Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES JOOST AYELI]>^GH. BY MAARTEN MAARTENS. THE GREATER GLORY. i2mo. Cloth, gilt, $1.50. "It would take several ccjlumns to give any adequate idea of the superb way in which the Dutch novelist has de- veloped his theme and wrought out one of the most im- pressive stories of the period. ... It belongs to the small class of novels of the period which one can not afford to neglect." — San l'ra7icisco Chronicle. " Maarten Maartens in ' The Greater Glory ' has even eclipsed his fine performance in the writing of ' God's Fool.' This new work deals with high life in Holland, and the Dutch master has portrayed it with the touch of true genius. The story is full of color and of dramatic situations deli- cately wrought out." — Philadelphia Press. GOD'S FOOL. i2mo. Cloth, gilt, $1.50. "Throughout there is an epigrammatic force which would make palatable a less interesting story of human lives or one less deftly told." — London Saturday Review. " A remarkable work." — New York Times. " The story is wonderfully brilliart. . . . The interest never lags ; the style is realistic and intense ; and there is a constantly underlying current of subtle humor. ... It is, in short, a book which no student of modern literature should fail to read." — Boston Times. JOOST AVELINGH. i2mo. Cloth, gilt, $1.50. "A book by a man who, in addition to mere talent, has in him a vein of genuine genius." — London Academy. "A novel of a very high type At once strongly re- alistic and powerfully idealistic." — London Literary Iforld. New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. JOOST AVELINGH a Dutcb Stor^ BY MAARTEN MAARTENS AUTHOR OH god's FOOL NEW YORK D. AP PL ETON AND COMPANY 1894. PR CONTENTS, PAOE Introduction «C Paet I. — Before. CHAPTEE I. — "A Strap fnder his Heart" 11 II.— "Santa Claus" 15 m. — Dramatis Persons 21 IT. JOOST STUDIES MEDICINE 35 v.— The Ice-Partt 42 VI. — Weighed in the Balance 55 Vll.— TnE Claims of Rank 60 Vlll. — The Claims of Love C6 IX. — "Found wanting" 71 X. — Madame de Montelimart V9 XI. — The Cup flows over , .89 Part ii. — After. XII.— Charity , . 97 XIII. — Looks back 107 XIV. — Money-Making made easy 112 XV.— "Are YOU ILL, AVELINGH?" . . „ . . .120 XVI. — The Jonker's Legacy 131 XVII. — Under the Surface 13S XVIII. — Murder will out . . , o « • • • 144 A "'-^ r^ ,f^ JOOST AVELINGH. CHAPTER PAGE XIX.— " Wanted " 157 XX. — Give a Dog a Bad Name 168 XXL— Jan Louentz 174 XXII.— The Trial 184 XXIII.— The TuRNiNG-PoiNT 199 XXIV. — Das Ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan . . . 205 XXV.— The Verdict 217 XXVI. — After the Verdict 218 XXVII. — Avelingh vs. Avelingh 223 XXVIII. — Liberty lost and regained 233 XXIX.— A " Lettre de Faire Part " 238 XXX. — Doctor Avelingh's Theory 244 XXXI. — Joost's Labors for others bear Frcit for himself . 250 XXXII. — Interviewing the Candidate 259 XXXIII. — More about the mad Countess . . . . . 264 XXXIV. — Blindfold not Love, if Love be blind . . . 272 XXXV.— The Election 278 XXXVI. JoOST SURRENDERS 289 XXXVII.— "Could WE DO ELSE?" 296 XXXVIII.— What should it profit a Man? 298 XXXIX. JoOST MEETS VAN ASVELD FOR THE LAST TIME . . 305 XL. — The Confession 310 XLL— The World's Farewell to Joost Avelingh . ,317 JOOST AYELII^GH. INTRODUCTION. It had stopped raining. Had it not stopped raining? The grumpy old fellow who keeps the small grocery store on the Hoester road crept to his door and looked out. You know the little shop, if you know the neighborhood at all, the low house with the lollipop jars in its square-paned window. The old grocer stood shading his eyes with his hand to see better, as men will do in excess of darkness — strangely enough — as well as in excess of light.- He was asking himself for the twentieth time that evening whether it was worth his while to cross the shining, sli])pery road and have his customary chat with his friend, the innkeeper opposite. It was not so dark but that he could see the long, straight highway vaguely stretching away on both sides in a shimmer of steaming wet beneath the glittering drip, drip of its lines of trees. In fact, the light was coming through more and more every minute. High up among the clouds the wind was busy at his lace-weaving, lifting and spreading and intertangling puffs of black and white and gray in an ever thinner veil, for the moon to look through. And she, as if to bid him continue, was sending forth feeble rays that crept slowly down upon the little cluster of some half-a- dozen cottages wliicli lie huddled — like a knot in a rope — 6 JOOST AVELINGH. halfway down the long, lonely road between Heist and Hoest. Decidedly, the clouds must have stopped raining, even if the trees had not. The Baas came to the conclusion that crossing might be worth his while. Whether it was a craving for the inn- keeper's company, or for his customary steaming " night- cap," that influenced his decision, it were needless, and per- hajis invidious, to inquire. He toddled through the mud toward the dim light over the way. " Innkeeper " is, in fact, although it has been used already, too imposing a word to apply to old Wurmers. The cottage opposite, with one narrow window beside the door, and one square window over it, is the smallest even of small Dutch public-houses. A broad hoop, painted a bright green, with " Tappery, Slytery " on it in golden letters, stands out above the entrance, and in the window a solitary card, the advertisement of a Bavarian Brewery, hangs before a blue wire-work screen. Within, all is stale smoke and bitters. A low box of a room, with a bar, a number of shelves full of bottles, a square deal table and two or three wicker chairs. The grocer pushed open the door; the master of the house came shambling forward. He was old, like the other man, with faded red hair, and he walked lame. " A bad night," he said, " no customers." "So much the better for the Temperance people," chuckled the grocer. " There's a meeting down at Heist to-night. Ha ! Ha ! I know what they say : ' God made water and fire, and the devil brewed fire-water out of them.' " " God made all things,'' said the other piously ; he was a pious publican, a Publican and a Pharisee, a type not un- known in Holland — nor elsewhere, for the matter of that. " Even gin ? " asked the grocer, with a queer grin, as he took the glass Baas Wurmers held out to him. INTRODUCTION. 7 "Gin more than most things," replied the republican sententiously. "At the marriage-feast of Cana, a village where it appears there were not enough wineshops — " But the devil's reasoning on the devil's behalf was sud- denly cut short. The noise of advancing wheels, to which both old cronies had been lending a vague attention during the last few seconds, stopped abruptly outside. A rough voice was heard calling and swearing. Both men hurried to the door as fast as their shaky legs could carry them. A one-horse chaise was drawn up in the middle of the road, its lamps flashing in broad sweeps over the mud and dimly revealing under the hood the figures of two men, a younger one driving, and an older one at his side. It was the older man who had cried out, and he now re- peated his demand, in the same loud, blustering voice. " A borrel," (dram), he shouted, " a borrel, you damned old stupid ! What else should a man stop for at your hole of a house on such a damned cold night as this ? " The younger man sat silent. Behind, in the open dickey, was a servant, half-asleep. The gin was Brought without a word of greeting. Free Dutch burghers do not like being sworn at. It was gulped down amid a multiplicity of oaths, the last at the driver for tarrying ; and then the carriage dashed off again into the darkness, its lights playing " catch me and kiss me " with the few moonbeams that lingered among the trees. The two men stood watching it out of sight. " Those are not going to the Temperance meeting," said the tavern- keeper. " Poor young fellow," muttered the grumj^y old grocer. And they wnet in. The chaise passed swiftly down the road, hoof and wheels plashing straight through big and little puddles. Conver- sation there was none between the two occupants, unless an 8 JOOST AVELINGH. occasional muttered oatli from the one, or an angry whip- cut from the other, can claim the dignity of that name, A good deal of intercourse, doubtless, may be kept up by such intermittent signs as these. The younger man sat silent, with a white face and tight- ly compressed lips, holding the reins firmly, and driving fast, fast. The older one, whose wrathful ejaculations had been gradually dying away in longer intervals, suddenly shook himself together and burst into a torrent of meaningless invective. His companion shrank slightly away, against the farther side of the hood, but answered never a word. And then, a few minutes later, the angry man foamed over, as it were, bubbling and spluttering and choking, till he fell back in a heap, limp, clumsy, huddled up, his voice lost in a sudden whisper, a gasp — then a prolonged gurgle, broken once or twice by a stronger effort, like a groan. The younger man sat silent, holding the reins firmly, and driving fast, fast. And so they passed on swiftly between the dripping trees. The lights of Heist were standing out and growing larger every moment. The figure in the corner stopped its gurg- ling, gave a faint gasp, then another — and was still. The chaise rolled along the road for some minutes long- er, then jolted over rough pavingstones, between straggling oil-lamps. Suddenly the still, motionless figure fell for- ward ; the young man sat silent, and drove on. At last, with a clash that dragged the horse down on its hindlegs and sent flakes of mud flying up over both men and right back into the hood, the chaise stopped. Without heeding his reins, the driver jumped out and ran round to a house-door. He rang a furious peal that seemed to wake the servant in the dickey, who pulled himself together and tumbled out. The door was thrown open ; there was light in the hall, INTRODUCTION. 9 streaming out to meet the carriage-lamps. A maid-servant had come forward, and, immediately after her, a little old gentleman in black. "Is the Notary in?" said the young man in a dead voice; and the little old gentleman in black immediately cried back from the hall : " Why, you see that he is ! " " There's something wrong, I believe," the other went on hurriedly, "we were coming to see you. He — " he pointed wjth his thumb over his shoulder — " he is ill, I fea — fancy. He — I don't quite know." The Notary hurried to the chaise. He touched the man lying in it, lying half off the seat, with his body falling for- ward over his knees. He shook him gently at first and called to him in a voice growing shriller and more shaky every moment, then turned and impatiently summoned the young driver, motionless under the hall-lamp, — turned again and addressed the groom, awake now and curious at the horse's head. Together lawyer and man-servant dragged the heavy, in- sensible body down out of the chaise, and laid it, all bespat- tered with mud as it was, on the marble floor of the bare little hall. They laid it down against the wall ; where the maid no sooner saw it, motionless, with purple face and star- ing eyes, than she pressed her hand against her bosom and went off into a series of smart little screams, a tribute she considered she owed to her feelings. The young man stood as if struck to stone, with his fists clenched at his side. He did not offer to help the Notary who, rapidly taking the matter into his own hands, undid a red silk comforter tied tightly round the sick man's throat and, opening his under- clothes, laid a more or less steady hand on tlie heart. While doing so, lie cast one or two quick, cross glances at the young man under the lamp. " How white he looks ! " he thought, " and how strangely he presses his teeth together ! I IQ JOOST AVELINGII. should not have thought him such a coward. For it can't be his love for the old man that makes him look like that." The subject of these considerations watched every move- ment eagerly. The maid sat down in a heap on the stairs, and moaned, and rocked herself. The Notary, running for some brandy, stumbled over her, and abused her in pass- ing. The groom stood staring sheepishly; no one offered any assistance. It was the Notary who chafed the numb hands and forehead and poured a few drops down the throat and did a number of useless, and even of unwise things, from which he at last stood up, panting, despairing. The young man broke the painful silence. " He is ill," he said with the same toneless voice he had spoken in before. " 111 ! " cried the Notary impatiently. " 111 ! He is dead." The young man fell down on his knees and burst into a passion of weeping. " God forgive me," he cried, " I would give the world it were not so ! " PAET I. BEFORE. CHAPTER I. " A STEAP UNDEK HIS HEART." " And tliis," said Agatha, as she tied a bow over one of many parcels, "is for Joost."* " Poor Joost ! " cried a cliorus of voices. And then they all laughed. The ladies of the family were assembled round a table in the big livi»g-room — the home-room, as we say in Holland — portly, self-satisfied Mevrouw van Hessel and her three un- married daughters, Agatha, Anna, and Elisabeth, or rather, to designate them in the euphonious accents of their native tongue, Agapiet, Annemie and Bettekoo. It was the eve of Santa Claus — the 5th of December, the most important social event of the year. In an hour or so Mevrouw van Ilessel's married daughter would arrive with her husband the secretary and their three young chil- dren, and then the gentlemen would come in from the smoking-room, and there would be great goings-on round that big table laden with presents. Joost was coming too. " Oh yes, of course ; ask Joost," * Pronounce " Yoost " with a " y " us in yoke, not joke. 12 JOOST AVELINGII. had said good-natured Mynheer van Hessel, as he stood with his hand on the door-knob a day or two ago. " But Santa Clans is a family festival," expostulated Mevrouw, " and Joost is not one of the family." " Conceidus^'' began Mynheer, very slowly and impress- ively, '•'•'pro nato liabetur quotiescunque cle ems commotio agitui\ so you see, my dear, Joost has a right to come. Send him an invitation, Agapiet," and he opened the door and closed it behind him with wonderful rapidity. Mynheer von Ilessel knew that he seldom got his own way at home ; he did not mind that as a rule, but he had also learned long ago by experience that his only chance of gaining respect occasionally lay in puzzling his far cleverer and more imperious wife. He remembered very little Latin out of his college days, but that little not infrequently came in useful. " After all," said Madame, " men have far more oppor- tunities than we." She admired what she considered her husband's learning, while she somewhat despised his want of sense. But in reality Burgomaster van Hessel was a sen- sible man, of very slender intellectual acquirements, with a turn for what he considered wit, and his friends tomfoolery. His intellectual acquirements, by-the-by, were the only slen- der thing about him. So his daughter wrote her note, and received a favorable answer. " And this," she said, with her hand on a little brown paper bundle, " is for Joost." " What is it ? " cried mother and sisters, in a breath. Agatha smiled, blushed, looked at her parcel, looked at them, twirled it in her fingers, and laid it down again. " It is something new," she said, hesitatingly. " At least, you never hear of it here. But I thought — " " What is it ? " cried Bettekoo, who was always impa- tient. " You know, I read about them in That Charming "A STRAP UNDER HIS UEART." 13 Curate. It appears that in England they are quite a cus- tomary present to gentlemen, and so useful." " But ivhat are they ? " almost screamed Bettekoo. " A i^air of embroidered braces." " Embroidered braces," said Annemie, the beauty, slowly and sneeringly. " Who ever heard of such a thing? " Agatha was not a beauty ; she was only beautiful. At least, so all the good people thought. A fair-haired, fair-cheeked maiden of nineteen summers, with graceful, gentle features and full blue eyes that seemed to say: "Love me, for I love others and deserve to be loved." " Poor Joost," she said, " I thought it would be quite a new kind of thing to give him, and he wants, as I shall tell him, a strap under his heart." * " But braces," cried Bettekoo, " Oh, Agapiet, to a gentle- man ! " " We ought not to know they wear them," remarked the beauty, languidly. " Fancy, supposing they were to begin giving us stays ! " " It is Bot the same thing at all," cried Agatha, hotly. "In England everybody gives everybody else embroidered braces. I mean all the gentlemen ; no, all the ladies, I mean. And the English are a very proper nation." " I consider it an extremely improper and indelicate se- lection," said Mevrouw van Hessel. "No Dutch maiden who respects her feelings would allude to any such article in the presence of strangers. Nor can I allow any daughter of mine to give anything of the kind to a — a man." By this time Agatha's cheeks were crimson. She rue- fully fingered her little parcel ; and the red rosebuds over which Siie had spent so many an hour, seemed to burn their way up through the pajier and smart in her very eyes. She * Dutch idiom. J 4 JOOST AVELINGH. knew that it was no use trying to reason with her mother, who habitually found all opinions unreasonable but her own. " So few people can argue," said Me\Touw van Hessel, mean- ing that, as a rule, so few peojjle agreed with her. " But I shall have nothing to give Joost ! " cried poor Agatha. Her father, entering at the moment, caught the words. " Nothing for Joost ? " he asked, " How is that ? " " Agatha should have prepared a more appropriate gift," answered Mevrouw. " Some articles are not fit to be mentioned, and some subjects not fit to be dis- cussed." Agatha held out her parcel with a glance of mingled mirth and misery, and Mynheer van Hessel extracted the objectionable braces. He looked comically grave. " They are very pretty," he said, " and— No ; give them to him in a year or two." " And why in a year or two ? " queried Madame. " It's a pity," continued Monsieur, " that you did not rather choose slippers, Agapiet. That would have been harmless, and an appropriate emblem ! " " I do not understand you," cut in his spouse, — which was true ; she rarely understood his smallest jokes. "- There is no reason why Agatha should give slippers, or anything else, to Joost. I have got something for him, and so have the other girls, and Kees. Agatha is growing too old for that sort of thing. And besides, it is her own fault, surely, but girls are so unreasonable." " In England—" began Agatha. " In England ! We are not in England, thank Heaven," snapped Mevrouw, who was a good woman, but did not like being bothered. " In England," said Mynheer, " girls talk of ' inexpressi- bles ' and yet embroider braces. In England the highest honors are a garter and a bath. Never mind ; tell him that, "SANTA CLAUS." 15 next year, you will give him the best present he can get, Agapiet." " But then I have got nothing for this evening," said Agapiet. CHAPTER II. "SANTA CLAUS." An hour or two later the big room was lighted up, and full of movement and conversation. A buzz of excitement round a table laden with parcels, large and small, some un- wieldy, some fantastic : flower-pots, cigar-boxes, pails of water, j)iles of plates. It is the custom in Holland to send these Santa Claus presents, done up in so-called " surprises," no gift being in reality what it seems at the first moment. A book is a box. A cigar-case contains six real cigars and one imitation one with a breast-pin inside it. A plate full of food has a false bottom ; an oyster hides pearl ear-drops ; a dead mouse in a trap is caught with its neck in a diamond ring. Elaborate imitations of the most various articles are spread out in the shops, costing as much in themselves as many a handsome present ; but most families prefer to spend their ingenuity — and not their half-pence — in the fashion- ing of their own surprises, often from odds and ends, and often from household articles " which please return," all little incidents of the current year, individual peculiarities and family traditions, being taken into due account. Nor are ill-natured jokes altogether unknown ; many a learned professor or pompous official has been unpleasantly reminded of his idiosyncrasies on the Eve of Santa Claus. Years have robbed the feast of much of its simplicity. There is no limit nowadays to the present-sending from 10 JOOST AVELINGH. liouse to liouse, and the things themselves have grown cost- lier and costlier, till the whole custom threatens to become a nuisance. The thrifty Dutchman, who rarely spends a penny on ornament of any kind all the year round, over- leaps all bounds at " Sin terklaas "-tide. And feasting — gorging, guzzling — plays, alas, the most important role of all ; sugar — enough to nauseate a Polyphemus — being un- fortunately the chief ingredient. Great blocks and rounds of sugar (with a little fruit flavoring) ; chocolate letters, half- a-yard long and a couple of inches thick; almond-paste letters, still larger; ginger-bread dolls, weighing many pounds of unwholesome sweetness — mountains of every kind of rich foreign confectionery are spread out and piled up in lines of shops, a very Paradise Eow for the children. All Holland turns out into the streets, and comes home laden with parcels. All Uolland is apt to eat itself sick, and the doctors hold their feast-day on the morrow. If it may be truly said that to the intelligent foreigner (with the pictorials as his guide-books) Christmas in England is all beef and plum-pudding, plus an occasional carol for the sake of old associations, it is no less certain that Santa Clans in Holland is all sugar-cake and gingerbread, but then, it must be added, in common fairness, that the latter is not, and does not pretend to be, a religious festival from the first. The van Hessels were simple, old-fashioned people, but they had a large circle of friends. So their door-bell kept ringing ceaslessly on that important evening, and after each ring a maid-servant would come running in with a parcel, a stiff cap and a beaming face. Then there were shouts and cries and questions. For whom is it ? From whom is it ? the latter question often remaining unanswered, for it is an essential rule of the proceedings that all presents are from " Santa Clans." The festival is originally a children's one. "SANTA CLAUS." 17 and the good bishop, the great lover of children, rides round with his African servants at night, passing down all the chimneys, as you can gee for yourself, if you look into the little boots at daybreak. There is a dreadful tradition that he asks the parents if he must leave presents or a rod ? It is often mentioned during the year, but it would appear that no Dutch father has ever considered his own children so very, very naughty — whatever he might have advised if consulted about neighhor''s " Jacky " — or else, judging by the exemption of some little wretches, St. Nicholas can not draw the line much under parricide. But Mevi-ouw van Hessel's grand-children — the little Verrooy's — though they too had been threatened with the rod at intervals lately, had never really deserved it. The two youngest still firmly believed in Santa Clans, the eldest — six, and " no longer a child " — was beginning to waver and confuse him with her father. Her uncle Kees's reiter- ated assertion that the bishoj) was coming presently, that she would really — now really, you know — see him herself, was nevertheless beginning to tell upon her. In the mean- time all three children, with sparkling eyes and burning cheeks, were skipping from one aunt to the other round the ever-increasing confusion on the table. There was a great gingerbread sweetheart for every one, of course, and an in- digestible almond letter, and parcels innumerable, boxes and papers, taking up twice as much room again in the delicious medley of unpacking. Mevrouw van Ilessel sat with a great sack of genuine potatoes before her among which she had long hunted for the hollow one ; Kees * — twenty, and at college — had wanted to uncork all the bottles in his wine- basket (prevented in time) before he perceived that papa had stuck a banknote in an envelope behind one of the labels. And Annemie, the beauty, had, amid much laugh- * Short for " Cornelius." 18 JOOST AVELINGH. ter, unpacked a hat on which her younger brother Klaas * had lavislied cheap green and yeHow ribbons, fastened to- gether by a tiny Greenaway brooch. That was a pardonable hit at Annemie's appreciation of her own good looks, Joost was there also. He had not so many presents, be- cause he had not so many friends. He did not sit staring vacantly at half-a-dozen articles, wondering whoever could have sent them, and what he was to do with them now they had come. He was not troubled by the pre-occupation of the girls van Hessel, lest they should reach a lower number than their acquaintances, and Bettekoo's repeated : " Oh I hope we shall pass the hundred this year ! " struck him as foolish, if it struck him at all. He had unfastened his par- cels one by one as they were brought to him, and guessed at the donors. It was not so difficult under these circum- stances because he scarcely had to look beyond the circle around him. His first paper had revealed a card-case with a little embroidered vignette. He had held it in his hand for a long time, wanting to say : " Agatha," but something that made his heart go pit-a-pat had forced out " Bettekoo." He was quite sorry to find he had guessed aright, and then ashamed of himself for feeling sorry. And so he had suc- cessively found out Mevrouw van Hessel, Mevrouw Verrooy, and Annemie ; and now only one parcel remained. This, then, surely, must be Agatha's. He took off a number of papers and disclosed a small black leather case. His hands trembled a little as he opened it and gazed down on a Meer- schaum cigar-holder. He felt nov\^ instinctively that he must keep back the one word that was pushing to the front, and yet, looking round, he stammered out : " Agatha." There was a general laugh, and Kees, the giver of the pipe, slajoped him on the back and cried " Bravo," and so Joost was mis- erable for the rest of the evening, * Short, for " Nicholas." "SAXTA CLAUS." 19 "Agatha's present is not yet quite ready," said Mynheer van Hessel. " I tell her she must wait to give it you until — " " And here is something new," cried Mevrouw, as the folding-doors were thrown open. A personage entered, of reverend aspect, with flowing beard of cotton- wool, robed in a crimson mantle and wear- ing a bishop's mitre. In his hand he carried a well-stuffed bag, and as he slowly advanced, he told his name and mis- sion : St. Nicholas, the good bishop, friend and patron of all good children. The two smaller Verrooy's stood staring curiously ; but when the Saint asked gravely, if there were any such good children there? the youngest promptly an- swered : " Yes," and they held out their hands for their presents and scrambled gleefully for the sweetmeats which were soon being scattered all over the floor from the Bish- op's inexhaustible bag. But the eldest, " who was no more a child," shrank back nervously, being old enough to question, and would not take courage, till Kees, the very person who had done most to convince her, took pity and whispered : " It was only Uncle Klaas," thereby dispelling all belief in Saint Xicholas^in good fairies, ghosts, and good fortune — forever. The disappearance of Saint Nicholas heralded the de- parture of the children who went off, laden with more good- ies than they could eat in a month, and more toys than they could comfortably break in a week. Then, all the parcels having been oj)ened, a lull fell on the party, till Bettekoo, who was the sprightliest of the family, proposed a new game she had recently seen played, a French game, you know, — they call it " Combles," — in which every player has to give his definition of some " Comblo " selected before hand. Lo Comble de I'ennui, le Comble de la betise, le Comble de I'ava- rice, and so forth ; you agree on a special subject, and then give your idea of its non plus ultra; the best delinilion to gain the prize. B 20 JOOST AVELINGH. Le Comble du pleonasme was chosen, and Mevrouw van Hessel led off " with a reasonable argument," at which her husband shook his head. Then came Kees with " unneces- sary sujDerfluity," Annemie with "attractive beauty " ("very bad," said Kees) and Mynbeer van Hessel with " unreason- able woman," accompanied by a triumphant look at his wife. And now it was Joost's turn. He had got his pleonasm ready beforehand and was burning to say " Fair Agatha " ; but at the last he feared it would be considered immodest, and so he said " good Agatha " instead. " Right," said Kees. " Why ? " asked Bettekoo, who was not aware that Aga- tha means " good." " You should have said, ' fair Agatha," remarked Myn- heer van Hessel. " In my youth, when men were still gal- lant, every cavalier would have said ' fair Agatha' ; but you youngsters can not turn a neat compliment nowadays." It did not comfort Joost much after this that "good Agatha" gained the prize. ■ ■ • ■ • • • " Good-by," said Agatha, at the hall-door, " I — I had got something for you, Joost; only mamma did not like what I had chosen, and — " " Ask Agatha for her present, Joost ! " called out Myn- heer van Hessel. "I don't think mamma would like the present I should ask," said Joost to himself, as he walked out briskly into the frosty night. DRAMATIS PERSONS. 21 CHAPTER III. DKAMATIS PERSOX.^. " You are a fool, Joost," said the Baron van Trotsem, next mornino^ at breakfast. Joost did not answer. " You are a fool," repeated his uncle. Do you, perhaps, a student of medicine, a wise man, scientific and all the rest of it, mean to tell me you believe in Santa Glaus or any saint, good or bad? Nonsense; you scientists nowadays believe only in the devil, whom you worshij) as the origin of evil by his new name of the great Microbe." Still Joost was silent. He smiled to himself, for he thought that he recognized a saying of Mynheer van Hessel's. "And did you enjoy yourself?" queried the old gentle- man, as he poured himself out a cup of tea. " No," said Joost. " And I suppose you told Mevi'ouw van Hessel so ! " sneered his uiicle. " She did not ask me," said Joost. " And if she had done so ? " the ojd gentleman paused, with uplifted sugar tongs, and regarded his nephew from under liis beetling eyebrows. " I should have told her the truth." " You are a fool, Joost." It was now sixteen years ago, that Joost Avelingh, a pale little orphan of five, had first crossed his uncle's threshold, and he had never since then spent more than half-a-dozen consecutive nights under any other man's roof. People often wondered how he came to be there at all. The Baron van Trotsem himself could scarcely have told. If any one had been able to give a fairly accurate explanation, it would have been the Baron's old nurse — ninety-three, and pen- 22 JOOST AVELINGH. sioned off, in a cottage ou the estate, for many long years now — but the Baron's old nurse was childish, and past talk- ing accurately about anything whatsoever. It was a pity ; for she might have told of days in the early years of the century, when Dirk van Trotsem was a bright and loving, if somewhat wayward and imperious child, an only child, always playing alone, learning as it were to live alone, roam- ing far and wide through the woods of the ancestral home he dearly loved, and — later on — shooting through them day after day, with no companion but his dogs. She might have told of his passionate resentment when his father married again, after twenty years of widowhood, and of his equally passionate afterlove for his little half-sister Adelheid. She had once remembered all the circumstances of their affec- tionate intercourse; she had seen the girl grow up and twine her charms round her brother's impetuous, impres- sionable heart. She had seen them live together when the old father died, in the time when the sister was twenty, bright, gay and handsome, and the brother forty, a strong man, but affectionate, a country gentleman to the backbone, still fond of being left alone, knowing each inch of his own estate and loving it, and proud with an all-corroding, all- consuming pride of his great historic name and ancient lineage. She could have remembered the great quarrel later on : the Freule's match with the village doctor in open defiance of her brother, the cruel separation — forever, as it proved — when he drove her from his door ; the whole sad story ; the old nurse could have told it once upon a time, and told it Avell. But so far she would have recounted nothing that all the village had not heard from its grandmother half-a-dozen times before. However, she could Imve gone much further and spoken of long lonely nights wlien the Baron stalked up and down his dark room till daybreak, and of gray hairs among the black, and deep furrows on the ruddy complexion. DRAMATIS PERSONS. 23 " There was no doubt," as she said, at the time, " that tlie separation tried the Baron cruelly, for if there was one thing he loved more on earth than Trotsem Towers, it was surely his sister. x\nd she, poor thing ! Dear, dear, people complained of his not having a good heart, but it was all bluster — bluster and a heart of gold." Therein, however, her judgment failed her. It was not all bluster. There was a burning wound, a depth of posi- tive, continuous pain, such as few men can understand and still fewer sympathize with. To acknowledge, and fairly appreciate, the wrongs of injured family pride a man must have ancestors and an ancestral name of his own. They are a possession, as much so as houses and lands, or an honor- able reputation ; too often they form the owner's only prop- erty ; to take them from him is theft, to strike at them as- sault. And the multitude, unjust in their ignorance, talk of " vanity receiving its due reward," as if it were the de- served fate of the proud possessor of a beautiful garden that roughs should climb in and knock off all his roses. The Baron Dirk van Trotsem was not an intellectual, nor a well-ed+icated, man. He had grown up, as has been said, pretty much alone and at haphazard, with an old nurse to look after his wants, and without seeing much of his father, who was a State-minister and occupied with public affairs. Even as the boy grew older, he avoided the society of his equals ; but he turned instinctively to the men about the estate, and made friends with grooms, gardeners and gamekeepers. From his earliest days he developed a very passion for a country life, for country pursuits in all their forms. Before he could conjugate " amo, amas, amat," he knew the note of all the birds of his province. He never learned to write Dutch correctly, but as years went on, ho acquired what may be called a personal ac(|uaintancc with half the trees on his large estate, an individual acquaintance which separated, and kept apart, the peculiarities of half- 24: JOOST AVELINGH. a-dozen trees of the same species, standing side by side. But, none the less, a bird was a bird, and a tree was a tree, to the Baron van Trotsem. Trees remained material for agricultural occupation, and birds — chiefly remarkable as game-birds, useful and harmful birds — were made either to be killed or let alone. He knew the varieties of primroses, and could even give you one or two Latin names (with a false quantity), but for all that they were yellow primroses to him — and nothing more. His father had, after a fierce struggle, given up all at- tempts to send the boy to the University : he died, bitterly disappointed, soon after the loss of his second wife, whom he had been chiefly prompted to marry by the desire for a more promising son, and who only presented him with one little daughter. Dirk found himself his own master at the age of twenty- three, alone in a large old-fashioned castle with a middle-aged housekeeper, who had been his nurse, an infant, and a host of servants. He laughed at all ambi- tious advice, answered that to be the last van Trotsem was in itself a vocation, shot and fished over his property and ex- plored every nook of it, putting to rights the many things his father had neglected, until each slate lay on the cottages and each twig fell from the trees according to the strictest rules of economical accuracy. There was not a better man- aged estate in the country than Dirk van Trotsem's ; there was no budget in commercial Amsterdam more beautifully worked out than his. The Baron could not reason logi- cally, but he could cipher with the best. His father's book- cases stood untouched and dusty, but lie had his private library, consisting of three volumes: his mother's Bible, Eietstap's " Noble Families of the Netherlands " and the ac- count-book of the estate. The first he honored from a dis- tance; the second he admired aud often looked into of a Sunday ; the third he studied all the week. In short, Dirk van Trotsem Avas a hard-headed, not too DRAMATIS PERSONS. 25 soft-hearted, old-fasliioned country gentleman, with an im- mense idea of the greatness of his race, and of himself as its representative, but not otherwise of noticeable vanity; a good landlord because a so conscientiously painstaking one ; and a good citizen, because, although he usually voted for nothing at all, he never voted for anything wrong. Senti- ment first came into his life when his little half-sister began to attach herself to him, and within a short time he had given his whole heart, such as it was, to the child. She was beautiful, and he worshiped her beauty; she was affection- ate, and he went a-begging for her kisses ; she was imperi- ous, and he bowed his neck to the family spirit. The con- trol of the estate was his daily bread ; the coming home to Adelheid a jam-puff at the close. There was nothing romantic in his love, for all that. It was good, solid, every-day, wear and tear affection. lie liked Adelheid, not for any far-sought reason, but for what she really was to him : a van Trotsem, his sister, a sunbeam in the gloomy house ; and, as years went on, a quick, if care- less housekeeper. He liked her to play the piano to him in the evening, laying ; and he lost it in the end. Joost had been two days in the castle before uncle and nephew met, " Wliat is your name, child '? " said the uncle abruptly. " Joost," replied the nephew, and added, " Ave- lingh." It was the first time that the Baron heard the boy's name, and he was angi7 at himself for being so angry that his sis- ter had called her baby after her husband, and not after liim. lie turned abruptly and left his little nephew stand- ing on the grass-plot, all in a tremble at the fear of having done something wrong. As Joost grew older and his character developed, his uncle began to take a greater interest in him. They were very different, and yet in one or two things they were strangely alike. Joost also early displayed a taste for wan- 32 JOOST AVELINGH. deriug away into the woods alone, to his nncle's disaiapoint- ment, who now, irrationally enough, was in want of a com- panion. Bnt Joost did not get intimate with natnre, at least not in his uncle's manner. He would lie out in some sun-checkered copse or by some murmuring stream, en- joj'ing himself with an intense enjoyment, but when he came home, he could not tell what he had seen. One day he stood listening to a singing bird, lost in a rapture of de- light. His uncle came suddenly upon him, and, momenta- rily pleased at the boy's evident pleasure, asked him what kind of a bird it was. " A — a lark," said Joost, confusedly. " The boy is an utter, hopeless fool," thought the uncle, for it was a nightingale. Van Trotsem came to the conclusion that a boy who wandered out into the woods without caring for them, must be after some secret kind of mischief, and he forbade the lonely excursions, though he would never have stooped to asking his nephew to accompany him. Joost, whose one great pleasure those moonings had been, acquiesced sullenly. It was like the Beast to shut the fair- est chamber up. Other subjects with regard to which they came near enough to clash would not be difficult to find. The Baron was by nature straightforward, biit the quality had been warped by years and misfortunes, till he had learned to ac- quire a certain amount of astuteness. Joost was also strictly truthful, but, with him, the habit was more a carefully in- culcated one, his natural tendency lying in the direction — not of untruthfulness, but of the avoidance of all unpleas- antness whatsoever. His father had never told him a lie or even joked him untruthfully ; he soon got to see that his nurse had a whole list of deceptions ready and measured them out, as required, by the yard. His uncle too, strictly honorable in all transactions, did not consider a "fancy" answer to a child in the light of a really responsible full- blown lie. And so Joost soon found himself at sea, though DRAMATIS PERSON.^, 33 lae stuck hard to his ideas of truth, imbedded as they were, in his dead father's — Beauty's — memory. He had been a year or two at the Castle when Mevrouw van Hessei — not by any means always distinguishable for tact — asked him in the Baron's presence, whether he did not love the dear good uncle — who was so kind to him — im- mensely. Joost lifted up his great dark eyes to hers and said softly but resolutely, " No." An awkward silence fell upon the company, and the child stole a timid look at his uncle with oh such a fear bumping at his heart. It was this incident which revealed to the Baron what a turn things were taking. He drove back, his little nephew sitting op- posite, without a word, simply because he did not know what to say. " He will murder me when we get home," thought little Joost. "l^ever mind, I shall go to Beauty." But the next morning the Baron called him out, not to stab him on the terrace, as he expected, but to show him a little pony he was to have for his own. It was partly the Baron's tribute to the boy's intrepidity and partly a shamefaced attempt to gain his affection. Joost's eyes grew even larger and round- er with pleasure, yet in the first moment he shrunk back with a half-nervous awe from the living, prancing, palpitat- ing wonder before him. His uncle saw the movement and, crying out that the child was a coward, stung to the quick, he ordered the groom to take the animal back to the dealer's. Joost never saw that marvelous vision again except in his dreams ; it often came to him then, and he kissed it and fondled it. He thought his uncle had arranged the whole scene to punish him, to insult him ; and he clenched his small fist beneath the coverlet. There came a time when Baron Dirk would have been ashamed to confess to himself how anxious he was that the child should take to him. He was full of false shame, was the Baron — like all egotists — of false shame and true pride. And in spite of his desire he did nothing — or the wrong 34 .TOOST AVELINGH. thing — to gain Joost's love. He would sit opposite to liim sometimes in silence for a-qiiarter-of-an-hour, with his hands on his knees, his great red face beut forward and his fierce, prominent eyes staring, staring at the child, seeking to stare into his features — as it were — some resemblance to the dead Adelheid. It was a futile undertaking, for Joost was like his father, and like his father alone. It was a terrible ordeal to the self-willed old man to see thus ever before him this living monument of the whole cruel, painful story. Several years had passed before he spoke to the boy oi his mother. He did so one evening, in the twilight, sud- denly, with an impetuous effort. But he struck no answer- ing chord ; Joost could remember nothing of her. The child sat silent for half-a-dozen moments, and then called to the dog. A burning desire had often come over him — almost insupportable at first — to speak to some one of bis father, but an instinctive tenderness held him back. He had grown to be twelve before the subject was broached at all. And then it came np quite suddenly. Joost had recently acquired a habit of throwing back his black locks with an impatient movement of the head. It was a daily bitterness to his uncle's heart, for it had been the high- spirited doctor's favorite gesture, the scornful shake with which he had flung from him the Baron's brutal attacks. " Don't do that ! " said van Trotsem one morning, exasper- ated beyond endurance. " Don't do that ; it's ungentle- manly ! " The word stung Joost out of his life-long reticence. " Papa used to do it," he said. Suddenly, in that moment, the memory flashed upon him across the years. " Your father," shouted the Baron recklessly, " was not a gentleman ! " The child started back. " Yon lie," he cried. His uncle struck him, for the first time, a blow across the cheek. JOOST STUDIES MEDICINE. 35 The blow was never repeated, but it marked a fresh turning-point where the paths of uncle and nephew went still farther apart. Joost never forgot its disgrace, and, as he went up to his room, he vowed that he would nevermore give his uncle cause to strike him again. He was by nature uncommunicative ; he now grew taciturn. See what came of resenting wrong — fresh, insupportable insult ! He would render it impossible. Before all his uncle's gibes and re- proaches he henceforth sat silent, sullen, often apparently sleepy, thereby maddening the old man more and more, and ignoring the one means by which he might have fronted and routed him. Tlie habit, thus assumed in youth as a preventive against violence, grew upon him. It was easy, after all ; and you soon get indifferent. It never left him afterward. CHAPTER IV. "^ JOOST STUDIES MEDICINE. "When Joost attained his thirteenth birthday, it became evident that he must go to the Public School at the county town. Till then he had been educated in a happy-go-lucky manner, the village schoolmaster coming up in vacant hours and setting him long tasks to fill up the intervals. French he had learned from his early governess, and hd spent too much of his free time in the disused library, reading and re- reading the French classic poets, and even the great masters of French prose. His selections were often not those a care- ful mother would have made. He knew La Rochefoucauld and Le Sage Avell before ho was twelve, and was not un- acquainted even with Rabelais. Then he dived into French translations of the Greek and Latin authors — a chance c 36 JOOST AVELINGH. volume of Herodotus led him thither — reading on " fast and loose" as they say in Dutch, and forgetting what he could not understand. His uncle disapproved of the whole taste without being able to control it. What rational boy would prefer a book to a boat, a pen to a pony ? Joost would wil- lingly have accepted the pony and the boat too, had his uncle offered them. He was now driven to the library by sheer ennui, and it was a blessing he enjoyed himself there. He did not care for the society of the children of those grooms and laborers his uncle was so familiar with in his own haughty manner. He idled out into the gardens and com- posed verses. They were not very good verses, and he was by no means a nineteenth-century Milton, but they kept him innocently employed — for he could not publish them. Even Dirk Trotsem would have comprehended that such a boy must be properly educated, had he been left to find it out by himself. But the village schoolmaster spared him that trouble by telling him plainly, that Joost now knew all he could learn at home. And the old man, who looked upon his nephew as a continual worry, an annoyance and a re- proach, who had no common interests with the lad and no agreeable intercourse, and who even felt at times that he positively disliked him — the old man now suddenly realized that he could not let the child leave the house. He hated the idea of being left alone in it ; there would be nobody to talk to, nobody to talk at, if you will, nobody upon whom to pour out his grievances. The next worst thing to keeping Joost was letting Joost go. Both were evils ; his life was made up of evils ; he was an ill-used, undeservedly perse- cuted, miserable, righteous old man. So the boy remained at the Castle and drove over to school daily, a drive of some nine miles. He got on better with his companions than might have been expected. His heart warmed and thawed amid all that bright young life. He was quicker than most boys, certainly, and more reflect- JOOST STUDIES MEDICINE. 37 ive, born with what the poets call an " inward eye," but once out in the open air with schoolfellows, he became a differ- ent creature. He could run wdth the swiftest and laugh with the loudest, and he showed quite an unexpected cour- age in hitting out when attacked. In athletic sj)orts and games he did not excel ; " I can only run away," he used to say in later years. But he had a frank, ingenuous manner, which goes home straight to boys' hearts — no one but a bully would have struck Joost Avelingh. His uncle — guided therein by the Public School masters — had destined him for the bar. It seemed the natural thing, and Joost was well satisfied it should be so. By the time he was eighteen, and in the highest class, he looked upon the matter as definitely settled and made all his jilans ac- cordingly with Kees van Hessel, his class-fellow and chum. They were to go up together. But in the long vacation — at the last moment almost — a sudden change came. The old Baron — he was Just about sixty by this time — called Joost into his room. He sat in the armchair by his desk, looking straight in front of him out of the winj^ow, with his back turned to the youth. " I have been obliged to alter my arrangements," he said, abruptly ; " 3'ou will study medicine." Joost stood as if a thunderbolt had fallen on his heai*t. Perhaps — who knows? — if he had burst into hot reproach and refusal, he might have shaken his uncle's purpose. But that was not Joost's manner with regard to " the transaction of unavoidable business," as he had come to call his inter- course with his uncle. He hesitated for some time ; then he asked quietly and, worst of all, sneeringly : Might I know your reasons for so sudden a change ? " Now that he was no longer a child, he hud got into this dreadful sneering accent with his uncle, unconsciously, as a man of superior intellect is apt to do under oppression. It was the worst tone of all with van Trotsoin, wlio could not have told whv it stung. 38 JOOST AVELINGH. " I have my reasons," said tlie Baron, shifting his ac- count books. " It is, therefore, I should like to hear them," said Joost. There was a long silence. The big dog at the Baron's feet rose up, stretched himself, lifted his head, gave a long look at Joost, a deep sigh, and lay down again. The Baron kicked out one foot, unintentionally, and struck against him. " I may say on my side," continued Joost, " that, al- though I am a doctor's son, or perhaps, on that account, I have a particular, a peculiar dislike to the study of medi- cine. I loathe it. The idea of always puddling in putrid matter is especially obnoxious to me. You may wish to know this." The Baron nodded his head once or twice. " That comes true," he said aloud, more to himself than to Joost, " quite true." He took out, mechanically, a sheet of paper from the blotter before him, held it up for a few moments without reading the contents, and then put it back. Joost noticed the paper ; is was of a peculiar pink tint, covered with writ- ing in a large, florid hand. " Quite true. Quite, true " said the Baron softly. " And therefore," repeated Joost, " I should feel obliged if you could communicate your reasons to me." The old man now for the first time turned round and looked at his nephew. The dog came up and put his nose against Joost's hand. " Joost," said the Baron, quite kindly, " believe me, I have my reasons. I consider them impera- tive. I am sure they are right. I can't tell you ; at least, I don't wish to. I want you to begin studying medicine to please me. You'll like it afterward. I know you will. They say so ; do it to please me." The tone of the voice — almost imploring — was lost upon Joost. " Thank you, sir," he said, coldly. " I do not be- lieve I need trouble you for any reasons. I am confident I JOOST STUDIES MEDICINE. 39 know them. In fact, I should say I had stated them my- self — just now." He turned to go. " What ! " screamed the old man, starting up and shaking his fist. " Damn you, you thank- less scoundrel. Damn you and the bread you eat. Medi- cine ! You shall study medicine ! I'll make you study it ! I'll — damn you, what do you mean by your insolence? What was good enough for your rogue of a father is good enough for his blackguard of a son ! Damn you ! " Joost stood looking at him for a moment, then smiled — the faintest ripple of a smile — and left the room. He really thought that he knew the reason. He believed that the whole comedy of preparation had been jDlayed by the old man for the sake of this final coup. He had been led to make all his plans for the future, that the disappoint- ment, the humiliation, might be the greater in the end. " He may well do it for love of me," muttered the Baron to himself, as he fumed up and down his sanctum. " Why should that not be the best reason of all ? As good any day as the other. Why should he not care for my wishes, the ungrateful vagabond ? Talk of filial affection ! If such a thing exists, he ought to feel it for me ! And his father, whom he has never seen since he was a child ! Whom he owes nothing but beggary ! Doubtless he would gladly do it for his father. He sha'n't do it for his father. He shall do it for me." " And he enjoys it," said Joost to himself, alone with his cigar, by the pond. " I tell him it means life-long misery to me. And he enjoys tliat. That's what he wants. I hate liini. Great Heaven, how I hate liiiu ! Can it bo wrong to hate as I do? With such a cause." He was debating witli himself, smoothly and leisurely, v/hether he should turn his back upon his uncle and his uncle's house forever. He could enlist as a soldier for Acheen. 40 JOOST AVELINGH, That meant a horrible death in a year or two. Friends — the most intimate, to whom he had confided something of liis troubles — had advised him to enlist. They were snugly settled in their own homes, and it sounded well. He might come back a general, with the Military Order of Will- iam on his breast. He might — Joost thought of the un- speakable horrors of Acheen, and shuddered as he looked down into the blackness of the pond. He was well aware of his poverty. He had been too often taunted with it for the ghost of a doubt to be possible on that score. The exact amount of his possessions stood out before him, as he had heard it a hundred times from the lips of his uncle : three thousand three hundred and twenty-nine florins, fifty-five and a half cents, " the interest — you know, Joost, goes in keeping you. It really all goes ; or would you desire me to give you a written account?" He was too much a child of the nineteenth century and he had been too accurately enlightened by his uncle not to know that a couple of thousand florins were at best but a loosening rope over the precipice of starvation. And be- sides, even what little he had was in his uncle's keeping. That uncle was rich enough ; it had been Dirk van Trot- sem's mother whose money had bought off the mortgages on the estate and restored the family to their pristine glory. The second wife, Joost's grandmother, had been as poor in her own right as the old Baron, her husband, was in his. Joost could not escape from his guardian, even if he wished it. For the ensuing five years he was bound by the law to obey in all things. If he fled, he would be brought back with contumely. He could not, therefore, obtain a situation and " honestly earn an independent crust." He could only attempt to run away — run to sea, in fact. Not all young men have a natural aptitude or inclination that way (if they had, there would be more good admirals) ; Joost looked down again, this time at his own reflection in the JOOST STUDIES MEDICINE. 41 pond and the red spot of the cigar. He was too old and too tall for a cabin boy. Decidedly the idea was unpracti- cal, and Joost, being practical, walked up the terrace and rang for some coffee. So Joost Avelingh studied medicine. He began his work with a rooted dislike, and the farther he Avent the wider that dislike spread out, until his life was overshad- owed by its branches. The young men of his own rank, or rather of the rank his uncle's position had brought him, were law students, and naturally kept a good deal to them- selves, though they made an exception, as far as possible, for Joost. His own fellow-students were rough lads of the lower middle class, who laughed at the airs he gave him- self, and despised him for his dislike of his profession. He turned sick at the sight of blood, and even the professor burst out laughing. The smell of the laboratory, the touch of all that putrescent flesh were horrible to him. Often, after lecture, he could not eat a morsel. His daily occupa- tions became a terror. He fled from them — whither? It is a wonder now^^ looking back, to think he did not fly to his own ruin ; he sought a refuge in his old favorite, literature, and thereby escaped many a danger. He lived in rooms of his own now. It was inevitable on his going up to the University, but it was also desired on both sides. The time had long gone by when the Baron was anxious to keep his nephew near him. He saw that the young man avoided him, and he also was quite content they should see but little of each other. He regretted sin- cerely that there should be so little sympathy between them, and he laid the blame on Joost. If there was in Joost's character a strongly marked fault growing out of a virtue — what the French call : Un-de-faut de ses qualites — it must have been the intense longing for approval and admiration whicli was part of his affectionate- 42 JOOST AVELIXGH, ness. He was anxious to do all men a pleasure, but he was also anxious to be thought pleasing by them, and it was an extravagant enjoyment to him to know that they thought him pleasing. He wanted to be liked and honored and praised. Why not? He wanted affection. But in his present position he could not get what he desired. Besides, in any case, he was not a man to be popular at a Dutch University. He drank but little ; he swore not at all, and he never played. And so Joost Avelingh had spent three years at the University : he was therefore now, at the age of twenty- one, about half-way in the Dutch curriculum. He had even passed his first examination, although with but indifferent success. He went over to his uncle from Saturday to Monday ac- cording to agreement. The rest of the week he worked as little, and read as much, as he possibly could. He dreamed of the great things he might have done, and thought him- self a good deal cleverer than he really was. Most young men do, and that is why the very clever ones are so unbear- ably conceited. During the vacations he returned home, " by royal command " as he expressed it. He was at home at the time of that Santa Claus evening when Agatha van Hessel — " fair Agatha " — sent him away empty-handed. CHAPTER V. THE ICE-PAKTY. " I SHOULD ask her, Joost," said Kees. They were skating leisurely up the crooked Ehine on their way past Utrecht to the quaint old town of Ysseltein. THE ICE-PARTY. 43 Behind them skated the rest of the party. They in- tended making quite a day of it and were in high spirits ac- cordingly. Mynheer and Mevrouw van Hessel had driven over with several other middle-aged peojile, and the young ones were now skating to join them. There was to be a simple luncheon when they reached their destination, and then all were to skate back again along the white canals. " I can't think," Joost had been saying, " what I can have done to offend Agatha. I suppose I have no right to expect her to give me presents, but she always has done so till now on St. Nicholas eve. So I suppose she's offended about something." " I should ask her, Joost," said Kees. " You don't know anything about that thing she said she had got for me ? " continued Joost, wishing his friend would be more communicative, " and which your mother — er — er — disapproved of." " Xo," said Kees truthfully, " only that my father said she could give it you next year." " Anyhow," Joost went on grumbling with a lover's in- constancy, " ^he didn't give me anything. So I'm sure that she's offended. I wonder what I have done." " Ask her, Joost," said Kees imperturbably, pulling a long whiff from his short curved pipe. " Ask her ! Ask her ! " cried the other, losing all pa- tience, and sweeping round the corner with a flourish that almost made him lose his balance. " How can you be so provoking, Kees ? I can't go up to your sister and say : ' Freule, why don't you give me presents ? ' I might as well stop a young lady in the street and say : ' Freule, why don't you give me yourself ? ' " " You might," said Kees. " And the young lady might be my sister, or she might not. Look here, Joost " — he struck with a short stick he was carrying at a lump of snow that lay handy, " you have known Agatha ever since sho 44 JOOST AVELINGH. was a child. You like her, and she likes j'ou, and if you can't ask her by this time whatever you want to, you must be a duffer. That's my opinion, and I don't consider my- self a fool." Joost skated on in silence. A year ago he had come to the conclusion that he was in love with Agatha van Hessel, and he had found amusement and interest in developing the tender passion ever since. So by this time it was a very serious thing indeed. At least, so he told himself. She occupied his thoughts, and he liked to have them so occu- pied. Of course she had early taken possession of his verses, and her presence in them had materially improved these works of art. The idea of his having somehow displeased her worried him, chiefly because it hurt his comfortable self-esteem. He did not like people to be dissatisfied with him. He liked to please them. " Van Asveld," he said presently, " is a cad." " Of course," acquiesced Kees. " Xobody doubts that, I suppose." " Then why did you ask him ? " " My dear fellow, man is a gregarious animal, and only a gentlemanly hermit could keep himself clear of cads. I am content, therefore, to draw the line at officially recogized, objective cads. I exclude all honest people in fustian, but the subjective broadcloth cad, the coronetted cad, I admit. I must talk to somebody. At least, that's my opinion, and I don't call myself a fool." " No," interpolated Joost, " leave that to me, as your father says. No offense." " The van Asvelds are an old family," continued Kees. " Title pretty old too. Besides Arthur's a relation of yours." " He is no relation of mine ! " shouted Joost with un- necessary vehemence. " He is only a cousin of my uncle's, as I have told you a hundred times." He cast furious THE ICE-PARTY. 45 glances behind him, where Agatha was skating, at some distance from them, hand in hand witli the objectionable Arthur. " Oh very well," said Kees coolly, " most people wouldn't think it mattered much. By-the-by, how is the old gentle- man ? " " Wonderfully amiable. He presented me with a check for a hundred florins * this morning as a tardy Santa Claus gift. As far as I can remember — and I've been thinking it over all the morning — it's the greatest proof of his affec- tion I ever received in my life." " Let us hope he will continue to improve," said Kees. "The older he gets the more may he give you, till he cuts up and gives you all." Joost flushed up. " He must be very rich," Kees went on, " with all his hoarding and his capital administration of the estate. All's well that ends well, Joost. You'll be a great landed pro- prietor some day. My father says Dr. Kern told him the old man may last twenty years longer, but there's every chance he won^'t last two. He's got something the matter with his heart and he's apoplectic too. You knew that didn't you ? Well, don't tell him I told you. He does. Kern told papa some weeks ago. My opinion is you won't have a chance of killing many patients, Dr. Joost. Joost skated on. It has been said that he was a child of the nineteenth century, the age of gold, but it is due to him to add that, although he knew the importance of money, his was anything but a mercenary mind. He had fully understood that his uncle was rich, and that he was poor, and that, furthermore, he was dependent on the old man for support — the fact had been stated to him with sufficient plainness and frequency. But he had never real- * About £8 5s. 46 JOOST AVELINGH. ized that there could be any other connection between him and his uncle's money. Baron Dirk never spoke of the subject. And, for Joost's thouglits, it had lain too far out- side the sphere of "jiractical politics." The Baron was not an old man — sixty-three, Joost thought ; he might, as Kees Hessel had said, live twenty years longer, and by that time the best part of Joost's life would be over. The subject was too far away for immediate consideration. However it be, it is certain that Joost had never looked upon himself in the light of a possible possessor of his uncle's wealth till the morning of that 13th of December, when Kees Hessel, probably impressed by what his father had repeated of the doctor's indiscretions, first stated the desirable eventuality in such unmistakable terms. "And a good thing too," continued Kees, breaking a long and awkward silence. " And I quite agree with my father, whatever mamma may say, that you are a very advan- tageous joar/i." " Of course, a bird in the hand and all that's quite true," continued the ingenuous youth, " but as matches go nowa- days you're a good one. And if I said what I thought — but I can't say what I think." " I wish you would," said Joost. " You are like the celebrated foreign King — France, wasn't it? — who never thought a foolish thing and never said a wise one. At least, if one is to believe your own account." " Well, I will say it," cried Kees. " My advice would be : Don't bother about Agatha's being offended with you, but ask her to marry you. She likes you ; my father wants it. You like her, I am sure, for you're always jawing about her. J\iime ; tit ainies ; il aime. Make it: nous aimons, and have done with it." " Thank you," said Joost stiffly, drawing himself up as well as he could while skating so fast — for he had spurted as if in a race during the last speech — " Thank you. You THE ICE-PARTY. 47 are very good, and your advice is undoubtedly attractive. But I shall never propose to any woman till I am in a posi- tion to maintain her." " Oh very well. Don't be waxy. I don't consider my- self a fool, and that's my oj)inion. Only mind Arthur As- veld doesn't forestall you. I don't think he will quite wait for love-making till he is able to support a wife." And good-natured, self-satisfied Kees buried his chin in the col- lar of his pea-jacket and tried hard to reanimate his perish- ing pipe. They were nearing their destination. They had been skating on and on along the narrow river which lay as a gleaming baud across the flat, frozen landscape. Barren it was and hushed, as if in death, beneath its white coverlet, but not bleak. The wintry sun shone out too cheerily for that from his pale, silver-blue sky, lighting up every sparkle in the wide expanse, and sweeping great shadows — yovi could not tell whence — across the ice-band down the middle. The rare trees along the banks — a cluster of poplar?, a row of straggling willows — stood out, black and gaunt, against heaven. Here'^and there untidy bushes formed a sort of fringe. From these a bird Avould start up occasionally and shoot on ahead over the river. In the full, clear winter still- ness they could hear his parting rustle ; the notes of bells came ringing from peaked church-towers in the distance. Children called out to them, standing among the hens be- fore red-roofed, snow-bedizened cottages aloTig their road. And as they passed the full-bellied Dutch barges, motionless by the frozen river-bank, a head with a pipe would lift itself slowly from the companion and lazily follow them, and half- a-dozen chubby, red-comfortered children, pottering about on their own small skates, would come after them with a merry hue and cry, trying to keep up with the older riders. The town, small enough, and huddled together, appeared against tlie horizon long before they were near it. It lay. 48 JOOST AVELINGH. flat amid the far-stretching flatness, with a steeple here and there, first gray, then, as they approached sufficiently to see the snow-patches, all red and glistening white. The others had been gaining on them while they talked, but after Joost's rejection of his friend's advice, they hurried on in unbroken silence, Joost skating ever faster, with a grim frown on his dark face, and Kees keeping up with him as a point of honor. As they neared the town, however, Kees slackened his sjieed, and Joost looked round at him, " I think we'd better wait for the others," puffed Kees. "Politer, you know." " No, sir," said Joost, " You're beat. But all right ; I'll wait." " Oh very well," laughed van Ilessel. " It's quite true. "We've been going too fast for any sensible man these last ten minutes, and that's my opinion." So they made up what quarrel there may have been, and skated back very leisurely to pick up the others, talking of University affairs the while. Joost's face did not cloud over again, till he saw Agatha coming up, still hand in hand with van Asveld. The Jonker Arthur van Asveld was a fellow-student of the other young men, and in their set. When they first went up to the University he had highly disapproved of the admission of a medical student into a club of " jurists," and had loudly expressed his disajoproval. Of course some one had told Joost. He was not himself a very attractive per- sonage, but in accordance with Kees's candid confession, he could scarcely be called an unpopular one. He was very stupid and boasted of his stupidity, he was very impecunious, and lived on his debts and his losses at play. He was very corpulent, and thereby proved a claim to good-nature. He was fairly good-looking and extremely licentious. He had a good many claims to popularity in the circle in which for- tune had set him. The Jonker Arthur was a connection of THE ICE-PARTY. 49 the Baron's, being the son of that gentleman's cousin. He had come up to Utrecht from an out-of-the-way village where his widowed mother tried to keep up her rank on £500 a year. The Jonker now spent seven or eight hundred at the University. • •••••• There was quite a merry company of them round the luncheon table of the hostelry of the " Golden Cow." A long table in a low, sanded parlor, a white earthenware serv- ice of coffee-things and a shining black slop basin, plenty of double rolls — " cadets," as they call them, mealy, pasty, nasty things — with thick slices of red beef or Dutch sweet cheese between them, and a dish of oranges to wind up with. Good spirits, glowing cheeks, and keen appetites; what would you have more? The Jonker Arthur asked for a pick-me-up. Mevrouw van Hessel, portly and commanding, sat with the kettle in the little burnished peat-stove beside her, overlooking the company. She did not approve of Annemie — the beauty — 's tendency to flirt. It was an imported cus- tom, she thought, and not an improvement on the silent, still Dutch manner of old. Still less, however, did Mev- rouw approve of her spouse's inclination to follow his daughter's example. Bettekoo had brought a friend, a charming young thing of seventeen, in swansdown and curls. Mevrouw promised herself to speak to van Ilessel at some more convenient time. Verrooy, Mevrouw's son-in-law, had come over with them. There was not much to be said of Verrooy. He was " Secretary " to the Board of tlie Village of lloest, because his father-in-law was Burgomaster of the village of Heist, and because the son of the Burgomaster of the former place wanted to bo appointed to tlio Board of the latter. It was very simple. Some day he would become Burgo- master of some other village, when he had money, or influ- 50 JOOST AVELINGH. ence enough, to get the place. Verrooy was not clever. He could skate well, and he had a fine, light-blond mus- tache. " It had not been a very good match," thought Madame van Hessel, as she looked across at her son-in-law eating bread and cheese. "Agatha must do better, but then Agatha was good-looking, not so fine a girl as Annemie but far better than Clara, who had something that was al- most a cast in her eye. Clara's had been a love-affair. She had surrendered to Verrooy's mustache, and now the mustache bored her. Oh, those love affairs, they always turn out badly." Joost sat between Agatha and Annemie, and, in a fit of caprice and shyness, flirted with Annemie. It was a mistake on his part, for Agatha naturally turned to her other neigh- bor and bestowed — not her sweetest smiles, for Agatha was certainly not a flirt — but such second-best sweet smiles as she had on the Jonker van Asveld. Arthur was delighted, and grinned, and paid her such compliments as he found in his repertoire, compliments which had already often de- lighted the ladies he usually spent his evenings with. They did very well, he thought, brushed up and burnished, to set once more before an honest girl. " Well, Joost,'' cried out Mynheer van Hessel from his end of the table, his volatile mind suddenly " butterflying " away from the rosebud next to him. " Kees tells me you beat him in skating this morning. So much the better ; I congratulate you." He lifted up his coffee-cup and flour- ished it gracefully toward Joost — " I drink to you gentle- men of the medical profession. You remember the old saying : Medicina autem est ccrs tuencli, etc. La medecine est Vart qui tuey He laughed heartily over his own joke. It was an old friend that had gone through life with him, and he loved it accordingly. He could not have remem- bered when first they met. " Thank you, sir," said Joost. He was beginning to find THE ICE-PARTY. 51 the fat Burgomaster rather a nuisance. He turned again to Annemie. But Mvnheer van Hessel was a born button-holer. He could not bear to let you go, till you tore your coat in es- caping. " You must excuse me, you know," he went on, " I have always had a prominent ' os humoris,'' a mouth for humor, as you doctors say, and I like my little joke. I was remarking only yesterday — " " Did you say anything ? " Joost asked abruptly of Agatha. " I should like a little water," the latter answered meekly. Mynheer van Hessel was left, open-mouthed, in the middle of his recital of yesterday's witticism. Two young men had swooped with a rush toward a bell-rope in a cor- ner ; four legs and four arms had got remarkably inter- mingled ; there was a clutch at the rope, a violent peal, and then the whole concern came down, and the antagonists rolled up against the wainscoting together, with outstretched arms and exclamations. " Damned clumsy," hissed stout van Asveld in Joost's ear. " It was," Joost whispered back, " only : balls will roll, you know." A peal of laughter greeted this misadventure. " What's the matter ? " said the Burgomaster. " A ring for Agatha? There Joost has the first right." * When they got up from table to go and see the quaint old town and the ruins of the castle, Bettekoo — Benjamin, as her father called her — ran up to him. She was full of excitement and animal spirits that day, what with the cold and the fun. " We can't all troop along like a flock of * For the satisfaction of the captious reader who objects that tlie Burgomaster spoke Dutch his poor little pun is here given in the original : " Luiden voor Agaatje. Dat mag Joost bezorgen." D 52 JOOST AVELI^'GH. sheep, papa," slie cried. " You must let me marshal you like a school-mistress. Mamma will take Verrooy, papa -will go Avith Jennie (the young charmer in svvansdown), Kees may have me, Joost will take Agatha — " " But will Agatha take Joost ? " interrupted the Burgo- master. There was a moment's awkward pause. The wretched man availed himself of this to make matters worse by add- ing : " Pom' ceci et cela il faut Men etre dexix.'''' " Thank you, no, Bettekoo," said Joost, hastily flushing and stuttering. " You must really excuse my disobeying, but I have already arranged with Annemie." And so Arthur van Asveld went with Agatha. She had now been tied to him for several hours and was getting very weary of his inane conversation. Mevrouw van Hessel looked on, concernedly. The excursion was not one of un- mixed pleasure to the good lady. She had some serious objections to Joost, but she disaj)proved utterly and unmiti- gatedly of van Asveld. ' Agatha's difficulties, as it happened, were, however, by no means over. The party ultimately retraced their stejos to the river, and, the girl having lingered to speak to her mother, it so chanced that, when she came down to the bank, she found both young men looking out for her, and casting terrible glances at each other. Both advanced simul- taneously ; both — exactly at the same moment — bent down to fasten her skates. " Excuse me, van Asveld," said Joost in a voice which he in vain sought to steady, " it is my — er — privilege to help the Fi-eule with her skates." " By what right but impertinence ? " queried van Asveld. " If the Freule allows me to assist her, I shall do it." " Mynheer van Asveld," cried Joost, suddenly dropping out of the familiar " thou," " you will leave this skate to me." He seized hold of it as he spoke. THE ICE-PARTY. 53 " M3'nheer Avelingh," replied Arthur, scornfully accentu- ating the " Mynheer," " you are probably crazy. " " It is like you," said Joost quietly, " to quarrel before ladies. Let the Freule decide for herself." Agatha looked from one to the other. Their angry faces warned her to settle the dispute at once. She ad- dressed Arthur. " Then, Mynheer van Asveld, if you will be so kind — " ; she turned to Joost, " because you know, I know you longest, Joost." It was rational and graceful enough, surely, but Joost walked off in high dudgeon. She eyed him in despair, for, she felt, that, were it only for appearances' sake, she could not again ride all the way home with van Asveld. Practical Mevrouw van Hessel came to her rescue. She had come to the river-bank to see them off, and now she called Joost to her. " Will you start with Agatha, please," she said, " while van Asveld attends to Bettekoo." So Ar- thur, much to his disgust, had to remain behind with " that child." Joost and Agatha skated off in silence, side by side. Joost offered no assistance, but glowered straight in front of him. His companion was not a very efficient skater, and after they had gone some distance, she stumbled, and would have fallen, had he not caught her. They righted them- selves with some dithculty, Joost stamping himself straight on his skates again. " Would you give me a hand ? " asked Agatha, humbly. He held out both, with no very good grace, and they skated on again. They liad turned a corner and passed under an old wood- en drawbridge. The glow and sparkle had gone out of the landscape. The sun hung low, and half-way veiled, behind a line of pink clouds. The whole scene was gray and cold and hazy. There is nothing so ashen and death-like as the sunset of a fine wintor's day. 54 JOOST AVELINGH. They had skated on for nearly an hour in silence. They had distanced all the others, for Joost dragged Agatha for- ward, and were now apparently quite alone amid that misty waste of snow. " And you flirt," burst out Joost, suddenly, " with one, and the other. A. for my fan ; B. for my gloves ! And, later on, I daresay, A. for my hand, B. for my heart ! You are a bad girl, Agatha ! " It was very childish. And what did Agatha's flirtations matter to him ? He had been ruminating the subject all day. Provoked by Kees's advice, disgusted with Mynheer van Ilessel's stupid banter, he had only just now made up his mind to be very circumspect. The Burgomaster's hints, especially, provoked him. They had led him firmly to re- solve to make no advances to Agatha van Hessel. " No, he was not the man to be bullied in matters of that kind. He would show the Burgomaster that he, Joost Avelingh, was no fool. He would marry whom he chose, and as he chose, and, however much he loved her, he would not propose to Agatha at any man's bidding or prompting — not he." The sudden attack on Agatha was childish under any circumstances. She was inclined to be very angry, and give him such answer as he had deserved. But, after all, Joost was Joost. They had known each other from childhood, almost as brother and sister ; she could take a good deal from him that she would not have borne from another. And she stole a look at his dark face, looking so cross and hand- some with the black eyebrows knit, and the mouth set square under the little black mustache. Poor fellow, how good and silly he was. She pitied him and his foolish anger. " Joost ! " she said gently, reproachfully, with a world of tender, laughing, half-vexed consolation in the word " Joost ! " She turned her kindly, clear blue eyes upon him. He WEIGHED IX THE BALANCE. 55 thought he liad never seen her look so bewitching as now, in her tight-fitting sealsliin. A little ear lay close to him, resting on the liglit fur collar, and her masses of yellow hair were coiled under a sealskin cap, " Agatha," he burst out, " I love you. And that's why 1 And that's all." They skated on. He held both her hands, and she could not well withdraw them without falling. He pressed them — that was unnecessary — and she could not well return the pressure without accepting him. She returned it. They skated on. He bent his tall form and kissed her. There were icicles in the little black mustache and in his wavy hair. Nineteen and twenty-one, and a winter's even- ing. A sinking sun and a violet haze ; a pale heaven with a single star in it, and a gleaming stretch of ice across a boundless snow plain. She rested her head on his shoulder, against the shaggy peajacket. And so they skated on. CHAPTER VI. WEIGHED IX THE BALANCE. When the van Hessels turned the corner from which they could see their house, the first object that met their view was Joost Avelingh standing on the " stoop." " Dear, dear, how tiresome ! " said Mevrouw to Mynheer. " I suppose he is waiting for an invitation to dinner. It really appears to me that we have been seeing too much of that young man lately." Mynheer van Hesscl lay dozing in his corner. He knew 56 JOOST AVELINGII. he was in disgrace. Ever since they had set down their last guest a few minutes ago, he had pretended to be asleep. Madame had a way of ticking the middle finger of her right hand against the back of her left when she was displeased. She was ticking now. " You will not ask him," said Madame. " No, no ! " answered the fat Burgomaster, cautiously opening one eve. " Oh, no ! Quite enough gayety for one day." " Quite enough tomfoolery," began Madame, severely. The Burgomaster shut his eye hastily and buried his red face in his furs. The carriage drove up to the house. Joost came for- ward, astrakhan-cap in hand, with a beaming face. " It w%as very good of you to wait," said Madame, as he helped her to alight. " You should not have done that merely to say good- by. Good-by " — she held out her hand at the door. The Burgomaster came tumbling out after his wife. " Joost," he said, " Oh yes. Capital fun, wasn't it ? Hope you enjoyed yourself. Good-by ! " " Mynheer and Mevrouw," said Joost, " I have proposed to Agatlia, and she has accepted me." Mevrouw van Hessel was a fine woman, a big woman, a woman of the world, with a handsome face and bearing, despite her increasing girth. She turned slowly half-way in the hall-door and looked at Joost. She looked at him. His eyes fell. " Bravo," said Mynheer van Hassel. " So far so good.'* " So far," said Mevrouw. " Perhaps. But no farther, at least to-day. These subjects, as you know very well, are, as a rule, first discussed with the young lady's parents." " I thought that Mynheer had already sufficiently sig- nified his consent," stammered Joost. Mevrouw shifted her ground. " Quite enough has been WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE. 57 done for to-day," she replied, " if not too mucli. You can come up to-morrow and speak to Mynheer. Good- by!" She walked into the hall. Mynheer followed after, but, as he passed through the doorway, he turned round and winked at Joost. And so that young gentleman went home, consoled for Mevrouw's " brutal behavior." " I will not talk on the subject to you to-day, Agatha," said Mevrouw, as she stood dressing for dinner. " No, I positively refuse to give any opinion. You have thought fit to act and ju