The Government functionary turned in dismay. “Why, Mynheer,” he exclaimed, “I had been quite given to understand you were a Liberal?”
Helena’s voice broke the ensuing silence. “We really must go in to dinner, papa. We shall be late for the theatre. Good-bye, Mr. Mopius; my compliments to Mevrouw!” She took the Baron’s arm and drew him away. “I like a fat fool,” she said on the stairs; “your lean fool is only half a fool. He can’t look the part.”
[J] There are three political parties in the Dutch Parliament--the Roman Catholics, the permanent Liberal majority (who are aggressively anti-religious), and a small, much-persecuted Protestant remnant. All issues of any interest are religious. There is no longer a Conservative party.
[K] Title of Dutch Members of Parliament.
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.”