So life flowed on at the Horst, for its chatelaine, in a narrow little stream, over rocks, amid a vast splendor of scenery. The Baron, her husband, working day and night in the almost hopeless effort to make both ends meet, waxed sombre and careworn beneath the ever-increasing dislike of his numerous dependants. Towards his wife he was always affectionate, closing the door to his heart-chamber of torture and seeking relaxation as from a beautiful plaything. And Gerard, except for the briefest of visits, remained at Drum.
When the Stork, some twelve months after the old Baron’s death, tapped at Ursula’s window, her life was no longer empty. Suddenly the Baby filled it to overflowing. Every one manifested an absorbing interest in the Baby, as was his due, even the Freule Louisa, for babies, surely, are vast potentialities. Miss Mopius forgot her slumbering grievances and rubbed the Baby’s back with fluid electricity. The Dominé christened his grandchild, wearing his Legion of Honor, as he had done at Ursula’s wedding. But the Dowager Baroness very nearly refused to be present at the ceremony, for the heir of the house received the single name of Otto.
“How cross he looks!” said the Dominé, benignly, dangling his grandson on one awkward knee. “I believe he disapproves of existence. Do you know, children, it has struck me from the first, I can’t understand why your son should have been born with such a look of chronic discontent. What do you mean, Ottochen?” He shook the morsel of pink-spotted apathy, and laughed innocently at its unconscious sneer.
Involuntarily the parents’ eyes met. Otto walked to the window.
“Life is good, Ottochen,” continued the Dominé, his eagle face alight with tenderness. “Life is very beautiful. People love each other, and the love falls like a rainbow across every background of cloud. Everything is beautiful, especially the storms.” The baby puckered up its face into one of those sudden, apparently causeless fretfulnesses which the masculine mind resents. “Thou wilt grow up,” said its grandfather, “into a brave soldier of the Cross”--the Baby overflowed in slobbery, but agonizing, sorrow. Ursula hastily took it from the Dominé’s clumsy deprecations.