VJ COLLECTION OF BEITISH AUTHOKS TAUCHNITZ EDITION. VOL. 2876. GOD'S FOOL. BY MAARTEN MAARTENS. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. L TAUCHN1TZ EDITION. By the tame Author, THE SIN OF JOOST AVELINGH . . I vol. AN OLD MAID'S LOVE 2 vols. THE GREATER GLORY 2 vols. MY LADY NOBODY 2 vols. HER MEMORY I vol. SOME WOMEN I HAVE KNOWN . . i vol. MY POOR RELATIONS 2 vols. DOROTHEA. , 2 vols. G O D'S FOOL A KOOPSTAD STORY BY MAARTEN MAARTENS,rP5ea^j of- AUTHOR OF "THE SIN OF JOOST AVELINGH," ETC. COPYRIGHT EDITION. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LEIPZIG BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 1892. THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO ALL MY FELLOW-KOOPSTADERS IN THE FOUR VAST QUARTERS OF OUR MEAN LITTLE GLOBE. There was a man once a satirist. In the natural course of time his friends slew him, and he died. And the people came and stood about his corpse. " He treated the whole round world as his football," they said, indignantly, "and he kicked it." The dead man opened one eye. "But always towards the Goal," he said. There was a man once a naturalist. And one day he found a lobster upon the sands of time. Society is a lobster; it crawls backwards. " How black it is ! " said the naturalist. And he put it hi a little pan over the hot fire of his wit. "It will turn red," he said. But it didn't. That was its shamelessness. There was a man once a logician. He picked up a little clay ball upon the path of life. " It is a perfect little globe ," said his companions. But the logician saw that it was not mathematically round. And he took it in his hands and rubbed it between them, softly. "Don't rub so hard," said his companions. And at last he desisted, and looked down upon it. It was not a bit rounder, only pushed out of shape. And he looked at his hands. They were very dirty. There was a man once a poet. He went wandering through the streets of the city, and he met a disciple. "Come out with me," said the poet, "for a walk in the sand-dunes." And they went. But ere they had progressed many stages, said the disciple: "There is nothing here but sand." "To what did I invite you?" asked the poet. "To a walk in the sand-dunes." "Then do not com- plain," said the poet. "Yet even so your words are untrue. There is Heaven above. Do you not see it? The fault is not Heaven's. Nor the sand's." CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PART I. Page CHAPTER I. Sweeps the Reader into a Cloud of Mist . 7 II. Shows that the Story will be a highly re- spectable one 19 III. And also altogether comfortable .... 27 IV. The new Life begins 33 V. Light and Shade 44 VI. "Thunder "-storms 55 VII. Stepmothers 66 VIII. Cousin Cocoa 75 IX. Elias hears the Truth 87 X. Dr. Pillenaar's Revenge 92 XI. "Like a Stream under a Willow-tree" . . 103 XII. Volderdoes Zonen 115 XIII. The Head of the Firm 130 XIV. No Thoroughfare, and the Way out . . 144 XV. Hendrik's Temptation 152 IO CONTENTS OF VOLUME L PART II. Pa&8 CHAPTER I. Compos Mentis 172 II. A "Struggle-for-lifer" 182 HI. The Marriage-lottery 192 IV. Blank 201 V. Cousins and Cozenage 213 VI. The Bride asks for Flowers on her Path 221 VII. Treats of Religion 232 VIII. Music and Discord 242 IX. A Prince among Paupers 252 X. Elias slays his ten Thousands . . . 265 GOD'S FOOL. PART I. CHAPTER I. SWEEPS THE READER INTO A CLOUD OF MIST. SUDDENLY the horses shook themselves, waking up, as it were, from their dull lethargy of damp. They tossed the great drops off their manes, in a quick splash of impatience, once, twice then once again, with a suc- cession of those nervous shivers that run all down a horse's sides and rattle the harness in a dozen places together. And then one of them neighed, pathetically; and the other hung down his head, as if neighing were hardly worth while. Decidedly, Hendrik Lossell's horses did not like the mist "Fie!" said Chris from his box, drawling out the word. And then he said it over again, twice, very briskly. "Fie! fie!" It was the second warning did it. They did not heed the first. Chris never shook himself. He sat immovable in his long dark-blue winter-coat, his gloved hands holding 12 GOD'S FOOL. the reins in his lap. An infinitesimal spray lay all over the surface of the thick frieze. He didn't mind the wet It wasn't wet. For, in fact, the night was dry, or so a Dutchman would have called it No rain had fallen. Only a soft white cloud was trailing swiftly over the morasses in a succession of innumerable puffs, as from the mouths of a thousand cannon underground, as if the spirits of the dead men in the waste were warring against the climate that had killed them. And a heavy mantle of gray misery was soaking quietly downward in shivering masses from the leaden sky, as if the angels would shut out the consciousness of so much condens- ing rheumatism, and softly, imperceptibly, a bright glitter of moisture was breaking out on every leaf and blade and pebble, upon everybody and everything. The house was a lonely one. It stood by itself, in its gardens, on the road outside the town; and the nearest group of cottages, some hundred yards distant, had long since sunk away in clouds of vapour. You could not see much more than twenty feet in front of you. And soon you would not be able to see as much as that, for darkness was rapidly closing in over such dull twilight as still feebly struggled with the damp. Already the "seeing" was very blurred and indistinct It was an April night, by-the-bye, late in the month. A bakers boy came up the avenue and passed round to the back of the house. Presently he appeared again, whistling a dismal tune. "Bad weather for driving," he remarked, as he went by. "So, so," said Chris cheerily. "One good thing, it keeps dry." INTO A CLOUD OF MIST. 13 "Yes, it keeps dry," answered the baker's boy. "That's one good thing. Good-night" And he sank out of sight into the mist, his whistle alone lingering a few seconds longer. Another quarter of an hour crept by. The darkness grew denser. And presently the clock of the big church- tower away down in the town boomed forth the hour of eight. Its echoes crept along the dreary silence, and lay faint upon the air. The chimes which must have prefaced those final strokes had got lost in the mazes of the mist. Just before the striking of the hour the front-door had suddenly opened, and a man had come running out, and away into the fog. "Whoever can that be?" thought Chris; but he never speculated long on the unknowable. He looked up at the lighted window in one corner of the house, on the top story. There were only two stories. "Terribly fond of the poor creature," he soliloquized, half aloud, "one might think, by the way he keeps the horses out. And that with the infirmenza in all the stables of the neighbourhood. And it's not he will stop at home for fear of anybody's catching it." Chris remembered his own experiences last year, when he had been bad with this same influenza, and had been obliged to drive his master to the office through the rain, at least a week too soon. He shook his head reproachfully; and as the drops fell from his hat, he thoughtfully shot them off his sleeve with finger and thumb. "A bad master," he murmured. "Seems to me the bad masters get all the good servants in these parts. Perhaps that keeps them bad." 14 GOD'S FOOL. He gazed vaguely into the gathering darkness, as if searching for a solution of this mystery. And the clouds of white mist drizzled upwards, and the clouds of gray mist drizzled down. One of the horses sighed a long-drawn sigh. With the swelling of his sides the carriage creaked drearily forward, and then sank back again. The other whisked his tail. Chris yawned. But even as he did so, he straight- ened himself and arranged the reins. A man's shadow had passed rapidly across the white blind of the lighted window. "Up at last," said Chris to himself. After a pause he added cautiously, "At least" A few moments later, however, the house-door was thrown open with a bang which startled the horses. They bounded erect at once in a tremble of expecta- tion. "Wo a!" cried the coachman, tightening his grasp, and reaching for the whip from its holder. The little brougham quivered, as if recoiling for a spring. A gentleman leaped, at one rush, from the dark hall into the dark carriage, throwing, as he passed, the single word "Home!" in the direction of the box. The carriage-door banged. "Allez, boys!" cried Chris, for so much French do all Dutch coachmen un- derstand, and all Dutch horses also. The little brougham jumped forward, and ran away into the fog. It hurried along almost noiselessly in the clinging whiteness that seemed unwilling to let it pass, so tightly did the mist close round, deadening every sound with its dull weight Presently, however, the door banged INTO A CLOUD OF MIST. 15 again. Chris glanced round quickly, impatiently. Only the close carriage behind him, and the horses trotting briskly down the road in front. "I do wish he would learn to shut the door when he gets in," muttered Chris angrily; "it's always falling open unexpectedly. We shall have an ugly accident some day in a crowded street," and he whipped up the horses, already going fast enough. Once within the town-gates, he found it necessary to slacken his speed. The gas-lamps, few and far be- tween, lay like blurs of yellow fog amidst the white. Streets, in which there was barely room for two vehicles to pass each other, were cut by steam-tramlines. Chris peered forward a little anxiously, keeping his steeds well in hand. After a minute or two he came to a narrow crossing, near a corner, and here he checked them into a walk. The streets seemed sufficiently deserted, one would think, only you can never be quite sure. "See Misfortune before she sees you," says Chris's friend, the County Almanack. A moment earlier Chris had heard his master in the carriage. -That gentleman had coughed, and struck something, doubtless inadvertently, against the glass be- hind the box. Now, in turning the corner, the coach- man was surprised, and heartily annoyed, by a second click of the lock, softer this time, as if the door were being gently drawn to. He greeted it with a round oath at Mynheer Lossell's clumsiness, and, without deign- ing to glance backwards again, he cautiously wriggled round an awkward bend, and then once more slackened the reins. After that he did not check his pace till he turned into a broad avenue, and drew up at his master's 1 6 GOD'S FOOL. door. No one moved inside the carriage. The coach- roan cast a reproachful glance at the lighted entrance. You could see the gas-lamp flaring steadily in the vesti- bule behind the glass doors. No one moved in the hall. Evidently the sound of the advancing wheels had not been heard in the house. He put his whistle to his lips, but, even in the very act, he hesitated, and let it drop again. He had never required to whistle on behalf of Mynheer only for Mevrouw. Mynheer was often out of the carriage be- fore it had properly stopped, long before the man-servant had run down the steps to meet him. He peeped cautiously down over his shoulder. He could make out nothing in that manner. An uncom- fortable, indefinite wonder caused him to slip from his box, speaking soothingly to his horses the while, and so cautiously approach the brougham window. One glance, and all hesitation was gone the carriage was empty. He bounded on to his seat again, and, with a cut of the whip at the astonished horses, he swept round the short drive, and away again into the mist Old Mulder, attracted at last by this rapid exit, stood open-mouthed in the wide hall-door, staring at the backward reflection of the carriage-lamps, flickering like lucifer matches in the darkness. And after a moment even that faint flicker died away. "He must have fallen out," said Chris to himself over and over again, as he raced down the road towards the comer where he had last heard the door sink into the slot "He must have fallen sideways in a fit or something. See what comes of his careless ways!" INTO A CLOUD OF MIST. 17 He stopped abruptly at the cross-roads. No one there. Nothing to be seen. Nothing to be heard. He called softly, then louder "Mynheer!" Whiteness, stillness. The drip of water, the glitter here and there of smooth surfaces, and long lines of drops. And the audible rustle of a Dutch mist. Pat! Pat! Pat! "Mynheer!" He bent forward, following the stretch of shining streets with scrutinizing eyes. The chimes began to ring down tremulously from the tower. Half-past eight! He drove on cautiously, still tracing the road on both sides with careful question; he drove out of the city, into the deathly loneliness of the shrouded fields, still repeating, with bated cry, his master's name. Not far from the house in front of which he had waited, he met them, a whole crowd of them, confused, alarmed, excited in that frenzy of mingled horror and delight which a great catastrophe calls forth among lookers-on. They were all crying together, in crazy, distorted lamentation and amaze. Chris threw back his horses on their haunches. What was wrong? For the love of heaven, what was wrong? A new outcry greeted him. They sprang back in alarm from the frightened, struggling horses looming in a cloud of steam. The light poured across their eager faces distorted with fear. Over the champing of the horses' bits and the screaming of the women a man's voice rose. "Lossell's Chris, as I'm alive! Would you believe it? Of all people, Lossell's Chris!" "And why not Lossell's Chris?" cried that personage in a white fury, half rising from his box-seat with up- God's Fool. /. 2 1 8 GOD'S FOOL. lifted whip. "What's the matter? Where's my master? What is wrong?" "Wrong?" echoed a chorus of voices; and the shrieks redoubled. Somebody wailed: "Oh, how shall we tell him!" a woman. And then there was a lull of silence. "Wrong?" continued the man's voice tranquilly. "There's only this wrong, coachman. There's murder wrong, that's all" And as he spoke a cry came from the distant house, a cry as if of the voice of a trumpet, deep and strong and irresistible, over the sleeping country and all the far white fields: "Murder! most awful murder! O Christ, murdered yet living, dost Thou know of the deed?" A man stood at the open window, his face uplifted towards the starless sky. SHOWS THAT THE STORY, ETC. IQ CHAPTER II. SHOWS THAT THE STORY WILL BE A HIGHLY RESPECTABLE ONE. THE fool sat in his room, by the fireside, with his hands in his lap. His eyes were closed. They were always closed. God had closed them. Many years ago. In his youth? Well, hardly in his youth, if we distinguish our ages by their succession, for the fool had always been a child. But he remembered when he had been a happy child. He remembered it vaguely, objectively, as we remember a dream we have dreamed or a book we have read. Not with a poignant consciousness of loss, but with a distant envy cheered by hope. To know of happiness is to believe it possible. Whatever has been, can be; whatever can be, may be mine. And from moment to moment he lived in the present, which is his all, expecting it to change and grow pleasanter, more like that other impression which still lies next to it; and, lo, the present is gone, and another present is there, and hope remains. Many of our best friends he missed; but our most cruel foe memory was also a stranger to him. Not that he could not remember, only he could not call up and live over again as past, with any degree of actuality, half- forgotten phases of joy or sorrow, the heart's ex- 2* 20 GOD'S FOOL. perience, or the mind's. He recalled how he had burnt his hand badly more than a quarter of a century ago; he recalled it as if it were yesterday, and a troubled look came over his face, and he shrank back in alarm. But he smiled when they told him that his mother was dead, and he said that it was not true, and pointed in the direction of her young picture against the wall. He knew that it hung there; they had told him. How had they told him? you will say. This man to whom God had refused both the light of His sun and the light of the human voice? What message from the outside world could pierce the darkness in which he lay, blind and deaf? Hush, hush! let me tell my story in my own way. Yes, you are right, he was blind and deaf. He could not remember many things, he had not many things to remember; yet this morning, as he sat there in the loneliness of his room the loneliness of his life scattered fragments of the past came rolling across his mind like beads from a broken necklace. He caught them up here and there as they passed him, not heeding, unable to rearrange, the lost symmetry of the string. There had been a time, long years ago more than thirty years ago, only to him it was not a memory, but a sensation a time when it had seemed as if all the gifts of fortune had been showered down upon his head, a golden, curly head, gilded by the sunshine of half a dozen summers. All the children of the neighbourhood that were old enough to feel envy had envied little Elias Lossell. His father was the great merchant and SHOWS THAT THE STORY, ETC. 21 town councillor, Hendrik Lossell, who, from being a nobody, had suddenly risen to the rank of " somebody's husband" by his marriage with the only daughter and heiress of old Elias Volderdoes, the biggest rogue and most respected tea-jobber in Koopstad. For Koopstad, though only a little place, had nothing provincial about it, and vied with Amsterdam or any other great city in its simplification of all social distinctions according to the needs of the nineteenth century. The only casts it still recognised were connected with the Mint, and the one Order it now invariably honoured was the money- order. It looked down with supreme contempt upon those out-of-the-way sister-cities which still ventured to maunder about their "old families"; such ideas might have answered very well in their day, but they would not do for anyone in Koopstad (except the old families themselves) since the railway had brought it within forty minutes of the capital. You were always getting into awkward predicaments for want of a definite limit; now, with the new standard, as imported by the new train, no misconceptions were possible. You applied the decimal system, with due regard to proportion, and there you were. A man possessed of a hundred thousand florins was deserving of a certain amount of respect; a man possessed of two hundred thousand florins had a claim to exactly four times as much esteem, and so on. When you got beyond a million, the good citizens of Koopstad dropped their voices and folded their hands, as their fathers had done in church. Old Elias Voider- does had got beyond the million. He had done so on that last occasion when he had taken up the Govern- ment commission for the damaged cargo of the Ino. 22 COD'S FOOL. It's an old story. They made him something after that President of the Chamber of Commerce, I believe. And they took off their hats to him a little lower. The worthiest of them the "well-intentioned burghers," as the rich people called them regulated the sweep of their hats through the air by the same mathematical rule which governed their hearts' esteem. You might have set up an algebraic equation unconsciously, but automatically, exact between the angle of the circle of their salute and the income of the person they saluted. The salute was old-fashioned, but the idea entirely modern, as new as most of the fortunes which graciously waved a benedictory response. I am not speaking evil of Koopstad. Heaven for- fend! I am merely anxious to prove that we are not out-of-the-way people you can get to Amsterdam in less than forty minutes if you take the express and that these Lossells for whose tragic story I ask your brief attention need not necessarily have lived in our quiet neighbourhood, but might have done honour to the big city which you inhabit, unless yours is the melancholy one where they only do homage to a tea- jobber, when he doesn't cheat, and remains poor. Hendrik Lossell, then, from being recognised by hardly anybody but his creditors, suddenly dropped into the very obtusest angle of salutation through his mar- nage with Margaretha Volderdoes. He loved her so he said; and it is very possible that he loved Margaretha Volderdoes rich; we need not inquire whether he would have loved her poor, for she wasn't And she loved him; she would have loved him under any circum- stances, as long as he could lift to her pure forehead SHOWS THAT THE STORY, ETC. 23 those great black eyes, behind which there was nothing but a machine for counting dollars, but which seemed to spread like very lakes of liquid tenderness. So they loved each other, and it was all very beauti- ful and sentimental; but old Elias did not properly ap- preciate sentiment, and it seems an extraordinary thing that he should have let them marry merely because they were in love. The old ladies of Koopstad still shake their heads over this mystery; but they need not ask me about it, for I cannot tell them any fresh particulars, no more than the "Christian Reformed" minister's wife, who knows all the scandals of the town, including every original or unoriginal sin that has been committed there during the thirty-seven years of her residence in the place. I have a shrewd suspicion, if you ask me, that we all of us, however old or wealthy we may be, retain a soft spot somewhere in our hearts that hardens last; and, if such spot there be, you will probably find it is a mother or a daughter perhaps, more rarely, a sister or well, no, hardly a wife. So they were married, and lived happily all through the honeymoon, in which better-matched couples than they invariably quarrel. It is a bad sign, that, too smooth a honeymoon. And a few months later Mar- garetha had learned that you must not marry a man for his eyes. People tell you they are a mirror of the soul. And yet Hendrik Lossell's soul was far from soft. He was not a bad man; he was worse one of those men who are not bad enough to get better. He was not interested in much except himself, and he was not even interested in himself subjectively, as an inde- pendent "I." The object of all his attention was the 24 GOD'S FOOL. firm of "Volderdoes Zonen, tea-merchants," incorporated, to the advantage of the civilized world, in the person of Hendrik Lossell. For old Elias had departed this life after having re- mained just long enough to thoroughly initiate so apt a pupil as his son-in-law into the mysteries of money- making wholesale. This fortunate dispensation the re- maining, of course, not the removal Hendrik Lossell had accepted as a personal attention to himself, and it had put him into so good a temper with the government of the world in general that he had written down a double amount opposite the name of the firm on the Church charity list for the year "Volderdoes Zonen, six hundred florins." "A worthy successor!" said the minister's wife. But that was the Church minister's wife; Volderdoes Zonen had nothing to do with Dis- senters. When the little Lossell was born they called him Elias. The name was ugly, but it was the fond grand- papa's; and, besides, an ugly name looks well in busi- ness. It sounds old-fashioned, and "established 1791," and all that kind of thing. "Our Puritan forefathers," you know, and the strict uprightness and straightforward dealing of those good old times. What a "solid" im- pression it would make when young Elias was a middle- aged man himself, and sat behind the great office table, with old Elias's portrait above his head. He would point to it, over his shoulder, benignantly: "My grandfather. I am named after him. His father was the founder of our house. If you leave the mixing to us, we can let you have it at two seventeen and three-quarters." Lossell's heart glowed at the thought SHOWS THAT THE STORY, ETC. 2$ In the meantime the little Elias, having wept the customary tears over that preliminary sea-sickness which seems inseparable from all infancy, sailed over as smooth a life's ocean as falls to the lot of any human being, big or little. His grandfather, who lived to see the child's second birthday, worshipped the very ground he trod on. His mother, having recovered in him his father's eyes, poured out upon his small existence all the love which had found no former outlet His father let him alone. In one word, his happiness was com- plete. And so, when he was five years old, his mother died. Within a year his father married again married "someone to look after Elias." The someone was a merchant's daughter, a young thing, ready to hand, for her father had business connections with Volderdoes Zonen. She slapped Elias. That was her way of looking after him. It did not answer as well as his father's. Presently there were two cradles in the old house, and twins in the cradles, and that put Elias's nose de- finitely out of joint. Matters did not improve when his two little half-brothers stepped out of their cradles and on to his toes. I wonder: Is that why they call them step-brothers, because they step into your place in the heart of that imitation article which your father bade you call "mamma" the other day, and which seemed so kind to you at first? Elias's stepmother's kindness had not even held out the regulation nine months' length. Hendrik and Hubert, the twins, now began to enjoy life in their turn; their spell of "good times" was to last longer, fortunately for them, than Elias's. The land- a 6 COD'S FOOL. scape might have reminded you of one of those Alpine scenes when it has already begun to rain on the moun- tain, while the valley is still bright with sunshine. Not that the inhabitants of the valley can help it Nor that they feel any the happier because the mountaineers are in the dark. The younger boys were fairly fond of their elder brother. They had no objection to him. He was not in their way. And they played with him, and bullied him, as children will. He, on his part, adored them with unreasoning worship. There was only a difference of some half-dozen years between him and them. The second wife used to sit watching the trio at their play. Elias had retained that victoriously pleading look in the lustrous eyes over which his poor mother had so often sighed and prayed. He had a noble forehead high and pure, as hers had been and the golden curls fell clustering over it and down to his shoulders. He was tall and well-grown for his age, neither very clever nor remarkably stupid backward if anything, and more eager to romp than to study. He was fully seven years old before his father put him to learn his letters it being Hendrik Lossell's theory that the best leap follows on a recoil and it took him as long to distinguish U from V as if he had been an ancient Roman. The mother looked at her own boys. They were sturdy little Dutchmen, the kind of children no one but the mother looks at twice. She hated that other child. AND ALSO ALTOGETHER COMFORTABLE. CHAPTER III. AND ALSO ALTOGETHER COMFORTABLE. ELIAS was nine years old when the world, with all its good and evil, died away from him, and left him alone. It was his little brother Hubert who, half in fun and half in wantonness, pushed down a flower-pot from the ledge of the tall nursery-balcony on the laughing face upturned to greet him. "Hubby! Hubby! look at the yellow bird on the big laburnum-tree!" Crash! Hubby was leaning over the parapet, kicking his white legs against its columns, with gravely puckered face, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. "There is no hope," said the doctor; "there is not the slightest hope. It is a good thing there is not." He said it harshly. Standing in the darkened room by the small iron bedstead on which the boy lay in- sensible, he looked from the stepmother, dissolved in self-pitying lamentations, to the father, hard and im- patient, annoyed, perhaps, to be called away in business- hours. He did not think they cared much; and he said it harshly, because he himself was sorry for the child. "Why a good thing?" asked the father abruptly. 28 COD'S FOOL. "It is better sometimes, especially at his age, to die than to live on," replied the doctor. Hendrik Lossell stood for a moment terror-struck. Then he burst out: "You mean that he will recover! That probably his brain will be injured that he will be mad, or an idiot, or whatever you call it! And he will live on for ever these idiots always do! Hey! speak out: do you mean that?" The doctor busied himself with his patient, dis- daining to answer. Suddenly Hendrik Lossell turned upon his sobbing wife: "Peace!" he said fiercely. "Go out of the room. What are you howling for? For pity of the child, per- chance! Go go out of the room do you hear me? and pray for yourself, not for him." She obeyed him, gathering her wraps about her, and keeping her handkerchief to her eyes, as she slouched out of his sight He shut the door carefully behind her, and then he came back to the bedside. "Doctor," he said menacingly, "let us understand each other. You are right; that child must either re- cover completely, or not recover at all." He spoke very quietly, but with such concentrated meaning that the physician, accustomed as he was to scenes of horror, trembled at the words. "I shall do what I can," he answered gruffly. "The issues are not in my hand, Mynheer Lossell." For a few moments the merchant evidently hesitated, at war with himself. He walked up and down the little room in the dark, his straight, strong figure swaying to AND ALSO ALTOGETHER COMFORTABLE. 2Q and fro. Then he said slowly and distinctly his hand on the door-handle his face averted: "I did not intend that you must, in any case, have power to cure the child. But, if he recovers, he must recover completely. If he does not regain the full use of his faculties, better that he should not return to life at all. Should either of these eventualities occur I refuse to believe in the possibility of any other you will allow me to consider that mortgage annulled which I still hold on your house. Only, if you please, in the case of cure or no cure. Half a cure is worse than no cure. Half a cure, for me, would mean foreclosure. Good-day, doctor." The doctor answered never a word. He swore under his breath in the silence of the sick-room. "Fore- closure it shall be," he muttered to himself, "as far as lies in my power, so help me God! But whatever can the Right Worshipful mean?" He called him Right Worshipful, you see, because his fellow-citizens had rightly considered that Hendrik Lossell's income was entitled to a place in the councils of the town. Foreclosure it was, accompanied by envy, malice, and all uncharitableness; so much so that people began to ask each other whether the rich merchant was angry with Dr. Pillenaar for having saved his son's life. Lossell did his reputation severe injury in Koopstad by the scandal he called up around this matter; but he did not mind such considerations a trifle in comparison to the satisfaction of having his own way. He knew that the burghers could not be guilty of contempt^ for 30 COD'S FOOL. any lengthy period, of a man who drove his carriage and pair. So he persecuted Dr. Pillenaar, because Dr. Pillenaar had thwarted him, and left the rest to time and the popular sense of what is fit Still, people wronged him when they hinted that he was weary of his eldest son. He was quite willing that the boy should live, though, perhaps, he would not have grieved overmuch to see him die. But the semi-recovery of Elias was indeed a terrible blow to him, and it was not till after the merchant's death that Koopstad found out the exact reason why. In the meantime the object of all this solicitude, after hovering for many days between heaven and earth, turned the wrong corner and decided to live. Much to the doctor's astonishment, and no less to his fierce satis- faction, Elias's strong little body asserted its right to continued existence, whatever might become of the poor child's mind. He rose up, as it were, in his sleep, and walked about, and even spoke unintelligible words at first, the indivisible rigmarole of a dreamer; then slow, short sentences, as the sounds fell gradually into their proper places again. But he could receive no answer to his questions. Some fatal injury had been done to the apparatus of hearing by the force of the blow. The doctors said that the tympanum was intact in both ears; they could not account for the absence of all power of perceiving sound. It would not have been of much use to Elias could they have explained the reason of his deafness. He would not have been less incurably deaf. Some subtler influence was at work, out of reach of AND ALSO ALTOGETHER COMFORTABLE. 3! the wise men's probing, eating away the very strength of the child's brain. He was deaf. Well, so be it. It was a terrible affliction, but they must make the best of it, said his father. Many men were deaf who yet did their work ay, and left their mark in the world. Elias, as soon as he seemed sufficiently to have recovered from his ill- ness, was set to learn the deaf-and-dumb alphabet. "An easy thing enough for him," remarked Lossell, "considering that he isn't even dumb. He might have been dumb, you know, Judith. He can very well go into the business, all the same." Elias, however, did not find the deaf-and-dumb alphabet as easy as his father had expected. He struggled over it with almost hopeless failure, and there was something very pathetic in that constantly reiterated, "But I don't understand," which he sent out into the silence around him like a futile appeal for help. His great eyes lighted up for a moment with something of their old lustre under the impulse of that passionate questioning. But soon the strange dimness again sank over them. "He did not really care to understand," said his teacher with a shrug of the shoulders. "He was the most unintelligent pupil that he the master had ever come across." "The child is too stupid," Hendrik Lossell groaned to himself. "It is not his deafness that is at fault, but his stupidity. If that fool of a Pillenaar had only under- stood both the boy's welfare and his own! What am I to do with him in this condition? There ought to be a law against wills like that of old Volderdoes." And then he made some sotto voce allusions to his 32 GOD'S FOOL. deceased father-in-law, which were not at all in harmony with the veneration which he had vowed to the chief of the great house, whether alive or dead. Elias understood that he was very naughty, and he ran away into the woods and flung himself on the ground and cried. He did not like crying, but sometimes he could not help it And he lost himself in the wood, following after a bird of strange plumage which he had never seen before. He thought he knew all the birds that ever existed. He was quite sure that he knew at least thirty-seven kinds. He had counted them up on his fingers. And he was acquainted with any number of plants, and flowers, and funny wild things, only it tired his head to remember the names. It tired his head now far more than it used to, before Hubby threw the flower-pot at him. His head never used to be really tired before. And now, somehow, he was always having the headache, not always equally bad, but always that dull pain over the eyes. He could not tell them about his headaches. They would only say it was naughty of him. As he dared say it was. He came home late from that escapade in the woods, and he read in his stepmother's angry looks the reproaches he could no longer hear. Mind you, this is not a melancholy story, and I will not have it designated as such, however appearances may seem to be against me. It is essentially a comfort- able story, intended to show the comfortable people that this is really a comfortable world, and that they have a right to be comfortable in it THE NEW LIFE BEGINS. 33 CHAPTER IV. THE NEW LIFE BEGINS. THERE was a big dinner-party at the Lossells'. Now, what more cheerful than a dinner-party? Especially for those who, snugly established by their own fireside, with a book and a valid excuse, remember that, but for such valid excuse, they too must have been there. There was a dinner-party. The Lossells were old- fashioned people, and they sat down to table at half- past five. They made up for beginning so early by sitting on late. And the children came in to dessert, also in the old-fashioned manner, somewhere near half- past seven. Sixteen ladies and gentlemen, including the host and hostess, were gathered round the oblong dining- table, the ladies mostly in high dresses of some sombre silk, plum-coloured or bronze or spinach-green, with black-lace trimmings; the gentlemen in buttoned frock- coats and black ties portly gentlemen, with sparse hair and solemn, stupid faces, and parchmenty cheeks, from which the counting-house had drained away all pulsa- tion, leaving only a yellow smoothness of unmeaning dignity. The long narrow board there was nothing festive about it stood covered with a number of dessert-dishes in painfully perceptible lines: plump, over- laden dessert-dishes, full of hyper-trophied fruit and God's Fool, /. 3 34 GOD'S FOOL. sweetmeats, dishes that seemed to say, "Look at me; I can afford to pay." And the guests especially the ladies stared back with depressing indifference. They also could afford to pay. Had that not been the case, they would not have been there. There were no other flowers on the table than the big bouquet of red and pink roses, done up by the florist (done up tight), in a crystal centrepiece; but here and there stood a fat silver candlestick, with a thin candle, rising up like a plumed officer among the martial array of crackers and pears. And a couple of fat-bellied porcelain lamps, garlanded with a splendour of blooms such as Nature might vainly yearn to imitate, dropped their oil with a tranquil solemnity befitting the feast The great gilt chandelier, with its dozens of candles, was not lighted. Only its covering of yellow gauze had been removed. To tell the truth, Mevrouw Lossell had made up her mind that she would light the candles if the Burgomaster's wife had accepted her invitation. But the Burgomaster's wife had written to say that she was indisposed. "Indisposed to come," said Lossell in his rough manner, as he threw the letter back to his wife. "She says she isn't well enough, does she? Not well enough with us, she means." And so the candles remained un- lighted. None the less, there was light enough what with the various lamps and candlesticks scattered about [nay, pompously planted] on mantelpiece and sideboard to brighten even that big room, with its mahogany furni- ture and dark-red wall-paper. It was not the absence of outer illumination which left the assembly hi the THE NEW LIFE BEGINS. 35 dark. You may put pounds upon pounds of wax- candles round a coffin, but you can't make it a cheer- ful object by so doing. It was the dignity which did it, and the consciousness what ho, a moralist! that only poor people laugh. Let us not speak irreverently of these worthy people and their pleasures. The occasion was, indeed, not such an one as warrants a smile. They were working their way through a better dinner than falls to the share of most rich men. It is an irritating nay, more, a deeply-saddening problem for a wise dyspeptic to ponder: the super- abundance in this little world of ours of things cookable, and the extreme rarity of cooks. Mevrouw Lossell was telling all about the Burgo- master's wife to a chocolate manufacturess a cousin who sat four places off. Farther down the table Mevrouw LosselPs sense of propriety would not have allowed her voice to reach. "Yes, the dear Burgomasteress is ill," she was say- ing. "She wrote me an affecting little note. I was so sorry, but I could not put off my party. The doctor has absolutely forbidden her to go out." "Except in an open carriage," answered the choco- late-makeress tartly. "I saw her driving in the Park yesterday with those fat-faced children of hers." This lady could afford to be plain-spoken, the Burgomaster's wife having honoured her last year's banquet with her presence, and she could enjoy a little quiet spitefulness, for incomprehensibly enough, as it seemed to her judgment the Koopstaders persisted in preferring adulterated tea to .adulterated cocoa. "They .don't know what is good for them," she would say, 3* 36 GOD'S FOOL. quoting from her husband's best advertisement. "Tea weakens the nerves, but cocoa strengthens the blood." If this be true, let us hope that the Koopstaders will absorb Johnsonian quantities of the emollient beverage. Their nerves will be all the better for a little weakening. "Yes, so she tells me," Mevrouw Lossell remarked coolly, in answer to the information she had just re- ceived. It was not easy to discomfit Mevrouw Lossell. Her nerves were of the genuine Koopstad type. "I must say I prefer healthy-looking children. Some pe9ple's children make you wonder whatever their parents feed them on!" The cousin replied only by a nod and a smile, flung across to her hostess, over a gathering swell of inter- posing voices. She ignored the attack on her own chocolate-nurtured offspring. And she contented herself by remarking to her immediate neighbour: "And some poor little creatures look so pinched and wasted you cannot help asking whether they get anything to eat at all." But the stout tobacco-planter next to her, even had he understood her meaning, would have felt no interest in the subject True to the rule of his life, he had al- ready eaten too much that evening. It was impossible for him to realize the condition of anyone who could eat too little. And it more than sufficed for him that Mevrouw Lossell had provided him John Pruim with so capital a dinner. They were beginning to hand the dessert It was seven o'clock. He loved Mevrouw Lossell. The dessert brought in the children. They came THE NEW LIFE BEGINS. 37 through the great dark door behind the red damask screen, and round into the full light of the dinner-table, with its glitter of silver and crystal. They advanced with children's solemn hesitation towards the confusion of heaped-up fruit and disordered wine-glasses, bordered by that circle of ponderous faces, all turned towards them in a sudden lull of languid interest They saw nothing absolutely nothing but the dazzling white of the tablecloth, and their mother's meaningless face at the farther end. The twins were in front, hand-in-hand, their squat figures clad in black velveteen blouses, and behind th.em came Elias, also in black velvet, but in a tailor-made suit, with a dainty white waistcoat, and black stockings instead of red. For Elias was now nearly eleven. His long fair curls poured down in silken streams upon his shoulders. Mevrouw Lossell had wanted to cut them off long ago. It was so silly for a great boy to wear curls, she said. Elias had also wanted them cut off, for the same cause. But some reason or other made the merchant say "No." Perhaps in the depths of his money-loving soul there still occasionally stirred a soft recollection of the woman who had loved him more than money. It must have been so, for, one day, after a fresh altercation about the hairdresser, he suddenly said to Elias on the fingers, for the child had now learnt to understand that language easily: "Your mother had such curls as yours, Elias." He did not say it till his wife had left the room. Elias never asked again to have the curls cut off. The child was tall, too tall for his age, and his high forehead and delicately-veined cheeks were thin and 38 GOD'S FOOL. pale enough to explain the chocolate-lady's apprehension. Yet it was not true that he did not get enough to eat not true, in fact, that he wanted for anything, except affection. He was still the rich town-councillor's eldest son. And he lived in the lap of that substantial luxury of which the Dutch have possessed the secret for cen- turies. The landscape around him was the same as it had always been, only the warmth had gone out of it when his mother died. His was a swinging, easy step, as a rule, despite his deafness. Nature had accorded him that mysterious grace of movement, most intangible of beauties, which seems to mould immediately and imperceptibly the most various surroundings into a framework for one con- sistent central figure. He was not, perhaps, handsome according to the rules of straight lines and clear colours. But the child was interesting interesting against your will. And when in the middle of his boisterous play he paused for a moment by your side, and turned full upon you those great eyes of his, already dimmed by the presage of deepening trouble, a something in your heart awoke to say, "God bless him!" before you turned away to talk of yesterday's dinner or to-morrow's dress. He could not hear you. He would run away, shouting, "Hubby! Henky!" with a voice that rang out like a clarion-note, and their shrill cries would come pealing back in futile answer forgetful of his infirmity with the forgetfulness of children, and grown-up men. I do not think that infirmity weighed very heavily upon him as yet It was awkward, he felt, and hin- dered him in his intercourse with other children; but it did not prevent his playing as much as his heart could THE NEW LIFE BEGINS. 39 wish. And whenever he wanted anything, he could ask for it; and children, as a rule, are far more anxious to talk than to be talked to. Being talked to means being "don'ted," as a rule. Elias found that, notwithstanding his deafness, people could easily don't him far more than he liked. And his immediate entourage had learnt to speak to him on the fingers. There had been some talk at first of trying to teach him to watch the move- ment of the lips, but this had been postponed, by the doctor's advice, till his head was stronger. The father had taken comfort. He had come across a couple of deaf and dumb gentlemen in Amsterdam who read everything that was said off the lips with perfect ease. They even spoke, and it was quite possible to under- stand them if only you took the trouble. They were in business, both of them. "Your son is not dumb, you tell me?" said the director of the great deaf and dumb institute. "I will guarantee that, with the most mediocre intelligence, he will be able in the course of eighteen months to under- stand everything that is said to him by whosoever chooses to speak slowly and distinctly. There is no reason why he should not become as eminent a man of business as yourself." Lossell travelled back in a fever of delight He kissed Elias on both cheeks when the boy came running out to welcome him. The child's chief regret was that his little brothers could not converse with him. Mevrouw Lossell had positively forbidden their learning to do so before they knew the ordinary alphabet. She was afraid of some disastrous results. She could not herself have told you 4O GOD'S FOOL. what But Elias felt very sorry. He was not angry with Hubby. And now, on the occasion of this dinner-party, he followed the six-year-old twins into the dining-room. He kept his hand on Hub's shoulder, as the little group steered, with uncertain movement, in the direction of the mistress of the house. "What an interesting-looking child your stepson is, Mevrouw!" said Judith Lossell's neighbour, a white- haired old grandfather, as they sat watching the boys draw near. "I do not call him handsome," answered that lady shortly. She was thinking that the old man might as well tell her that Henky and Hubby were interesting- looking children too. "Well, not handsome, perhaps, but striking. Yes, strik- ing. He has the kind of look peculiar to those children who make a noise in the world when they grow up." "He makes quite noise enough already, I am sure," retorted Mevrouw Lossell indifferently. "Come here, Henky; let me put your lace-collar straight And say 'How d'ye do?' Hubby, to Mynheer van Veth." The chocolate-cousin was making overtures to Henky, smiling and nodding over her shoulder, with an out- stretched cracker in her hand. She wanted him to come to her, partly because she feit it was her duty to notice the children, and partly because it would give her an opportunity of telling her side of the table that her little Diederik could read words of one syllable, while Henky Lossell did not even know A from B. Elias stood awkwardly near his stepmother, still THE NEW LIFE BEGINS. 4! clinging, as if with a nervous clutch, to Hubby's velve- teens. Old Mr. van Veth had offered him some sweet- meats. The boy did not take them. The old gentle- man, looking up in surprise, saw that Elias's eyes were staring vaguely in front of him away towards a dark corner of the brilliantly-lighted room. "Good heavens!" he said to himself; "if the boy is deaf, he should look at people. The eyes are the only means of intercourse left." "Come here, Elias," called out the Town Councillor from his end of the table, as if his eldest son could hear him. He beckoned to the boy. They often spoke to him in this manner, exaggerating their gestures that he might read their meaning thus unheard. The stepmother turned round impatiently. "Why don't you go to your father, child?" she cried, pointing with her substantial arm. "Don't you see him calling you? Don't pluck at Hubby in that tiresome manner! Can't you leave the poor child alone?" Elias seemed to take no notice of anything. He stood staring, staring away to that dark corner over there. A sudden silence fell upon the guests. Mevrouw Lossell's voice, rising over the buzz of conversation, had flattened it down at a blow. People looked in her direction at her florid, angry features, and at the pale, unconscious face by her side. "How naughty!" said her sister softly, yet audibly, from a distance. The chocolate-manufacturess cast an indignant look in the direction of the voice. "Poor child!" she inter- 42 GOD'S FOOL. posed out aloud. "Elias boy," ejaculated the father in amazement, "come here." Judith Lossell heard the remarks of both ladies. They irritated her still more. She half turned in her chair, and seized her stepson's arm, aud shook it angrily. "You naughty child!" she cried. "Why can't you at- tend to what your father says?" She trusted to her expression to explain her words and pointed eagerly across the table. The shake seemed to awaken Elias to conscious- ness. He removed his eyes from the cornice, and turned them full on the attentive guests assembled round the dinner-table. Evidently he felt that some- thing was expected of him. He must say something. "I can't see!" he said. No one understood the meaning of the words for the first moment. There was a general movement of surprise, of uncertainty. His stepmother sat in annoyed bewilderment, not daring to make quite certain as yet that this was some miserable trick. His father bent forward as if about to speak. But the wall of his frightened reserve once broken through, Elias burst out, pouring forth all the flood of his childish terror and despair: "I can't see! I can't see one bit! Papa! mamma! where are you? Didn't we come into the dining-room? I don't know where I am! I don't understand! Touch me, Hubby! It's all dark, and my eyes are open! Oh, papa! what has happened? Oh, papa, papa, papa!" He burst into tears into passionate, panic-struck, audible sobs. There was something alarming in the THE NEW LIFE BEGINS. 43 thought that they could not reach the child alone in his silence and his darkness. The guests started from their seats. Some of the ladies fell back, and, unable to bear the pain of that wild sobbing, broke into sym- pathetic cries and weeping. The wretched father ran round from his seat with a groan. He caught the child to his arms, and drew him away to an embrasure. "Hush! hush!" he stammered, as he stroked the golden head. "It will be better presently better pre- sently. He can't hear me!" he suddenly cried, turning fiercely on the dum-founded faces grouped at some dis- tance from the corner where he had taken refuge. He looked from one to the other. "Make him hear me!" he gasped. "Tell him, somebody make him under- stand that it will be all right soon! It is some passing distemper. Comfort him, somebody! Here, you, Judith! No, not you!" He pushed her from him. "O my God! can no one stop his crying like that? It will be all right presently all right presently." For a moment he had forgotten himself, and all his hopes and his ambitions. He lifted the child high in his arms, and bent over him, face to face, cheek to cheek, and so motioning back all sympathy and all help he bore him away into the silent loneliness of their individual loss. 44 GOD'S FOOL. CHAPTER V. LIGHT AND SHADE. ELJAS did not immediately become irretrievably blind. After a few anxious hours his sight returned. He looked round and feebly recognised his father, and stroked his hand. And a little later he sat up in bed and smiled. Then the doctor took his hat and went home; and when the doctor's wife, who had sat up for him, met him in the passage, and said, "Well?" he an- swered her abruptly, "Don't ask me," and brushed past her into his study and banged the door. It was not Dr. Pillenaar. Eh'as had cried in vain for Dr. Pillenaar. The man who had ruined Pillenaar dared not ask his aid. The child grew better without it For a time, at any rate, he could see. But now, under the stress of this new calamity, he confessed to those continual head- aches he had not dared to complain of before. His frightened stepmother reproached him for his reticence. "Yes, I very often have a pain over my eyes," he admitted; "but, mother, I didn't think I might" This is not a melancholy story. I refuse to be told that it is melancholy. It "ends well." You who can see, and won't, and won't hear, and can, you will envy my blind child yet, when the lights and shadows change. In the meantime he was more interesting than ever, and the doctors talked him over at the Club. LIGHT AND SHADE. 45 "There is some permanent injury to the brain from the effects of the original blow," said the physician last called in. "The communication between it and the organs of sense suffers in consequence. First the hear- ing was intercepted. Now it is the eyesight." "I have always said the brain could not entirely re- cover," interposed Dr. Pillenaar. He was heartily sorry for the patient, but he was a little glad that his prog- nostic should not have proved erroneous. "It is like a volcanic territory," began another man, who liked to hear himself speak. "There has been a subsidence, or an eruption, and the telegraph-wires have come down. So long the boy is blind. As soon as the communication is re-established, or succeeds in re-esta- blishing itself, he can see again. You will have another upheaval presently and another crash, and some day it will be with the eyes as with the ears, and no one will be able to put the telegraph-poles up again." "Poor little chap!" said the doctor who had wit- nessed the flash of the first telegram, after the interrup- tion, between father and son. "But, for Heaven's sake," cried Pillenaar excitedly, "you, who have influence with the father, get him to see some great specialist. Get him to take the child to Utrecht, or abroad, if he wants to go farther and fare worse." The other doctor mentioned this idea to Lossell next time they met The idea was a good one. And the frightened lad went with his stepmother to Utrecht, and had to undergo the ordeal of the railway journey, and the long wait in that sickening ante-room all doc- tor's ante-rooms are sickening, if you are really ill and 46 GOD'S FOOL. the solemn trial with its suspenseful watching of the great man's kindly face. And then, because he was a child, they mercifully sent him away before the final verdict, as if it lightened the victim's doom to leave the sword suspended over his head. Alas! the sword was indeed suspended there, and no medical science could unhook it The famous oculist could only speak of possibility and hope. The eyes were sound strong, healthy, and beautiful still. The danger lay in the brain. "And of diseases of the brain, my dear madam shall I be absolutely, straightforwardly truthful? neither I nor the brain-doctors know anything at all as yet" As long as the attack had not repeated itself, how- ever, there was every hope of its not proving of serious importance. In this all the wise men were agreed. A single seizure might signify nothing; a recurrence would mean ruin. It must be avoided at all cost. A residence of several months in a milder climate was suggested. Could Mynheer Lossell see his way to arranging that it should take place? "I will sacrifice anything 1 possess to save the child's eyes," said Hendrik Lossell. "It is a matter of life and death to me of life and death!" "Anything he possessed!" People smiled to each other a little sceptically when those words were repeated at the Club. Yet they did wrong. They did not know, to begin with, how much Hendrik Lossell possessed. They could but take off their hats to his carriage in the street, and not to the contents of his strong-box. So Elias was sent away to Clarens, and instructed to play about in the open air, and to drink as much milk as he could swallow. He did not like the milk, LIGHT AND SHADE. 47 but he liked driving the cows, so they allowed him to combine the two, and he was happy. It was his old nurse, Johanna, who made this arrangement for him, and many others. Mevrouw Lossell could not leave the cares of her household, so Johanna was sent for Johanna, who had watched over Elias's golden morning, who had loved his mother with unreasoning affection, and who had only left the family because she could not endure the sight of another woman in the dead mis- tress's place. She had reproached herself a thousand times for having deserted the orphan, and she accepted Mynheer Lossell's proposal as a message of reconciliation with heaven. What mattered it that she was called to face all the terrors of a foreign country, a land of mountains and cataracts and other traps for the unwary, a land where it would be impossible for her to obtain that bi- hourly cup of coffee which is the fetish of Dutch domestic servants? She bravely answered all the forebodings of her terrified circle of acquaintance with the words, "I shall be caring for Elias," and she went forth un- dauntedly into the jaws of the Unknown, like a female Stanley, with her charge and Mynheer Lossell in a first- class carriage change at Cologne. Her old mother and three sisters watched the fast train speed away into the distance into an infinitesimal black vagueness into emptiness. There was nothing left of her. Nothing but a memory and a prayer. She had her coffee at Cologne, but she had no coffee between Cologne and Bale. She survived the omission. The spell was broken, and I believe she is a contented woman still. 48 . GOD'S FOOL. Rooms had been found for her and the child in the house of a widow, whose husband had been Swiss watch- maker in a Dutch country town. The landlady, there- fore, spoke a few words of Dutch, and understood a good many more. Had this not been the case, she could hardly have accepted the charge of her lodgers, for Elias was prevented by his infirmity from picking up words of a foreign tongue, as other children would have done; and as for Johanna, to her the whole French language appeared to present no definite sounds of which a rational, full-toned organ of speech could possibly lay hold. "The people," she said, "are all butterflies, and the French words are just like moths; they go flying, flying past you, and when you succeed in grabbing hold of one of them, it crumbles away to nothing in your hand." Johanna very seldom caught her moths. They spent two months together at Clarens, two months of a superbly fading autumn, watching the crimson glow pale off into an ashen gray. Around them the late roses in neat beds of cultivated colour; before them the blue serenity of far-stretching water, the limpid lake; and opposite, ascending above the sloping masses of russet and golden and faintest yellow those sylvan splendours of Nature's gorgeous death o'ertopping all that changes with our changeful seasons, towering high into the presence of the unalterable: the pure summits of eternal snow. The child, whose eyes had never be- fore lifted themselves to any earthly object sublimer than a church weather-cock, now gazed with awe-struck wonder upon these heights that yearn towards the stars. LIGHT AND SHADE. 49 He realized, untold, not so much their loftiness or their purity as their unbroken silence, the snow-bound un- approachableness in which they rest throughout the ages. It must be very still up yonder, he felt, always still, as in the stillness of his own young heart, on which no ripple ever broke of other laughter than his own. And the mountains drew nigh to him in his loneliness through one of those inexplicable childish whims of sympathy which sometimes bind our early years in a communion with Nature which we never quite lose in after-life. He would fancy himself a moun- tain the mite tall, majestic, untouched by the world's coming and going, far away in the hush of God, nearer to heaven in the solitude and the silent waiting. And he would nod to the great gray pile beneath the drop- ping clouds. "We are friends, you and I," he said aloud. Johanna poised her uplifted needle in her hand, and stopped to look at him. He was gazing into the lofty distance, into limitless transparent azure, away beyond the mountains, beyond the clouds. Johanna shook her head. The next moment he was romping through the little garden, the music of his own merriment filling his de- solate heart; for Tonnerre had pounced upon him Tonnerre, the landlady's nondescript spaniel, who owed his tremendous name to the unreasonable rumble by which he invariably showed his discontent. Tonnerre's discontent was chronic. His health was perfect, though Madame Juberton tried to make everyone, herself in- cluded, believe that bodily affliction accounted for his ill-temper. It was a pious fraud, common to the woman- God's Fool. I, 4 50 GOD'S FOOL. kind connected with grumblers. As a rule, the people who never cease complaining complain without occasion, for you cannot possibly always hit on a just cause of complaint So they get into the habit of discontinuing their search for a reason, and they soon find out that they can get on far more fluently without. Hlogically, then for he was intensely illogical, a human failing rarely found in dogs Tonnerre had taken a great liking to Elias, which he showed him chiefly by pouncing upon him unawares. He had early perceived that the deaf boy could not hear, but only see him, and he utilized the discovery by inventing a game which would suit these unusual circumstances. Elias played with his four-footed companion as often as the latter would permit. Sometimes a little oftener. The child was happy at Clarens. Everybody was kind to him. Johanna loved him. Madame Juberlon, after he had been in her house for nine minutes, loved him too. She was not, you will notice, a very soft- hearted woman. Most women love an afflicted child, when they meet with it, at first sight, and do not take nine minutes to make up their minds about the matter. God bless their motherly hearts! "Do you know," said Elias one day, after he had been sitting a long time pensive at his nurse's feet, "you are I don't quite know how but I think, Johanna, I think you are like mamma. I mean," he added, after a moment, in a solemn whisper "I mean mamma in heaven." Johanna vigorously shook her head in protest, but his eyes were not turned towards her. "I can't say how I mean like," he went on thought- LIGHT AND SHADE. 51 fully, "not like her portrait in the library, but like her to me, somehow. Like the smell of roses, you know. They look so different till you smell them, and then they are the same. And it isn't the smell, Johanna. I don't know what it is. It's the feel, I think. Since I am deaf, I seem to feel different. And when it it tingles, then it reminds me. And the tingles go together. I can't make you understand. But I understand for myself. It's the tingle does it, not the smell." She understood indistinctly, yet enough. And she caught up the little fellow in her arms. Two days afterwards she found him crying in his bed a great boy of eleven. Fie upon him*! What was he crying for? He did not dare to tell her. At last it came out, among the sobs. "It was so wicked of him, and he was ashamed of it. But the thought had come upon him that Tonnerre was like mamma." And so love the divine word beyond human utter- ance stammered forth its first broken accents upon the silence of the deaf boy's heart. A glow of kindness spread around and over him, bringing with it undefined reminiscences of the opening scenes of his existence. People not only made those necessary signs to him, which they had always made since he had lost his hearing, but they added super- fluous ones little unexpected nods, and smiles, and twitches of the eyes, which came to him now as so many gentle words and terms of endearment come to more fortunate children. Johanna would sit watching to catch his eye; and his glad, frank flash of recognition 52 GOD'S FOOL. would amply repay her for any tenderness she bestowed upon him. Madame Juberton's increasing affection took the form of increasing sweetmeats. The more her heart warmed towards Elias, the bigger she made her tarts. And it was not till she reached the limit of her largest pudding-mould that she found out how inconvenient is the limitlessness of the human soul. He liked the tarts; no fear of his not liking them. For he was a bright boy with a healthy appetite, and nothing about him of those transcendental little wretches who are too good to succumb to a weakness for goodies. I am sorry to own I fear he was not at all particularly good. His stepmother was right in saying that there was no danger of his dying from premature develop- ment of wings. He did not want his wings to develop. He did not want to die. He was self-willed, and he al- ways gave the preference to his own view of his own requirements, as other children are apt to do at times. And he had occasional fits of mischief, as when he put Tonnerre into the milk-pail, because someone had ex- plained to him the other day that thunder had turned the milk. He soon began trying to bully Johanna, and sometimes he succeeded, and sometimes he didn't He did not mope about his deafness, for, thank God ! he did not fully realize it And with the insouciance of his age, he had forgotten all about the scare of his blind- ness. He did not think he was going to be blind. They had said it would be all right now the weakness kept away. He sat, with Tonnerre asleep on his knees, and Johanna at work, as usual, by his side, watching the hushed sunset of a beautiful autumn evening. Johanna LIGHT AND SHADE. 53 was knitting a set of reins for him crimson wool with tinkling bells; she had been busy over them for some time, and he watched her work with increasing in- terest. "When you are ready, I shall be your horse," he said; "I am sure now I prefer being horse. I have made up my mind, because it is so nice to be able to run wherever one likes." Johanna nodded back to him, and beamed all over her genial face. Then she said to him on her fingers for she had learned to use these signs with extreme facility that they would go for their long-planned ex- cursion to the mountains on the other side as soon as the reins were ready to-morrow, perhaps, or the day after, and he should lead her all the time. He flushed up with pleasure, as he watched her nimble movements. "That will be splendid!" he answered "splendid!" He loved sweetmeats, undoubtedly, but he loved sweet words far better, and those fond glances best of all. The pale autumnal light was rapidly shadowing over, so rapidly that it seemed as if you could almost watch the folds of the mantle of night come falling one by one across the landscape. A moment ago the whole mountain-side had been one great mass of sunlit foliage, swept together in tumbled waves of crimson, and sheets of vari-coloured gold. The confusion of splendour was already gone; a wide smoothness of dull orange was deepening into indefinite gray. And the cold, still sky was shrouding itself in mist. The sun had sunk from sight behind the mountains, yonder, where his radiance still lay white. Elias sat looking intently on the spot where he had disappeared. 54 GOD'S FOOL. The nurse shuddered. The autumn air was cold, and earthy, wet with decay and approaching death. "Let us go in," she said. But Elias clung to her, and held her fast "Oh, it is beautiful!" he said "beautiful! What a beautiful thing to see!" She drew him into the house, and helped him to get into bed; and she sat watching him for many minutes after he had dropped fast asleep. And the next morning, when Elias again opened his eyes, he found that God had left him nothing in the world for them to open on. "THUNDER "-STORMS. 55 CHAPTER VI. " THUNDER "-STORMS. No, it was not unexpected, or unusual, or unlikely. At least, not if we are to believe the doctors, for the news no sooner got about that little Elias Lossell was once more stricken with blindness, than all the medical authorities of Koopstad exclaimed that they had fore- seen this catastrophe from the first And the great specialist who had advised the journey to Clarens re- marked what a good thing it was that they had followed his advice, or the blindness might have come on almost seven weeks sooner. Old Lossell hurried over to see what could be done for his unfortunate son. Nothing could be done. It was not unexpected. At least, not to Johanna, who had watched, with that fatal perspicacity which only love bestows, for every sign of approaching danger. She could not deny to herself that of late Elias had been constantly troubled by his old enemy, the headache over the eyebrows; that he had complained of the rest- less flames and circles which would not let him sleep at night; that he had Ah me! that morning, a few days ago, when she had spelt out to him from her window, "Jasje, see the big balloon over the water!" and he had called back out of the garden, "There isn't any balloon, Johanna there isn't any balloon at all!" How had she, in the 56 GOD'S FOOL. phraseology of her own people, "held her heart fast," lest it should drop from her! These and many other instances I have passed over, not wishing to dwell upon what will be considered by many a sad episode in the story of Elias; anxious, above all, to avoid any semblance of a wish to "pile up the agony," as it is vulgarly called; but I am conscious of few things with greater clearness than of the fact that Johanna, when she detailed her experiences to me in after-years, repeatedly assured me that she had seen the prophetic cloud lie heavy on Elias's brow for many weeks before it fell. It fell. The woman sat by his bedside, the un- finished harness on her lap. From out his sudden dark- ness the child poured out question after question, appeal after appeal. He wanted help medical help; would they give it to him? Was the doctor coming? Had he been already, perhaps? What had he said? Would the blindness pass off as it had passed off last time? Of course it would pass off would it not? would it not? No answer possible. The woman got up hurriedly, and rushed from the room. She could not longer bear that ceaseless cry into the void. And, then, she could not bear to be away from it, beyond the reach of his requirements and his sorrows, and she came hurrying back again, and fell down by the bedside, and took his little hand and held it fast in both her own. And she was almost glad that he could not see her tears. Already, in that first anxiety of desolation, she taught him that the pressure of her hand meant "Yes." "THUNDER "-STORMS. 57 After a moment or two he understood her. A look of passionate relief came over his face. The inexpressible horror of complete isolation died away from him a horror of thirty minutes' duration, never to be forgotten communication was re-established, imperfect, yet possible. He trembled over it, cried over it, clung to it, and in a sudden flash of inspiration he burst out: "Stroke my hand, if you mean 'No,' Johanna. It won't remain, will it? It will go off, as it did last time. It can't remain. Oh, Johanna, why doesn't the doctor come?" "Let him stay where he is for the present," said Mevrouw Lossell, arranging her teacups, and looking away from her husband; "it will be much better both for him and for the other children. You say that the woman is devoted to him, and she can give him her continual care. He is content to be with her, I pre- sume?" "More than content," said Hendrik Lossell bitterly. She rattled her cups slightly, still without looking at him. "I have always deeply regretted," she went on, "that your son has not met my advances with such con- fidence on his part as I believe them to have merited." "The child!" burst out Lossell; "the poor, wretched, motherless child!" "Not necessarily motherless," she answered coldly. "You need not insult me without reason, Hendrik. These recriminations are as unseemly, as they are un- availing. But, in the interest of my own children, I must discharge a present duty, though I can afford to 58 GOD'S FOOL. ignore the past However painful the duty may be, I dare not shrink from it" It is a thoroughly feminine trait to accuse an opponent of having started an argument which can no longer be profitably kept up. "And what is your duty?" asked the merchant, with a palpable sneer. "To suffer misrepresentation," she answered quickly. "Very well, I will endure it And therefore I venture to say, Elias must not associate daily with his little brothers. The strain would be greater than children of their age could endure. And I cannot allow them to submit to it" "Pooh!" said the merchant Judith was not a woman of half-measures. "Brute!" she cried, turning on her husband. "Choose between my children and your own." The phrase, inspired by jealousy, was an unfortunate one. She felt this, even as she uttered it "Mevrouw," said Lossell stiffly, "you forget your- self. Or rather, Judith, you are a fool. Mind this, it is neither your interest, nor that of your children, to estrange Elias. Some day, perhaps, you will be glad enough, both you and your children, to live in his house, and to eat of his bread. Good-night" and he walked out of the room with the happy consciousness of having gained the victory at least once in his life. Some things are praised for their sweetness, and some for their rarity. A husband's triumphs belong to the latter, not to the former, class. He was resolved not to leave the boy alone in a "THUNDER "-STORMS. 59 foreign country. He fetched him back without another word of excuse or explanation. But he did not immediately bring him home. "Elias shall decide for himself," he said. "He shall do what he likes best." But how to make him understand? There lay the difficulty; for the poor little patient had sunk into a state of apathy. He was rapidly losing his touch, such as it was, of the outer world. Walled in on every side, he began to succumb to the hopelessness of trying to look out. His eager questioning at first a very torrent of anxious entreaty was dwindling into one cease- lessly-repeated, unanswerable, "When will the doctor make me see again?" Those about him grew to yearn for the stream of appeals they had formerly dreaded as they watched him sitting silent, mournful, hour after hour, with only the reiterated interruption of that slowly- decreasing hope. And then even that restless flicker sank low, and for long periods he would not speak at all. A few days after the catastrophe, Johanna suddenly snatched up her unfinished harness, and began vehemently knitting at it. She had been struck by the thought that though Elias could no longer lead the way as horse, he might still act the part of coachman. In this manner she would perhaps succeed in rousing him to a little exercise; for as yet he shrank back from all con- tact with the outer world, and would creep brooding into a corner when they came to fetch him for a walk. He tore off the cap he felt placed on his head, and cried out that he would wear no more caps till the doctor made him see again. Johanna came to him, having finished the work in a hurry, and put the ends 60 GOD'S FOOL. of the reins in his hands. She had removed the bells which she had first added at his express desire. He had been very particular about these bells. "For though I don't hear them, I can see they are where they ought to be," he had repeatedly said. Now she cut them off with a weary sigh. "He will prefer to know they are no longer there," she said to herself. But she was mistaken. She was often mistaken at first; and it took even her yearning affection some time to find out the idiosyncrasies of a peculiar case like Elias's. Hendrick Lossell noticed this. He noticed many things in those days of indecision, anxious, waiting, longing to do the best for the afflicted child who persisted in living on, to his own detriment and that of them all. "It wants a lot of love," said the loveless father to himself, with a pang of self-reproach. He thought of his smooth, self- satisfied wife, and of chubby, happy Henkie and Hubbie. How could he bring yonder wreck among them? And yet how dare he thrust from the door of his house its rightful lord? Yes; let there be no secrets. Secrets are only clumsy aids to interest, and this story shall carefully avoid them. It does not require them, for it is a true story. Hendrik Lossell might be a great merchant, but wretched little Elias was the only rich member of the family. When Johanna brought him the harness, he imme- diately felt for the bells, and an expression of pain came over his face. He realized why she had removed them; and a little querulously he bade her put them back. And so this rough peasant woman also learnt, step by step, her lesson of devotion the devotion of her life. She was barely thirty when she returned to her " THUNDER "-STORMS. 6 1 post as Elias's nurse. She never deserted him after- wards. The lad allowed her to persuade him, by caresses, to creep out into the open air with her. But the reins were a failure; for he stumbled forward in his darkness and his uncertainty, and fell and cut his face. And again Johanna had to make a discovery that the blind must learn to walk anew. Tonnerre, also, had to learn the lesson that his friend could run no more. To him it was an enigma, and he puzzled over it with many growls. At last he gave it up, and adapted himself to circumstances, which had been altered without his consent. He rolled away within easy reach on the floor; and, actually, Elias felt after him. And then he rolled on a little bit farther, and again a little bit; and Elias rolled in the same direction, and grabbed at his tail as he whisked it up and down. And then Elias actually laughed. It was for the first time in several days, ever since his seizure. Johanna threw her apron to her face, and once more fled from the room. It was such a bright little laugh. She need not have fled from those sightless eyes. Undoubtedly. But one of the last things for her to realize was the fact that, if Elias was unable to see any- thing, he could not see her. Parting from Madame Juberton meant parting from Madame Juberton's dog. And here a serious difficulty arose. Neither his father nor Johanna dared inflict new pain upon the sufferer. Yet neither, seeing the affection the lonely old widow lavished upon her only companion, 62 GOD'S FOOL. dared at first suggest a separation between them. Al- ready Elias had asked once or twice what was to be- come of Tonnerre. But it was impossible as yet to make him understand other signs than "Yes" and "No." He knew it, and would soon abandon all hope of an answer, only repeating his question from time to time lest they should forget it And once he had suggested timidly that perhaps papa might buy the dog. He had always been a child of great delicacy of feeling, and he evidently shrank from the thought of Madame Juberton's loss, while unable to bear the prospect of his own. "No," he said, after a moment, as if arguing out the matter with himself. "Papa cannot buy Tonnerre from Madame Juberton." And he sighed. Papa, however, resolved to think differently about the matter. He went to the landlady, and offered her twenty-five francs for her favourite. The old lady sat up hi her chair. "No, monsieur," she said; "I cannot sell Tonnerre. I love your unfortunate little son, but Tonnerre is the only friend I have in the world." Two pink spots spread out under her ears. But Hendrik Lossell was not in the habit of noticing such signs as these. They had no connection with business. "I will give you fifty," he said, and then as she continued to stare at him in silence "well, madam, I will make it a hundred, and that is the very last price I can offer. It is six times his value; but I am grateful for your kindness to Elias, and the child is attached to the little animal. You cannot in reason, madam, do otherwise than admit that I am paying an utterly dis- proportionate sura for him." "THUNDER "-STORMS. 63 "The price of the dog, Monsieur the Town Coun- cillor," said Madame Juberton in a great flutter, "is three hundred thousand francs." She made him a very low curtsey, and disappeared from his sight. Yet the merchant was not to blame not from his point of view. His offer had been as noble a conquest of self as a Dutch man of business could achieve. To deliberately offer for anything on earth ay, or in heaven what he believed to be twice its value four times its value six times its value he would rather have had any number of his teeth extracted, like that Israelite of the good old Plantagenet times. He trod his most sacred convictions under foot for the child's sake never mind whether the sum be little or large and having slaughtered his commercial self-respect on the altar of paternal affection, he was left standing gazing blankly at the faded pattern of an empty chair, while the growls of the insulted quadruped oozed towards him under the bedroom door. Madame Juberton was peeping through the keyhole, and waiting for him to go. There was no more talk after that of buying Ton- nerre. Elias sent for him constantly now, as if he would make up for the approaching separation, and he sat silent in a corner for hours with the rough-haired bundle in his lap. It was only during their brief frolics on the floor that he seemed to wake to any consciousness of enjoyment, and even then he would very soon desist with a "Papa, when is the doctor coming again? Does he think I am better, papa?" 64 GOD'S FOOL. Madame Juberton would stand watching the play- mates. She said nothing. Only once, when Hendrik Lossell caught her in the act, she broke out sharply: "I do not approve myself, monsieur, of letting chil- dren play too much with dogs." "I do not think," the merchant had retorted, "that this child plays too much." Madame repeated those words several times to her- self in the course of the day. As often as she did so, she carefully took off her spectacles, and wiped them, and put them on again. And she gave Tonnerre a lump of sugar. That lump of sugar came upon him as an unpredicted eclipse might come upon an astronomer. It reduced all his calculations to immediate chaos. For he only got lumps of sugar on Sundays, and he never had been out in his reckoning yet Perhaps he thought that the Comtist calendar had been introduced, or that Madame Juberton had altered her religion. The day of departure arrived. With many grum- blings, and a few tears, Madame Juberton prepared the farewell meal for her guests, as well as a provision of cakes and sweetmeats for Elias's special delectation on the road. The dear child must eat, she said, if they hoped to keep up his strength. And there was the dif- ficulty. For the child said, "I will eat," and then left liis plate almost untouched. As they sat, equipped for their journey, the remnants of their meal on the table, Madame Juberton hurried in, bringing with her the final chef d'oeuvre of her dessert an enormous p&te' which crowned with its majestic dome of delicate crust the largest pie-dish in her pantry. "THUNDER "-STORMS. 65 It was her farewell "goodie" for Elias, the last of a stately line, but the last. She put it down in front of him, and placed his hand upon it. And when he had realized what it was, exclaiming, "Oh, what a big pate. I never can eat it all, madame!" she pressed down his fingers, down through the crashing pie-crust, into something soft, and slippery, and woolly. Something that snapped at those fingers and then licked them. I don't think the some- thing bit them. I fancy it understood. Madame Juberton has never taken another dog. God's Fool. /. 66 GOD'S FOOL. CHAPTER VII. STEPMOTHERS. "AND now what next?" It was the question which Hendrick Lossell kept repeatedly putting to himself as he sat opposite the child in the train. He found it dif- ficult to look at that miserable face without a sensation of petulant disgust However ashamed he might be of the thought, he could not entirely suppress a feeling of anger towards the child for being what he was. "It is not his fault," he said to himself a hundred times over; "but " He hesitated. The expression itself, "it is not his fault," struck him in the face with a momentary tingle of self-reproach. Elias must decide for himself whether he would rather return home or remain with Johanna. In the latter case a little cottage would be prepared for him at a short distance from his father's house. But what did he himself prefer? "Are we going back to mamma?" he had asked once only once. His father had indicated to him that this was the case. No expression of feeling, whether pleasant or painful, had been called to his face by the news. Yet Lossell had noticed that the child's countenance was capable of expressing many changes of emotion. STEPMOTHERS. t>7 And, most remarkable of all, it had soon become evi- dent that Elias distinguished the touch of some persons whenever or wherever they touched him. This faculty had developed itself extraordinarily in the first weeks of his blindness; but he had always, ever since he had lost his hearing, manifested an extreme delicacy of nervous perception. If Johanna, for instance, stole behind him and laid her hand on his shoulder, his face would in- stantly light up with a glad smile of recognition. He recognised the touch of her hand among all others, even without lifting his own to feel it They tried in vain to mystify him on the subject. The only result was that he got to know Madame Juberton also, to that worthy lady's inexpressible delight. Elias said little on the journey. Only now and then he ejaculated "Tonnerre," and the accent with which he spoke the word would have amply rewarded the widow could she have heard it He had been very angry because they wanted him to travel with a green shade a useless precaution of the Geneva oculist's and he had torn it off and kicked it from him. But later on he had meekly resumed it, for his father had not had the courage to disappoint him when he asked whether it would do his eyes good and make them see sooner than otherwise. As they neared their destination Elias seemed to awake from his apathy, and began to manifest signs of agitation. He crept closer to Johanna, and nestled up against her, and then, unexpectedly, and with an evi- dent effort, he asked whether Johanna was going to stay. The maid looked quickly towards her master, the 5* 68 GOD'S FOOL. same question palpitating into her own cheeks with a flush of burning appeal. How often had she longed to receive a response to this demand of her heart! Hen- drik Lossell could hesitate no longer. He signed to the nurse to press her charge's hand. "Of course," said Elias quietly, "I could not do without you, Johanna, as long as I am like this. And when I can see again, I shall come and visit you very often, as often as I may." The woman could only press his hand again, and cast grateful glances towards the merchant The naive, childish egotism did not hurt her; it was only natural. "That binds me to one condition in any case," thought the father. "Wherever the boy remains, this woman must remain with him. But in the meantime, and as long as he himself makes no difficulties, I must take him home, whether Judith likes it or not" Judith did not like it Of that there could be no doubt And surely it was impossible altogether to dis- agree with her when she said that the two healthy, noisy children and their deaf and blind half-brother were not fitting companions for each other. She stood in the hall with the martyred air of a woman who is resolved to have her own way. A female servant helped Elias to alight. "Is it mamma?" he asked, as he took the outstretched hand. The woman pressed his fingers, and he, mistaking this pressure for the sign of affirmation to which he had now become so accustomed, put up his face to be kissed. The maid stooped down and kissed him almost in- voluntarily. STEPMOTHERS. 69 "Jans!" cried Mevrouw Lossell, in stern indignation, from the top of the steps. The housemaid started and blushed. "Bring the young Heer to me," commanded her mistress. And Jans carefully guided the boy to his stepmother, whose outstretched hand he took indifferently, thinking she was one of the servants, and never dreaming of putting up his cheek again. "Poor child!" said Mevrouw, not without some genuine pity at the actual sight of her stepson. "He has become completely idiotic already. I know Pillenaar always feared it would end like that." "Where are Henkie and Hubbie?" queried Elias, turning his sightless eyes as if he would look for them in the hall. "Not so idiotic, after all," thought his stepmother quickly. "He does not ask after me because he does not care to know. His physical condition is very sad, very sad indeed. But he never had an amiable charac- ter, and it has been altogether warped by his in- firmities." Judith Lossell did not wish to be unkind to her stepchild. Nor was she unkind to him. She treated him with exemplary forbearance. She kissed him cheer- fully, when kissing was unavoidable. His clothes and his toys were quite as good as Henkie's and Hubbie's. Only she did not love him, that was all. Do not let us be unjust. There is no law why step- mothers should love their husbands' children. On the contrary, there exists every reason for them not to do so. If they have no children of their own, they are, 70 GOD'S FOOL. jealous of the dead woman in her grave, and if they have children' of their own, they want the living father to admire their children most If the father doesn't, then jealousy of the first wife naturally steps in again. There is no reason, if you come to think of that, why anybody should love anybody else, and, as a rule, they don't, unless the other person is a bit of themselves, either by choice, in the shape of passion, or by fate, in the shape of birth. And this intense egotism of the human race explains the frantic admiration of our own offspring which goes by the name of "a mother's love," and which never by any chance extends to anybody else's progeny. Why doesn't somebody feel a mother's love for somebody else's motherless babe? No, there is every reason, on the contrary, why we should dislike each other as soon as we begin to argue about it For in all of us the disagreeable largely pre- dominates over the agreeable side. I know it does in me, because I have frequently been assured of the fact And if you are not as certain of the matter in your case, that merely proves, not that you are more agree- able than I am, but that my friends are more disagree- able than yours. More truthful, if you like, but I shan't scratch out my word because you prefer a synonym. I don't know your friends, still, I have no reason to doubt the possibility of their being more amiable than mine. If, then, the disagreeable predominates, we dislike people as soon as we begin to argue about them. Fortunately, we rarely take the trouble to think our friends out, and that accounts for our retaining them. STEPMOTHERS. 7 * But this, nevertheless, is the whole solution of the step- mother question. A 'stepmother is always arguing about her stepchildren's right and wrong. She never argues about her own children. If she is a good woman, she will do all she can to persuade herself that she is harsh. And the very effort will make all the blemishes stand out more. I heard a good soul say the other day that a friend of hers must be fond of her stepchildren, because she was so very kind to them kinder frequently than to her own. As if she would have been so very kind to them if she had loved them! As if any mother was ever kind to her own children! There are plenty of unkind mothers, mind you; but there never yet was a mother who was "kind." There was a lady once who said to her little daughter, as they came out of the pastrycook's: "Give that remnant of tart to yon poor little girl, darling! you have had more than is good for you already, and you know, besides, that you don't care much for this sort" "Thank you, kind lady!" said the street-girl, as she seized on the cake. And she was right that lady was "kind." There is another wide field which lies next to this one of the world's stepmothers, a far wider field, whose sterility can be demonstrated in the same manner; it belongs to the world's mothers-in-law. We have to do here with another form of the very identical disease, but we are not going to speak of it, because that would 72 GOD'S FOOL. lead to digressions, and digressions are excrescences and excrescences are faults. A digression already? Nay, this has been anything but a digression it is of the very essence of the character of Judith Lossell and her relation to the hero of the tale. Yet it is an awful thought one word only, forgive it it is a thought which must trouble many a thinking man as he lies upon his bed through the long hours of the night that, while but few people are troubled with stepchildren, almost everyone possesses or is possessed by a mother-in-law. For shame! this is cynical talk, which leaves no one the better for its utterance except, perhaps, the cynic. But if that be true, it is an impertinence here. And therefore peccavi. If the fire will but cease smoking, and the tea-kettle commence singing, if that rat-tat at the front-door will but bring me not a bill I thought I had paid, as the last one did but a letter, let us say, from the dear old mother at home my mother I don't care tuppence about anybody else's we shall have no more cynical talk. Judith Lossel was very kind to Elias, all the kinder because she was resolved to remove him from the family circle, and "place him under proper care." Oh, by-the-bye, dear stepmother, whoever you are, who read this, don't write to me to say that you have always loved your stepchildren as much as your own. I know you have. I didn't mean you. STEPMOTHERS. 73 But, despite all the efforts to make him comfortable, Elias was not happy at home. They could not procure him happiness that was natural but they could not even spare him those additional annoyances which he had not felt whilst abroad. On the evening of his ar- rival, after he had repeatedly asked for them, the twins were brought to him half asleep. "I disapprove of it," said Judith sharply "I dis- approve of it altogether. The children are just going to bed. This is not the moment to frighten them, Hendrik, and cause, perhaps, a lasting estrangement." "If he asks for them, he must have them," replied the Town Councillor shortly. And he stepped across the room, and rang the bell. The issue proved Mevrouw Lossell right. Henkie and Hubbie, called down at so unusual a moment, shrank away from the still figure sitting unconscious in the shade. They hung back fortunately, he could not see that and then, as their father forcibly pushed them forward, they shrieked out in abject terror fortunately he could not hear that. "I will not have it, Hendrik," cried Mevrouw Lossell, starting up with indignant eyes. Her husband hesitated. "And the boys? When are they coming to see me?" asked Elias again, speaking out into the void, as was his habit what else could he do? That question, suddenly issuing from the living tomb before them, even as they were unwillingly drawing nearer to it, completely upset the two children. They broke loose from their 74 COD'S FOOL. father, and fled to their mother for protection, scream- ing to be taken away. And she drew them towards her and out of the room, leaving Hendrik Ix)ssell standing undecided, staring stupidly at the wreck of his eldest son. Elias, though unable to realize this and similar scenes, soon began to understand that his little brothers did not care to play with him, and that they did not come when he called. It was a great trouble to him, but he retreated into his solitude with all the sensitive- ness of disease. He shared that solitude with Johanna and Tonnerre. The last-mentioned personage, unfor- tunately, had merited disgrace by his aggressive be- haviour towards Mevrouw Lossell's fluffy lapdog. He had growled at the lapdog, and when the lapdog growled back, he had flown at him. Elias, alone in the room with them, had remained entirely unconscious of the catastrophe. And his stepmother, descending suddenly upon the combatants, had beaten Tonnerre. Of this also Elias knew nothing, but he soon found out that his friend was not happy except with him. Johanna, of course, was impudent. This anyone could have foreseen. It was inevitable that mistress and maid should disagree about Elias and his wants, and, as Johanna was a "menial," and Judith a "Me- vrouw," there could not be the slightest doubt that the former would be "impudent," or would, in any case, find herself designated as such. So Johanna and Elias and Tonnerre soon got to spend their days together in a big room at the top of the house which had been set aside for their use. STEPMOTHERS. 7 5 There was not much opportunity for out-door life now, for when the year is dying at Clarens, it has been dead for some time in Holland, where, in fact, its health has never been very robust. And Elias refused, even more vehemently than before, to go out into the streets, now he was back in a place where everybody knew him. He would creep down the garden-path occasionally "foot by foot," as they say in Holland leaning on his nurse's arm. But, for the most part, he sat upstairs, immovable, and waited for the doctor. And the doctor came, and looked very learned, and examined his eyes, and felt his pulse. "It is the brain," said the doctor. "It is the brain." The sentence was not a long one, but it only cost half-a-crown, for doctors are not expensive in Holland, as a rule. "And, Johanna, when does he think I shall see again?" asked Elias. "Next week?" Constantly, Johanna found herself placed between silence and a lie. "I shall tell him," she said. "Some day. Soon. I cannot agree with his father. Surely it is much better he should know." "When he knows, he knows for ever," said Hendrik Lossell. The merchant grew daily more tender-hearted to- wards his child under the influence of the spectacle of the servant-maid's love. "It brings her in two hundred and fifty florins and 76 GOD'S FOOL. her keep," he said to himself. "And what a lot she supplies for the money! It is a cheap thing, is love!" Ah, indeed, dear merchant, it is a cheap thing, is love the cheapest thing on earth and the one we pay most dearly for, when the final reckoning comes. COUSIN COCOA. CHAPTER VIII. COUSIN COCOA. AND then Mevrouw Lossell's cousin came to see Elias, the chocolate-manufacturess. She was very self- confident and important, was this lady, and that seems only natural, for her husband's chocolate was the very best in the world, as is the chocolate of everybody who manufactures chocolate at all. Chocolate and cocoa are just like sweethearts. Each is better than all the others. In fact, there is no better; there is only everybody's individual best. Mevrouw Lossell did not fully appreciate Mevrouw van Bussen's sterling qualities. For Mevrouw van Bussen's great merit consisted in knowing better than all her neighbours what was good for them and their children, and this admirable characteristic Mevrouw Lossell had never succeeded in finding out. Yet Me- vrouw Lossell's obtuseness in no way diminished Me- vrouw van Bussen's ardour. The latter lady, in fact, only pulled all the more energetically in the right direc- tion, the more she saw infatuated beings turn towards the wrong one. "There's none so blind as those that won't see," she said, when they carried off Elias to Clarens. And she also said it when they brought him back again. She meant Elias's stepmother, not Elias. 78 GOD'S FOOL. "I shall go and call on Judith Lossell this after- noon," said this good lady to her husband at break- fast "There are a hundred other things I ought to do, undoubtedly, but I shajl leave them all and go and call on Judith Lossell." "I should do what I ought to," remarked her hus- band quietly. He was a very worthy man. He had never looked farther than the tip of his own nose; and it was a short one. "I mean 'ought to,' if I consulted my own con- venience," retorted Mevrouw van Bussen; "but I rarely find occasion to do that" "Can't always neglect it," said the chocolate-maker, with his mouth full. "If you mean to insinuate, Titus, that I do not look after my own household," flashed out his wife, "I can only advise you to go and stay for three days with the Lossells. I only advise you to. And she with her two children and a half to my ten!" "Why should I go and stay with them when we live in the same town, Amelia?" asked Titus. "I wish you would give me some more tea. And, if you are going, you might take Elias a box of chocolates. I'll send you one up from the office." "Never!" cried Mevrouw, energetically pouring out the tea. "That woman would say behind my back that I had poisoned the child. I know she sent for a tin of Van Houten's cocoa the other day from the grocer's. I know she did, for my sister Waalwyk's cook heard it from the Overests' servant, who was in the shop at the time." COUSIN COCOA. 79 "Never mind," said Van Bussen good-naturedly. "Ours is the best. Van Houten is well enough, when you can't get ours." By-the-bye, a strange misfortune befell our good friend Van Bussen the other day. He had paid the Koopstad Tramcar company a swinging price to have boards put up outside all their trams with "Van Bus- sen's Cocoa is the best" in enormous letters. And when the contract had been signed and sealed, and made hard and fast for a twelvemonth, there came his hated Rotterdam rival, and he paid the company a still swinginger price to have his boards put up just under the other man's. And on these boards was written in yet more enormous letters: "When you can't get Van Swink's." The company's shareholders now all drink Van Swink's concoction. He says in his advertisements that his cocoa is "grateful." It is difficult to say what that may mean, but it is certain that the shareholders are. "I shall not make any allusion to her unthankful- ness," said Mevrouw van Bussen to herself, as she marched off to her cousin's. She was alluding to Judith Lossell's purchase of the rival brand; "I should consider it beneath me to do so. And it's her loss, not mine, if she ruins her children's healths. On my part, I will do what I can for them. 'Strive to do good, and you'll learn to do better/ as the Domine said so beautifully last Sabbath. But Judith doesn't even strive. I wish Titus would go to church with me 8o GOD'S FOOL. more regularly. He says it interferes with his Sunday rest And yet it needn't do that" Her thin lips pinched themselves together into a contortion which no one but a connoisseur in facial expression would have understood to be a smile, as there rose up before her mental vision that long line of reposeful faces which nodded down at her for a couple of hours every Sunday from the pews where the gentle- men of Koopstad sat enthroned such of them as went to church. Male Hollanders seldom do, for the service consists almost entirely of sermon, and they probably get enough of that at home in the week. "Well, how do you do, Elias?" said "Cousin Cocoa," as the little Lossells called her. She had just been ushered into the room where the child sat alone with his dog. In spite of all her cleverness, Mevrouw van Bussen constantly forgot either the boy's deafness or his blindness in her occasional intercourse with him. Now, however, in the unaltered silence, she realized, and blushed over, her mistake. She was one of those people who are so convinced of their own superiority that, to appear foolish, even to themselves, for ever so brief a moment, is absolute suffering to them. For- tunately, with this kind of people, the moment is always very brief indeed, and it leaves no scar. She stood hesitating near the door. There was a strange dog on Elias's lap, and this creature, a bundle of odds and ends of brown untidyness, sat up and growled at her. Mevrouw van Bussen had nerves of iron; it was something else in her then her calves, perhaps that lived in constant terror of little dogs. COUSIN COCOA. 8 1 We are all of us afraid of something even the bravest afraid of either of these two: the indefinitely great, or the infinitesimally small. "Who is there?" said Elias. "Come and feel my hand, please." He could always perceive the entry of someone into the room the opening and shutting of a door, or any other sudden displacement of air being felt by him, though he could not hear it. Mevrouw van Bussen shrank back before Tonnerre's redoubled growls, and Elias vainly repeated his ques- tion. Then, suddenly frightened by the unexpected continuance of silence, smitten by one of those panics which complete helplessness is apt to produce, he started up from his chair, crying out: "To the rescue! Danger! Thieves!" and fell over a footstool in his haste to get away, bringing down with him in his fall a column with a favourite statuette of his stepmother's. Tonnerre flew straight at Mevrouw van Bussen, who, skipping back all too rapidly, with her skirts drawn tightly round her, sat down suddenly in a bowl of flowers. Upon this confusion entered Judith Lossell, as placid as concealed vexation can manage to be ter- ribly placid. "Yes; the child's condition is a great affliction," she said smoothly, as she helped up her dripping cousin out of the pool of water and broken glass. "I am sorry you could not help frightening him, as you say, for that flower-basket was given me by my sister who is dead, and the statuette had been my mother's, as you may God's Fool. I. 6 82 GOD'S FOOL. remember. Not that it matters; only, of course, one gets attached to these things. Oh no, I should not say your mantle was entirely spoilt, not if you take out the stained part, and put in another piece, although I fear you will not be able to match the colour exactly it is such a a peculiar colour. Be quiet, do!" here she turned fiercely on Tonnerre, who had never left off barking "that miserable animal is the worry of my life. Oh yes; he certainly bites! he nearly killed my poor little 'Fox' never mind; I can't help it I don't fancy he will bite you, Amelia, but if he does, you must bear it" "Judith!" cried Amelia, in disgust and admiration. She was whisking round and round in futile efforts to get a full view of the damage to her mantle, and Ton- nerre, who believed she was attempting to amuse him, was whisking after her in jumps and snaps. She stopped suddenly. "My dear, I cannot help it I am not the master of the house," rejoined Judith, more placidly still. She had picked up Elias, and was doing her best to reassure him by kisses and caresses. This was her duty, and she fulfilled it in the most exemplary manner. Even after he had settled down again contentedly on the sofa, she gave him two more kisses than her duty re- quired. These, therefore, were supererogatory, and doubtless were written down as such. Not till Tonnerre had been turned into and a cane-bottomed chair had been fetched out of the hall (for not even the removal of the mantle had rendered this latter precaution superfluous) did Mevrouw van Bussen resume her efforts to enter into communication COUSIN COCOA. 83 with little Elias. Then, however, she sat down by his side, and guided his hand over her face. Mevrouw van Bussen had the bulbousest of bulbous noses. As soon as the blind child's hand reached it, he exclaimed, in accents partly of vexation and partly of amusement: "Why, it's only Cousin Cocoa, mamma!" The reaction from the alarm he had just ex- perienced threw him completely off his guard. The chocolate-makeress appreciated neither the con- tentment of the "only," nor the humour of the nick- name thus suddenly flung in her face. She was smart- ing with the humiliation of her cousin's broken crockery, and she sprang delightedly at the retaliation of a griev- ance of her own. She let go little Elias's hand. "I am sorry to perceive, Judith," she said, bristling up, "that you encourage your children to speak dis- respectfully of me. I have always considered such matters from a very different point of view. When my children began to speak of Elias here as 'Deaffy,' I put it down at once with a high hand, though he could not even hear it, and I whipped one of the boys, with great pain (to myself), when he disobeyed me. I see now that I might have spared my wrath; not that I wish to do evil lest good should come, but it is evident that you do not consider it necessary to punish your children for the faults of mine, or rather, I mean, that what is a punishment for my children should be a fault in yours. I mean that the faults of my punishment " "Exactly," said Judith, in her clearest voice. Mevrouw van Bussen preferred to scramble out of her muddle as quickly as possible. 6* 84 GOD'S FOOL. "And even this afternoon," she went on excitedly, "I came here, only actuated by the sincerest interest in that child's welfare, though I am no cousin of his, whether Cocoa or otherwise! I had better go, Judith, since I am an object of derision and a source of amuse- ment Do not, pray, think I am vexed with Elias; I pity him far too much for that, but I certainly am of opinion that your children " "Of course, if you wish to go, I shall not detain you," interrupted Mevrouw Lossell, as her visitor rose while speaking, "but I should advise you to consider the desirability of waiting till your dress is dried. The stain shows, you know ahem when you get up." Mevrouw van Bussen sat down again with great rapidity, and said: "I cannot understand, my dear cousin, why you have never tried the experiment of treating Elias's case homceopathically." "You remember, dear cousin," replied Judith, "that I experimented on Henkie's chilblains homceopathically at your request. I gave the child sips of vox populus and bella-donna alternately every half hour for a week, and somebody was always upsetting the tumblers with their paper covers, and making messes all over the room." Mevrouw Lossell's eyes wandered, perhaps in- voluntarily, to the stain on the carpet. "Not 'vox populus,' 'mix vomica,'" said Mevrouw van Bussen, with a great air of superiority. "Besides, the chilblains got better." "Yes, when the warm weather came round; but we had left off the medicines long before that" COUSIN COCOA. 85 "After all, the homoeopathic system is the only rational one," said the chocolate-makeress, again branch- ing off to smoother ground. " ' Simile syllabubs,' as my doctor always says, which, you know, means 'cure like with like.' Now, the reasonableness of that must strike everyone immediately. It 'jumps to the eyes.' " "Why?" asked Judith. "Oh, because because Of course, it is a law of nature, like gravitation, and all that, you know! And I think not that I wish to give you any advice on the matter that the system might well be tried on Elias." "I can't make him blinder," said Mevrouw Lossell, with a half-suppressed yawn. "You could only put it into practice on a one-eyed person. Elias hasn't got any eyes left to put out, poor boy!" "You wilfully misapprehend me, Judith. You ought to give him phosphorus for his brain, and aconite for his well, at any rate, certainly aconite." "Oh, undoubtedly aconite!" said Judith. "It is your business, after all, and not mine, if the child gets better. Not but that I would do anything in my power, anything for I have ten children of my own only I am afraid of appearing to meddle. I have spoken to my homoeopathic doctor about the case, but he refuses to give an opinion until he has seen the patient. So I thought you might perhaps step down to his house with Elias one of these days. His hours are from one to three." "Thank you," replied Mevrouw Lossell negligently. "I will put him down on my list. I shall hardly be able to get to him this week, because I already have nine physicians, previously recommended, and a mag- 86 GOD'S FOOL. netism-man and a somnambulist, not to speak of Hol- loway's pills, and a family ointment. But as soon as your man's turn comes round, I shall give Elias his dose of aconite. Do you think I might give it him be- fore the doctor says he is to have it, or do you deem it absolutely necessary to wait till after?" "Judith," replied Mevrouw van Bussen, "I will trouble you to ask your man to get me a cab. When you feel sorry, you had better come and tell me so." "I feel sorry already," said Judith "very sorry." And again her eyes wandered towards the dark stain on the floor. "I know all about your goings on, Judith," continued Amelia, again making for the door. "If you think Elias's health will improve upon inaction and Van Houten's cocoa, you will find out your mistake when it is too late." "I know," said Judith, "Van Bussen's is the best" ELIAS HEARS THE TRUTH. 87 CHAPTER IX. ELIAS HEARS THE TRUTH. "MAMMA," said Elias presently, from his corner in the great old-fashioned horse-hair sofa. "Mamma, do you know I feel sure Cousin Cocoa was cross because I called her Cousin Cocoa. I didn't mean to, but I was so surprised, I quite forgot. I'm very sorry. I should have liked to tell her so, only I didn't dare." From her seat by the window, Mevrouw Lossell looked round at the child without moving. She was vexed with him for tumbling about and breaking things. To tell the truth, he had already occasioned several of these smashes, for his blindness was too recent as yet not to betray him from time to time. "I do my best," he said,, "but somehow the things get out of their dis- tances." Mevrouvv Lossell was in a very bad temper, not with him so much, as with fate, and with Mevrouw van Bussen. She was very cruelly used, she thought, in being saddled with this dead weight. Of course she was sorry for the child. She was extremely sorry. But did that, she asked her husband a dozen times over, forbid her being sorry for herself? When a man is egotistical, he sometimes feels ashamed of it. When a woman is egotistical, she never even notices that she is. But the disease is much rarer in females, especially under a certain age. 88 GOD'S FOOL. "Yes, I wish I could have told her," continued Elias; "and, mamma, I am very sorry I broke the vase." "He is a good child," soliloquized Mevrouw Lossell, "and he deserves to be happier than we can make him here. I shall tell Hendrik so once more to-night I found him crying again yesterday, because the children wouldn't play with him. They can't play with him! How can he play, I should like to know? It is very sad for us all; but surely common-sense tells everyone but Hendrik that the boy will be better off outside the house." In the meantime Elias went on speaking, partly to himself. "I knew she was angry, because I can feel it," he said. "I feel it, somehow, when people are very cross with me, or when they are very good to me. Only, sometimes, I make mistakes. Sometimes, for instance, I fancy you are cross with me, when I know I haven't done anything wrong, and then you come and kiss me, and so you see it's all an idea of mine. I don't like to think people are cross with me, when they're not, mamma; and I suppose it's very naughty." Judith Lossell went over and kissed her stepson. The colour had deepened upon her substantial face. "It's nice that I can speak to people," said Elias, with a weary sigh, "but, what's the use, when nobody can ever speak to me? I want somebody to speak to me very badly. Nobody has said anything for ever so long." It was a yearning to which he had given utterance again and again, but this time the words were barely out of his mouth when he started up, his pale cheeks ELIAS HEARS THE TRUTH. 89 aglow with excitement, his whole frame trembling with the anxiety of the idea that possessed him. "1 must go upstairs to Johanna," he stuttered. "Please, please open the door, mamma. I can quite well find my way if you will let me out. I have got something to ask her immediately. No; I can't wait till she comes to fetch me. Oh, mamma, do you know I think I might Please, please let me out Yes; I have got the balustrade. No, I shan't " He was gone. He fell up the stairs in his haste, crying "Johanna! Johanna!" through the house, and as she ran out on to the landing to meet him, he threw himself, gasping for breath, into her arms. "Quick!" he cried; "make A against my cheek, Johanna. A with your fingers. A, B, C. Yes, yes. Quick! put your hand so, up against my face. A, B, C. Not so fast. How stupid you are! D. D now; D, E. Oh, Johanna! I can hear everything you say. I can hear quite well like that. Go on ; say something. Quick ! quick! Oh Johanna! I am sure I can hear like that." He burst into tears, but still he held up his sight- less face, with the big drops coursing down it, and pressed her hand against his cheek. And she, in the agitation of the moment, could think of nothing to say but "stockings," and "stockings" she said, gazing stead- fastly down at the unfinished one lying in her lap. "K," cried Elias, spelling out the Dutch word as she slowly formed the letters, laying her hands against his cheek "K O U Not so fast Do it over again. U S. You said 'stockings,' Johanna. What made you say 'stockings'?" go COD'S FOOT. He broke away from her, dancing round the table as best he could, and crying: "Stockings; what made you say stockings? But I understood it quite well. I shall be able to hear them." He fell up against something in his triumphant dancing, and tumbled back into Johanna's arms, sobbing as if his heart would break. "Tell me quick," he sobbed, "why you said stockings. What made you say it, Johanna?" It was the first word except "Yes" and "No" he had heard for several weeks. The woman could only spell back to him "Nothing." Elias understood her. "Stockings? nothing?" He grew impatient "What do you mean, Johanna? Why can't you say something to me? I want dreadfully to hear you say something to me. Oh, Johanna, how unkind you are!" She folded him to her breast for only answer, and it was not till several minutes later that she began more calmly to practise with Elias this spelling of the deaf and dumb alphabet where he could feel, instead of seeing it. Presently she selected the side of his neck in preference to his cheek, and this communication once being established, she soon agreed with him upon slight alterations and simplifications better suited to these peculiar circumstances. That, however, was the result of later considerations, when Elias had already got to understand whatever was said to him. It was not long before anyone who took the trouble to master these signs could converse with the boy, and soon he read them far quicker than they were given. And thus one great ELIAS HEARS THE TRUTH. 01 cloud rolled away from his darkness, and the stars came out again in the night. "And, Johanna," he said, when the first tremor of discovery was over, and he sat enjoying, as it can but rarely be enjoyed, the full delight of question and answer, "now tell me all the doctor says about my eyes. It is that I have been wanting to know most of all during the whole long time. And nobody ever told me not really. Of course, he says I shall get better. But does he think it will be soon? Does he think they are better already?" "No, dear, you are not better," Johanna spelled back in return, with shaking fingers. "You must not think too much about getting better, Elias." 92 GOD'S FOOL. CHAPTER X. DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE. FOR the next fifteen years Elias Lossell lived with Johanna and a middle-aged under-servant in a little cottage outside the town, where his father came and saw him daily. His stepmother came* often not daily and his brothers came also, from time to time. The under-servant changed once or twice as the years passed on; Johanna, of course, remained, and the flow of Elias's life was almost as a lowland stream under an over- hanging willow. It had been decided that he should go and live thus not long after intercourse had been re-established between him and the outside world. Judith Lossell be- lieved to her dying day (she is dead; she died some years before the great catastrophe) that this decision was the result of the scene between her and her husband when she told him quietly, as was her manner, and. without any screams or tears that Henkie and Hubbie, despite their tender age, must be sent to boarding-school as soon as possible, for that the gloom of Elias's pre- sence was ruining their infant livers not lives; it isn't a misprint; but livers. Judith Lossell said so. Neither her printer nor her historian is responsible for what she said. If that chronicler of a woman's many words were responsible for all their foolishness, there would be more DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE. 93 alas! no; there are enough broken-brained geniuses already. There would be no chronicles written at all. Judith Lossell, however, was mistaken. The decision had been taken without any regard to her opinions, and it had been taken before the great scene, above- mentioned, came on. That the merchant had allowed his wife to fight it out, under the circumstances, was the result of his inability to inform her of his reasons. He was not accustomed to oppose her, and he positively preferred her to think that she had bullied him into submission. "Anything for a quiet life," said this Town Councillor, to whom everybody bent except his consort, but, none the less, he stuck to his original resolution that Elias himself should indicate what he preferred. And this was how the matter was settled. They were alone together in the twilight, after dinner, the father and son. Henkie and Hubbie had just been sent off to bed, and their mother had followed "to tuck them in." The merchant went over and spoke to the child. "You can always perceive when Johanna is in the room or when she touches you, can you not?" he asked. "Yes, papa," said Elias. "And can you when your mother does so?" "No, papa." "And me I?" A long pause. "Sometimes, papa." And so Elias went to live with Johanna. And Johanna played with him, and was his horse. Tonnerre also played with him. Henkie and Hubbie occasionally 94 GOD'S FOOL. came, by their father's orders, and they, too, would try to play with him. But Tonnerre did not approve of their coming, and persisted in barking at their shins. At first, a master was procured for him who, without exactly giving what could be described as lessons, had instructions to slip into his conversation such scraps of the most necessary information as could be conveyed in this desultory manner. The master was quite equal to the task thus entrusted to him, and the plan would un- doubtedly have worked very satisfactorily had Elias's head been stronger. But he grew tired, and he could not remember. That was the worst of alL He could only remember what he knew by heart, what he had known for years, or what constantly repeated itself in his experience. Sometimes it almost appeared as if his development had remained stationary with the recurrence of his blindness. And then again something would come out which would prove that this was not the case. Yet he would speak of the autumnal glories of Clarens, as if he had beheld them yesterday, while his teacher would vainly ask for the fiftieth time: "Elias, what is the capital of France?" An attempt to teach him reading and writing, ac- cording to the methods employed among the blind, proved a failure. The writing, especially, with its con- fusing combination of dots, greatly excited and fatigued him. At the conclusion of one of these lessons, in which he had strained his powers to the uttermost in his nervous anxiety to succeed, he was laid prostrate by a feverish attack which caused the frightened Johanna to send for the nearest doctor, and then for Hendrik Lossell. The nearest doctor turned out to be Elias's DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE. 95 old friend, Pillenaar. He came, magnanimously, and he was in the sick-room when the merchant hurriedly entered it. "You!" cried Lossell, thus suddenly thrown into the presence of the man he had wronged. The doctor answered only by a repellent gesture, and continued to busy himself with his little patient. Hendrik Lossell walked away to the window and drummed his fingers against the pane. Presently he drew near again, attracted against his will by the silent old man at the bedside. "Why are you here?" he asked. "I was sent for," replied the physician quietly. "And a physician is not in the habit of asking where they are taking him, but why he is fetched." He spoke without looking up, and meanwhile he drew from under the patient's arm the thermometer which had been resting there, and walked with it towards the light. "You cannot wish well to me or mine," persisted Lossell, "nor can it be an agreeable thought for me that the life of one of my children is in the hands of a man who probably thinks he owes me a bad turn." "I am having my revenge," said the doctor quietly, as he turned back to the bed. The father walked up and down for some moments with hesitating step. Then, stopping near Pillenaar, he asked, with a visible effort: "Do you mean that you are hurting the child?" The doctor paused in the act of measuring out some drops, and looked across at Lossell with eyes full of tranquil scorn: "Fool," he said. The merchant received the word right in his face, g6 GOD'S FOOL. like a well-aimed snowball. He started back. He was accustomed to being called "Worshipful Sir." He did not speak again, till the other got ready to go. Then he followed him downstairs, and asked, almost timidly, as they were nearing the hall-door: "Is the child very ill?" The doctor stopped under the lamp, in the act of shaking himself into his overcoat: "No," he said. "Not now. The fever was very high, when I came, but we have already got it down half a degree. Did I not tell you I was having my revenge? The boy will get belter, Mynheer Lossell, but there will be no more lessons for him. His nurse tells me he is learning to read and write. I shall stop that. I have told her so. I shall give publicity to the facts that I found your son in this condition and that I have forbidden your continuing to 'improve his mind.' And if I find that you disregard my advice, I shall make public that little conversation of ours which led to your nearly ruining me in the mortgage affair. I have never mentioned it to anyone yet. But I shan't allow you to make away with this unfortunate son of yours. Did not I tell you that I was having my revenge? Good night" "Stop," cried the wretched father, roused by these unmerited, yet excusable, taunts. "You wrong me. Be- fore God, you wrong me. It was no intention of mine to hurt the child. I do not deny that I would rather he had died when he was first stricken down. It would have been happier, above all for him. If you think these years of wretchedness have been preferable, I cannot help differing from you. I was angry with you, chiefly for your manner. I was unreasonable. I admit DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE. 97 it. But I have never lifted a hand against one hair of his head, neither then nor since!" The doctor had stood curiously watching Hendrick Lossell's face. "No," he said, when the merchant ceased speaking, "I dare say not. You are not one of those who kill, only one of those who cause to die. I can't fathom your whys and your wherefores, Right Worshipful Heer Lossell, but I know that, for some reason or other, you would rather have that poor unfortunate out of the way do you dare deny it?" The merchant winced. "If Providence thought fit to call him to a happier sphere," he answered, "once more, who would dare wish for his remaining here?" "Providence!" interrupted the old doctor testily. M Providence! That is only another word for 'timely foresight.' Your providence provides for yourself, Myn- heer Lossell. But I advise it to look out." "I swear that it is false," cried Lossell hotly. "And to prove to you that you wrong me, as well as to shield myself from your attacks, I will follow your instructions in all things concerning the boy. Nobody else shall touch him in future. He has always retained a liking for you. Doctor him as much as you choose, and revenge yourself for any wrong I may have done you by charging me whatever sum you may please. Do you accept?" The tea-merchant was indeed roused to an unusual pitch of agitation, or he would never have committed himself to so rash a proposal. But he was growing old -with worry, more than with years and his arith- God's Fool. I. 7 98 GOD'S FOOL. metic was no longer as hard and fast as it used to be. "I accept," said Doctor Pillenaar, after a moment's hesitation, "for the child's sake. My charge is a dollar a visit. And you know it." No more lessons. No more struggling after fleeting images, that ran and ran, the harder he strove to retain them. Repose, and fresh air, and tranquil enjoyments and then a blissful feeling as if the ache were almost gone. It was Dr. Pillenaar who called in another great medicine- man to come and see Elias, not an oculist, this time, but a learned professor of "psychiatry." Very few people in Koopstad knew what was meant by psychiatry; it may be doubted whether the wise man himself did, though he was professor of it An im- pression got about, however, that a phrenologist had been sent for to feel Elias's bumps, and Koopstad was perfectly satisfied, though some people did say they would never have thought it of Doctor Pillenaar. " Elias has had one bump on his head, I should think, which could explain the whole matter," said Henkie. Henkie was an unfeeling lad. Hubbie looked away. He did not like people to speak of that terrible story, which was so old, and yet daily so new. "It is the brain," said the professor, saying nothing new, but charging a couple of hundred florins for saying it and therein will ever lie a subtle comfort for those of us who can afford to pay for it, and especially for those who can't "It is the brain. There is un- DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE. 99 doubtedly a permanent lesion, and probably, in connec- tion with that, as an outcome, yes, I should say, as an outcome of it" he frowned deeply "a slow malforma- tion of the brain. Has this deterioration ceased or has it not? that, honoured colleague, is the question which, if I understand aright, you are desirous of seeing solved?" Pillenaar nodded acquiescence, a little im- patiently "It is a question requiring mature considera- tion, and requiring, above all, as many data as can possibly be procured. Let us ahem have luncheon first, and then we can talk the whole matter over at our ease, as, if we reckon half an hour for the meal, I shall still have twenty minutes till my train leaves for ahem home." They called in Hendrik Lossell, as soon as their conference had been hurried over, and they told him the result. "Nothing could be settled with any degree of cer- tainty. On the whole, it was probable, judging by the experience of the last years, that the boy's brain would still suffer further derangement It might safely be assumed, however, that such alteration, if it did occur, would manifest itself very tardily. Years might elapse before any noticeable change took place. On the other hand, the patient might" the professor paused and glanced inquiringly from the father to Dr. Pillenaar. The latter motioned to him to proceed "the patient might lose other senses as he had already lost these. The eyes were sound; the ears were intact, the mischief therefore lay in the channels of communication between 7* IOO CODS FOOL. these organs and the central consciousness. It was possible, however, that the work of destruction had now come to a standstill. It was also possible that, if it continued, the patient might lapse into idiocy" Dr. Pillenaar nodded. "The great man did not think this was likely, too long a period having already elapsed. More could not be said with certainty. But what had been said before was certain, taking the accompanying restrictions into account And, if the cab was waiting? thank you perhaps it would be better to wake the cabman." "I understand," said Lossell, confusedly following the great light of science, "that only the brain is diseased?" "Certainly. Undoubtedly. Probably. Of course. The constitution is healthy, not absolutely robust, but far from unsound. Rather the reverse. Remarkably sound. With care the child may live to be a hundred. It is this very fact of his general healthiness that proves there must be some local flaw." "Then, could we not," stammered the merchant on the steps, "could we not as I see the great doctors do in Vienna with stomachs, you know, insert new ones of of pigskin it's in all the papers could we not renovate the diseased part of the brain remove it, you know, and and insert new piece, professor!" "Pig's brains?" queried the professor. His cab was coming up to the front-steps. "Well, hardly. And what use would they be to your son, my dear sir, if he had them? How could he become a doctor or a lawyer Or a parson, with the brains of a pig?" "I don't want him to become that," said Hendrik DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE. 101 Lossell, innocently pursuing his direct line of thought, without deferring to his companion's. "I want him to become a merchant like myself." "No, no; he would only do for a doctor," interposed Pillenaar bitterly. "We have not got quite as far as that yet," said the student of the human soul (seen from the outside), as he settled himself in his conveyance. "Nor has the Vienna doctor, whatever he may do in ten years' time. But we have done great things, none the less, in psychiatry, very great things indeed, considering" he added complacently "that nobody ever did anything before us." "And what have you done?" asked Lossell, think- ing discontentedly of his departed banknotes, the open carriage-door in his hand. "We have classified, my dear sir. We have classi- fied. And we have found a great number of people to be mad whom nobody ever imagined to be mad be- fore." "And have you," asked Lossell, "found a good many so-called mad people to be sane?" "Well no, hardly that," replied the "psychiater," somewhat taken aback, "hardly that, no. I should scarcely say that. Would you tell him to drive to the Northern Station? Thank you. I am much obliged to you. I have not the slightest doubt your boy will do very well indeed." The carriage drove away. "We have been born too early," said Lossell sadly, as he turned into the house. "It is our misfortune. If we had only lived 102 GOD'S FOOL. twenty years later, the doctors would have spoken of a new brain for Elias, as the parsons now speak of a new heart, and he would have been a good man of business yet, and all would have been well." He sighed heavily. "And now all is wrong," he said. "LIKE A STREAM UNDER A WILLOW-TREE." 103 CHAPTER XI. "LIKE A STREAM UNDER A WILLOW-TREE." AND so Elias grew up, with the old brain that would not work as it ought to, watched-over and cared for in his daily needs and perplexities by Johanna's motherly affec- tion, and protected, from a distance, by Doctor Pillenaar, against all mistakes and misconceptions. After some years Tonnerre died, of old age, and that was the first intense grief he had known since his blindness. His father obtained for him at great expense and at almost greater pains an exactly similar little animal from a London dealer who probably stole it as a last resource but Elias would have none of the little stranger. "It was ungrateful of him," said Judith Lossell, "after all the trouble his father had taken." And therein she was right. She was always right; and you always had a sneaking feeling that she ought to have been wrong. She had a talent for stating tiresome truths that nobody wanted to believe. It was disagreeable for her, too, to find this deaf duffer, this blind idiot that nobody wanted to live, outgrowing her own children daily in health and strength and outer beauty. For Hendrik and Hubert Henkie and Hubbie no longer had developed into little business-mannikins such as you can find in any number, if you care to look, on the exchange and mart of Koopstad. They 104 GOD'S FOOL. were small and spare, with close-cropped heads and yellow complexions, and they smelt of "Jockey Club." They were over-dressed, into just that shade of over- dressing which is peculiar to the sons of merchant- princes. They had aristocratic tastes, for they hated the Jews, and never swallowed a glass of wine without saying that it might have been better; and they knew all about everybody and everything. Elias, on the contrary, living in God's great solitude of boundless fresh air and almost unbroken silence, grew up with such a frame as we all might be troubled with, were civilization not there to refine us. From a puny, pale-faced laddie he developed into a man of six feet two, with a chest like a drum and a voice like a trumpet, a man with the limbs of no, no, not those eternalized effeminate appendages of a Greek god with the limbs of an old Batouwer from the forests by the Rhine. And there was something unavoidably affecting in the combination of this great display of physical strength with a certain timidity of movement alas, much of the old childish grace was gone! and a slight stoop of the head, the natural results of his blindness. He had retained that golden shimmer over his curly locks which so seldom outstays the golden sunshine of childhood, and his face had grown hand- some with the repose of harmonious lines. The sight- less eyes were usually closed; for long hours he would sit thus silent, curtained from that outer world he could not gaze upon; but it was when he swept up the long-lashed eyelids that you understood how it came that women called the blind fool, Elias Lossell, the most beautiful man in Koopstad. "LIKE A STREAM UNDER A WILLOW-TREE." 105 He had inherited, with his mother's rather insigni- ficant regularity of feature, the fathomless splendour of his father's eyes those eyes that had purchased Volderdoes Zonen. But in the son's unillumined orbs there slept a sadness, a tender, pitiful pleading, irre- sistible as that attraction of deep, dark water which compels you to look again. It was impossible to realize that such glory of love and sorrow could fall back upon the beholder from a soulless mirror. And who shall say, indeed, that these tranquil depths could give forth none of their own inner light because they could receive none from the radiance around them? It was that gentle, fugitive pleading which broke across the stillness, like a ripple on a lake, a something indefinite, some- thing lacking, like a prayer and a regret, that moved you to the very centre of your being, you could scarcely have reasoned out why. Eyes that look forth upon the world's little ups and downs are swept by every change of sentiment; only sightless repose could burn with such a steadfast game of sadness, and of love that conquers regret. How well I remember those eyes of Elias Lossell's nay, forgive the epic poet that the strength of a personal reminiscence should break through your neat little rules I have good cause to remember. For they did me brave service once, many years ago, when I was not as old, and therefore not as wise, a man as I have become since. I had been to hear a stupid lecture, which had impressed me very much, because there were a number of scientific terms in it which I could not understand, and which, therefore, I knew must all contain as many undeniable truths. It was all about the origin of man, io6 GOD'S FOOL. and it had proved to me irrefutably that I, like the rest of the human race, was nothing but a perfected cell. I could appreciate that argument about life, and humanity, being a gigantic sell. In my darker moments I had often reasoned it out for myself. And there was nothing but matter and force, and nothing worth living for, except life. It was all very beautiful and simple, and you had only got to persuade yourself you liked it, even when you had the toothache or the heartache, and there you were. I was thinking it over, and won- dering to myself why I could not immediately realize that that perfected anthropoid ape, Graziella (my heart's queen at the moment; I found out afterwards that her name was Jane), was not a bit more perfected than all other she- anthropoid apes. I was reproaching myself with my foolishness in not comprehending more readily that there was nothing inside anybody's body except that body itself. I understood perfectly how all my good and evil instincts had developed themselves out of my original cellular ancestor, and, the particulars having got somewhat jumbled in my head, I was ready to affirm that I owed my dislike of mint-sauce to the wolf's disagreeable habit of eating his lamb raw, and my short-sightedness to the eagle's equally unreasonable custom of staring needlessly at the sun. For I had understood the lecturer to say distinctly that everybody was descended from everybody else, and that all our qualities could be explained by the fact that somebody else had had them before us. In fact, I was converted to the very latest scientific discoveries of that day. Two years afterwards I happened to hear the same lecturer again, and I found that he was most anxious to tell us that "LIKE A STREAM UNDER A WILLOW-TREE." 107 all he had told us last time had been proved to be wrong. I could have told him that sooner. I had learned it, not from a wise man, but from a fool. And I had found my soul again, while he was still looking for his. I heard him say that he quite expected to light upon it soon in the development of the carrier-pigeon out of the pigeon that can't carry anything at all. I believe this has actually happened since, for I was informed the other day that he was perfectly happy in a scientific squabble with a brother inventor I mean discoverer who main- tains that, wherever the soul of man may be, the soul of woman can distinctly be traced to the pouter. I was wandering down the street, then, with a jumble of these latter-day truths in my head, when I suddenly remembered that Elias Lossell had been un- well of late, and that I had promised my mother to go and inquire after him. So I walked out of the town towards the house where he lived, and I found him sitting up by his fire, for he was better. I talked with him a little you could always get Johanna to interpret and then I lapsed into silence, facing him, with only the hearth between us. And presently, in the darkness and confusion of my thoughts, he lifted his drooping eyes and turned them full upon me turned them with their sightless immensity of a sorrow that has conquered itself. 1 got up, and pressed his hand, and went out. And ever since, though I respect the earthworm no less, nor the domestic pigeon, nor even the tailless ape, I believe that the humblest human intellect is the servant of a soul which sprang from God, and that the loftiest is nothing more. io8 GOD'S FOOL. Elias had fortunately a small number of hobbies which were practicable even to his enfeebled intellect. Chief of these, strangely enough, was the amusement for with him it could not be called an art of garden- ing. His great delight was to potter about in a small bit of garden, with the aid of a gardener, and to plant combinations of brilliant colour, which his eye could never behold. He would feel the flowers carefully, and request that they might be minutely described to him; then he would set to work, taking them one by one from the heaps in which his assistant had laid them and arranging them according to his fancy. And thus it was also his supreme enjoyment to make up his own flowers into nosegays and send them to anyone that had shown him kindness. But he could never remember for any length of time where the various kinds had been planted, and had to ask day after day, if they were in bloom. And gradually a number of pets were gathered around him, not to fill up Tonnerre's place, but to live and die beside him. For Elias could never remember that Tonnerre was dead, and, when a new dog was brought into the room, he would ask after his old play- mate, and he would even cry because they said Ton- nerre was gone. Johanna could never quite succeed in breaking him of that petulant habit of crying when he wanted to have his way. Other pets, however, were given him by friends, and he made them all welcome; white mice, a tame squirrel, a big cat whom he taught to respect the mice, and a couple of canaries. They were quite a family of friends to him, with their separate names and their "LIKE A STREAM UNDER A WILLOW-TREE. 109 individual peculiarities, and he liked to tell you about them and their tricks. The canaries were his favourites, ** because of their beautiful song," he said, and he de- clared was it a fancy of his or not? that he could always know when they sang of course without dis- tinguishing a note by the movement their music oc- casioned in the air around him. Thus, in the care of his "menagerie," as Henkie called it, his heart found opportunities of extending its affections, and Johanna often told him laughingly that she was jealous of his winged and four-footed loves. "I don't know," said Elias slowly on one of these occasions. He always spoke slowly, as if looking for his words. "I should like to love everybody, only that it seems like loving no- body. But I love you best, Johanna, except myself." Presently he added: "I I love myself very much, Johanna. Do you love yourself better than me?" Any lie seemed preferable to the truth for a mo- ment, for the woman shrank from the seeming self- complacency of the confession. And then she said angrily aloud: "He is only he, after all," and yet she blushed deeply as she spelled on his neck: "No; I think I love you better, Elias." He sat quiet for a moment, and then he said softly: "I didn't know. I thought it was very good of me to be so fond of you. I think I should like to love you better, Johanna, than I love myself. But I love myself very much. And I think I would rather have myself happy than anybody else's happiness." Elias was about twenty, when he thus spoke. He no GOD'S FOOL. was too foolish not to distinguish better between what is and what we suppose to be. "It is no use trying to develop his intellect," Dr. Pillenaar had repeatedly said to Johanna. "He can't stand it And, especially, he can't stand efforts to in- crease his stock of knowledge. Working on his me- mory is useless, and can only do harm. Try what you can achieve with his moral sense, his affections, his standard of right and wrong, and so on. I am not very hopeful, but any improvement can only come from thence. Instruction is out of the question. I do not say that a certain amount a moderate amount of education may not be attainable with patience and tact I believe you have both, my good woman, at least where this youth is concerned. See what you can do for him. A man may be a man, though he doesn't know the multiplication-table, all the better, perhaps, for never having realized that himself and nine fellow- creatures only make an I and a Nought." Johanna undertook her task and worked it out with laborious devotion. In fact, she had begun it long be- fore Dr. Pillenaar mentioned the subject At Clarens she had been amazed to discover that Elias's whole idea of moral distinctions was based upon "Mamma likes" and "Mamma doesn't like" a rule good enough in itself, perhaps, but surely only as the outer court to an inner temple. Elias reposed tranquilly upon the consideration that wrong became wrong through your mother's finding it out Right became wrong, for that matter, if it interfered with the good lady's comfort, and certainly wrong became altogether right, if she "LIKE A STREAM UNDER A WILLOW-TREE." I I I happened through ignorance or carelessness not to object to it. It was, in its way, a very complicated system, because its single instances all had to be judged apart, without any possible reduction to general rules, but, on the other hand, it had the advantage of offer- ing a superficial , but fully satisfactory solution of each difficulty, immediately it supervened, so that you could always know, for the moment at least, what to do and what not to do. But, away from his stepmother's scoldings, Elias was as a vessel without a rudder. He was anxious to find out Johanna's opinions on various subjects, and he set himself to do so with laudable earnestness. "Mamma won't allow me to keep my wet boots on when there's company," he said, "but, Johanna, there's no company here." Johanna devoted her life to the rousing in his torpid nature of a consciousness of the fundamental principles of right and wrong. "Elias good," "Elias not good" as with a little child. It was uphill- work, at first, not that she found him unwilling to learn, but the narrow limits of his horizon made it difficult for him to oversee problems which belong to the most intricate the human race must grapple with, while yet he had natural sensitiveness of conscience enough partly to perceive them upon his path. "If it's bad of me, what makes me want to do it?" he would ask, for instance. And upon Johanna's replying that it was the devil who tempted him, "Then why didn't God forget to make the devil when He made all the rest?" said the fool. And the worst of it was that his brain had not elasticity enough to cast off a perplexity which had once got itself wedged fast. He would repeat a question like I I 2 GOD'S FOOL. the above over and over again during many weeks, always forgetting the answer he had received a few hours before. And Johanna would answer with unalter- ing patience that she did not know, or that nobody knew, or, at last, when this solution left him longing for somebody who did know that God did not make the devil, but that the devil made himself. He had not strength of mind enough to leap beyond so satisfactory an answer, and therefore found content- ment in it, until he forgot and asked again. But, whatever might become of the theological ab- stractions, one practical lesson Johanna found easy enough to drive home. The simple duty of doing little kindnesses was one which he understood with eager aptitude; in fact, there was considerable danger of his missing the idea of duty in the pleasure which this ful- filment of duty occasioned him. And soon it became the greatest reward for good behaviour that he should be allowed to give some trifle away. His nurse encouraged him in his dull life, to seek this diversion as much as possible. And they would go out into the country cottages together, and with his own hand Elias would distribute what he had brought He made friends in this way among the cottage chil- dren. He would speak to them, and some of them would get over their alarm when they saw how gentle and kindly he was. This simple philanthropy of alms- giving, which estimable people will probably think ought not to have been permitted, was an ever increasing source of pleasurable occupation, and it brought him into contact with his fellow-creatures as he would not otherwise have been brought Then, after a time, it be- "LIKE A STREAM UNDER A WILLOW-TREE." 113 came not only mere alms-giving, when Elias got to know individual cases. And his serene presence in the cot- tages was in itself a lesson which only they could over- look who were blinder than he. For, after the poignant hope and fear of the first months, and the stagnant agony which succeeded them, Elias sank into more cheerful repose. At first they who watched over him dreaded that this tranquillity might deepen into apathy, but the untiring devotion of his faithful nurse drew him slowly out of his lethargic resignation into a taste for the various occupations which have been indicated above. And as the years passed on, and his health grew stronger, some new interest would be added from time to time to the little circle which was already his. Of games, unfortunately, he could only play the simplest. His head was, of course, not strong enough for chess, or draughts, or even dominoes, in the study of which he might otherwise have whiled away so many a weary hour. But he could play an occasional game of "solitaire" in his loneliness, and, extraordinary as it may seem, he had selected the game of "spillikens" as his especial favourite. The merely mechanical skill was within his comprehension, and the extreme delicacy of his touch enabled him to discern if the piece he was lifting came into contact with another. He learnt through long practice to judge of the position of the set by lightly passing his fingers over the little heap, and, if he failed to notice a movement, Johanna would be near to give a hint. He attained great proficiency through constant repetition, and it was a strange sight to watch this blind creature bending, with contracted God's Fool. I. 8 1 1 4 GOD'S FOOL. brows, over the simple game which would seem to re- quire, as one might think, keenness of eye quite as much as sureness of hand. Very, very slowly the shadows deepened over his already clouded intellect With all her love Johanna could not avert them; with all her hopefulness she could not ignore their coming. Almost imperceptibly in the enforced seclusion in which he lived, hedged in on every side, the lights of human intelligence went out one by one. He forgot more and more, his little stock of knowledge growing less he experienced yet greater difficulty in finding his words. He began to speak of himself in the third person, as little children do: "Elias will be good." And yet to her who knew him best because she loved him, it seemed as if with the increase of his man- hood, he grew gentler, kinder, more affectionate. And his father knew only this. He knew that he had constantly asked the boy: "Are you happy, Elias?" And at first, there had been no reply possible, and then the lad had sometimes said: "I suppose so, Papa," and now the man would often answer: "Yes." And the days were like each other, and the years were like the days, only longer, and when Elias was twenty-five, Hendrik Lossell died. VOLDERDOES ZONEN. I 1 5 CHAPTER XII. VOLDERDOES ZONEN. HENDRIK Junior was nineteen, and had entered his father's office the year before. Hubert, being more backward than his brother, was to remain a little longer at the School of Commerce. They had worked to- gether originally until Hubert, not having "passed" on one occasion, had been forced to see Hendrik move into a higher form without him. This separation had naturally caused a change in their pursuits, their com- panions, their hours and courses of, work. They had been compelled to go each his separate way, and from being almost always together, they had come to con- sider it natural that the one should not know for hours what the other was doing. "I wish you would help me with my work, Henk," said Huib, "as you used to when we worked together." "Oh, I can't bother," said Henk. "I've forgotten all that rot since I moved up. It seems years ago since I learnt it." Good-natured Huib winced. Dutch boys talk Dutch slang. Their repertoire is small, and lacks the picturesqueness of English school- talk. Still, they are as convinced as their coevals over the water that there is a good deal rotten in the bill of fare prepared for their intellectual nourishment, and the term used above can therefore certainly not be n6 GOD'S FOOL. considered misplaced. And schoolboy-talk is untrans- latable. To the connoisseur it always seems delightful, salt and bracing and ever fresh, like a breeze from the hills of youth. What a good thing it is that the mammas so seldom hear it! It only reaches them, as a rule, through the medium of the young ladies' school- room, and from the lips of these it tastes like bottled sea-water, and not a bit like bottled breeze. No, a girl should not talk slang. She always knows she is talk- ing it And therefore in her it becomes affectation, while its very essence is "unavoidableness." In the boy's case it comes bubbling from the lips with irresistible simplicity, and you feel that it is the harmonious vehicle of his thoughts. It is keen, supple, gleaming. And it strikes straight With the young lady whose governess is teaching her how to hand a parcel pooh; do you remember that old fable? hush; let us be polite, even to the slang-talkster: "There once was a lion that went out walking in a donkey-skin." "And everybody noticed how much softer a donkey's skin is by nature than a lion's." Fables are wearisome things till you get to the moral; and then they become provoking. At least, so I have always found them, but most people whom I have questioned on the subject have told me they considered fables were very instructive, because they give you such a much clearer insight into the faults of your fellow-creatures. It is unfortunately hardly correct that Dutch school- boys delight in slang. They have but few idiomatic VOLDERDOES ZONEN. I I "J expressions, and these are often of very unpleasing origin. Alas that they should make up for the de- ficiency by oaths. Then, why, it may be asked, this dissertation upon the subject? There was a man once who possessed a coat but no peg to hang it on. So, having honestly earned his coat, he stole a peg. He thought that the coat would hide the peg. And so it did, but, as it hung loose in the air, the detectives cleverly remarked that the peg must be behind it. And they took the peg away, and the coat, and the man; and upon the latter the critics sat down no, I mean the detectives. And so he died. Hendrik went into his father's office. And he began to talk about "'Change." They call it the "Purse" in Holland, as everywhere on the Continent, and Elias had long believed that it was a great bag full of money, hung up somewhere, and that his father and all other people's fathers went down to it every afternoon and took out as much as they wanted. He asked why the ragged children's fathers did not go down to the "Bourse." "Elias," said Hendrik, "is an unutterable fool." The adjective was painfully true. Hendrik Junior was not a fool. Even the many who did not like him unhesitatingly admitted that he was a smart young man. His father's old clerks beamed upon him, when he sat down before his office desk, spreading out his spidery little legs on a magenta- coloured sheepskin, and knotting his little black eye- n8 GOD'S FOOL. brows, as he struck a quick hand through a thick bundle of papers, with an incisive "Let's see." "Voider- does Zonen" was not merely a wholesale tea-shop. It was a great house in the best sense of the word, a social institution, and to a certain extent what might be called a tribal family. All those who were con- nected with it and its far-spreading interests, were con- nected with each other. The mighty head of the firm, looming bald and sacred, in the far distance of his sanctum behind glass doors that opened into the outer office, was Volderdoes Zonen incarnate, but the youngest errand-boy, who stared timidly from the entrance-hall, as he came up with his message, across lines of desks and bended heads, towards a solemn silence where mortals scarce dared tread, felt that he, too, somehow and in some infinitesimal manner, was "Volderdoes Zonen," and rejoiced in the thought Outside, where he waited, was a perpetual clamour of rail-cars, a babel of voices, the continual thud of heavy cases, the mono- tonous rush of ropes on the pulley and men, with grave, preoccupied faces, passed him rapidly, going to and fro through the great doors. Inside was silence, except for the buzz of voices in the so-called "Strangers' Office" nothing but the occasional rustle of a leaf, or a fragment of a whispered conversation, as one clerk would step over for a moment to consult with another. Sometimes a handbell would ring with a sharp, electric twang from the chiefs table, and a name would be called out in a clear and imperative key. Then some quiet worker would lay down his pen and pass through the glass division, into the presence of his sovereign. The oldest of them never listened for the name which VOLDERDOES ZONEN. 1 19 must follow that electric signal without a moment's quiver of expectation. It was the only occasion on which Volderdoes Zonen's clerks laid down their pens unwiped. And from the yard and the quays beyond it came the boom of the machinery, the rustle of the descend- ing lift, the "heigh-ho's" to the horses among the clatter of hoofs and the whistle of whips, hour after hour, day after day through the winter rains, when the great stoves were lighted inside, and round by the sweet soft, summer months when all the windows were opened and, amid the scents of tea and machine-oil and lilacs, the twittering of the city-sparrows broke in upon the ceaseless scratching of the pens. There was not one of them from the oldest to the youngest (not the sparrows, rather the pens) but felt "Volderdoes Zonen" to be eternal, without beginning and without ending, like the world they lived in. Hendrik Lossell himself, they felt, though he was an incorporation and a symbol, was not the eternal Idea, any more than William I. or William II. is the Empire. He would go, as he had come, and Hendrik II. would come in his turn, and go also, but the unity of which all the busy workers were component parts was not dependent on any of them for its existence, either the greatest or the least. Hendrik Lossell, however, was fully conscious that for the time being, at any rate, the sceptre rested in his hand. Not that he allowed it to rest; he swayed it with that kind of impersonal government which is usually described as "stern" by those who are pas- 12O GODS FOOL. sively, and "just" by those who are actively connected with it. Disobedience meant instant dismissal; obedience could not always mean immediate reward. That was unavoidable, and the management of so extensive a business required, you may be certain, a firm hand as well as a quick one. "Office hours are too short for good work, as it is," Ix>ssell would say to some penitent promising amendment; "I can't pay for bad." "There's no room for repentance in business," he used to re- mark. "If you want to repent, I must leave you free to do so at home." Whoever might be head of his household, there was no doubt who was master in the office. Perhaps he found some sweet compensation in the thought Who shall tell? And when he himself was found out in some omis- sion, or some positive error? Well, that would occur at times, of course; and the moment was an awful one. It happened upon one occasion that a mistake had been made which involved a considerable loss. The confidential clerk who had to broach the matter to his master trembled in his shoes, not for himself, for the fault was Lossell's. The clerk had been in the office more than forty years; he had served old Elias long before anyone had thought of the present head of the firm. He spoke calmly, despite his tremor, politely, positively. The chief reddened, looked up with an un- comfortable glance, looked down at the papers before him. "Yes," he said, "Mr. Hopman, there has been an altogether inexcusable mistake. I am very much vexed, very much displeased, that such a mistake should have occurred, and I must bear the con- sequences." VOLDERDOES ZONEN. 121 The old clerk understood. It was Volderdoes Zonen scolding Hendrik Lossell. But Volderdoes Zonen did not send Hendrik Los- 'sell away. The wall of the private room were hung with the firm's historic mementoes; diplomas of honour, an ap- pointment to the Jury of a Great Exhibition, a framed and glazed letter from a European sovereign long since dead. They were spread out there as the captured banners adorn the chapel of a conqueror. And high above the monumental mantel-piece, with its solemn clock, sat enthroned the life-sized portrait of a Chinese Grandee, a splendour of flowered silk under a pair of little twinkling slits of celestial Cheatery, a Li-Foo- Something, who had earned his highest button by rob- bing his Imperial Master in company with old Elias's father. This heathen Chinee was the tutelary deity of the house. He pervaded it, as such a patron spirit should, for old Elias had turned his father's friend into a trade- mark alas, the illustrious dead! and everything be- longing to the business, even the charwoman's dusters, that came out of their cupboard on Saturday afternoon, bore the image of the tea-honoured Mandarin. He was an actual Presence; they believed in him down at "Vol- derdoes Zonen's," and spoke of him and to him, as if he really were responsible for the fortunes of the firm. The warehousemen had a superstition among them, laughed at, yet not altogether despised, that the great cases could not come to grief as long as the Chinaman- label upon them remained intact And when old Vol- derdoes celebrated his silver-jubilee as head of the 122 GOD'S FOOL. business, the whole of the staff clubbed together, big and little, every member of the vast family, the errand- boys subscribing five cents, and presented him with a silver dessert-service, in which silver mandarins sat under silver palm-trees, bearing crystal dishes. There were any number of silver mandarins, fit type of the spoil which the astute Li had divided between himself and his Christian confederate. Judith Lossell spread them over her table on all state occasions, for she was a merchant's daughter and had a merchant's daughter's pride. "Fiddlesticks!" said Hendrik Junior. He believed in silver, and in Chinamen, but he did not believe in tutelary deities, nor, in fact, in any deity, whether ad- verse or otherwise. He did not even believe overmuch in "Volderdoes Zonen." At home he spoke of it as "the shop," but not when any stranger was by. It was an unavoidable formality for making money to him, no- thing more. Money was the one thing worth having, on this beastly planet If you could have got it without any trouble, so much the better, but, as you could not, well, "Volderdoes Zonen" came handy. He considered himself especially praiseworthy for looking at matters in this light He knew men enough who wanted money but were too lazy to work for it He did not realize how great his wish for money was. Well, but he worked hard for it And when the day's work was over, he would go and spend his even- ing quietly at the opera, especially if there was a ballet, or at one of the little theatres where you laugh without knowing why. And if he wanted other pleasures, he took them without troubling anybody about them, and VOLDERDOES ZONEN. 123 there was never any scandal or unpleasantness in con- nection with young Hendrik Lossell's name. He was altogether a most estimable young man. There were many such in Koopstad. He quite forgot in a month or two that poor Hubert, still at school, was his twin-brother. He thought of him, and soon spoke of him, as the younger son. And so, indeed, he was, though only by several minutes. He grew younger daily, however, in the new-fledged mer- chant's eye. "That's your brother, ain't it, Lossell?" said a fresh chum, also a merchant-princelet, when they met Hubert coming along the street with his books under his arm. "Yes," said Hendrik, with a good-humoured smile, "c'est mon cadet, you know. He goes to school." Elias also knew something, in his vague way, of the greatness of Volderdoes Zonen. He had grown up under the shadow of the house, and as a child, before his troubles came upon him, he had played in the ware- houses and watched the men at their work. The memory had remained with him, and would abide in his heart for ever, as those experiences of our earlier years become our companions through life. He did not, certainly, know much of the intricacies of commerce; but he did know, for his father had repeated it to him almost daily for many years, that "Volderdoes Zonen" was a thing to be honoured and reverenced, as the source of all good to himself and to all his relations. It was as if the merchant had set himself to inspire his eldest son with a cult of the historic name, he who left all impressions of religion or morality to a servant. Pro- 124 COD'S FOOL. bably he had good reasons for his conduct, and could have told you why such strange conversations as the following were so common between him and the son who had attained to manhood, and who would live through his whole existence, without ever coming into contact with that busy world in which the merchant dwelt "Elias, what is your father? Tell me, do you re- member?" "Head of the house of 'Volderdoes Zonen,' Papa. The great house of 'Volderdoes Zonen,' I mean." "And what was your grandfather?" "He was the same, Papa." "And what would you like to be best of all, if you could work?" "I don't know, Papa. I forget" "Yes, you do" impatiently. "Think." A silence. Then suddenly: "I should like to be a doctor, Papa, and make all the sick people well." "No, no. You would like better still to be what your father and grandfather have been, would you not?" "Henk may be that, Papa." "Very well; so he may, now you can't But you ought to have been it. And it is the grandest thing in the world. But now you will like Hendrik to be it, when I am dead; will you not? What would you do, Elias, if people came and told you, after my death, that you mustn't allow Hendrik to take my place?" "I would kill them, Papa." The strong man clenched his fists, and involuntarily spread out his mas- sive chest "No, no, that is not necessary. But you would tell them that Hendrik must take it; would you not?" VOLDERDOES ZONEN. 125 "Yes, Papa, but" an expression of extreme anxiety "you are not going to go away, are you?" "No; I hope not. But, listen, Elias, what would be- come of you, if Volderdoes Zonen ceased to exist?" "I should die of hunger," answered Elias rapidly, and by rote. "Or else people would come and take me away, and lock me up in an asylum, and everything would be very miserable and poor." "That is true. You will never forget it" "No, Papa." And the merchant went his way. It was like a catechism. "Johanna," said Elias presently, "why are some people poor and some people rich?" "Because it's good for them," replied Johanna, who was an optimist, or she could not have lived with the fool. "And am I rich?" asked Elias. "Yes. Or at least your father is." "And are you poor? "Yes." "It seems to be very much the same thing," de- clared Elias, after a period of slow thought. "I sup- pose, the devil made the poor people first, and then God made the rich people to help them, and so He put it all right again?" Johanna did not answer him. "I am glad God gave us 'Volderdoes Zonen' to look after us," he went on. "It was very good of Him. And I shall thank Him for it every day." And he did. 126 GOD'S FOOL. It was a few days after the conversation recorded above, the last of many, that Hendrik Lossell's tenure of office as head of " Volderdoes Zonen" came to an end. "I have got a pain in the left side," he said to his wife at breakfast one morning. "Do you know, I think it must be something the matter with my heart I have felt it once or twice before, of late." "Oh, nonsense!" replied Judith carelessly. "How fussy you men always are! It's nothing but just a little wind. I know the feeling quite well. I've had it, myself." He did not continue the subject, but presently got up to go to the office, as usual. Mevrouw Lossell followed him to the door. "Don't forget to look in at Ramaker's," she said, "and tell them to be quite sure to have the fresh turbot for Tuesday. It's a bad day for fish. I wish we could have our dinner-party on another day." "I can't help it, Judith," he replied, a little wearily, "as I told you before. I must attend the Town Council on Wednesday, and the meeting of the Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, and you won't have it on a Friday or a Saturday; so there you are." "Ah, well!" she said, with an injured air. "In any case, don't forget" "I shan't forget," he replied, and was gone. He drove out to Elias first this morning, as he noticed that he had plenty of time. He had made it a rule, from which he only deviated under stress of cir- cumstances, to give his eldest son at least a few minutes every day, but he usually went to him in the afternoon. Elias was surprised and delighted to receive his father at so early an hour. This visit was a continual VOLDERDOES ZONEN. 127 treat to him, the great event of his uneventful day. Foi Hendrik Lossell had acquired much facility in Johanna's method of conversing with the deaf man Elias's method, as she proudly called it, for had he not been its in- ventor? and in his own peculiar way the father was kind to his son, kind almost against his will one would feel inclined to say. It was against his will that he often wished Elias dead; it was against his will that he often treated him with generosity and affection. This unfortunate son was to him not so much an unpleasing personage as an adverse circumstance. But he did his best he had always done his best to treat him well, none the less. "Papa," said Elias this morning, "Elias tired. Elias often so tired. And forget words. Elias not talk much." "It is one of his bad days," interposed Johanna, who had been bustling about the room, getting things ready for her charge. "He has been complaining of headache all the morning. When he has one of these bad headaches, he is very dull and stupid. I think they get rarer, as time goes on, but do you know, sir? I think they get worse." The father went up to his son and stood looking at him intently for some moments. Presently he groaned, audibly. And then, turning suddenly away, as if to hide his confusion, he said to the woman: "He is a beautiful man." "Indeed, that he is, Mynheer," assented Johanna energetically. A vision rose up before her of Henkie and Hubbie, yellow-faced, sharp-featured, groomed and oiled and smartened up, as she turned towards the silent, statuesque figure, motionless in its customary arm- 128 COD'S FOOL. chair, and stood gazing lovingly upon that noble Olym- pian head, with its glory of golden curls and the line of patient suffering over the closed and tranquil eyes. "Good-bye, Elias," spelled the father. "Good-bye, Papa." "You love me, after all don't you? in spite of all?" "Of course I love you, Papa." Hendrik Lossell turned to go. The woman passed out and opened the hall-door for him. "You yourself look far from well, sir," she said. "Hadn't you better see a doctor too, once in a way?" "Oh, I'm all right, thank you, Johanna," he an- swered, as he got into his brougham. "If the boy becomes completely idiotic," he muttered as the carriage bore him away, "he may as well become it without loss of time. It would be the best thing that could happen, I suppose, on the whole." He almost invariably alluded to this full-grown son as "the boy." What more was he? Nay, in fact he was barely that And yet he was not a child, as other children are. The merchant's face twitched once or twice, as if with sudden pain, and he gave a sigh of relief when the coachman drew up at last in front of the warehouse. He thought to himself with a half-smile, as he let him- self slowly out and crossed the busy threshold, that it was now more than twenty -five years since he had entered the office at that hour as a partner in the concern. Day after day, month after month but for an occasional brief summer holiday at some foreign watering-place had he done what he was doing now. The same twist through the same side-door and down VOLDERDOES ZONEN. I2Q the same passage. The same "Good-day's" among yesterday's unchanged surroundings. He hung up his coat and hat on their accustomed peg. And then, in turning to take his place before his desk, he cast the same invariable glance towards the clock. And the clock marked the same invariable hour. He sat down and drew the day's bundle of business towards him. Hendrik would not be in for an hour or so. "No use trying to make young folks give up old habits," he said to himself. And then he settled down to the day's work. A packer had been turned off for carelessness, and had appealed from his immediate superior to Caesar. Hendrik Lossell went into the matter as was his wont. He found that the man had indeed been to blame, though in no serious degree, but he maintained the dismissal, in spite of prayers and entreaties. "Not time enough for good work," he repeated, "still less for bad." And then he returned to his own. And when Hendrik Junior came in about half an hour later, he found that our common Master, Death, had touched the chief of the great house of " Volderdoes Zonen," and dismissed him from his post. God's Fool, I. 130 GOD'S FOOL. CHAPTER XIII. THE HEAD OF THE FIRM. HENDRIK LOSSELL, Hendrik Junior no longer, stepped towards the glass doors and drew them to. Then with one rapid jerk of the wrist he swept the broad "portiere," which hung handy, across that wide surface of glass. From time to time the chief of the house would thus close out the office, when he wanted to be alone. And then the son went back to his father's prostrate figure, thrown forward across the desk. He did not for one moment doubt that this was death. He saw the seal set plainly upon the rigid face. "Death," he said in an undertone, and his little figure trembled from head to foot with a couple of quick, nervous thrills. And then he drew, with unsteady hand, the keys of the great safe from his father's trousers pocket, where he knew they were always kept. He had to un- fasten a button of the pocket to get at them, and for a moment he shrank back in disgust "Aliens," he said, aloud. And then he struck a quick blow on his father's bell, and, holding the curtained door ajar for one moment, he called out the name of the head clerk, his father's right hand. "Meneer Trols." He started at the loudness of his own voice in that chamber of death. THE HEAD OF THE FIRM. 131 The person thus summoned came hurrying up. He passed beyond the curtain, and appeared in the sanctum, his face lighted by a look of expectation he was striving to restrain. Hendrik was standing by the table, where lay his father's corpse. "Mynheer Trols," he began nervously, "something terrible has happened. Something very terrible in- deed." "Good God, sir, the master!" cried the clerk, run- ning round to the figure in the chair. "Do not interrupt me," fired up Hendrik angrily. "Yes, something has happened to my father " "He is dead!" cried the clerk, unheeding. He had lifted the fallen head, and was striving to retain it in his arms. "Hush, you fool!" burst out Hendrik fiercely. "Do you want the whole office to hear you? Don't you see it's far worse for me than for you, and I don't go on like that. It's my father. Be a man. D me, what a fool you are!" For the clerk was striving in vain to control the workings of his face. The old fellow was crying. "Go back into the office, as soon as you're fit to," said Hendrik contemptuously, "and say that Mynheer has been taken ill, and that I have gone home with him. But first tell one of the men to run for a cab, and then you and I will lift in him. I don't want it to be known he died in the office. Do you under- stand? It will be given out that he died at home." "Yes," said Trols, speaking as a man in a maze. But why put it so? If " 9* 132 GOD'S FOOL. "You understand me, Mynheer Trols," interrupted Hendrik. "Please to order the cab." When the clerk returned from this mission, he found young Lossell sitting at his own desk, with his back turned to that thing on the table. "I will tell you, Mynheer Trols," said Hendrik, "why I wish to return home with with my father. There is no reason why the day's business should be disturbed. In fact, it can't be, as you know. Not to-day, of all days. The Jeannettc sails this evening, and she must take our cargo with her. It is a matter of forty thou- sand florins. I can't shut up the office to-day." "But, sir," stammered the head clerk, "I believe that Mynheer had just spoken of countermanding the consignment He had heard bad accounts of the firm in Copenhagen. And even if it were not so, would it not be better, in the face of so appalling a cata- strophe " "Not a word more," interrupted Hendrik haughtily. "Remember, if you please, Mynheer Trols, that I am the head of 'Volderdoes Zonen' now." "What will become of us?" said Trols to himself, as he went back to his desk, after having aided his young master and obeyed all his commands. "A boy of nineteen ! He can't be the chief, whatever he may say. He isn't even of age, nor will he be for the next four years. I wonder whether I am right in executing this order. Well, I can't help it I suppose I must But common decency would have shut up the place for the day." THE HEAD OF THE FIRM. 133 And so young Hendrik inaugurated his reign. It may be a satisfaction to the reader who likes to know everything to be told that the Copenhagen house failed in the course of a month or two, so that the little job above mentioned cost Volderdoes Zonen the sum of thirty seven thousand four hundred florins and ninety- three cents. "And now, mother," said Hendrik, "let us see how matters stand. You may as well call in Huib, and we can all talk it over together." They were sitting lugubriously facing each other by the dying dining-room fire. The remnants of dinner an untouched dessert stood on the table, under the dim light of a lamp which left three-quarters of the room in mysterious gloom. The meal had been a silent one, and Hubert had escaped from it to his own room as soon as possible. Hubert was frightened and saddened by his father's sudden death. His was a gentle nature; and he attached himself to his sur- roundings. Hendrik got up, as his mother left the room, and stationed himself in front of the fireplace. He shud- dered slightly as he stared into the darkness of the dreary distance. Over the whole house hung that incomprehensible atmosphere of death, which lights up the monotony of existence with a sudden glare of false electric light, bringing out in lines of unexpected nakedness the little- ness of daily wants and duties and throwing into full 134 COD'S FOOL. relief the reality of our turbulent consciousness against the great still shadow of the beyond. "I am alive," said Hendrik to himself, not in so many words, but in a thought he was unconscious of thinking. He had been feeling it thus to himself all day. He rang the bell. "Is there a fire in my mother's room?" he asked. "No," said the servant; they had forgotten to light it The servants sat huddled together in the kitchen, describing to each other all the corpses they had ever seen, with comments upon their greater or lesser beauty and upon the ravages caused by various diseases. The cook had occasioned a little unpleasant feeling by the statement that she had owned an aunt the cost of whose funeral had amounted to over a hundred florins. To this poetic license the others had taken exception, even when the items, as described, had been carefully totted up by the butler, and their voices had risen for a moment in indignant discussion, only to be suddenly hushed into whispers of mutual disparagement, when somebody recalled the fact that their master was lying "barely cold" upstairs. The pretty housemaid rubbed her warm arm ap- provingly with one rough little hand. And the butler said sententiously that it was a good thing the dead had to leave their money behind them, and he dared say that Mevrouw would keep up everything just as it was. They all looked at each other. That was an interesting subject, and it caused them to forget the cook's ostentatious relative. They were discussing prob- abilities when the dining-room bell rang. THE HEAD OF THE FIRM. 135 "Bring a couple more lamps, then; we shall stay here," said Hendrik to the butler. "Commanding like a king," remarked the latter gentleman on his way downstairs. It was true that the nineteen-year-old son of the house had at once assumed an air of proprietor- ship. He felt that he was become the head of the family as well as of the firm. And without noticing the change himself, he had allowed his voice and manner to take a shade of authority in consequence. Yesterday, you see whatever he might think he merited he knew that he was of very little importance to anyone but himself, while to-day why, to-day he was almost as important as his father had been yester- day had been this morning. His father! who had always seemed to him the ideal of a social magnate, whose will governed as many inferior wills as that of the colonel of a regiment, and with far more unlimited power. He was a minor, of course, but he had not the slightest doubt that he would immediately obtain letters of dispensation. Who else could manage the business but he? He was quite confident that he could manage the business. That was the great weakness in his strength, his overweening self-assurance, and it was the chief cause of the many misfortunes which befell him in his after-life. When his mother came back with her other son, she found the lamps distributed over the room as was customary on the occasion of a dinner-party. The festive impression thus effected struck unpleasantly on her freshly -widowed heart. It called up painful recollec- 130 GOD'S FOOL. tions of her last conversation with her husband that morning, and of the invitations for next Tuesday which had already been sent round. "Why all these lights?" she asked. "I hate a half-light," answered Hendrik abruptly. "What do you care, mother? There'll be money enough to pay for a little extra lamp-oil, I should think." "Papa wouldn't understand, if he came in," inter- posed Hubert. "The room never looks like that" Hendrik glanced scornfully at his twin-brother. "I thought you knew our father is dead," he said. "It's no use speculating on what he would do if he wasn't" . "I know he is dead," replied Hubert quickly. "But he is barely dead, Henk." And again the tears gathered in his eyes. Hendrik vouchsafed no answer. He drew a chair forward for his mother, and then said abruptly: "Mother, here are father's keys." And he threw them down on the white tablecloth. In his nervousness he threw them more violently than he had intended. They struck against a wine-glass, and broke it "Oh, Hendrik!" expostulated his mother, "one of your grandfather's set!" "Not my grandfather's," replied Hendrik. "That's where the difference comes in. These social courtesies are all very pretty, but when it comes to legal docu- ments you soon find out that your stepbrother's grand- father never was yours. We shall have to distinguish henceforth between Elias and ourselves." "Not as regards these matters," said his mother. TOE HEAD OF THE FIRM. 137 She did not say what matters, but they understood each other perfectly. "In these matters and in all others. And therefore the sooner we know exactly how we stand, the better. I shall go down to the office to-morrow as usual, and Trols must sign till I can get the proper authorization. It's a good thing he is empowered to sign for the firm." "Couldn't you stay at home till after the funeral?" queried his mother. "Yes, if they shut up the 'Exchange' till then," sneered the new head of the house. "Now, mother, there are the keys, as I said, and the best thing we can do is to look over my father's papers. It's no use wait- ing till you feel inclined, for you won't feel any in- clineder to-morrow than to-day." "I did not say I did not feel inclined," said Judith. "Hubert, you take one lamp, and I'll take another," Hendrik continued, suiting the action to the word. And so they passed together, the three of them, into the dead man's room. The dead man's room does not die with him. On the contrary, it becomes far more vividly, far more pain- fully alive than it was before his death. It seems to be breathing, almost audibly, and as you stand there, lamp in hand, amid the twilight, all its thousand and one little trifling objects seem to be opening their new-found eyes and staring gloomily at you. And when your glance falls unexpectedly on the dead man's hat and gloves, you realize, as you never realized before, that he is dead. 138 GOD'S FOOL. Judith Lossell took up a woollen comforter, which she had only recently knitted for her husband. She had noticed that morning that he had neglected to put it on, and she had felt a twinge of displeasure at the thought of his holding her gift in such light esteem. Now, as she took it meditatively in her hands, a couple of tears dropped slowly on the wrap. "Lift up your lamp, so I can see, Huib," said Hendrik. . He had set down his own and was trying the keys on his father's private "Chatwood." The safe contained two compartments, the one, with a second door, being reserved for stock, while in the other lay all important documents, not actually con- vertible into ready money. It was these that Hendrik drew out, leaving the inner division untouched. "We can't stop here," he said, "it's too cold. Mother, would you mind carrying my lamp?" "Oh no, not here," said Hubert, in a whisper. They went back to the dining-room. "Lock the door, Hubert," said Hendrik, and he pushed away the dessert things to make a clear space for the bundle he had brought with him. His mother came to the rescue of her crockery, as Hendrik flung down the papers with a thud in a stream over the white table-cloth. And then they gathered around, and watched, the while he sorted them. Presently a hungry flash passed through his eyes. It was gone in an instant "This is it," he said, as he laid down the paper he had just taken up. It was the will. THE HEAD OF THE FIRM. 139 He began reading it rapidly, the others waiting im- patiently meanwhile. Divested of its legal preamble it was very short indeed. "My eldest son Elias being otherwise provided for," said the testator, "I bequeath to him only that legal portion of which I could not deprive him if I would, while I appoint my twin-sons, his half-brothers, Hendrik and Hubert, heirs of all other property of which I die possessed." In Holland a parent cannot entirely disinherit his or her child, but must leave it a fraction of the in- heritance. Hendrik laid down the document. "That was the best arrangement father could make," he said with a complacent smile. "What's the use of leaving money to a half-witted creature like Elias, who already has his mother's money probably, besides? You and I must be Volderdoes Zonen, henceforth, Huib." "But you haven't found out about Elias's money yet," said Hubert quietly. "Oh, that's his mother's fortune, of course, which has been invested in Government securities during his minority. The law arranges all that, Hubert" "I know," said Hubert, without any sign of im- patience. "Wait till you see," interposed Judith. She recalled several dark threats of her husband's, and her heart was not at rest. "Find Papa's marriage-settlement," suggested Hubert. He often thought, while Hendrik was busy. "Here is yours, mother," said Hendrik, fumbling among the papers. 140 GOD'S FOOL. "I know," answered Judith angrily. "It's the other woman's you want" They found it. It was a lengthy document, a mar- riage-settlement in propria formi. It settled the sum of one hundred thousand florins on Hendrik Lossell's first wife, and it tied down all the money she would ever possess to herself and her heirs for ever. The money was tied down as tight as family pride can tie. "Of course," said Hendrik, "and quite right too. One hundred thousand florins at her marriage. The only question which now remains to be answered is this: What did old Elias Volderdoes's death add on to that original sum." "No trifle probably," remarked Judith. "We shall hardly find an answer to that here," said Hendrik, pushing the various documents apart with his hand. But they did. For they found a copy of old Elias's will. By-the-bye, all these papers were copies. Dutch law recognises no wills except such as are deposited in the hands of the attorneys, who are Government officials. And these were the contents of old Elias's will. The old gentleman disinherited his daughter, thereby setting the example which that daughter's husband afterwards followed with regard to their child. He de- creed that the large sum of which he could not de- prive her was to be taken from the money which he had invested in the funds, and this sum, according to the marriage-settlements, would pass to her children at her death. And then he came to the capital which was invested THE HEAD OF THE FIRM. 14! in the business. This capital had been divided, shortly before the old man's death, into one hundred shares of ten thousand florins each. Of these shares five only had been allotted to Hendrik Lossell, while the remain- ing ninety-five had remained the property of Elias Vol- derdoes, the head of the firm. These ninety-five shares the old gentleman now left to his grandchild and godson Elias, with the express stipulation that they were forthwith to be registered in his name. And furthermore it was expressly directed that, if the boy's mother were to die while he was under age, all profits resulting from these shares were yearly to be invested to the said boy's advantage, after deduction of fifteen per cent, by the father. The money was to remain thus tied up, the testator went on to say, as long as the child was under guardianship or curator- ship of any kind, and alterations could only be made, when he was able to make them of his own free will. Such, in brief, were the contents of this singular document, when divested of all technicalities and super- fluities. The testator had known, when he made these restrictions, that his daughter, already ailing and near death, would have no other offspring than Elias. He had centred all his hope on this his only male de- scendant. For his son-in-law, the penniless robber of his daughter's heart, he had never felt any very great affection, but other near relations he had none, and, if Elias died, well, then there would be nothing left worth caring for, and Elias's father might as well have the money as anyone else. But the old man did not believe that Elias would 142 GOD'S FOOL. die. He had his little private superstitions, and he be- lieved in the future of Volderdoes Zonen with Elias at their head. The result, then, of old Volderdoes's will, in con- nection with the previous marriage-contract, was this, that every penny of the vast Volderdoes property was settled on Elias Lossell, and that Elias's father had only enjoyed the interest on his wife's legal portion and the fifteen per cent on Elias's dividends during the years between Margaretha's death and Elias's twentieth birth- day. After that birthday even this source of revenue had failed, as all moneys derived from the minor's property must thenceforth be allowed to accumulate, according to the requirements of Dutch law. This, however, was not the worst The worst was undoubtedly that the capital of the firm had been so securely tied down for Elias that there was no getting it loose, unless he himself consented to unfasten it Any attempt to fictitiously increase that capital an expedient of very doubtful efficacy was rendered im- possible by the terms of the original agreement I do not know whether I have given the exact stipulations, as they ought to have been stated, for, of course, I have never seen the original documents, which are at the notary's, nor the authenticated copies, which are in the hands of the Lossell family, but I believe that all I have repeated here is substantially accurate, and no doubt it will be found sufficient for the require- ments of this story of Elias's fortunes. Young Hendrik sat reading the transcript of Elias's grandfather's will with increasing rapidity and heighten- THE HEAD OF THE FIRM. 143 ing colour. When he came to the term "guardianship or curatorship," a subdued exclamation broke from him, which need not here be repeated. He threw the paper across to his mother. "Every penny is Elias's!" he burst out wildly. "Great Heaven, that blind idiot is the head of the firm!" 144 GOD'S FOOL. CHAPTER XIV. NO THOROUGHFARE, AND THE WAY OUT. "POOR Ellas!" said Hubert Perhaps he had never realized so much as at that moment what an immense injury he had unwittingly done his stepbrother. And yet he often remembered. It would not be correct to say that he always did so, nor that the recollection saddened his entire life. But it sobered it, casting a shadow at times over its most brilliant sun- shine. It was, if you can pardon the simile, like a hollow tooth in his heart, and when he bit on it, he pulled a face. He hardly liked to be thrown much in company with Elias. For Elias reminded him of the tooth. "Poor you!" retorted Hendrik. "Pity yourself and me, if you want to waste pity on anyone. Or shall we still speak of 'dear Grandpapa,' when we remember the old gentleman up there?" He jerked his head in the direction of the great portrait of Elias Volderdoes, which smiled down from the wall with its air of sly pomposity. There came a knock at the dining-room door. "Who's there?" cried Hendrik impatiently, sweeping his arm over the scattered papers. "Go and be hanged! You can't come in." NO THOROUGHFARE, AND THE WAY OUT. 145 Hubert went to the door. It was the man-servant, come to clear away. Hendrik passed out to him. "The notary must be sent for at once," he said. "And Mynheer Alers, also. You know, my friend, the lawyer. He had better come after the notary is gone. Ask him to step round in half an hour, Mulder." He went back to the others. "And yet, I suppose it is only fair," said Hubert. "The firm was originally Volderdoes, and Elias is the only one of us who has any Volderdoes blood in his veins." "You are a child, Hubert," cried his brother, "and a stupid one. It is not fair. Everyone had a right to expect that, after a quarter of a century of such un- ceasing work, my father would have bought out any share his first wife had in the business. And so he would have, over and over again, but for this black- guardly clause. He has been working all the time, like a horse, merely to heap up hundreds of thousands of florins for an idiot to whom they are not of the slightest use. I can't imagine what made him keep at it so hard, under the circumstances, unless it was because he couldn't do things otherwise than well. He was a splendid man of business, was my father. I wish you and I may be like him." It was his tribute of esteem to his dead father's memory. And, coming from a young gentleman of his wisdom and self-respect, it was not a little thing. "After all," he added presently, "Papa must have left a lot of money behind him. I dare say there will God's Fool, f, IO 146 COD'S FOOL. be no difficulty there. But what is to become of Volderdoes Zonen Providence alone can tell." His voice faltered with sincere emotion over the final words. Yet another disappointment awaited Judith Lossell and her sons. It could not be long before they made the discovery that the Town Councillor had not left a large fortune behind him. And, truly, young Hendrik was deserving of pity, as he fell from one disclosure to another. Soon the whole truth lay bare before him, and he must face it as best he could. The very fact of his having been bound down to what he must consider perpetual poverty had driven the merchant into repeated speculation as the one means of achieving a fortune. During the short period of his marriage his income had been very large, and even after his wife's death, up to Elias's twentieth year, it had remained considerable, although his share of the great profits of the firm had then become restricted to the dividends on his own five shares and the fifteen per cent allotted him on his son's large revenue. With the money he had been enabled to lay on one side he had speculated on the Stock Exchange "for my children's sake," he told himself, but not with the suc- cess so worthy an object merited. Of late, especially, when his income had so much decreased, his attempts to make good the deficit had proved singularly unfor- tunate, and when he died, stricken down suddenly, and still in the prime of life, he left liabilities which far ex- ceeded the value of his personal estate. The great firm NO THOROUGHFARE, AND THE WAY OUT. 147 of Volderdoes Zonen was as wealthy and prosperous as ever, but its head was practically insolvent The merchant, it must be said to his honour, had been scrupulously upright in the administration of his son's fortune. How easy it would have been for him to slur over accounts, nay, actually to ignore them. But, once having bound himself down to this contract by which he accepted the position of acting partner on five shares and fifteen per cent, of all remaining net profits, with his son as sleeping partner and owner of the whole business, he had drawn up his annual ac- counts as if a board of directors were waiting to audit them. While practically poor himself, he had heaped up his son's great fortune with consistent accuracy. It lay there, gradually swelling to a total such as is rarely met with in Holland; it lay useless, and, as long as Elias lived, there it must lie. Hendrik Lossell's com- mercial integrity accepted the terrible fact as inevitable. It might cause him to wish at times for the death of the hopeless owner, but he had never taken any steps by which his father-in-law's wishes might be set aside. And yet, when his son came of age, he could easily have attempted some adjustment of his difficulties. He had shrunk from doing so. Perhaps he had remained for some time hesitating and uncertain, and on that very account had delayed the appointment of a curator. Perhaps he had preferred to leave the whole matter to his heirs, presuming that they would be less scrupulous than he. However this might be, he had lived up to his standard of honour; and, when he was suddenly struck down, the enormous fortune of Elias was found intact 10* 148 COD'S FOOL. in the hands of the family notary, in so far as it was not already secured in Dutch consols or in the shares of the firm. He had brought it to the above-mentioned functionary a few days before his death. It was as if he no longer trusted himself, after all these faithful years, to have it lying ready for immediate use. For, indeed, he might easily have used it, if only as security. When young Hendrik, with white face and smarting eyes, walked into his father's deserted room, and drew forth the second key, and opened the inner division of the safe, he found it empty. He went up to his mother's bedroom and knocked at the door. "You can't come in, Hendrik." "But I must, mother." "You can't I have the dressmaker with me." "Send her away, somewhere, anywhere. I must come in" this in French, which the dressmaker under- stood perfectly. "Tell her to go downstairs and make dresses for the servants. All the servants must go into mourning. I should think so. II y a de quoi." "Je ne travaille pas pour la domesticit, Madame," said the dressmaker inside, indignantly, wishing to show that she also could speak the language of fashion and fashions, as well as young gentlemen who dealt in tea. "I know, I know, my good creature," replied Judith wearily. "It's only that he wants to come in. You might as well take that bodice into the next room and alter the tucker. He will only be a minute, I dare say." "I could do it better at home," said the dressmaker peevishly. NO THOROUGHFARE, AND THE WAY OUT. 149 "I can't help it," replied the mistress of the house. "You see he says he wants to come in. And I suppose he must." All her strength seemed to have gone out of her. She was rapidly learning to "knuckle under" to her son. At this juncture Hendrik rattled the door lock. He was getting tired of waiting. "Renvoyez-la," he cried. The dressmaker came out, casting annihilating glances at the young tyrant. They did not annihilate him, however, because he did not see them. He rushed past her, at a bound, and into his mother's presence. "Mother!" he cried. "This is no time for fooling. Borlett will be here in ten minutes, and I must know what to say to him. My father's left nothing but debts. And who's to pay them? The only thing we can do is to repudiate the inheritance at once." Judith Lossell turned very pale. All the pride of this wife and daughter of merchants rose up in terrified protest Such disgrace was impossible. Who could lift up his head again after it? "Refuse to pay the debts ! " she stammered. "Hendrik, what can you be thinking of? Whatever happens, we could never sink as low as that." " We shall have to," said Hendrik sullenly. The poor woman turned from one falling pillar and clutched feebly at another. "Hubert would never allow it," she said. "Hubert! Hubert!" cried Hendrik in a towering rage. "And who is Hubert, and what is Hubert, pray, to allow or disallow? Will he make money for us out of pebbles, with his sentimental airs and superior refine- 150 GOD'S FOOL. ment? I can cry enough, if you like, and if you think crying will do any good. Hubert, indeed ! As if Hubert had an inkling of an idea, what this ignominy means to me." He checked himself. His voice sank. He looked quite old and skinny and careworn, this boy of nineteen. "I only meant that it cannot be," protested Judith faintly. "It is too terrible." "Look here, mother," said Hendrik fiercely, "it is terrible, and it is absurd at the same time. But for us it is not funny, only hideous. Yet it is ludicrous, none the less, with the business one of the finest in Holland. It means giving over our family secrets to be the laughing-stock of every club or exchange in the country. But it can't be helped. At least, I see no way to avoid it, and I've been thinking over the matter till I believe my hair is turning gray. There's some twenty thousand florins still in various securities, and there's the fifty thousand of the firm, that's seventy. And there's a hundred thousand owing to the brokers after this fresh fall in North American Railways, which ought to be paid in forty-eight hours. The best thing is for me just simply to go and tell them that there will be an inventory, and that they must get what they can out of the property. The house, it appears, is Elias's. I dare say they'll be civil to me when I explain." He choked over the words, but set his face hard. "You see, you must," he went on. "We're minors. You're guardian. They'll come and ask you to pay. And you" another gulp "can't What'll you say, then, mother?" He looked at her for a moment, sitting there in her half-finished widow's dress. Then he fixed his eyes on NO THOROUGHFARE, AND THE WAY OUT. 151 the floor. And then he lifted them again to her face. She did not speak. What should she say? And then suddenly he threw his arms round her neck and burst into tears. He was only nineteen. This was very different from being lord of "Volderdoes Zonen," or even only a merchant-princelet and heir apparent. He was utterly broken down and ashamed. "And Elias's millions!" he said fiercely, after a moment, between his sobs. His voice grew hideous with hate. "Yes, he could save us," answered his mother eagerly, "and why not, Henk? I cannot understand it He is of age. He is not under anyone's control now. Can't he do as he likes with his money?" "I suppose so," faltered Hendrik. "Then why can he not spend it as we advise him to?" Hendrik hesitated. A gleam of hope, and more than hope, played about his cunning little face. "It all depends," he said slowly, "whether Elias is crazy or not." And then a long silence fell upon them. 152 GOD'S FOOL. CHAPTER XV. HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION. "THERE is one way out, of course," said Alers. "As you probably know, even better than L" "And which is that?" asked Hendrik, without look- ing at his friend. "Your step-brother." Alers was a young Koopstader, a few years older than Lossell. All the Koopstaders being connected by some bond of marriage, whether in this century or the last, there was a kind of relationship between these two young men also, but neither of them had as yet reached a sufficiently eminent position in the world for the other to remember that they were cousins. The world is full of these one-sided kinships, which never attain to mutual recognition, because they are always either forgotten by both equals or ignored by one superior, and in Koopstad especially there was not much honour to be obtained by the casual mention of "my cousin the Burgomaster," because the Burgomaster was every- body else's cousin also, at least from the point of view of the everybody else. Thomas Alers had enjoyed the advantages of a university education and had recently settled down in his native city as an advocate, practising in the courts of law. He was a sharp young man. By a sharp young HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION. 153 man is very often meant a young man whose moral side is blunt, so blunt that the money-making, pushing side comes out cute per contrast It would be pre- mature to say that Alers was that kind of sharp young man. As yet he had little to do, but great prospects. The prospects were visible to his mind's far-seeing eye; the smallness of his present occupations to the most near- sighted busybody in Koopstad. Busybodies, however this by the way are never near-sighted, although they almost invariably squint. "Elias Croesus or the Croesus Elias," the young lawyer continued, playing carelessly with his stick. "Of this Croesus it may also be said that you can call no man happy until he is dead, that is to say, the Croesus. You understand? No? Well, it's hardly worth think- ing out. All the same, it's a great nuisance for you, Lossell, that Hubert didn't give that pot a harder push." "Once for all, none of that," burst out Hendrik with an indignation which seemed almost disproportionate. "It's useless. And it's disgusting. I won't hear it. I've got enough to do with my own thoughts, worse luck." "Tut, tut," said the other coolly. "It's no affair of mine. And even you can't be more willing than I to do homage to the new head of the house, Elias the Second or is it Third? I was thinking of going out to him this afternoon and asking him to let me have some of your law-business. I'd do it cheaper than your father's man." 154 GOD'S FOOL. "Nonsense," cried Hendrik, more indignantly still. "You know perfectly well that Elias isn't head of the firm, and never could be. It's bad enough, as it is, that he should be sleeping partner at all. You needn't make it worse!" "Sleeping owner, you mean," retorted Thomas lazily. "I don't know, I'm sure, who's the firm, if he is not" "The firm!" stuttered Hendrik. "There is none. I mean I shall I ought to what are you insinuating, Alers? What do you want? Do you advise me to kill Elias as the shortest means of inheriting his wealth?" The lawyer started to his feet His whole manner changed in a moment "Don't father your thoughts on me," he said very angrily. "I never said, or hinted, or dreamed of, anything as atrocious. And if you choose to sit hatching monstrosities, remember the orginal bad egg was your own, if you please. How dare you suggest to me, Hendrik, that I am to blame for the abominations of your thoughts?" "I fancied it was all in your day's work to suspect everyone of thinking abominations," answered Hendrik, somewhat alarmed. "You've often said so. And, be- sides, you declared just now that my brother supplied me with the only means out of the difficulty. What else did you allude to?" "You are too agitated to discuss any subject sensibly," said Thomas Alers. "If you will sit down, and listen calmly, well and good. If not, I would rather take leave of you for the present There's a client coming to see me to-morrow morning," he added proudly, "and I have a number of papers to look over for him still" HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION. 155 Hendrik threw himself violently into a corner of the sofa, and sat there the picture of sullen impatience. "The last thing any reasonable being would suggest," the young advocate went on, "would be that you or anyone else should in any way injure your unfortunate step-brother. On the contrary, your only way out of the difficulties in which you find yourself is to treat him with all due affection and regard. He is a very important personage now. The most important in all Koopstad, I should almost venture to say. Except, perhaps, my cousin, the Burgomaster." Alers was poor. His mother had married beneath her. He liked to allude to his mother's relations. "He is an idiot," said Hendrik, "and ought to be under proper guardianship." "He is blind, poor fellow," replied Alers. "And he is deaf. His memory, I have often heard from you, is weak, and he thinks slowly. Does that constitute idiocy?" "You know nothing about him," said Hendrik irrit- ably. "You have never even seen him, I believe." "I know this," retorted Alers imperturbably, "that your father was never so incensed as when anyone dared to suggest that his eldest son was not in full possession of his senses, such as they were." "He is an idiot, all the same," repeated Hendrik. "If that is true, I am very sorry for you, for then there seems to me to be no way out of your diffi- culty at all." Hendrik sat up and stared at him. "What do you mean?" he said. "Surely it is very simple, Lossell. You are not nearly as clear-headed a man of business as I thought 156 GOD'S FOOL. you. By the terms of the old gentleman's testament the situation is to remain unaltered until Elias can alter it of his own free will. Now, if his mind is deranged, he has got no free will of his own, and he must ac- cordingly be placed under a 'curator.' " "I have thought of that," said Hendrik. "The will expressly says 'guardians or curators.' I should in any case be the one trustee, and Hubert would probably be the other." "Probably, but it is by no means certain. In fact, from a few words that Borlett, your father's notary, dropped yesterday, I fancy he would stir up the two other members of the family council to propose a dif- ferent trustee to the juge de paix. Don't forget that you two step-brothers are his heirs, and that Elias has distant cousins enough on the Volderdoes side. The judges don't, as a rule, look after the interests of such unfortunates over-zealously, but this property is large enough to attract the attention of all Koopstad, and, even if you should be the sole trustees, you will find public opinion watches your doings pretty sharply." "I don't want to do anything wrong," interposed Hendrik. "Of course not, but you will find it difficult to do anything at all, once you get a 'curatela' instituted. We needn't go into law talk just now. But you will soon perceive, I can tell you, that your crazy brother's money would be immovably fixed in the business and on the 'Great Book of the National Debt,' and there it could go on uselessly accumulating as it has done hitherto." "Then it must accumulate. 7 can't help it" HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION. 157 "On the other hand, the law recognises no grada- tions between absolute incapacity and entire responsi- bility. It can't do so. A man is either incapable of spending one farthing on lollipops, or fit to look after a business involving a couple of millions. There is no alternative. And if a man isn't mad, he is sane." "You want me to say that Elias isn't an idiot," spake Hendrik. "Very well; he isn't. He is a man of remarkable intelligence. He is a Sophocles what d'ye call 'im? Socrates, I mean." "No, he is not, you fool," hissed his friend in swift sharp accents, angry for the first time, "and he needn't be, as I tell you. He needn't even be as clever a crea- ture as you are. It's quite sufficient for him to be hovering on the border, as long as he's hovering on the proper side." "And why?" asked Hendrik. He was not offended. I think it was one of the worst traits in a character not otherwise evil that insult did not annoy him. "For him, I grant it you. But not for us. If the business be liquidated, as I suppose it must be, and all this money be put into Elias's foolish hands, he will make ducks and drakes of it in a month." The lawyer turned full upon his friend. "Is it that you really can't understand me, or is it that you won't?" he asked. The other shifted uneasily on his seat "Hum," said Alers, and again, for a few moments, he became engrossed in the points of his boots and the tip of his cane. "You might, at any rate, speak plainly, when you do speak," remarked Hendrik presently. 158 GOD'S FOOL. "I don't speak. I have no wish to speak unless I'm asked," was the quick reply. "Well, I ask you," said Lossell humbly. "Then this is all I have to say. I make no doubt you are saying it to yourself. Avoid by all means in your power the appointment of guardians for Elias, even if those guardians be your brother and yourself. Prove to the outer world that, although afflicted in the loss of his physical senses, he has retained the clear use of his brain and is quite able to look after his own interests." "And then?" asked Hendrik, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. "You press me unduly. The interests of brothers surely should have much in common." "And when they clash?" "It seems to me the stronger brain should con- quer." Another pause. A longer one this time. Then said Hendrik: "Alers, what makes you say these things? What makes you care to say them?" "I?" replied the other lightly, as he rose to go. "Philanthropy! My affection for you, and my love of well-doing! What else?" "Oh, nothing else," said Hendrik. But the lawyer did not quite want to leave him under that impression if he really had it "And, of course, it is an advantage to me to have you as a friend. You will be a rich man some day, Ix)ssell, a rich man soon, I fancy, for you are going to be head of the great firm. After all, Elias hasn't been HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION. 159 brought up to business-habits, and in his own advantage, as well as in yours, he will have to make over to you what is yours by right. And when you are a rich man, you will want a professional adviser. I think you want one already. It's a pleasant thing to be a rich man. The next best thing is to be a rich man's friend. Ta, ta." "I haven't got any money to buy it up," burst out Lossell. The other paused in the doorway. "What price does Elias ask?" he said. "You don't know yet? Ah, I thought so. Well, a good deal will depend upon that. Tell me, when you know. Or don't; just as you prefer. It's no business of anybody's, as far as I can see. Quite a family arrangement Good- night" Left alone, Hendrik remained for a long time with- out moving, huddled up in his corner of the sofa, his eyes fixed intently on some spot they did not see. He had understood his friend perfectly. Vague conceptions which had been floating in his own brain had received definite form and substance. And mistaken impressions had been corrected. He had had a confused idea that Elias might be made harmless by being declared insane, and that then the man who administrated his fortune for him, would be allowed to use it, as far as was necessary, for the welfare of the whole family. It had not occurred to him, at least not in that concise form, that it would be far simpler and more efficacious to let his step-brother give his money, 160 GOD'S FOOL. instead of taking it away from him. But at the first hint in that direction, he had seen the whole path clear before him at once. Nothing would be easier, if Elias were left master of himself, than to prove to him that expediency or honesty or any other motive which came handy required him to cede the business to his brothers. He would make a present of it to them; nay, still better, he would sell it to them for an old glove. A new deed must be drawn up, by which Elias, of his own free will, liberated the acting partners from the yoke which old Volderdoes had fastened on their necks. The shares must be redistributed. Elias selling the larger part of them to his step-brothers at a nominal price, and the profits, also, must be restored to the people who worked for them. What could be fairer, if you came to think of it? Elias would be quite rich enough, even if he lost this great income from the business to which he had prac- tically no right Vested interests? Capital? Ah, vested interests always look unjust when it's another man that they're vested in. And it appeared to Hendrik that Elias had already drawn far more than he deserved from these vested interests of his. "Whose the labour is, his should the profits be," he said to himself. He did not say it to his employes. What would Hubert think? There might be a slight difficulty there, but hardly a very serious one. Nothing could be done till Hendrik had obtained the dispensation he hoped for, and then it was he who would have to do everything. Hubert would be altogether a secondary person. And it would be easy to find a notary who was more obliging than BorletL HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION. 161 Ouf! It seemed very simple. And really very fair. Were those not the words which constantly returned to his thoughts? Why did they return so constantly, and why did he not simply accept them, and repose in them, so to say? Why need he repeat thus over and over again: And really very fair? Of course it was fair. Quite fair. Was it not fair? Must a dead man, then, dead a quarter of a cen- tury ago, rule the world by the eternal law of his in- justice? And had not this man himself indicated the way of escape ? Elias should decide when he came of age. Elias was of age. Let him decide. He put on his hat, and went out. Where to, he did not know. He thought the air would do him good. It had been his nightly pleasure, when the day's work was over, to loiter down the gaslit streets of Koopstad, with some equally exquisite friend, the delight of all beholders, on his way to the theatre or the music-hall. To-night he shrank from the far din of the populous streets. It seemed to him as if every- body in Koopstad knew of his dilemma, and could read his thoughts. He crept away, and slunk down back streets, towards the quays, and, almost before he heeded whither he was going, he found that his accustomed steps had brought him to the warehouse-door. He rang the door-keeper's bell, again scarcely know- ing why. As he was there, he might as well go in for a moment, and see that all was right God's Fool. I, 1 1 1 62 GOD'S FOOL. He passed by the old concierge, with a hurried recognition, and walked swiftly down the corridor to- wards his father's private room. He had never yet been in it by evening. The father would sometimes return to his office after dinner. He had not required this of his son. Was it this feeling of singularity, or some strange awe of night that made him hesitate on the threshold? What is it that causes the dead to be nearest to us at night-time, calling them up out of the darkness into which they sank from our sight? Do they really revisit their earthly haunts in those still hours only, when they need not fear the sunlight which to them is an eternal terror and regret? When we come suddenly into the dark room, which was theirs before they left us, we feel their breath fall cold upon our faces, and, as we turn rapidly to look behind us from the newly-lighted candle, we catch a glimpse of the shadow of their shadow flitting away into the widening light Young Hendrik Lossell had never felt his dead father so near to him as now when he stood a moment irresolute in the dark passage outside that closed door. He felt for his matches, and struck a light And then he threw open the door and stumbled forward into the room. It was already lighted dimly by a movable gas- lamp which stood on the mantelpiece. Hendrik threw away his match with an exclamation of surprise. His brother Hubert was sitting motionless in a corner of the room. HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION. 163 "You here!" he cried. "What in the name of goodness " "Hush," said Hubert almost solemnly. Hendrik laughed a nervous laugh. He went round to his brother. "I can't imagine what you are after, Huib," he said. Hubert looked up at him, and Hendrik saw that his face was white. "What are you after?" said Hubert. "I?" stammered Hendrik, at a loss. "I came to see " Again Hubert stopped him. "You came because you were called," he said. "I knew you were coming. I knew it just when you opened the door. Father had told me." "Father!" cried Hendrik, almost with a scream. "Hubert, you are " The other started up and flung his hand on his brother's mouth. "Still," he cried. "He will hear you. For God's sake, be still." "Don't be vexed with me," Hubert went on hurriedly. "I came here, I don't quite know why. I couldn't stop indoors, so I ran out, and my footsteps brought me here. I thought I should like to be quite alone in this place once in a way and think of my father's working and and dying here. And I got Peter to let me in. Of course the place reminds one of father more than any other. And and, Henk," his voice dropped to a whisper; he pointed with one hand "that's, that's his chair." "I know that, surely," said Hendrik impatiently, but trembling from head to foot as he cast a frightened glance towards the round leather-cushioned armchair ii* 164 GOD'S FOOL. before the immense "bureau ministre" in the middle of the room. On the table the blotter lay, neatly closed; a number of petty, well-known objects, penholders, a large seal, a pair of scissors, were arranged in tidy rows, waiting for the hand that had used them so often. Its shadow still seemed to hover over them. The gas-lamp now burning on the mantelpiece had been invariably used by the merchant on his desk when he required light. "I've seen him sitting in it day after day," said Hendrik. Something in his brother's nervous voice and awe-struck manner irritated and agitated him both in one. "Ah, but I saw him sitting there to-night," whispered Hubert "Don't stare at me like that, Hendrik. He was sitting very quietly, gazing at the table in front of him, sitting just as he used to sit And after a few moments, he turned round and looked at me, and his face was dreadfully, unfathomably sad. And then I knew that you would come." "Come away," cried Hendrik, pulling at his brother's arm, and trying to make his voice as loud as he could without raising it "Come away immediately. It's hor- rible, Hubert, and I won't stay to hear any more of it" "There is no more," said Hubert "Why is it hor- rible? No, Hendrik, you must stay. For that is why you are come. Hendrik, we must save the old house. Do you hear me? And we must save our father's memory. There must not be a whisper against it in Koopstad, not a whisper. We must all take our share of the burden, and therefore Elias must take his. Elias HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION. 165 must pay the debts, and he must support mother so that no one may know she has less money than formerly. He owes that to his father's memory, and we must tell him to do it Is it not so?" "Yes, yes," said Hendrik, gasping for breath. "What more?" "And we owe it to our father's memory to reverence our step-brother's misfortune, and to protect him from all injury and all insult. Not I only who not I only, you also. He, on his side, will do his duty, as we bid him, and we will do ours. It will be a bond, dear Hendrik, between us and him. And the thought that he has been enabled thus to help us will make his welfare sacred in our sight; will it not?" "Yes," said Hendrik in a toneless voice. "He hears us," continued Hubert, speaking slightly louder. He drew his brother towards him, and advanced a little nearer to the empty chair. "He hears us, I am sure of it, he, who always, through the long years of his untiring labour, held the cruel rights of his hapless son as a thing too holy to be touched. We will do like him. And we will ask nothing of Elias but what we know it is his duty to accord. We declare it, father, even as in thy presence. And if thou understand us, let that sadness die away for ever from thy sight." "Let us swear it, Henk," he added softly, after a moment's solemn pause. "Swear to save his memory by Elias's help, to maintain the house in its greatness by all powers at our command, and to further the wel- fare of Elias as if it were our own. Swear." 1 66 GOD'S FOOL. Hendrik clasped his brother's hand, and bent his head without speaking. "We swear," said Hubert for them both. "So be it," he added. "So help us God Almighty. We have sworn. And now let us go and speak to Elias." "It is too late to-night," began Hendrik feebly. "No, no; it is not yet near nine. Let us get it over to-night, and then we can rest in peace. Better have it done to-night There is yet time." And without casting another look backwards into the dim, dreary office-room under its strange air of disturbed daylight, without a thought for the lamp left burning on the mantelpiece, Hubert fled down the pas- sage, followed by Hendrik. The old Chinaman, left alone with the shaded light and the memory of the dead, winked hideously from the elevated shrine whence he had presided for so many years over the fortunes of the great house of Voider- does. Probably he was well content. For even he could not, with that power which is the common privi- lege only of dead saints and living devils, look far into the awful future, and foretell the bloody sequel of that night's solemn vow. Old Peter was not sentimental. He came in a few minutes later and turned off the gas, with many grumblings at the recklessness of the young and lauda- tions of his own vigilance. And before he turned the screw, his eye fell on Hendrik's half-smoked cigar, which had been flung into the grate. And he extracted it carefully, and dusted it, and took it away with him into his lodge. And there he smoked it HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION. 167 The two brothers found Johanna in the act of help- ing Elias to bed. In fact, she had just completed his toilet; and he was saying his prayers. They came in upon this, the maid having admitted them, and stood waiting till he had done. The words fell solemnly on the stillness, issuing from that cavern of darkness. They were few words and simple, such as any child may speak, strangely in contrast with the massive frame and powerful head of this man in the full bloom of a manly adolescence. He thanked God, as usual, for having given him Volderdoes Zonen to provide him with all that he needed. Hubert looked at Hendrik. Hendrik winced and closed his eyes. And then he prayed for his father, forgetting that he was dead. When he had done, Hubert went up and tried to speak to him, but his hand trembled, and Elias shrank back, as if in pain, from the agitated movement of his fingers. "You interpret for us, Johanna," said Hubert. "Tell him we are here. Remind him that papa is dead. Tell him that he is now very rich. That he has got a great deal of money. Does he understand?" "Yes, I understand," said Elias, with his bell-like voice. "Then, if I have got a lot of money, may the old man have his beef-tea?" "He means an old man who comes here every morning," said Johanna. "There was none to-day." "Say yes, yes," burst in Hendrik, as a man speaks when he breaks suddenly through restraint. "Say yes," repeated Hubert, "but tell him we shall 1 68 GOD'S FOOL. want some of his money, not much considering, for the maintenance of Volderdoes Zonen. Does he under- stand?" "I understand," said Elias again. "If there were no Volderdoes Zonen, I should be very unhappy in- deed." "Then he wants it to continue to exist?" "Yes, yes," interrupted HendriL "Ask him, Johanna, if he wishes to do all he can that it should continue to do so?" "But I can't do anything," said Elias, as soon as this was made plain to him. "I can't do anything." He sat up in bed. "What can I do?" he repeated excitedly. Johanna soothed him. It was told him that he must give money to pay his father's debts, and a yearly sum to support his step-mother. It might be questioned how much he understood of all this, but there could not be the slightest doubt of his eagerness to give to whoever wanted or ever asked his support. Had they asked him to divide a million florins between his brothers, he would un- hesitatingly have trusted them and done as they re- quired. "No, no, no," said Hubert. "That is quite enough. Tell him that we will bring him the necessary papers to sign (he must make a cross) when they can be ready. I am sure Borlett will help us, Hendrik, in all this. And now tell him also, Johanna, that we thank him. Tell him that we have sworn to do all in our power to help and to protect him. Never mind if he HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION. 169 understands it all. Tell him that we love him; he will understand that. And that we will be good brothers to him, by the help of God." "I understand," said Elias after a pause. "Kiss me, Hubert Kiss me, Hendrik. I am very sleepy. I think I should like to go to sleep." "Thank you, gentlemen," said Johanna with the tears in her honest eyes. "Nothing more ridiculous," Alers was repeating at the Club, "than the thesis that a man must be insane because he is blind, or deaf or even both. It is outra- geous. The law knows no guardianship of those who have lost the use of their organs of sense. The brain ah, that is a different thing. Homer was blind. Galileo was blind wasn't he? And so was Milton. And I'm sure that a great number of eminent men were deaf and dumb, only one doesn't remember their names. Now there's Elias Lossell, you were speaking of or was I speaking of him? Well, it doesn't matter I know the Lossells well. I can assure you Elias is no more idiotic than you or I. I don't say he is as in- telligent but there's a great difference. Now I don't pretend to be nearly as intelligent as you are, but I must object to being called more idiotic. I repeat, such a nature has naturally great disadvantages, but the law fortunately does not add to their number. And it would be outrageous not to allow a man to do what he liked with his own, simply because such a man was blind, and deaf and dumb. And Lossell's not even dumb." 170 GOD'S FOOL. "I certainly agree with you," said a quiet gentleman by the fireplace. "But is Lossell really only deaf and blind? I had always understood he was half-witted." "Did you ever hear his father say anything of the kind?" asked Alers, turning on the speaker. "No; I hardly think so. But his brother certainly. Young Hendrik Lossell never speaks otherwise of him than as of a hopeless idiot" "Young Hendrik is a capital fellow," rejoined Alers sententiously. "He is a great friend of mine. But he is young. And we young fellows are quick with our generalisations. Unless we are lawyers and weigh our words. A man is always an 'utter idiot' or 'awfully clever.' A woman is always either 'the most beautiful creature in the world' or 'altogether unfit to look at' And besides, young Lossell is naturally a little jealous of his unfortunate stepbrother, despite the tatter's mis- fortune. "I wonder how much money there is," said another man, a large, loose fellow, who had come lounging up with his hands in his pockets. "A lot of money any- way, I fancy." "There is more money, I can tell you," replied the young lawyer with a great air of mysterious importance, "than often passes in this country from a father to his children. They are all rich, naturally, with such a business, but by far the richest of them, nevertheless, is the eldest, the deaf man Elias. I fancy Elias Lossell must be the richest man in Koopstad." There was not one man in that whole smoking- room who did not consider money the supreme thing HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION. 17 l worth living and working and lying for. And yet there was not one who dared pronounce the words which rose to all lips mechanically, and say: "Lucky fellow!" of the richest man in Koopstad. For God's finger held them back. PART II. CHAPTER I. COMPOS MENTIS. THE fool sat in his room, by the fireside, with his hands in his lap. His eyes were closed. Night lay over them. And over his soul lay the twilight of a great sorrow and of a glorious dawn. How much did he know of himself? Of that past which is ourselves in all of us to such a degree that the more thoughtful sometimes question with terror- struck wonder whether it will remain ourselves into the endless future? It is hard to say how much he knew. It seemed to him sometimes as someone else's life, and sometimes as to-day. And therein, surely, he was not a fool. It was nearly ten years ago now that they had first told him that his father was dead. There was a past before that time, and a past after it They had been very different, and he knew they had been different, for he had daily experienced their difference. And yet he could never properly have realized the cause of the change, for even now, though he had not held inter- course with his father through so many years, he re- membered him only as in the life of to-day. There was nothing complicated in the confusion of the fool's ideas, if once you got hold of the keynote, as COMPOS MENTIS. 173 his faithful nurse had done long ago. It was she, in fact, who had tuned his whole being into harmony with that keynote, developing it in constant sympathy with the central theme. To this work she had devoted her life. Those who loved Elias understood him. And he understood only those whom he loved. The intellectual life of his soul, cramped and weakened in all its re- sources, lay languishing and spluttering in fitful flashes, as uncertain in its unexpected light and darkness as a wick that is dying for want of wax. But the emotional life, the life of loving and admiring and believing, inde- pendent, as it is, of all artificial development, burned on and upwards with a steadily increasing flame. And thus his memory also was a memory of love and, alas ! of pain. He remembered little that had attained to his mind's perception only; you could not be certain of his remembering anything at all, unless it had reached his heart. But of one thing you could be certain, that he would not forget what had touched his affections. And yet here also, he was incapable of making distinctions which are transparent to wiser men. He could not re- member love as a thing of the past. Where once he loved, he loved for ever, and, therefore, as I have al- ready said, his love of the dead or departed was a memory of an eternal to-day. "For in the Presence of my Love Shall be no Future and no Past." He was a fool. He thought that dead people were still alive. And he forgot that you must have money if you want to buy bread. And the life of love, with- out beginning and without ending, was the one reality of his soul. 174 GOD'S FOOL. And you, if you loved him, perhaps you also would understand him better. And yet, as you do not love him Nay, throw down this book. There is the evening paper just come in, with to-day's stock-exchange. They're up, I believe. Elias Lossell knew more about money than many people might have thought. He knew that, since his father's death, they were always telling him that he was very rich. And he knew that it was a pleasant thing to be rich. Come, come, he was a philosopher, and no fool. He lived in the same little house just outside the city, in which his father had established him nearly a quarter of a century ago. Hubert had wanted him to move into a large and beautiful villa, which had come into the market a year or so after old Lossell's death. But Elias and his nurse had both begged to be allowed to remain where they were. Elias had been to "see" the proposed dwelling, and had felt his way about its numerous rooms. It was all strange and awkward for him. He knocked against unexpected obstacles. He realized that it could never be home. It would be months before he dared feel his way alone up the stairs and across the wide vestibule. "Take me home," he said wearily. And they brought him back to the little house. But a carriage Hubert had insisted upon his having, in spite of protests from Hendrik, who declared it to be an expensive encumbrance. "It would procure for him COMPOS MENTIS. 175 so many more opportunities of taking the air," said Hubert. And this it did, but Elias found his health beginning to give way under the want of exercise. So he resumed his long country-walks with Johanna. Jo- hanna, a buxom, full-blooded female of nearly sixty genial winters, would have preferred the carriage-drives, had she not made up her mind so many years ago al- ways to prefer what was best for her charge. The twins, having attained their twentieth birthday shortly after their father's death, had received "venia setatis," according to Dutch law, that is to say they had been declared prematurely of age. Hendrik had wished to have this privilege restricted to himself alone, but Hubert refused to allow any such distinction to be made between them, and he got both his mother and the old notary to second his demand for equal rights. The brother who had always looked upon himself as number one was surprised to see how "le cadet" came to the front in this and other matters of business. Hubert took his place as if upheld by some secret authority, and quietly imposed his opinion whenever he considered this desirable. Hendrik could not help smarting at times under a feeling of weakness he seemed unable to overcome. The financial affairs of the old merchant had been wound up as soon as the brothers were entitled to act. With Notary Borlett's willing co-operation for herein he felt he was taking the interests of all parties into account a deed was drawn up by which Elias under- took to pay his stepmother an income sufficient to enable her to keep up her position in Koopstad as Hendrik Lossell's widow. This deed received Elias's 176 GOD'S FOOL. more or less shaky signature, his hand being guided to make it The money was not paid during any length of time, for Judith did not survive her husband many years. It was a great bitterness to her during this closing period of her life to be dependent on the step- son to whom she had shown so little charity. Furthermore it was agreed that in estimating the merchant's liabilities and assets his five shares in the business should be rated at two hundred per cent At this price they were bought for Elias, and the surplus, thus obtained, was divided as Lossell's residuary estate. Considering the profits made in recent years, the price, though high, could in no wise be considered unreason- able. But the result was that the twin-brothers were now entirely excluded from a share in the business, which became the exclusive property of Elias. It became the exclusive property of a man, there- fore, who was as incapable of managing it to his own advantage as a babe unborn. And accordingly all parties recognised as just that his two step-brothers should be taken into partnership with him. A contract was entered into by which Elias was recognised as sleep- ing partner, while Hendrik and Hubert were to share all responsibility between them. So far, so good. But it was when it came to settling the division of profits that the great diversity of opinion made itself felt "Share and share alike," said Hendrik. "All profits to be divided into three equal parts." Hubert, on his side, clung to his original idea that old Volderdoes's testament must be respected, and eighty- five per cent paid out to Elias's fortune. The more his COMPOS MENTIS. 177 brother objected, the more vehemently he defended his opinion not that he desired to remain poor, but be- cause that obstinacy of chivalry had taken possession of him, into which opposition to a self-sacrificing offer will readily drive a man, the poignancy of which is increased by the shame of the thought, that defeat would, after all, not be so very unpleasant. Hendrik, however, flatly refused to waste his whole existence in the amassing of a useless pile of gold. He would rather start a new business for himself, he said, than bind his abilities down to such life-long servitude. The notary admitted that chivalry must have its limits, even among men of business, and he ultimately suc- ceeded in effecting a compromise by which seventy per cent, was allotted as dividend to the shares and thirty per cent, to the acting partners, while it was further- more agreed that the latter should be entitled to buy up a certain number of shares, as soon as they had capital to do so, at a price to be fixed by consultation with experts. Other concessions Hubert refused to consent to. The brothers quarrelled with [brotherly energy. But ultimately, as each felt that he had acted in a truly generous manner, the hearts of both were filled with that kindly glow which a good action never fails to inspire, and they settled down into the daily routine of business, under protest, but not in animosity, only irritated by the thought that the unfortunate go-between should have so woefully mismanaged the matter. They both decided, with youthful alacrity, that the whole family, Elias included, must have a notary better God's Fool. /. 12 178 COD'S FOOL. able to do his work, whatever it might happen to be. They were glad to find themselves agreed on any sub- ject whatsoever. And Hubert left the choice of Borlett's successor to Hendrik. And the notary, who had arranged everything for these overgrown children with much taking of pains and comparatively small profit to himself, smiled quietly when he saw the brothers pass his door. He knew that the man who effects a reconciliation between various members of a quarrelsome family is always the last to be forgiven. But presently he thought of Elias and then the smile died away from his lips. For Elias, it was now agreed, had the full possession of his wits, and therefore was responsible for what he did with them. No trustees of any kind had been ap- pointed to look after his affairs. The whole of his huge fortune lay, theoretically, at his disposal. In reality it was invested almost entirely in government securities or the business, and looked after by his brothers in con- junction with the notary. "It is much better so," said Hubert. "The result obtained is just the same as if we had been appointed curators, and we avoid all the useless, wearisome for- malities. Besides, why subject him to all the superfluous scandal and disgrace? By acting thus we respect poor Elias's reputation in the city, and we leave him as free as he possibly can be in his peculiar circumstances to do what he chooses with his own." "That is quite true," said Hendrik. And many another man, cooler than Hubert or COMPOS MENTIS. 179 more disinterested than Hendrick, would have reasoned as they. "I think you are right, undoubtedly," said Dr. Pil- lenaar, when Hubert went to him for assistance, "in deferring as long as possible the official declaration of your half-brother's insanity. It will always be time enough, when the step has become altogether inevitable. And that is not nearly the case as yet. The formalities, as you know, are numerous and disagreeable, and the practical result would be pretty much the same, I sup- pose, as at present, namely, that you and your brother would manage his affairs. I have my serious doubts, besides, whether the judges would consider the case a fit one for intervention. I am a medical man, so you must allow me to abuse the lawyers. But I am willing to admit that in this particular instance I should be at a loss what to say. Elias is not an idiot like other idiots. As for maliciousness, he is a better man, I fancy, than most of us who have got our senses and make a bad use of them. As for incapacity, he can be helped to sign his name; he can be made to under- stand, at least for the moment, whatever is said to him; and he can answer distinctly enough. I don't say he isn't imbecile, but I say that it is difficult to decide in what measure. He has only got to open those magni- ficent eyes of his. I should always be afraid that the man of law who finds those eyes fixed full upon him will not dare to say there is anything wrong with the brains of their owner. No, no. Avoid all extra un- pleasantness, and be good to him; be very good to him. It is a great responsibility," 12* i8o GOD'S FOOL. "It is indeed," said Hubert, as he wrung the doctor's hand. Koopstad, therefore, respected Elias Lossell as it never would have done otherwise, had they taken his money away from him. Nobody ever approached him, except a very few intimates. A halo of delicious golden mystery formed round his solitude and his wealth. A number of young ladies, and not only the very young, fell hopelessly in love with his beautiful face and his beautiful fortune. Shoals of begging letters, addressed to him personally, were delivered at the little house. Johanna kept them from him, for they agitated him too much. But nevertheless, he continued to excite a great deal of interest and envy and cupidity and curiosity. He was the far-off wonder of the city. And it was touching to see, said the neighbours, at first, how kind his brothers were to him. And yet their relations must often present peculiar difficulties, because he was so very much richer than they, you know. Not long after the death of Judith Lossell Hubert went out to Shanghai to promote the interest of the Rouse in China. Such an arrangement had become unavoidable, and Hubert, whose rather romantic nature ever allowed itself to be attracted by the novel or the unusual, was far from unwilling to go. There did not exist so much sympathy between the two brothers, that both could not placidly contemplate the prospect of a separation. Nor could the parting from Elias cause his stepbrother any very acute regret, for Elias lived a life too entirely blocked out from the rest of the world to COMPOS MENTIS. l8l be very near to the daily interests of anyone. Hendrik would be there to look after him, and, still better, Johanna, and that would suffice. A few months later Hendrik, tired of living alone, announced to the astonished world of Koopstad his engagement to his "cousin," Cornelia Alers. Koopstad disapproved of the engagement 1 82 COD'S FOOL. CHAPTER II. A "STRUGGLE-FOR-LIFER." THAT, in itself, would not have had any particular significance, for Koopstad disapproved of every engage- ment Not of engagements in general, for these it con- sidered to be the very pillar and foundation of the State, but somehow, if you believed the Koopstad ladies, the wrong people were always getting engaged to each other. The whole subject, of course, concerns the ladies only; the gentlemen took a very languid interest in it, and ordinarily confined themselves to pitying the man brutes. But it certainly was very deeply to be deplored that, whereas a young betrothal is always such a beautiful and interesting and touching event, the ladies of Koopstad never could entirely surrender them- selves to the charm of contemplating one with feelings of unmixed satisfaction. "It was a very desirable match from many points of view, but" and then they would lower their horns and butt at the unfortunate pair. And indeed it is very sad to contemplate the perversity of all these young people who will not see that they could be perfectly happy and excellently suited to each other, if only the couples would make up differently. It is very sad, and it would be still much sadder, if the peculiarity of Koopstad were not peculiar to every corner of the globe where three women with marriage- A "STRUGGLE-FOR- LIFER." 183 able daughters, or with marriageable selves, get together over fifteen cups of tea it is coffee in Germany, but the principle remains the same. And a woman long thinks her daughters marriageable, and, if she have no daughters, herself yet more marriageable still. It was not only the ladies of Koopstad, however (whose sincerity could not even reckon on mutual re- cognition), that cried out at the news of Hendrik Lossell's engagement. No woman ever listens with any degree of confidence to another woman's talk about her own sex they know too well, the darlings, the why and the wherefore of their sugared blame and yet more sourly sugared praise ah, sugar is a terrible acid! but when the men unanimously declared Hendrik to be a fool, their wives and daughters sat up and listened. Stereotyped expressions of condolence with a "victim" the ladies were accustomed to; they considered, how- ever, that this particular case was entitled to more detailed discussion. What had the men to say against Mejuffrouw Cornelia Alers? Well, to begin with, she was a couple of years older than her suitor, and, you know, we always pull up our noses at that, especially when the boy is just under thirty, and the old lady is just this pen refuses to write the word that was destined to follow. Let lawyers and doctors do what ignoble duty their professions may sometimes require of them; no gentleman ever yet said of his own free will that an unmarried woman was over ^thirty. For the last year or two Cornelia Alers had been twenty- nine. In addition to this she had a Roman nose. With 184 GOD'S FOOL. a woman's aptitude for seeing her own bright side, she considered that this ancient feature imparted an aristo- cratic appearance to her face. And perhaps she was not altogether mistaken in her supposition, for she certainly had an air of hauteur over her which she possibly owed to the bend of the nose, or possibly to her unusual height (no execrable pun is intended), or yet more probably to her indomitable trust in her own superiority. Having been placed, a big woman, in a limited sphere, she had firmly resolved to bring her surroundings into harmony with her stature, and so she set her heavy foot on the social ladder of Koopstad and clomb, and clomb, higher and higher, as high as little Hendrik Lossell. The social ladder of Koopstad was a living organism, more like a tree than a ladder, securely planted and rooted in the mean soil of our dusty humanity, manured by frequent offerings of filthy lucre, and daily watered with the tears of the unsuccessful aspirants down below. Hendrik Lossell did not sit on its topmast branch Elias would have sat there, had he not been an idiot but he sat at an elevation where the fruit already hung sufficiently thick, and where the ladies of the company, when they looked downwards, which they seldom did, could no longer perceive the Cornelia Alerses. This social tree, for it is a tree, and no ladder, has in common with some few other trees that its fruit grows thickest towards the top, and it has in common with most, that no fruit at all ever grows on the bare stem which supports the fat little crown, and feeds it Cornelia Alers believed that happiness dwelt at the top of the tree, and misery at the bottom. You would A "STRUGGLE-FOR-LIFER." 185 have thought that she had never tasted rotten fruit, nor ever reposed in the shade. Her belief had in it that element of ignorance which peppers all belief. For she knew nothing either of the hard work at the bottom nor of the sunshiny indolence at the top. The Alerses were by no means great people in Koopstad, but they were just unlittle enough to frantically aspire to be greater. Yet thank Heaven, they were not so little that their daughters, however needy, should stoop to honest work. Koopstad is old- fashioned, and it checks the tide in many places where larger communities have already sailed out to sea. The Alerses had committed the seven cardinal sins, for they were poor, and they had committed an eighth, for Alers senior had married above him. This eighth transgression, by attracting notice, brought out the misery of all the other seven. And the junior Alerses, the lawyer and his brother and Cornelia and her three sisters, soon found that their only chance of absolution was to go and sin no more. So they played in the State Lottery, and also in the lottery of the married state, and they wriggled and haggled, and turned their dresses and their opinions, and ran errands and social risks, and fell and picked themselves up and smiled sweetly when people asked also sweetly whether they were hurt. There was not one form of shabby-genteel suffering from which they shrank. They even went to stay with their mother's rich relations. The world is full of these quiet heroisms "that nobody knows nothing of." We have all admired, and rightly, the Spartan boy whose face remained serene while the fox was consum- ing his vitals, but we nowhere read that he sat smiling, 1 86 COD'S FOOL. smiling all through that repast, and then said it was the nicest thing on earth and when might he come again? People gave him immense credit for his fortitude, as he knew they would be sure to do all the time he was performing, but all those who had "arrived" said the Alerses were fools for their pains and laughed when they slipped off the rungs of the ladder. And so the stately Cornelia was engaged to Hendrik Lossell. How had she managed to obtain his consent? That was the question which Koopstad at least female Koopstad was dying to know. Many a man has be- come a great general by studying other great generals' victories. Alas, the conquest of Hymen's land is rarely the prize of a brief compaign, unless the invader be largely supplied with the sinews of war. Cornelia had plenty of sinews, but they were not of the right kind. They helped her, however, to dance attendance (literally) at every raid into the enemy's country to which she could procure an invitation. And she got somebody's cousin to have Thomas put up for the Casino, on the express understanding that Hendrik was to be put up too. Do not accuse the young fellow of being a heartless cynic who stood watching her tall figure and skinny shoulders through the mazes of the dance, and who, from his safe coign of vantage against a window, sent forth unkind thoughts about women generally upon the patient air. They were true, I doubt not, but he did not mean them. No good man ever thinks bad thoughts about women. They waylay him, and rob him of all he possesses his good name, first, which was not of much use to himself, probably, but which is utterly A "STRUGGLE-FOR-LIFER." 187 worthless to them and when they have stripped him entirely and left him lying bleeding in the way, they come back after a minute to give him another ha'penny- worth of happiness and to twist their pretty fingers round once more in his gaping wounds, and then they kill him. But he never utters a word of complaint, and he smiles upon them, and is good and beautiful and patient in death. That is to say, if he be a man deserving the name. It is only your base-born cowards that beg for quarter. "Your money or your life," cries the brigand who meets you on the highroad. And you give your money cheerfully to avoid the alternative, especially if you happen to have left your purse at home. Beware of the woman-brigand. She asks for both. Give them to her. Only mind you choose your brigand wisely. You will be all the happier for your loss. The man who would speak evil of a woman is a churl. The poor things are already sufficiently hard-pressed. For all the women do it. All the females who attended the Casino-gatherings said unkind things about Cornelia and her improvised dresses from her eighteenth year to her twenty-sixth. Then they pitied her too sincerely to honour her with more than an occasional sneer, and she was ticketed and numbered and put away. Nobody thought any more about her, but that did not hinder her thinking about herself. And so she laboured on quietly, while others played around her. Poor weary struggler, if she be not deserving of pity, to whom shall we accord it? And when all the ladies said that she must be at least 1 88 GOD'S FOOL. a hundred, and all the gentlemen that really, you know, they were certain she could not be younger than Lossell, she hooked the young fellow, and played, landed, frittered, fried and swallowed him before the horrified eyes of the entire female population of Koopstad. And this is how it came about How can anyone's biographer be excused for telling it? It has all been told a hundred times before. I sometimes wonder, had Eve been born without the wiles of Eve's daughters, would there ever have been the story of Adam's sons to tell? She was hopeless at last, was the brave huntress, utterly dispirited and dejected, despite her Roman nose. Her younger sister, Aurelia, had made a capital settle- ment, having married an old widower with sixty thou- sand florins a year and six daughters, the whole half dozen of whom she had sent out to boarding-school within a month after she had entered the house. An- other sister, just out, was to be seen at the Casino every Wednesday and Friday, fleeing in Parthian style from a young officer whom to remain classical the victory of Pyrrhus would too soon befall. And she, she went up to her chamber-window to look vainly down the desolate road. That is to say, she sat down on her sofa and sighed. It was no use looking out of her window, for she would only have caught cold and red- dened the Roman nose. Besides, there was no one there. "I shall give up going to the Casino," she remarked to Thomas. "Do you know, I think it has got very A " STRUGGLE-FOR-LIFER." 1 89 stupid of late. All the nice people seem to stop away." "Lossell had a committee meeting of some sort to- night," said Thomas. She flashed out at him. "There are more people in the world than Lossell," she said, "and nicer. I wasn't thinking of him." "Of course not," he answered. "You were thinking of Paffer." Paffer was the young officer, whom Cornelia hated like poison, on account of her sister's success. "You are pleased," she said, "to think yourself funny. And so you would be, if you weren't stupid." "And you are proud," he replied, "to think your- self spiteful. And so you would be, if you weren't un- happy." You see, they were hardly an amiable couple, this brother and sister. They were given to recrimination, and vulgar squabbling. But they liked each other, in their own disagreeable way. After a few moments while Cornelia, struck by the accuracy of her brother's last thrust, was still casting about for a reply Thomas began again: "Look here, Cornelia, we needn't joke through the last scene of what is fast turning into a tragedy. You're as good or as bad as an old woman by this time. Best be plain-spoken. You've been lying in the shop- window for nigh upon a dozen seasons, and demmy reduced prices or not, you can't be left there much longer. As you say, you had much better give over going to the Casino, where you only serve as a foil to the younger girls. Look the inevitable future in the I QO GODS FOOT- face, as you ought to have done six years ago, and take your seat by the fireplace and knit" If Thomas spoke thus coarsely, it was very much on acount of his own anger and disgust at his sister's failure. He was anxious, too, about her ultimate fate, for, though you might easily talk about sitting down by the fireside, it would not be so easy to say who would pay for coals. Like her sisters, Cornelia had invested her small patrimony in the matrimonial business. Bank- ruptcy seemed impending. "You had better sell your muslin ball-dress to Ninnie," added the head of the family. "It will do for her be- trothal to Paffer." Cornelia's rugged old heart was not easily shaken. But under these heavy blows of her brother's hammer a pair of tears squeezed through the crevices and rolled slowly down her cheeks. Young Thomas was not proof against these silent symptoms of distress. "I don't mean to be unkind," he said uneasily. "Only we may as well 'sail straight' The case is desperate. It's 'kill or cure.' Now, I'm willing to do all I can to help you. Do you want Hendrik Lossell to propose to you, or do you not?" Cornelia made a movement of disavowal. "I know you do," said Thomas coolly. "Of course. Well, I will undertake that he shall come and ask you to be his wife within less than twelve hours that is, therefore, to-morrow morning before lunch if you undertake, on your part, to help me afterwards in any- thing I may stand in need of. We go into partnership, and this is the first stroke of business combined by the firm. Is it a bargain?" A "STRUGGLE-FOR-LIFER." IQl "Get him to do as you say," whispered Cornelia, "and I'll do anything you like for you afterwards, Thomas. Oh, Thomas, I can't be an old maid!" "No, you can't," said Thomas. "We can't afford it." And so they shook hands on their contract. 1 92 GOD'S FOOL. CHAPTER III. THE MARRIAGE-LOTTERY. THE next morning, at an early hour the doors of the office were barely open Thomas Alers was ushered into the private room of the acting head of the house of Volderdoes Zonen. The actual head of the firm and proprietor of the business was at that moment pottering about in the greenhouse which his brothers had built for him on his modest premises and querulously demanding of the gardener whether or no the pink chrysanthemums had already come out Hendrik Lossell did not rise to receive his visitor, but extended the tips of his fingers with a slightly con- descending air. He was very proud of his position at that great table full of documents, was Hendrik Lossell. All the prouder, perhaps, because the position was not quite what it ought to have been and what he had always expected, for the whole of Koopstad knew per- fectly well that the real owner of the business was the fool. The young Hendrik could only prolong the con- nection which the old one had begun and lived through, and suffered and died under. They were practically everything, except After all, they remained in- truders, hard-working, inadequately rewarded intruders, and the real Volderdoes was Elias. THE MARRIAGE-LOTTERY. I 93 "How de do," said Hcndrik carelessly. We have dropped the note of interrogation in that question long ago. "Keen weather, eh?" Nevertheless, he was sur- prised that the hand which Alers drew out of a thickly wadded glove should be so cold. He did not know when the glove had been put on. Looking up, he was surprised to see that the young advocate's face be- trayed signs of considerable agitation. A good deal more, besides the glove, had been put on at the door. "Good heavens, what's the matter?" cried Hendrik the note of interrogation now in full play. "Hush," replied Thomas in alarm. "Nothing. Why do you ask, Lossell?" "Why? Just look at your face in the glass! A man doesn't look like that and expect no one to notice it." Thomas cast a quick glance at a narrow mirror which hung between the two windows the great, squinting Chinaman was over the mantelpiece. The 'cute young lawyer recognised with satisfaction his own aptitude for playing a part, but he exaggerated his self-praise (some people do), for nature had helped him considerably by flurrying him in spite of himself. "I assure you it's nothing," he said, "at least no- thing to agitate anyone, only I am so stupid in these matters. But I may as well tell you, Lossell. In fact, I wanted to tell you. Imagine what has happened to me this morning. One of the last things I should have ex- pected ever to occur to such unfortunates as our family have always been. You are sure no one can hear us?" he looked apprehensively towards the glass doors, Cod's Fool, /, IJ 194 GOD'S FOOL. which were closed. It was a peculiarity of Hendrik Junior's character that he elected to have them closed as a rule, in spite of the inconvenience and disturbance occasioned by the constant opening and shutting, as message after message passed from the outer office into the inner room. Herein he was different from his father, who had always preferred to remain in touch with the clerks at work beyond. "Of course not," said Hendrik impatiently. "Go on." "I had a letter from our Amsterdam bankers this morning, Henk. Don't laugh at our having bankers" (Lossell was not thinking of laughing). "Every poor beggar has. The robbers manage to secure their tax on ten florins as well as on ten thousand. Well, I had a letter from them this morning and you saw the an- nouncement in the evening papers yesterday about the first prize of the Vienna 1864 Lottery having 'fallen' in Amsterdam?" "Yes," cried Hendrik, "and I wondered who the lucky beggar was. It's a fortune. Donnerwetter! Tommy, it isn't you?" "Not me, no, worse luck. I wish it was. But it's Cornelia. Hang her. As if girls wanted money to get through the world!" "I suppose everybody wants that," said Hendrik moodily. He was pricked with envy, and he didn't see why the eldest Miss Alers should not need a little ready cash to secure her a place in the wedding- coach. "Yes, but a man wants it to buy bread with, and THE MARRIAGE-LOTTERY. 1 95 a woman to buy cake. A woman of our class always gets her bread from somebody, husband or father or brother. Now this sum in my hands would have meant a million within a twelvemonth, while in my sister's it represents a respectable four per cent, till the end of the chapter." For it was in the good old time when people still got four per cent, for their money, and yet slept at night. "You penniless people always think money breeds like rabbits," said Hendrik snappishly. "I wish to good- ness it would. But I'm sure I congratulate you. It's a fortune, as I said." "Hardly a fortune. It's about a quarter of a mil- lion florins, but an outrageous quantity goes off in Government percentage and so on. Still, it's a lot of money. You must congratulate her, though, not me. It's no advantage to me in any way, except in so far as I'm awfully glad for her." After that, neither spoke for a few moments, for each was busy with his own thoughts. Thought Thomas: "If he doesn't begin now, I shall have to." And Hendrik thought: "Here goes!" "Does your sister Cornelia know already?" he asked. "No, not yet." "And I suppose nobody else does, in that case?" "No. I got the letter just as I was starting for my office, and then I thought I might as well come round and tell you on my way. But I must be off. I'm late enough, as it is," 196 COD'S FOOL. And he jumped up, and began buttoning his coat "Wait a minute," cried Hendrik. "By Jove, Tom, I wish you had kept your secret a day or two longer. Your bringing it to me puts me in a very awkward position. I I hardly know how to say it" "What?" asked Alers sharply, turning full upon him. "Well, look here. You know I've long been how shall I express it? paying my court to your sister. Je lui ai fait un brin de cour. You must have no- ticed it." "Never," said Thomas energetically. "Oh come, you must have. Why, everybody did. I've been chaffed about it over and over again at the Casino. People thought we were engaged." It was true he had been chaffed, but chiefly on ac- count of the dead set the Roman nose had made at him. "Fly to me, my good Henkie," a fat motherly old aunt had said to him, spreading out her wide skirts from her seat against the wall. "Creep under, if the worst comes to the worst I shall tell her, when she looks for you, that you are lost in admiration." "I never heard about it," said Thomas. "But that proves nothing. Brothers are the last people to hear that kind of chaff." "It's true, all the same; and no wonder I should think of marrying. That big house is very lonely since my mother died last year. And I've been looking for an opportunity to ask your sister about it by G , I have. I should have done so, in all probability, last THE MARRIAGE-LOTTERY. 1 97 night, if I hadn't been prevented from going to the Casino." He almost believed himself, with such energy of conviction did he speak. "Now, you see," he went on hurriedly, sweeping over the words, ere his friend could interrupt, "this scrap of information you have just brought me puts me in a very painful position. For if I choose this moment to propose to your sister, everybody will say that I did it for the money. Of course that's absurd, as you know. I may not be as rich as I ought to be, or as some people think, but I'm not poor enough not to feel free in the choice of a wife." "I don't know about people's thinking," said Tho- mas. "I believe it's pretty generally known that your step-brother is the rich man, and not you." Hendrik winced. Decidedly Thomas was cruel. "Yes, that was Hubert's doing," said Hendrik. "He couldn't keep a quiet tongue in his head. He's much better away at Shanghai with his English wife. But you must admit it would look strange." "Very strange," said Thomas gravely. "Not so very strange, hang it, if people weren't always so disgracefully ill-natured, for everybody knows, as I say, that I have long been intending to propose." "Ah, but you didn't do it," interrupted Thomas. "Oh but, Tom, I say: do you mean to imply that I want Cornelia for her money, when I never heard till to-day of her possessing a penny in the world?" "No, my dear fellow j it's the last thing I should 198 GOD'S FOOL. think of. I am quite sure you would be above anything of the kind. But we must reckon, as you say, with the ill-natured world around us. The worst of it is, these money matters can never be kept dark, in spite of every- body concerned being sworn to inviolable secrecy. You see, the fact has got into the papers already, the name, in spite of anything we can do, will be all over the place in a couple of days. And neither the rest of the world, nor Cornelia herself, will consider the moment was happily selected for a proposal." "But if I had been at the Casino last night, or you hadn't told me this morning, I shouldn't have known," said Hendrik obstinately. "That is true," acquiesced the young lawyer thought- fully. And he stood for a moment, considering the di- lemma. Then he said: "If you mean what you say, Hendrik, as doubtless you do, the only way I can see out of the difficulty is for you to get the whole business over with Cornelia before she, or anybody else, knows anything of this change in her fortunes. In that case I will tell Cornelia that, knowing you were intending to ask her, I kept back my news that you might not be influenced by it, and we shan't let out the story, if we can help it, till after your engagement has been an- nounced." "Capital!" cried Hendrik. "You're a right-down good fellow, Tom. In that case, there's no time to be lost." He actually ran towards the peg on which his hat and coat were hung. But, in doing so, he stopped. He was not half such a rogue, after all, as the other. THE MARRIAGE-LOTTERY. IQQ "Only, I say," he began, "is that quite fair towards your sister?" "No," replied Thomas coolly. "It isn't And, there- fore, as you yourself broach the subject, let me be plain with you. It isn't fair to her. Accordingly, it must be understood between us that you ask her at once, with- out the slightest delay, to be your wife. If she refuses you, there's an end of the matter. If she accepts you, I tell her, also at once, about this lottery-prize. And then you must return her her liberty and leave her al- together free to reconsider her decision. So much you owe to her, but you needn't be alarmed. If I know anything of my sister, she will act honourably under all circumstances. And then, as soon as these preliminaries are settled, there must be no time lost before giving the news to the world." "I accept," said Hendrik, taking down his hat. "Shall I find your sister at home if I go now?" "Yes, but wait a minute. I'm willing to do you this service and keep a quiet tongue in my head. But you'll remember, please, that I did so, and when the time comes, you'll not deny that you owe me a good turn?" "No," replied Hendrik. "Can I take you on any- where? I shall have a cab called at once." And he whistled through a speaking-tube that lay upon his writing-table. "Well, as you offer it, I'm awfully late. I don't know what my clients will say. Let us arrange that I fetch you at our house after a couple of hours, and then, if all be satisfactorily decided, we can lunch to- 2OO GOD'S FOOL. gather at the Club and start the news of your engage- ment. There's nothing in the world not even wildfire spreads half as fast." "Yes, that will do very well." "But it's a bargain about my getting help from you in my turn?" "Yes," said Hendrik with his lips to the tube. BLANK. 2O I CHAPTER IV. BLANK. "WELL?" asked Thomas a couple of hours later, pausing in the hall of his own house as Hendrik issued from the door of the dining-room to meet him. "You may congratulate the happiest of mortals," re- plied Lossell. "Cornelia has promised to be mine." "So be it," said Thomas. "Now just let me go in to her for a moment, and then we can drive to the Club together. I see you have kept your cab." "Yes, to sit in and wait, in case she had refused me," answered Hendrik gaily. "Two hours!" ejaculated Thomas, shaking his head. "Well, well, true love was always reckless and regardless of expense." And he disappeared behind the dining- room door, closing it carefully after him. The fair Cornelia was standing by the window, look- ing out into the dull garden. She turned round slowly, as her brother came in. There was a glad light of con- tentment over her forehead, but it died away at sight of the young advocate, just as the sunlight slips from your chamber-wall before a falling blind. "Well?" said Thomas, repeating the brief greeting he had used to Hendrik. "He has proposed to me," replied Cornelia dryly, "and 1 have accepted him. That is all," 202 GOD'S FOOL. "All?" said Thomas indignantly. "Nonsense. You might give me a word of thanks for having managed so well for you what young ladies usually settle for them- selves." He threw a hundredweight of spite on the word "young." "On the contrary," averred Cornelia with no less acrimony, "he tells me that he has been wanting to ask me for ever so long. He says modesty has deterred him; that's rubbish. Modesty only deters men from doing what they don't wish to do but ought to. And as soon as you want him to do it, he does it That means that you've been keeping him back hitherto. And I should like to know how, Thomas, and why." "I?" said Thomas innocently. "Come, that's too bad. The patcher-up of lovers' quarrels always gets the abuse they had destined for each other. My dear Corry, I regret that I couldn't get him sooner. Be glad that I got him so soon. You must allow that twelve hours isn't bad." "If you have got him so soon," she insisted, "you could have got him much sooner. You have been keep- ing him off, and I repeat I should like to know why." He shrugged his shoulders: "Keeping him off!" he repeated with scorn. "I had trouble enough to bring him up to the scratch. Swallow him, and digest him thankfully, and ask no questions as to how he was caught and cooked. Poor fellow!" "Thomas!" she burst out, the tears of rage gathering in her eyes, "I don't believe you. To think that I could have been married perhaps before I was th-th-thirty!"- her feelings overcame her. "Go away!" she cried, "I don't want ever to see you again!" BLANK. 203 "Dear me," said Thomas coolly. "I am glad to see you can still be childish. I should have thought you would have forgotten the way by this time. 'Before you were thirty!' What utter folly, Cornelia. Lossell hasn't been hesitating as long as all that." "Tell me what brought him round?" she said in a wheedling voice, taking her hands from her face. "Not to-day," replied Thomas, who did not quite trust the strength of nerve of his sister's conscience, "I've no time. He's waiting for me in the hall. I dare say he heard you yell out you were past thirty." And with this parting shot he retired. It was too bad of Cornelia to get such an idea into her head. She would take a very different view of the matter in a day or two, when he informed her of the truth. But, in the meantime, she cut up rough. "It's all right," he said to Lossell, who was anxiously pacing the narrow hall. "Only she thinks you don't know about the money. I had to leave her that little illusion. And so will you have to. The women can't do without a semblance of love." "What a lucky thing it is that they are content with the semblance," added this young philosopher, as Hendrik was waking the cabman. "Now we men are different, we either want the real thing or no pretence at all. And we are quite satisfied to do without the semblance when the real thing can't be got. How awful it would be if women were like that!" Hendrik did not cry out against the charge implied in these words. Perhaps he did not hear it. He occu- pied himself with poking his umbrella into the cabman's 204 COD'S FOOL. dingy cape-protected sides, till the old fellow became dimly conscious that he was wanted. And then they drove to the Club and had lunch and a bottle of Heidsieck Monopole. And Thomas told everybody about Hendrik's good fortune, and everybody congratulated Hendrik, and then went away into the smoking-room, and laughed. Next day on a beautiful afternoon of early frost, one of those days when all earth and all heaven are in a glitter of radiant cold Hendrik Lossell and his Cor- nelia walked down arm in arm to see the skating on the "Koopstad Ice-Club's" submerged field. Thereby they announced their engagement to all the world's wife and daughters. No one had heard a whisper as yet of the fair fiancee's supposed accession to fortune. And somebody said that meeting Cornelia out with that little boy at her side reminded you of that other Roman dame who fetched her lumps of mischief home from school and tried to pass them off on her friends as "jewels." Rough diamonds they probably were. And Hendrik wrote to Hubert, out at Shanghai, that he was engaged to Cornelia Alers, whom Hubert would doubtless remember, the girl with the majestic bearing, and that he hoped that he Hendrik would be as happy in his married life as Hubert was with the English girl he had chosen out yonder, and who had already gladdened his heart with a couple of children. Should he add a word about Cornelia Alers's quarter of a million florins? He thought not. No, better wait till next mail. BLANK. 2O5 So they were happy. Cornelia bestowed upon Hendrik the most statuesque of smiles, and Hendrik brought to Cornelia the most costly of hothouse flowers. He soon noticed that she did not care for flowers un- less they were costly. For she said: "Oh, what beau- tiful roses! They are sixpence apiece at this time of the year." Hendrik was deeply mortified, for they had cost him eightpence halfpenny, and he considered she ought to have known. Nevertheless they were happy. And the ladies of Koopstad, having a new subject for discussion and de- famation, were happy too. On the third day after the day of the engagement Thomas started up from the newspaper he was reading at the Club with an exclamation of such violence that Hendrik dropped his "Review of Finance" into the grate. "Hush," he said, turning round in alarm. "They will hear you over there. What's the matter?" "Let them hear!" cried Alers hoarsely. He ran to the central table and rummaged with nervous hand among the chaos of newspapers scattered there. "Help me to find another list of the Vienna prizes, Lossell. Help me quick. The Amsterdam Gazette or something! Good Heavens, supposing there was to be some mis- take." Lossell needed no second injunction. "How do 206 GOD'S FOOL. you mean 'wrong'?" he asked in a whisper, as he joined his friend in the search. He got no answer. The advocate hurriedly snatched at a journal and tore it open with a great screech of rent paper casting agitated glances down its columns. "Merciful Heaven, it is true!" he murmured, in a long-drawn gasp. The paper fell from his hand. Hendrik Lossell stood op- posite him white and uncertain. "Come away, Hendrik," said Alers gently, after that first moment of paralysis, "I must speak to you. No, not here. Let us go home." They paused for a few seconds outside the Club- entrance, under the full light of the lamp. "What next?" asked Lossell. Alers seemed completely to have lost his ordinary cool alertness. "Not in the open street," he raid dazedly. "Let us take a cab again, like, like that other time." And they got into one. "Where to?" said Lossell, his hand on the door. "Oh, anywhere," replied the other. Ix>ssell gave Alers's address. "Henk," began Alers, as they were driving through the lighted streets, "I may as well tell you at once. The number announced in the papers is not the number our bankers have sent me. There's some mistake. And I hope it's the papers have made it." "Oh, the lists in the papers are always inaccurate," said Hendrik, much flurried. "Mistakes almost con- stantly occur." "Yes, but the two papers agree," remarked Thomas, shaking his head. "That proves nothing. This information emanates from the same source. Let us drive to some money BLANK. 2O7 agents and inquire. What is the number you have? Do you know?" "Do I know?" repeated Thomas. "I should think so. No 37, Series 2419. But it's no use going to a banker's at this hour." "Then let's telegraph to Amsterdam so as to get an answer first thing to-morrow." "We can do that, if you like. It's not much use, but we can do it My dear Hendrik, how I hope this is a false alarm. What a disappointment it would be for her." "And what is the number in the newspapers?" asked Hendrik testily. "The series is the same, 2419. But the lot is 39 instead of 37." "The bankers are sure to know best," said Hendrik with an assurance he was far from feeling. They drove to the telegraph-office, and Thomas telegraphed. And then they parted, not so cordially as three days ago. "He's left me to pay the cab this time," said Thomas to himself, as he drove off alone in the direction of home. "Well, I suppose it's worth a cab fare. It's a miserable business. I should never have considered myself justified in doing it, if necessity hadn't squeezed our throats so tight." Hendrik Lossell went home and had a bad night of it, the worst he ever spent in his life. During the whole of his later reckless career, when far larger sums hung in the balance, he never experienced such a horror 208 GOD'S FOOL. of anxiety again. We get accustomed to the presence of anxiety, if only it will take a consistent form. As the slow hours waited on each other, he tossed to and fro upon his bed. Endless rows of figures danced up and down before his eyes. The room was hot, he thought, in spite of the dying fire and the oc- casional crack of the frost outside. The room was stifling. He threw off the bedclothes, and shivered with cold. And the next morning Thomas Alers came to him, before he had left for the office. He was sitting at his lonely breakfast in the great dull dining-room where Elias had first been stricken with blindness. Thomas brought a telegram with him. And the telegram con- tained only these words: "Series 2419. No. 39." The first thing which Hendrik noticed was that Thomas had cut off the signature. He fell back in his chair without a word of com- plaint, and sat stupidly staring in front of him. "I'm awfully sorry, old man," began Thomas Alers. "But there's no one to blame except the bankers. We shall leave them at once, of course, and take some other firm. They have always kept the list of our lottery tickets and shares, and they sent me a memor- andum as I told you, to the effect that No. 37 was out with the prize." "I don't believe," said Hendrik huskily, "that any firm in Christendom would make such a mistake as that." "No firm in Jewry would," replied Alers with an BLANK. 2O9 ugly laugh. "Nonsense, Henk, you don't mean to in- sinuate that I'm telling you lies? I'll show you the memorandum if you like." "What is the name of the firm?" asked Hendrik, with a certain amount of menace in his tone. "I told you last night when we telegraphed that I could not, in all honour, betray them. It would ruin them, if the thing were to get known." "Nevertheless," said Hendrik, "I, and I only, have a right to know it." "You have not. You will see the memorandum, with the name cut out, and that must suffice. Lossell, you are most insulting. I should not permit you to doubt my word in this manner, if I did not take the vexation of the moment into account. I can under- stand your disappointment, but its expression must re- main within bounds." And lanky young Alers blustered and tried to look broad. Hendrik Lossell was not a passionate man. Or rather, the quiet fury of his passion burned white and flameless, unnoticed by all except by him whose heart it consumed. "Sit down," he said calmly, "and let us talk." There was an intensity of purpose in his quiet gesture which caused the other to sneak into the corner of a big black sofa. "Look here, Alers," said Hendrik. "You have fooled me. There's no denying it. You played the part very well till now, but this final scene is too dif- ficult, even for so good an actor as you are. Don't God's Fool. f. 14 2IO GOD'S FOOL. jabber at me; it's useless. The whole thing was got up; I can see that. I don't believe your story about the Amsterdam bankers. I'm not a child." "Now really, Lossell " "Hold your tongue, or admit the truth. I see through the whole farce, I tell you. And I con- sider myself free, accordingly, as regards Mejuffrouw Alers." "You mean to say that you break it off?" "Yes. I have been scandalously duped, and I re- fuse to submit to that." "In other words," cried Alers, rising to the occasion, "you confess to having asked my sister for her money alone?" "Not that But I confess to not having perceived that I was being snared like a bird." Alers got up out of his corner. "We shall see," he said, threatening in his turn, "what Koopstad society will say when you tell it your story. The moment after I had communicated to you what I believed to be my sister's good fortune, you propose to her, after having implored me not to divulge my secret to anyone. She is half a dozen years older than you. And as soon as I tell you there's a mistake about the money, you want to retract Do, if you dare," he cried, blazing out, "and stop in Koopstad, if you can." "She said she was twenty-nine!" cried the wretched bridegroom. "Well, I won't contradict her. She has said it so long, that she ought to be sure about it. And where is your fine talk about the delicacy of your position, and your wishing you had never known of the lottery- BLANK. 211 prize? Enough. Gammon. You saw I didn't believe it at the time." "I won't marry her," persisted Hendrik, reddening. "I don't care about Koopstad. It's quite true that I had liked her before all this business, but I won't marry a woman who could play a fellow such a mean trick as this." "Is that your only difficulty?" asked Alers. "No, but it is the chief one. I have always liked Cornelia. She is imposing, and I, for one, consider her handsome." "Well, if it's any comfort to you, I can swear you my most solemn oath, she's as innocent as as a new- laid egg. She knows of nothing. Convince yourself. When I went in to her, I did not tell her about the money. The trick, such as it is, but there is no trick, was mine." Lossell went close up to his antagonist, his clenched fists held down tight by his sides. "Blackguard!" he said. "You are as disagreeable as you are foolish, Lossell. It is you who outwitted me when you told me you loved my sister without this money. You have treated us dis- gracefully. And I undertake that, if you now leave Cornelia in the lurch, this good and upright little world of Koopstad will spue you out as you deserve." "I have always liked her," said Hendrik, "fairly well. But I won't marry her now." And so Hendrik Lossell married the fair Cornelia. And the whole of Koopstad flowed to the church to "assist" at the ceremony. It said, when it came out, 14* 212 GOD'S FOOL. that the preacher had been extremely edifying, and the only thing it did not understand and consequently would like to inquire about, was why the bridegroom had taken the bride. The bride asked herself the same question. The bridegroom did not ask it, but he grumbled con- siderably over the answer. COUSINS AND COZENAGE. 213 CHAPTER V. COUSINS AND COZENAGE. HE resolved, however, to make the best of it. And he did. It was true, as he had admitted to Alers, that he had long felt a sneaking liking for Cornelia. "She was a woman of sense," he always said, "a woman whom you could speak with. A rare thing. For most women you can only speak to, and look at." "Well, that's one comfort," Hubert had answered but that was several years ago, "for there's not much to look at in Keetje Alers." Hubert must have been speaking qualitatively. Quantitatively there was a good deal of Cornelia. Yes, there was a good deal of her, and what there was belonged to that substantial sort of female archi- tecture which does not do for sweet seventeen, but often develops wonderfully into a dignified matron at the head of her dinner-table. "She'll wear best of them all, will Cornelia," Thomas would say in reviewing his sisters. He was very vulgar and coarse; I don't deny it, but he saw without spectacles the things he wanted to see. Cornelia, having climbed, with a lift from her brother, into the lap of Hendrik Lossell and Koopstad society, settled down majestically among what she called the duties of her position. She found herself surrounded by an army of newly acquired cousins who could not 214 GOD'S FOOL. remember that her mother had been their cousin before. And although she did all she could to cure their de- fective memories by frequent injections of facts, she found that the failing was constitutional. In fact, it was hereditary. "She is trying to cozen us," said a con- nection of Hendrik's, who was a wit and a ne'er-do-well. But she clung to her theory that patience would bring them round. "If you want to play your cards well in this world, you must choose the game of patience," she said to Hendrik Lossell, one day, as they were driving home from a house where they had been ungraciously received. Little Hendrik gallantly pressed a kiss on his consort's substantial arm. "You are as witty as you are clever," he said. The Dutch word which he used for "clever" is an ambiguous one; it may mean "good-look- ing" and it may mean "well-brained"; the English word "smart" may serve as an example of somewhat similar latitude. Those old Duchmen were wonderfully shrewd old fellows. They understood how to preserve in close contiguity the two forms of peace most dear to their repose-loving natures, the peace of the heart and the peace of the hearth. And, having made the time- honoured discovery, which all men make and which each man must make for himself, viz., the discovery, that, by some strange perversity, most pretty women are stupid and most clever women ugly, they thought out this subtle combination which satisfied both their own consciences and the vanity of their wives. "How 'cun- ning' you look!" they would say, and their children say it still. And the frightfullest hag in the eleven provinces casts an approving look towards the glass. The invention is not patented. And the discoverer COUSINS AND COZENAGE. 215 of the secret makes no charge for divulging it. He generously offers it to all other nations. He makes them a present of the word. It is "Knap." Introduced into the various languages of Christendom (let us begin with petticoat-governed Christendom), it will do more towards bringing about universal harmony than the whole of Volaptlk. "How 'knap' you look!" said Hendrik Lossell. But on his lips the word may have beeq a recognition of the majesty of the Roman nose no one can say. The coldness of his relatives they were mostly his mother's people was fast warming his heart into a blaze of affection for Cornelia. After all, she could not be held responsible for her brother's treachery. He had con- vinced himself that she was innocent of all complicity. He was furious with the advocate only, but the advocate, when he found the couple "billing and cooing," as he phrased it, declared he would set up a matrimonial agency. He was born a match-maker, he said to Cor- nelia. "A match-seller," replied that amiable damsel. Matron. No offence was intended. None will be given. She is still alive, but she won't read this story. She never reads novels. She has grown religious of late. At least, so she says. Mevrouw Lossell clung for many months to the idea of conciliating her husband's relations. She only gave it up after a passage of arms with that same good- natured old aunt of his who had advised him to fly to the protection of her skirts. "My cousin van Driel was like that," this old lady was remarking one day over the tea-cups. "She was 216 GOD'S FOOL. so terribly frightened of fire that she used always to have a rope-ladder hanging ready from her bedroom window. And a man climbed up one night, as we had always told her would happen, and took away all the silver from under her bed. My cousin, Miss Matilda van Driel, that was. I fancy you can hardly have known her." "She was a cousin of my mother's, Aunt Theresa," replied Mevrouw Lossell. "Don't you remember I told you so the other day, when we were speaking of 'Beechy Place' where she lived? And I knew about the ladder. I have heard the story ever since I was a little girl. And I remember the robber left some of the plate be- hind. People used to say he had caught a glimpse of Miss Matilda without her front, and it gave him such a turn, that he fled." "Indeed?" said the old lady. "Will you take an- other cup of tea, my dear? I never heard that part of the story, and I should hardly think it was very likely, because my cousin Matilda never wore a front, you know. She had exceedingly ugly curls, but they were her own. And were you ever inside 'Beechy Place,' my dear?" "No," replied Cornelia. "My mother did not visit there in later life." "Indeed? Ah well, then, you never saw the sitting- room of my cousin Geertruida. My cousin Geertruida had an idea that all colours but green were injurious for the eyes. So she had her sitting-room papered and curtained and carpeted in green, and she wore a green dress and had green chair-coverings and, worst of all, the glass of the windows was green. It was very pe- COUSINS AND COZENAGE. 2 17 culiar. Was she a cousin of your mother's also, my dear?" "Why, naturally," replied Cornelia, somewhat taken aback. "She was a sister of of Matilda's, so she must have been." "Yes, she was a sister, as you say. And there was a third sister, Theodora. Theodora would never on any pretext enter Geertruida's sitting-room, for she had a dreadful blotchy complexion, and the green things made her look a fright Theodora did not appear hand- some in any one's sitting-room. She was decidedly plain. Did you ever see my cousin Theodora van Driel?" "No," stuttered Cornelia, "not that I remember, aunt." "And she also was a cousin of your mother's, my dear?" Then Cornelia understood how it is that the well- bred horses of Koopstad refuse to turn their noses to- wards the shabby-genteel parts of the town. And she gave up trying to pierce loopholes through those blind walls of memory. She realized that family minds, like family mansions, arrange their windows so as to open on their own small court alone. And she went home and on a small scrap of paper she wrote the following words: "Rank discourtesy The discourtesy of rank," and she sent them in anonymously to the Koopstad "Weekly Fun." But the "Weekly Fun" did not insert them. So you see that, having grasped her fruit, she found it to be an apple of Sodom. But she was not the 2l8 GOD'S FOOL. woman to be daunted by feline amenities. She resolved at once to force her way forward where the pleasanter method of slipping in had been denied her, and she could not long hesitate in Koopstad as to the means to be employed. "Cornelia," she said to herself before her looking- glass, a day or two after the tea-drinking with Hendrik's aunt, "these people remember each other because they can boast of each other. And as soon as their con- nection with you affords matter for boasting, they will also remember how closely connected we are. AH you have got to do, is to have better things, or at any rate finer things than they have, and they will recall the relationship. They will hate you, but that they do already. And even if they declaim against your extra- vagance to others, they will add: 'She is my cousin, you know.'" "Yes, my dear," she was saying a couple of hours later to a daughter of our old friend the Cocoa-lady, now married in her turn to a sugar-planter, "I thought your little entertainment very nice very nice. And it was good of you to ask us" this very humbly, with downcast eyes "I am thinking of giving a small dinner myself, you know. Oh, quite a small affair, as we have been married so short a time. Only twelve people to begin with. You had eighteen, had you not? No, I shall only ask twelve, and we must be very select And I shall have all my flowers over from Nice; you can't get good flowers here at this time of the year." "But won't that be very expensive?" suggested the sugar-planter's wife. "If you want things first-rate, you must pay first-rate COUSINS AND COZENAGE. prices, of course," replied Cornelia, with dignified non- chalance, "but I agree with Hendrik that it's much better to leave these things undone, if you can't do them well. Nobody can abuse you for not asking them to dinner, if you don't entertain, but they can abuse you for inviting them and then making them sit down to sweet champagne." "I prefer champagne to be sweet," said the other lady, reddening as she recalled last Thursday's Moet and Chandon. "I don't," said Cornelia coolly, "but that is, perhaps, a matter of taste as well as of price. Well, I shall see about my dinner-party. I must arrange the invitations with Hendrik, and I hope I shall be able to squeeze in a vacancy for you, as you were so kind as to ask us the other day. It was so sweet of you, my dear. And it was really quite a nice little entertainment, really quite pretty and nice." "We shall none of us go to your party, so you needn't ask us," muttered the sugar-planter's wife, as soon as she was out in the street. But when ultimately the dinner was served, all the guests sat down to it. The sugar-planter's wife was not there. She had not been asked. But she had been promised an invitation to a more promiscuous gathering, when the flowers .would again come from the Riviera. There were to be a good many gaieties in the dull old house. "My cousin Lossell is going to give a dinner-party," said the sugar-planter's wife to the next lady she called on. "Quite a small affair. Only twelve people. But very select. She is going to have over a quantity 220 GOD'S FOOL. of roses from Nice for the occasion. Heaven knows what it will cost. Yes, she is very extravagant, un- doubtedly, but that is her business, not mine. And Hendrik Lossell has plenty of money, you know, though not as much as my cousin Elias. She has promised me an invitation, and I am curious to see what a dinner at the old house will be like under the new regime. A very brilliant affair. Yes, she is a cousin of mine. No, not only through the Lossells. Her mother was a van Purmer. Before her marriage, she must have been a distant connection of ours." And then she went on to her mother's, the Cocoa- dame's, and there the two abused Cornelia untiringly during five quarters of an hour. But they were alone, and they closed the doors. They felt that in future it would be a necessity of existence to lay bare all the faults of the intruder, but they also felt that they would do well to curtain their society windows before the vivi- section began. Cornelia was going to be a power in Koopstad. She was going to spend more money than other people. And the good city did homage in the first place to those who were known to have money, whether they spent it or not, and in the second to those who were known to spend money, even though it might be hinted that they did not possess it And, then, there was always the vast wealth of Elias in the background. His stepbrothers were his heirs. Unless he married. THE BRIDE ASKS FOR FLOWERS ON HER PATH. 221 CHAPTER VL THE BRIDE ASKS FOR FLOWERS ON HER PATH. "HENDRIK," said Cornelia that evening after dinner, *'I have been thinking that it is quite time we began returning the civilities which have been shown us on our marriage and afterwards." Hendrick was lying back in his easy chair, resting after the day's work at the office. He was enjoying the cosiness of the warm, well-lighted library his father's room and the excellence of his cigar also one of his father's. The unique enjoyment which Hendrik Senior had allowed himself had been genuine Havannahs. And his sons had not understood till after his death what their father might mean by the reiterated saying that a man could not be altogether unhappy, as long as he still had a perfect cigar. Hendrik Junior did not possess his father's talent for smoking, but he liked good things generally. He lay lazily stretched out in the big arm-chair, his little body lost against the dull time-stained leather, his little feet in their glazed shoes and red-striped socks forming a. bright speck on the hearth-rug. He was not so diminutive, really, when you came to measure him, but the whole of the man was so thin and slight, so puny in face and feature, that you could not think of him 222 GOD'S FOOL. otherwise, if you once had noticed his head and hands, than as little Hendrik Lossell. He did not think of himself as little Hendrik Lossell. He was proud of his hands, on account of their smallness, and he was proud of his feet for the same reason. He sat eyeing them at this very moment, as he rested by the fire, with placid content He was dwelling gently in a pleasant after-dinner simmer on his social importance and his personal attractions. He was a man of very great standing and of very small feet He was far more comfortable, of course, in a multi- plicity of ways, since Cornelia had taken the direction of his bachelor household. He would have been so, whoever had succeeded to his mother's too-long deserted place. But Cornelia, schooled in the school of much demand and but little supply, was an excellent house- keeper, quite capable of gladdening her husband's heart with abundance of comfort and good cheer. Economical, however, she was no longer, whatever she might once have been. It could have been foreseen that the change in her circumstances must develop either increasing parsimony or extravagance. She "went for" extra- vagance. Her "house-money" sufficed amply for her wants, as long as the tradesmen sent in no bills. Hendrik Lossell was delighted to see how much an experienced housewife could do for comparatively little. "It all comes of method," he declaimed. "You can do what you like if only you know how to do it Ah, poverty is the grandest of schools, and the greatest of THE BRIDE ASKS FOR FLOWERS ON HER PATH. 223 usurers. They say rich men get usury from their money. It's the poor that do that." Cornelia said it was very true. And she considered they must now acknowledge such kindness as they had received. "We sent cards round," replied Hendrik, alluding to a custom of his nation. "And we 'thanked' in the papers as well. What mote would you have? I'm sure I've disburdened myself of all the gratitude I ever felt." "You know very well I don't mean that, Hendrik," said Cornelia severely. "Everybody sends round bits of paste-board to everybody else. It would be a bless- ing if the whole thing were abolished." "Have you got tired already of seeing 'Mevrouw Lossell' in print?" interrupted Hendrik with a tender glance at his larger half. "You were pleased enough with the little bits of paste-board, when I brought you them a few weeks ago." "How silly you are, Henk," she answered kindly. She drew a chair close up to his and sat down by his side. She had too much sense of the fitness of things to risk making herself ridiculous by flopping down on the rug at his feet. "I like the bits of paste-board as much as ever," she said, "but there are other cards I stand more in need of just now. Cards of invitation, my dear Henk. We must begin to think of giving our first dinner- party." How she enjoyed the last words, "Our first dinner- party!" I believe there is only one other sentence, equally short, which contains as much condensed happi- 224 COD'S FOOL. ness and disappointment in a worldly woman's life. "My first ball-dress!" Poor things, that is all. All, be- tween God's Heaven above them, and the shroud and banquet of worms below. "Oh, come, not this year," expostulated Hendrik, sitting up a hideous vision rose before his eyes of the Burgomaster's wife in her crimson satin, and the brooch with her grandfather's hair, established in the place of honour for an hour and a half, complaining that the room was too hot or too draughty. "Oh come, Cornelia, nobody will expect us to entertain already. Why, we're supposed to be still far too fond of each other, my dear, to want anybody else but ourselves." He stretched out his hand and stroked his wife's, which lay in her lap. He had a theory that you could do what you liked with a woman if you were kind to her. More men have that theory. It all depends upon their getting the right sort of woman. If they do oh, when they do! their fate is sealed. "Certainly," said Cornelia, gently pushing the hand away. "That is quite true, Hendrik, and all very well. But, nevertheless, when you dine with other people, you must ask them back again. Most undoubtedly, you must ask them back again." "Of course," persisted Hendrik, "but not the first year, Cony." Have you ever noticed that when two people keep up a conversation in "exactly" and "undoubtedly" and "of course," they are always in utter contradiction and disagreement? Such words are a kind of jumping- board, on which you alight before you leap away." Cornelia withdrew her hand altogether and looked THE BRIDE ASKS FOR FLOWERS ON HER PATH. 225 at her husband. "My dear boy," she said, "you must allow women to be judges of these matters of etiquette. You talk as if it were a pleasure for me to take upon me all the burden and the responsibility of this dinner. Do you really think a woman likes to get one ready?" "Yes," said Hendrik boldly. "You know little of the worry it entails, then. To hear you, Hendrik, one would think you had always lived among the flightiest of females. Was your mother so fond of seeing company?" Hendrik might have forced the truth a little for the sake of argument and said: "Yes," but he could not very well class his dead mother among "the flightiest of females," so he muttered: "No," and shook the ashes off his cigar. "There, you see!" exclaimed his wife triumphantly. "You men always have your uniform little set of cut and dried axioms about women, without any regard for what you could see for yourselves. It's a little catechism you learn in the novels. If you will take the trouble to look for yourself, Henk, I will teach you what a true woman is like." And so, having given him clearly to understand that it was not pleasure but duty she was in search of, Cornelia set herself to convince her lord and master how wrong it is to shirk duty for the sake of repose. "Let us have them," acquiesced Hendrik at last, with a sigh of resignation, "but you need not take upon yourself all that bother you are afraid of. You have only to ask Mulder to arrange everything as it used to be. He knows all about how my mother used to order things. 'Her dinners were a great success, I believe." Cod's Fool. I. Ij 226 COD'S FOOL. Mulder was the family butler, who had ruled the basement for a great many years. Cornelia had re- tained him, as was almost inevitable, on condition that all the maid-servants should go. But the idea that he might superintend her domestic arrangements was any- thing but pleasing to the strong-willed lady. "Thank you," she said sharply, showing offence for the first time that evening. "Such things can hardly be left to servants, I should say. And you must allow me to manage matters in my own way, though I have every respect for your mother's. Fashions change so much, Hendrik, as you know. If the thing is done at all, it must be done well." "Ye es," hesitated Hendrik. "You might have a dish or two from the pastrycook's." Cornelia ignored this hint As if she were going to trust her untried domestic! She would have a man- cook in upon whom she could entirely rely. But you must never harass your husband with trifles, when these are only preliminaries. It's no use first tickling a man you are intending to stab. "It will be best to order the flowers from Nice," said Cornelia, "as the Leeflands had done the other day. Only, if we do order them, we may as well have more roses than they had. It is no use, I repeat, doing these things shabbily, and it looks so absurd to admit that the flowers have come from the South, unless they really make a show which is worthy of the journey." "Flowers from Nice!" echoed Hendrik. "What rubbish! Why, the Leeflands are among the richest people in Koopstad. We needn't surely compete with them." THE BRIDE ASKS FOR FLOWERS ON HER PATH. 227 A weaker woman than Cornelia would have burst out crying, and sobbed that she wouldn't have a party at all, no, she wouldn't, however much Hendrik might ask her. But Cornelia knew that these things are not to be done more than once, or perhaps twice, in a life- time by a wife who is older than her husband, or by one who has a Roman nose. Besides, she did not require the expedient; it is always a little humiliating, though invariably successful. She could manage without "It's not always the richest people who need to spend most money," she began. "You have married me, Hendrik, and now you must support me accordingly. We can afford neither ostentation nor shabbiness. But we must take our position in society, and that will depend largely on the impression we create this winter. I am going to create a good impression, I assure you. Leave things to me, and you will have every reason to be satisfied." "My mother's position was all right," said Hendrik, annoyed, "and she didn't have flowers from abroad." He irritated her with the constant reference to his mother. "I tell you, times alter," she cried. "Leave me in peace with your mother. Besides, the case was different Your mother found her position ready-made." "You need not remind me of that," said Hendrik, colouring. "Yes, I must. For it is a fact, and I do not deny it. It would be false pride in me to do so, and I have no false pride. My mother's family was every bit as good as your mother's, but my father, I suppose, was below yours. At any rate, he had not the good fortune to marry the wealthy Margaretha Volderdoes." IS* 228 GOD'S FOOL. "The wealth of the wealthy Margaretha Voldcrdoes is not mine," said Hendrik, still irritably. It was the first time that he alluded to the subject in speaking with his wife. She looked up at him quickly. "I know that," she replied, "but I suppose that one day it will be. Yours and Hubert's. And, meantime, you are the head of the business. And quite rich enough, I presume." "I am not rich," persisted Hendrik. "You saw that from the marriage-settlements." "I know," she said, playing with her hand on the arm of his easy-chair, "that you have not as much capital at present as you are entitled to. But your in- come from the business must be very large, Hendrik." "My income from the business is what poor people call very large," answered Hendrik bitterly, "and what men of business themselves call miserably small." "He might mention the sum," thought Cornelia. But Hendrik thought differently. "Well," said the lady, as soon as she perceived that he remained obstinately silent, "it is no wish of mine to intrude into your privacy in any way. Nor does there appear to be any reason why I should do so. But it is evident to everyone, and you will not deny it, that you can afford, and must afford, to keep up your position in this town. You need not be afraid of my falling into extravagance. I was not brought up in it, Hendrik, and you yourself have said hitherto that I managed so well." "Yes," assented Hendrik, "that is true." "Very well, then," she continued, following up her success, "you may be sure I shall stop short of the THE BRIDE ASKS FOR FLOWERS ON HER PATH. 22Q example of that great lady of Paris who, the Scraps in this week's 'Graphic' say, spent forty thousand francs on the flowers for one fete." But her comparison overdid it, and frightened him. "More probably an adventuress than a great lady," he said. "However, joking apart, how much do you expect them to cost?" "I shall have to find out. But in any case, Hen- drik, you must allow me an additional grant for my receptions. I cannot, of course, defray them out of the housekeeping money. You must let me have, say, two hundred florins for this dinner " "Two hundred florins for a dinner!" he began. But she swept down his voice, "And the flowers. And, then, we shall have to give a couple more, which may be slightly simpler, and an evening reception once or twice with a little music. We can't live like hermits, Hendrik, however fond we may be of each other. The house must do as it is for this year people will under- stand about our not altering it but, when we go abroad during the summer, for our holiday, it will have to be done up. Yes, it will have to be done up and renovated altogether. There's no denying it: it ought to have been seen to years ago. And we shall have to get new furniture modern furniture for the two drawing- rooms. We can leave the dining-room as it is for the present. An old-fashioned dining-room doesn't look so bad. We can't help ourselves. We needn't exaggerate. But the inevitable we must do." She stopped. He stood on the hearthrug, staring at her. "And, Hendrik," she added, "there is one other 230 GOD'S FOOL. thing which is almost more important than any. We must have a carriage. The sooner we start it the better. It will look so marked to do it after a while." "Have you quite done?" he asked. "Quite." "Then, look here, Cornelia, all this is foolish talk, utterly unreasonable and impossible. You have married a hard-working man, a man of business, a man whose object in life is to save money, not to waste it. We are going to live very simply, and you must make up your mind to do so. I am not unjust to you, for I never pretended to be even as rich as I am." "No," she cried angrily, "you pretended to be poor. And there is nothing more dangerous not that I married you for wealth or for poverty than a rich man's pretending to be poor. It writes him down a Croesus at once." "There is one thing yet worse," he said quietly, "it is a poor man's or woman's pretending to be rich. It doesn't pay." There was so much meaning in his tone that she looked at his face. She had avoided doing so for some time. "What do you mean?" she asked. "You are most unjust All Koopstad knew we were poor." "Ask Thomas what I mean," replied Hendrik, nettled into desperate candour. He had not intended to say as much, but the strain of the moment was too strong for him. These plans of his wife's must be stopped by all means. "I prefer to ask you, Hendrik," she said. She had risen and stood facing him. THE BRIDE ASKS FOR FLOWERS ON HER PATH. 23! "I mean this," he said fiercely, "that the less money is spent in this house the better. I will ring, if you will allow me, for tea." And he stopped further altercation by summoning a servant. Cornelia stood irresolute. The great battle had been fought. Who had won it? There seemed to be heavy losses on both sides. Her husband had shown more energy than she had expected of him. Evidently, this question of money was the one on which he best knew his own mind. She must return to the charge, the sooner the better, but not before she could oversee the field. The vehemence of her emotion had brought on a sharp fit of headache, more than suf- ficient to justify retreat. But retreat would have been a confession of discomfiture. She wrapped herself in imperious silence as she handed her husband's tea And Hendrik felt stubborn and crestfallen, "sorry he had spoken," yet resolved to hold out. It was too late to go back, for either of them. And how to go on successfully, was far from clear. The fate of all the Lossells hung in the balance, and this woman stood poising an uncertain weight in the clasp of her powerful hand. 232 GOD'S FOOL. CHAPTER VII. TREATS OF RELIGION. AN impression of discomfort remained brooding after their quarrel over the newly-married pair. A dif- ference of opinion between husband and wife must end in a "blow-up," if it is to end at all. And this dis- crepancy lay almost too deep for such a simple solution. The expenses of life we have always with us, whatever may become of its joys. And where these expenses must be borne in common, and one of twain looks at them through a telescope and the other through a microscope, the daily difficulty cannot but ultimately dim the view of both. So it was with Hendrik and Cornelia. They were not sufficiently attached to each other for either loyally to sacrifice, once for all, his or her whole object in life to the other's unreasonable per- sistence; they were not so altogether indifferent to mutual regard as to remain entirely content under a consciousness of disagreement They had not yet got beyond that stage in which you are still heartily an- noyed because your partner in life will not see that it would be rational to agree with you. There is another slough, which lies much farther and much deeper, the slough of indifference or of despair. So they lived on in that uncomfortable relation be- tween two closely allied persons when the air is full of TREATS OF RELIGION. 233 the silence of an ever-present preoccupation, which it were useless to allude to. And yet sometimes the sub- ject would unavoidably push itself forward. And there were moments, in which one of the two, exasperated by silent contemplation of the other's conduct, would burst out in the full enjoyment of pent-up eloquence. Such moments were rare, however, and they were not of the kind which bring peace in their train. For Cornelia was resolved not to "save and scrape," and Hendrik consistently refused to "waste." The lady, it must be admitted, had the stronger position, for it is always easier to let loose than to restrain. If she chose to spend money, it was difficult to keep her from doing so, for all Koopstad would give her credit, and she simply ordered and did not pay. Hendrik Lossell soon understood that, although she might be a methodical housewife, the credit system was undoubtedly at the bottom of her method. And to check her in this course he would have been compelled to seek for aid in a publicity which to him would have seemed worse than any evil she could do him. So the dinner-party took place, and was followed by a series of festivities. Cornelia resolutely and quietly put her foot down, and sent round the man with her orders and her invitations. She was not unreasonable. She had married a husband with a large income, and she was not going to live on a small one. "He loves money," she said to herself with infinite scorn. "He makes a lot of it, and then he puts it aside. For shame! like Harpagon, he loves money for its own sake in piles." She did not love money. She only loved money's worth. 234 GOD'S POOL. Yes, Hendrik Lossell loved money. But he did not love it as his wife believed, for its own bare, glittering sake alone. He had always respected it, from his earliest youth upwards, as the one god who is wor- shipped in Koopstad, and when a child, he had looked up with timid reverence to the great portal of its temple, the Exchange, which none but the initiated might enter. Those memories of childish veneration never quite die away from our hearts, and he must indeed have been seared by the flame of a desperate career who can recall what was deemed holy in the old home without a dim admission that it is holy still. But Hendrik, in the smooth flow of his life through the washed and tidied sheets of Koopstad, had never found cause to break away from the overshadowing solemnity of the state-religion. The state-religion was Caesar. And he brought unto Caesar the things which were Caesar's, cheerfully. He had never heard not even when he was confirmed upon reaching the requisite age of God and the things which are God's. He loved money, because the man who does not love money is a Socialist, and a Socialist is a Nihilist, and a Nihilist is an Atheist And an Atheist is a man who has no religion. Therefore, the love of money being the root of all religion, he loved money because he was a religious man. He loved it with a humble, tranquil veneration of its majesty, recognising it gratefully as the sheet-anchor of that respectability which, to him, represented the good ship of state. To Cornelia it was merely a source of personal enjoyment either of what you yourself possessed, as manifested, for instance, in the purchase TREATS OF RELIGION. 235 of pine-apples or of what your neighbours lacked, as exemplified when your pine -apples were bigger than anybody else's. To Hendrik it was a wondrous bene- ficent Omnipotence, enthroned in all that is not only great, but also good, the enemy of the improper, the improvident, the tattered, the discontented, in a word, the one tangible bulwark against the chaos of the anti- cosmos. He could not have reasoned it out, perhaps, but to him and to his co-religionists the god of the Cosmos, its originator and its upholder, was gold. He was not altogether unreasonable, surely. The original King may have been Love, but his subjects have de- posed him. If they can. Cornelia's love, then, was a merely animal affection, based on the passions. Hendrik's was a far higher spiritual admiration, growing forth from a man's calm appreciation of objective good. You cannot quite fathom the depth of his feeling, unless you live in Koopstad. But, very probably, you do. The passion of money-making, however, the religious enthusiasm of the thing, had first come upon him after his father's death. Till then he had received his allow- ance, and not thought much about the matter, except that it was a good thing his father was rich. But the discovery which had followed Hendrik Senior's demise had brought home in quite a different manner by comparison of absence the value of wealth to Hendrik Junior's mind. Old Elias Volderdoes's will changed 236 COD'S FOOL. the whole man, not by altering his character, but by suddenly sobering and hardening it down at the early age of nineteen. Still a boy, a precocious boy, such as these young city-chaps are apt to be, but a boy, none- theless, he found himself placed, as soon as the law would grant him license, face to face with the great difficulties and yet greater responsibilities of his position as practical head of the house. The position was an unjust one, cruelly unjust, for all the dead weight of work and anxiety pressed heavy upon his shoulders, while the fruits of his labour dropped from his hand into others, into hands which were too weak to retain the treasure and let it sink in a useless mass upon the ground. This sensation of futile work. not so much of work done for another, as of futile work, for the fast-collecting heap of dull gold would probably pour into his pockets in the end, when it was too late, had roused all the energies of his nature into dogged oppo- sition. He was an irritable but unimaginative man, one of the coarsely materialistic yet intensely nervous organi- zations of this age of railway engines. And to suggest injustice to him, was to exasperate him into restless resistance. For it is a tendency of our time that men can no longer brook the slightest injustice or oppression. When they experience them. But in many ways, undeniably, Ix>ssell's lot, such as circumstances had fashioned it, was a hard one, and it could almost be said that he had a right to rebel against it He resolved to alter it. And his resolve soon grew upon him, with the daily pressure of his wrongs, into that intensity of purpose which shrinks back from no sacrifice, if needs be, from no crime. TREATS OF RELIGION. ^37 For there is nothing that breeds injustice like impatience of injustice. Fifteen per cent, of the profits of the business were his, fifteen per cent, were Hubert's, the remaining seventy belonged to the shareholders, as yet to the unique shareholder, Eli as. But it will be remembered that Hendrik had insisted on acquiring the right to purchase shares at a fair price from his idiot step- brother. And as long as Elias was considered respon- sible for his actions, there could be nothing to hinder the shares being thus disposed of. In fact, it was the one way out of the dilemma, as Alers had immediately understood. Hendrik set himself then, heart and soul, to the acquiring of these shares. All that he wanted, to be- come master of the business, was capital to buy out the useless sleeping-partner, but it would be a long time ere he could command the large sums required for such an operation. Before Hubert had left for Shanghai, it had been settled that the shares were, for the next few years, to be estimated at a hundred and fifty-seven per cent. Hubert himself had bought a couple before his marriage, not since. Hendrik's one object of existence was to scrape money together and buy more. During the first few years after his father's death he had ' gradually dropped all those expensive tastes and habits which Koopstad dutifully nurtures in her richer sons. He cared for nothing now in which he could not foresee, through an intermediate vista of money-making, a nearer approach to the goal he was aspiring after. And so his whole soul went out to a passion of gold -getting, as a racer tears over the ground, 238 GOD'S FOOL. not for the sake of the sand beneath his feet, but for the sake of that little flag at the end. His little flag was the mastery of Volderdoes Zoncn. But his approach to it could hardly be compared to a rush over a race- course. It was a struggle uphill. He fought himself in all his little foibles, and con- quered them. He smoked cheaper cigars not a little thing, O daughters of Koopstad! he crushed down his taste for good French wines (and he had it); he caused his tailor to lift hands of deprecatory horror by sending a light summer-coat to be dyed. Somebody says this is nonsense. The somebody has forgotten all about when he was nineteen, or he has never had a light summer-coat And so he saved money. It's only the business- man who knows that every little tells. How he knew it! How be thought over it and worked it out His one pleasure had become to sit of evenings over his account-books, reckoning again and again his chances of profit and loss. His gains for the year would probably amount to so much. His expenses to so much. There would be so much left, then, towards the share-buying. He hardly had time to notice in between that his mother died. And in all this he was upright and straightforward. His mind was set square on its course. He had under- stood immediately, after the first temptation ' and its defeat by Hubert, that the shares must be honestly worked for and earned. He had no wish to obtain them by other means from Elias. He set himself to obtain them thus. And his one comfort was that the day would come at last when he would know that he was lord of the great house of business, in reality and TREATS OF RELIGION. 23Q not only in name, and when he could declare the fact before men. Yes, he must be able to declare it before men. And therefore, above all, there must be no underhand deal- ing. The brothers had left their father's notary, but they had betaken themselves to another of equal stand- ing. And the necessary "procurations" relative to the administration of Elias's property had been made out with all due precision and legal propriety. It could all bear inspection by anyone who might choose to inquire into it. The best experts had been called in to settle the price of the shares. All Koopstad might know that Elias's stepbrothers were slowly buying him out at that price. It was essential that Koopstad should know it. And that, ultimately, it should know of their success. Life, perhaps, was not worth living, but that moment of life was worth living for. And, then, suddenly, he married Cornelia. A fortune! The news had dawned upon him with one encircling flash of thought, not subsequent but simultaneous. Such fortune meant, by no means the realization of his plans, yet a great step towards it. For, if once such a share in the business had passed into his hands, the increase to his income resulting from ii would easily enable him to make further purchases. It would, above all, give him an immense advance upon Hubert, who had married a poor girl out yonder, all for love and loneliness. To get the start of Hubbie was a great thing for Henkie. He was furiously jealous of Hubbie, his partner, his brother, and, therefore, his rival. All this stood out in clear light upon his mind the very moment he first heard from Alers the story of the 240 GOD'S FOOL. lottery-prize. He liked Cornelia. He resolved, at once, to combine duty and pleasure in marrying Cornelia and her money. Which represented duty? And which pleasure? He hardly knew. A little of both, perhaps, was to be found in each. A man who thought and hoped as he did might have been expected to hang back as soon as he dis- covered the error into which he had been trapped. But to think this of him was not to know him well. Un- doubtedly his first impulse, as we have seen, was to cut the cords and free himself. But he desisted as soon as he perceived that the cords were drawn too tight. For, if it be true that gold was his god, we have seen that it was respectable gold. He was not a false-coiner. He clung to that outer respectability which is of the very essence of money. For money has always been the maximum of the genteel to the many; that is why they stamp it with the heads of Kings. The number has ever been a restricted one of those who know the difference between snobs and common people, or Kings and gentlemen, but coppers and counters no ten-year-old boy will confuse. The number is small, but it has always existed. And it is loud-voiced. Hendrik Lossell was afraid of public opinion. Public opinion, when it turns to the right, is usually the opinion of a chosen resolute few. Hendrik knew that these few go about in the city even unto this day, as the prophets of Jehovah went about among the children of Baal. He saw also in a moment; he was a man of slow impulse and quick decision he saw that he could no longer go back. And he went on. In one word: His TREATS OF RELIGION. 24! cult was not the cult of gold. It was the cult of social weight. It was not, as had been the case with old Elias, and to a certain extent with Hendrik Senior, the impersonal cult of Volderdoes Zonen. For the firm itself, to him, was chiefly a means towards an end. His father had sacrificed his life to the idea of com- mercial probity, honesty with regard to his unfortunate son, the heir of the house of Volderdoes. He would have liked the boy to die, but he could not cheat him. Not even under the stress of disastrous speculations. There was some small chance of Hendrik Junior's cheating, if only he could feel certain that he would never be found out. At present, however, he had not the slightest wish to cheat. He was willing to work, to work hard. And every fresh thousand that came rolling, wave-like, into the dead sea of Elias's fortune he conscientiously in- vested in Dutch Consols, where it lay uppermost till another wave fell a-top of it. It never had to wait long. And he scraped, and saved, and was happy in hope. And then, you see, he married Cornelia. Cod's Fool. I. 1 6 242 GOD'S FOOL. CHAPTER VIII. MUSIC AND DISCORD. AND, having married Cornelia, somewhat against his will, he was delighted and cheered by the discovery of her talent for housekeeping. The discovery took a load off his mind. True, he had expected that she would have thrifty habits, but he had not known whether she would combine economy with comfort "After all," he had said to himself in those first days of his en- gagement, "it is cheaper, on the long run, to marry a poor girl than a rich one." He was delighted to see his sophism assume such an appearance of good-sense. There is no sensation on earth more enjoyable than to find one's favourite sophism come true. He actually grew quite fond of his stately wife. And it vexed him to be obliged to disapprove of her conduct But she soon disappointed him in the very expectations he had most fondly cherished. It was too bad that Cornelia, of all women, should prove extra- vagant "It would be too bad," said Cornelia to herself continually, "to marry a large income and live on a small one." Some husbands can let slip a virtue or two in their wives without noticing much difference. They have plenty to lose. But the bottom of the basket had MUSIC AND DISCORD. 243 always remained more or less plainly visible to Hendrik Lossell's eyes. He was coming leisurely downstairs to his late break- fast on Sunday morning. Sunday to him, as a rule, was a day on which to transact such private business as he could find no time for in the week. He would look over his personal accounts and read the weekly survey of the Stock Exchange, and he would write the few uncommercial letters which circumstances might require. He was member of a couple of committees, like every Dutchman, high or low, and these gave him a little desultory occupation of the gently satisfactory sort. One of them was devoted to Charity Organiza- tion. He did not believe in charity, but he believed in organizing it into a minimum of charitableness. He was one of their best men. In spite of his small respect for the Sabbath, he involuntarily experienced its reposeful influence. To begin with, there never was any hurry about getting up on this first day of the week. And on that account, doubtless, as well as through the absence of the cus- tomary peals at the servants' entrance, a holy calm permeates the houses and skins even of those who would be most unwilling to acknowledge a day of rest. In France and Germany, for instance, it is not the pleasure-making which swamps the idea of Sunday half as much as the continuance of work. You look out of window, and there is the butcher at the door, and the bricklayer opposite is spreading his mortar. Poor fellows! they are enlightened members, probably, of their "Free-thought Society," and this evening they will prove 16* 244 GOD'S FOOL. to you, with impassioned eloquence, that Christianity has conferred no benefits on mankind. Hendrik Lossell had had time to shave leisurely. And that, in itself, is always indicative of peace of body and mind. The scene upon which he looked forth from his bedroom-window was tranquil, but, then, it was always that The house stood in its own small patch of ground, at some distance from the road, with a carriage-sweep in front of it Nobody ever passed it except the people who couldn't help doing so. He had drawn on his coat carefully he was not one of the men who wear Sunday coats. And he had thoughtfully put back his watch and his loose change and other trifles into his pockets, instead of making a grab at the whole lot, as on week-days. He had dressed alone, for Cornelia, who detested loitering, had gone downstairs an hour before. Cornelia was never half-awake. You could imagine that she woke up with her boots laced. And so he stole downstairs, enjoying the slowness of his movements, the dapper little man. He was going to have a quiet day of it. The only thing he regretted was the hitch in his intercourse with Cornelia. Perhaps he might go and see Elias again, once in a way. He did not often go and see Elias. But since his silent quarrel with his wife, he felt himself more drawn at times towards his elder brother. As he proceeded step by step across the little half- way landing, he heard voices down in the entrance-hall, and, looking over the banisters, he saw his wife in eager conversation with a gentleman, whom he imme- diately recognised. MUSIC AND DISCORD. 245 "I cannot do it, if you stick to that price," the fair Cornelia was saying with majestic eagerness; "I am sure you are very expensive, Herr Pfuhl." Hendrik understood at once that a fresh plot was being hatched against his repose of soul. For the personage who was paying his wife so early a morning call was the director of the Orchestra which provided all the high-class music of Koopstad. Herr Pfuhl was one of those people who always make the impression upon you of standing in need of being pulled together and buttoned up. He was a loose, flabby, untidy sort of man, with a round face and figure, red cheeks and tie, and shiny head and spectacles. The aforesaid full moon on his occiput was bordered at the lower side by a fringe of straggling, wispy dust-coloured locks, and when he bowed his fat little body, as he incessantly did, you caught yourself wondering how it was possible for a ball to cave in like that unless it was hollow. Need it be added after this that he bit his nails? That one fact ought to have incapacitated him for his pro- fession. But he was a magnificent musician, and some people considered this a compensation. "What is expensive?" cried Hendrik quickly. He hung over the banisters as far as he could reach. Cornelia started internally. She looked up calmly enough. Herr Pfuhl looked up also. And as the round red face and the thin pale face were lifted towards him, Hendrik thought to himself: "She is really quite hand- some! How well she carries her head!" "I was asking Herr Pfuhl," she said sweetly, "what would be his price for a musical evening. It would be 246 GOD'S FOOL. such a good idea to give a small concert, I thought But his price is beyond me. I think he ought to do it for less." For, although she was as magnificent in her views as the most penniless fortune-hunter, she could haggle and cut down like the wealthiest daughter in Israel. "ButMevrouwis dragging me the skin over the ears," protested the Director. He spoke no language at all. He had forgotten his own, and had never learned Dutch. "And she ignores that I cannot play my pieces with one half the performers and leave the others to make musics in the streets. It is not a band, Himmelkreuzsacrament, and my price is 'fixe' like in the big bazaars. And you do not pay half-seat in the concert neither, because you please to go away in the middle." He looked up again to Mynheer Lossell as if appealing for help. He got it Hendrik ran down a flight more stairs, and paused at a distance of a few steps from the bottom. "I quite agree with you, Heir Pfuhl," he said. "There will be no music. Most certainly there will be no music. We cannot afford to pay for it, and therefore we will not have it" But this answer conciliated neither party. Nor did he intend it to do so. The Orchestra-Director had quite expected to secure his engagement, for he had perceived that Mevrouw's heart was set upon the matter, but he had hoped that Mynheer would prove malleable with regard to the price, as is the manner of men. "Not but that I should be gracious to give the con- cert," he began he meant gratified "for, arranged as Mevrouw would intend it, it would be a beneficent pre- cedent in the city, still I must consider " MUSIC AND DISCORD. 247 "It is not a question of affording or not affording," interrupted Cornelia hastily. "Mynheer agrees with me, you see, Herr Pfuhl, that your price is too high. Only he puts it differently." "Yes, the price is too high," cried Lossell, slightly raising his voice, "and lucky the man who finds that out before paying. With some things you can't, Herr Pfuhl. And then you must make the best of a bad business, Herr Pfuhl. It's a very fine thing, is music, Herr Pfuhl, but sometimes you get tired of a tune. And, although you can't always stop the music when you want to, you can always leave off dancing to it, I believe, Herr Pfuhl. Don't you think that one can?" "It is not for dancing," replied Herr Pfuhl con- fusedly, "but for a concert of instrumentals, as I under- stand." "The principle remains the same," cried Lossell. "Keep out of expenses while you can." "But don't, if you can't," interrupted Cornelia tartly. Till now her husband had resolutely fastened his eyes upon the orchestra-director's shining rotundity. He withdrew them for a moment less than a moment as Cornelia spoke; and their glances met. In that tenth of a second a big battle was fought and lost, far more decisive than the wordy dispute of the other night. For Hendrik read defiance in Cornelia's look and retreated before it In that flash of recognition he resolved to give up all attempts to browbeat her. His must be a warfare not of the broadsword, but of the stiletto. There lay discomfiture in the swift admission, not defeat as yet, but repulse. Once more Cornelia's eagle face had 248 GOD'S FOOL. stood her in good stead. "After all, I can't slap her," muttered Lossell to himself, as he scowled back towards Herr Pfuhl's bald head. Indeed, he could not "'Can't' is an ugly word," he said, to himself almost as much as to her, and he walked away in the direction of the breakfast-room. In the entry he turned round. "No concert this winter, Herr Pfuhl!" he cried, and then he shut the door quickly behind him. He was still sufficiently master of his own house to say what he chose in it But he was not master enough to remain where he chose, after having said it He was far from sorry to think the door should be shut The repose of the Sabbath that blessed resting on the oars had been broken by a sudden squall. He glowered discontentedly at the breakfast-things, and, as he lifted the teapot-lid, he sneered down upon the in- nocent brown liquid inside. Yet Cornelia could make good tea. And he knew it It is a beautiful thing in a woman. No man of nervous or artistic temperament should bind himself in wedlock before the partner of his choice has passed an examination in tea-making. And even in Koopstad there are nervous souls, though inartistic, in these days of ours when Time travels only by rail. Hendrik was of a highly nervous nature, irritable and fifty miles an hour. He sat down to breakfast and drew the Sunday morning paper towards him. Cornelia might as well stop away as not How unreasonable she was, and how inconsiderate! He would walk out presently MUSIC AND DISCORD. 249 and see Elias. The walk would do him good and brace him up a bit. Elias was his brother a step-brother, but still a brother, a Lossell. Blood is thicker than water, and every now and then the old truth comes home to you. And Cornelia was fast deepening into a nuisance. She came in, serene, as if nothing had happened. Her victory satisfied her for the moment, and she was too wise a woman not to relax her hold of the rope, the moment she had drawn the boat into her current. She had shown Hendrik the limit of her endurance, and instead of leaping over it, he had shivered back. That was enough for to-day. She did not really want the concert very badly, especially not at that "scandalous" price. "I quite agree with you, Henk," she said mildly, as she busied herself with her tray, " and I have told Herr Pfuhl so and sent him away. It would be absurd to pay so much for his band, and we can, in any case, very well wait till next year." Hendrik's whole being melted away into notes of interrogation and admiration, as he stopped and stared at his wife, the open print in one hand, his half-lifted tea-cup in the other. "We must give an extra dinner instead," continued Mevrouw. "Why did you not wait for me to pour out your tea, Hendrik?" "I am in a hurry," answered Lossell, still bewildered, "I want to walk out to Elias's and see how the poor chap is getting on." Mevrouw pulled a face. She did not like to think of the useless idiot who stood between her and the full 250 COD'S FOOL. glory of greatness. Elias was her permanent eclipse. "Oh, depend upon it, he is perfectly well and happy," she snapped. She avoided as much as possible allowing her thoughts to dwell upon contingencies, but she could not keep down an undercurrent of exasperation at sight of the idiot's unbroken health. "It is only the people whose existence has no raison d'etre," she said, "that go on living for ever." M So-o," muttered Herr Pfuhl to himself emphatically, in a long-drawn reminiscence of his native land. He hurried down the short avenue in fretful jumps, and, as he went, he struck his greasy wide-awake down flat on his speckled cabinet-pudding of a head. "So it is in the great houses. They have the butters and the oils of life, and yet the wheels go creaking. The Mevrouw, ah, she will have her concert when she wants it Not so was my Lieschen. Never has she given me Blutwurst again, since I told her it was Leberwurst I loved better. And yet Blutwurst was her LeibgerichL" Whenever he was strongly moved, his German seemed to break forth again purer from some hidden spring of feeling and to come surging up across the muddy ditch of broken Dutch. A film spread over his eyes, for Lieschen would never eat Blutwurst again. She had been dead for many years. She had died in this strange, straight-lined country, of a chill at the heart Peace be to the old Director's ashes. He, too, is dead. But his orchestra was heard in Mevrouw Lossell's rooms, before he laid down his baton. And on that MUSIC AND blSCORD. 251 memorable occasion Hendrik Lossell went up to him, with nervous, puckered face, and complimented him on the excellence of the performance, adding, with a pal- pable sneer, that there were some things so valuable you could never pay enough for them. And the sneer was at himself. 252 GOD'S FOOL. CHAPTER IX. A PRINCE AMONG PAUPERS. To Elias life was one long Sabbath. The dim hush of a cathedral-chapel. The long-drawn, mournful sweetness of organ-tones that sink to rest For the full blaze of life and the full burst of life, the heart's sunshine and the mind's proud clamour of activity, these could never be but partially aroused, where the avenues of sight and sound remained blocked. Yet he was happy in the stillness in the half-light of his existence. As he looked down the long vista of monotonous years, he lost count, if ever he had been able to retain it, and, dully as he remembered a time when he was happier still, because less hampered in enjoyment, the recollection conveyed to him no con- ception of a "nevermore." That phase, though not present with him at the moment, was a perpetual reality. He regretted it no more than a child regrets this morning's breakfast in the presence of this even- ing's tea. For all that, it may prefer the earlier meal. Elias knew that all things, good and evil, have their times of coming and going, yet the thread of existence was tangled round his brain in the form neither of a ragged scrap cut at both ends (as with us) nor of a harmonious circle (as with the philosophers) but of an ellipse (as, I presume, with other fools). That which A PRINCE AMONG PAUPERS. 253 was, and that which is and that which shall be blended together it has already been pointed out into a unity of consciousness. The consciousness of love, which is impulse, and that steadfast calm of regret which is love inadequate or love misunderstood. It is very difficult to present a distinct picture of Elias's "clouded intellect" to intellects unclouded, which have always been aware that, if to-day is the 3ist of December, the 3Oth must have immediately preceded it, while to-morrow will be New Year's Day, when the old year will be definitely dead. But it doesn't matter. We can skip Elias; and yet the story, I flatter me, will remain interesting still, for Hendrik Lossell was very wide-awake and unclouded, and able to do any amount of mental arithmetic, connected with tea. Besides, there is a murder later on, if you care to get so far, just as there is in this morning's "Police." Elias Lossell is uninteresting, but he cannot help it He is only a fool, and not even a titled one. Had he lived in Eng- land and had his florins been pounds sterling, he would probably, as eldest son of the late merchant prince, his father, have been Sir Elias Lossell, or even, perhaps, Lord Taycaddy. And the Honourable Henk and the Honourable Hub would have been more honourable then than they can ever hope to be now or henceforth. And Elias would have been interesting, although be- longing to a not uncommon class. But all that is im- possible. There never was a Baron took to trade in Holland yet, neither in tea nor in cotton nor in any- thing else, excepting the seven pearls of his coronet. The Lossells and their friends would have laughed me to scorn, had I pretended, out of deference to my 254 GOD'S FOOL. readers' feelings, that Elias was a Baron. He was not And as his name has unfortunately been dragged out of the quiet corner where it shone serenely in the hearts of the few who knew and loved him into the glare of literary notoriety, it must now remain for ever inscribed on the long roll of the Circulating Libraries as a probably unique example of a hero of modern story who stands forth as an unutterable, and nonethe- less an untitled, fool. His folly was without any alleviation, and also with- out any excuse. And yet he was interesting enough in his own circle of Koopstad, was my poor Elias. How interesting he was came out plainly on the occasion of his brother's marriage. As a rule, Elias lived away in his modest house and garden outside the town. He never entered the narrow, traffic-tormented streets. You could meet him, with his faithful Johanna or a man-servant, oc- casionally, if you went for long walks in the fields, but few people in Koopstad have time to go walking. It was not time that he lacked, and he loved these wide wanderings into the vast recesses of Nature, even though he could not peer and poke, as you and I can, into her unfathomed mysteries. Probably what most delighted him in these walks was the consciousness of using his strength. Evidently, he could not ride or shoot or run. But he could walk, on an attendant's arm, away into the immeasurable distance, on and on, until he came home blessed sensation healthily tired. Johanna, strong and hearty, and comely as ever, could force herself to accompany her darling. And when A PRINCE AMONG PAUPERS. 255 the rage of inexhaustibleness fell upon him, as it some- times would, well, then, Johanna must stay where she was, and John must go instead. There was only one Johanna, but alas there was a frequent variation of Johns. They never succeeded in getting a man-servant who could resist the continual temptation to steal from Elias. For Elias sanctioned every theft. He would seldom talk, as he proceeded on his way through the sweet sights and smells and sensations of a summer day. The smells and sensations were with him, whatever might become of the sights and sounds. They were with him in such a degree that he could often tell through what plantations of trees or what fields of grain they were passing, not merely by stop- ping to feel with his hand, but by distinguishing a variety of odours which "John" declared to be the same unprofitable "country smell." He was always most anxious to know what birds were singing. "Do you hear them?" "What birds are they?" he would ask over and over again. And the John of the moment usually answered: Finches. Elias would fly into sudden furies of futile disappointment over that unaltering reply. A couple of Johns had been sent away for not being able to distinguish between finches and black- birds, and that was a pity, for it took a long time to accustom a new man to Elias's strange forms of con- versation. And the whole thing was after all more a theory than a reality with him, for he knew nothing of the notes of birds, and became perfectly happy with a servant who had the 'cuteness to vary his random re- plies. But the afflicted man clung to the idea all the more on account of its shadowiness; he made most 256 GOD'S FOOL. of what little he could possess, and to hear him talk glibly about the trees in his garden, you would hardly have thought he knew only a couple of dozen of the commonest kinds. And even of these he could not remember where they stood, as so many blind men can. It was the same with the corn in the fields, he must have some assistance from touch or smell. But Johanna, who helped him in these things to the utter- most, contended to strangers that of late the senses he still possessed had developed under continual use. He could now distinguish the places where his different flowers were planted by smelling and feeling them. They were purposely put in patches or broad borders of the same species. It was a great pleasure to him to feel his way down to them alone, and to pick with his own hand and blend in a bouquet such selections as he might be desirous to make. But it was in accordance with the whole bent of his crooked mind that he could not realize the fact that one servant should go and another should take his place. They were all "John" to him, for so the first one had been called. And they were obliged to ac- quiesce in the fiction. On the whole, they had a good time of it, as long as it lasted. Nothing much was re- quired of them, except a pair of elastic legs. For Johanna retained with jealous hands the personal care over her "Jasje," as she still occasionally called him, and the man who was rash enough to encroach upon her privileges might as well advertise for another place at once. They danced attendance on a master whose pockets were always full of small change, which he scattered, indiscriminately, to any beggars who cared to A PRINCE AMONG PAUPERS. 257 accept it, and a good many of these pieces naturally would find their way into the valet's itching palm. Johanna had in vain done all she could to persuade her charge not to take money with him on his walks, except when she could accompany him. He had re- fused, peremptorily, obstinately refused an unusual thing with him. He had reminded her that it had been his first almost his only stipulation when his brothers told him he was rich, that he must have a certain sum to give away. He had begged for it, cried for it; Hubert had accorded it him. It was only a thousand florins (about eighty pounds), a mere drop from the ocean. And every day he took with him a hundred copper cents in each side-pocket, and gave them away anyhow, like a fool. Hendrik "administered" the rich man's charities, nothing exaggerating and no- thing setting down unseen. On the lists which went the round of all the great houses he wrote the sub- stantial name of "Volderdoes Zonen" opposite large, fat, respectable sums. And the gentlemen who brought the lists were very much obliged to Hendrik Lossell. They sometimes ventured to hint, however, that his stepbrother's indiscriminate scattering of pennies was a nuisance, and a hindrance to the proper organization of relief. The burgomaster, duly enlightened by his parish officers, complained that Elias was "pauperizing the poor." It was true. The children of the neighbouring villages began to look out for and waylay him. Hen- drik shrugged his shoulders. He regretted it. So did the Johns. And therefore they took Elias's pennies away from him, when they could, and kept them. It was not very difficult to do so, for he easily lost count. Cod's Fool, /. 17 258 GOD'S FOOL. Burgomaster's "Tibbie" (Matthias), having a passion for sweet-stuff, when sticky, had also hit upon the in- genious expedient of tracking the blind man and stop- ping him for a copper. The first time he did it very timidly; the second he was quite bold and impatient For evidently Elias, unless warned by his John (who had instructions to do so, but evaded them), was in- capable of knowing you wanted money, unless you pulled him by the coat-tails. The village children would adopt that expedient, or roll in the dust across his path. They scampered off, if they saw Johanna with "the fool." Elias got no thanks for his well-intentioned largesse; he was always "the fool" to them. They thought him a fool for giving them coppers without cause. Johanna, having suspected "Tibbie," caught him one day by peeping round a corner. She told somebody who told somebody else, and Solomon being con- sidered altogether "out of it" in Holland as regards "pedagogy" the Burgomaster punished his greedy off- spring by condemning him to complete deprivation of pudding for the next six weeks. It was Elias's fault Most certainly it was. No- body will deny it But the Burgomasteress, as she sat sadly gazing upon her puddingless darling at table, hyper-realized, perhaps, how much Elias was to blame. And she told everybody. And everybody pitied her, and the poor harmless child, and the Burgomaster's re- sponsibility, and the weight of work imposed upon the parish officers and the church-chanty-fund. And every- body said that desultory giving was a crying evil, and that it "pauperized the poor," and they only wished they had some of Elias Lossell's useless money, and why A PRINCE AMONG PAUPERS. 259 didn't he give it to them, if he didn't know what to do with it? And he ought to be locked up. His reputation, therefore, was at a very low ebb when he suddenly appeared among the Koopstaders on the occasion of Hendrik Lossell's wedding. Hubert was away in China; other near relations there were none. Elias, the head of the family, must represent it He could not be one of the two witnesses groomsmen whom Dutch law requires for either of the contracting parties, but he must appear in the " family-circle" never- theless. He expressed his readiness nay, his eager- ness to do so, though he had not been near the bustling city for years. As a rule he shrank painfully from the society of men more favoured than he and who was not? Walled up in the loneliness of his small spot of tranquil sunlight, he would repeat constantly to Johanna the saw her devotion or her selfishness had taught him: "Two's company, three's none." But one day, suddenly, he stopped himself. "Am I one, Jo- hanna?" he asked, with a troubled expression of face. "Yes," she told him. "I can't understand it," he murmured, shaking his head. "Seems to me I'm company, and two. I'm always thinking of Elias Lossell, and talking to Elias Lossell, and I love Elias Lossell very much. Who is the I, Johanna, that is Elias Lossell's friend?" Johanna could not answer him. She knew about the old Adam, and the new man, as treated abstractedly in church. Some vague idea that these might come in useful floundered across her brain. But she did not 260 COD'S FOOL. feel able to cope with them, and therefore she confined herself to telling Elias that he must not love himself more than he loved her, his poor old nurse, who doted on him. Elias promised not to. A few days later he burst upon the astonished gaze of Koopstad. Hendrik's wedding, with its elements of wonder, amusement and complaint, would naturally awaken considerable curiosity. The large Church of St John "Jack's," they call it in Koopstad, as else- where in Holland, for the Dutch are by nature reli- gious, but not reverent "Jack's" was crowded with a fashionable crowd, that nodded and smiled, and talked in more than a whisper and kept on its hat till the service began. All the clan of Hendrik's relations were there, come to see their dear cousin make an exhibi- tion of himself, and rejoicing that it should be so, although annoyed by the thought of the fortune which would become his some day. And the Alerses, for their part, spread themselves out over the sacred build- ing which to them, at that moment, was a very temple of Mammon. It was not everybody that got married at "Jack's." Aud some of the Alerses cousins, female, of course, and very young felt conscious of a futile hope the outcome of envy gone demented that at the last moment Cornelia might still possibly come to grief. "There are a number of people here," grumbled Cousin Cocoa's lesser half to his sovereign lady, "who have no reason for coming at all. As if it were not bad enough to be dragged to a wedding on compul- sion." "You may be certain, my dear Titus," replied A PRINCE AMONG PAUPERS. 26 1 our old friend Amelia (in a new lilac bonnet, and there- fore not unhappy, though ashamed of her cousin), "that when a church is as crowded as this, the wedding is sure to be an ill-assorted one." "And royal weddings, then?" faintly ventured the cocoa-man. "Royal weddings are always ill-assorted," answered Amelia, whose domestic religion consisted in having the last word. When Dutch bridal couples enter the church, they have already been civilly married before the registrar, and the bride invariably comes up the aisle on her hus- band's arm. There had been a general consensus among the ladies that Cornelia would look "hideous," "ghastly" or what is the correct adjective which a pretty woman applies to a plain one? Oh, of course; you could make up your mind about that But, when she walked calmly up between the broad borders of sceptically smiling faces (she had on flat shoes for the occasion, and little Henky high-heeled boots), she dis- appointed them all. "She was not half bad," said the men, "serenely self-conscious, and with a queenly look about her." The women dropped smiles of vinegar into their watery praise: "She looks ever so much younger than she is," they tittered. "She looks almost as young as her husband." Immediately after the happy pair came Elias, lead- ing or, rather, led by Cornelia's married sister, the lady of the widower, the six stepchildren and the sixty 262 GOD'S FOOL. thousand florins. As he emerged from the entrance into the full glare of the vast, white-walled, white-win- dowed barn-like building, a thrill of interest a genuine impulse of spontaneous excitement ran swiftly through the ruffles and laces and simpers and even penetrated to the yawns. Many of those present had not seen Elias since he was a boy; few had seen him otherwise than once or twice from a carriage, when they passed him on some quiet road, where he stood, half-averted, under a slouch-hat which hid his face. But now, suddenly, he came among them; he passed along their serried lines, where outstretched hands could touch him, his blindness uplifted in the vulgar light of their little day. He followed imperceptibly the guiding of the woman by his side. That evening-dress which the Dutch still commonly wear at weddings and which is not nearly so unbecoming, after all, as some enthusiasts would have us believe (the man who looks like a waiter in a white tie, will look like a groom in a red one), that evening-dress, which, like most other much-maligned evils, survives all attacks, sat easily and not ungrace- fully on Elias's massive frame. The fair curls fell in a bright flood over his shoulders, and the beard no razor had ever touched it now lay soft and silky on the manly chest. His golden fairness wrapped the blind man's head in an aureole of sunlight; he walked erect, with a tranquil purity over his even features, and, as he turned to take his seat in the half circle of rela- tions which Dutch etiquette groups around the two prin- cipal personages, his sightless eyes shone forth in all their fathomless unconsciousness as cloud-veiled lakes A PRINCE AMONG PAUPERS. 263 of dark transparency upon the Alerses and the Los- sells and all their roots and fruits and branches, upon Koopstad, moneyed and mercantile, majestic, meritori- ous and mean. "Lord bless us!" murmured a meagre old cousin in black satin, one of those cousins we are all afraid of and venerate, because she can leave her money where she likes. She closed her thin hands tightly over her gold -clasped hymn-book, and her chin shook. The younger ladies of Koopstad did not exchange satirical glances. They were looking at Elias. Everybody had forgotten the bride. They were looking at Elias. Everyone was looking at Elias. At the back of the church, and in corners and along the walls people had got up and were stand- ing discreetly on tiptoe and craning their necks between intervening shoulders and over agitated heads. There was something uncanny about the apparition of this sunless Baldur, that struck their admiration cold. They gazed at him in alarm and reproach, for he was of their own race and yet outside them, but they gazed, fixedly, unintermittently, as he sank into his seat. Very few of them saw Hendrik stumble over the footstool prepared for his bride. And still fewer saw Cornelia's impatient frown. They were not thinking of Cornelia. They were thinking of, and looking at, Elias. And suddenly Elias remembered, with a shock of self-rebuke, that he was in church. He had not been in church for innumerable years. He sank forward abruptly on his knees and, speaking out aloud into his own unbroken silence words which he believed to be 264 GOD'S FOOL. entirely inaudible, but which rang clear and low through the sacred edifice in the subdued tones of his bell-like voice, he said: "Dear God, bless Hendrik and Cornelia, And bless me. And Hubert out in China, And make everybody happy and good." ELIAS SLAYS HIS TEN THOUSANDS. 265 CHAPTER X. ELIAS SLAYS HIS TEN THOUSANDS. NEXT day a number of the young ladies of Koop- stad were quietly but resolutely in love with Elias Los- sell. "It is a ruinous pity," remarked Hendrik's Aunt Theresa, the same who afterwards initiated Cornelia into the mysteries of clanship, "it's enough to make any mother cry her eyes out, and such things ought not to be allowed. Idiots oughtn't to be born to such fortunes as that, and then left irretrievably single. If they can't marry, I consider their money ought to be taken from them and given to someone who can." "But, my dear," objected her husband, "it seems to me you are condemning dispensations " "I can't help it, Edward! Don't talk to me of dis- pensations. I say it is a crying shame. What use is all this heaped-up money to Elias? He is a fool. And he is not even like most men a marriageable fool." "He is a merchant-prince," said Mynheer Overdyk solemnly. "Nothing can alter that." He spoke the words as one might speak in church. To him intellect was a secondary thing altogether, and account-books were the only books of account. What mattered it if a man could not read, as long as others could find his name inscribed on the great roll of the National Debt? 266 GOD'S FOOL. And Elias's signature, however loosely it might sprawl across the paper, was still the sign manual of the richest "koopman" in Koopstad. "It is just that which aggravates me," cried Aunt Theresa. "Here he is everything who ought to be no- thing, and nothing who ought to be everything. He should have been neither or both; you understand what I mean. And it always strikes me as being so particu- larly hard upon the other two boys, who now just miss the goal. 'Half achieved is lost,' as the proverb says. And they have to sit down all their lives long and look at the apples beyond their reach, like Tante Tante what was the name? Tante Lize. Yes, it is decidedly exasperating, and I repeat, it ought not to be allowed." Mynheer Overdyk's commercial integrity objected to this view. "Oh come, Theresa," he said stolidly, "that is nonsense, you know. The money is Volderdoes money, and the business is a Volderdoes business, and Elias is the last of the Volderdoes blood. Henk and Huib have no right to a penny, if you come to think of that Nor would they have been nearly as well off as they are now, supposing your sister Judith had been Hendrik Lossell's first matrimonial venture. In my opinion they have been singularly lucky, although I don't deny that their present position may remind one somewhat of Tan- talus. But they can well have the decency, at any rate, to wait for the poor fellow's money, which will all come one day to them and their children, just as if they were old Elias's offspring instead of the poor blind fool. I often laugh to think what a rage old Elias would have been in, could he have foreseen how matters would turn out But let Judith's children be content with their ELIAS SLAYS HIS TEN THOUSANDS. 267 good fortune aren't they in the business already? and remember they have no right to a cent." Yes, the money was rightfully Elias's. That ad- mission was very strongly accentuated in Koopstad com- mercial circles. For in these the heredity of a great business-house with its goodwill and its connections and its hundred and one sources of money-breeding was as firmly established a principle as the reversion to a title or an entail. These things went with the blood for ever and ever, like the King's crown by the grace of God. People might talk about Hendrik and Hubert, and acting partners, and the representatives of the business here, there and everywhere, and all the rest of it; in practical life, of course, everything depended upon who had the right to sign for the firm, but, theoretically, none of the older merchants ever forgot that Elias alone was the grandson of grumpy, snuffy, wealthy old Elias Voider- does. "All the same, I repeat it is cruelly hard upon everybody," persisted Aunt Theresa, who did not appre- ciate her husband's view, she not having come into the family on the Volderdoes side; "and I maintain that it oughtn't to be allowed." No, it oughtn't to be allowed. All her nieces agreed with Aunt Theresa. And not her nieces only, but a good many other young ladies, especially those who had not yet completed their education. But though they arrived at the same conclusion, they reached it by a very different road. Public feeling ran high against Hendrik Lossell among the older pupils of the select academies for young ladies, and even in the labour- loaded class-rooms of that public abomination, the Girls' 268 GOD'S FOOL. High School. It was absolutely impossible, and the young ladies refused to believe it, that a man could be an idiot with such eyes as they had seen beam forth upon the disconcerted congregation of "St Jack's." Evi- dently his brothers were keeping him sequestrated for the sake of his property. It was the old story of the Man with the Iron Mask, whom only unromantic people believed not to have been a twin-brother of Louis XIV. Elias was a living nineteenth century romance. Anna told Agatha, and Agatha told Anna. They excited each other about it until all the facts of the horrible mystery were worked out in black and white. In one school Bella van Wreede, the State Prosecutor's daughter, was put into Coventry because she had refused to appeal to her father to rescue Elias. She did not dare to, pleaded Bella. She was put into Coventry, forthwith, for last week's "subject" had told her, and ought to have taught her, that "Cowardice is an Accomplice of Crime." It must not be hastily concluded that the enthusiasm for Elias was confined to those young ladies whose hair still lay in two thick cords on their unwilling backs. They who would judge thus would but lightly estimate the charms of the handsome hero. Nay, indeed, fair maidens with their hair "done up" which headdress is equivalent to a hunting-cap where men are concerned, and means that the chase has begun in earnest fair maidens who were "out" and wore low dresses, and even one (as I happen to know) who had refused an eligible offer because she wouldn't live with her mother- in-law not only giddy girls, therefore, but discreet young women of the world, all these were touched with ELIAS SLAYS HIS TEN THOUSANDS! 269 just a twinge of the contagion. They called it the "Elias-fever" in Koopstad. It was very disagreeable for Hendrik Lossell. "Have you got the Elias-fever al- ready?" said one chit to another in a crowded tram, unconscious that the little gentleman in the corner was the tyrant whom she execrated. "I've had it, but I'm better," replied chit No. 2. "My father says he isn't really ill-treated, but has a beautiful carriage to drive in, and my father says that his brothers are good to him and don't try to kill him, as Jennie declared the other day." "I don't believe it " began her companion in- dignantly. Hendrik went and stood outside. None of them believed it. For to deny that Elias was persecuted would have been like throwing water on the candle by which young Fervour delights to read the world. If there were no wrongs, there would be no romance. And Elias's wrongs were fortunately intensely romantic. It was not an opportunity which fact-frozen young Koopstad could afford to waste. Effusions and floral tributes began occasionally to arrive at the quiet villa, but of these Johanna made short work. She threw away the flowers and tore up the notes. She was shocked at the contents of some of those queer letters. One young lady actually offered to rescue Elias with the aid of her brother and a good conscience. She said that her brother was four feet, and the wall only five feet and a half. But the poetesses were the most enviable of all. There are a good many of them in Holland, rhymes being too easy in Dutch, and prosody too difficult, for 270 GOD'S FOOL. either to supply the desirable barrier. Elias's blindness and deafness, his beauty, his unavailable wealth, all these provided countless spurs for the too-eager Pegasus. The singers would apostrophise their idol as a god or as an idiot, according as they selected him for an ob- ject of their praise or their pity. Ida Dorestan the Dutch Felicia Hemans who, you will remember, was a girl at that time, of seventeen or eighteen summers Ida Dorestan composed a Sonnet "To an Eagle Maimed." _ The prisoned eagle will not pair, and you, Bound to your loneliness by triple chain Of Darkness, Silence, Cruelty, in vain You learn that happiness is born of two." I forget whether that was the beginning or the end. The matter is of no great importance. "The prisoned eagle will not pair"; that was the beginning, end, and middle of the business. "There ought to be no in- sulated fortunes," insisted Tante Theresa, proud of the word, although it is just possible the happy shot was originally aimed at "isolated," "and if there must be, a law should be enacted to restore communication. I am sure, Edward, that I am expressing myself clearly. Money does not, I consider, belong to an individual, not even, as you will torment me with old Volderdoes, to a family. It belongs to us all, the better classes, as a community, and we are collectively and what is the world? solidarily responsible for its use and dependent upon its benefits. We stand and fall together, we, the people with white hands." "And our palms, are they pure too?" queried young ELIAS SLAYS HIS TEN THOUSANDS. 27 I Isidor, who was the "enfant terrible" of the Overdyk and van Bussen families. It was his mother's fault. She had read poetry and called him Isidor. But nobody attended to him. "Only, my dear Theresa," interposed Mevrouw Amelia van Bussen, who was present, "it appears to me that is a very uncom- fortable theory. It seems to make one so promiscuously accountable for other people's shortcomings. Don't you think we must all stand or fall by our own merits? You can't cover an inferior article with the prestige of your name!" "She is thinking of her cocoa," whispered Isidor in a disgusted aside to his cousin Adelheid. Adelheid frowned. She liked Isidor, but she did not approve of levity in connection with articles of commerce. She was forty; she had been born in Koopstad seventeen years ago. "You misapprehend me, my dear," replied Aunt Theresa mildly. She was always mild. Everything in the dear old lady remained unruffled, except her throat and wrists. "I do not mean that we are morally ac- countable, but socially we can hardly help ourselves, I fear. The sins of the individual are set down to the class, and when one of us goes astray" a keen glance at Isidor "the crowd cries: 'Look at the Patricians!'" "And how many of us are what we call ourselves?" asked Isidor impatiently. "Genuine hereditary Pa- tricians?" "You are, Isidor, for one, and therefore it is rude of you to allude to the subject. Trust you Radicals to stickle for rank. And I am, also. But you need not 272 GOD'S FOOL. insult the van Bussens, who are a highly respectable family too." And then there arose a general combustion in which Elias Lossell dropped altogether out of sight. END OF VOL. I. PRINTING OFFICE OK THE PUBLISHER. A r\r\ r ' '"'