Читать книгу My Lady Nobody - Maarten Maartens - Страница 5

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THE DOMINÉ

“Let us go in to breakfast,” said the Dominé. Father and daughter passed up between the stiff stalks of the gooseberry-bushes, among the sallow, swollen fruit. Both of them walked with a straight step, the figure erect, and a little self-reliant.

The pastor fell back a few paces with meditative gaze. He was wont to rejoice tremulously in Ursula’s physical health, in the easy carriage of the head, the light swing of the hips. He rejoiced in the clear brown of her complexion and the calm depth of her brave brown eyes. No weak woman in blood or brain, this stately, strong-limbed maiden. He thanked God mournfully, ever reminiscent of the pervading sorrow of his life, the loss of the frail young creature who had dropped by the road-side wellnigh twenty years ago.

It was that affliction which had made a cleric of Captain Roderick Rovers. By nature he was a soldier, recklessly brave and almost devil-may-care. A man who thought straight, if not far, and struck straight in the front. He had escaped from the inertia of the long Batavian peace to the red-hot tumult of Algerian desert war, and had come back, early bronzed and silvered, plus the Legion of Honor and minus an arm. He had married a pure white clinging thing, like a lily, that twined every tendril round his sturdy support, and then dropped from the stem. She was a good woman. To him she had come as a revelation. “I have fought the good fight,” she had whispered in dying. He, with the medals on his breast and the memory of not a few killed and wounded—could he have said as much face to face with death?

He began to comprehend something of that battle which is not to the strong. On their wedding-day the bride had given her soldier-husband Bunyan’s Holy War—a Dutch translation—substituting it on his table for the weather-beaten little Thucydides which had been his companion in all his campaigns. He had demanded back the Greek historian. He now took up the spiritual conflict, and fought the powers of darkness, as he had ever met an enemy, at arm’s-length.

His mutilation having incapacitated him from active service, he took orders, henceforth to do battle with his country’s inmost foes in the heart of every parishioner. The old militant spirit flamed in him still, and he led his slow flock like a regiment under the banner of the great Captain. On the high days of the Church he wore his Cross of the Legion in the pulpit. His clerical superiors had objected: he dared them to object. It was gained, he said, like their reverend titles, in honorable war.

He had cherished the solitary treasure of his heart, but his care had been free from coddling; he had even combated the enervating influence of his sister-in-law, who kept house for him. “Coolness and cold water” was one of his maxims in any sudden emergency; late into the autumn you could have seen the gaunt father and the little solemn-featured girl wending their way towards the river for a swim. The bathless villagers watched and wondered. They judged the good man to be a little daft, no doubt, but they loved his cheery helpfulness. Dozing on the battle-field, they caught, between two yawns, the stir of his réveillé, and its clarion note passed like a breeze through the foulness of their sleeping-ditch.

Then they turned in the trenches and fell asleep again.

Ursula learned early that life was no dream-garden. “Duty, like a stern preceptor,” often pushed himself unpleasantly to the fore in her young existence and extinguished the sunlight, provoking thunder-storms. Not that these were by any means the rule; her father loved her too tenderly for that; he kissed her leisurely upon the forehead. “Be sober,” he said, “be vigilant.” Her aunt gave her sweets.

Yet Ursula, from a two-year-old baby, loved her father best. Even when, once, he chastised her because she had told a lie.

“Gerard will be late for the train,” said the pastor. “Headlong, as usual. Either he will get there too late or he will drive too fast.”

“He will drive too fast,” replied Ursula, quietly. “Tell me, father, about this elder brother of his. How strange it will seem! A new son at the house whom nobody knows. I wish he were not coming.”

“I have told you before, Ursula, but women are so resolutely curious. A man’s curiosity is impulse, a woman’s is method. Besides, you remember him yourself; he was here twelve years ago.”

“I don’t remember much, only a quiet, kind-looking gentleman who seemed afraid of children. What had he been doing in Germany, Captain?”

“Earning his daily bread, no more and no less.”

“And what has he been doing these twelve years in Java?”

“Earning his daily bread, not less, but no more.”

“I know,” mused Ursula, with feminine inconsistency. “It seems so ridiculous, a Van Helmont earning his living.”

But this was a red rag to a bull. “It is never ridiculous!” cried the pastor. “Give us this day our daily bread; that means: we would accept it, Lord, from no other hands than Thine!”

“As manna?” queried Ursula.

“No, child, as the harvest of toil. By-the-bye”—the old man stood still on the veranda steps, his limp sleeve hanging against his long black coat—“it is a strange coincidence, my preaching to-morrow’s sermon, and Otto coming home to-day. The Sabbath before he first started for Germany I preached on resisting the devil.”

Ursula smiled, a harmless little smile, all to herself.

“I remember it as if it were yesterday,” continued the Dominé, thoughtfully watching a wheeling swallow. “Do you know, Ursula, why Otto van Helmont went away?”

“No,” she responded, quickly inquisitive. “Tell me why.”

“I suppose you think it was some love-story?”

“No,” she said again. “Why should I think? I don’t know.”

“You are not like other girls, Ursula. Most women think everything is a love-story. Come, let us go in.”

“But he is quite old now?” she persisted, with her hand on his arm.

“He is what children call old. I believe he is seventeen years older than Gerard. I have always liked Otto exceedingly, little as I know of him. He is a true, simple-hearted gentleman, is Otto.”

“I don’t doubt it,” replied the girl, with a shade of petulance; “but it will be so awkward, a stranger at the house!”

“I wish you would close the veranda door, Roderigue,” said a querulous voice from inside. “You are letting in all the heat.”

The occupant of the room came forward, a little yellow lady, with red ringlets, in a red wrapper. This was Miss Mopius, the Dominé’s sister-in-law, and an invalid.

“I had kept down the temperature so beautifully,” she complained, during the performance of the usual perfunctory pecks. “What’s the use of my scolding the servant if she sees that you don’t care? Look at the thermometer, Ursula; it was under 65°.”

Ursula obediently reported that it was now nearing 67°.

“You see,” said Miss Mopius. She said nothing else, but the words dragged down upon the little room a fearful weight of guilty silence, from which Ursula fled to wash her hands.

As the girl was coming down-stairs again, she heard the rumble of returning wheels. She could not resist a swift run to the veranda, where she had abandoned her basket. As she caught it up the dog-cart came flying past. The two brothers were in it now. The elder turned sideways, started, hesitated, took off his hat. Ursula remained watching them, a symphony in yellow and brown, with the marigolds at her feet in a lake of golden orange, and the pink-tipped honeysuckle all around her, against the staring sunflowers loud and bold.