ARRESTED
That evening some household duty called Ursula into the unused
up-stairs corridor, which as a rule she avoided. And as she
passed the “Death-rooms” she very nearly came into collision with
Hephzibah, issuing from them, eyelids downcast.
Ursula felt that the woman had been watching her, as usual. And
although, as a rule, she resisted the feeling, to-day, by a sudden
impulse, she turned like a dog at bay.
“If it makes you uncomfortable, why do you come here at all?” she
said.
“Why do you?” retorted the woman, adding “Mevrouw.”
“I never do; I was only passing,” said Ursula.
“Ah, you _daren’t_. But I must. I can’t help myself. I can’t rest
down-stairs. I seem to hear it calling to me all the time. Mevrouw,
it _drags_ me up. There’s guilt in this house. It won’t sleep.”
Ursula leaned up against the wall and closed her eyes.
“Have you anything you wish to say to me, Hephzibah?” she replied.
“If so, say it.”
The woman hesitated.
“No, I’ve nothing to say to you,” she began, slowly. “I suppose
it’s true, Mevrouw, that the Jonker is coming home?”
“Of course it’s true.”
Hephzibah began moving away.
“If you go in there, Mevrouw,” she said, “perhaps you’ll hear it
to-night. It’s groaning and gasping worse than ever to-night.”
She ran down the long passage.
“O Lord! O Lord, have mercy!” she murmured. “I’ve done what I
could to make amends. I thought, after what I’d done, I should
never hear it again. O Lord, I’m not a bad woman! There’s those sit
in high places is a great deal worse than me.”
“The creature is crazy,” said Ursula, aloud, as she pushed open the
door of the antechamber.
In the inner room all was dark and still. Ursula shut herself in,
and sank down by the bed.
“Otto, I have done my best,” she said.
An immense weight of guilt lay upon her. Gerard was grievously
wounded, was dying; perhaps already dead. Who could tell what was
happening out yonder, in the fatal sun-blaze? Before a message
could be flashed across the waters his body would already lie
rotting in the red-hot ground. And his soul, for all she knew,
might be standing, even now, by her side.
“Gerard, I have done it for the best,” she whispered.
But the words brought her no relief. She knew that if this man
died his life would be required at her hands. And if he returned
alive, yet broken in health, mutilated, crushed, she would have to
confront him ever after, reading in every furrow of his forehead
the charge against herself.
“I have done right,” she gasped. “I could not do otherwise. I have
done right.”
And her thoughts went back to Otto, dying here, gasping out with
every successive stifle his last, his only appeal. For a long time
she knelt there, her face upon her hands.
“If only some one would answer!” she thought. “If only one of them
would speak!”
The place was very silent. She could hear the dog Monk sniffing and
vaguely whining beyond the outer door.
“If only Otto would answer me! If only he would release me! What am
I that I must bear this weight single-handed? If only I knew--if
only I knew!”
A great agony fell upon her, such as was strange to her strong
and steadfast nature. She wrung her hands, and, prostrate against
the oaken, empty bedstead, in impotent protest, she moaned softly
through the darkness.
Suddenly some one--something--struck her through the darkness,
heavily; she fell back, losing consciousness, across the floor.
When she opened her eyes they rested on Hephzibah. The
waiting-woman knelt, with a crazed expression on her white
face, peering close down upon Ursula, by the faint glimmer of a
night-lamp on the floor. Ursula shuddered, and dropped her eyes
again.
“Not dead!” exclaimed Hephzibah, in a distinctly disappointed tone.
This touch of involuntary humor restored the invalid. She tried
to sit up, and lifted one hand to her hair, which seemed to have
grown oppressively warm and unsettled. She brought away her fingers
covered with blood.
“I am bleeding still,” she said. “What has happened, Hephzibah?
Help me, please.”
The woman pointed impressively to a clumsy carved ornament lying
near her, which had fallen from among several others placed on the
rickety canopy of the bed.
“_That_ struck you,” she said. “I thought it had killed you.
‘Judgment is mine,’ saith the Lord.”
Ursula staggered to her feet. She became conscious of the great dog
standing close beside her--attentive, benevolent. His deep eyes
met hers; they were overflowing with sympathy. Steadily gazing, he
wagged his tail.
“Help me to my room,” commanded Ursula. “There is no necessity
for saying anything more. Get me some water.” She gave her orders
calmly, and the woman obeyed them. “Leave me,” said Ursula, at
last, lying back on a sofa with a bandage over her brow.
As soon as she was alone she got up, still dizzy, and rang the bell.
“The brougham,” she said to the man.
He hesitated, in doubt if he could possibly have heard aright.
“The brougham,” she repeated. “Tell Piet to get it ready as soon as
possible. I am going far.”
“Your nobleness is not hurt?” he stammered.
“No, no. Be quick.” She hastily found a hat and mantle--she had
recently laid aside her mourning--and then waited till the carriage
was announced.
“To the notary,” she said. “Tell Mevrouw that I shall not be back
till late.”
Mynheer Noks lived some way out, on the farther side of Horstwyk.
The coachman, unaccustomed to any sudden orders, whipped up his
horse in surly surprise, and reflected on the chances of meeting
the steam-tram.
His mistress did not think of the steam-tram to-day, often as she
recalled, in passing it, her wild drive with Otto, and Beauty’s
cruel death. To-day she sat motionless in the little close
carriage, watching the lamps go flashing across the road-side trees
in a weary monotony of change.
“_If_ it had killed me!” that was all her thought. She had never
realized till this moment the possibility of immediate death. There
would always be time, she had reasoned, for final arrangements,
death-bed scenes. People did not die without an illness, however
sudden. Besides, when she had risen from the long prostration of
her early widowhood, “God has not permitted me to die,” she had
said. “He knew I had a mission to fulfil.”
And now--supposing she had never regained consciousness?
She saw the lights of Horstwyk pass by, and wondered if she
should never reach the notary’s, and reproached herself for her
foolishness.
“The notary is in?” she asked, eagerly, at his door.
Yes, the notary was in. He was entertaining some friends at dinner.
Ursula drew back. “Show me into an office, or some such place,” she
said. The notary, convivial in dress and appearance, came to her in
a little chilly back room, full of inkstains and dusty deeds.
“Nothing is wrong, I hope,” he began; then, noticing the queer
bandage under Ursula’s dark-red bonnet, “You have had an accident?”
“No,” replied Ursula. “Mynheer Noks, I am sorry to disturb you just
now, but I can’t wait. If I were to die to-night, who would be my
heir?”
“That depends upon whether you have made a will,” replied the
notary.
“I have not made a will.”
“In that case your father is your natural heir.”
“So I thought. Then, notary, I must request you--I am very sorry to
trouble you--but I must request you to make my will to-night.”
“My dear lady, certainly. I presume you have brought your written
instructions? Leave them with me, and to-morrow I will bring up a
draft which we can talk over together.” Ursula stopped him by a
gesture.
“I must have the document signed and sealed,” she said, “with its
full legal value, to-night.”
The notary stared at her; then he looked ruefully down at his
resplendent, though already much crumpled, dress-shirt.
“I can’t help it,” continued Ursula, desperately. “It will only
take you a moment--”
“Only a moment! Dear madame, documents of such importance--”
“Yes, only a moment. Just two sentences. That is all.”
The notary sat down with a sigh, and drew forward a sheet of paper.
“You wish to say?” he asked, and shivered--twice. The first shiver
was real, the second ostentatious.
The second caused Ursula to disbelieve both.
“Only this: if I die without other arrangements--”
“Pardon me. I must already interrupt you. You cannot die ‘with
other arrangements’--the expression is exceedingly faulty--if you
make a will.”
“I can alter it, surely!” exclaimed Ursula.
“Only by another will.” The notary sighed and looked at the clock.
Quarter-past ten.
“Very well. I wish everything I possess to pass unconditionally to
my brother-in-law, the Baron van Helmont.”
The notary gave a visible start, and pricked his pen into the great
sheet of paper. He nodded his head with complacent approval.
“Should he be dead,” continued Ursula, “I wish it to belong to his
cousin, the Jonker Theodore. That is all.”
“Quite so,” said the notary. “Quite right. And now, Mevrouw, I
have only one objection.”
“No objection,” interrupted Ursula, vehemently. “There is none.
Surely you have understood me?”
“I have understood you, but the objection remains. The thing can’t
be done. That is all.”
Ursula started up.
“Can’t be done!” she cried. “I am the best judge, Mynheer Noks, of
what I choose to do with my own. I understand your being vexed at
my disturbing your party; but if you refuse to draw up my will as I
desire, I shall drive on till the horse drops, in search of another
attorney.” She trembled from head to foot.
But the lawyer was also exceedingly angry. He had always, since
Otto’s death, disliked and distrusted “My Lady.”
“You may drive to Drum, if you wish to,” he replied, “but you won’t
find a lawyer who can alter the law. No, Mevrouw, nor can I, even
though you disturb my party to get it done. Be sure that _I’d_
draw up a deed of gift, if you chose, this minute; but the law’s
stronger than you or I. And as long as your father lives he must
come into half of your property.”
“My father!” repeated Ursula. “Do you mean that I cannot disinherit
him?”
“You cannot. If you happen to die before him, half of your
possessions _must_ pass to him. That is the law of the land; and,
as I remarked, the law is stronger than you or I.”
“It is stronger than justice,” said Ursula.
The notary shrugged his shoulders.
“The case is altogether exceptional,” he answered. Again he
shivered, and looked at the clock. “So I suppose we may as well
leave the will-making to a more convenient occasion,” he added,
half rising.
“No,” replied Ursula, with an imperious movement; “make it at once,
if you please, just as I said. Never mind its being illegal. You
will be law, and my father justice.”
“It is exceedingly incorrect,” said the notary.
“A great race like that of the Van Helmonts cannot let itself be
tied down by every paltry police regulation,” replied Ursula,
proudly. How often had she said so to herself, remembering her
first experience of Gerard’s _hauteur_ at the railway station,
hammering the thought firmly into her “bourgeois” heart: the
high-born are a law unto themselves! So Gerard had understood, so
Otto, and so she herself.
“Write it down,” she said, “and leave the rest to us.”
“Now, at once?”
She clinched her hands to avoid stamping forth her impatience.
“Now, at once,” she said.
“But there must be witnesses, Mevrouw.”
“Must there? Well, there are the servants, if some one can hold the
horse, and--” She stopped.
“Witnesses,” she repeated. “You mean people who must learn what I
have just told you? Oh, but that is infamous! No, no! Do you hear?
I will not have it. I don’t care for your infamous laws. What I
have said is between you and me. As long as I live no ‘witnesses’
shall know it.”
“You wish to make a secret will,” replied the lawyer, coldly.
“Well, there is no objection to that. I will write it out for you,
and you can copy and seal it. Then I draw up a deed of deposit, and
the witnesses only witness that deed. But all this will take time.
My guests will be thinking of departing. My wife--”
“Draw up a form,” exclaimed Ursula; “I will copy it to-night. My
father and Gerard will respect my plainly stated wishes, even
if--something were to happen to-night.”
Her voice dropped.
The notary glanced sideways, as he wrote, at the tall figure
pacing restlessly to and fro. She was not natural, not herself;
and herself, in his eyes, was strange enough for anything. That
bandage! How had she come by so sudden a wound? What was the
meaning of this unseemly hurry? He wondered uneasily whether this
strange woman was minded to make away with herself. He resolved
to do what he could to prevent it--a Christian duty, if rather an
unwilling one.
“Here is the paper,” he said, rising. “Nothing more can, with
decency, be done to-night. It has, you will understand, not the
slightest legal value.”
“Give it me,” she replied; “I shall expect you to-morrow morning
with your clerks. Thank you; I am sorry I was obliged to disturb
you. Mynheer Noks. Can I pass out unobserved?”
He unlocked the office entrance for her, holding up the oil-lamp.
Under the little portico she looked back.
“I do believe,” she said, “you think I am going to kill myself.”
“Mevrouw!” he stammered, horrified, over the wine-stain on his
shirt-front--“Mevrouw!”
“Set your mind at rest, my good notary. Only fools think they can
kill themselves. God has not made life quite so easy as that.”
The carriage-lights came twisting round to the little side gate.
As the footman held open the door there was a glitter of polished
glass and a cosey vision of shaded silk.
“Come to-morrow morning early,” said Ursula, with her foot on the
step, “and you shall have one of my poor father-in-law’s regalias.”
As soon as she knew herself to be out of sight she pulled the
check-string and ordered the coachman to drive to the Parsonage.
“There goes eleven o’clock,” said Piet to his companion. “One would
think there was truth in what people say.”
“What do people say?” asked the footman.
“Why, that Mevrouw likes being out by herself of nights. At the
tavern they were calling her ‘night-bird.’”
“I know what they _used_ to call her,” grinned the fresh-faced
young footman. “It used to be Baroness Nobody.”
“Oh, every one knows that. But hold your tongue. The Jonker Gerard
never would allow a whisper on the box. He seemed to hear you in
the middle of the night.”
“The Jonker Gerard was a real gentleman,” replied the footman,
crossing his arms.
Ursula, as the carriage neared her old home, looked out anxiously,
seeking for the light above the hall-door. It was gone; yet
she knew her father to be in the habit of sitting up late. She
lifted the carriage-clock to the ray from one of the lanterns: a
quarter-past eleven.
“Let me out,” she said; “I will go round to the back.”
For a moment she stood, in the chill night, by the study window,
listening. She knew perfectly well that she was acting foolishly;
but that seemed no reason for leaving off.
“I must do it to-night,” she said; “I cannot sleep until it is
done.”
She knocked at the window, timidly, terrified at the prospect of
meeting with no response. The soughing of the trees struck cold
upon her heart.
“Father!” she cried, with a sudden note of pain. “Father! Father!”
Somebody moved inside, and soon the heavy shutters, falling back,
revealed the Dominé’s mildly astonished face against the large
French window.
Ursula brushed past him and threw herself into the faded old
leather chair. She looked up into his questioning eyes for one long
moment; then, as the _home-feel_ of it all came over her--the room,
the books, the loving countenance--she dropped forward on her hands
and broke into convulsive weeping.
“Don’t be frightened,” she stammered between her sobs. “Nothing
has happened. It’s only--only--” She wept on silently. Presently
she dried her eyes. “It’s only--nothing,” she said, smiling. “I am
stupid. I have come to you for courage, Captain, as when I was a
little girl.”
The Dominé laid his single hand upon his daughter’s head, and under
his gaze she found it very difficult to keep to her brave resolve.
“No, no, you must scold me,” she said. “That is not the way.”
“You do the scolding yourself, child. It is only fair that one of
us should attempt the comforting. Have you hurt your forehead?”
“Yes,” replied Ursula, quickly. “It is not much, but it has upset
me. It has upset me, you see.”
“Ursula, Ursula, when a woman like you finds cause for tears, a
bodily pain comes almost like a diversion. Dear child, I know your
path is far from smooth. Sometimes I wonder whether we did right.
It seems to me as if, with you, it would have been ‘No crown, no
cross.’”
“You ought to be proud of my career,” said Ursula, still resolutely
smiling.
“And, I know, the home-cross is the worst cross,” continued the
Dominé, as his eyes involuntarily wandered to a simpering portrait
of Josine upon his writing-table. “Attack is not so hard, as all
young soldiers soon find out. It is standing patient under fire.”
“You pity me. You encourage me,” said Ursula, with sudden
vehemence. “You think I am not to blame. But if I were to blame for
my misfortunes? If I were wrong? If I had brought them on myself?”
She looked up anxiously.
“I should pity you all the more.”
“Father”--Ursula rose--“do you think I could ever become a
criminal?”
“Let him that standeth,” replied the Dominé, “take heed lest he
fall.”
“And if he be fallen already?”
“There is no better posture for prayer.”
The little room, so warm, so _anheimelnd_, grew very still. At that
moment, perhaps, Ursula would have confessed everything.
But before she could utter another word the door was thrown
violently open, and Miss Mopius, in a red flannel bed-gown and
nightcap, rushed over the threshold with a recklessness which
entangled her in the Dominé’s paper-basket, and precipitated her, a
brilliant bundle of color, on the hearth-rug.
“I wish you would knock!” cried the Dominé, irrational from sheer
annoyance. Ursula had started back into the shade, and her aunt did
not at first perceive her.
“Roderigue,” gasped Miss Mopius, “there are thieves in the house!”
Burglary was Miss Mopius’s most persistent bugbear.
“What? Again?” said the Dominé.
“Hush. Not so loud. This time I distinctly heard them.”
“You always do,” interrupted the Dominé, who was an angel, but
angry.
“At the window just under me, as I awoke from a restless sleep,
I heard them, Roderigue. And I _saw_ them. I saw two figures
stealthily creeping. Ah!” Miss Mopius, who had hissed out all this
from the landing, now clutched her brother-in-law’s arm. “We shall
be murdered,” she sobbed. “Shut the door, Roderigue; lock it. I
don’t know how I ever managed to summon up courage to come down.”
She gave a shrill scream as something moved behind her. Ursula
stepped forward.
“Fear sees every danger double,” said the Dominé, with a smile to
his daughter. “Go up-stairs again, Josine, and take some of your
Lob.”
“Ursula!” cried Miss Mopius, in a fury--“Ursula, if I die, my blood
will be on your head! I was ill enough, Heaven knows, this evening,
and now I shall have a sleepless night.” She put her hand to her
side. “Ah!” she said. “Ah!” Her face was deadly pale. “It is not
enough that I devote my whole life to your poor old father, while
you--live in luxury and pomp.”
“I am very sorry,” answered Ursula, lamely. “You have dropped all
the Sympathetico on the carpet.”
It was too true, and this misfortune annihilated Josine. In her
hand she held the bottle, from which the stopper had escaped as she
fell.
“I had forgotten it,” she said. “I had to take some before
venturing down. Now I sha’n’t get a wink of sleep. But I shouldn’t
have got that, anyhow.” She shuffled towards the door. “Roderigue,
would you mind watching me up the stairs? I certainly saw two
men. But, of course, it is very dark. Is Ursula going to stay all
night?” Up-stairs, at her bedroom door, she turned. “Nothing wrong,
I suppose, at the Horst?”
“No,” called back the Dominé from the hall.
“Of course not--only mad pranks. Ursula’s behavior is criminal.”
The Dominé’s thoughts lingered over this last word as he returned
to his daughter. “She did not even observe your bandage!” he said.
“The room is dark,” replied Ursula. “I am going now, but I just
wanted to ask you this. I came to ask it. By-the-bye, Captain, did
you know that if I were to die you would succeed to the Horst and
the Manor of Horstwyk?”
“Yes, I knew,” replied the Dominé, gravely. “But you are young, and
I am old.”
“Captain, dear, if ever you own the Horst, I want you to give it to
Gerard.”
“Yes,” replied the Dominé, more gravely still.
“You will, won’t you?”
“Let me ask you another question: Why don’t _you_ give it to
Gerard, then?”
She faced him. “Because I can’t,” she said. “Don’t ask me, father.
It isn’t mine to give.”
“Ursula, that would be exactly my standpoint. Property is never
ours; we are God’s stewards. And if I became owner of this great
estate--God forbid, child, God forbid!--I should hardly deem it
right to disannul my responsibilities by abandoning them to another
man.”
“You think the property is better in other hands?” cried Ursula,
eagerly.
“I do not wish to say that of Gerard,” replied the Dominé, gently.
“Responsibility changes character; even the reckless Alcibiades
felt as much. Still, I cannot help observing, Ursula, in what a
marvellous, I might well say miraculous, manner the estate has
passed away from Gerard, to fall into your hands. Surely, if
ever man can trace Divine interference, it is here. No, Ursula,
inexplicable as the course of events would be to me, I see God’s
action in them too plainly to venture on resistance. Never should I
_dare_, child, to return the estate to Gerard. God, in prolonging
your child’s frail life for those few minutes, _God himself took it
from him_.”
Ursula fell back to the door. “And afterwards?” she stammered.
“Afterwards?”
“The afterwards is God’s. It is only when every soldier plays
general that God’s war goes wrong. But, dear girl, you are young; I
am old; we are all, young and old, in His hands.”
“Let me go away, father,” gasped Ursula, putting out her hands as
if to keep him from her. “It is near midnight. I must go home. The
servants won’t understand.”
He led her to the carriage, out into the night wind again.
“Obey orders,” he said, softly. “It’s so magnificently simple--like
Balaclava. Says the private: The general _may_ be wrong, but I,
if I obey, _must_ be right. And our General cannot be wrong.” He
leaned over the door of the brougham in closing it. “Be of good
courage,” he whispered. “I have overcome the world.”
She caught at his hand and kissed it in the presence of her
sleepily staring footman. Then she sank back among the cushions as
the brougham rolled away.
“Divine interference,” she murmured--“Divine interference. Oh, my
God! my God!”
The Dominé stood watching her away into the darkness.
“Ursula and Gerard!” he reflected. “Had Gerard but acted
differently! How I wish it could have been! For to human
perceptions the estate seems rightfully his. I trust I have
entirely forgiven Otto the wrong he did my child!”
He had done so, fully; but a doubt of the fulness was one of his
most constant troubles.