“We must have some fun, hey, wife, while Ursula’s here? We might give a dinner-party, and show the grandees what’s what.”
“But the grandees don’t come to our dinner-parties,” objected Mevrouw Mopius.
“No, they don’t, hang ’em. But they’d hear from the people who do. Your Dominé Pock knows ’em all. We’ll have Pock to dinner. He’s always asking for money for something or other, but he’s a good judge of victuals. Trust a parson to be that, and a poor judge of wine. At least the Evangelicals. And he’ll tell every one I’ve the best venison in the city. I get my venison from Brussels, Ursula, and it’s better, they’ll all say, than the Baron van Trossart’s, who shoots his himself.”
“The Baron van Trossart!” said Ursula. “That is the guardian of the Van Helmonts’ cousin, Helen, the heiress. I am to go to a party there. Gerard promised me an invitation.”
“Look here,” he said, “are you staying with me or in barracks? If with me, you must allow me to amuse you. I won’t hear anything about your Barons Gerard. And I won’t have nothing to say to them.”
“Gerard isn’t the Baron,” replied Ursula, hotly. “That’s his father. Not that it matters.”
“No, I shouldn’t think it did. I won’t hear anything about them. What did you say the father’s name was?”
“Theodore, Baron van Helmont van Horstwyk en de Horst,” rolled forth Ursula, proudly.
“Yes, poor Roderick likes that sort of thing. Is ‘the Horst’ the name of the house? Is it grander than this?”
Ursula laughed. “It’s quite different,” she said.
“Well, I dare say. But I won’t hear another word about them. That kind of people are all a mistake.”
Harriet lifted her indolent eyes, and fixed them on Ursula’s face.
“Do you like your wine?” she said. “Mind you deserve it.”
For the rest of the meal Mynheer Mopius talked of the entertainments he would organize for Ursula. He refused to let her accompany Harriet on the theological errand concerning Leah’s eyes.
“No, no,” he said, “come into the drawing-room and amuse us. Do you play? Do you sing? Harriet does neither. We do both.”
Ursula played well. She gave them a Concert of Liszt, and Mynheer did not talk till Mevrouw dropped her scissors and asked him, after a wait, to pick them up for her. As soon as he could, he got hold of the piano himself, and called out to his wife to join him. He had been possessed of a fine bass twenty years ago, and had enjoyed much admiration in Batavian society. It now stopped somewhere down in his stomach, and only a rumble came out. His wife rose wearily to play his accompaniments, and he kept her chained to the piano for the rest of the evening, though Ursula could not help seeing that the playing seemed to cause her physical pain.
