards the house, diverted from his course by
continual grabs at the porker’s wispy tail. “Do you see this
child?” asked Adeline, catching hold of a faded blue mantle, and
turning up a pretty though mealy little face. “This is my child, my
only one.” She had shrewdly left the infant at Drum.
Hephzibah started, and vainly pretended to have slipped. “Well?”
she said.
“His name is Gerard.”
Slowly the faithful servant lifted her crossed eyes to the other’s
better-favored face. “Hussy!” she said, deliberately, with all an
honest woman’s slow pressure on the term.
Adeline burned with the immediate umbrage of a girl who feels her
ears boxed. At a leap she resolved to rejoice in the rôle which had
long allured her.
“Menial,” she said, loftily, “know your place. You are speaking to
Mevrouw van Helmont.”
* * * * *
“Well,” reflected Hephzibah, pausing for breath on her hurried walk
back to the Parsonage, “I am glad that I _told_ her she was a liar.
Still--”
Queer stories about the Jonker Gerard had been rife in the
servants’ hall. The domestics of the Trossart household had added
their occasional items. It was pretty well known that Helena would
have married her cousin but for some sudden impediment. Judging by
appearances and gossip, there was nothing absolutely improbable in
Adeline’s story. In fact, Adeline very nearly believed it herself.
Hephzibah wished that vigorous denial could prove it untrue.
And then the child! Hephzibah screwed her wrinkled face up till
it looked like an enormous spider. That woman Lady of the Manor!
_That_ woman! Hephzibah shook her head as she hurried along. “Who
is thine handmaid,” she said, aloud, “that she should do this
thing?”
She was late, and she found the Freule waiting, shawled and
gaitered and exceedingly nervous, in the dim drawing-room, amid
driblets of unwilling conversation with Juffrouw Josine. Louisa
looked vehement reproaches, and longed for courage to speak
them; but Hephzibah was too violently excited by her afternoon’s
adventure to notice such trifles as these. The pair marched off
through the damp twilight.
“Red Riding-hood and the Wolf,” said Josine.
“Hephzibah,” began the Freule presently, in a trembling voice, “I
wish you would walk on the other side of the road. One can’t tell
where you may have been.”
Hephzibah obeyed with silent protest.
“Hephzibah,” hazarded the Freule a few minutes later, unable to
bear any longer the gray atmosphere of disapproval, “what is this
terrible secret you said you would tell me the other day? You have
alluded to it several times lately, and always declared you dared
not mention it in the house. Well, we are alone now, on the road.”
“Oh, it’s of no account,” muttered Hephzibah. “And I couldn’t shout
it across, besides,” she added, in a lower key.
“Well, come a little nearer, if you like, but not nearer, mind you,
than the middle.”
“It’s nothing,” said the maid, gruffly.
“Oh, but it is. Coming out, you told me it was most important. Now,
Hephzibah, you are in a bad temper because your conscience reproves
you.”
“My conscience!” exclaimed the immaculate maid. “My conscience
reproves me a hundred times a day!”
“So much the better. Then tell me your secret.”
A struggle was going on in the handmaid’s bosom. She prolonged
it for some distance, perhaps unnecessarily; but then she rather
enjoyed a moral struggle. At last she said, in a dull, dissembling
voice:
“I’m sure now, Freule, that Anne Mary steals cook’s perquisites. I
can prove it.”
“Pooh! Is that all?” cried the disappointed Freule. “You’ve talked
about that before, and I don’t care a brass farthing, Hephzibah. A
nice secret to make secrets of! Go along to the other side of the
road--do!”
Hephzibah obeyed, looking very wise.