(^^ y^ ■ ^1^...^ o-,^.^^--^ 
 
 ^■/ 
 
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 U/; 
 
 /^66 ^'
 
 BY MAARTEN MAARTENS. 
 
 GOD'S FOOL. 
 
 i2nio. 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 ReTteiv. 
 
 " Perfectly easy, graceful, humorous . . . The author's 
 skill in character-drawing is undeniable." — London Chron- 
 icle. 
 
 " A remarkable work." — Neiv York Times. 
 
 " The story is wonderfully brilliant. . . . The interest 
 never lags; the style is realistic and intense: and there is 
 constantly underlying current of subtle humor. ... It is, 
 in short, a book which no student of modern literature 
 should fail to read." — Bos/on 7 iines. 
 
 JOOST AVELINGH. 
 
 i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 " A book by a man who, in addition to mere talent, has 
 in him a vein of genuine genius." — London Academy. 
 
 " So unmistakably good as to induce the hope that an 
 acquaintance with the Dutch literature of fiction may soon 
 become more general among us." — London Mortiing Post. 
 
 " In scarcely any of the sensational novels of the day 
 will the reader find more nature or more human nature." — 
 London Standard. 
 
 " A novel of a very high type. At once strongly re- 
 alistic and powerfully idealistic." — London Literary 
 ti'orid. 
 
 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 121X10. Cloth, Si. 50. 
 
 New York: D. Appleton & Co., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY 
 
 A STORY OF HIGH LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 MAARTEN MAARTENS 
 
 AUTHOR OF cod's FOOL, JOOST AVELINGH, ETC. 
 
 " So doth the Greater Glory dim the less " 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 D. APPLE TON AND COMPANY 
 
 1894
 
 Copyright, 1893, 
 Bv D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
 
 Electrotyped and Printed 
 at the appleton press, u. s. a.
 
 TO 
 
 WENDELA
 
 NOTE 
 
 Holland is a small country, and it is difficult to step 
 out in it without treading on somebody's toes. I therefore 
 wish to declare, once for all, and most emphatically, that 
 my books contain no allusions, covert or overt, to any real 
 persons, living or dead. I am aware that great masters of 
 fiction have thought fit to work from models ; that method 
 must therefore possess its advantages : it is not mine. In 
 this latest book, for instance, I have purposely avoided cor- 
 rect description of the various Court Charges, lest anyone 
 should seek for some feeble coincidence. Such search, after 
 this statement, would be deliberately malicious. I describe 
 manners and morals, not individual men. 
 
 M. M. 
 
 Cv)
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I.— Rings the departuee-bell 1 
 
 11, — Young Reinout 9 
 
 III.— Deynum. 18 
 
 IV. — The Rexelaers of Deynum 25 
 
 V. — The stranger comes to Deynum .... 35 
 
 VI. — The White Baroness 39 
 
 VII.— Heureux en mariage 48 
 
 VIII. — A prince of the blood royal 53 
 
 IX.— Disease .60 
 
 X. — A shepherd and two sheep 67 
 
 XI. — " Entre l'arbre et l'ecorce " 76 
 
 XII. — The heiress and her squire 86 
 
 XIII. — Baronial business 94 
 
 XIV. — Young Reinout meets his unknown friend again. 110 
 
 XV.— "Why not, M. LE Marquis?" 107 
 
 XVI.— "J'osAis" 117 
 
 XVII. — Not as we will, but as we would, Lord . . 129 
 
 XVIII. — An aristocrat's idea of the law .... 139 
 
 XIX. — The spoiler and the spoiled 145 
 
 XX. — The Marquis's heirs 158 
 
 XXL— J'ose! 162 
 
 XXIL— The home of poesy 165 
 
 XXIII. — And of statecraft 173 
 
 XXIV. — A WINDOW opens 183 
 
 XXV.— Miss Piggie 188 
 
 XXVL— Splendide Mendax 192 
 
 XXVII. — Low life, for a change 201 
 
 XXVIIL— Reinout II 208 
 
 (vii)
 
 Vlll 
 
 rt)XTP]NTS. 
 
 CHAnER 
 
 XXIX. — Thk message of the silence . 
 
 XXX. — ",Iaik-sxaps" 
 
 XXXI. — Reixout's cousixs .... 
 XXXII. — Margherita discovers that Yoi: cax 
 
 A COLD COUNTRY TOO HOT TO HOLD Y 
 XXXIII. — A COUNTY-MAGNATE .... 
 
 XXXIV. — The two Reinouts meet . 
 XXXV. — A strange light and new darkness 
 XXXVI. — The head of the house . 
 XXXVII. — "All the comforts of a home"' . 
 
 XXXVIII.— The Borcks 
 
 XXXIX.— Honest hearts 
 
 XL.— Of some that returned to Deynum and 
 departed thence 
 
 XLI. — "Cousins" 
 
 XLII. — The dawn of the higher life 
 XLIII. — The dawn proves cloudy 
 
 XLIV. — The iron hand 
 
 XLV. — Count Rexelaer's troubles . 
 XL VI. — Foreign affairs and other people's b 
 
 XLVII. — A MYSTERIOUS POET .... 
 
 XLVIIL— Stains 
 
 XLIX.— The Lady's Dole .... 
 
 L. — New scenes and old faces . ^ 
 
 LI. — Little Paradise .... 
 
 LII. — Volkert 
 
 LIII.— The will 
 
 LIV. — The Slough of Despond . . . 
 LV. — Humility and humiliation 
 LVI. — A clandestine correspondence with 
 
 left out 
 
 LVIL— The story of Ri-Ksi-La and the Dey 
 
 LVIII. — A HUNTED HARE 
 
 LIX. — The Baron's confession . 
 
 LX. — Rekselaar 
 
 LXl. — "He leadeth me in green pastures" 
 LXII. — No thoroughfare .... 
 
 LXIIL— Alone 
 
 LXIV. — Success 
 
 LXV. — Respice finem 
 
 lAKE 
 
 ou 
 
 THE 
 
 Xou 
 
 M 
 
 PAGE 
 213 
 
 218 
 226 
 
 232 
 238 
 246 
 254 
 258 
 265 
 271 
 279 
 
 287 
 297 
 306 
 311 
 315 
 320 
 328 
 334 
 341 
 348 
 360 
 368 
 376 
 387 
 395 
 401 
 
 409 
 414 
 419 
 429 
 435 
 440 
 448 
 455 
 462 
 469
 
 THE ARGUMENT, 
 
 WHICH NO^E JSEED READ. 
 
 She came to him— the Life of his Life, the Said of his 
 Soul — she came to him where he sat in the loneness of the 
 stately mansion, and she laid a gentle touch upon his bended 
 head. 
 
 Where he sat in the loneness of his grandeur, with hands 
 close-pressed against throbbing eijeballs, jjressed get closer, 
 to shut out that crimson flare which ivas eating aivay his 
 heart. 
 
 Thus she found him staring wildly into darkness, star- 
 ing beyond the darkness, into that void which is more hor- 
 rible than death. " Come,'''' she said. 
 
 Then he lifted up his eyes in sluggish wonder. " Is it 
 thou?"" he whispered. ''Art thou thou?'''' — and he took up 
 his burden, which loas himself, and followed her. 
 
 She led him down into the great hall of mirth, from 
 whence he had but newly crept away for weariness. The 
 discordance of its tuneless music and its joyless laughter 
 rolled up to meet thefn in their coming ; yet of sight there 
 teas nought to welcome them, because that its myriad candles 
 were grown suddenly dark. 
 
 Suddenly dark and unperceivable, had it not been that, 
 as she passed before him, the light of her eyes shone forth 
 icith spreading splendour, and by its rays he marked in 
 dumb amazement how that the great gold cups and chargers
 
 X THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 on the board were empty all, and la and behold the guests sat 
 naked, and their fair white flesh luas covered with S07rs and 
 they were not ashamed. 
 
 They loere not ashamed, but rather did they clash to- 
 gether empty goblets and raise thetn to their lips and drink 
 and sing. Ay, there was drinking fro)n emptiness and from 
 hollowness was merriment. A cold mist, white and slow, 
 rose across the shadows, in a ring around the radiance of 
 that starlit brow. 
 
 He stop2)ed beside a woman fair of face to look upon, 
 ichose leprous arms were girt witli bracelets, and a serpent 
 lay upon her breast. There was scorn in his sad eyes as he 
 gazed upon her, and he broke into a fierce shout of laughter 
 that beat doiun the tumult around. 
 
 But the looman stared bach upon him as one that saw 
 him not. In her gaze stood a sorrow', great and silent. 
 None echoed his laugh ; upon all that gay company a sudden 
 hush 7vas fallen. And his eyelids also were heavy with 
 tears. 
 
 She — the Life of his Life, the Soul of his Soul — ficrned 
 from lohere she luas passing on before him. " Coyne forth," 
 she said, and resumed her way. 
 
 But, ere she approached the great portal, to which her 
 hope was hastening, o)ie that sat loiv down at the table 
 stretched out his naked arm and barred her path. " Thou 
 art illfavotired," he cried, ^'■and strange to look upoji. Tell 
 thy name ere thou go.'''' 
 
 Serene, she drew herself up to all her lofty stature. "/ 
 have many names," she ansivered him, " but none for such 
 as thou. To thee let me he known for ever as an evil angel 
 of God:' 
 
 He dropped his arm with an oath and lifted one of the 
 empty cups and seemed to drain it. And some that sat near 
 cried shame — upo7i her. 
 
 Then fled they forth, these twain — he and she — info the 
 far country, and luhen the stillness had enfolded them as a
 
 THE ARGUMENT. xi 
 
 garment, sJie dreto down his head upon her hreast. " It ivas 
 thy mother,^'' she ivhisijered gravely, as one chides a child 
 that is sorry. 
 
 " My mother 9 " he replied, " / have never knovjn her, if 
 so he that she and I have met. Nothing have 1 known be- 
 yond the lap) that bare me and the breasts that never gave 
 me suck.'''' 
 
 Then went they on in silence, these twain — 7ie and she — 
 rising swiftly into the soft night-air, sioeeping forivards 
 past many a solitary house and quiet hamlet and ivide- 
 spread village, over the drowsy fields, oppressed tvith corn 
 and cattle, over the restless forests, that never cease convers- 
 ing i?i their sleep. All tJte beautiful world, of ivliich men 
 knoiv so little, lay beneath tliem, shrouded in darkness, and, 
 above them, circled in light, lay tlie beautiful worlds of 
 which men know nothing at all. 
 
 They arrested their flight and hung over the great 
 city. It gloived in the abyss, a red blot through the 
 night. 
 
 " Look down,'''' she said. And he obeyed her. For one 
 br'ief moment he obeyed tier ; then he shuddered aiv ay. "/ 
 cannot,'''' he gasped. /She smiled upon him, with a smile of 
 trustful pity. '•'•Look down^' she repeated, and there was 
 cominand in her voice. 
 
 And agaiM he obeyed her. And a great silejice lay be- 
 tween them, for many moments. Then he spoke: 
 
 " It is most horrible^'' he murmured. " It is strangely, 
 sadly beautiful. I would gaze for ever thus, but that my 
 
 sight is failing me Dearest, I thank Heaven that I 
 
 am blind.'''' 
 
 And she led him far awag into the desert — into the 
 place where no man cometh except she guide him thither. 
 On the brink of that vast precipice they stood and waited, 
 and he felt that destruction yawned below. 
 
 " Leap ! " she said, and let fall his hand. Then, as he 
 lost her hold, the truth rushed back upon him that he was
 
 xii THE greatp:r glory. 
 
 but a )))((fi, a child of earth, and that icinga are gii'en to 
 angels only. 
 
 And he leaped. 
 
 But as he fell away into space, he recdized suddenly that 
 there was no more falling, no height, "nor depth, nor dis- 
 tance. There was nothing hiit the small round eartli out- 
 side him, and around him God. 
 
 And he lay silent in the immeasurable heaven. 
 
 '■'■It is a meteor f^ said the people, gathered to behold. 
 " How brilliantly it shines ! But tuhy ? " 
 
 And no one could give them answer, for the Angel of 
 God was dead. 
 
 This is not an allegory. It is simply the irhole simple 
 story. They who icill may read it. But you and I, we 
 cannot understand it rightly, because the Angel of God is 
 dead.
 
 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Ri:NrGS THE DEPARTURE-BELL. 
 
 This is a true story. It is what they call a story of 
 high life. It is also a story of the life which is higher 
 still. 
 
 There be climbings which ascend to depths of infamy ; 
 there be also — God is merciful ! — most infamous fallings 
 into heaven. The wise men, who explain this world, have 
 taught us to consider it a round one ; doubtless they have 
 wisely measured it. Then, as 't is round, should wisdom 
 twist it topsy-turvy no one would be a whit the wiser, not 
 even the wise men. And that, perhaps, is why — sometimes 
 — to fools — our earthly high and low seem but a mighty 
 matter of tweedledum and tweedledee. 
 
 Fortune, the blind old hag, in her seat by the hearth, 
 grins down vacantly at the wise men, whom she twiddles on 
 her thumbs — like the fools. Like tlie fools, they go rising 
 and sinking, rising and sinking, till, one after another, all 
 drop away into the fire. I'hat, at any rate, is the end. ^^'o 
 drop away into the fire. 
 
 Yet never a traveller paused by the roadside to look 
 back, in weariness or wonderment, but understood, if the 
 valley spread wider, that his path leads him up. So be. it. 
 Presently, on the other side, the road slopes down again 
 into another valley. But wliat matter tlie ups and downs
 
 2 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 of tlie journey to the traA'cllcr if his face be set firmly to- 
 wards the goal? Only he feels that descent is strangely 
 easy, and bonders Avhy God bade him climb. 
 
 We say that the steadfast sun rises and sinks, like us. 
 We see him do it ; such mysterious eyes are ours. Yet Ave 
 know that it is otherwise. We, who know so little. 
 
 In earth's tiny circle revolve earth's little high and low. 
 God's high is a steadfast point. It is here : in tlie centre 
 of this strange thing you do not understand, this thing you 
 call yourself, the divinely-human heart. 
 
 Mine is a true story. It is a story of high life as they 
 call it. It is also a story of the life which is highest of all. 
 
 A moment's patience ! We shall be coming to the 
 funny part presently. Is it my fault if the comedy begins 
 at the wrong end ? So much the better for the other end, 
 the riffht. 
 
 The departure-bell clangs suddenly upon the silence. 
 A score of drowsy figures creep forth from twilight corners 
 into the radiance of a clear October afternoon. 
 
 Yes, it was on the 6th of October that the old Belgian 
 came to Deynum. My birthday, as it happens, my fifteenth 
 birthday. Or was it the fourteenth, Wendela ? 
 
 From Avhere she sits by the window, in the fading sum- 
 mer sunset, mending one of Baby Gertrude's socks, Wen- 
 dela tells me that she herself was twelve years old at the 
 time. Then it must have been my fourteenth birthday, 
 dearest. Yet what does the trifling date concern us ? It is 
 all so long ago, but that it is to-day. 
 
 On that sixth of October, then, somewhere towards the 
 first sink of the sun down a white-blue autumn sky, a 
 hackney-cab drew up, with a farewell rattle, in front of an 
 outlying Amsterdam railway-station, away on the desolate 
 dyke. The silver daylight rested cold upon the wooden
 
 RINGS THE DEPARTURE-BELL. 3 
 
 shed, upon the great grey square, with its solitary kiosqne, 
 upon the dull exj^anse of water beyond. Across the loneli- 
 ness a cruel little wind came persistently blowing. Inside 
 the building a sudden bell rang out, with the very insolence 
 of noise. 
 
 " This is not enough, sir," said the cabman. He said it 
 gently, for the Dutch remain calm under injustice. 
 
 The old gentleman who had alighted from the vehicle 
 continued his stolid ascent of the station-steps. His serv- 
 ant, preparing to follow, paused on the pavement, in a con- 
 fusion of wraps and traps. It was the servant who had 
 proffered the offending coin. 
 
 A Dutch railway-station is a scene of unruffled repose, 
 inside and out. Half a dozen porters, in white blouses and 
 brass badges, leant immovable by the entrance, sleepily per- 
 ceptive. The platform-bell stopped with a jerk, and in the 
 stillness of the square the solitary cab stood out against its 
 own clear shadow, with its cab-like air of sudden col- 
 lapse. 
 
 " Not enough," repeated the driver, without raising his 
 voice. The Dutch are as obstinate as they are gentle. He 
 held up the half-florin he had received, between greasy fin- 
 ger and thumb, in the face of Heaven and the half a dozen 
 porters. 
 
 " Xo, mynheer, it is not enough," chimed in the young- 
 est of the porters. The elder five said nothing ; they un- 
 derstood that information from a porter should never be 
 gratuitous. 
 
 The valet cast a timid scowl after the receding figure of 
 his master. Then, motioning back all slow offers of assist- 
 ance, and balancing his load of luggage as best he might, he 
 laboriously extracted a whole florin from a little black velvet 
 purse and handed it to the cabman. The purse, with its fat 
 embroidered cross, looked queerly suggestive of an under- 
 sized offertory-bag. 
 
 "Thank you," said tlie cabman, almost audibly, as he
 
 4 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 ilrove olT. lie did not say: "This is more than enough.'" 
 lie was only a human cabman. 
 
 " Ten per cent.," muttered the servant, in French, and 
 hurried away into the station. The white porters stared 
 passively in front of them. They could understand neither 
 the too little nor the too much. 
 
 The old gentleman, meanwhile, had progressed straight 
 across the entrance-hall. There was a convenient passage 
 to the platform here, which officialism had reserved for 
 luggage. Sub-officialism called out. 
 
 The stranger pointed a careless cane in the direction 
 where his servant might have been. He was a distin- 
 guished-looking man, tall and straight, well oiled and well 
 brushed, with a magnificent white moustache, and superla- 
 tively clad in a light-yellow ulster, such as young fellows 
 wore in those days. 
 
 " A prince," said one guard, by the gate, in an awe- 
 struck growl. 
 
 " Pshaw," grumbled his comrade, a bilious man without 
 any predilections. " Priucs or Pope, he had no right to 
 pass through here; barring he had been a portmanteau, 
 which he wasn't." 
 
 " Perhaps he was an Englishman," said the first guard. 
 "Englishmen may do whatever thev like. And they 
 do it." 
 
 The object of their unwilling admiration turned neither 
 to right nor left. His movements were those of a man in 
 a trance. His eyes were set in that glassy stare which sees 
 nothing that is near. 
 
 A line of empty carriages was drawn up along the plat- 
 form, Avaiting. He got into one of them, and closed the 
 door. A silver - braided somebody sprang forward and 
 opened it again. The old gentleman awoke to the action, 
 and flushed. 
 
 At that moment the station-bell rang out afresh. " On 
 Sonne le depart," he said aloud. " Eh bien, I am ready to
 
 RINGS THE DEPARTURE-BELL. 5 
 
 go. But not thus, great God ! Xot flius.''^ And large 
 beads of perspiration stood out upon his forehead. 
 
 The deserted platform now began rapidly to fill. Little 
 groups went wandering by, with bags and bundles ; a bright 
 provincial dress shone out from time to time among the 
 shoddy waterproofs. Presently a scrubby, shoppy indi- 
 vidual slipped into the compartment, an open paper of 
 grapes in his hand. 
 
 The stranger passed out and wrenched open the first 
 door within his reach. But once more a conductor hiter- 
 posed. " This compartment is reserved, monsieur, in case 
 any of the directors — " 
 
 " It is the only one takable and I take it," replied the 
 old gentleman, still in French. " Antoine," he turned 
 fiercely upon his valet, Avho had just sncceeded in finding 
 him, "you blockhead, where are you? Pay for all the 
 places, and see that they leave me in peace." 
 
 " If monsieur would but inform me where it is his in- 
 tention to betake himself — " began the valet, with a slight 
 stutter over the word " Monsieur." 
 
 The old man hesitated on the carriage-step. " Get your 
 tickets," he burst out, with unreasoning fierceness, "as 
 far as the train goes. And see that they leave me in 
 peace." 
 
 Xo further molestation was offered him. At a few hur- 
 ried words from the frightened valet, the protesting officials 
 fell back, with discreet glances of half-vexed curiosity. 
 " These great personages ! " said the inspector, shrugging 
 his shoulders, and with his own hand he brought a card, 
 marked " Engaged." 
 
 " This is not for Belgium ? This train ? " asked the old 
 man, rousing himself. 
 
 " Certainly not, your Highness. The Belgian train does 
 not leave till 6.40. This one is just starting. Might I 
 ask—" 
 
 "My valet! My valet will tell you," replied the old
 
 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 man, ^vith a ivpollaut gesture. " Morbleu, euunot you leave 
 me in peace ? " 
 
 They bustled iu Antoine, still fumbling his change, and 
 expostulating with everybody. Another moment and the 
 train was off. 
 
 " I have tickets to the frontier, Monsieur le Marquis." 
 
 The old man took no notice. His face, under its careful 
 make-up, was hideous w'ith the horror of his thoughts. 
 
 The valet remained standing at the farther end of the 
 railway-carriage, steadying himself against the side with an 
 air of resjDectful indifference. Presently he drew a couple 
 of small note-books from his pocket, and began scribbling 
 assiduously in them. One especially appeared to claim 
 much of his attention ; it was lettered " Debtor and Credi- 
 tor " in dull gold. 
 
 The train ran on swiftly through the ashen twilight. 
 All around, the flat country lay brown and bleak. Xot a 
 sound disturbed the listening silence, except once when the 
 old man broke into a shuddering groan. The valet looked 
 up quickly, then down again, and went on with his scrib- 
 bling. 
 
 " Listen," said the Marquis at last, abruptly, speaking as 
 if he dreaded equally both silence and speech, " I may as 
 well tell someone. I am dying." 
 
 A long stillness. " I am dying — hein ? " 
 
 " I regret it sincerely for Monsieur le Marquis." 
 
 " Ha, polisson, you will regret it for yourself." Having 
 once cast forth his secret, the sick man seemed to find relief 
 in abuse of his companion. He heaped up angry words for 
 some moments longer. The valet stood silent, ticking his 
 pencil against the cover of his pocket-book. And the train 
 ran smoothly on. 
 
 " You will gain nothing by my death. Do you under- 
 stand ? " 
 
 " I have always understood that perfectly, Monsieur le 
 Marquis." And the train ran smoothly on.
 
 RINGS THE DEPARTURE-BELL. 7 
 
 Then a station was reached. During the long halt that 
 ensued a number of inquisitive glances were attracted by 
 the label in the window, a most unusual sight in Holland. 
 People lingered near, a-tiptoe, peering. The valet stared 
 back insolently, screening his master. 
 
 When the train was once more rushing forward, away 
 among the fields, the Marquis resumed, with his eyes on 
 the window beside him : " At least you might have asked 
 how long." 
 
 " As it pleases Monsieur le Marquis," said the valet. 
 
 Again a heavy pause. And, beneath the deepening 
 shadows, an increasing sense of chill. Miles upon miles of 
 quiet meadows and monotonous cattle. The Marquis did 
 not see them as he gazed. He saw nothing but that death- 
 warrant he had heard an hour ago, writ large across the 
 steadfast heavens. And the weight of his solitude became 
 unbearable to him. 
 
 " That cabman?" he began anew. " Did you pay him 
 more than his proper fare ? " 
 
 " No, Monsieur le Marquis," said the valet. 
 
 " It is good. I should have deducted the sum from 
 your w\ages." 
 
 " So I told myself, Monsieur le Marquis." 
 
 But Antoine smiled softly, as he fingered the little ac- 
 count-book in his pocket. And he breathed on the pane 
 before him, and wrote " ten per cent." across it with his 
 finger, and gently rubbed the letters out, as the smooth 
 train flew on. He did not look round again until a quick 
 succession of gasps attracted his calm attention. Even 
 then he did not turn immediately. He was hardly an evil 
 man. He was only a menial. What sympathy of sorrow 
 should he dare to have in common with his arrogant 
 lord ? 
 
 The Marquis was lying back, faintly struggling with the 
 tightness of his collar and cravat. His features seemed 
 wrenched awry in the violence of his pain. " We must
 
 8 THE uiu-:ater glory. 
 
 stop," he whispered, " at tlie next station. I can go no far- 
 ther. Stop ! " 
 
 The valet drew near, helplessly striving to help. " But 
 where then — ?" he began, and checked himself. 
 
 "Wliere? Does it matter?" — the sufferer's voice rose 
 to a momentary scream and immediately died down again. 
 " Anywhere. Only stop." 
 
 They remained facing each other in the long grey sun- 
 set, the servant inicertain, annoyed, swaying to and fro in 
 the continuous motion ; the master crushed down among 
 his foppish finery, vainly hoping to beat back the fierce 
 flame from his breast. 
 
 At last the engine slackened its pace, and drew up with 
 a thud. Antoine thrust his head out into the sudden hush. 
 An open shed stood forlorn, amid the shadow-smitten land- 
 scape, by the glistening rails. 
 
 " This is a station — this? A village? " cried the valet. 
 
 " Jawel, mynheer," replied a voice. 
 
 " Quick ! " murmured the Marquis ; " open the door. 
 Quick. Before they start again ! " 
 
 The valet still delayed for a moment, with his hand 
 nervously trying the lock. " And the name ? " he called. 
 
 The guard came running up in astonishment. "You 
 are mistaken ! " he cried. " This is nothing. This is Dey- 
 num." 
 
 The old man started slightly as the name reached his 
 ears. " Deynum," he repeated ; " of all places ! That de- 
 cides it." He stumbled to his feet. " De3mum I That 
 must mean little Eeinout. Here or anywhere. And what 
 does it matter where, w^hen the final summons comes ! " 
 
 The shrill station-bell rang out its sudden warning 
 across the listening fields.
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 youxg reisout. 
 
 " Eeinout ! " 
 
 Count Hilarius went across to the window and called to 
 his son. It was a dull, sombre-curtained window, oj)ening 
 out upon the long, dull city-garden of a dull house at the 
 Hague. The room was a " study," so-named from the direc- 
 tories and Government almanacks which slept, uncut, on 
 their shelves, against the wall. 
 
 Count Hilarius smoothed his fair moustache, and a flush 
 played across his cheeks. He cast a gratified look at his re- 
 flection in the window-pane, and a still more delighted one 
 down on the document in his hand. 
 
 " Reinout ! Come here immediately. I have something 
 to tell you. Something you will like to hear." 
 
 The boy in the distance, who had been stooping over a 
 rabbit-hutch, turned in hasty obedience to this reiterated 
 summons and came running towards the house. As he ran, 
 he continued to fondle a cumbersome black bunny, which 
 hung, jammed up most miserably against his jacket, inces- 
 santly twitching its little pink nose. 
 
 " I couldn't come at once, papa," he shouted. " This 
 animal had got its paw caught in the netting, and I had to 
 unfasten it. Poor beastie. Poor bcastie." He squeezed 
 the rabbit energetically. " I hate rabbits all the same," he 
 added. " I shall give mine away on my birthday. Greedy 
 creatures. They're no good to nobody but themselves." 
 
 " And a very wise philosophy," replied his father laugh- 
 ing. " Look here, Peiiiout; something very im])ortant has
 
 10 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 happened. You're too young to understand about it riglitly. 
 Still, you can easily see that I am pleased." 
 
 " I shall be fourteen next Aveek, papa," said Reinout. 
 Then a sudden burst of flame came pouring across his 
 southern eyes. " Are we to go back to Brazil ? " he asked. 
 And dropped his rabbit. 
 
 " Far better than that — " the boy made a dash at the 
 skipping, crouching quadruped — "We shall never leave 
 Holland again. For here, in my hand — " Count Hilarius's 
 voice and countenance dropped in solemn unison — " I hold 
 my nomination to the Eoyal Household. Child, your father 
 will henceforth spend mncli of his time in attendance on 
 the King." 
 
 He called out the final words, somewhat crossly, after 
 his retreating offspring. But Keinout leaped back at a 
 bound. 
 
 " Oh how splendid !" said Reinout. 
 
 The Count smiled a complacent little smile. 
 
 " Monsieur de Souza always says," continued the boy 
 enthusiastically, [he was quoting his tutor], " that that's 
 what / must do when I grow up. Serve the King ! There's 
 nothing else worth doing in these days, he says. And you 
 remember, the king can do no wrong, papa. So he will 
 always be able to tell you exactly what is right." 
 
 " Child, how stupidly you sometimes talk. I am not to 
 be Prime ^Minister, thank Goodness. I am appointed one 
 of the Lord's Sub-Comptrollers of the Household. There ; 
 that is what you can tell j'our playmates. A Lord Sub- 
 Comptroller of the Household. There are two of them. It 
 sounds rather nice ; does it not ? " 
 
 And he walked away from the window, pleasantly lin- 
 gering over the delightful words. Then, with one of the 
 quick twists peculiar to his nervous figure — Count Hilarius 
 was never more irritable than when gratified — he turned to 
 say sharply : 
 
 " Don't talk nonsense about Brazil. You would like to
 
 YOUNG REINOUT. H 
 
 live out in the countiy — wouldn't you ? — here in Holland, in 
 a beautiful Castle with parks and pleasure-grounds, quite 
 dijfferent from this poky bit of garden, where you could have 
 dogs, and a pony, and lots of other pets ? " 
 
 " Oh a pony ! " cried the son, overliearing the rest. " Are 
 you going to give me a pony for my birthday ? I don't want 
 any other dog than Prince." 
 
 " No, not just yet. But if ever I get — Deynum, you 
 shall have one. There, run away now. I have letters to 
 write." 
 
 " To mamma ? " asked the boy. 
 
 " Amongst others. Why do you ask ? Do you want me 
 to tell her to come back ? " 
 
 " No ; it is not that. I was thinking she would like to 
 hear that Prince's leg is well again." 
 
 " Oh, rubbish. You had better write to her yourself." 
 
 " I ? " said the boy. " Why ? " And he ran away— he 
 always either ran or crawled — with tlie rabbit against his 
 cheek, overflowing his shoulders. 
 
 At the farther end of his dusty playground he stopped 
 abruptly. " How splendid ! " he repeated, and then he sat 
 down on the bench by the single apple-tree, to think it out. 
 
 The news had overwhelmed him, little eighteenth-cen- 
 tury royalist that he was. Of the strange education which 
 his parents had decreed should be his, more anon ; suffice it 
 to say at present that its central idea had been the pomps 
 and majesties of the Crown and its dependent Coronets, the 
 glory of the Sun and of the Stars. " Make a gentleman of 
 him, not a scholar," his father had said to the old Chevalier 
 de Souza. And with Count van Rexelaer a gentleman meant 
 a man of the world. 
 
 " Tell your playmates." Ecinout reflected. Boy-friends 
 — chums — he had none. Away in Petropolis, where his 
 father had helped, in a small way, to represent the Court of 
 the Netherlands, his child-life had been one of absolute 
 lordship among a confusion of servants and ajiimals, with
 
 12 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Monsieur de Souza ever ready to instruct liini how to use, 
 without abusing, his birthright of supremacy. And during 
 the succeeding half-dozen years at the Hague — school being 
 forbidden by the ex-diplomat's theories — although he had 
 certainly come into contact with a number of his equals, at 
 fencing-classes, dancing-classes, riding-schools, etc., the bar- 
 rier of his isolation had always been maintained. " Seek 
 acquaintances and avoid friends," was one of his father's 
 favorite sayings. " You want stepping-stones, not stum- 
 bling-blocks. I have known a man ruined for life by one 
 friend." 
 
 Eeinout, then, was steered clear of all compromising 
 connections, high or low. " But I may give my old rocking- 
 horse to the coachman's children ? " And white-headed 
 Monsieur de Souza smiled down fondly on his impetuous 
 pupil : " Most certainly, mon petit, you must always be very 
 gracious to the coachman's children." But that was long 
 ago. 
 
 Eeinout got off the seat again. " Prince," he called out, 
 " Prince ! " He was not intending to whisper his story to 
 the dog, he was too old for that ; but in all moments of 
 superabundant feeling our thoughts most naturally flow out 
 to whatever we love best. The dog did not make his ap- 
 pearance, how'ever, and Eeinout, after referring to his watch 
 to make the agreeable discovery that lessons were still dis- 
 tant, sank back dreamily, letting the massive gold time- 
 keeper fall loose in his lap. 
 
 With this treasure, too costly an one for his age, was 
 connected the sole eventful episode of his dignified young 
 existence. He loved to recall it. He loved the watch next 
 best after Prince, because Prince was alive. But then so, to 
 some indistinct extent, was the watch. 
 
 The first summer after the return from South America 
 had been spent at the Belgian sea-side resort of Blanken- 
 berghe. On one broiling July afternoon, when his more 
 reasonable elders were dozing, Eeinout, impervious to heat
 
 YOUNG REINOUT. 13 
 
 as only children can be, had slipped out for a good run with 
 his hoop, beneath the blazing firmament, along a quiet, 
 dusty lane. He had progressed for a long distance, in 
 warmth and loneliness, when suddenly a turn of the road 
 had brought him face to face with a swiftly advancing ridei*. 
 The start, and an unexpected slojoe of the ground, had 
 caused him to lose control over his bounding toy, and he 
 saw it, a few yards in front, making straight for the horse's 
 legs. In one flash he had realized the danger to the rider 
 and had flung himself after it, with set teeth, straining be- 
 yond his strength. Then had come a terrible rush of two 
 seconds, a whirlwind of sand, and a great crash of thunder, 
 as he fell aside and rolled over with the hoop in his arms. 
 After the first moment of dazzlement, he had awakened to 
 the fact that the horseman had drawn rein beside him, an 
 old gentleman, high and haughty, on a magnificent charger, 
 in a halo of dust. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir. I am very sorry," said Eeinout, 
 sitting up. 
 
 Of these words the old gentleman took no immediate 
 notice. " Why did you throw yourself under my horse's 
 feet?" he asked. 
 
 " The hoop, monsieur. I had to stop it. I couldn't — 
 I am very sorry." 
 
 " Of course. Most children would have stood and stared. 
 Do you always know your duty and " — with an amused 
 smile — "risk your life in doing it?" 
 
 No answer but a puzzled look. 
 
 " Where do you come from, little fool? What is your 
 name?" 
 
 "From Brazil, monsieur. Koinout van Rexelaer. I 
 mean I am a Hollander. I am very sorry." 
 
 The horse gave a plunge for which, this time, Reinout was 
 in no wise responsible. " You are a brave boy," said the rider 
 presently. " It is good you are a small one, for I jumped you 
 as you fell. So your name, of all others, is Rexelaer."
 
 14 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " Yes, monsieur," acquiesced Reinout ; " but, if you 
 please, I did not do it on purpose." 
 
 The stranger sat looking down upon him for a moment. 
 Then he said thoughtfully : 
 
 " I wonder — never mind. Here, catch hold ! As a me- 
 mento of our meeting. And remember : ' A gentilhomme 
 devoir fait loi.' Good-b3'e." 
 
 Eeinout remained alone in the road, still seated on his 
 hoop, white and shabby, the beautiful watch in his lap. 
 ^ " What a lie I gave him to remember me by," reflected 
 the stranger, as he rode rajiidly away. " TVell, these lies are 
 the pillars of society. A fine fellow, though I was foolish 
 to give him my watch. Of course it is her child. The 
 world is positively becoming too small to turn round in. I 
 shall go back to Saint Leu to-night." 
 
 Eeinout had kept his present, for — somewhat to his 
 father's vexation — no effort had been successful in discover- 
 ing the donor. By a storm of tears he had even extorted 
 permission to wear it daily. He was immensely proud of it. 
 And of the grand old gentleman, his mysterious acquaint- 
 ance. And of : " A gentilhomme devoir fait loi." 
 
 Count Hilarius had finished his letters, and was re-pe- 
 rusing the last. It was addressed to his Countess, at Spa, 
 whither she had betaken herself for a course of the waters, 
 the state of her nerves not j)ermitting her son to accompany 
 her. His father was willing enough for him to remain. 
 In his own manner, and for his own ambitious reasons. 
 Count van Rexelaer was deeply attached to his only child 
 and heir. 
 
 " Xow more earnestly than hitherto" — the Count had 
 written — " I shall make every effort with regard to Dey- 
 num. I must succeed. It has been the principal object of 
 my life, as you know, and, at last, after all these years of 
 economy there is money enough." " Bye-the-bye I " re- 
 marked Count Hilarius, when he came to this passage, and
 
 YOUNG REINOUT. 15 
 
 he rose and rang tlie bell. " Go to the Hotel des Etrangers, 
 if you please, and ask whether Mynheer Strum, if he be in, 
 could call in the course of the evening." 
 
 " To the hotel — I beg your pardon, sir ? " said the man, 
 
 " I will write down the name for you ; that will be bet- 
 ter," replied his master suavely. And he did so, and then 
 he added a postscript to the Spa letter : " At this moment I 
 have a better chance than ever of acquiring Deynum." Then 
 he stopped. " Pooh ; she doesn't care as I do. How could 
 she?" he said. His son's voice came wafted to him from 
 the garden. And he smiled. 
 
 Ten minutes later he himself was on his way to the place 
 whither he had dispatched his servant. He found the man 
 waiting in the hotel-entry. " No use delaying till this even- 
 ing," he said half-apologetically. And the servant, knowing 
 his master, touched his cap and departed. 
 
 Mynheer Strum was in his room, an hotel-bedroom on 
 the top floor. " If Mynheer would enter the reading- 
 room;" but Mynheer preferred to go up. The stairs were 
 dark, and the apartment w^as modest, as befitted its tempo- 
 rary occupant, a young country-notary who had just suc- 
 ceeded to his father's practice. This personage, as his visitor 
 entered, rose lingeringly from the bed upon which he had 
 been lounging, a big, ungainly creature, with red hair, red 
 hands and red, spectacled eyes, his whole frame-work sug- 
 gestive of bones out of place. 
 
 " I am Count Rexelaer, upon whom you called a week 
 ago — " began the ex-diplomat. 
 
 " I remember," interrupted the IS'otary. " Take a seat. 
 Mynheer the Count," and he pushed forward the one unen- 
 cumbered chair, without any effort to tidy the others, as he 
 propped himself up against the side of the bed. 
 
 " I was too much occupied with other important matters 
 at the time to give your communication due consideration. 
 Since then I have studied it more closely. I shall instruct 
 my Notary to write to liaron Rexelaer, as you propose."
 
 It] THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 "Do," said the Notary, cracking his prominent knuc- 
 kles. A youthful habit which his foiul mother had never 
 even observed. 
 
 Count Rexelaer's face showed a little surprise, no vexa- 
 tion. " If I understand the matter rightly," he continued, 
 "you are acting in Baron van Rexelaer's interest?" 
 
 " Xo, Mynheer." 
 
 " But, surely, though I am sincerely obliged to you — " 
 
 " I am acting in nobody's particular interest, not even 
 my own. As it happens, they all coincide." 
 
 " Still, I can easily conceive that the Notary of Dey- 
 num must regard the lord of the manor — my cousin, if I 
 may so venture to call him — with feelings of peculiar — 
 peculiar — " 
 
 " Do not say ' obligation,' Mynheer," interj^osed the 
 other irritably. " I owe Mynheer your Cousin — " a sneer 
 flashed through the last two words — " nothing beyond the 
 deference due to his position. Me he owes — thanks to my 
 father's good-nature — a very long bill. Please do not mis- 
 understand me. I have nothing against the family at Dey- 
 num. On the contrary, a man does not easily break loose 
 from his earliest prejudices, and I feel for the Baron at the 
 Castle a good deal of w'hat my parents have taught me to 
 feel. I wash him well. I heartily wnsh to assist him. And 
 that is why I came to — you." 
 
 There was a world of youthful arrogance in his words. 
 Count Rexelaer rose, smiling. " Quite so," he said. " Well, 
 I shall have the letter forwarded immediately. And I trust 
 you to advise Baron Eexelaer for the best." He had caught 
 the sneer; he did not again speak of " my cousin." But he 
 smiled again. 
 
 " For the best," repeated Strum, " most certainly. 
 Which is also your best. Mynheer the Count, as I hope you 
 will remember later on." He got away from the bed and 
 went, as an afterthought, to open the door for his visitor. 
 " I must congratulate your Excellency," he said in his
 
 YOUNG REINOUT. lY 
 
 awkwardest manner " on the result of your preoccupation 
 of last week." 
 
 " How do you know ? " asked Count Rexelaer, stopping, 
 in genuine surprise, on the little landing. 
 
 " I heard it talked of at the ' White ' Club." 
 
 " Ah, you go there ? " 
 
 " Only on business. I hate such places. My stay here 
 is over, and I return to Deynum to-night." 
 
 " Indeed ? Then I was fortunate. Bon voyage." 
 
 " I thank your Excellency." 
 
 " Not Excellency." Count Hilarius paused again, this time 
 in the dim light of the ladder-like staircase. " That is alto- 
 gether a different thing. Allow me to explain. Excellency is 
 a title reserved for the very highest charges only. I am a.])- 
 pointed a Lord Comptroller of the Household. There are 
 two. But they have by no means the title of Excellency." 
 
 " I am infinitely obliged to you for the information. 
 Mynheer the Count," replied Strum ; and then he closed 
 his door. " I did not tell him how they talked of it," he 
 thought. And then he mimicked the Count's manner. 
 " Allow me to explain. I am appointed a Lord Comptroller 
 of the Household. Bah, what a fool my father was ! And 
 how one learns to despise them all." 
 
 Count Rexelaer, meanwhile, went skijiping blithely 
 home. "So it is talked of already," he told himself. 
 "Everywhere. And this foolish fellow called me Excel- 
 lency." Ah well, excelsior ! Someday the greater glory 
 will outshine the less. Who used to say that, by-the-bye ? 
 Oh, old Sir Percy Skefton at Rio. I suppose it was a quo- 
 tation from somebody." 
 
 A few days later Baron Rexelaer van Deynum, who, by- 
 the-bye, was in no way related to his namesake, the Count, 
 received a letter from the Hague. He frowned over it, and 
 crumpled it, and cruslied it away in his pocket. And 
 there he remembered it.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 DEYXUM. 
 
 Ox the evening which brought the Marquis to Deynum, 
 Baron Rexelaer had been down to the village. " Good-even- 
 ing, Laudheer," * said a peasant, touching his cap. 
 
 The old Baron did not hear. He walked slowly, stoop- 
 ing forward, and his hands, which held a paper, Avere 
 folded behind his back. He was a man nearer sixty than 
 fifty, old-fashioned in appearance and apparel, a man of 
 clear-cut features, which had been still further sharpened 
 by the delicate chisel of Care. 
 
 The peasant, an old man also, turned to stare after his 
 master with leisurely surj)rise. Then he shook his head 
 lengthily as he resumed his slouching way. 
 
 The road was a long one. It came creeping down, 
 white and thin, from the wooded hillocks against the dim 
 horizon, and stretched itself, as one that takes possession, 
 right across many miles of purple heath ; then it broadened 
 out, straight and hard, past the village, and curled away 
 into nothing among the distant trees of the park. 
 
 The village lay, trim and prosperous, red-roofed and 
 green-shuttered, in two rows, behind equal strips of narrow 
 garden, on each side of the road. These patches of ground, 
 though chiefly devoted to cabbages and cauliflowers, shone 
 bright here and there in great splotches of crimson and violet. 
 The gardens Avere silent. The cottages were silent. Only, 
 occasionally, some humble figure, in white cap and print- 
 Lord of the Soil, equivalent to Laird.
 
 DEYNUM. 19 
 
 gown, would come running out from a half-open door, and 
 hurry round to the back with a pail or a platter. On a 
 small green, over which the church rose gaunt and bare, a 
 little knot of urchins cowered, chatting sedately. They 
 stumbled to their feet, in a languid manner, as the lord of 
 the land went by, and Jerked their caps in half a dozen va- 
 ried postures of clumsiness. 
 
 He had not noticed them. Yet, at this jooint, he paused, 
 and, slowly turning, took a deliberate survey of the village, 
 from the windmill which stands at the entrance, like a 
 towering sentinel, its great brown sails becalmed upon the 
 pale blue air, to the little low-thatched cottage, asleep at 
 the farther end, against the park-enclosure — the lame cob- 
 bler's cottage, which looks, in its deep-sunk humility, as if 
 it had pulled the roof over its eyes for shame. 
 
 It was very short and thin, this village. And around it 
 heath and woods spread very far and wide. An ashen dul- 
 ness fell slowly settling upon all things, such as follows 
 when the shadows lengthen over the deep gold of a sunlit 
 autumn day. A chill little wind, from nowhere, began flat- 
 tening out the soft air. 
 
 " My village," said the old lord's thoughts ; and the 
 paper crackled between his nervous hands. All Deynum 
 was his. It was little Deynum. To him it was neither big 
 nor little. It was all Deynum. 
 
 Beyond the village, as has been already said, the road 
 led away into the castle-grounds. You found yourself sud- 
 denly among the tall trees, on both sides, in the half-light 
 shaded and solemn. A moment ago you could still have 
 seen them rising, from the flat fields all around, in a great 
 bouquet of rounded verdure, like an offering from earth to 
 her Maker. The park was not large, compared to many 
 others, but its wide-spreading oaks and beeches were reck- 
 oned among the oldest in Holland. It was open to the 
 })ublic road, excepting for a deep, dry ditch alongside, and 
 presently you happed upon the avenue, which, witliout 
 :5
 
 20 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 lodge or gate or even stone of warning, stretched broad and 
 stately from before your siglit to a dark-brown sjoot in the 
 distance — the house. The owner of the place — for as such 
 the world still regarded him — turned gently in the direc- 
 tion of home. It was colder here, under the great trees. 
 He shivered slightly. 
 
 A pretty peasant-girl, bright and healthy, with a face of 
 " milk and blood," came tripping down a side-path. " Good- 
 evening, LiiJidheer," she said. But she also got no answer; 
 she threw up her dainty nose indignantly, and repeated the 
 words in a higher key. The old gentleman started, and 
 coloured over his thin cheeks. 
 
 " Good-even, good-even, Lise ! " he said hurriedly, re- 
 calling now the words he had at first ignored. " I had not 
 noticed you ; I am sorry for it. You look prettier than 
 ever, little maid. How goes it with the bridegroom?" 
 
 " The bridegroom is well enough, ^Mynheer the Baron," 
 replied the girl, laughing. " Were his pockets as full as 
 his cheeks, there would be no cause to delay the wed- 
 ding." 
 
 " Many things would be easier, girl," said the old man 
 musingly, "did purses not run dry." 
 
 " But we hope, nevertheless, to trouble Father Bulbius 
 before St. John comes round again." The girl had the 
 privilege of her good looks, and she used it. " Perhaps 
 your Worship) will deign to dance at the wedding," she 
 said. 
 
 " Yes, yes," the Baron gave hasty answer ; " good-even, 
 my child ! Tell your father I have spoken to the bailiff. 
 He can have that stroke of land he asked for. Good-bye ! " 
 and he resumed his thoughtful walk. " Dance," he re- 
 peated ; " the very word, forsooth. Other dolls will be set 
 a-dancing,* before that time comes round." 
 
 He struck aside — half-way down the avenue — into an 
 
 * Dutch idiom.
 
 DEYNUM. 21 
 
 alley of soaring chestnuts, broadest green, with an occa- 
 sional dab of golden orange, as if an early imp of autumnal 
 mischief had frolicked along the trees. At the farther end 
 of this alley — " the Holy Walk," they call it — hidden away 
 in the leafy silence of the woods — sleeps a small grey 
 chajDel, ivy-covered, fern-surrounded, an almost perfect bit 
 of early Gothic, fairly well-preserved. 
 
 Its oaken door stood ajar; the old Baron pushed softly 
 through, from the ashen calm of the park into the dusky 
 repose of the sanctuary. 
 
 A little greystone chapel, with half a dozen stained-glass 
 windows, a chapel of the dead, every available space upon its 
 narrow floor and walls heaped up with monumental records 
 in marble, metal or wood. A Roman Catholic chapel, as 
 shown by its ornamented altar, which bore an ivory crucifix 
 and two vases of pale-white roses, pure and fragrant. Over 
 the altar, amidst a blaze of colour, and furthermore, in cor- 
 ners and cornices, on monuments and praying-stools, — or 
 and argent upon a field of sinople, protruding one above 
 the other from either side of the shield, — the two lion's 
 paws with uplifted swords, the Coat of the Rexelaers. And 
 under the Coat the motto : Ipsa glorior infamia. I glory 
 in my shame. 
 
 Stumbling forward in the heavy twilight, the old noble 
 sank down reverently at the altar-steps. He buried his 
 face in his hands, which still held the crumpled paper, and 
 liis cheeks moved nervously, in the silence of his prayer. 
 It was all very peaceful and hushed, but for a faint sough- 
 ing, from time to time, in the trees. A squirrel peeped in 
 for a moment, with bright, inquisitive eye, and then scam- 
 pered away in alarm — awe-struck by the stillness. 
 
 The Baron van Rexelaer was praying for himself, in his 
 weary middle age, for the few still near and dear to him, 
 for the great name he bore so weakly. He was praying for 
 the illustrious dead, his goodly heritage that none could 
 take from him, for the old home, fast sinking away into the
 
 '2-2 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 marsh of social ruin, for tlie villagers of Deynum, his chil- 
 dren every one ! 
 
 The little chapel was heavy with the petition. 
 
 From behind the plates on which their pompous digni- 
 ties stand graven the dead lords of the soil came slipping 
 forth, in their armour and slashed doublets, in their long 
 robes and ruffles, noiselessly crowding together, as they 
 rapidly filled — with bended knee and head — the small space 
 round tlie last scion of their line. Eeinout Rexelaer sank 
 forward to the ground, and his prayer came fast and 
 thick : 
 
 " Oh, let it go up, my God ! Blessed saints in heaven, 
 pray for me that it go up at last ! " 
 
 The " it " was the American money-market. 
 
 Presently, his orisons being concluded, the Baron quit- 
 ted the chapel, and climbed to a rustic seat a little beyond, 
 on the top of a mound which we, in our pancake-like flat- 
 ness, have dignified with the name of " The Mountain." 
 You get a good view of the Castle from here. But by the 
 time the Baron reached the spot, nothing much was dis- 
 tinguishable beyond a confused mass of angles and gables, 
 a greater darkness against the dark, and, standing out above 
 it all, still clearly visible, — as it often is for miles around, 
 whenever you get a break in the foliage, — the great ball of 
 the summit as borne by Atlas, for full three hundred years, 
 upon his never-wearying shoulders. 
 
 A rest upon " The Mountain " formed the invariable 
 finale of the Baron's afternoon walk. The rural postman 
 purposely passed by it, on his way through the grounds, for 
 of late the arrival of the evening mail had become the one 
 important event of Mynheer van Eexelaer's long day. He 
 sat and waited. Alas, the nights were lengthening down- 
 wards, dark and chill. Soon it would be too late to deci- 
 pher anything. 
 
 Xo need of daylight to make out the crumpled paper
 
 DEYNUM. 23 
 
 lying upon his knees. He had re-read it frequently, and 
 always angrily, within the last three days. 
 
 " High and Nobly-Born Heer : I take the liberty, 
 acting for the High-Born * Heer Count Eexelaer, my client, 
 to re-open a correspondence which your Nobleness closed a 
 couple of years ago. Count Rexelaer's reason for wishing 
 me to do so is that it has occurred to His High-Born Count- 
 ship that circumstances may have supervened of late which 
 might modify your views of his original offer, were he now 
 to repeat it. His High-Born Countship therefore requests 
 me to inform your Nobleness that he is still as willing as 
 formerly to enter into negotiations for the purchase of the 
 Castle and Manor of Deynum." 
 
 The letter was signed by a Hague Notary, Klarens — old 
 Klarens who did everything for the Court people in those 
 days. It was dated October 3rd. 
 
 The old Baron knew all about Count Rexelaer of the 
 Hague. He did not believe in Count Eexelaer. 
 
 " He has heard of Borck's offer to buy the Chalk-house 
 Farm," reflected the Baron bitterly, for the fiftieth time. 
 " He might have waited to hear that I shall refuse it." 
 
 And then his thoughts wandered to Lise, whose father 
 lived at the Chalk-house Farm. He was annoyed with him- 
 self for having overlooked her salute. 
 
 " I am forfeiting my position too soon," he said bitterly. 
 " I must look to it. Trouble deprives a man of everything, 
 excepting of himself." 
 
 And then the muffled tread of the postman absorbed his 
 attention, as it came twisting up among the trees. The man 
 stopped and slung round his bag. 
 
 " Nothing but the evening-paper. Baron," he said, " and 
 a letter for Mevrouw." 
 
 * For some mysterious reason " High-Born," on tlie Continent, is a 
 more exalted title than " High and Nobly-Boni."
 
 >_>4 THE tJREATF.R CiLOllY. 
 
 The evening-paper was all the Baron wanted. He fum- 
 bled tremulously in his pockets for a box of matches he 
 knew to be there. He could not find them. The postman 
 lingered, iincertain how to help. 
 
 '' tJo," said the old man impatiently. "Go on with your 
 work. I mean, thank you, Jacob. Good-night." 
 
 Left in peace, he found his matches, and, bending over 
 the wooden bench, under the whispering of the mighty 
 trees, struck a light. He passed it rapidly down the column 
 devoted to the day's Amsterdam Exchange. 
 
 "Down again, by God !" he said. And then the match 
 went out, and all was dark.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE KEXELAERS OF DEYXUM. 
 
 There have always been Rexelaers of Deynum. There 
 are stilL You can read about them in the Aunuaire de la 
 Noblesse des Pays-Bas. But probably you know. 
 
 If you do not, you may as well lay down this book : it 
 does not address itself to you. It is written for a set. 
 Ours. 
 
 The Rexelaers have intermarried with some of the great 
 continental families, and are well-known in Germany and 
 France. In fact, they themselves are — or were — a great con- 
 tinental family. For Willem van Rexelaer (grandson of the 
 founder of the house), who remained with the Roman King 
 Willem of Holland all through the long siege of Aix la Cha- 
 l^elle, was rewarded, on the day of his master's coronation, 
 by the bestowal of the somewhat unwilling hand of the 
 heiress of the Hohenthals, whose father and brother had 
 fallen on the opposite side. It was this marriage which 
 brought the fief of Hohenthal >Sonnenborn into the family, 
 making the head of the house a Count of the Holy Roman 
 Empire, with the title of " Erlaucht." But that exalted 
 rank fell away from them, some two and a half centuries 
 later, when they got into trouble with the Habsburger Max- 
 imilian. There is a long correspondence in the Archives at 
 Brussels showing how they plotted to get it back again, and 
 perhaps they might have succeeded, had not Anne van Rex- 
 elaer joined the Compromise of the Nobles. Good Catholic 
 as this powei'ful nobleman was, he would hardly have es- 
 caped the fate of Counts Egmont and Hoorn, had he not
 
 20 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 claimed, and obtained, the protection of his mother's cousin 
 (and his own god-fatlier), the Great Constable of France. 
 You may look up all that in Motley, if you care to. It is 
 hardly worth while. 
 
 Most truly they had been an illustrious family. At the 
 time of this story they had dwindled down to a quiet old 
 man, his wife and only daughter. And, shameful to relate, 
 they were j^oor. 
 
 Ah, those were different times when Euwert van Rexe- 
 laer sat enthroned in the Castle at Deynum, with thirty 
 horses in his stables, and seventeen serving-men before his 
 side-board, in green and gold. And when Eovert van 
 Eexelaer, his brother — the renegade ; God forgive him ! the 
 Protestant — having followed, like his ancestor of Hohen- 
 thal, another Dutch William to the conquest of another 
 kingdom, rejected, in his pride, the alien honours that 
 monarch would have conferred upon him. " I will make 
 you a peer of England," said William of Orange. " You 
 shall be Baron Butterworth ! " "Of William the Third's 
 creation," rei)lied Rovert, with low obeisance, and sank 
 back in disgrace. He did not Avant a peerage. What he 
 wanted, and had schemed for, like his ancestors, was the 
 revival of the Roman Countship, not for himself but for the 
 elder brother, whose doors he could never darken again. If 
 ambition had prompted his secession — as some still think it 
 did — it could hardly have been hope of personal aggrandise- 
 ment. 
 
 The Rexelaers had stuck to the old faith. And, as far 
 as enforced retirement goes, they had suffered for their con- 
 stancy. Thereby hangs the tale of the strange motto be- 
 neath their arms. When Anne van Rexelaer's son Eduard 
 found himself deprived of his dignities by Prince Maurice, 
 successor to " the Silent " — for so did they still go dropping 
 between two stools — he withdrew in high dudgeon to his 
 castle and carved over its portal the sentence : " Ipsa glorior 
 infamia." " I glory in my disgrace." They left him to
 
 THE REXELAERS OF DEYNUM. 27 
 
 his glory. And the words may be seen this day Avhere 
 Ednard van Rexelaer placed them. 
 
 The device, therefore, like most heraldic mottoes, is 
 comparatively modern. It seems all the more so, if you 
 accord credence to the story of the coat itself. You are 
 asked to believe — not by me, mind you, though my son has 
 the genuine Rexelaer blood in his veins, however spurious 
 mine may be — you are asked to believe that the Christian 
 maiden Wendela, having been confined by a heathen prince 
 in his stronghold on the Rhine, was delivered by a lion, 
 which penetrated into her chamber, a flaming sword in 
 either fore-paw. An eighteenth century Rexelaer, in a wig 
 and a Voltairean nose, wrote a j^amphlet to prove that the 
 story had been misunderstood. It belonged to the time of 
 the Crusaders, he said, not to that of the Romans 
 (a. d. 237), and the lion in question was no four-foot- 
 ed animal, but a lion-hearted knight of that surname and 
 crest. 
 
 The other version is the prettier one. None of the 
 Rexelaers have perhaps ever dared to believe it as much as 
 they wanted to. Nor would many of them have cared to 
 swear by their patron saint that their name was really de- 
 rived from Rex Hilarius, this same King Hilarius having 
 been baptised — after an unaccountable lapse of the family 
 into heathenism — in 500 and something by an old French 
 priest who had named him in pious recollection of Bishop 
 Hilary of Aries. It was all very beautiful and deliciously 
 improbable, and one clung to it and might have died for it, 
 but, as to believing it — well, the Crusading ancestor, the 
 first Willem's grandfather, was an historic fact, and surely 
 he ought to have sufficed for the requirements of the proud- 
 est, or the vainest, heart. 
 
 And what now was left of it all ? The old liaron shook 
 his head, as he passed over the bridge to the house. Not 
 that ho had been recapitulating, as he went, the long his- 
 tory of the Rexelaers. He had no need to do so. His
 
 OS THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 heart was a burial-<]:round of the race, on which all 
 the Aviudows of his thoughts afforded an unconscious out- 
 loolv. 
 
 " Mon cher," said the Baroness genth', " his Reverence 
 has waited." 
 
 The Baron winced. He was a military veteran and had 
 seen something of life — not much — in his day ; he had 
 never yet learned to accept a reproach from a woman, with- 
 out a tendency to blush. And the Baroness was not one of 
 those who accustom you to rejjroaches. 
 
 "I was delayed," replied the Baron humbly. "His 
 Reverence will forgive a man of many occupations." He 
 offered his arm to his wife with an odd little, old-fashioned 
 bow, and the priest, who took life reposefully, grinned a 
 good-humoured grin over the earnestness with which his 
 patron created a round of meaningless duties out of the 
 emptiness of everyday squiredom. " There are men who 
 talk in their sleep for sheer waste of activity," the good 
 father was wont to declare. " A better thing, in an eccle- 
 siastic at any rate, than to sleep in his talk," the Baron had 
 once unthinkingly made answer. And then he had filled 
 up his guest's wine-glass, smiling an apology, as his eyelids 
 dropped obediently under the Baroness's dignified surprise. 
 
 " Come, Wanda," said Father Bulbius, crooking his arm 
 at as wide an angle as he could manage from the rotundity 
 of his rusty black coat. 
 
 But the daughter of the house, a girl of twelve with a 
 mass of brown hair and big brown eyes, drew pettishly 
 away from him. " Xo, thank you," she said. " You hurt 
 my shoulder last time, squeezing through the doorway." 
 And she ran on in front. " I don't like priests," she said 
 to herself in the passage. 
 
 The meal was a simple one ; but for its surroundings of 
 old plate and older oak you would have called it poor. 
 These people belonged to that daily decreasing class vrho can-
 
 TUE REXELAEKS OF DEYNUM. 29 
 
 not live poorly ; their pomp is themselves. The Baron 
 would have pitied you, not his wife, had you noticed the 
 simplicity of the menu. And even fat Father Bulbius, 
 dearly though he loved a good dinner, was happy in the 
 eating of a bad one amidst the quiet dignity of immemorial 
 pride. Besides, was there not always the " King's Wine " 
 nowadays, to gladden sinking hearts? You cannot miss 
 hearing about the " King's Wine." The Baron was always 
 referring to it. 
 
 To-day, however, the Baron referred to nothing, but left 
 to his wife the unlaborious task of entertaining their famil- 
 iar guest. The entertainment was single ; for many years 
 it had been based, by mutual consent, upon alternate mon- 
 ologue. 
 
 " At last then," emphasized the Baroness, slowly shaking 
 her white side-curls, and the white ribbons on her white 
 cap, " I carry out my threat of complaining to your Rever- 
 ence, though I do so with the deepest regret." 
 
 She was not really an old woman, by-the-bye, not more 
 than five and fifty, but her hair had been a silvery white for 
 nearly twenty years, and she had set herself early to wear it 
 gracefully. She wished to be old and to mortify the flesh. 
 At least so she told herself and Father Bulbius. 
 
 " So far, Madame, I am altogether with you," answered 
 the Father. He always said that to the Baroness Rexelaer. 
 " And as I was telling the. Baron, I cannot understand why 
 my celery is not a success. I have followed out his instruc- 
 tions exactly." He threw himself back in his chair with a 
 sigh, and his amplitude seemed to ooze out all around him. 
 " I have constantly dug it up and put it into something else. 
 In April I took one of my few meat-dishes for it, and Ve- 
 ronica made my life a burthen to me forthwith." 
 
 He stretched out his hand for his wine-glass and laughed 
 heartily, and wiped his mouth. 
 
 " And the school-children, if they refuse to listen, must 
 be made to feel," said the Baroness distinctly.
 
 30 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 The Father luul one udvantage over lier, inasmuch as ho 
 poured forth his words like a torrent, wliile she dropped 
 hers one by one, as from a medicine-tube. On the other 
 hand, he would invariably flounder astray in his own mul- 
 tiloqnence, and then she saw her opportunity and took it. 
 
 "■ But, then, I did listen," he rejilied. "For in May, ac- 
 cording to the Baron's instructions — " He looked towards 
 the Baron. The Baron looked down at his plate. The 
 old gentleman could not attend. " And seven eights," he 
 was saying to himself, " one dollar ; two fifty ; multiply by 
 twelve. And seven eights — " 
 
 " I emptied out my single cucumber-frame for it. And 
 Veronica tells me she is dying for want of cucumbers. Dur- 
 ing centuries, it appears, they have formed a remedy in her 
 family for some mysterious hereditary ailment. And I feel 
 like a murderer. Mynheer, till your head-gardener comes 
 and tells me that the celery is dying in the cucumber-frame, 
 and must be buried in trenches at once." 
 
 The child looked across at him with solemn eyes, and 
 spoke for the first time. " I buried my canary, too," she 
 said gravely. " Last week. But it was dead first." 
 
 ISTobody paid any attention to her. The shaded light 
 from the old silver oil-lamp played — gently reflected from 
 napery and crystal — upon the four faces round the table : 
 the sallow, serious cheeks of the little girl, and her mother's 
 calm white brow, the priest's fat double chin, with its pim- 
 ple, the Baron's bent nose, bent head, bent everything. 
 
 That little red excrescence on the Father's chin was an 
 old acquaintance of Wendela's. She used to wonder of 
 what it was made and why. But now she knew. For, one 
 day, in the drawing-room — she could have pointed out the 
 exact spot — its horrid little specks and dents had suddenly 
 resolved themselves before her fascinated gaze into a minia- 
 ture face, like the Father's. She had never lost sight of 
 the similitude. It laughed with the Father's laugh ; it 
 frowned with his froAvn, and all the time he was talking, it
 
 THE REXELAERS OP DEYNUM. 31 
 
 would wink with each movement of his chin, as much as to 
 say : " Don't believe him." It was a little Baby Bulbius, 
 as she had told her great friend and admirer, Piet 
 Poster. " Priests don' have babies," said matter-of-fact 
 Piet. 
 
 " And seven-eighths," reasoned the Baron silently with 
 knitted brows, "seven times two and a half, seventeen hun- 
 dred and fifty. Let me fill your glass, Bulbius." 
 
 " And they pop up out of their graves almost as fast as 
 you bury them. If there's too much of them visible, they 
 lose their colour : if there's too little, they choke. No. I 
 am very much obliged to you, dear Baron. Besides, I be- 
 lieve your gardener hoped they would fail." 
 
 The child had been pondering intently. " It's a riddle," 
 she said now. " What lives best for being buried ? What 
 lives best for being buried. Papa?" 
 
 The Baron aroused himself at this direct appeal. " A 
 great name," he said. 
 
 The child clapped her hands with elfish glee. " Wrong ! " 
 she cried. " Quite wrong. English sedlery." 
 
 " Celery," corrected the Baroness. " I wish you would 
 listen to me. Father. Surely it is a terrible thought that 
 the children should bring down damnation upon them- 
 selves — " 
 
 " Undoubtedly," acquiesced the Father. " But, tlien, 
 fortunately, the good God has made it so difficult for them 
 to do it." 
 
 " I cannot imagine your condoning their laughing in 
 church," — there was the faintest tinge of vexation in the 
 lady's tone. The first article of their unspoken contract 
 precluded interruption. 
 
 " Mevrouw, I condone nothing," replied Father Bulbius 
 good-humouredly. "I exact penance for every sin con- 
 fessed. The less confessed the better. The less that re- 
 quire confession, I mean, of course. The better for the 
 guilty party, for everybody " — he yawned. " The King's
 
 32 THE GREATER (5 LORY. 
 
 wine is the King's wine still," he said to the b.iron. He 
 did not care for the Baroness to play curate. 
 
 " Le Roi est mort ; vive le lloi ! " replied the Baron sol- 
 emnly. He threw up his hand for the military salute and 
 touched his wine-glass with his lips. As he did so, an old 
 servant, who stood by the side-board, saluted too. 
 
 " Le roi est mort; vive son viu," murmured the ecclesi- 
 astic, with goggle-eyes dancing over the rim of liis bumper. 
 His j)ronunciation was bad. The Baron frowned. The 
 Baron tliought his sentiment was worse. 
 
 "And what, I say, is to become of discipline, if they 
 openly laugh at the priest ? " 
 
 " Hull ? " ejaculated the Father, whirling round to my 
 lady. " Who laughs at the priest ? " And he glared across 
 at Wendela. He put on a most comical look of indigna- 
 tion, and the pimple immediately did the same. The child 
 could not help laughing. The priest had one of those vari- 
 able india-rubber countenances which remain comical even 
 when they cry. They are made in a limited number of 
 tints. His was purple. The olive-green are best. 
 
 "I have been striving for the last ten minutes," said the 
 Baroness complacently, triumphant in her ultimate suc- 
 cess, " to tell your Reverence that of late the village-chil- 
 dren in the gallery have taken to laughing while you 
 preach." 
 
 " But Me — Mevrouw ! " spluttered his Reverence. He 
 was really disconcerted. " I can hardly believe — " 
 
 " Yes, Gertrude, you are surely mistaken," interjjosed 
 the Baron, who had at last finished his computation of the 
 day's deficit. 
 
 " I am not mistaken, and it must be put a stop to," said 
 the Baroness. 
 
 " It is his Reverence's own fault," said the child. 
 
 There was a general outcry. " AYendela, you forget 
 yourself," said the mother sharply. " Wendela, little maiden, 
 how do vou mean?" asked the Baron.
 
 THE REXELAERS OF DEYNUM. 33 
 
 " Shall I tell ? " said the child, out loud. She was look- 
 ing at the pimple ; and the pimple winked at her. 
 
 " There's a hole in the velvet cap his Eeverence wears at 
 sermon-time," she continued slowly, " and his Reverence's 
 hairs stick out in tufts. Sometimes they stick out in two 
 tufts and sometimes in three. And the boys — bet." The 
 stress she laid upon the venerable title would have been un- 
 conscionably naughty, had the Baroness not believed it im- 
 possible. 
 
 " Gracious Heavens ! " ejaculated the shepherd of the 
 school-children's souls. 
 
 " Marbles, and — lollipops, and things," she went on 
 hastily, now thoroughly frightened at her own audacity. 
 " Last Sunday there was only one tuft, so none of the bets 
 could count." 
 
 The Father rumpled his grey locks in manifest distress. 
 They formed an untidy fringe round his bald red head, and 
 he had long insulted and despised them. He now tried to 
 pretend that they did not belong to him. With but jiartial 
 success. 
 
 " But my dear little one," said the Baron mildly, " you 
 cannot know these things. You must be making them 
 up." 
 
 " Papa ! " — she flushed scarlet — " Papa ! " In the ensu- 
 ing silence, she felt that any avowal would be jn-eferable to 
 the imputation of untruthfulness. " Piet Poster told me," 
 she murmured. 
 
 " For shame, Wendela," said her mother. " Let us hear 
 no more about it. Try a fig, Father. They are not as good 
 as Veronica's, but even hers are not equal to the figs of my 
 youth." 
 
 " Quite so," answered the Father, who was angry with 
 his housekeeper, suspecting some spite in her neglect of his 
 clothes. " I am grieved, AVanda, by your intimacy wntli 
 these blasphemous — I say blasphemous — children. You 
 might be led into imitating their wicked ways." He looked
 
 31 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 quite sadly at her. The pimple puckered up its little lips 
 and appeared ready to weep. 
 
 " Figs," said the Baroness, " require excejitional care. 
 They are so apt to run to seed.". 
 
 " Tush, my dear Father, it is not as bad as that," — the 
 Baron stretched out his hand to his little daughter, moved 
 by her distress — " you can hardly imagine my Wanda wa- 
 gering her dolls against the village on the growth of your 
 hair." And he laughed softly. 
 
 But this was dreadful. Without touching the out- 
 stretched fingers, Wendela started from her chair. " I — I 
 am afraid," she explained in a great burst of tardy tears, 
 "there was just one little bet, Papa, the Sunday before last, 
 with — with Piet Poster." 
 
 " Leave' the room immediately," cried her calm mother, 
 with unwonted acerbity. " Consider yourself in disgrace ! 
 Piet Poster ! I am deeply sorry to think it could be pos- 
 sible ! " 
 
 " But I — I lost, mamma," sobbed the culprit. 
 
 " That is hardly an alleviation, though certainly better 
 than your winning. You have lost, however, a good deal 
 more than your sweets." 
 
 " It was plums, Mamma," cried Wanda, as she fled in a 
 tempest of angry dismay. 
 
 " I hate priests," she said to herself, in the darkness of 
 her own room. Somehow she laid the blame of the whole 
 miserable business on Father Bulbius's round, innocent 
 head.
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 THE STRAXGER COMES TO DEYNUM, 
 
 " A PRETTY amusement indeed," said the Baroness in- 
 dignantly, as the door closed on the delinquent, " for the 
 heiress of Deynum. Gambling with her peasant-boys." 
 
 " On the subject of their pastor's wig," added Bulbius 
 despondently. 
 
 " Poor little heiress of Deynum," said the Barou. 
 
 " You are too indulgent, Eeynout. I do not want to be 
 harsh, but there are limits." 
 
 " Indulgent ? " responded her husband. " Well, why 
 not ? I would have the heiress of Deynum enjoy what hap- 
 piness she can. While she can." His voice sank over the 
 words. And it seemed as if the dim light sank with the 
 voice, and it grew still darker in the great, dark room. 
 
 The Father gazed down at his fingers, spread out upon 
 the table-cloth. 
 
 " Mon ami, you are out of sorts to-night. Come let us 
 have coffee, and then you and his Eeverence can play your 
 game of ecarte." 
 
 " Yes," said the Baron, with an effort ; " I will ring the 
 bell." 
 
 And then, suddenly, with an awkward jerk of the arm, 
 he snatched from his pocket the letter which had been burn- 
 ing a hole in it for the last three days. " There ! " he said. 
 He flung it on to the middle of the table, as if it were hot 
 in his hand. 
 
 The priest made an involuntary movement to pass the 
 4
 
 36 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 paper on, then drew back agaiu. The Baroness sighed, and 
 oouglied to hide the sigh. 
 
 " Fresh troubles ?" she said softly. " Poor husband." 
 
 " On the contrary," the Baron smiled somewhat fiercely. 
 " A happy deliverance. Count Hilarius van Rexelaer — so 
 the gentleman calls himself — once more offers to purchase 
 Deynum, as he offered a couple of years ago." 
 
 The Baroness looked contemptuous. " Is that all ? " 
 she said. 
 
 " I suppose he has heard, somehow, of Borck's proposal 
 about the farm." 
 
 The lady's j^ale ej'es flashed. " Rather to Borck than to 
 that man," she said. " Even almost rather to Borck." 
 
 In sj^ite of his trouble an amused look came into her hus- 
 band's eyes. " Really? " he queried incredulously. 
 
 " Yes, yes, yes," she iterated, with vehement passion. 
 And then she grew pale and calm again. 
 
 " But we shall sell it to neither," she added presently. 
 " God is good." 
 
 " Beyond human hope or prayer, amen," said the priest 
 fervently. And as he meditatively sipped his wine, his hot 
 countenance grew solemn with an unspoken prayer for 
 Deynum. 
 
 A knock came to the door. " There's a man sent up 
 from the station, Mynheer," said the baron's old servant. 
 " Fokke Meinderts, your Worship remembers, old Mother 
 Meinderts' son. The second one, that broke his leg last 
 autumn — " 
 
 " What does he want ? interrupted the Baroness. She 
 always interrupted Gustave. Her husband never did. 
 " You lose half an hour a day by his meanderings," she had 
 once remarked. 
 
 " So I do,'my dear. But I gain a good deal more." 
 
 "How so?" 
 
 " A good man's affection." 
 
 " Nonsense."
 
 THE STRANGER COMES TO DEYNUM. 37 
 
 "And perhaps" — this a little slily — "ten years sooner 
 of heaven ? " 
 
 " Ah ! " said the Baroness. 
 
 " I will go and find out what he wants," said the Master 
 of Deynum. He stumbled wearily to his feet, and imme- 
 diately his wife's spirit soared to one of her pinnacles of 
 sacrifice. 
 
 " Let him come in here," she commanded, " J'espere 
 qu'ii ne sentira pas trop mauvais." Gustavo understood 
 French, but his mistress considered he had no business to. 
 And as for poor people, she approved of them in their own 
 homes, where she diligently visited them. 
 
 The individual who was now ushered in appeared at the 
 first moment to be a mass of revolving arms and legs. In 
 reality he was an ordinary peasant, confused, bodily as well 
 as mentally, by the Presence in which he unexpectedly 
 found himself. And it seemed as if a few right arms came 
 jerking from his shoulders, as he began : 
 
 " An't please your Worship, and the Chief says {i. e., the 
 station-master) and I was to say as there's a dead gentleman 
 at the station that wants to come to Deynum." He paused. 
 
 " Even the dead," said the Father with a solemn twinkle, 
 " desire Deynum." 
 
 " Leastways, when I say ' dead,' your Reverence, I mean, 
 as good as, or more probably so than not. He wasn't, when 
 I left, but he would be, the Chief said, before I got here. 
 You understand '? " 
 
 " And what of this dead man, wdio is alive ? " asked the 
 Baron. " Was he coming here? We expect no one." 
 
 The yokel looked down at his great, dirty boots. 
 
 " Oh no, he wasn't coming here. Mynheer the Baron. 
 He wasn't coming anywhere,- because he is a foreigner. 
 Leastways was, if he is dead. 'Tis a sin I should say it. 
 But he can't remain in the waiting-room, and his servant 
 wants to get him to the inn, he says. But there's ojily a
 
 38 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 waggonette at tlie inn, you know. And the Chief said he 
 thought — if you Avere acquainted with tlie gentleman — it 
 might be better like that, you understand." 
 
 Fokke Meinderts looked round upon the company in 
 triumph and executed a rapid revolution, like a Catherine 
 wheel. He felt altogether unexpectedly successful. 
 
 The Baron started up eagerly. His weary look had en- 
 tirely left him. Already he saw this foreigner — this gentle- 
 man — left to die in the miserable open shed which does 
 duty in Holland for far larger stations than Deynum. 
 
 " Of course I " cried the Baron. " I am much obliged 
 to the station-master. Gustave I Where is Gustave ? Tell 
 them to put to the horses ! I will take the landau. At 
 once ! " 
 
 " But, my dear, you are tired I " ventured his wife. 
 
 " My own, there is nobody who can understand him. It 
 is half an hour's drive. Amuse his Reverence, while I — " 
 The door fell to behind him. 
 
 " Dear man," said the Baroness. 
 
 " Quite so, Madame," answered Father Bulbius absently. 
 " So far I am altogether with you."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE WHITE BARONESS. 
 
 The Baroness and her Priest adjourned to the drawing- 
 room, there to await the development of what in their un- 
 eventful life was almost an adventure. The Baroness sat 
 down to her nightly game of " Patience," and the Priest 
 took his place beside her, as he invariably did, when not 
 playing ecarte with the Baron. For they played ecarte. 
 He knew that it ought to have been backgammon. 
 
 But the Baron, a mild man in his pleasures, had re- 
 tained this weakness for games with a pecuniary risk. So 
 he persuaded the good father to stake fivepence a game, 
 and the results of a long evening's contest were practically 
 nil. But the Baron would get irritable none the less over 
 his luck, and many a time had the father confessor decided 
 to speak the terrible words " No more cards." He never 
 did so, for his kindly heart sent a telegram to arrest them 
 on his lips. Still, he thought it hard lines, when a few 
 days after his sermon (in a mended cap) on the iniquity of 
 betting, Wanda innocently asked him, as if the idea had 
 just occurred to her, whether ecarte was a form of gam- 
 bling or not. 
 
 Has he suspected for a moment that his patron's foible 
 had led that unfortunate gentleman astray from the courtly 
 society of the Kings and Queens of the Card-table among 
 the bulls and bears of the stock-exchange, he would have 
 found it easier to settle the conflict in his own mind. Tlie 
 Baron preferred this large winning from Xobody. He did
 
 40 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 not like to mulct Bulbins, even of fivepence, though Bulbius, 
 us his patron was well aware, was possessed of (modest) pri- 
 vate means of his own. 
 
 Xeither did the Baroness know anything of her hus- 
 band's futile hunting-excursions in the howling wilderness 
 afore-mentioned. Had she known, she would not have nn- 
 derstood, and that, in itself, was sufficient excuse for his 
 not telling her. The Baroness Avas one of those women 
 who cannot be made to grasp the difference between con- 
 sols and coupons. All their ideas of " bonds " and of 
 " shares " are connected with a husband and a home. They 
 are none the stupider for that. You could not look Ger- 
 trude van Eexelaer in the face and write her down a fool. 
 
 Nearly forty years ago — through one crowded, self-con- 
 centrated season — she had been a Court beauty. Her father, 
 one of the few great Catholic nobles, had brought her up 
 to the Hague from his Castle in Limburg, a part of Holland 
 which no Hollander has ever heard of. And immediately 
 the lovely provincial had become, at all receptions and en- 
 tertainments, not " a nice," but " that nice " little girl. She 
 stood forth an object of attraction to the other sex, of de- 
 traction to her own. In one word, her social success was 
 complete. And one evening, at the Palace, a chivalrous 
 Monarch, stooping to hand her a fan she had dropped in 
 her youthful trepidation, requested the favour of a dance 
 for a beardless and awkward young officer, who had caught 
 his Majesty's kindly eye, as he hung dangling, forlorn, 
 against the wall. 
 
 So did Gertrude de Heerle receive her fate from the 
 hand of her King. The young officer turned out to be a 
 distant connection, Eeinout van Eexelaer. And a few 
 months later the Beauty exasperated everybody, especially 
 her father, by deliberately spurning from her the well-filled 
 hand of a notoriously profligate suitor and accepting the 
 better-filled heart of her handsome "cousin" Eeinout. The 
 Eexelaers always married into the family if possible, so as
 
 THE WHITE BARONESS. 41 
 
 to get as much of their own blood as the Eubric would 
 permit. 
 
 The pair were very poor at first, to everybody's satisfac- 
 tion ; and they were visibly happy, to everybody's disgust. 
 The "everybody" were a couple of hundred men and 
 women in society, and as few of these were happy, and none 
 of them were poor, they had a right to protest. Presently 
 brighter seasons came to the young Rexelaers, across a 
 period of honest tears and mourning, when first Eeinout's 
 elder brother died, and then his father, the young people 
 shook the tinsel-dust of the " Residency " from their feet, 
 and the poor regimental pay out of their pockets and went 
 to live at Deynum. TiiQy carried away with them a health- 
 ful scorn of the gas-lit glitter of that bursting bubble, 
 which you and I, dear Yicomte, call " our world." 
 
 A period of calm prosperity followed, overshadowed by 
 a gradually descending cloud. They had no children. 
 
 The Baroness had always been a fervent Catholic, The 
 unfulfilled yearning for an heir deepened her piety into 
 devotion and, as the empty years sped on, into bigotry. 
 She sank into the hands of the priests, as an invalid is grad- 
 ually fascinated by doctors, resolved to climb up into 
 heaven and wrench down the blessing withheld. She 
 fasted and mortified herself, and even undertook such short 
 pilgrimages as were within her reach. She would have gone 
 Jumping to Echternach but here, for the first time, her hus- 
 band interfered. So she stayed at home and sent for mirac- 
 ulous waters to drink and to bathe in. And she thanked 
 heaven, whether it heard her or not, and prayed yet once 
 more for a hearing. 
 
 Her hair had turned white some ten years after her 
 marriage. " From moping," her husband told her, with 
 tender reproof, but that was not so, these white heads being 
 peculiar to the de Heerles, as you can see from the famous 
 " Jan de Ileerle " in the National Museum at Amsterdam. 
 Baron Reinout never alluded to their common trial, except
 
 42 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 to rally his wife on her grief for it. Iksides tlic anxiety to 
 spare her, there was hope against hope in his lieart. A 
 Ilexelaerless world? lie had faith in the indispcnsableness 
 of the Rexelaers. 
 
 With the whitening of her hair the last bit of colour 
 seemed to die away from the Baroness. Her beautiful com- 
 plexion had always had the pallor of marble ; her eyes had 
 been the weak point ; they were faint ; they grew fainter 
 still. When the pleasures of this world fell away from her, 
 she had taken to dressing very much in white. Her hus- 
 band liked it ; to her it was a compromise between the 
 rainbow-hues of vanity and the black of religious seclusion. 
 The villagers looked at each otheii with something akin to 
 awe as the slender figure went flitting between the trees, a 
 vision of pureness, with the basket of charity on one arm. 
 People began to speak of " The White Baroness " in all the 
 country round. Perhaps she liked it. Perhaps what had 
 been at first a natural predilection developed into a parti 
 pris. For years she was " The White Baroness," a j^ure 
 and pallid apparition, very silent, very kind to the poor and 
 suffering, very strong- and narrow-willed. She surrounded 
 herself with white doves and white chickens, white cats and 
 white roses. The latter hobby, in especial, took possession 
 of her ; she could never get blossoms enough for the little 
 Chapel in the Park. " xVn infant's soul as white as these," 
 she murmured in her prayers, over and over again, in the 
 silence of the sanctury, and all the dead Eexelaers lay still 
 and listened. " spotless Virgin, a little, little infant, with 
 a soul as white as these ! " 
 
 The head-gardener at Deynum — they had a better one ■ 
 in those days — even succeeded in producing a new white 
 variety which he named in her honour. She was very 
 proud of it. Is it not written down in all the rose-growers' 
 catalogues as " The AVhite Baroness " to this day '? 
 
 As her piety increased, she would have had all men 
 share it, her particular form of piety, of course. And that
 
 THE WHITE BARONESS. 43 
 
 is a difficult matter in a world wliose good and evil are vari- 
 ously shadowed by each good man's individual eclectic light. 
 Besides, Deynum was officially split up into two colours, 
 Roman Catholic and Protestant. " Catholic and Beggar," 
 the Baroness would have said. For the Romanists of Hol- 
 land still daily insult their old antagonists with that most 
 honourable by-word of " Gueux." 
 
 The Baroness pitied all beggars and would have fed 
 them. But when they refused the communion of any other 
 table than their own, her pity, turning under the thunder 
 of papal anathemas, soured rapidly to wrath. And she 
 made war upon them to drive them forth, as the Rexelaers, 
 having themselves felt the weight of persecution, had never 
 done before. She boycotted them, a very common thing in 
 Holland, although rather an unfair one, because the Protes- 
 tants, whether more tolerant or more indifferent, do not re- 
 taliate in this manner. And as the years went on she 
 perfected her system of repression, cruel only to be kind. 
 " In the choice between a son of the church and an infidel, 
 why choose an infidel ? " she asked. The Baron could not 
 deny that she was theoretically right. But he strove prac- 
 tically to minimise results. " Let us be faithful in little 
 things, dearest," said the Baroness, " we who ask so great a 
 thing of God." 
 
 And the hot breath of persecution opened ujo the blos- 
 soms in cold Calvinistic hearts, as is its mission, and there 
 was a revival. There had never been a Protestant church 
 at Deynum, the worshippers going to the neighboring par- 
 ish of Rollingen, but now it became suddenly manifest that 
 this state of affairs could not be allowed to continue. The 
 difficulty was how to get it altered, for all the available 
 land in the village belonged to the Baron. A movement 
 was set on foot, but it proved unavailing, for, even liad his 
 wife not been there to instruct him, Reinout Rexelaer would 
 hardly have consented to so startling an intrusion. " Let 
 them worship as they have worshipped for ages," he de-
 
 44 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 clared. " If worship it be," added Gertrude. The dispute 
 spread into the newspapers. And the powerful lord of the 
 adjoining parish, Earou Borck, took it up. He was a man 
 of easy indifference in matters of religion — the more mod- 
 ern name is "tolerance" — but some stories of Mevrouw 
 Eexelaer's rigour had reached him, and his wife and daugh- 
 ters had petty grievances against their neighbours, and 
 there had been a dispute about a ditch. Baron Borck was 
 a Member of the States Deputed, which are a small govern- 
 ing-body elected out of the States Provincial. He was a 
 man of authority and he used it in endeavour to get a De- 
 cree of Expropriation on the ground of general utility. But 
 the Baroness fought him with dogged pertinacity. " Shall 
 we bring down a curse upon us ? " she repeated incessantly. 
 "We who have such especial need of a blessing?" She 
 dragged up the chancel-steps on her naked knees. She sent 
 forth angry glances from her castle turret towards the im- 
 pudent Protestant steeple of Eollingen. And she sent 
 forth also from that same elevation, into the stormy night, 
 her favourite snow-white carrier-pigeon, that he might lift 
 up the story of her sufferings for the faith to the very 
 bosom of the Queen of Heaven. But the pigeon was a 
 nineteenth-century bird, and went back to his dovecot. 
 
 She conquered, whether by these means or others. She 
 carried her cause up to the Privy Council, and there she 
 conquered. Not a single member of that august assembly 
 could see any connection between a Church and a matter of 
 general utility. 
 
 And then the gift, so strangely, so fearfully sweet to a 
 hope deferred, came upon her as a reward. She accepted 
 it, humbly before God, triumphantly before men. In those 
 days of calm expectancy, with the smile of Heaven upon 
 her, she felt as Hebrew Hannah must have felt when the 
 Lord took away his handmaid's reproach. She was more 
 than forty years old. She had been married more than 
 twenty. The child was born ; and it was a girl.
 
 THE WHITE BARONESS. 45 
 
 When they told her, she said : " God's will be done." 
 She said it aloud. And when they offered to bring her the 
 babe, she answered : " Presently." Which shows what her 
 heart said. 
 
 A little later its wailing cry broke in upon her faintness. 
 She turned her head from the wall. " Is that the little 
 one ? " she asked. And they laid it upon her breast. 
 
 She went through the ceremony of her chnrching, and 
 she regularly attended mass. But during six months she 
 did not go to pray in the loneliness of the chapel, and, 
 throughout all that period, its altar remained destitute of 
 flowers. One morning she walked into the library and went 
 straight up to the curtain which usually hung down over 
 the book-shelves of the eighteenth-century Rexelaer who 
 had explained away the lion-myth. She pushed it aside 
 with resolute hand, and took down a volume — of Voltaire ! 
 She stood turning over the pages undecidedly for a few 
 moments, then she shut it up with a shudder, and went 
 away again. Her eyes were dry and hard. 
 
 She loved her baby girl ; it was not against the child 
 that her anger was kindled. The miraculous answer which 
 need not have been, yet now was, and was not an answer, 
 struck her in the face like a personal taunt. And she was 
 as one in an open boat that drifts away from the friend he 
 loves, beyond all loving, because that friend has cut the rope 
 which held him moored. 
 
 " Eeinout," she said one day, before her convalescence, 
 while her life yet hung in danger, — " Give Baron Borck 
 the bit of land he wants, near the mill." 
 
 " Hush," said her husband. " You mustn't talk." He 
 thought her mind was wandering. 
 
 " Somehow, I don't want you to sell it. Simply give it. 
 Throw it in his face." 
 
 She lifted her eyes and looked at him. " You think I'm 
 not, not conscious," she murmured in surprise. " Reinout, 
 I know I'm in danger. I may be dead to-morrow. Write
 
 4(i TllH GREATER GLORY. 
 
 to-iiiglit. A scornful letter. Tell him it doesn't — matter — 
 1 1 \v — th e y — pra}'. ' ' 
 
 And he wrote, after some hesitation. It was her an- 
 swer. A defiance to High Heaven, with Death at her 
 chamber-door. 
 
 Father Bulbius, who had bravely seconded her during 
 the battle, opened his eyes wide with disappointment. And 
 tlien he half closed them, as was his habit, and watched. 
 
 " ]\Iy daughter," he said one day, after he had listened — 
 in the confessional — to her recital of various peccadilloes, 
 " you have difficulties of which you do not speak. The sun 
 of your contentment does not shine as it did before." 
 
 " I am as you have always known me. Father," she an- 
 swered. And he saw that that door was closed. 
 
 He waited another couidIc of months, and slept nine 
 hours at night, and an hour after his noonday dinner. And 
 of evenings, when not engaged with the Baron, he watched 
 the Baroness's game of Patience, and he j^layed his own 
 little game of Patience too. 
 
 He won it on the day when the distressed Baron con- 
 fided to him, as the greatest of secrets, that the Baroness 
 had tried to read Voltaire. That evening the Father dis- 
 coursed eloquently on the infidel writer, of whom he had 
 never read a word, repeatedly regretting the speciousness of 
 his arguments, which only your cleej) thinker, he said, could 
 resist. In the lady's ignorance the name only stood out, a 
 recollection of earliest eschewment, synonymous with Luther 
 or the Devil. But her curiosity was aroused, and when she 
 slipped into the library next morning, the volume contain- 
 ing " La Pucelle " came most easily to her hand. She 
 turned from that in horror, successfully biassed by a very 
 few pages, and took down a controversial work. These, 
 then, were the thoughts of an infidel. And as she read, 
 carelessly at first, his attacks upon a faith which lay dead 
 within her, that faith awoke in its grave and cried out. 
 These things were false. Yonder accusation was absurd.
 
 THE WHITE BARONESS. 47 
 
 Against this statement it could be argued — She rose from 
 her reading with a flame in her pale eyes. She must reason 
 about these matters with someone. Why, even a woman 
 like herself could see the sophistry of the argument on page 
 105. She was rather proud of seeing it so clearly. She 
 must tell Father Bulbius about it. 
 
 And she did. He showed her, intellectually, the evil 
 ways of infidelity. Her woman's heart rose up against the 
 foolish pride of feeble sense. And under ideal persecution 
 she revived, as surely as the materially ojipressed Protestants 
 of Deynum. 
 
 " For My thoughts are not your thoughts," said the poor 
 lady. " When one learns to iinderstand what a godless 
 man's thoughts are like, it is not difficult to admit that 
 God's thoughts must be better, even when not, or when mis-, 
 understood." The old fervour did not return to her, but 
 there were once more " White Baroness " roses on the 
 chapel-altar. Her almsgiving had never changed. 
 
 " Who knows what may still happen ? " said the Baron, 
 sturdily. " All things are possible with the Almighty," he 
 said. And once when she had turned upon him, in one of 
 their most rare dissensions and had burst out with "Not 
 the ridiculous ! " he waited until one evening in the chapel 
 they paused, before a window gorgeous with a crimson 
 sacrifice of Isaac. " That also Avas a race," he said softly, 
 " which Heaven, in its Providence, could not allow to die 
 out." 
 
 But the Baroness van Rexelaer had nothing in commoii 
 with Sarah. Not even a likino^ for the children of Abraham.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HEUREUX EX MARIAOE, 
 
 " Should you not have moved your ten on to the 
 knave '? " inquired the Father mildly. " That would have 
 enabled you to get at your ace." 
 
 "Yes, but I wanted to free my seventh line," said the 
 Baroness. 
 
 The Baroness's game is a very complicated one. It has 
 the true merit of a game of Patience : like its homonym, it 
 hardly ever succeeds. 
 
 " How well your little Carlsbad cards wear, Mevrouw," 
 said the Father, searching, in his restless loquacity, for a 
 subject of conversation. " You have never, I believe, been 
 to Carlsbad ? " 
 
 "Xo, I have never been anywhere." replied the Bar- 
 oness. 
 
 " Xor have I. But I knew a young clerical colleague, 
 who went there two years ago, for a melancholy he could 
 far better have cured by a religious retreat at the College.'' 
 
 " Perhaps it was dyspepsia," suggested the Baroness. 
 You see, she had read Voltaire. 
 
 " If so, he could have cured it by fasting. Besides, it 
 was not the slightest use his going to Carlsbad, for he died 
 before he got there." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said the Baroness, with that sudden interest 
 which the final catastrophe always awakens. Then she 
 added mechanically : " How sad ! " 
 
 " He died in a railway accident," continued the Father. 
 " And the most provoking thing of all was that, when the
 
 HEUREUX EN MARIAGE. 4<J 
 
 doctors opened the body, they, were unanimous in declaring 
 that Carlsbad could never have cured him, after all." 
 
 " But that did not matter to him then," objected the 
 Baroness. 
 
 " Perhaps not," replied Father Bulbius, doubtfulh^ 
 " But somehow, it has always seemed to me so like a case of 
 suicide, without the ghost of a reason." 
 
 The Baroness looked at the clock. A couple of logs of 
 wood lay smouldering and flickering on the oj)en hearth. 
 The soft glow of the fire and the softer lamplight played 
 over the delicate lines of the lady's face and over her slen- 
 der, blue-veined hands, as she sorted her game. There was 
 a gentleness about the warm quiet little drawing-room with 
 its subdued, old-fashioned colours and a glamour of some- 
 thing almost like romance over the stately figure in grey 
 satin with white lace collar and wrist-bands, white hair and 
 white cap. In spite of the grey apparel wdiich time had 
 led her to adopt, the Baroness was the white Baroness 
 still. 
 
 There was nothing romantic, however, about Father 
 Bulbius, who sat doubled up by the little green card-table, 
 his broad forehead closely knotted over the puzzle of his col- 
 league's /e/o de se. 
 
 " He will be coming back again soon," remarked the 
 Baroness, thinking of her departed lord. 
 
 " Hardly that," replied the Father. " He was definitely 
 dead." 
 
 " Not definitely, I fancy. I merely understood that the 
 station-master expected him to die." 
 
 " Oh, but excuse me, my dear lady, I remember nothing 
 of the station-master's opinion. Though there certainly 
 was a station-master concerned, whom everybody considered 
 to blame. As for me, I should prefer to censure the foolish 
 ones who go hurrying through Europe to escape from them- 
 selves. I have one insuperable objection to medicines ; they 
 all make me unwell. Trust in God and put a cold water
 
 50 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 compress where the pain is. That's my cure." The good 
 priest liked the Baroness to k'ave him master of the fiehl ; 
 the Baroness did not listen. 
 
 The Baron found them thus amiably consorted when he 
 returned. His face was very grave, 
 
 " Dear me, if the man was dying, perhaps I ought to 
 have gone to him ! " cried the priest with tardy compunc- 
 tion. 
 
 " lie is dying," replied the Baron ; " but he need not do 
 so without your aid. It is a foreigner, taken with acute 
 spasms in the train, who finds himself stranded here. Un- 
 doubtedly he is very ill." 
 
 " Where is he now ? " queried the Baroness. " Is he 
 better? Is he a gentleman? Or shall I send him some 
 soup?" 
 
 " He is a gentleman. He is very old. The servant told 
 me his name was M. Farjolle ; he says he is a Frenchman. 
 They are at the inn." 
 
 "At that place?" cried Mevrouw. " Mon cher, you 
 should have asked him here." 
 
 " Mon amie, he steadfastly refused to come." 
 
 " Ah, j^ardon. Of course you would do what was right." 
 
 " I do not think he understood," said the Baron. " He 
 offered a napoleon for the use of the carriage." 
 
 " For shame," exclaimed the Baroness, who considered 
 that no suffering could excuse such an error. 
 
 " I told him that he was mistaken, but that I should be 
 glad to accept a florin for the coachman," said the Baron 
 coolly. " And then I left him in j^eace." 
 
 "• "Which means," cried his wife quickly, " that you came 
 back on the box. Oh, Reinout, how could you ? At least 
 say that the weather was fine." 
 
 " It might be worse," replied the Baron, and he walked 
 away to fetch the newspaper, sitting down quietly, now, to 
 its Home and Foreign Xews. 
 
 " Aha," he said suddenly, in the tone of a man who
 
 HEUREUX EX MARIAGE. 51 
 
 makes a discovery. " This explains Monsieur Rexelaer's 
 move. ' Appointed to tlie jjost of Sub-Comptroller of the 
 lioyal HoiTsehold, Count Ililarius Jan Eeinout van Rexc- 
 laer.' At last." 
 
 " And what is that, Mynheer the Baron ? " asked Bulbi- 
 us, slowly hoisting himself off his chair. 
 
 " Oh, it's the man that looks after the larder and but- 
 tery," interposed the Baroness sharply. 
 
 " Well, he has edged himself into the enchanted circle," 
 said the Baron, " and now he wants to cut a figure as a 
 noble and a great landed proprietor." 
 
 " And a Eexelaer," added the Baroness. 
 
 In the thoughtful silence that followed, the Priest took 
 his leave. " Have you got an umbrella ? " asked the Baron, 
 following him out of the room. 
 
 "No. Why so? It isn't raining." 
 
 " Hush. Yes, it is. But it might be raining a good deal 
 harder at this time of year ; might it not?" 
 
 Mynheer van Eexelaer went back to his wife. She had 
 risen and was standing by the mantelpiece. 
 
 " Sub-Comptroller of the Eoyal Household," she said 
 slowly, and with increasing bitterness — too scornful not to 
 reveal a little touch of envy. — " In all things for the last 
 twenty years has Fortune favoured this adventurer, baulk- 
 ing, according to her custom, the better man." 
 
 He took one of her hands in his. " Not in all things," 
 he said. 
 
 " How so ? " 
 
 He pointed to the cards now lying in a little stream 
 across the table. " Heureux en mariage," he said, " nial- 
 heureux au jeu. Let the Count take his share. I have 
 mine. No man, it appears, may claim botb." 
 
 As he spoke, his look fell on the crumpled newspaper 
 lying against his deserted chair. And his own words struck 
 home to him. " Malheureux au jen." 
 
 She pressed his hand, and they stood silent, side by side
 
 52 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Then he broke away, with an exclamation of impatience, to 
 wind up the oil-himp. 
 
 She came after him. " But lie has not got Deynum 
 yet," she said, " this Count." Oh the contempt of the last 
 word from her lips ! 
 
 " Xo, he has not got Deynum 3'et." 
 
 " But, Reinout." 
 
 "\Yhatisit, Gertrude?" 
 
 " lie has a son."
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A PRINCE OF THE BLOOD ROYAL. 
 
 " She has looked them out in the ' Annuaire de la No- 
 blesse,'" thought the Baron. "Yet what could she care 
 about these peojole? How inquisitive the best of women 
 are." 
 
 The Baroness had done more, while angry with herself 
 for doing it. Writing to an acquaintance at the Hague, she 
 had casually inquired after those other Rexelaers : " Do you 
 know anything of our namesakes, the Count's family, I 
 mean? There is a boy — is there not? — called Reinout." 
 The unknown Reinout Rexelaer incessantly tormented her 
 unwilling thoughts. Yet she turned to the answer with a 
 sort of irritable pleasure. 
 
 " You ask after the Rexelaers," wrote the Hague lady. 
 " Him one meets everywhere. Her I have never seen. I 
 know his brother's family better; the wife there, you know, 
 is one of our own set, a Borck, and I like her very much. 
 Since the Count brought back his nigger spouse and her 
 millions from Brazil, where he was secretary or something, 
 he has worked day and night to recover the position they 
 had lost through their impecuniosity, but the black woman 
 is an obstacle. She locks herself up in a hot-house, people 
 say, and cries for the sun. It is a great pity they should be 
 Protestants — How was that, by-the-bye? — still, now that 
 you, my dear Gertrude, have only a daughter, it must be a 
 source of real satisfaction to you to remember that this 
 other branch is blessed with sons. The Rexelaer- Borcks 
 have two, and there is one boy, one child, at the Count's.
 
 54 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Yes, his name is Keinout, like your husband's. I suppose it 
 is a family name ? 
 
 " The little that I know of the lad is rather interesting, 
 I think. For some foolish reason they keep him altogether 
 apart ; perhaps that is a Brazilian idea. He is educated, it 
 appears, into a premature little man of the world, and put 
 to bed in a court wig and ruffles. I don't know particulars. 
 But he comes to a gymnastic class Avith my children, at- 
 tended by the queerest, courtliest little Louis Quiuze cheva- 
 lier that you ever saw off a snuff-box lid. I met him there 
 once, and he stood aside to let me pass, lifting his cap with 
 the air of a young prince, enough to break the heart of a 
 mother of hobbledehoys. He is a very handsome youth, 
 dark complexioned, with big, expressive eyes. Of course the 
 other boys do not care for him. He had a violent quarrel 
 with my own Louis, in which I cannot help thinking Louis 
 was wrong. I have run on, but I fancy that is about all. 
 How is Vendela ? " 
 
 The Baroness slowdy slowly tore the letter uj) and placed 
 the fragments on the blazing fire. 
 
 It was unavoidable that the bovs with whom he was 
 brought into such unsatisfactory contact should look askance 
 at voung Eeinout. "L'nbeknown is unbeloved," says a 
 Dutch pioverb. Schoolboyhood whispered derision of the 
 little gentleman wnth kid gloves. 
 
 And when schoolboyhood whispers derision, its next step 
 is to shout it. His companions, as his father fondly called 
 them, began to tease him at the various classes where they 
 met. They would bow before him and address him as 
 " Your Majesty," in never tiring allusion to the ancestral 
 King Hilarius, with whom Eeinout himself had unwarily 
 made them acquainted. All of them had plenty of ancestors 
 of their own, but the King was a delightfully fresh source 
 of amusement. And thence sprang the quarrel with the 
 Louis mentioned above.
 
 A PRINCE OF THE BLOOD ROYAL. 55 
 
 This Louis, one afternoon, had made a highly successful 
 joke about Eeinout and his dog, whom he nicknamed " the 
 two Princes." Carried away by his own wit, he aimed, just 
 as the class was dispersing, a couple of blows with a fencing 
 foil at the lad and the brute, missing the former, but draw- 
 ing a yelp of protest from the veritable " Prince." Quick 
 as thought Eeinout turned, and, first checking himself with 
 a chivalrous " On your guard ! " flashed a retort full into his 
 aggressor's left eye. He was carried off in a fume of indig- 
 nation, by his faithful Mentor, who knew not whether to 
 scold or approve, and, on reaching home, he ran straight to 
 his fatherls study. 
 
 " Papa ! " he began impetuously. 
 
 " Hush ! " said the Count, who was looking over his 
 cash-book. The Count was an admirable, and scrupulous, 
 financier. 
 
 "Well?" he asked, presently, jotting down some figures. 
 
 " Papa, it is all true — is it not ? — about Rex Hilarius, 
 and the lion and Wendela, isn't it?" 
 
 " Of course it is true, Rene," replied the Count with a 
 smile. 
 
 The boy gave a great gasp of relief. " I am so glad to 
 hear you say that," he almost sobbed. " Then I may hill 
 whoever says it is not ? " 
 
 His father burst out laughing. " Certainly not," cried 
 the Count. " You may kill nobody. On the contrary, you 
 must be on very good terms with all your companions. 
 There's not one of them but you may want him some 
 day." 
 
 Reinout stood lost in reflection. " Life is very difficult," 
 he said at last. " Do you know. Papa, I think it is almost 
 impossible fo'r a man always to know how to act as a gentle- 
 man," 
 
 " Certainly not," cried the Count again.^ " Nothing is 
 easier. It becomes a habit, like all others. Like speaking 
 French without mistakes."
 
 56 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " But I don't mean politeness," said Rcinout vaguely. 
 " I mean about doing right." 
 
 " Of course," replied the Count, turning to his books 
 again. " So do I, Reinout. Ask Monsieur de Souza. He 
 knows." 
 
 But Reinout did not immediately return to liis tutor. 
 He went to look for his mother in the conservatory, where 
 she lay, on her lounge, enveloped in heat, a novel of Catulle 
 Mendes in her hand. 
 
 " Shut the door, Rene," she said without lifting her eyes. 
 Her attitude was nltra-languid, but her soul was palpitating 
 with the heroine's infidelities. The Countess had literary 
 tastes and aspirations, as will be amply proved in the future. 
 She even composed poetry. Private poetry, of course, as 
 befitted her rank. 
 
 Reinout stood gazing at his mother in silence, for one 
 whole minute. He was searching, confusedly, for explana- 
 tion and expression. But his heart seemed too full for 
 speech. 
 
 With her eyes unalterably intent on her book, the 
 beautiful Creole — she was still beautiful — slowdy drew to 
 light from the folds of her dressing-gown a pink-ribboned 
 confectioner's bag, which she held out in the direction of 
 her son. " Take some sweets," she said. 
 
 The boy required no second bidding, but plunged his 
 fingers eagerly down. " Are there any of those chocolats 
 with the green stuff inside ? " he asked. 
 
 She nodded, a little impatiently, and he went away, with 
 his hands full, to demonstrate to Monsieur de Souza's not 
 unconvincible ears that he must fight Louis to-morrow, and 
 lick him. 
 
 Never, surely, had child a stranger tutor. Monsieur de 
 Souza-Calhao was an old Portuguese gentleman of shattered 
 health and fortunes, but of irreproachable ancestry and ex-
 
 A PRINCE OF THE BLOOD ROYAL. 57 
 
 perience. The Rexelaers had come across him just before 
 they quitted Rio, and had brought him away with them. 
 He talked incessantly, pumping up his words with an audi- 
 ble draw, — he was a great sufferer from asthma, — and his 
 talk, a life's harvest of gentle cynicism, delighted the 
 Count. " Teach my boy," said the latter, " whatever you 
 remember yourself. All the rest, I feel sure, is unnecessary. 
 Contact with the world and those who know the world is 
 the only education. At school children but learn what life 
 teaches them to forget. Make a man of him, like ourselves, 
 that has seen men and cities. And furnish him with 
 enough arithmetic to reckon for number one." The two 
 men shook hands. Count Rexelaer so thoroughly believed 
 in what he said, that, from the child's earliest youth, he 
 had taken him about with him everywhere. Well, nearly 
 everywhere. When he left M. de Souza, he went in to his 
 wife, and explained his plan. The Countess demurred. She 
 had aspirations, poor thing, in her own foolish way, and she 
 suggested the addition of " The poets." Count Hilarius 
 smiled. " Ma chere," he said, " Believe me ; I know my own 
 class. The Almanach de Gotha and the Paris Figaro are a 
 liberal education." 
 
 Monsieur de Souza carried out his instructions and im- 
 proved on them. He was a shrewd and kindly man, not 
 soured by his misfortunes, which he bore with easy jihi- 
 losophy. He liked his pale little pupil — " the child is not 
 strong, don't let him learn too much," had been the verdict 
 of a great Paris physician. " Ah, you see," said the father. 
 It was an education which many a more correctly educated 
 man might have envied. The tutor, for instance, would 
 take Bucharest for the morning's subject, and would then 
 talk for a couple of hours, first about the city as he remem- 
 bered it — he had been everywhere — and the places of inter- 
 est near, the dress and habits and peculiarities of the Rou- 
 manian people. " All this," he would say, " you can go and 
 see for yourself some day," but then he would proceed far-
 
 58 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 ther and tt'll about the great Ivoumanian families, their 
 members, their possessions, their relations to the brand-new 
 German-silver crown. He would repeat these stories from 
 time to time and ask his pupil about them, and so, gradually 
 travelling round the world, the boy learned all about the 
 net-work of vulgarity and vanity which keeps it together, 
 the little tangle of kings, ministers and mistresses in which 
 it swings. But he also learned a variety of other things, a 
 smattering of conversation about latter-day pictures and 
 operas, for instance, nothing beyond the limits of elegant 
 ignorance. And he was early taught dancing, riding, fenc- 
 ing, his mother's accomplishments. The Countess Mar- 
 gherita came in to fence with her son and mortified him 
 into efficiency by her successes. " K'ever kill your man, un- 
 less you want to," she cried, as she leaped straight at the 
 boy's heart. To see her lithe figure bounding to and fro in 
 a quiver of excitement, — she fenced in the French manner 
 — one would have imagined it impossible that this was the 
 woman who for days could only loll on couches in conserva- 
 tories and munch lollipops. 
 
 "And especially, Monsieur de Souza," said the poor 
 Countess, " I beg of you to supplement your own vast ex- 
 perience by the reading of books with my son. Let him 
 know how the great intellects saw life." " You mean nov- 
 els, Madame?" suggested the old gentleman. "Xovels, 
 Poems, Le vrai, Le bon, Le beau. Whatever edifies a char- 
 acter." So Eeinout read his tutor's two favourites. La Bru- 
 yere and Montaigne. The tutor did not take kindly to the 
 Countess's suggestion. As for works of the imagination, he 
 held them in abhorrence. " If you must read," he fre- 
 quently said to Reinout, " although I see no reason for your 
 doing so, then memoirs are best." Eeinout waded through 
 a certain number of Court memoirs of the 17th and 18th 
 centuries, and very queer information he got out of them. 
 
 But M. de Souza did not only acquaint him with the 
 evil side of the old redme. This cavalier of the old school
 
 A PRINCE OF THE BLOOD ROYAL. 59 
 
 •had its virtuea as well as its vices. He had its code of 
 honour, not a perfect one, perhaps, but far better than any- 
 thing the boy could have learnt from his father. " Never 
 do anything mean to a woman " — he might have added : 
 " except under the cloak of ' love,' " for that was what he 
 meant. " Never be afraid of any man." " Never do any- 
 thing you need be ashamed of " — that sounds well, but many 
 an unworldly soul might be surprised to hear of what things 
 the chevalier was not ashamed. Self-stricken of misfortune, 
 he taught his generous-hearted pupil to respect, and, if pos- 
 sible, to relieve it. " A gentleman should not save, but 
 spend," the old spendthrift was never tired of repeating, 
 " wisely, if possible, and, if not possible, ill. Money must 
 flow, or it freezes." And he would tell again the story of 
 the Due de Eichelieu and his grandchild. 
 
 The result of this peculiar training was a little aristocrat, 
 heart and soul, face and bearing, manners and speech, a boy 
 of fourteen, Avith much of the profoundly ignorant " knowl- 
 edge of the world," of a roue, and no less of that unasked, 
 good-natured pity for the vague millions outside its circle, 
 which is built up on unmerited contempt. He was pro- 
 foundly ignorant of the real lights of life, standing, as he 
 did, from childhood upwards, under the glare of its wax 
 candles, but he was eager, intuitively, to love, to help, to be 
 of use by word or deed. And he remembered the words of 
 the old Belgian gentleman : A gentilhomme devoir fait loi. 
 And in the far distance he caught the vague music of their 
 meaning, like the roar of a slowly approaching tide.
 
 CnAPTEE IX. 
 
 DISEASE. 
 " AXTOIXE ! " 
 
 "At your orders, Monsieur le Marquis." 
 " Hist. You take a delight in disobeying me." 
 " But I liad understood that, when we were alone — " 
 " You had understood nothing. You never understand." 
 " If Monsieur wishes to hare his title ignored, what of 
 these ? " As he sj)oke, the man carelessly fingered one of 
 the many gold-stoppered bottles which he was arranging on 
 the shaky little side-table. Cool impudence and indiffer- 
 ence were written in every line of his shaven face. 
 
 " True," said his master pensively. " Lock the things 
 away, and have new ones from Amsterdam. How much 
 can they cost ? A thousand francs, at the utmost. Find 
 out an address, and write to-day." 
 
 " As it will please Monsieur. But when Monsieur 
 remembers that all his underclothing is dotted over with 
 the sign of his exalted rank, I would ask myself — " 
 " Well, get other things." 
 
 " I would ask myself if Monsieur considers it worth 
 while." 
 
 If the man had looked for a storm of abuse, he did not 
 get it. " Push forward that table," said the Marquis ; 
 "Place the morphia-injector where I can reach it. And 
 give me ' Les Memoires de Cocodette.' So. Xow go down 
 into the village and find out all about it." 
 
 "But it is pouring with rtiin, Monsieur le Marquis."
 
 DISEASE. 61 
 
 " Can I not see ? Go down into the village and find out 
 all about it." 
 
 The valet slunk towards the door. His master called 
 after him. " I desire to know, especially, the name of the 
 seigneur of the village. In whose carriage was I brought 
 here last night ? " 
 
 " That I can tell already to — to Monsieur. The name is 
 Eexelaer." 
 
 " Ah ! Well, find out the rest." The Marquis remained 
 alone. 
 
 It was a poor apartment enough, even for a village inn. 
 Strangers did not stop at Deynum. The place was one to 
 feed your horses at before you hurried on. And the chubby- 
 faced peasant hostess had been far more put out than 
 pleased by the arrival, in her Lord's own carriage, of the 
 distinguished invalid and his still more terrible serving- 
 man. She had hurriedly prepared her own sitting-room — 
 a secret never to be divulged — while the Marquis lay gasp- 
 ing, amid fumes of cheap gin and cheaper tobacco — in the 
 hurriedly deserted parlour below. 
 
 The whole bedroom was full of indefinable odours, not 
 especially evil, but suggestive, generally, of old clothes, and 
 hard labour, and mustiness. There were little windows 
 everywhere, unfit for airing, that yet let in marvels of 
 draught The bright red beams of the ceiling lay heavy on 
 your head. A great bedstead with faded green curtains (of 
 quite a different shade from the green strip of carpet) stood 
 against one side of the wall, opposite two bad prints from 
 fine pictures of the Holy Family. So far there was nothing 
 at which you could take offence. But in the middle of it 
 all was suspended a truly painful object, the joy of its pos- 
 sessor's heart, a brand-new paraffin lamp of tlie commonest 
 make of cuivre poli, highly wrought in flowers and faces, 
 and surmounted by a pale-green globe with a pink paper 
 border. It hung there crooked and greasy, odorous and 
 two-and-sixpenny, unusable though filled to overflowing, an
 
 «;2 THE CRKATEK GLOIIY. 
 
 insult to tlie lioucst deal tables and rush-bottomed chairs 
 upon Avhieh it looked down. 
 
 But the Marquis noticed none of these specifically ; he 
 only realized an unendurable discomfort. He lay back in a 
 common but comfortable wicker chair, his tall and elegant 
 figure wrapped in a white plush dressing-gown faced with 
 silk. And he w-as as carefully oiled and brushed as ever. 
 
 He was thinking of himself. He had rarely thought of 
 anything else for more than seventy years. But never had 
 he had sadder subject for his cogitations than now. During 
 a few moments, certainly, his mind lingered over the name 
 which Antoine had flung to him in departing. There rose 
 up before him a memory of a dusty road in the glare of a 
 July sun, and a little fellow seated in the middle of it, 
 across his hoop, white and hot, shame-faced but trium- 
 phant. Of course it must be so. He had understood the 
 connection at once. That he should come to this place, of 
 all others, to die ! 
 
 " That dog, Antoine, smelt death," he said aloud, " or 
 perhaps I should not have told him. Yet, I don't know. 
 Great God, I am all alone in the world." 
 
 His life had been a long one, crowded with incidents 
 which had interested him absorbingly at the time of their 
 occurrence. In the seventy-three years of its duration not 
 so much had happened as in the last twenty-four hours. 
 And this much he now understood of time and eternity, 
 that the longest 2:)eriod of the longest life is the moment in 
 which it ends. 
 
 He was a great noble. He had lived the little round of 
 his class : horses, women, shooting, cards, women, horses, 
 shooting, women, cards. He had been in the diplomatic 
 service for a certain period : that only meant larger experi- 
 ence in the women of various nationalities ; and he had 
 graced during many years the presidential chair of the So- 
 ciety for the Improvement of the Breed of Horses; that 
 meant a certain amount of betting, but he was rich and
 
 DISEASE. 63 
 
 could afford it. In fact, he had done Iiis duty to his King, 
 his Country and himself. He had done more than his duty? 
 for he need not have patiently suffered banishment to 
 Madrid, where the cuisine did not agree with him, nor need 
 he have kept so many race-horses in the interests of agri- 
 culture. Even had he confined himself to the round above- 
 mentioned, he could still have proved himself — what he was 
 — a great noble. 
 
 There was the incident of the Marquise. How small it 
 looked now ! For there had been a Marquise who had 
 spread her existence through no less than twenty-seven 
 years of his life. He had hated her, because she had borne 
 him no children, to be great nobles like himself. He had 
 never paused to question his hatred, he, the roue, who had 
 married a young girl. He did not think she had much to 
 complain of : he seldom objected to her doing what she 
 chose. She had only been an incident. He forgot her. 
 
 And his life, as has been said, had been very full, 
 crowded with the labour of each day's many pleasures. He 
 looked down it now, and he could distinguish nothing. He 
 could not even remember any point of especial interest. 
 Ah, yes, there was that — when he was quite a young lad — 
 that innocent little girl who — whom — . He took up the 
 book of dirty stories from his lap and began to read. 
 
 And this is what he read. A dull weight always there. 
 At first the thought that it must be fancy. The question : 
 Do I really feel it ? Then, with increasing iteration : Do I 
 not feel it? There it is again. I never felt anything like 
 it before. I wonder what causes it. Something indigesti- 
 ble I must have eaten. But I never knew tilings to be 
 indigestible before. I never was ill before. I am not ill 
 now. 
 
 Of course not. But why this deadly feeling of sickness 
 which keeps creeping up without any ajiparent reason ? 
 AVhy that sudden fainting at the club, which proves my 
 fancy not fancy but fact?
 
 64 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 lie laid down the book at the unturned page, and sat 
 staring through the narrow, muslin-curtained window at 
 the steady rain outside. The elms on the village-green 
 swayed cheerlessly under the lowering sky. 
 
 When was it that the stern reality had first seized him 
 by the throat ? Ages ago. Life is long, after all, when we 
 look back upon it. Immensely long The summer before 
 last? Last summer. 
 
 How annoying it had all seemed at the time. But his 
 doctor had promised to cure him in a month or two. He 
 had always kept a doctor, like a chaplain, without requiring 
 either. 
 
 Then had come that first attack of pain. How that had 
 suddenly altered the whole face of the matter ! How 
 furious he had been with the numskull who had allowed his 
 indisposition to spread so far. He had hurried to Brussels 
 to consult a great authority, — a great name, at least ! He 
 had learnt that he was suffering from inflammation, pos- 
 sibly a tumour — a loliat, great God? — yes, probably a 
 tumour. Oh, nothing to be alarmed at. Monsieur le 
 Marquis. 
 
 " But my habits, my daily — ahem ! — duties. How, with 
 your ridiculous diet of slops, can I go out to dinner, as I am 
 accustomed to do five days of the seven ? And the little 
 suppers which — enfin ! — which occur in the existence of a 
 man of the world ? I should have to be very ill, indeed, 
 and I am not, before I could submit to such a life as you 
 l)ropose." 
 
 " Monsieur le Marquis, you are not very ill, but you are 
 ill enough to render my regime absolutely imperative. Ab- 
 solutely imperative." 
 
 " Is my illness dangerous ? " 
 
 " Not yet." 
 
 " Ah ! But, professor, are you not mistaken about the 
 tumour ? The fool who prescribed for me has allowed a 
 chill to settle down into a chronic catarrh. A friend of
 
 DISEASE. 65 
 
 mine has much the same symptoms as myself, and he suffers 
 from a chronic catarrh." 
 
 "Monsieur le Marquis, I am sorry to say, you mast not 
 treat this affection too lightly. I will not answer for the 
 consequences if you do." 
 
 Of how little importance it all seemed to him now. A 
 week ago it had come upon him as the greatest catastrophe 
 of his life. To have something serious the matter with one 
 — well, not exactly serious, but "requiring care." To have 
 to change one's whole mode of life — for a time, of course, 
 on one's body's account. How vexatious ! And he was 
 only seventy-three, while Prasly-Latour had celebrated his 
 eighty-seventh birthday last August in perfect health. The 
 fates were unjust. 
 
 All this was vague, and far-away. His whole previous 
 existence was but a thin dash, as a prelude, leading up to 
 yesterday, a blot, a full-stoj). 
 
 After two more attacks of fierce spasms he had made up 
 his mind to know what was really wrong. Why this con- 
 stant giddiness ? Was his brain diseased also ? He would 
 go into a foreign country, where he would be free to speak. 
 Amsterdam was close by; some-one had recommended a 
 professor at Amsterdam, who had cured somebody else of a 
 swelling somewhere. He went to Amsterdam. 
 
 Why had he insisted upon this man's laying bare the 
 whole truth? He did not really want to know it. He 
 would much rather not have known it. Oh the blessed 
 ignorance of yesterday morning ! Oh the blessed cruel 
 doubt of yesterday morning ! Oh the happiness of that 
 torturing: Is it? compared with this irrevocable: " It is." 
 
 He had come out from that chamber of judgment with 
 but one idea : Escape. Anywhere, away from the truth, 
 from himself. Not back to old acquaintances, familiar 
 faces, how are you's — I hope you're better ; come and dine. 
 Anywhere, into some quiet corner, unknown, to hide his 
 suffering in a hole, like a cat or a dog. It was chance that
 
 66 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 luul prevented liis going farther than Deynum. He hud 
 intended to push on — somewhere — into Germany, miscalcu- 
 lating his strength. 
 
 lie knew little of illness, hut of fl/is illness he knew. 
 lie had seen it take its course in his wife. Yet, he now 
 told himself, her symptoms had been so different. . All the 
 preliminaries of his own case had been omitted ; only the 
 final agony had come, sharp and swift. It never occurred 
 to him what she might have endured in silence. He cursed 
 his fate which dealt more hardly with him. 
 
 He shuddered. The horror of a continuous, hopeless 
 agony was upon him. Xonsense, he was exaggerating. She 
 had not really suffered so much. She seldom complained. 
 He did not remember any very terrible paroxysms. And 
 yet he had received a general impression, from doctors and 
 nurses, from occasional sights and sounds — still, he may 
 have exaggerated. He regretted that he had not asked her 
 oftener about her sufferings. He would have known better 
 now. 
 
 There were maladies in which you suffered more than 
 in cancer. There must be. He tried to think of them. 
 He might have been a life-long leper, like his friend, the 
 Duke. He tried to feel thankful that he had not been a 
 life-long leper. 
 
 He broke into a horrible laugh. And then again he 
 took up the book. For one thing he was thankful, that 
 last night had come to an end, and that it was day again, 
 wet and miserable, but day.
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 A SHEPHERD AXD TWO SHEEP. 
 
 Meanwhile Antoine wandered disconsolately to and 
 fro in the solitary village-street, his trousers turned-up to 
 an unnecessary degree, his shiny umbrella dripping low 
 over his bended shoulders. 
 
 "Ah, your turn has come at last, has it, old ten per 
 cent?" he murmured over and over again, with quiet glee. 
 " Great lords kick everybody under them, and the greatest 
 lord is Death," he chuckled. He had an unpleasant way of 
 chuckling internally, with melancholy, long-drawn face. 
 The idea of the impending catastrophe appeared to afford 
 him distinct satisfaction. He gave it utterance, letting it 
 linger on his tongue, like a lozenge, as an antidote against 
 the damp. 
 
 He stopped to stare along the deserted road. 
 
 "A pretty name," he said, speaking of the village. 
 " And, for the rest, beastly — like many a girl." 
 
 Meditating thus, in a manner worthy of his philosophic 
 mind, he dribbled down a little lane, which seemed to lead 
 nowhere. " In ten minutes more I shall go back," he re- 
 solved, " and shall tell the old fellow anything he may care 
 to believe. What's the use of his stupid questions? To- 
 morrow, at the latest, we move on." 
 
 At this moment an energetic tapping caused him to lift 
 the umbrella off his.ears. Ho had reached a low tenement 
 which stands well-hid behind an over-crowded strip of 
 garden, winking, as it were, Avith one eye over a tall box-
 
 (3S THE (JREATER GLORY. 
 
 hedge. If 3'ou look at it closely, you will see that it is a 
 little more pretentious than its — distant — neighbours in its 
 simple unpretentiousness. It is larger and, if possible, 
 neater, and one or two concessions have been made in erect- 
 ing it to other .considerations than those of the barest utility. 
 " Erecting " is an incorrect word ; it lies prone beneath the 
 trees. And just now it was a thing of most wondrous 
 beauty to gaze upon, for the whole irregular length of its 
 mixed up apartments and out-houses was ablaze, like a 
 magnificent sunset, with the all-luminous death of a great 
 Virginia creej^er. Antoine saw notliing of this, not even 
 the glittering eaves, till he had found a little gate to peej^ 
 through. 
 
 " Presumably meant for me," he said. " "Whoever she is, 
 she must be hurting her hand. I hope she's young." 
 
 The knocking increased in energy. 
 
 " I fear not," sighed Antoine, still peering under his 
 umbrella. " Xo woman under forty would knock as loud 
 as that." 
 
 The knocking ceased and a portly figure in black ap- 
 peared at the door, a low door, half-hidden under a porch. 
 The figure was making signs with the pipe, across the mists 
 of rain. 
 
 " An old one, of course ; like my luck," grumbled An- 
 toine, who was near-sighted (ocularly only). " Well, a glass 
 of cognac will not come amiss this damp morning." 
 
 "Push it ! " shouted Father Bulbius in Dutch, with vio- 
 lent gestures of both arms and the pipe. Then he cried : 
 " Pussy ! " which is French and means the same thing. 
 
 " Yes, you may yell, old lady," muttered Antoine, vio- 
 lently jerking the recalcitrant latch. " Hang this gate ; it's 
 as virtuous as a Mother Superior. Hi, you there, you must 
 come and let me in, if you want me at all I " 
 
 He desisted. Whereupon Bulbius, with a mighty re- 
 solve, in which courtesy and curiosity triumphed over cau- 
 tion, hitched up his cassock as high as was permissible — a
 
 A SHEPHERD AND TWO SHEEP. 69 
 
 little higher — and, holding it resolutely out on both sides, 
 with the pipe sticking crossways, commenced a gingerly zig- 
 zag over the puddles. 
 
 " Black ! " soliloquized Antoine. " A widow presuma- 
 bly. Well, widows take most trouble. Here she comes. It 
 is the mountain, evidently, on its way to Mahomed. It is — 
 Good Heavens, it is a cure. In this land of all others ! But 
 do not derange yourself. Monsieur le Cure ! " Then he 
 stood aside, bowing and scraping. " This is Veronica's do- 
 ing ! " gasped Father Bulbius, dropping the skirt he had 
 tucked between his knees, as he rattled at the gate. " She 
 has locked it again." 
 
 Even as he spoke, another figure, gaunt and terrible, ap- 
 peared in the doorway, and a big bass voice came booming 
 through the wet. " Is it possible, your Reverence, with 
 your baldness! Is it permissible thus to risk one's health? 
 Ah but return immediately! Immediately! Besides, it is 
 useless, for / have got the key ! " And Veronica, the Fath- 
 er's housekeeper (and body-guard) came stalking across with 
 straight, upright jerks like a squirrel. 
 
 " Murder will out," snapped Veronica, " but I say : Mur- 
 der will in. Leastways theft." She unlocked the little 
 gate with the very big key which she held in one bony 
 hand. " Is this — person to come in, your Reverence ? " 
 
 " Certainly, unless you have left the table loaded with 
 plate," replied the Father, with a timid attempt to banter 
 her. 
 
 " There are other valuables besides plate," retorted the 
 woman, with a toss of her head. You're nearest to your 
 own skin, says the proverb, and I'm sure there's no one else 
 to be near to in this loneliest of lanes." 
 
 The priest pushed her aside, a little impatiently for him. 
 
 " Enterrez-vous, Mesjeu? " he said with a polite wave of 
 liis hand. The movement drove his long pipe backwards, 
 causing Veronica to start away with a snort and a splash. 
 
 "Shall I not derange you, Monsieur I'Abbe ?" protested
 
 70 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Autoiue, bowing bareheaded, but under liis umbrella, where- 
 in he distinctly had the advantage of Bulbius. 
 
 " Oh no ; I am not at all deranged," replied the latter 
 gentleman, and led the way into the house. 
 
 " My good Veronica," he said, pausing at the door of his 
 den, " I should like a half-bottle of port." 
 
 " There is no more port, your Reverence, and it seems to 
 me that for a man who has been out in the damp, a good 
 cup of coffee — " 
 
 " Yes, yes," said the Father, gently closing the door of 
 his sanctum upon her — and motioning his guest to a chair. 
 
 There was not, however, a vacant one in the whole little 
 room. From top to bottom the Parsonage was a model of 
 primness and cleanly discomfort, angular, empty, white and 
 cold, with that eternal smell of polish and soap and ubiqui- 
 tously slipi3ery sloppery in which the soul of the Dutch 
 housewife delights. But to the rule of this general un- 
 habitability one exception had perforce been established. 
 The priest had made a stand with regard to his own little 
 study. On the first day of the month he permitted his 
 housekeeper to enter and " clean " it, deserting it himself 
 during twenty-four hours. When this compromise was pro- 
 posed to her as the result of long weeks of battle, ruse and 
 subterfuge, Veronica first resigned her post, and then, as 
 the Father remained unexpectedly firm, herself. She found 
 some consolation in ceaselessly ascribing all the ailments 
 she invented for him to the unhealthy condition of his 
 apartment. And, seeing that an indolent man always 
 makes far more litter than a busy one, the sanctum, as in- 
 spected from outside the window, must have caused agony 
 to a swept and straightened mind like Veronica's. Father 
 Bulbius never picked up anything, — and he had an apti- 
 tude for letting things fall, — nor did he ever replace a book, 
 or whatever else he had taken down, unless there was an 
 opportunity for putting it sideways, or topsy-turvy. 
 
 He now hurried to an easy chair — all his chairs bore
 
 A SHEPHERD AND TWO SHEEP. 71 
 
 that name, and deserved it — and, knocking off a dusty pile 
 of newspapers with one hand, while he hastily passed a slip 
 of his cassock across the seat with the other, he apologised 
 in broken French for the delay. Then he waddled to a 
 cupboard, from which he carefully^ extracted a quart bottle 
 and two small glasses. These he lield up to the window 
 with a smile on his broad face which seemed to pour a sud- 
 den flood of sunshine over the rain-oppressed little room. 
 
 " You are doubtless," he said, " the stranger of yester- 
 day. I was anxious to aflt'ord you, sir, a shelter from the 
 wet. I regret that circumstances rendered this difficult." 
 He stammered out his words under a hailstorm of mistakes, 
 but we will not delay ourselves with the mistakes and stam- 
 merings of otbers. 
 
 " I am the servant," said Antoine humbly, " of Monsieur 
 Farjolle." 
 
 " I know. That is what I meant," replied the Father 
 hastily, filling the glasses. " I have some decent cognac 
 here. In spite of my housekeeper's objections, I occasion- 
 ally take a little as a remedy against the damp." 
 
 Lorij^ont was amazed by the quality of the liquor. 
 Trust a gentleman's gentleman to know. But the truth is, 
 Father Bulbius loved good tobacco, good drinks, and good 
 humour. For tbe rest, the world might wag as it listed. 
 And the worst thing in it to wag was his housekeeper's 
 tongue. 
 
 " Monsieur your master, he is better this morning, I 
 hope ? " 
 
 "He is very ill. Monsieur le Cure," said Antoine sol- 
 emnly. 
 
 " So I hear. So I hear," murmured the Priest, mourn- 
 fully shaking his fat chin over his elevated glass. " I hope, 
 my dear friend, that — " he hesitated. He was going to say 
 " that he is prepared," but he felt this to be still too early a 
 stage of their interview — " that you approve of the brandy," 
 he said.
 
 72 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " It is most excellent, Monsieur le Cure." 
 
 " "We owe it, like most good wines, to your beautiful 
 country. Monsieur," said the Father, lovingly rocking tlie 
 golden liquid against the light. 
 
 Antoine was silent. His master had expressly com- 
 manded him to disguise their nationality. Belgium is so 
 small and so close by. 
 
 " For you are a Frenchman, I presume ? " added Bul- 
 bius. 
 
 " I am a Belgian, Monsieur le Cure," replied An- 
 toine, W'ho could lie to anybody on earth, excepting to a 
 priest. 
 
 " A Belgian — ah ! " The Father paused, apprehensive 
 of a presence at the door. 
 
 " Here is the coffee," came from the passage in sepul- 
 chral tones. " Will your Eeverence take it, as I am not 
 permitted to intrude ? " And a tray was proj^elled through 
 the narrowest aperture imaginable, Avith a brusqueness 
 which gave to the very cups an attitude of defiance, as they 
 jumped to the jerk. 
 
 " Xice warm coffee," said Bulbius meekly, in closing the 
 door. 
 
 Lorijjont dropped a scrutatory glance through the 
 depths of the too transparent liquid, which glance went 
 down deep into the Father's heart. 
 
 "But she cooks with great care," replied the Father 
 apologetically, " the dishes she likes. She says her instinct 
 advises her what is wholesome. My instinct " — his eyes 
 twinkled — " is invariably wTong, she says. But this is un- 
 gracious," he cried suddenly, " and, to a stranger, offensive. 
 It is right I should not care too much about eating, and 
 Veronica's peculiarities, I trust, will be looked upon up 
 yonder "^le pointed to the ceiling — " as something of an 
 excuse for the quality of this^^ — he ticked his fat finger 
 against his glass. 
 
 " But your Eeverence is very comfortable here," replied
 
 A SHEPHEED AND TWO SHEEP. 73 
 
 Antoine, a little ironically. " I see you have farm-buildings 
 attached." 
 
 " Ah, that was unavoidable. I have to occupy my house- 
 keeper. If you are married, you will know that a woman 
 devotes at least all her spare time to her neighbour's affairs. 
 A dangerous quality in the house of a parish priest. Veron- 
 ica is always complaining that she has too much to do. So 
 she has, although, by-the-bye, she insisted on getting the 
 cows, when I was ordered fresh milk. It is necessary that 
 she should have too much to do. And, besides, the griev- 
 ance keeps her in a pleasantly bad temper. She would not, 
 for the world, do less." 
 
 Antoine Loripont smiled. He had an immense venera- 
 tion for the clergy which was altogether indejiendent of 
 their personal faults or peculiarities. It rested solely on the 
 consideration that, if death should happen to be, not an 
 ivipasse, but a passage (so he expressed it), the guards at 
 the farther gate would wear the livery of the Pope. " Pour 
 s'assiirer une bonne place au spectacle," the fellow said bru- 
 tally, " il faut avoir de bons amis dans les coulisses." And 
 he was superstitious, with all the superstition of a weak 
 cynic and evil-liver. 
 
 The guest's smile recalled Father Bulbius, already half 
 ashamed of his garrulity. But oh the splendid opportunity 
 for pouring out pent-up grievances into patient ears that, on 
 the morrow, would bear them hundreds of miles away ! He 
 could not have ventured to speak thus fearlessly of his 
 " house-cross " to the family at the Castle. The smaller 
 our world is, the larger are its ears. 
 
 " I am breaking the ninth commandment," he now con- 
 fessed with rueful countenance. "And worse. In those 
 days a man's neighbour alone was protected : it was deemed 
 incredible that one should speak evil of those of his own 
 house." 
 
 And to himself he added : " You who are yearning to 
 pump this stranger, who called liim in on purpose, you ac-
 
 74 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 cuse others of being busy-bodies. Oh, Bulbius, you hypo- 
 crite, I shall punish you as you deserve." He took out a 
 little much-faded pocket-book from beside his bulgy breast. 
 In this little book he carefully made a little note. It was 
 his record of penances, and wheueVer he realized that he 
 had wronged a fellow-creature, he wrote down a punish- 
 ment for himself in it. Let it be hastily added, for the 
 benefit of those who feel an affection for the poor old 
 father, that the self-inflicted penances were not overwhelm- 
 ingly heavy. He did not scourge himself, for instance. lie 
 had tried it once, gently, but found that it hurt. 
 
 Loripont's keen eye watched the little book with great 
 interest. It recalled to him his own daily dealings with the 
 Marquis. " You have other intercourse, however," he said. 
 " The carriage which so kindly brought my master from the 
 station — " And the Father's stream of chatter babbled 
 over into another channel, and he sang the praises of Dey- 
 num and the Baronial house of Eexelaer. " An oasis," 
 remarked Antoine, "in this wilderness infested by' the 
 Gueux." 
 
 " True," replied the Father demurely. " Yet I have 
 known Protestants who were good men." He was not go- 
 ing to allow a Belgian to abuse Hollanders in his presence. 
 " The pity is that they refuse to be converted ; at least, so I 
 have often been told. Help yourself, my friend." 
 
 " I will take a drop more of this coffee, with your Eev- 
 erence's permission," replied Antoine, reaching over for the 
 cognac-bottle and grinning in the Father's face. 
 
 Then he rose. " You will not be here for any time?" 
 queried Bulbius, who had really got nothing out of the 
 stranger, after all. 
 
 " Oh, no, we shall probably be leaving to-night." 
 
 " But your master ! He is dying. Should he have any 
 need of spiritual comfort — " 
 
 " I grieve to say, Monsieur le Cure, that my master is an 
 atheist and an infidel."
 
 A SHEPHERD AND TWO SHEEP. 75 
 
 Father Bulbius heaved a deep sigh, as he accompanied 
 the faithful son of the Church to the door. 
 
 In the porch Antoine stood stilL 
 
 " Infidels, Monsieur le Cure, when they die, go to hell, 
 do they not ? " 
 
 The priest wagged his head to and fro. " Undoubted- 
 ly," he said — with great hesitation. 
 
 "Then my master, when he dies, will go to hell?" per- 
 sisted Antoine. 
 
 " Let us hope he will not die an infidel," said Bulbius 
 gently. "Poor fellow, you must implore the Virgin for 
 him. You are a good man. If you stay, come and see me 
 again." 
 
 " Your Eeverence — if your Reverence has not caught 
 cold already — " cried a sonorous voice from the kitchen. 
 
 The Father fled back to his room.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 " EXTEE l'aKBRE ET L'ECORCE." 
 
 For the twentieth time the Marquis laid down his book 
 and glanced at the travelling-clock which stood ticking 
 nervously beside him. " He does it on purpose," murmured 
 the Marquis. " I cannot, I will not, be alone." 
 
 Even at that moment, had he known it, his solitude was 
 coming to an end. For the landlady was stumbling up- 
 stairs in a frantic hurry, tripped up by her loose slippers as 
 they dropped away from under her feet. 
 
 " The Landheer ! " she gasped, falling over her various 
 belongings and snapping her apron-strings. " I hope he 
 didn't see that my back-hair's come undone." 
 
 She thumped vigorously at the door, and then — for 
 though foreign gentlemen might be terrible possibilities, 
 the " Landheer " was a magnificent fact, — she " irrupted " 
 recklessly into the bedroom, crying : " The compliments of 
 Mynheer the Bai'on, and his Xobleness desires to know how 
 the strange gentleman is ! " 
 
 The Marquis moved one white hand in delicate protest. 
 " Go away," he said softly, in broken Dutch. " Go away." 
 
 Hendrika, though delighted to hear her own language, 
 stood " struck all of a heap," as she afterwards declared, by 
 the strange gentleman's attire. Long white robes, in her 
 simple mind, were connected with the least dressed of un- 
 dress only. Doubtless, distinguished foreigners wore such 
 night-garments as these. " Oh la ! " she said. She was an 
 apple-faced young woman without any figure to speak of.
 
 "ENTRE L'ARBRE ET L'ECORCE." 77 
 
 She fell back a step or two. " Mynheer is waiting. Please 
 give an answer. I'll shut my eyes," said Hendrika, and 
 suited the action to the word. 
 
 The Marquis sat staring indignantly at the nncouth, 
 crimson-cheeked figure, which stood untidy before him, 
 with tight-screwed eyelids and pendent arms. The woman's 
 talk was of course incomprehensible to him ; her manner 
 made him uncomfortable. " Perhaps some sort of an idiot," 
 lie thought. " But one cannot throw things at a woman. 
 I wish she would take herself off." And he rang the hand- 
 bell, as a last resource, for he was neither strong enough 
 nor sufficiently attired to move from his chair. He hoiked 
 that that summons might bring up the landlady. 
 
 It caused that personage timidly to open one eye. 
 Whereupon, beholding the stranger's horrible expression 
 and the uplifted hand-bell, she fled behind the door, giving 
 the Marquis an opportunity of which he immediately 
 availed himself, to send half a dozen heavy articles crash- 
 ing up against the panels, as the best means both of fright- 
 ening her and shutting her out. Hendrika shot violently 
 towards Antoine, and that gentleman, pitching her anyhow 
 down the staircase, walked into his master's presence with 
 a sneer of questioning surprise. 
 
 " You infernal miscreant ! " shrieked the old man, 
 threatening him with the last thing he had snatched up, a 
 big paper-knife. " How dare you leave me to be insulted 
 by every hussy that cares to come and stare at me ? Are 
 you showing me to the village for a penny ? I— I believe 
 you would do it." 
 
 " Monsieur will be heard," retorted Loripont calmly, 
 " by the gentleman at the foot of the staircase." 
 
 " Gentleman ! What gentleman ? " 
 
 " The gentleman who brought us from the station. He 
 is asking for Monsieur le Marquis. Monsieur de liexelaer, 
 I presume." 
 
 " I will see him," said the Marquis, after a moment's re-
 
 78 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 flection. " And you, with your everlasting clumsiness about • 
 my title, mind not to betray who I am." 
 
 But the insulted Ilendrika had meanwhile conveyed to 
 the Baron the information that the old creature upstairs 
 was out of his mind. He had abused her and thrown things 
 at her, and he had even refused to hear anything concern- 
 ing his Xobleness the Baron. " And I should never have 
 taken him in at all," argued the*' landlady, " but for your 
 Xobleness's commands. My inn is intended for respectable 
 people from market, not for foreigners, no one knows why, 
 whither or whence." 
 
 "No, no, it is some misunderstanding. You will see; 
 he will pay well," answered the Baron soothingly, as he 
 turned away. 
 
 But Antoine stopped him and ushered him into the 
 presence of " my master. Monsieur Farjolle." And the 
 Angel who watches over the fortunes of Deynum looked 
 from one face to the other in tremulous doubt. Perhaps 
 he realised, vaguely, that this was the beginning of the end. 
 For angels, whatever they may foresee — pure eyes are far- 
 seeing — cannot read the future 2^1ainh^ They know that 
 God's goodness, like man's evil, is boundless; they remem- 
 ber the Past. But the problem, for them as for us, still re- 
 mains an equation, in which the fourth quantity, the Future, 
 is eternally marked with a cross. 
 
 " I had not intended to intrude," said the Baron, bowing 
 stiffly. 
 
 " It were cruel to deprive me of a pleasure. Monsieur," 
 replied the Marquis, all urbanity, motioning his visitor to 
 one of the rush-bottomed chairs. " Have I the pleasure of 
 speaking to Monsieur de Pieselaer de Deynum ? " 
 
 " Yes, that is my name," said the Baron, with a quiet 
 little glow of pride. He was nearly sixty ; he had never 
 learnt to suppress the feeling altogether. 
 
 " Mine is Farjolle, Monsieur le Comte." 
 
 " Ah no ; pardon me," said the Baron promptly, but
 
 "ENTRE L'ARBRE ET L'ECORCE." 79 
 
 with ail awkwai'd blush. " That is another family alto- 
 gether ; they spell their name diiferently. Count Kexelaer 
 is no connection of mine." He hesitated a moment. "I 
 am Baron Eexelaer of Deynum," he said. 
 
 A complicated look of confusion, vexation and incredu- 
 lity came over the Belgian's face. " Impossible," he 
 thought. " Some quarrel. But, evidently, it's the wrong 
 man." Aloud he said : " I liave yet to thank you — " " It 
 is nothing, it is nothing ! " from the Baron — " ah, but in- 
 deed, you cannot rob me of the pleasure of being indebted 
 to you. Monsieur le Baron." 
 
 " The old j)eacock will betray Jiimself at once by his 
 strut," soliloquised Antoine, where he stood behind his 
 master's chair. " And why shouldn't he ? It's only half 
 a masquerade at the best, this stupid joke about Farjolle." 
 
 The Marquis turned round, as if he had understood. 
 
 " Get you downstairs," he said. " And, if there's any- 
 thing edible in the house, you may eat it." 
 
 " Then," said the simple-hearted Baron. " Why not 
 increase so trivial a pleasure by accepting the hospitality of 
 my house till you can proceed on your travels ? " 
 
 The Marquis's face clouded with the painful memory of 
 the last word. " There will not be much more travelling," 
 he said, " I thank you sincerely. Monsieur. But I am too 
 ill to be anyone's guest." An ashen j^allor lay over his 
 sharp features. He had aged since yesterday. The chin 
 seemed lengthening out upwards, as if striving to come in 
 contact with the eagle-nose. Yet he had fixed in his teeth 
 as usual that morning, and they fitted as well as ever. 
 
 " On that very account — " began the Baron, " but I do 
 not press you, though our worst, simple people as we are, 
 would be better than this." He swept his arm round the 
 room. " Besides, it is hardly worth your while perhaps. I 
 liope you are feeling well enough to continue your journey." 
 
 " Excuse me ; I am not going to continue my journey. 
 I am going to stay here."
 
 80 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 The Baron stared in imdisguised amazement. His frank 
 eyes somewhat disconcerted the man of the world. 
 
 " I was not on my way to any j)lace in particular," con- 
 tinued the Marquis hastily. "Mine was a journey of — 
 pleasure. I was looking for a quiet spot in which to — rest. 
 This seems a charming one," 
 
 " It is indeed," acquiesced the Baron emphatically. 
 
 "Just so. Do you know — perhaps — of some small fur- 
 nished house I could hire in the village? Excuse my trou- 
 bling you with my private affairs. For the moment I can- 
 not travel. Xor can I remain in this room — " with an 
 expression of extreme disgust. 
 
 The Baron sat thinking for a few moments, an earnest 
 desire to be of use distinctly marked on his manly face. 
 Then he looked up with an eager smile of satisfaction. " I 
 have an idea," he said, " I must go and inquire." And he 
 hurried away, without waiting for the other's premature 
 gratitude. On the staircase he looked at his watch. " I 
 mustn't keep Gertrude waiting lunch," he thought. 
 
 Two hours later he appeared at the Parsonage and, re- 
 ceiving no answer to his knock, walked straight through, 
 into his Eeverelice's study. 
 
 "His Eeverence is in bed," said a deep voice behind the 
 intruder. It was the worst part of Veronica's tyranny that 
 she showered verbal reverence uj^on the victim, out of sea- 
 son, and out of sense. 
 
 " 111 ? Dear me, he was well enough last night." 
 
 '■'■And came home in the rain," replied Veronica, im- 
 pressively. There was reproach in her eye. 
 
 " But icith an umbrella," expostulated the Baron. 
 
 " Umbrellas are no protection against the under-damp," 
 retorted Veronica enigmatically. " The under-damp is es- 
 pecially dangerous to fat men. It rises alongside the thin 
 ones, but it strikes against the fat men and upsets them." 
 
 " Humph ! " said the Baron. " Well ! " And he pushed 
 deliberately past her. Veronica followed grumbling. She
 
 "ENTRE L'ARBRE ET L'ECORCE." 81 
 
 feared no one on earth where her priest was concerned, but, 
 still, the Lord of Deynum was — the Lord of Deynum. 
 
 The Baron opened the bedroom door, and, as he did so, 
 a scramble was heard and the thud of something heavy col- 
 lapsing into something soft. Father Bulbius was discovered 
 in bed, the clothes pulled up tight under his double chin, 
 his face melting with heat and more purple than ever. 
 
 Veronica came stalking after the visitor. " Is it com- 
 fortable, your Keverence?" she inquired with solemn in- 
 terest. 
 
 " No," replied the Father without looking up. " It 
 hurts." There was resentment in his tone. He was actu- 
 ally sulky. 
 
 " So it ought to, if it's to draw out the cold " — but at 
 this stage the Baron bundled out the handmaid — with his 
 eyes — and closed the door behind her. 
 
 " Had you not better lock it, Mynheer the Baron ? " 
 suggested a faint voice from the bed. 
 
 No sooner had this hint found acce23tance than Father 
 Bulbius threw off the bed-clothes and sat erect. With an 
 almost piteous " By your leave," he removed a sticky yellow 
 mass from his ample breast and laid it beside him on the 
 pillow. The Baron stood watching. " I cannot understand 
 you," the latter burst out wrathf ally. " It is indeed time 
 that I renewed my oft-repeated proposal to deliver you. In 
 fact I am here with that object. Send the woman away 
 and come and live with us." 
 
 " But I liave got a cold," protested the Father, turning 
 in immediate self-defence. " I sneezed twice, I assure you, 
 before I got into bed, of my own free will." 
 
 " Then put on your plaster again," replied the Baron 
 grimly, " I sha'n't squeeze my hand twixt the beech and the 
 bark. But my advice is : send the woman away." He 
 hesitated a moment ; then he said abruptly, " You give up 
 this place, which you and she are always declaring un- 
 healthy and declaiming against, and you come and live at
 
 83 TOE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 the Castle, as you have often said you would like to do. It 
 is a deliverance, my good Bulbius." 
 
 The parsonage, properly speaking, of Deynum was a 
 poor little house near the church ; the Chaplain who served 
 the Castle-chapel had always lived with the family. Tlie 
 Protestant minister came across from the village of Rol-' 
 lingen. 
 
 " And where would Veronica go to ? " queried the 
 Priest. 
 
 "To the—," the Baron checked himself. "To her 
 relations. Isn't she always telling you that she ought 
 really to leave you and attend to some old creature at 
 home?" 
 
 " Ah yes, but she merely says that because she wants to 
 have the old lady here. Veronica has a venerable great- 
 aunt of ninety-three, so deaf she can hear nobody's voice 
 but Veronica's. Veronica certainly has a splendid voice. 
 And perhaps I am rather selfish " — this ruefully — " but " 
 — with sudden triumph — " you see, I doii't have her, Myn- 
 heer the Baron, which proves that I possess a will of my 
 own." 
 
 " Then use it, and come to the Castle." 
 
 " It is most kind, but I could not expect it of Veron- 
 ica." 
 
 " I have an opportunity now, such as will never occur 
 again, to rid you of lease, furniture and all." 
 
 " You tempt me sorely, ]\Iynheer the Baron, but just 
 think of Veronica." 
 
 " Oh, I'll settle Veronica," cried the Baron, and ran from 
 the room. 
 
 Father Bulbius sank back, smiling contentedly, on his 
 pillow. But, almost simultaneously, he started up with a 
 shriek. And his bald head, as he hastily removed the burn- 
 ing mess into which he had dropped it, shone like a lobster 
 through its sauce. 
 
 " Veronica, I hear you are anxious to return to your
 
 "ENTRE L'ARBRE ET L'ECORCE." 83 
 
 relations ? " cried the Baron, suddenly appearing in the 
 kitchen. 
 
 The old housekeej)er was busy among her pots and 
 pans. In fact, she was preparing another plaster. She 
 turned round very slowly. " I never said so, Mynheer the 
 Baron," she answered, more slowly still. " Did his Eever- 
 ence ? " 
 
 The Baron was a little taken aback by the solemnity of 
 her manner. " Oh come," he protested. " And there's your 
 aunt, you know, who is ninety-seven, and who can hear no 
 voice but yours. You have undoubtedly a very fine voice, 
 my good Veronica." 
 
 " Mynheer the Baron is very kind. My great-aunt is 
 barely ninety-one. Has your Nobleness a candidate for my 
 place with his Reverence ? " 
 
 " His Eeverence is coming to live at the Castle. This 
 house, Avliich is so unhealthy, is going to be let." 
 
 Veronica slowly put down the plaster which had lain 
 steaming in her hands. " Not like that," she said, and her 
 deep tones sounded like the distant roll of thunder. " Ex- 
 cuse me, Mynheer the Baron, but I can't believe it of his 
 Reverence. Not this house. Not like that." 
 
 " And why not this house ? " inquired the Baron impa- 
 tiently. " You've grumbled enough at it for years." 
 
 She turned upon him almost fiercely. " And you. Myn- 
 heer the Baron, would you sell Deynum ? " 
 
 He did not deign to answer her impudence directly. He 
 only said : " And your aunt, whom it is your Christian duty 
 to look after ? And your master, whom the damp is killing, 
 you say ? " 
 
 She started, and, for a moment, a swift tremble shook 
 her. " True," she said, and marched straight past the 
 liaron into Bulbius's room. She entered so quickly that the 
 invalid had not time to replace his cataplasm. 
 
 " It is true," she began abruptly, " that the damp is bad 
 for your Reverence. It is especially bad fur fat people be- 
 7
 
 84: TIIP] GREATER GLORY. 
 
 cause of the ' underdamp.' Tlie ' wonder-doctor ' told me 
 who cured my aunt of her fidgets. So I know. And my 
 grand-aunt Avants me badly, and you'll be more comfortable 
 at the Castle. And the Baron is right." 
 
 "Nonsense, Veronica," murmured Bulbius in a shrill 
 whisper from among the bedclothes. " Shut the door. Do 
 you mean to say you have told the Baron you are willing to 
 go?" 
 
 " So be it. He is right." 
 
 " Fiddlesticks. And who will attend to my require- 
 ments as you do ? I love the people at the Castle, but I 
 can't go and live with them. You're the only person in the 
 world who can cook my porridge exactly as I like it, or who 
 can m-ix my grog of nights. And there's my posset after 
 service — and — and — " 
 
 " And Flora with that calf coming," burst in Veronica. 
 " And the pigs that won't be fit to kill for another month, 
 at least. And there never was anyone like your Eeverence 
 for wearing holes in your black stockings, and — " 
 
 " Go and tell him that you can't," cried his Eeverence. 
 " Go and tell him immediately that you won't. There's a 
 jewel of a woman ! Go and tell him that yoii wonH^ 
 
 " But he'll think I'm grudging your Reverence a health- 
 ier residence." 
 
 " But he'll misunderstand my refusal to enter his family." 
 
 " So be it," said Veronica again, and marched to the 
 door. 
 
 Before she reached it, it was opened from the outside by 
 the Baron van Eexelaer. That gentleman had tired of the 
 saucepans. " So you see. Father, it's all settled," he said. 
 
 " No, I cannot. Mynheer the Baron," Veronica was be- 
 ginning heroically; but Bulbius, brought face to face with 
 the crisis, arose in his bed, and to the occasion. 
 
 " It is settled that we decline your kind offer," he said. 
 " There are too many objections. And I do not think I 
 could manage without Veronica."
 
 "ENTRE L'ARBRE ET L'ECORCE." 85 
 
 " Your Reverence," exclaimed the Baron vehemently, 
 *' is a child and a slave. There, there ; you may forgive me 
 to-morrow. You won't think better of it? No, really? 
 Then keep on your house for that woman. Good-bye." 
 
 He ran away in a rage. He was mightily offended. 
 Veronica stood watching him from the porch. " And you 
 might as well sell Deynum ? Why don't you ? " she said 
 when she thought he was out of hearing. But she had mis- 
 calculated the strength of her splendid voice. 
 
 The poor Father, much perturbed by his patron's dis- 
 pleasure, drew his little book of penances from under his 
 pillow and made a note in it. The plaster, endured from 
 simple good-nature, was a point to the good. " It is true," 
 he said to himself, " that I am ridiculously susceptible to 
 wet feet. And Veronica really takes most excellent care of 
 me. On Sundays, especially, she is altogether tractable, but 
 it cannot always be Sunday." Then he yawned, and got 
 out of bed, and wondered what Veronica would say to that. 
 
 But she said nothing, when she came in presently, with 
 red eves.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE HEIRESS AXD HER SQUIRE. 
 
 The Barou's anger had cooled somewhat before he 
 reached the little posteru which leads from the bottom of 
 the lane into his own park. He walked slower, having 
 started with a run. And his footsteps suddenly died into 
 stillness on the sodden leaves which filled up the narrow by- 
 jjath, as he wound slowly forward into a wilderness of russet 
 and gold. Evening was falling, with that tearful sadness 
 which often heralds an autumn sunset, and the pale sky was 
 visibly grooving gray and blurred above the sharp outlines of 
 the fading trees. 
 
 His own trees. He knew them, individually. You can- 
 not understand, unless yon have had trees yourself. They 
 possessed faces Avith which they met his eyes, in every 
 change of joy or sorrow. He knew them as the colonel of a 
 regiment knows, or should know, his numerous men. He 
 always had a ready approval for the fine fellows that did 
 their work bravest, budding early and blooming late, but 
 also a gentle thought of indulgence for the weak ones, the 
 stragglers, and an understanding that their lesser beauties 
 were not so much the result of evil intention as an accident 
 of circumstance or place. 
 
 He stopped to-day before an old oak, far-spreading and 
 stately, but dead at the top. He eyed it lovingly. It stood, 
 sombre and lonely, in a little clearing, bordered by a curve 
 of lighter trees. He remembered how it had begun to de- 
 cay in his father's time, and what an outcry there had been
 
 THE HEIRESS AND HER SQUIRE. ST 
 
 when the fact was first discovered. He might have recalled 
 annual conversations with his steward always in the same 
 stereotype form. " It will do as it is for the present, Die- 
 vert." " Yes, Mynheer the Baron." " It is a pity that this 
 particular tree should take to going." " So it is ; so it is. 
 Mynheer the Baron." From time immemorial — to the vil- 
 lagers — it had been called " Lady Bertha's Oak," because of 
 the little daughter of the house who, climbing recklessly up 
 into its bosom, had been caught, as she slipped, in the arms 
 of a fair, sad lady that must have been the Blessed Virgin 
 herself, and borne safely to the ground. The little Freule 
 Bertha had seen and declared it ; it was written in a fif- 
 teenth century parchment that lay emblazoned in the ar- 
 chives of the family, and a weather-beaten cross, with a faint 
 14:74 marked upon it, still leans, crooked and moss-eaten, in 
 this secluded corner of the park. 
 
 " It will last my time," said the Baron, turning away 
 from the tree. He wandered along, sadly meditating that 
 no blessed Virgin was likely to spread her arms out under 
 his little Wendela's threatening fall. Ah, those were brave 
 old days when the Saints were still especially interested in 
 us gentry. 
 
 " But it's not as bad as that yet," said the Baron, shak- 
 ing off his gloomy thoughts. " With Strum's help I shall 
 find money for the mortgages. I dare say my primary ob- 
 ject with Bulbius was selfish. I should have let the house 
 at a far higher price to this Monsieur de Farjolle, or per- 
 haps sold it. Dear me, I wonder now whether I had 
 thought of that ? " 
 
 Somebody was moving in the brushwood. He turned to 
 the slight rustle, attentive, as country gentlemen are. You 
 miglit find a stray pheasant here occasionally, but it was too 
 early in the day for poachers. The man came slouching 
 along, one of his own labourers. The Baron stopped, slowly 
 remembering, as the rustic saluted him. " Your little boy 
 better this evening, Sam ? " " Yes, thank you, landheer.
 
 88 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 lie's but poorly, thank you. And we remain humbly 
 thankful to Mynheer for the broth." The broth was his 
 wife's doing. He met her, as lie turned into a broader 
 avenue, a basket on her arm and their little daughter by 
 her side. 
 
 "AVell, and have you succeeded, mon ami? "asked the 
 Baroness, his confidante in this as in all other matters but 
 one. 
 
 "No, indeed," cried the Baron, with a sudden rekin- 
 dling of his wrath. " The man is a fool ! " And he savagely 
 struck at the lemon-colored leaves of a chestnut which hung 
 drooping perpendicularly from their stem. 
 
 " Be silent," said the Baroness in English. Her pale 
 eyes lighted with reproof. " How can you, Keinout, speak 
 in that manner, and before the child, of a priest ? " 
 
 The Baron was eloquent in no language, least of all in 
 English. He walked on in silence, and presently held out 
 his hand to his daughter, who took it gravely, without a 
 change in her brown eyes. She drew it against her mother's 
 white woolly shawl. " Isn't it nice and soft ? " she said. 
 
 They came in sight of the house. The chill avenue 
 widened out gradually to a clear tract of grass, on which 
 the dark forms of browsing deer moved indistinct beneath 
 the drooping twilight. Against the far horizon the park 
 began afresh, a great half circle, black beneath the slaty 
 sky, but illumined, at one point, by a steady crimson flare, 
 where the weak sun had sunk away. In the distant fore- 
 ground, beyond the meadow, spread the brown mass of the 
 Castle, enclosed by a moat whose current, invisible here, 
 shone dully a little farther off. The sombre brickwork rose 
 naked from the water, a confused mass of buttresses and 
 excrescences, with a great square tower and a couple of 
 smaller round ones, all jumbled uj? together under a fanci- 
 ful tracery of weather-cocks, peaks, and flourishes, and 
 a-glitter in the shimmer of its countless dull-blue windows 
 and its topmost ball of Atlas against the dying light.
 
 THE HEIRESS AND HER SQUIRE. 89 
 
 " How cold it is getting ! " said the Baroness. " We 
 stayed too long with Mother Bosnian. She is sinking 
 fast." 
 
 Wendela had lagged behind to stare after a long- vanished 
 sqnirrel. 
 
 " Are yon sure," questioned the Baron, waveringly, 
 " that it is quite advisable to take the child to see old 
 women die?" 
 
 " ^lost decidedly. She cannot too soon learn the respon- 
 sibilities of her future position. Besides, she is no longer 
 so young. She will soon be admitted to the Communion 
 at the same altar where one of her ancestresses stood up to 
 be married at her age." 
 
 " Betrothed, my dear. Elizabetli van Rexelaer was 
 fourteen when she married. And those were other days." 
 
 " We are never too young to become acquainted with 
 suffering, if our lot be cast among the great in this world," 
 said Mevrouw van Rexelaer, " When I was twelve, my 
 dear mother lay dying of consumption, and I was her only 
 nurse." 
 
 " But, then, you had always a most remarkable char- 
 acter," said the Baron from the bottom of his heart. 
 
 They had paused by the bridge which leads to the court- 
 yard, a brick courtyard with a stone road down and round 
 it, nasty for horses in slippery weather. Tubbed orange- 
 trees stand here during the brief months of a northern 
 summer, in stately lines across the square and up the wide 
 stone steps. Some of these orange-trees are said to be two 
 hundred years old. They are giants to move, twice a 
 year, with much groaning and creaking. And successive 
 Baronesses have worn a sprig of their blossom in bridal 
 wreaths, and afterwards dutifully made preserve of their 
 fruits every summer, until the Baronesses themselves, in 
 their turn, were soldered into leaden cases, with their faded 
 bit of orange-blossom, and all their hopes and fears, to be 
 hidden away in the vault under the chai)el. Ill-luck to
 
 00 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 tlie bride wlio noirlcctcd tlie orange-trees; the White 
 Baroness's own marriage had been dehived till the flowers 
 came out. 
 
 " I have sometliing still that I wish to sec about," mur- 
 mured the Baron, pausing on the bridge. 
 
 " But, mon ami, why do you always run out into the 
 sunset ? Come within. It is the w^orst time of day." 
 
 " Xo, no ; I have things of importance to attend to." 
 lie turned away quickly, then, recollecting himself, came 
 back after his wife, and led her across the dusk of the court- 
 yard and kissed her hand upon the steps. 
 
 " Why is it, Keinout ? " she asked abruptly. " What ? " 
 
 " One worries sometimes about the mortgages. It is 
 nothing." 
 
 " The lady sighed. " Wanda I " she cried. " Where is 
 Wanda ? " 
 
 " She has lagged behind. I will send her to you." He 
 went back under the shadow of the great black walls. By 
 the bridge he met his daughter. " Go in to your mother, 
 Wanda," he said. 
 
 " But I want to come with you, Papa." 
 
 " Oh, no. Go in immediately." He disappeared into 
 the darkness of the trees. The Bourse was long over ; the 
 day's quotations were in print and would presently reach 
 him. Xevertheless was he anxious to kneel at the altar be- 
 fore he went on to " The Mountain." He did not reason 
 about these things. Xor do you. 
 
 " I, when I am grown up, I shall do as I like," said 
 Wendela to herself in French. Xot a child that was ever 
 born but has found comfort in those delightful words, since 
 little Cain first muttered them, when his mother ordered 
 him to put on his furs again. Even Abel must have 
 thought them. 
 
 " I, when I am grown up, I shall do as I like," said 
 Wendela. Then she added "without being naughty," and
 
 THE HEIRESS AND HER SQUIRE. 91 
 
 ran away iu tlie wake of her father. She did not, however, 
 follow him into tlie chapel, a pardonable divergence when 
 it is remembered how frequently she was obliged to accom- 
 pany the Baroness thither. She branched down a lane 
 wdiicli leads to the kitchen-garden and orchards, and, when 
 she got close to the garden- wall, she gave a shrill whistle, a 
 most unladylike thing to do. 
 
 The whistle was answered, and a small boy's form 
 loomed out of the darkness, on the top of the wall. 
 
 " Are you there, Piet ? " 
 
 " See I am, Freule." 
 
 " Why don't you say ' Wendela,' Piet? " 
 
 '"Cause you're twelve now. I told you I should never 
 say ' Wendela ' again." 
 
 " There ! you've said it." 
 
 " IS'ever. I told you so on your birthday. You know I 
 did, when I brought you the peaches." 
 
 " You stole the peaches, Piet." 
 
 " I tell you I didn't. I worked for them with Father. 
 I never stole anything in my life. It's mean of you to say 
 that again." 
 
 " And I didn't eat them. I wouldn't 'cause you 
 wouldn't say ' Wanda.' You remember, Piet, I threw them 
 away." 
 
 " I know you did. It wasn't nice of you, Freule. I'd 
 worked for them real hard, three half-holidays." 
 
 " Well, say ' good evening, Wanda,' now." 
 
 " I sha'n't. Don't worry, Freule. You're too big." 
 
 " Oh you rude boy. I wish I were bigger, and I'd hit you." 
 
 " You can hit me now if you like. I'll come down. I 
 don't mind being hit by a girl." 
 
 " You don't mind 'cause you think I shouldn't hurt 
 you. But I should. You're afraid of being hit by your 
 father." 
 
 "That's not true, Freule. I don't care when Father hits 
 me."
 
 92 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " Well, then, get me a pear. One of Llie French ones." 
 
 " I won't, Freule. I tell yon, I don't steal." 
 
 Wendela blnslied scarlet in the dark. " I don't want 
 yon to steal," she said hotly. " What a horrid hoy yon are ! 
 Ain't I the heiress of Deynum ? " 
 
 " And don't I tell you this year's pears ain't next year's 
 pears? When you're the lady of Deynum, you may kill 
 yourself, eating pears." 
 
 " So I shall, if my husband's as bad as you are." 
 
 " Oh, stop that. We left off being husband and wife 
 three years ago." 
 
 " But people canH leave off being husband and wife, un- 
 less they're ' Gueux.' Mamma says so. You wouldn't be a 
 'beggar,' Piet?" 
 
 " No," cried Piet Poster with great vehemence, kicking 
 his feet against the wall. 
 
 " Well, if you leave off being my husband, you must be. 
 You are. You are." 
 
 " Don't call me a ' beggar,' Freule. If you do, I'd al- 
 most — " 
 
 "Almost what— ?" 
 
 Piet Poster clenched his fists behind his back. " I'm 
 going away," he said. 
 
 But this was not what the little lady wanted. " I won't 
 say it again," she cried. " Look here, Piet, when we're 
 grown up, I shall really marry you, and then you'll be lord 
 of De3mum. You'd like that, wouldn't you? And then 
 you could scold your father." 
 
 " All right. What'll the Baron say ? " 
 
 " Oh — oh — oh ! I say, Piet, I didn't come to talk about 
 that. I came to tell you about his Reverence." 
 
 " What about his Reverence ? " asked Piet in a reveren- 
 tial tone. 
 
 " He knows." 
 
 " What about ? The— the cats— the— ! " 
 
 " Xo, about his cap."
 
 THE HEIRESS AND HER SQUIRE. 93 
 
 " I say ! Who told him ? How did he find out ? " 
 
 " I told. I couldn't help it." 
 
 " Oh you sneak." 
 
 " I tell you I couldn't help it. And it was such fun. 
 You should have seen his face ! " 
 
 " Well, I didn't see it, so it's no fun to mo. I think it 
 was rightdown mean of you, Freule. We sha'n't be able to 
 have any more bets." He spoke in a very disgusted tone, 
 and began slipping down from the wall. 
 
 " Piet ! Listen Piet ! I shouldn't have wagered again 
 anyway. I think it's wrong " — this last rather hypocritically. 
 
 " You ! I was thinking of the boys. C ood-night, 
 Freule." 
 
 " I say, Piet ! you won't tell I told ? " 
 
 " Tell ! No. You'd better be going home. It's getting 
 dark, and you'll be afraid." 
 
 " You need not be rude as well as unkind," replied 
 Wendela, moving off in dignified displeasure. She turned 
 back for a jjarting shot. " Telling lies is every bit as bad 
 as stealing," she cried, and was gone without saying " Good- 
 night."
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 BAROXIAL BUSINESS. 
 
 Next morning Xicholas Strum, the Deynnm lawyer, 
 was ushered into the Baron's private room — a lofty, empty 
 chamber with bare Gothic windows, its wainscoted walls 
 hung with trophies and implements of shooting and fish- 
 ing. It oj^ens out of the library. The Baron was not a 
 reading man. 
 
 The Strums have always been the notaries of Deynum, 
 from the beginning — that is to say, of the Strums. There 
 has been a time, of course, when there were Rexelaers but 
 no notaries. Ever since there were notaries at all, however, 
 the Barons van Eexelaer have been married and buried 
 under tlie legal surveillance of an Andrew or a Xicholas 
 Strum. The present man was Nicholas. The Baron had 
 preferred Andrew. 
 
 Andrew had been old, very old, from his earliest youth, 
 and slow, ponderously slow — benignant, bare-headed, broad 
 and bow-backed, absolutely reliable. Nicholas was tall and 
 heavy, lanky, lumpy, and loutish. But Nicholas was clever. 
 He had been born in a stand-up collar, and his mother had 
 always admired whatever he said and did. His father had 
 shaken a massive head over the boy's shrewdness. But that 
 did not hurt Nicholas, who admired himself even more than 
 his mother admired him. Andrew was dead. Nicholas 
 was very much alive. 
 
 There were various reasons why the Baron should dis- 
 like Nicholas. One of these was what Mevrouw van Eexe-
 
 BARONIAL BUSINESS. 95 
 
 laer styled the " lawyer's brazen infidelity." The Strums, 
 of course, had always been zealous Eoman Catholics, but, 
 Andrew having sent his son to the University of Louvain, 
 so as to keep him free from contamination, the young 
 man's innate spirit of contradiction had there, under the 
 influence of rampant nltramontanism, developed an indif- 
 ference to matters religious which had branded him at 
 home as a " liberal Catholic," a creature almost unknown in 
 the Netherlands. Originally the man had only wanted to 
 go his way in peace, but the conventional horror of impiety 
 and liberalism all around him fast drove him towards radi- 
 calism and irreligion. He was sick of the cult of " the 
 Powers that be," in spite of his personal respect for the 
 Baron. And the Rexelaers, on their part, would have pre- 
 ferred to break with this un-Strum-like Strum, had they 
 seen their way to doing so. " How can pence develop into 
 pounds," asked the Baroness, " in the hands of a man who 
 does not believe in miracles ? " " How indeed ? " said the 
 Baron. " You may w^ell put that question here." And he 
 smiled, by himself, as he had always had to, at his sad little 
 joke. 
 
 " Sit down. Strum," said the Baron. 
 
 Strum sat down and gathered his long legs about him. 
 The Notary possessed, quite unconsciously, two manners 
 which had but one quality in common. He was either 
 voluble and insolent, as soon as he felt that he had got the 
 upper hand, or silent and awkward, when in the presence of 
 a stronger power. In both cases he was rude, often chiefly 
 from shyness, for shyness lay at the core of this big, un- 
 emotional-looking lump. You required but to watch his 
 timid, spectacled eyes to see that. He had been polite, 
 according to his lights, to Count Rcxelaer, a possible pa- 
 tron. He was always especially volubly insolent to the 
 Baron, from a fear of becoming too servile, like his father, 
 and also from a lawyer's natural contempt of financial 
 embarrassment.
 
 00 THE GliEATER GLOliY. 
 
 ""Well?" said the Baron, after a moment's cxjicctant 
 silence. He coughed uncomfortably. 
 
 Strum coughed uncomfortably. Then he broke out sud- 
 denly, with the abruptness of a popgun. 
 
 " Your Xobleness has received my letter?" The Baron 
 took up from his writing-table a paper, which he had been 
 fingering all the while. 
 
 " Of course," he said, " It came up last night. But why 
 write? Your father never wrote to me in his life, Xicholas. 
 And, besides, the letter tells me nothing. Difficulties about 
 renewing the mortgage ! Why ? Which ? It is a couple of 
 months yet before the question need arise." He was very 
 agitated already. He was one of those men whom the very 
 mention of "business" agitates. Not having grown uj) 
 within its inner circle, they have learnt by experience that 
 for outsiders all " business " practically comes to legalized 
 spoliation. And the outsider never understands the trick 
 till it's done. 
 
 " I wrote," said Strum, " immediately after my final in- 
 terview with the Hague bankers. The stakes are too mo- 
 mentous ; the sum is too large." He jerked forward hisout- 
 lying foot with a great thump at nothing. " We can't wait 
 till the latest moment which is often a moment too late, as 
 my dead father used to say." He always quoted his dead 
 father to — or rather against — the Baron van Eexelaer. 
 
 " I miss him every day of my life, Mynheer the Baron," 
 he continued — a mere nervous overflow of talk — , " But 
 most of all in these great transactions with regard to Dey- 
 • num. I miss him very much." 
 
 " So do I," said the Baron, with very different conviction. 
 " Come to the point. Strum, please. Surely tour and a half 
 is a sufficient rate of interest." 
 
 "The interest is high enough," began Strum, "they 
 would probably renew for less — " 
 
 " Then why bother me? " cried the Baron with a gasp of 
 relief.
 
 BARONIAL BUSINESS. 97 
 
 The young Notary made a deprecatory movement with 
 his left hand, ere he proceeded to crack its fingers with his 
 right. 
 
 " Had they not made up their mind not to renew at all," 
 he said. He drew away his broad lips to his ears as he 
 spoke, revealing a set of irregular yellow teeth. The move- 
 ment had nothing of a grin in it, it was a mere muscular 
 twitch which gave his face an expression as if he were going 
 to swallow you. 
 
 " The risk is immense," he went on hastily. " The es- 
 tate, valuable as it is, cannot bear the continued depreciation 
 of land. They will sell while they can and the sooner the 
 better. For them and for everybody, I should say." He 
 spoke blusteringly. He was every Jot as ill at ease as the 
 Baron. 
 
 " Your dear departed father used to say, Nicholas," re- 
 marked a low, grave voice behind him, " that the man who 
 does business for gentlemen should always be a gentleman 
 himself." The Baroness, smooth and colourless in her laces, 
 had entered noiselessly througli the library-door. 
 
 " Chere amie, chere amie," expostulated the Baron, " leave 
 me and Strum " — yes; he said " me and Strum " — " to settle 
 these matters between us." 
 
 The Notary was boiling internally, but he only boiled 
 over in drops. " ]\Ievrouw," he said, with a great crack of 
 his curved thumb, " it would be a good thing for all parties, 
 if there were no business to be transacted at Deynum. But 
 the fact remains, Mynheer the Baron, that the mortgages 
 will not be renewed, and that the whole immense sum of 
 money must be found, which, of course, is impossible." 
 
 " How do you know what is possible or impossible ? " 
 asked the Baron haughtily. 
 
 " Only in so far as your man of business can judge." 
 
 " You are that, but not my confidant." 
 
 " I should be neither or both. Mynheer the Baron, as my 
 father used to say."
 
 9S TIIP] GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " lie never said it of you, Xicliohis,'" iutcrposcd the 
 Baroness. She had been standing watching his clumsy 
 twitches with pallid contempt. Slie now moved away to a 
 window-seat. Her vague eyes rested on the distant park. 
 They drew her husband's in the same direction. He had 
 not the strength to remonstrate again. 
 
 Nicholas bit his lips. He thought he could manage the 
 Barou, but he was afraid of the lady, whom he cordially 
 disliked. 
 
 " Of course, if the money will be forthcoming, so much 
 the better," he said. " In that case I need not further 
 trouble you with the object of my visit, which was an offer 
 I received yesterday." 
 
 " What offer ? " asked the Baron, a little shamefacedly. 
 Strum closed his eyes behind his big round spectacles. 
 " The bank informs me that an excellent opportunity oc- 
 curs — of which it would be to the advantage of all parties 
 to avail themselves — for transferring the whole of the mort- 
 gages into other hands, into private hands, as I under- 
 stand." 
 
 A sudden tremor played over the Baron's face. The 
 Baroness glanced round from the window, and then back 
 again at the trees. 
 
 " I understand," said the Baron in a husky voice. "And 
 that is why they refuse to renew. Who is the ' private 
 person ' ? " 
 
 " Xo name is mentioned as yet." 
 
 " Were you aware, Strum, that I declined, a couple of 
 days ago, the offer of a certain person at the Hague to pur- 
 chase this place ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mynheer the Baron." 
 
 " You were. Then you knew of the offer before it was 
 made. Perhaps you suggested it during your stay at the 
 Hague?" The Baron was not a good hand at irony; his 
 voice grew louder : " It is a conspiracy." he cried, " and you 
 are in it ! "
 
 BAROXIAL BUSINESS. 99 
 
 " A conspiracy, if you like," replied Strum roughly. " I 
 was asked my opinion as to the advisability of such a pro- 
 posal, and I said : Make it, by all means. I thought it the 
 best, the only solution of a gigantic difficulty. And I think 
 so still. I should call this anxiety on the part of Count 
 Kexelaer to purchase the place a most wonderful piece of 
 good-fortune ! " 
 
 " Count Eexelaer," repeated the Baron. " Just so. You 
 are your father's son, Nicholas, and, although you do not 
 know as much as he did, you probably know enough to 
 understand that I would rather see this house a smoulder- 
 ing ruin than the property of Count Eexelaer." He turned 
 upon the Notary : " You had no right," he said, " to take 
 both my pay and Count Rexelaer's." 
 
 Nicholas Strum returned his patron's look, full in the 
 face. Then he rose as majestically as his ungovernable 
 limbs would allow. " It is your Nobleness's good pleasure 
 as it is your prerogative," he said, "to insult your in- 
 feriors. But such insults, as my father used to say, hit 
 back, like guns. I acted for the best." And he left the 
 room. 
 
 The Baroness drew near to her husband. " If there is 
 not money enough, we must live still more simply," she 
 said, taking the woman's view. But her heart sank as she 
 thought of her housekeeping-book. 
 
 The Baron lifted his face from his hands : " Perhaps I 
 was hard on Strum," he said. " He cannot look at these 
 matters from our point of view." 
 
 " But why does that man want to become sole mort- 
 gagee?" 
 
 " It is next best. At the first hitch he would sell, and 
 — purchase." 
 
 " I do not understand exactly," she said. " Do you, 
 dearest?" 
 
 " No, I do not understand exactly," he murmured 
 humblv.
 
 100 THE GREATER GLORY, 
 
 " But God will leave us Deynum," she stiid, and, as her 
 cheek touched his, she burst into tears. 
 
 Nicholas Strum went tramping downstairs in a towering 
 rage. lie was very much wronged, and he had cause to be 
 angry. 
 
 " Serve them right," he said, as he struck his umbrella 
 viciously at the oaken banisters. " 'Tis like this that the 
 great folks make themselves hated, with their beggarly, 
 haughty, ignorant ways ! 'Tis a sin against God and them 
 to come lowering their greatness, even when just debts have 
 got to be paid. And my father was right, as that White 
 Creature put it : ' Gentlemen should do business with each 
 other and for themselves.' I wonder how they'd manage. 
 For each of them expects to give all the kicks and to get all 
 the half-pence." 
 
 Thus righteously grumbling, he went in search of Count 
 Eexelaer, Avhom he had left in the park.
 
 CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 YOUNG REINOUT MEETS HIS UNKNOWN" FRIEND AGAIN. 
 
 Upon receiving, through his own Notary, the Baron's 
 curt and absokite refusal to enter into negotiations, Count 
 Hilarius immediately started for Deynum. Matters were 
 coming to a crisis. He had succeeded, after months of 
 waiting and intriguing, in getting himself nominated on 
 the Board of Directors of the Bank which held by far the 
 greater part of the Baron's enormous mortgages. Once 
 there, he had prevented a renewal. And now the suj^reme 
 moment had arrived. The place must either fall into his 
 hands, almost immediately, or the Baron must disjiose of it 
 to others and probably lose it to the family for ever. 
 
 The Count took Reinout with him. Monsieur de Souza 
 being laid up with one of his bad attacks of gout on the 
 chest. And nothing delighted Eeinout so much as a 
 glimpse of the country. He was another creature there, 
 away from the straight pavements of his daily life, rushing 
 to and fro in reckless, aimless animal motion, bewildered 
 and intoxicated by the sounds, the smells, the great sky 
 overhead. 
 
 Father and son stood in a clearing in the woods, from 
 whence they could get a vague view of the house. They 
 had halted there, at a safe distance, leaving Strum to pro- 
 ceed on his errand. To Reinout the brisk autumnal walk 
 had been a source of overwhelming amusement and interest. 
 The Count, also, enjoyed this first sight of a place which 
 had been the Mecca of his thouglits ever since he could
 
 1(»2 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 think at all. It caused liiin an immense satisfaction to re- 
 turn the salutes of the rare peasants they came across. He 
 felt a sort of proprietorship in them. 
 
 " Look, lieinout, there it is ! " he cried. " The home 
 of your ancestors ! " He drew his son towards him, and 
 they stood gazing side by side. The Count was deeply 
 moved. 
 
 An indefinable thrill of pride and disappointment ran 
 down Eeinout's back. It was very grand, but, after all, it 
 was earthly. He had dreamed, through long years, a dream 
 of the intangible. And the October air lay chill and brown 
 over all that dreary stretch of trees — and the shadowy dis- 
 tant building with its feeble film of ascending smoke. 
 
 " It isn't a bit like Brazil," he said. 
 
 The Count could not suppress a movement of impa- 
 tience. Why did the child at every emergency, always say 
 or do the stupidest thing ? " Run away, and play," he said. 
 And Eeinout eagerly availed himself of the i^ermission. 
 He wandered off into the wood, attracted by one delight 
 after another, and ultimately lost his way and came out 
 into a country-lane Avhere he met a carter who drove him 
 back to the village. 
 
 The village he found almost as curious as the woodlands 
 surrounding it. He inspected the Protestant Church, and 
 took off his cap to Father Bulbius, who came out of the 
 Parsonage to have a look at him. And a little troop of 
 boys having collected on the green, he distributed his pen- 
 nies among them. Just as he had disposed of the last, the 
 baker's lame child, Tony, came limping up to find out what 
 was going on. Eeinout saw, and despairingly felt in his 
 empty pockets. Then he said aloud : " Oh, I can''t. Mam- 
 ma won't mind," and unfastened a small gold stud which 
 held his collar and slipped it into Tony's hand. After that 
 he took refuge in the public-house, where his father had 
 told him they would have some bread and meat before leav- 
 incf, and asked Hendrika for a bit of string.
 
 YOUNG IIEINOUT MEETS HIS UNKNOWN FRIEND. 103 
 
 The Marquis had grumbled for forty-eight hours. He 
 had not slept. He had only dozed, grumbling. He had 
 eaten nothing, but he had drunken a few cups of bouillon 
 which Antoine had concocted. He had grumbled over 
 them. 
 
 The blow which had struck him down seemed to have 
 paralysed all other life within him and to have concentrated 
 his powers into one persistency of grumbling. It was an 
 outlet for his rage against God and himself, a safety-valve 
 of his despair. He lay back among his pillows grumbling. 
 The sun was climbing the white sky. The sick man felt 
 weak. 
 
 " I must get up," he burst out, infuriated by this feel- 
 ing. " I never could stand lying down. You remember, 
 Antoine, how weak I became after that fall with my horse." 
 Antoine said he remembered. 
 
 " True," said the old man eagerly. " Bed does not 
 agree with me. I will get up." Antoine brought his dress- 
 ing-things, the new ones. The Marquis had been eager for 
 them to arrive, and had not looked at them when they 
 came. 
 
 He now allowed himself to be dressed, with many out- 
 bursts of irritation and peevish complaints. And in the 
 intervals of abuse he talked of the accident which had oc- 
 curred a couple of years ago. " It was Belle-maman," he 
 said. " You remember Belle-maman, Antoine ? She was 
 not a bad mare, and I never knew her to stumble before. 
 She took fright at a rascally undertaker whose black bands 
 jfluttered in her face. Here, don't crumple my shirt, you. 
 You don't even know how to fit in a stud." 
 
 "We all of us take fright at the sight of something ugly. 
 Monsieur le Marquis," said the valet politely. He was 
 having a bad time of it, and felt vindictive. The Marquis 
 talked no more about his accident. He swore till his toilet 
 was completed, and then he stood gazing for a moment by 
 the window. His attention was attracted by the little group
 
 104 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 of villago-cliildreu and the central figure, with its graceful 
 bearing, distributing largesse, like a lord. 
 
 " It is the same boy," said the Marquis instantly. " Then 
 the family is the same, after all. What did the old man 
 mean ? " He turned round to his valet. " Help me down- 
 stairs," he said. 
 
 "But yes. Monsieur le Marquis," replied Antoine with 
 alacrity. By the time the jDair had stumbled down, Eeinout 
 had entered the inn-parlour, and they found him confabu- 
 lating with the landlady. He looked up as the door opened, 
 and his eyes remained riveted on the sick man's face. 
 
 " You remember me ? " said the Marquis abruptly, as he 
 sank on to the settle. 
 
 This question put an end to the boy's doubts. " I do 
 now," he answered honestly. " You are the gentleman who 
 gave me the watch." 
 
 " And you are Rene de Rexelaer. I also, you perceive, 
 have not forgotten. You live here ? " 
 
 " Xo, Monsieur, I never was here bsfore. I live at the 
 Hague." 
 
 " And this Baron, up at the Castle, he is your uncle ? " 
 
 "No, Monsieur, we are of the same family, but two 
 separate branches. We do not know each other." 
 
 Eeinout stood up and answered like a man, though a 
 little embarrassed by the string in his collar. Hendrika 
 had fled. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " I do not know. Monsieur, unless it be because we are 
 Protestants. Eovert van Eexelaer became a Protestant in 
 1673." 
 
 The Marquis smiled. Ah, that was the reason then. He 
 could quite understand it. These country bumj^kins are all 
 alike, he thought. 
 
 " You have a mother ? " he asked after a moment. 
 " Yes ? Describe her to me. What is her name ? " 
 
 " Mamma is very beautiful, and dark," said Eeinout, a
 
 YOUNG REINOUT MEETS HIS UNKNOWN FRIEND. 105 
 
 little wonderingly. " Her name is Margherita cle Cachenard. 
 She and I, we come from Brazil." 
 
 " Very well," said the Marquis. " After all, I am ask- 
 ing what is no business of mine. Now, listen to me, my 
 child. You are going back to the Hague in an hour or 
 two?" 
 
 " Yes, Monsieur, as soon as my father comes." 
 
 " Then you will never see me again. You remember the 
 adage I taught you, half a dozen years ago ? " 
 
 Keinout nodded, half a nod and half a little bow. 
 
 " A gentilhomme devoir fait loi," he said. 
 
 " That was it. I had forgotten, myself. Live up to it. 
 Make it a truth. I have not." A silence fell on the 
 gloomy inn-jiarlour. " I have not. Eh ? What do you say 
 to that?" 
 
 " I am sorry," said Keinout simply. 
 
 " So am I." The old man's voice sounded true. He 
 staggered up and motioned to his impassive servant. 
 "Adieu," he said holding out his hand. The boy touched 
 the wasted fingers, and in the solemn stillness the old man 
 went away. 
 
 When Count Hilarius reached the inn half an hour 
 later he was in a very bad temper. Everything went 
 against him, he said, and all on account of a pig-headed 
 old fool that desired his own ruin. He was angry Avith 
 Eeinout for looking untidy, and annoyed at the discovery of 
 Monsieur Farjolle. He hesitated about sending up his card 
 to that gentleman. It would be absurd to return the watch 
 after all this time. But Antoine came down and said liis 
 master was very ill and saw no one. He was a French wine- 
 merchant ; they were going on to Paris to-morrow. So the 
 Eexelaers went away. 
 
 That evening the Baron sent oil two letters. One Avas 
 addressed to his Amsterdam brokers and contained a final
 
 lOG THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 order wliich was to briug him immense and almost certain 
 success. The other went by hand to the village. Its con- 
 tents were as follows : 
 
 The Baron van Eexelaer van Deynum j^resents his com- 
 pliments to Mr. Xicholas Strum, and begs to apologise for 
 any expression he may have made use of this morning which 
 could give Mr. Strum just cause for offence. 
 
 Castle Deyxum, Thursday evening. 
 
 " I don't care," said Mynheer Strum, ungraciously 
 throwing down the piece of paper. That morning he had 
 had to bear Count Eexelaer's silken ill-temjier as well. 
 " The fellow's afraid, that's all. I hate these aristocrats. 
 There's nothing drives you wild like constant, compulsory 
 cringing. I'm sick of the lot." 
 
 His old mother glanced timidly across the tea-table. She 
 knew her lord and master was in a bad temper, but then, 
 also, she was of an inquiring nature. " A letter from Myn- 
 heer the Baron," she said. " Are you commanded up to the 
 Castle again to-morrow, Xicky ? " 
 
 " No," he answered roughly, " it isn't any business of 
 yours, mother. I wish you'd hold your tongue, always jab, 
 jab, jabbering about the Castle." 
 
 " But I feel what a privilege it is for you, Xicky, to have 
 all the great Baron van Eexelaer's business to do just as 
 your father had." 
 
 " Hang the great Baron van Eexelaer ! " cries Xicholas. 
 " I wish I could send him about his business. I'm a so- 
 cialist, I am, mother. There, hand me the newspaper. 
 When the smash comes, there'll be no more Barons van 
 Eexelaer." 
 
 " And no more notaries," said his mother quietly. She 
 would not have been such a stupid woman, had she been a 
 little less fond of her son.
 
 CHxVPTER XV. 
 
 "WHY NOT, M. LE MARQUIS?" 
 
 The next couple of days were spent by the Marquis in 
 a semi-lethargic condition, the result of the nervous torture 
 he had undergone. At the twilight-hour on the second day 
 he roused himself and announced his intention of going out 
 for a walk. 
 
 " But at this moment," remonstrated Antoine. " And 
 in this country, with the falling damps ! " 
 
 "Am I to go out when you choose?" asked the invalid. 
 "It rained all yesterday. I am sickening in this musty 
 room. A walk will do me good." 
 
 The valet shrugged his shoulders. Why, after all, 
 should he waste his breath ? 
 
 "And I am anxious to find out," continued the Marquis, 
 while allowing himself to be as carefully arrayed as if he 
 were going to a garden-party at Laeken, " whether it is 
 absolutely certain, as tliis Baron wrote me, that there is 
 nothing to be got in the village. I cannot stay any longer 
 in this miserable inn." 
 
 They had now been at Deynum nearly four days, and 
 Antoine was fast losing all hope of getting his master away. 
 " Indeed, Monsieur le Marquis has delayed here too long 
 already. The smells alone must be injurious to health. If 
 Monsieur le Marquis would but venture just a little journey 
 farther—" 
 
 "Yes, I know," replied the Marquis. " You want girls 
 to fiirt with. I tell you again, nothing brings on these tor-
 
 ;^0S THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 rible spasms but raihvay-travelliug. I have had them three 
 times, and each time immediately after, or during, a railway- 
 journey. I am dying, but I shall die in my own way, and I 
 shall take my own time about it. You would like to have 
 it over in six months. I am going to take a couple of years 
 to do it in." 
 
 He said this but he did not think it. He would have 
 acted quite differently otherwise. His whole strangeness of 
 behaviour found its root in the fallacious conviction that 
 disease had numbered, not his months, but his days. 
 
 "I shall die at Deynum, if I choose," he said. He 
 stumbled along, leaning heavily forward. And constantly 
 he would pause and pretend to be hunting for his pocket- 
 handkerchief. " I have caught cold in those infamous 
 draughts," he said. And he lifted the handkerchief to his 
 face and gasped for breath behind it. 
 
 " The chillness of the evening air—" began Antoine. 
 
 " Silence. Ah, here is the park. It is really very good. 
 But it is not as good as— home, eh ? " 
 
 Before the servant could answer, the master broke into 
 a violent oath. His own word had stabbed him like a 
 
 knife. 
 
 He shufBed on under the trees. And every now and 
 then he righted himself and strove to walk straight, and 
 then fell forward again on his servant's arm, and shuf- 
 fled on. 
 
 Presently they were confronted by a view of the house. 
 It lay asleep in the solemn Avater, dark and still. " Good," 
 said the Marquis again. "Simple, but good," and shuf- 
 fled on. 
 
 It was not till they had turned into the Long Walk, 
 which leads to the village, that they came upon the figure 
 of a man stretched prostrate across the path. 
 
 Antoine sprang forward with a cry of surprise. The 
 Marquis, thus suddenly deprived of his prop, staggered back 
 in the impatient effort to stand alone.
 
 "WHY NOT, M. LE MxVRQUlSr' 109 
 
 " It is Mousienr le Barou ! " cried Autoiue, lifting the 
 insensible body. 
 
 "And what am I to do with Monsieur le Baron?" re- 
 plied the Marquis querulously. " It is hardly presumable 
 that he is drunk. He has probably had an attack. A sick 
 man cannot carry a dead one." 
 
 They looked round helplessly. " Shout ! " said the 
 Marquis. " We are not far from the house." 
 
 Antoine obeyed and sang out lustily. The Marquis 
 pointed to a white mass lying beneath a tree close by. An 
 open letter, a couple of newspapers, — the evening post. 
 
 " Shout again," said the Marquis. 
 
 A child came running up. " What is wrong ? " she 
 asked fearlessly. " Tiens, des enfants maintenant!" mum- 
 bled the Marquis, " Ma petite, this gentleman has fallen, 
 but he is not much hurt." 
 
 " It is Papa," cried Wendela. " Oh poor Papa ! " She 
 was struggling with her tears, to the Marquis's alarm. " We 
 must carry him to the house," she said, having mastered 
 them. " You, Monsieur, will you help ? " 
 
 " Mademoiselle, I regret sincerely, but I cannot," replied 
 the Marquis deeply humiliated. " Surely someone will 
 come." 
 
 She flung him a look of incredulous contempt. " I can 
 do it," she said, and vainly tried to lift the heavy foot. 
 " Halloo ! " cried Antoine again. 
 
 " Halloo," replied a bright voice. A milkmaid was com- 
 ing along a side-path. 
 
 " Ah, Lise, is it you ? " exclaimed the little Freule. 
 " You must help carry Papa. He is ill. Tliis gentleman 
 is not — strong enough," 
 
 But, recalled perhaps by the shouting, the Baron now 
 stirred and muttered and opened his eyes. 
 
 " I am quite well," he stammered. " I stumbled, that is 
 all. Where are my papers ? Where are my papers ? " he 
 repeated excitedly.
 
 110 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Antoine gatliered them together and put them in his 
 hand. The Baron rose to his feet, witli the valet's assist- 
 ance. " Ah pardon ! " he said, " Monsieur — Farjolle." The 
 Marquis was leaning against a tree in profound disgust. 
 What a disgraceful thing was bodily weakness ! The 
 shadows were spreading Avide and heavy. It was cold. 
 
 They formed into a little procession, the Baron leaning 
 on Antoine Loripont's arm, the Marquis pretending not to 
 press on AVendela's shoulder. The old gentleman broke 
 the silence once. " My little one," he said, " some day you 
 will understand the suffering of not being able." Wendela 
 coloured in the dark, and set her teeth hard to bear the 
 weight of his arm. Lize, with her clinking pails, brought 
 up the rear, her cheerful step in continuous contrast with 
 the slouch of the others. 
 
 " I keep in touch with your shoulder,'' said the Marquis 
 presently to his companion, " because 1 am afraid of a false 
 step on this unknown road. I hope I do not hinder you in 
 any way ? " " Xo," she gasped. But she did not ask why 
 he still clung to her all the tighter after they had emerged 
 into the open near the house. By that time the Baron had 
 almost entirely recovered from his shock. " You will come 
 in. Monsieur, and rest?" he said, turning round. "Glad- 
 ly," replied the Marquis, whereby he meant that he was too 
 utterly exhausted to decline. 
 
 Once in the house, he found himself compelled to re- 
 main. The two horses had been out for a long drive in the 
 afternoon, but one of them must take him home after din- 
 ner. That meal would be served in half an hour. " I am 
 all right again," said the Baron, " I really am all right." 
 And he introduced Monsieur Farjolle to the Baroness. 
 
 That lady was charmed. A gloom hung over the 
 household since the interview with the Notary. The 
 stranger's presence would cause a diversion. A man of the 
 world, a gentleman, and a Catholic ! — not that you noticed 
 anything of the religion ; still it was a comfort to know it
 
 "WHY NOT, M. LE MARQUIS?"' m 
 
 there. And the Marquis, who had locked himself up in his 
 despair since first it closed around him, was astonished to 
 discover that he could still laugh and talk — though with 
 weary heart and body — in the courteous nothings of social 
 intercourse. 
 
 Father Bulbius came in to dinner — not an unusual oc- 
 currence — and his bright face clouded over with impor- 
 tance at sight of the other guest. After having kissed the 
 hand of the lady of the house, at imminent peril of apo- 
 plexy, he wandered away to the Baron, who was sitting 
 wearily in the shade. 
 
 " Do not let me disturb your Kobleness," said the Father, 
 slowly letting himself down on the low divan. He dropped 
 his voice : " Have you any idea who that gentleman is who 
 calls himself Monsieur Farjolle ? " 
 
 " Yes," rejilied the Baron quickly. " He is a foreigner. 
 He calls himself Monsieur Farjolle. That is enough." 
 
 "Ah, but his servant this morning let fall a title which 
 aroused my curiosity. I questioned him, and I dis- 
 covered — " 
 
 The Baron stopped him. "Hush," he said. 
 
 " But, my dear sir, of course I heard nothing in my 
 official capacity," cried the Father bridling. " Surely you 
 know me better than to imagine that the secrets of the 
 confessional — " 
 
 " I know, I know, your Reverence. Come, let us talk of 
 something else." The Baron slowly shut and reopened his 
 eyes, that sure sign of exhaustion, whether of body or brain. 
 
 The Marquis, meanwhile, was praising the house to his 
 hostess. He drawled out his words with an unconcerned 
 ease of expression which seemed conscious that men would 
 find leisure to listen as long as his Grandeur found inclina- 
 tion to speak. 
 
 " I have lived here ; I shall die here," said the Baroness, 
 bravely. " It is that, I suppose, which endears the place to 
 me unspeakably. But, to you, Deynum must be terribly
 
 112 THE GREATER GLORY, 
 
 dull." She cast a commiserating glance at the old man's 
 hollow face. She could feel for all the various moods of 
 rotiuement. The stranger must be morbidly afraid of the 
 society of his equals to put up with the accommodation of 
 the village inn. 
 
 " Oh, no ; I like the country," said the Marquis. He 
 was greatly bored. He looked down at his smart patent- 
 leather boots ; there was a splash of mud across one of them, 
 and it persistently drew his attention. AVitli one carefully 
 kept hand he smoothed his white moustache and curled over 
 his ears the locks which were neatly drawn forward from 
 the parting at the back of his head. He was not dressed 
 for dining. The fact did not discomfort him ; nothing 
 could have done that. But he felt annoyed by it. 
 
 " I," said the child, who had drawn near to them, " I, 
 too, should like to die at Deynum." 
 
 The Marquis winced. " You, Mademoiselle," he said 
 lightly, holding out his hand to her. " A pretty child like 
 you ought not to talk of death." 
 
 She did not take the hand. " Death ! " she replied 
 gravely. " That is purgatory ; it is horrid. I meant ' dy- 
 ing.' I should like to die at Deynum and go and sleep 
 with the others in the chapel. Afterwards — it is horrid, 
 but one does not know ! " 
 
 " But you are a little philosopher," said the Marquis 
 with a ghastly grin. 
 
 " The child does not understand what she is talking 
 about," interposed Mevrouw van Eexelaer rising. " Permit 
 me to take your arm, Monsieur." 
 
 At table the little life left in the sick man seemed to 
 flare up under congenial surroundings. He ate sparingly, 
 but he drank a glass or two of his host's wine and warmly 
 commended it. And he told a couple of amusing stories, 
 cautiously, as if afraid of compromising himself. Father 
 Bulbius sat admiring him open-mouthed. 
 
 Stimulated by the Marquis's example and especially flat-
 
 "WHY NOT, M. LE MARQUIS?" 113 
 
 tered by the praise his ceDar was receiving from so mani- 
 fest a connoisseur, the master of the house also somewhat 
 shook off the lethargy of his own sorrows, and even so far 
 conquered himself as to tell the story of the King's Wine. 
 How in the glorious year '15, the great year of deliverance, 
 he, being then about twelve years old, had lived with his 
 mother for a time at a small country house in Brabant near 
 the frontier, while his father was with the army in Belgium. 
 And how on one beautiful calm June evening news had 
 flown up from the village that a courier was come with the 
 tidings of a great victory to bear to the King. His horse 
 had broken down ; he was clamouring for another — would 
 the Baroness give her best? And how he — little Eeinout, 
 as he was then — had run away to the stables and saddled 
 his father's " Bruno," with only a cry to the groom that he 
 would be back again to-morrow, and had ridden out upon 
 the high-road he scarcely knew how or why. And then 
 how he had rushed onward all through the soft summer- 
 night, with but one thought in his heart of the great victory 
 and the joy of the King! and had crossed the mighty 
 waters of the Moerdyk and the Maas, while some took his 
 gold sleeve-links and buttons in payment and others heli3ed 
 him on with God speed ! for the glad news that he bore. 
 How a post-keeper had lent him a horse when Bruno could 
 bear even his light weight no further, and how, at last, in 
 the glory of the proud June morning, he had drawn rein, 
 fainting but triumphant, at the Palace gates. How he had 
 cried for his grandfather who was one of the Court cham- 
 berlains, and how, between tears and laughter, he had finally 
 poured out his story at the Sovereign's feet, half an hour 
 before the State courier came in with the Despatches. How 
 the King, when the truth was confirmed, had patted his 
 liead, saying : " What must I do for you, my fine little fel- 
 low ? " and how he had answered with his eyes on the table : 
 "A glass of wine, please, your Majesty and Grandpapa, though 
 it isn't my birthday — " and how the room had swum round,
 
 114 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 as all the courtiers laughed. How the Kiug had declared 
 that he should never want that to drink the royal health in, 
 and had sent his father a hogshead to lay aside for him, 
 with the intimation that, when next he did his country 
 good service, he must ask for some more. " I reminded 
 him of his promise on a later occasion," said the Baron in 
 conclusion, " and I got another, and larger, present of the 
 same. It is good wine, as you say. I used to keep it, but 
 now I drink it. In a few years there will be nobody left to 
 do so." 
 
 " There's me. Papa," said the child. 
 
 " Women don't drink wine," replied her father, " They 
 sip it, without tasting." 
 
 The Baroness had heard the story several hundred times 
 before, but she had never heard it told to a Frenchman. 
 She was the more surprised that her husband avoided 
 specifying the " other occasion," which was merely the 
 siege of Antwerp in the Belgian war. 
 
 " He is too modest to allude to his own military ex- 
 ploits," she thought. 
 
 " The King is dead," said the Baron, saluting as he 
 emptied his glass, " Long live the King ! " 
 
 Gustave, b}' the side-board, saluted too. 
 
 " I have not yet had an opportunity of telling you," 
 said the Baron, when the two gentlemen were alone 
 together, waiting for the carriage, " how much I regretted 
 the failure of my attempt to find you a suitable lodging. I 
 fear now that you will very soon be leaving us." 
 He felt how complimentary was the " us." 
 " You are too kind, my dear Baron," murmured the 
 visitor, without regarding his own words. The old man sat 
 staring vaguely before him ; he was dead-tired, miserably 
 oppressed by the weight which no companionship could 
 cast off. He spoke a few sentences about the weather and 
 the crops, and the other answered him.
 
 "WHY NOT, M. LE MARQUIS!" 115 
 
 " I am ill," said the Marquis suddenly. " I am dying. 
 I can't travel any more. I won't travel. I can't stay iu 
 that filthy inn. Monsieur de Rexelaer, can you really not 
 find me some place I could buy to die quietly in ? " A 
 hungry, hunted look came over his face ; he was yearning 
 to speak of his trouble to someone besides Antoine. 
 
 The Baron got up and walked across the room, away 
 from his guest. " I know of one house," he said, " if you 
 were willing to pay for it." 
 
 " I will pay anything," cried the other passionately, " I 
 want rest. This stupid anxiety is killing me before my 
 time. What is the house that you speak of ? " 
 
 " It is this," said the Baron with his back turned. He 
 clutched at a chair and sat down. 
 
 There was an awkward pause. Then the Marquis said 
 stiffly, " You misapprehend me. Monsieur. I was very 
 much in earnest. I am perfectly well aware that you can- 
 not place this house at my disposal." 
 
 " Why not, Monsieur le JMarquis?" said the other from 
 his dark corner. 
 
 " What ! You know me ! That scoundrel has blabbed ! " 
 
 " Forgive me. The fault is not your valet's. From the 
 first moment I heard your name, I was aware that I had the 
 honour of speaking to the Marquis de la JoUiis." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried the Marquis. 
 
 " There are not so many of us that we do not know 
 about each other, at least in Holland and Belgium. For- 
 give my indiscretion, which I deeply regret. I was speak- 
 ing under the influence of excitement. But I warn you, I 
 fear that your name is known to others than myself." 
 
 The Marquis bowed, exaggeratedly vexed. He had 
 clung to his sick man's whim. " But this — this — how shall 
 I say ? — about your castle ? " he asked. " It is a pleasantry ? " 
 
 " Monsieur, is it a subject I should joke upon, even did 
 I desire to insult you ? If you wish to buy the place — the 
 whole thing — you can do so. The air does not agree with 
 9
 
 110 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 my wife. Yon see liow pale she looks. I am anxious to 
 settle abroad." 
 
 " But I want a house, not an estate," said the Marquis. 
 He rose as Antoine came forward with his wraps, and, mo- 
 tioning him back, tottered across to the dark spot in which 
 the other was sitting. " I thank you, sir," he said, " for 
 the signal honour you have done me. Believe me, I know 
 how to appreciate it." They shook hands in silence, and 
 then the Marquis was driven back to the inn.
 
 CHAPTER XVL 
 
 " j'OSAIS." 
 
 " ExcoRE un de flambe," said the Marquis to himself. 
 His class-feeling was honestly sorry for the Baron ; none 
 the less he could not entirely suppress a faint glow of satis- 
 faction that another of the world's mighty ones should have 
 come to grief, like himself. " Sold up ! " he said, and 
 smiled bitterly. 
 
 He could easily put two and two together and conclude 
 that the Baron had speculated and lost. " If he has played 
 away such a family estate, what a fool he must be ! " thought 
 Monsieur de la Jolais. In so far he partly wronged Baron 
 Rexelaer, for that gentleman, unable to pay off the mort- 
 gages his ancestors had accumulated, had only taken to 
 speculation as an ultimate possibility of escape. By his 
 operations he had lost more than twice the original deficit. 
 The news of the final crash had reached him through the 
 last post. His brokers, refusing to hold out any longer, 
 had sold. 
 
 There was no ecarte that evening. Only the Baroness's 
 Patience, with Father Bulbius watching it. 
 
 " Here, you, Antoine, listen," said the Marquis imperi- 
 ously. He had had his evening injection of morphia, and 
 the valet was about to withdraw. " I have something to 
 say to you. My identity is out." 
 
 The valet's conscience smote him; on that account he 
 smiled superciliously. " But what could Monsieur le Mai--
 
 118 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 quis expect ? " he said. " And with an alias which is Mon- 
 sieur le Marquis's own name ? " 
 
 " Peace," interrupted his master. " You told. Whom ? " 
 
 Antoine protested wath vehemence. The Marquis lis- 
 tened carelessly, half -hidden by the faded green bed-curtains. 
 Presently he said : " Let us understand each other. This 
 person, will he tell others ? " 
 
 " But nobody knows ! " cried Antoine. 
 
 " I suppose that means he will not. You wall go to him 
 to-night — to-night, do you hear ! — and offer him money to 
 hold his tongue. If it is the i^riest, as I presume, so much 
 the better. He will keep his promise as well as the money. 
 Or, still cheaper, you might pass your words through the 
 confessional ? " 
 
 Loripont's countenance expressed his disapproval of 
 such levity. He thought his master little better than a 
 heathen. 
 
 " Your religion comes useful occasionally," the Mar- 
 quis went on. " Where's that little Virgin of yours ? 
 Find it." 
 
 Loripont obeyed with a scowl. He drew from under his 
 shirt a tiny silver image, fastened to a string, and kissed it 
 reverently, and then stood dangling it, irreverently. Once 
 before, upon their first coming together, his master had 
 make him swear by it, swear never to steal or cheat. He 
 had religiously kept his oath. The little image was his 
 guardian-angel and every-day god. It was no good for the 
 other world, but it looked after him in this. Fortunately 
 the Marquis had not exacted a promise of absolute ve- 
 racity. The wisdom of government lies in the regulation 
 of liberty. 
 
 " I will give you," said Monsieur de la Jolais, toying 
 with the trifles on his bed-table, " one thousand francs for 
 every week I have to live. That is my offer. My demand 
 is this : 
 
 " First. You will send for your wife, and you and she
 
 "J'OSAIS." 119 
 
 will tend me with unmurmuring devotion. Secondly. You 
 will both j)reserve absolute silence about me and my doings, 
 now and ever afterwards. There is no mystery. I do not 
 intend to do anything extraordinary, but I will not have my 
 sufferings known to the world. As soon as I am dead, you 
 will convey my body back to Saint-Leu, and you will give 
 out that I died of some chest-complaint — Pneumonia. That 
 is all. Swear. I can trust your to frighten your wife into 
 her part. Swear for both." 
 
 " I will swear. Monsieur le Marquis, on one condition — " 
 
 " You have heard the condition," said the Marquis, 
 sitting up in bed. " The money shall be paid you. Swear." 
 
 He cowed the man with his keen eyes. Antoine mum- 
 bled " I swear," as he lifted the little image to his lips. 
 
 But immediately afterwards his manner changed. He 
 leant back against the roughly-painted door, slipped the 
 little doll out of sight behind his collar, and folded his 
 arms. 
 
 " Take a chair ! " said the Marquis, with courteous scorn. 
 But the valet did not modify his pose. " I also have my 
 conditions, Monsieur le Marquis," he said. " Will Mon- 
 sieur le Marquis have the goodness to listen to them for a 
 moment ? " 
 
 Monsieur de la Jolais sank back and plaintively won- 
 dered where was the strength of those good old days when 
 he would have cursed the fellow out of the room. His head 
 was growing dizzy. He merely said : " You should not first 
 have taken your oath." 
 
 " I permit myself to differ from Monsieur le IMarquis," 
 retorted the valet. " I remembered that I was dealing with 
 a gentilhomme." 
 
 The Marquis felt the force of the rebuke. " What is 
 it you want?" he said. "Be brief. I stand in great need 
 of rest." 
 
 " Monsieur le ^Vlarquis de la Jolais-Farjolle," began An- 
 toine, striving in vain to keep his voice quite steady, " when
 
 120 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 I entered your service eight years ago, you bound me down 
 never to ap2)ropriate any of tliose little advantages which a 
 gentleman's service naturally brings with it. You paid me 
 the usual wages. I therefore earned less than half of what 
 is usual. I have kept faithfully to my promise ; I have 
 never appropriated a halfpenny. I believe that, on the 
 whole, I have not given serious cause for dissatisfaction ? " 
 
 " So be it," said the Marquis. " You could have left, if 
 you wished." 
 
 " Not only did I not earn my due," continued the valet, 
 " but I was obliged to spend part of my wages, on your be- 
 half, to keep up the honour of our name. Permit me to 
 say it, Monsieur le Marquis, but a man in my position who 
 respects himself and his connections cannot expose himself 
 to the charge of continuous underpayment of inferiors. 
 Wherever, during all these years, you have instructed me — 
 at home or abroad — to give a cabman or a porter a franc, I 
 have been compelled by circumstances. Monsieur le Marquis, 
 — excuse my mentioning it — to make the sum one franc 
 fifty, and sometimes two." 
 
 " The more fool you," said the Marquis. 
 
 " So I have always thought. Monsieur le Marquis. But 
 one attaches oneself, against one's will, to the great name 
 one is connected with. Permit me to add. Monsieur le 
 Marquis, that I have carefully kept account of all the sums 
 I was thus compelled to advance in a little note-book, which 
 I have here." He touched his breast. 
 
 " Anything more ? " asked the Marquis. 
 
 " There is just one point which I am afraid I must still 
 mention," — he hesitated — " Taking into account the great 
 risk of these advances, I have considered myself entitled to 
 reckon ten per cent, interest on each payment from the day 
 on which it was made. I can assure Monsieur le Marquis 
 on the solemn oath by which I bound myself that the ac- 
 counts I have handed in have always been rigidly accurate, 
 and tliat in the extra charges I now bring forward I have
 
 "J'OSAIS." 121 
 
 never exceeded the limits of what I considered the unavoid- 
 able." 
 
 "J"o?< considered," said the Marquis. 
 
 " Monsieur will allow me to point out that Monsieur le 
 Marquis de la Jolais-Farjolle has the reputation of being 
 the most extravagant nobleman in Brussels. He has not 
 the reputation of being the most generous. He would 
 probably be known as the stingiest, were it not for his hum- 
 ble servant, Antoine Loripont." 
 
 He stared Ms master straight in the face, but not im- 
 pertinently. Then he produced his little account-book and 
 held it out. " The sum total," he said, " is three thousand, 
 seven hundred and forty-three francs, nineteen centimes. 
 The centimes sound unreal ; they are the outcome of the 
 interest-reckoning. I vouch for strictly honest accuracy, 
 by the Mother of God — " and he pulled out his little image 
 again, and kissed it. 
 
 " Go to the devil," said the Marquis. 
 
 " As Monsieur the Marquis pleases. But I mentioned 
 this subject because I wished to forewarn Monsieur le 
 Marquis that I shall consider myself entitled to refund my- 
 self this money — which I have always looked upon as a 
 loan — from whatever moneys or articles of value I may 
 happen to have in my keeping at the time of Monsieur the 
 Marquis's possible demise— I have understood that much 
 from the beginning." 
 
 " You shall make an inventory for me," said the Marquis. 
 " I shall send it to the Notary's." 
 
 Their eyes met. " I was mistaken," said the valet 
 coolly. " I should have delayed my oath after all." 
 
 The Marquis turned his face to the wall. " Take the 
 money," he said. " Take it now. But, for Heaven's sake, 
 let me sleep ! " 
 
 The repose which he longed for did not, however, visit 
 him as soon as he had expected. He, who had always been
 
 102 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 au excellent sleeper — it was natural to his tranquil good 
 health — had 3'et to learn that there is an exhaustion which 
 does not precede, but precludes, recuperative rest. Sleep, 
 like the jilt she is, does not come when courted. She 
 attracts, and casts her glamour all around her, and then 
 laughs and runs away. 
 
 And she leaves behind her all the torment of that living 
 night-watch which is so unlike the life of day. 
 
 All the hideous moonlight of a soul distorted, in which 
 depths of unknown stillness wake and move beneath the 
 shifting shadows, to a rush of restlessness that dies away 
 and yet is never altogether gone, while the thousand shape- 
 less spectres that rise and breathe and have no being come 
 roaming to and fro in the chilly greyness — into unending 
 distance, with a weary drawing of the brain, and then back 
 again upon the burning eye-balls, with a blow as of a ham- 
 mer, and once more down avenues of vagueness, never fully 
 visible — far — far — never out of sight. 
 
 The Marquis sat up in bed. " Eest," he said aloud. 
 And then he fell back again, and tossed from side to side. 
 
 And as he did so, there woke within him an indefinite 
 consciousness of something — something wrong — at that 
 point where the dead weight lay under his breast. For the 
 moment only there was the vague expectancy — half curious, 
 half . anxious — and then steadily, like the pressure of a 
 borer, slowly piercing farther, there came deepening on his 
 soul a persistency of pain. Then, the expectancy that it 
 would pass over, that it was relenting, lessening — a sharp 
 twinge, almost welcome, in the momentary diversion — a 
 sudden hope ! — and then again, slowly, steadily, the j^ierc- 
 ing, pressing pain. 
 
 He revolted against it in the fury of his impotence, tired 
 no longer, no longer conscious of fatigue. He struck his 
 hands wildly into the darkness, and threw back the bed- 
 clothes, and pulled them up again. He lighted a candle, 
 and stared at his haggard face in the glass, and fiercely
 
 "J'OSAIS." 123 
 
 dashed out the light. And at last, when he had pressed 
 his fists against his pursed-np lips and told himself again 
 and again: "I will not," he broke into a shriek of agony 
 and thrust his head down into the pillows and tried to be- 
 lieve he had not heard his own voice. 
 
 It had rung out, nevertheless. Presently there came a 
 knocking at the door. The landlady, aroused by the cry, 
 had risen hastily to inquire if she could be of use. Should 
 she call Mynheer's servant who slept on the other side of 
 the house? Mynheer was taken bad again; did he want 
 the doctor sent for? Her man could easily go if it was de- 
 sired ! With the simple logic of her sort, the landlady 
 was all the more voluble because the Marquis did not un- 
 derstand her. But even in his necessity the latter resented 
 the sympathetic tone of her voice, as it came pouring 
 through the keyhole. He refused to be pitied by these 
 creatures. He called for his servant, and cursed him when 
 he came, and, at length, by the help of fresh morphia, was 
 lulled into some kind of repose. 
 
 And thus we can comprehend one of the reasons why 
 Monsieur de la Jolais, when shipwrecked at Deynum, had 
 elected to remain there. Be it known, then, that Autoine, 
 when he described his master as the most extravagant noble 
 in Brussels, had but given one half of the characterisation 
 as it was repeated in the salons and clubs of that city. It 
 was true that the Marquis, wherever his own pleasures and 
 comforts were concerned, indulged in that careless extrava- 
 gance which is so often found in stingy men of wealth. He 
 was notorious for having ordered an extra train to Paris 
 upon missing the regular one, and then having quarrelled 
 over his fare with the cabman who drove him from the sta- 
 tion. It was he who had — ah, but that is a nasty story. 
 The man is dead. Better let it alone. 
 
 He had another reputation, however, of which he was far 
 vainer, the only thing, perhaps, of which he was really vain
 
 124 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 — the reputation of having been, all his life, the bravest of 
 a reckless set. From his youth upwards he had enjoyed the 
 excitement of foolhardy feats, risking his life a hundred 
 times, uselessly, for the laughter and the triumph of the 
 thing. He had rejoiced to think that none of his comrades 
 cared to take a particular ditch and hedge on his own 
 estate ; he liked to show them how to do it, as he said. It 
 was he who had driven a horse in a chaise from the high 
 box of a i^haeton and pair behind it, holding the reins of all 
 three, up the Montague de la Cour, and round by the Royal 
 Park. It was he also who had lain down between the rails 
 — for a wager — and let a train pass over him, but that was 
 very long ago. Moreover, he had fought at least a dozen 
 duels in his day, and, on one occasion, w^hen his adversary's 
 bullet carried oS the jjoint of one of his moustaches, he had 
 turned coolly to that gentleman with the punning words : 
 " Vous me rasez, Monsieur." He had been a hero among 
 his companions for the devil-may-care contempt of death 
 which had never found a worthy occasion of displaying 
 itself, and it was to this well-known trait that he owed his 
 nickname of " J'ose," an abbreviation for Josephe. He had 
 been intensely gratified by this public recognition of his 
 valour. It was the one " greatness " which he had achieved 
 for himself. Wealth, influence, position, he had been born 
 to these ; he was calmly proud of them, but when he forced 
 his frightened horse along the parapet of the terrace of his 
 family-seat of Saint-Leu, he felt that he was achieving a 
 distinction which no ancestors could have power to bestow. 
 He w^as vain of it therefore, in bright contrast to that en- 
 tirely different feeling of hereditary pride which, in reality, 
 is but a cumbrous thing to bear, at its best. 
 
 And this man who had so often tempted death as a pos- 
 sibility now recoiled from it in horror when it came to him, 
 a certainty, under the form of disease. Somehow or other, 
 it was all quite different. The light fell otherwise. Before, 
 there had always been the energy of escape, straining every
 
 "J'OSAIS." 125 
 
 nerve into momentarily increasing sureness of victory ; now 
 there was nothing except the consciousness of powerless 
 failure. It was Jio longer the old leap over a fence, but a 
 slow, remorseless fall against a wall of adamant. 
 
 And, above all, there had not been this terrible actuality 
 of pain — death through suffering ; it was a new thought. 
 Dangerless, inactive, stupid suffering, it was upon him al- 
 ready. He recoiled from it. Worse than that, he trembled 
 at it. And in his own horror of the tremble, the dread, the 
 cowardice, he fled he knew not whither, if only from those 
 wdio would mark, and jest at, his fall. J'ose. He would 
 die as he had lived. But he did not " dare." Some wag 
 would alter his sobriquet into " Jose." None must know of 
 this illness. He tried to get away into Germany ; any little 
 watering-place would do. And then, when he lay stranded 
 at Deynum, it seemed to him that Deyuum might be the 
 very place he stood in need of. He could not venture to 
 travel again, least of all in his own country. The shriek of 
 this night decided him. None but Loripont or his wife 
 must ever hear him shriek again. He could have killed the 
 poor landlady for her looks of compassion, and the all-com- 
 prehensive waggle of her good-natured head. 
 
 " You will go," said the Marquis to Antoine in the 
 early morning, "and fetch me the Baron van Rex- 
 elaer. My compliments, you understand, and all that sort 
 of thing." 
 
 Antoine departed, and on his way he met Father Bul- 
 bius. The good Father was pottering about in the village, 
 Ins village — more his than anybody else's, for, whoever 
 owned the bodies, the souls were the priest's. He was en- 
 joying the breezy freshness of that early hour, and he 
 stopped before a little flaxen-haired mud-pie makester, and 
 patted her on the head and said she was good. But he felt 
 that he could not honestly have treated himself in the same 
 manner. He was selfish. For when strangers ask us for 
 our houses and chattels, we, if we be good Christians,
 
 126 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 should grant tlicir request. Especially when the rent they 
 offer is high. 
 
 Between fear of his conscience and dread of his house- 
 keeper the Father had a bad time of it. He espied Antoine 
 and went towards him, hoj^ing by his aid to reconcile them 
 both. 
 
 " Good morning, Monsieur Antoine," he said, nodding 
 his benevolent countenance to and fro. " And how is the 
 patient this fine morning? Better, I hope, and able to con- 
 tinue his journey?" 
 
 " No, your Eeverence, he is not better," replied Antoine. 
 " Seems to me he is near his journey's end." 
 
 " Dear me ! " cried the priest nonplussed. " I hope he 
 is prepared to dejiart ! " To himself he said : " Anyhow, 
 you see, it would not be worth while." 
 
 " By no means," replied Antoine decidedly. " I en- 
 deavour to do my duty, but it is very trying for a servant, 
 your Reverence." 
 
 " Fortunately you have all the conveniences of an inn. 
 It is very convenient, is an inn. Monsieur Antoine. Much 
 more so than a house of one's own. If you want a thing, 
 you simply ring for it." 
 
 "x\nd simply do not get it," said Antoine. 
 
 " You are not — comfortable ? I hope you are." 
 
 " Oh no — " began Loripont. Then he caught a glimpse 
 of the Father's imploring face. " Xot uncomfortable," he 
 added, and smiled to think how good he was to the priests. 
 
 " Well, well, we all have our trials," sighed the Father. 
 " Some of us have not what we want, others have what they 
 would gladly be without. Au revoir. Monsieur Antoine." 
 
 " Serviteur, Monsieur le Cure." 
 
 But Antoine j^aused, and then retraced his steps. 
 
 " Monsieur le Cure," he cried, " a thousand pardons. 
 There is just one question I would ask you if I dared." 
 
 Father Bulbius, Avho had been meditatively contemplat- 
 ing a still far more meditative pig — astray from the right
 
 "J'OSAIS." 127 
 
 path, like himself — started iu anxious expectation. Should 
 he venture — a second time — to refuse ? And what would 
 Veronica say, if he came back to her houseless after all ? 
 
 " Monsieur le Cure," said Antoine, hesitatingly, " a little 
 mass — eh ? — just a little one for my — master ; it might do 
 much good, perhaj^s, but it couldn't — eh, do you think so? 
 — do much harm ? " 
 
 " Certainly not," replied the priest with an approbatory 
 smile. " The idea is an extremely praiseworthy one. But 
 Monsieur le Marquis is not yet deceased. And besides, 
 would he spend money on masses ? " 
 
 " It isn't possible, I presume," said Antoine, still feeling 
 his way, " to smooth over some of the unpleasantnesses be- 
 forehand ? Purgatory is a very awful thought, Monsieur le 
 Cure." 
 
 " It is indeed," assented the priest, with true solemnity. 
 
 " There is a little sum I have set aside," hazarded An- 
 toine. " It is not as large perhaps as might be considered 
 desirable. But the Marquis has not been a good master to 
 me, and I feel justified in leaving it — insufficient. He shall 
 have five per cent, of the sum he refunded last night," 
 reasoned Antoine. " And I hope," he added aloud, " that 
 my action in this matter will be accounted to my credit 
 when my own time comes." 
 
 " Our most meritorious acts," said the priest senten- 
 tiously, "are not those. Monsieur Antoine, which impress 
 us most vividly with the certitude of their meritoriousness." 
 
 Loripont winced under the rebuke. " Well, your Eev- 
 erence," he said, " I am a poor man, but I can't bear the 
 idea of even my master drifting away into — that ! If you 
 can do anything later on to make matters more comfort- 
 able, I should not wish it to be omitted." 
 
 " So be it," replied the Father. " May I ask : have you 
 fixed on any sum ? " 
 
 " Let us begin with a hundred francs," said Loripont 
 loftily, suddenly rising from his reverential air into one of
 
 jog THE GRPLVTER GLORY. 
 
 patronisiug importance. " One hundred francs, Monsieur 
 le Cure." And lie took liis leave and went on his way to 
 the Baron. " Religion is a very expensive item," he mut- 
 tered to himself, " and supposing — supposing — it were none 
 of it true in the end ! " 
 
 You who laugh in your souls at reading of this man's 
 thinkings, has the littleness of your life so dried up the 
 tears within you that you have none left to weep over its 
 majesty struck down in the dust ? God, all-loving, all- 
 wise, all-terrible, this then is Thy service in the latter-day 
 of Thy mercy, and we. Thy faithless, self -deceiving children, 
 holding np our rags to shield us from Thy radiance, we 
 call upon these, in their filthiness, and hail them as God ! 
 From the religions of our inheriting, our imbibing, our 
 creating — from all religions but of Thine implanting — de- 
 liver us, Lord !
 
 CHAPTER XYIL 
 
 NOT AS WE WILL, BUT AS WE AVOULD, O LORD. 
 
 A COUPLE of hours later Mynheer yau Eexelaer was 
 ushered into the Marquis's presence. The ceremony of oil- 
 ing, trimming and curling had been completed, and, in so 
 far as the word is suggestive of worship, that ceremony 
 might have been looked upon as a morning-orison to the 
 Devil, who had been plentifully invoked with imprecations 
 and prayers. The valet had smiled regretfully once or 
 twice, as one who sees a child rushing heedlessly into pun- 
 ishment. After a double-weighted oath at liis clumsiness 
 in dropping the curling-iron — even valets will get nervous 
 at times — he had ventured on a " Pourtant, Monsieur le 
 Marquis — " to be immediately interrupted with : " Just so. 
 Pour tant. .For so much a month do you do me such 
 service ! " 
 
 The Baron found the invalid sitting discontentedly 
 among the strange medley of his surroundings, a magnifi- 
 cent cloak of blue fox trailing on the sanded floor, a number 
 of costly objects scattered about over the furniture, a soft 
 luxury of toilet perfumes overpowering the paraffin. 
 
 "Do me the favour to take a seat," said the Marquis. 
 
 The Baron sat down. 
 . "I am about to be impolite," continued the invalid. " I 
 am an old man and the circumstances of the case must 
 serve as my excuse. May I venture to ask. Monsieur de 
 Rexelaer — forgive mc — whetlier yon still retain unaltered 
 your intention of travelling abroad V "
 
 130 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Tlie Baron strove hard to steady his eyebrows. 
 
 " But yes," he said abruptly. 
 
 " And am I then to understand that you still do me the 
 honour of proposing the possibility of my becoming tlie 
 purchaser of your house in this place, which you no longer 
 require ? " 
 
 The Baron van Eexelaer got up and began to pace to 
 and fro. He saw a look of fatigue and annoyance go flitting 
 across the sick man's face. He remembered that he had 
 been asked to sit, and so sat down again. 
 
 " Yes," he said. 
 
 " Then will you permit me to say that I have recon- 
 sidered your offer, which took me by surprise yesterday at 
 an unfortunate moment. As I mentioned to you before, I 
 want a quiet place to die in. That is all. You do not 
 wish to let?" 
 
 " I could not," said the Baron. " I must sell — sell the 
 whole estate — or nothing." 
 
 " So I understood," replied Monsieur de la Jolais. 
 " Personally, of course, I should much have preferred a far 
 smaller purchase. But I cannot help myself, and, when I 
 am dead, it matters nothing what becomes of my money." 
 This was true, yet even " the most extravagantly selfish 
 nobleman in Belgium " would hardly have made up his 
 mind to such vast gratification of his dving whim, hud it 
 not been for the thought of young Eeinout, the other 
 Rexelaer, over yonder at the Hague. 
 
 " You have no children ? " said the Baron. " Still, it 
 seemed to me that there is a young Monsieur de la Jolais in 
 the regiment of the Guides." 
 
 " But, you know all about us, Monsieur," rejoined the 
 Marquis with a faint smile. " It is my cousin. He is a 
 young rogue who only this year iieglected my Saint's Day 
 for the races. I shall leave him Saint-Leu and its belong- 
 ings. Nothing more. Saint-Leu is my home." 
 
 " I know," said the Baron sadly. " Who does not? One
 
 NOT AS WE WILL, BUT AS WE WOULD, LORD. 131 
 
 knows of Chatsworth, of Dampierre. Even the vulgar. 
 One knows of Saint-Leu." 
 
 The Marquis was gratified, whether dying or not. He 
 nodded approval. " But I am taking up your time," he 
 said. " If you will kindly direct me to the person whom 
 you wish to act for you, provided he nnderstauds French, I 
 will send my servant, who is entirely trustworthy, to settle 
 the whole matter without delay." 
 
 " Monsieur," replied the Baron hastily, " if you will per- 
 mit me, let us have no intermediaries. The various mort- 
 gages on Deynum amount to four hundred thousand florins. 
 The net produce of the estate is about twelve thousand. 
 We must not ask what thousands the building of the Castle 
 has cost. I am told that, at the present moment, if sold by 
 auction, it would hardly realize three hundred and twenty." 
 
 " I offer you three hundred and twenty," said the Mar- 
 quis, "on certain conditions. One is that you allow me to 
 take over all the furniture I require, exclusive of heirlooms, 
 at a valuation." 
 
 " Take the heirlooms too ! " burst out the Baron, losing 
 his hold. 
 
 " Exclusive of heirlooms," repeated the Marquis softly, 
 " These, if you wish, I will have properly catalogued and 
 put aside. My second condition is that the secret of my 
 identity be inviolably kept, by yourself, on your word of 
 honour, by any official concerned in the matter, on oath." 
 
 The Baron bowed. 
 
 " I have a third condition which I hardly like to bring 
 forward. My days are numbered. I am anxious — I should 
 wish—" 
 
 " Monsieur," said the Baron. " In forty-eight hours." 
 The other did not protest. In decency he could not. 
 
 " I," said the Baron, taking up his hat, " I also have a 
 condition. One only. I should wish to have it inserted in 
 the contract." 
 
 "And it is?" 
 10
 
 132 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " That you and your heirs and assignees after you sol- 
 emnly bind yourselves never to sell the estate or any part 
 of the estate to a person who calls himself Count Hilarius 
 van Rexelaer or to any of his descendants, relations or con- 
 nections." 
 
 The Marquis waited some considerable time before he 
 answered. Then he asked wearily : " Say it again, please." 
 
 Baron van Eexelaer repeated the clause, slowly. " Sell 
 the estate or part of the estate — tltcd I will promise. Cer- 
 tainly. I have no objection," said M. de la Jolais with half- 
 closed eyes. 
 
 " Or let," added the Baron, delighted at his own perspi- 
 cacity. 
 
 " Or let. Undoubtedly. The clause to be binding in 
 perj)etuity. Au revoir." 
 
 The Baron van Rexelaer stumbled over the door-step, 
 and crej)t down the steep stairs. He was not thinking very 
 much, of his loss; he realized it no more than a fond woman 
 realizes her husband's sudden death at her side. He was 
 debating how he should raise the money still wanting to 
 comjDlete the mortgage and yet manage to supjiort his wife 
 and child. 
 
 It was a very lovely morning in the jDark, brilliant with 
 deep-golden sunshine, cheerfully warm and yet freshly in- 
 vigorating^with no sound but the occasional rustle of a 
 falling leaf through the quiet glow of the cool brown 
 landscape. 
 
 He must go and tell his wife first of all. He stopped 
 abruptly in the lane. There was a deeper depth, then, even 
 to deepest sorrow. 
 
 Mevrouw was out in the grounds, they told him. 
 Gustave, who spent the greater part of his time watching 
 — or, as he called it, " watching over " — " his family," had 
 seen Mevrouw go out with the Freule. The Baron wan- 
 dered away, down one of the avenues, pondering over the
 
 NOT AS WE WILL, BUT AS WE WOULD, LORD. I33 
 
 deficit. And his nuconscious footsteps led liini naturally to 
 the chapel, where he found his wife, alone. 
 
 He saw her through the open door, kneeling in the dim- 
 ness by the chancel. He crept slowly into the building, and 
 came close to her, and knelt by her side. 
 
 The Baroness was muttering paternosters. Her hus- 
 band gently checked her. " Let us pray," he said, " for 
 strength in tribulation, in deepest tribulation." And they 
 prayed. 
 
 The little chapel was very silent, darkly shadowed, be- 
 neath its marble heroes and pictured saints. 
 
 " I sometimes wonder," said the Baron when they 
 had concluded, " whether our petitions really reach His 
 throne." 
 
 " Oh hush, hush," whispered the lady in a low voice of 
 horror. She spoke as one who sees suddenly evoked before 
 him visions of the dead. 
 
 " Are you so confident, dearest," said the Baron, in the 
 same hushed accents, " that He would leave us Deynum, 
 were we to ask it of Him ? " 
 
 " He has left it us hitherto," replied his wife evasively. 
 
 " But were He to take it from us — supposing He had 
 already taken it from us — would He, will He give us 
 strength to bear the loss ? " 
 
 The White Baroness rose slowly to her feet. " It is im- 
 possible," she said. " I will not believe it. Eeinout, my 
 husband, why do you speak of these things ? " 
 
 Eeinout van Rexelaer flung himself prone on the altar- 
 steps. 
 
 " Oh God,' he cried with a sudden loudness that seemed 
 to strike against the solemn hush around. " Oh God that 
 hearest not petitions for this world's prosperity, hear now 
 our cry for strength, to bear the weight of prayers un- 
 heard ! " 
 
 He lay silent, with his hands before his face. And she 
 stood beside him, white, and silent too.
 
 13-1: THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 ^lany minutes liad passed, when she stooped forward and 
 laid her hand ujiou his shoulder. She drew the fingers 
 away from his face, and slowly lifted it upwards. Her own 
 was set hard and strong as if carved in nuirble. 
 
 " Happy they," she said, " who suffer blameless for their 
 fathers' sins. Yours, my darling, was a heritage of ruin, 
 mortgaged acres and a noble name. And the name is 
 nobler now in your unsullied keeping than ever knight 
 has held in the days of yore. And the lands ! — God gave 
 them : man has taken. You and I, we have each other. 
 Love is God's to give, not even His to take away ! " 
 
 She pointed to the blazon over the chancel- window, as he 
 still knelt staring at her with troubled eyes : " Ipsa glorior 
 infamia," she said. 
 
 He rose to his feet and made as if he would have kissed 
 her. But she put him away. 
 
 " Strong," she said. " Strong. We have struggled to 
 retrieve the misdoings of our fathers. We have struggled 
 our life long, and the end has been vain. And we are utterly 
 ashamed. But ours is a glorious shame." 
 
 He had neither the courage nor the power at that mo- 
 ment to undeceive her in the midst of what, at best, was but 
 a partial truth. 
 
 " Papa ! Mamma ! " cried the child's bright voice at the 
 chapel door. It dropped as she came up the little aisle. 
 " I have been looking everywhere for you. Mamma." There 
 was a note of lietulance in her words. It seemed to her 
 young restlessness that her mother was perpetually pray- 
 ing. 
 
 "Shall we tell her?" asked her father aloud. The 
 mother nodded Yes. " Child," he continued, turning full 
 towards his daughter. " We are going to leave Deynum. 
 We are going away." 
 
 She brought her hands swiftly together, as if to clap 
 them, then checked herself, remembering where she was.
 
 NOT AS WE WILL, BUT AS WE WOULD, LORD. 135 
 
 " Oh delicious ! " she said, with bated ecstasy. " Are we to 
 stay with my uncle de Heerle? Or, Papa, will you take 
 me to the Hague at last ? " 
 
 " Hush, Wendela, you must not — " 
 
 " But you have promised for the last three years." 
 
 " You must not misunderstand me, little daughter. We 
 are going, never to return." 
 
 Wendela stamped her foot on the marble floor, an old, 
 bad habit of her imjoetuous nature, which required a lot of 
 breaking. " But no," she said, " I do not understand." 
 
 " It is going to be sold," interposed the Baron desper- 
 ately. 
 
 As the words fell upon her, the child's face seemed for 
 a moment to harden and lose all its youthfulness. It grew 
 sharp and thin ; it would have been wonderfully like her 
 mother's, but for the flaming eyes. 
 
 " Sold," she repeated, as if thinking out the word — then 
 fiercely : 
 
 " Papa, this is not your wickedness ! " 
 
 " Wanda ? " cried her mother, but her father motioned 
 back all protest. " Wickedness ? " he said. " No, we are 
 too poor to keep it, and therefore — " 
 
 " Then it is God's ! " she burst out and, leaping up the 
 altar-steps, she suddenly struck down, in fierce passion, one 
 of the great vases filled with white chrysanthemums, send- 
 ing its beautiful weight in clattering fragments over the 
 floor. And then she fled away, she knew not whither, in a 
 loud tempest of weeping. 
 
 Piet Poster found her, half an hour later, curled up 
 near Lady Bertha's Cross, under the trees, in a limp bundle 
 of misery. 
 
 " What is it, Freule ? Are you asleep ? " he asked of a 
 lot of tumbled hair on two rounded arms. But no voice 
 would answer. Nor any feature show itself. 
 
 Something told him however that the silent figure was 
 not asleep, but animate, watchful, listening. We always
 
 136 TOE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 feel that. He was alarmed, or perhaps a little curious. He 
 gently touched, then shook, an irresponsive arm. Then, 
 although he was only a little peasant-boy, he hit upon a 
 powerful ruse. 
 
 " She is ill," he said aloud. " I must go for some- 
 body." 
 
 And he ran oS a few steps. She started to her feet im- 
 mediately, hot and ruffled. " Can't you leave me alone V " 
 she cried. " I want to be quiet." 
 
 He came back quite close. " I'm so sorry," he said. 
 " You've been crying. "What is it ? " 
 
 " I'm not crying," she answered angrily. 
 
 He was too much of a gentleman to amend his words or 
 to charge her with prevarication. 
 
 "I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't know." And he de- 
 parted, with his hands pushed down tight into tlie pockets 
 of his rusty small-clothes. 
 
 Upon which she, being a woman right down to the very 
 bottom of her twelve-year-old development, called him 
 back. " Piet," she said, " can you keep a secret ? " 
 
 " Yes," he made answer stolidly, with a still lower push 
 of his tightly-wedged arms. 
 
 " But I mean a real secret. Eeally truly. Never to tell 
 nobody till somebody else tells you." 
 
 " Yes," said Piet, and lifted his blue eyes and looked at 
 her. 
 
 " I am going away for good," said TVendela, with a 
 catch in her throat, and then, giving way to the very lux- 
 ury of grief : " We shall never see each other any more." 
 
 Piet stood some moments immovable, his round pink 
 and white face very troubled. At last he said sturdily : 
 
 " Never is a long word, Freule." 
 
 She was piqued. " You don't care," she cried. " You've 
 been saying all along that things weren't as they used to be. 
 You've got another sweetheart. I know you have." 
 
 " No, I haven't," interrupted Piet.
 
 NOT AS WE WILL, BUT AS WE WOULD, LORD. 137 
 
 " Yes, you have. And you'll want me less than ever 
 now I can't make you Lord of Deynum. Though I should 
 never have done that, for you're only a peasant-boy. You're 
 a bad boy, besides, and it was only my fun." 
 
 " I know that, but I'm not a bad boy," replied Piet. 
 " And you'll come back to Deynum when you've done." 
 
 "Done what? We're all going. Oh you stupid, the 
 Castle is going to be sold." 
 
 " Sold," repeated the boy, just as his young mistress had 
 done an hour ago. He gave such a dig with his fists that 
 something cracked about his chubby, black-clothed body. 
 
 He was a slow- thinking boy : it took liim a long time to 
 work round to what he was in search of. Ultimately he 
 said : 
 
 " I'll give you all my marbles. I'll give you the crystal 
 one with the silver lamb inside." 
 
 " I don't want your marbles." 
 
 " Yes, you do, Freule. You've teased me about that sil- 
 ver one for weeks." 
 
 " I tell you I don't want 'em. I don't want anything. 
 Never no more. You're a horrid boy. Go away. I thought 
 you would have cried any amount about never seeing me 
 again." 
 
 Piet Poster was utterly at a loss. " I am dreadfully sor- 
 ry," he said. " More than about anything. More than if 
 Nick had died." 
 
 " Thank you ! To compare me to your goat ! " cried 
 Wendela in high indignation. 
 
 " But boys don't cry, Freule, when they're son-y. I never 
 cry, never since I was a little boy." 
 
 " You're a little boy still. And you cried when Mamma 
 scolded you for letting Nick get among her flowers." 
 
 " That's different. Your Mamma didn't scold me, and 
 then something made me cry ; I couldn't help it. But I 
 didn't cry when father thrashed me for it." 
 
 Wendela walked ofP, without condescending to further
 
 138 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 parley. She had seen Piet's father coming up along the 
 lane. And she called back with sndden misgiving : " Re- 
 member, it's a fearful secret, Piet ! " 
 
 The head-gardener heard the words. " What's this ? " 
 he said roughly to his son. " What mischief have you been 
 up to again with the Freule ? " 
 
 " It's no harm, father." 
 
 "Well, then, what is it?" 
 
 " It's a secret, father : I can't tell." 
 
 Poster was a brute. He struck the child a heavy blow 
 on the head. " I'll teach you to answer me like that," he 
 said. " Tell me this instant." 
 
 " I can't," said Piet, vainly trying to avoid a second blow. 
 His father's curiosity was aroused. Piet Poster had a bad 
 time of it that morning. 
 
 " They have no right to sell it," said Wendela to herself 
 fiercely, again and again. " It is mine ! "
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 AN aristocrat's IDEA OF THE LAW. 
 
 The news was all over the village in a couple of hours. 
 The head-gardener felt the more angry with his son for hav- 
 ing deprived him of the " primeur." 
 
 The Baron knew that everyone knew — had he not or- 
 dered his steward to publish the tidings ? — and in each 
 meeting with each of his vassals lay hidden a fresh dis- 
 crowning. 
 
 He locked himself up in his room. That was a weak- 
 ness, and so he told himself. The Baroness went among 
 her poor as usual, encountered, at every step, by red eyes 
 and looks of dull despair. One or two tried to speak, but 
 she motioned them imperiously into silence, and then in- 
 quired after their ailments, or the baby. 
 
 The Baron, in the solitude of his private-room had 
 enough to occupy him. Never, perhaj^s, was a home of 
 many centuries so hurriedly shifted from hand to hand, and 
 two days supervened of ceaseless packing and much confu- 
 sion. All that the Baron wished to retain was rapidly 
 inventoried by the steward and stowed away in the great 
 drawing-room : the armour, the portraits, the safes with the 
 plate and jewellery, and, above all, the archives. There 
 was a great jumble of it, all huddled pell-mell, boxes and 
 chests, and heavy oak-cupboards, " to bo arranged here- 
 after"; with his own hand the Baron had locked them. 
 The servants were active, but flurried, some of them deeply 
 grieved and aggrieved, others interested and amused.
 
 140 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 The Baron sat before his account-books. They are 
 seldom pleasant reading to an honest man, for an honest 
 man is usually a poor one. To him, who had been quite 
 honest, but very imprudent, they were unpleasant reading 
 indeed. His recent losses at the Stock-Exchange had, in 
 spite of all his computations, exceeded anything he could 
 have imagined possible, and the crash of the last day's sale 
 had made them irretrievable. He had seen the ripe apjile 
 falling straight into Count Eexelaer's lap, and, with a sud- 
 den impulse, had dashed it away to the Belgian. And with 
 the Baron there was no question of mere rivalry or malice 
 in this solemn struggle to keep the dead lion's skin unsullied 
 by the shoulders of the Pseudo-Eexelaer. It was the one 
 duty he still owed to his dying race, that it should die. 
 
 The Count at the Hague would undoubtedly have paid 
 more than any other living man — it was this which Strum 
 had rightly taken into consideration ; had the Count not 
 been willing to assume the entire weight of the mortgages ? 
 And the Baron could well have used the money. To pay 
 off tlie entire debt on the estate and to meet the demand 
 from his brokers he must sell whatever funded property he 
 possessed, and yet, count up his assets as often as he would, 
 he still always found himself confronted by a deficit of fifty 
 thousand florins. It is a small sum to have, but it is an 
 immense sum to want. He must have it to save him from 
 bankruptcy. Yet — be it noted at once — this does not mean 
 that he was absolutely penniless. It means, unfortunately, 
 that some thirty thousand florins of his wife's little prop- 
 erty had been unexpectedly swallowed up in the vortex, but 
 an income of four thousand (£330) still remained secure, 
 this being derived from a fund not under his control, of 
 which Strum, as the family-notary, was hereditary trustee. 
 It was Eexelaer-money, the sum having been set aside by a 
 head of the house in the seventeenth century, with the 
 especial object of forming a small annual allowance to be 
 paid, in perpetuity, to the wife of the reigning lord, under
 
 AN ARISTOCRAT'S IDEA OP THE LAW. 141 
 
 the name of " The Lady's Dole." It had been so paid to 
 this day. 
 
 " The Notary Strum is waiting," announced Gustave in 
 a loud voice, after having twice vainly coughed. It was 
 Gustave's peculiarity to indicate everyone as far as possible 
 by his trade or profession. " There are too many masters 
 now-a-days," he said. " Look at me. I am plain Gustave 
 Gorgel." And he would throw out his chest and look very 
 big and sj^lendid. The words were modest. 
 
 The Baron started and dropped his pen. " Just so," he 
 said. " Let him come in. You find me very busy, Strum. 
 It has come so unexpectedly, this decision to go abroad. 
 But I hope the change will do Mevrouw good. She is look- 
 ing very white." 
 
 " Mevrouw has always looked white," said Strum. He 
 sat down, all of a piece, as if he were afraid of dropping 
 some part of himself and losing it. He was calmly con- 
 tented. The sale would bring him in a large profit, and he 
 would probably become agent to an absentee owner. The 
 Baron was a fool not to have preferred the better buyer, but 
 that was the Baron's business. He, Strum, had done his duty. 
 
 " Still, I hope the climate of Germany will do her good," 
 said Mynheer van Rexelaer. 
 
 "The climate of Germany is large, Mynheer. Which 
 part of it is to benefit the Baroness?" 
 
 " I — I am not certain as yet where we shall go." 
 
 "You are only certain. Mynheer, that you must be 
 gone." Strum dropped his eyes over his great gloved 
 hands, and spread out the hands on his knees. The shad- 
 ow of the majesty of Deynum had lain over him ever since 
 his babyhood. In another day or two he would be rid of 
 these liexelaers for ever. Ouf ! 
 
 " Strum," said the Baron, roused to his duty by the 
 Notary's insolence. " We are ruined. You know it. It 
 would have broken your good father's heart, had he lived 
 to see this day."
 
 142 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " My good father's heart was continually breaking, but 
 he managed to live very well on the fragments. ' Xever 
 mind a cracked heart,' I have heard him say, ' if only your 
 head be sound.'" 
 
 For the moment the Baron felt agreeably cooled by this 
 succession of douches. It was quite easy, he found, to con- 
 front his old dependents, if they remained indifferent to, or 
 even secretly gloried in, his discomfiture. 
 
 " I have sent for you, sir," he said haughtily, " to trans- 
 act business. There is one point especially which I must 
 speak about. The fund under your administration, known 
 as ' The Lady's Dole,' amounts at present, I believe, to a 
 sum total of about one hundred thousand florins. I sjoeak 
 under correction ? " 
 
 The Xotary nodded, and blinked his eyes behind their 
 spectacles. 
 
 " According to the terms of the settlement that money 
 becomes the property of the last representative of the house, 
 as soon as it is absolutely certain that there will be no more 
 Baronesses van Eexelaer. That time has come. The cer- 
 tainty has existed for several years. There will be no more 
 Baronesses van Eexelaer." 
 
 The Xotary shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " I require the money now to pay off the mortgages. 
 That is to say : I require half of it. AVe must sell out." 
 
 "Bat your own private property, Mynheer?" began 
 young Xicholas in — for him — an insinuating tone. 
 
 " I require the money," repeated the Baron in a louder 
 voice. " And, according to the terms of the settlement, as 
 I say, there is no reason for reserving it any longer." 
 
 The Notary took off his spectacles and commenced care- 
 fully rubbing them. And then a sly leer crept over his 
 naked-looking face — we all know the suddenly undressed 
 appearance of these short-sighted eyes — and he murmured : 
 
 "Except the fortunate fact that your lady is not yet 
 deceased."
 
 AN ARISTOCRAT'S IDEA OP THE LAW. 143 
 
 " What has that to do with it ? " cried tlie Baron indig- 
 nantly. "Do you expect Mevrouw to object? Shall we 
 have her in ? " 
 
 " No, no," cried the Notary hastily. 
 
 " I should think not," said Mynheer van Eexelaer, sink- 
 ing back in scorn. " As I pointed out, Mevrouw is the 
 last of those who could possibly be entitled to the interest, 
 and she will be only too glad to forego it, if the caj^ital can 
 be used on my behalf and her own." 
 
 " But, unfortunately, trustees must be guided by their 
 trust alone. Mine enjoins me to preserve the capital in- 
 tact as long as there exists, or can exist, a consort of a 
 Rexelaer van Deynum. It can therefore only be paid over 
 to your widow or, if you survive the Baroness, to your 
 daughter after your death. Surely you see that." 
 
 But he did not see it, simple-minded gentleman that he 
 was. " Am I to believe," he cried nervously, " that you 
 refuse me this money which belongs by rights to my wife 
 and myself. Surely you can understand that she is the last 
 Baroness." 
 
 Strum readjusted his spectacles and looked down. 
 
 " You refuse ? " cried the Baron hotly, rising in his seat. 
 " Yes or no ? " 
 
 Strum pushed back his cliair with a grating jerk along 
 the floor. " And supposing the Baroness were to die," he 
 said roughly. " Supposing you were to marry again. You 
 are barely sixty. Supposing — ' 
 
 " Hold," shouted the Baron, beside himself. " You in- 
 sult me. I shall not marry again. I want this money. I 
 must have it. Must ; do you hear ? It is the only possible 
 means of avoiding disgrace. For centuries your ancestors 
 have been the faithful servants of an illustrious house. I 
 am an old man ; you are a young one. For the last time I 
 ask you: Will you rescue the name of Ilexelacr?" He 
 breathed hard. Oh, the humiliations of this pleading ! 
 
 " I can't do it," burst out Nicholas with an oath. He
 
 144 THE GKEATEU GLORY. 
 
 was niovec], iu s^iite of liis common sense. " You want to 
 make a dishonest man of me. I won't. And my dead 
 fatlier whom yon always respected — " 
 
 " Go" thundered the Baron, pointing to the door. 
 
 " Why didn't you sell to Count Kexelaer, Mynheer the 
 Baron ? " Strum went on recklessly. " I had arranged it 
 all for you, and there would have been money enough." 
 He came nearer ; a sudden idea had seized him. " The 
 heirlooms," he suggested eagerly with the old smile of sup- 
 pliant impertinence upon his speckled face. " The portraits 
 and all the rest? Count Eexelaer would give a lot for 
 those?" 
 
 And then, in the dimness and the whirlwind, the Baron 
 struck him.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE SPOILER AND THE SPOILED. 
 
 The Baron was very, very sorry, as he sat alone, once 
 more, among his litter of papers and account-books. That 
 is the worst of a good man's forgetting himself, he is 
 obliged to remember afterwards. While he still smiled at 
 the other's threats of vengeance, the vengeance had already 
 begun in his own awakening remorse. Yet he might well 
 have dreaded Strum's seeming impotence, could he have 
 read the future. We seldom can, but of one thing we may 
 be certain. The revenge of the weakest cuts deepest, be- 
 cause most subtly planned. 
 
 " There is one thing I should like to know," said Gus 
 tave, standing, stiff and smart, by the Baron's elbow. That 
 gentleman turned in annoyance. 
 
 " I believed Mynheer had answered my knock. I beg 
 pardon," continued the servant, whose prevarications were 
 always virtuous. He governed his master, to a certain ex- 
 tent, by alert apology. 
 
 " Well, what is it ? Be quick." 
 
 " It is an impertinence. Mynheer the Baron." Gen- 
 erous natures, as Gustave well knew, condone a fault con- 
 fessed. 
 
 " Then be impertinent. It would not be for the first 
 time." 
 
 " Mynheer the Baron confuses me in his memory with 
 the coachman. W^hat I would venture to ask — begging par- 
 don — is this." He stopped. "You remember, Mynheer, 
 when we were children here together?"
 
 140 THE GREATER (ILORY. 
 
 " Yes. Is that wliat you intruded ou me to ask?" 
 
 " And yon remember, Mynheer, when I got you your 
 saddle after Waterloo — we Avere both twelve then — you re- 
 member ? — the King's Wine I " 
 
 " Of course I remember. Things are bad enough, Gus- 
 tave. Don't make them worse." 
 
 "And you remember," continued Gustave, speaking 
 faster and faster, and louder and louder, " the war of 1830, 
 you oflficer and I corporal. You remember Antwerp and 
 the Hero Chasse and the great charge, and your wound, and 
 how I found you, and the King's Wine again ? How we 
 thrashed them, the blue blouses ! How they ran, the cow- 
 ards ! You remember. Major ? And the Prince telling the 
 army you were not only the noblest of his nobles, but the 
 bravest of his soldiers, too ! " 
 
 The man's voice had risen to a cry of triumph. His 
 master was scratching an enveloiDe with a pen. 
 
 " And you remember, Mynheer," Gustave went on 
 after a moment of sad silence, " our coming home to 
 the Baroness, and later on the birth of the Freule, and 
 all." 
 
 " Great Heaven," cried the Baron lifting up a haggard 
 face. " Am I likely, in my grave, to forget ? " 
 
 " What I mean, ]\I}Tiheer, is that we have always, so to 
 say, borne everything — begging your pardon — together, 
 from the cradle. Xot that it has anything to do with my 
 question which is just this, saving your Presence. Is there 
 ready money enough for this sudden emergency, Mynheer, 
 or is there not ? " 
 
 " There is not," cried the Baron, whose nerves were by 
 this time altogether unstrung, " and if that scoundrel of a 
 iN'otary has been chattering on his way downstairs — " 
 
 " No one has said anything, Mynheer. But I imagined 
 it might be possible, in the unexpectedness of the change. 
 And that brings me to what I wanted to say. It is only 
 right, of course, that Mynheer should have secrets from me.
 
 THE SPOILER AND THE SPOILED. 147 
 
 But I have long had a secret from Mynheer, and that was 
 wrong." 
 
 The Baron looked up vaguely, waiting for more. 
 
 " I — I," stammered Gustave, quite at a loss, despite his 
 martial bearing. " Mynheer has always had my savings in 
 his keeping " — an expectant frown gathered on his master's 
 face — " that is nothing. I mean the savings. But a num- 
 ber of years ago a cousin of mine left me fifteen thousand 
 francs. I never told you, Mynheer. I was afraid you would 
 want me to use the money, in a shop or something. And I 
 left it with the rascally broker, to take care of it for me." 
 
 " And of course it is gone," said the Baron. " Well, 
 you have fortunately still your savings, which are secure in 
 my keeping, as you say." 
 
 Gustave smoothed his grey hair shamefacedly. 
 
 " I am afraid it is different, Mynheer," he replied with 
 an apologetic smile. " The broker advised me to speculate 
 with the money, as I didn't know what else to do with it. 
 What was I to do with it, I that in my young time, when 
 you never have enough, could not even pay the Vivandiere? 
 It came too late, that's the truth. I was here, and had all 
 I wanted. The interest accumulated, and the speculations 
 succeeded, and now, what with my savings and this money, 
 I'm worth sixty thousand florins, the broker says." 
 
 " You are a singularly lucky man," said the Baron 
 bitterly. 
 
 The other shook his head. " I don't know about that," 
 he replied, " if I may make so bold as to differ. I didn't 
 want the money, but I liked the speculating, after a time. 
 It's amusing. Mynheer. But of late I've had scruples. 
 Especially of nights, and tliey're dreadful, are scruples, 
 worse than fleas, if I may be forgiven for saying so, for you 
 can't catch them, and they go on biting, after they've had 
 enough and you've said you were sorry. I don't think it's a 
 nice way of earning money ; it's a better way of losing it." 
 
 "You think so, do you? You speak from the winner's 
 
 n
 
 14S THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 poiut of view." The Baron's eyes went wandering away 
 over liis open books. 
 
 " Well, you see, Mynheer, one man's winnings are an- 
 other man's losings, aren't they ? It's like cards. And what 
 I can't understand is that I who never would touch a card 
 in barracks should take to playing on 'Change in after life." 
 He shook his head over this enigma, an old tormentor. 
 
 " Well, don't grumble at your luck," said the Baron im- 
 patiently. He was disgusted with himself for being jealous 
 — of his servant. 
 
 " If I grumble at anything, it's my conscience, Mynheer. 
 I wish the abominable thing were dead. It don't do to have 
 a conscience and speculate. I don't feel haj^py about my 
 winnings. I never earned them. I've stolen them from 
 somebody, the somebody that lost, as at cards. I've stolen 
 them from you, Mynheer. Lord forgive me ; the word's 
 out! And I wish you'd take the money back." 
 
 " And who told you I speculated ? How dare you speak 
 to me like that?" cried the Baron fiercely. On any other 
 day he might have been affectionate, but on this he was 
 angry. 
 
 " I told you it was an impertinence. Mynheer. I can 
 only say : Forgive me. Mine was American railways too, 
 Mynheer, whatever they may be. It's always American rail- 
 ways. So you see, it's your own money I've got. I've taken 
 it from you and Mevrouw and the Freule. And I do wish, 
 for God's sake, and my own peace of soul, you'd take it back 
 again ! ' " 
 
 He actually held out a bundle which he had drawn from 
 his bulgy tail-pocket. His voice Avas passionate with hope. 
 He felt like a highwayman, making restitution. 
 
 " Take the things away," said the Baron testily, pushing 
 the outstretched arm aside. " You are indeed impertinent, 
 as you say. And what you propose is absurd, Gustave, as 
 well as improper. Be thankful that, now you must leave 
 me, you will be able to live in luxury." And then he drew
 
 THE SPOILER AND THE SPOILED. 149 
 
 down his old comrade's face close to liis own, and looked 
 into his eyes. " I can't take the money, dear fellow," he 
 said. " God bless you. It is you must forgive me. We 
 shall think of some other way." 
 
 " I want no leave-takings," the Baron had said several 
 times during that crowded morning. " I could not bear 
 that." The Baroness had not answered at first ; later on 
 she had said : " There is nothing unbearable. Hell must 
 be bearable, Keinout, or Satan would die. We must not 
 count on incapacity for suffering." 
 
 The child was very silent, surprised that no one alluded 
 to her sacrilege of the preceding day. They were to leave 
 next morning early and go into temporary lodgings at 
 Cleves, on the other side of the Grerman frontier. " About 
 one thing I am resolved," said the Baron. " I must never 
 see this place again." The contract was to be signed that 
 evening ; the Marquis could take possession next day. A 
 woman, Loripont's wife, had been telegraphed for, and the 
 great mansion was to be abandoned to these three. 
 
 " Get a bottle of the wine, Gustave," said the Baron at 
 dinner, sitting erect before his untouched plate, " and you 
 shall have a glass of it too. I have had it moved to the 
 drawing-room with the rest. No one else shall own it. 
 Least of all a Belgian." They were a little dramatic in 
 those terrible days. It was their salvation. To some lives 
 there come moments when we cannot jog on in the midway 
 of existence ; we must either sink utterly, or soar. The 
 child's thoughts were preoccupied with Piet Poster. She 
 despised herself for eating her dinner. 
 
 The meal was drawing to a close, when Gustave slipped 
 through a narrow opening between the heavy oak-doors. 
 " The people are here, Mynheer," he said, " come to wish 
 your Nobleness good-liye and God-speed." 
 
 " The people ? " cried the Baron. " Who ? " 
 
 *' Everybody," replied Gustavo, and threw wide the doors.
 
 150 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 The far side of the hall was full of faces under the soft 
 light of its stained glass, and with the glitter of the armour 
 on both sides between grim portraits and masses of late 
 flowers and greenery. The leaders were huddled together 
 in front. Dievert the steward, and the head-gardener and 
 the coachman, with the other in and out-door servants, and 
 behind them the great farmers with their substantial wives, 
 and the tradesmen from the village, and behind these again 
 a medley of retainers and dependents, pressing the others 
 forward, as the doors opened, till the whole vestibule was 
 occupied. A flood of red-cheeked, awkward faces, the men 
 in tight-fitting black, the wives in print jackets and far- 
 stretching caps, belaced, befrilled, be-ribboned and be- 
 starched. A crowd which had been anxious to put in an 
 appearance, but which would feel fur more comfortable 
 when once again outside. 
 
 The Baron looked from one to another till his eyes 
 rested on Bulbius in a corner by the door. " This is most 
 kind," he stammered. " I am at a loss — " Then he 
 stopped, seeing that the steward was about to make a 
 speech. He rose and came forward, with his wife and 
 child. 
 
 The steward, Dievert, was a supremely self-conscious man, 
 corpulent, important, inclined to look warm. He looked 
 very warm indeed as he began his carefully prepared ora- 
 tion : 
 
 " Mynheer the Baron, our highly respective — respected 
 landheer, we, that is all those who are in any way connected 
 with your property of Deynnm, we have — we are — " He 
 stuck. 
 
 " Dreadfully sorry you're going away," said a voice from 
 the back. 
 
 The steward frowned, but this outrage suddenly restored 
 him to the full command of his diminishing dignity. He 
 launched safely into smooth floods of laudatory eloquence, 
 praising the Baron, the Baroness, and all their ancestors
 
 THE SPOILER AND THE SPOILED. 151 
 
 and belongings, for all deeds done and undone, for their 
 birth and their existence, for the death of such as had gone 
 before. And as he heaped up his praises, his face grew 
 warmer and warmer, and the Baron's heart froze cold as 
 stone. Simple-minded as the latter was, he could see 
 clearly enough in such matters as belonged to his com- 
 petence. He was well aware that Dievert was an honest 
 steward who had never cheated his master above, and 
 never beneath, the legitimate limit of a steward's cheat- 
 ery. 
 
 " And now that the sun is to set upon our village," per- 
 orated the spokesman of the peasantry, " now that — " (sud- 
 denly he began wondering to himself what the new lord 
 would be like, and the thought distracted his attention. 
 lie stuck again). " Now that — now then — " 
 
 " Now then," said Wendela, too audibly, from her place 
 by her mother's side. There was a general laugh, and in 
 the reaction a woman's voice broke into shrill weeping. 
 Others followed the tempting example. The speech was at 
 an end. 
 
 " Thank you. Thank you," said the Baron, shaking 
 hands with the wet-eyed and the dry-eyed, the simpering, 
 the stolid, and the sorrowful. He stood in the entrance. 
 In calmer moments he could have told you all about their 
 sentiments and measured to an ounce (of groceries) the 
 sympathy and sadness of every one of them. 
 
 " Come, Bulbius," he said, when it was over. " Come in 
 and drink good luck to all of us." 
 
 " I can't, I can't," protested the Father in broken ac- 
 cents, and solemnly emptied the glass the Baron had poured 
 out. Then, without more ado, he struck it against the side 
 of the table, snapping it at the stem. 
 
 " Pray for us, reverend father," burst out the Baroness, 
 " when we are gone. Pray for us night and day. You can- 
 not pray enough. And peradventure — " 
 
 " Hush," he interrupted her. " Gracious lady, prayer
 
 152 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 has no peradvcnture. Alas that sometimes, in God's wis- 
 dom, adversity should be its Amen." 
 
 He turned away, to leave them, but at the door he looked 
 round. "■ I forgot to tell you," he said. " Veronica has been 
 in a terrible temper all day. At one moment I feared she 
 was going to beat me. She has such a tender heart."
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE marquis's HEIRS. 
 
 The Marquis was restless. He walked up and down the 
 room. For a moment a fictitious strength was upon him, 
 and he rejoiced in it. The nun eyed him cautiously out of 
 her little slits of eyes, under the solemn veil. 
 
 For there was a nun with him now, a Sister of Mercy. 
 The Marquis wanted a hundred useless attentions in the 
 constant changes of his whim. Nursing him was exhaust- 
 ing work, physically and mentally, for, in his continuous 
 flight from himself, he could not be in repose, and he would 
 not be alone. 
 
 And so every moment the sick man thought of some- 
 thing else he wanted, merely because it was something else. 
 Loripont wearied under the perpetual strain, and showed it. 
 " Then get somebody till your wife comes," said his master. 
 " Not longer. Get a sister. They hold their tongues." 
 The woman had come that morning, and had ministered to 
 the Marquis's wants all day. She was a fat, middle-aged 
 woman, mealy, expressionless, buttoned-eyed. She spoke in 
 the shortest of sentences, and a sleepy voice. 
 
 " The house is exactly what I needed," said the Marquis 
 for the twentieth time that day. He stopped and vaguely 
 eyed the monstrous lamp in the middle of the ceiling. " I 
 shall be absolute master of my surroundings there, alone 
 with the Loriponts, in a wide expanse of park. I could not 
 have found better, had I hunted for years. Of course it is 
 enormously expensive, but what matters money to a man 
 who may be dead in a month ? "
 
 151 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 He walked a few steps farther and halted in front of the 
 nun. 
 
 " What matters money," he repeated, " to a man who 
 will be dead in a month ? " 
 
 " Xotliing," rej^lied the nun. They had sent him one 
 who understood a little French. 
 
 " And besides, the value of the estate remains. I offered 
 him the lowest figure ; it may not be a bad bargain after 
 all. Absolute seclusion ! I should say luck had befriended 
 me, were it not that I knew that everything is possible to 
 him that pays." 
 
 He rambled on, to himself, not to her, though he liked 
 to have a human creature listening. In an hour they would 
 be coming with the deed of purchase. To-morrow he would 
 hide himself, behind thick walls and wide woods, to shriek 
 out his life if he chose. For the outside world, he would 
 sink away into slow oblivion, and none of his whilom 
 "friends" would ever ai^prehend that the unconquerable 
 Marquis had, in his turn, been conquered by the great Con- 
 queror, Pain. 
 
 " What would it matter," continued M. de la Jolais, 
 " whether I left behind me ten francs or ten million ? The 
 Vicomte, my dear cousin, would not have a penny, could I 
 deprive him of his share. I hate him. And as for my 
 sister's child, whom I have never seen, why should I love 
 her?" 
 
 " What do you say ? " he asked, almost fiercely, turning 
 on the Sister of Mercy. He did not much care what she 
 said, as long as she talked. 
 
 " Xothing," replied Sister Constantia, smoothly, and 
 went on watching him out of her half-closed eyes. 
 
 The Marquis sank into his large elbow-chair. 
 
 " A beautiful quality in a woman," he said half sneer- 
 ingly, half smilingly. " Had Madame Cochonnard under- 
 stood its value, I might now have had somebody worth 
 leaving my money to. But she got into a habit of saying
 
 THE MARQUIS'S HEIRS. 155 
 
 ' Yes ! ' the worst thing your sex can get into the hii'bit of 
 sayijig. Could you have loved a creature of the name of 
 Cochonnard ? " 
 
 The nun dropped her eyes. " We love no one, Mon- 
 sieur," she said. 
 
 " A Avoman, I mean, of course," said the Marquis, testily. 
 " I do not forget to whom I am speaking." 
 
 " Ah — ," said the nun slowly. " We love everybody. 
 Monsieur. Yes, I could have loved anyone, whatever their 
 name." 
 
 " Then excuse my saying, ma soeur, that you have no 
 discriminating taste. Why, the very name is unpronounce- 
 able in society, so naturally the woman that bore it was 
 dead there." 
 
 He fell into a reverie. " To whom would you leave your 
 money," he said presently, " if you were dying, and had no 
 one to leave it to ? " 
 
 He talked thus constantly of dying. He had gone 
 tlirough all the experiences of horror and indignation indi- 
 cated above. Yet never for one moment had he realized 
 the actuality of death. It was in him, yet outside him. He 
 was present at the tragedy of himself. 
 
 But, for the moment, at any rate, he was alive. 
 
 " To my mother," replied Sister Constantia, " the com- 
 mon mother of us all. Lo, there are my mother and my 
 brethren." 
 
 The Marquis made a grimace. " Yes, I know," he said, 
 " It is a large family. But I have never felt attracted 
 towards the Great Unwashed. That surely is pardonable 
 in me, for I have always detested my relations." 
 
 " If I were dying," said the nun, roused from her placidity 
 by his manner, " I would strive to make my peace with God." 
 
 " Hoity-toity," he answered. " I know what is meant 
 by that. All of it to a lot of lazy priests, for masses they 
 never say ! No, ma s(eur, I am an upholder of religion — it 
 is invaluable — but I aui not a fool."
 
 15G THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 They were silent for some time ; she being too angry to 
 reply. 
 
 " "Waste is wickedness," added tlie Marquis spitefully. 
 " I never spent a jDennv, but I got a penny's worth for 
 it." 
 
 "Pennies become pounds in the heavenly exchequer," 
 replied Sister Constantia. 
 
 He rested his face on his hands ; the face was thin, the 
 hands yet thinner, long, slender and white. 
 
 When at last he moved again, he said, without looking 
 at her : " I wonder, would it be worth while? " 
 
 She waited. 
 
 " Xot to give it to the priests, mind you. I won't give 
 a penny to the priests. But to let the poor have it. Some- 
 thing must be done with it, and that way might have its 
 advantages. Your convent, now, does it interest itself in 
 the poor ? I supjDOse so ? " 
 
 " Indeed it does," said the sister. She opened her eyes 
 wide, not that it made them any wider. 
 
 " Well, I must see. I have never thought it out before. 
 I have never realized, nor wished to realize, the idea of hav- 
 ing heirs. The old Baron here, I fancy, suggested the sub- 
 ject, and I daresay my ' poor relations ' will do as well as 
 anybody else. That means ' the monkeys,' doesn't it ? I 
 don't mean those ; I mean the other set, the canaille. Peu- 
 ah, it is an unj)leasant subject. Oblige me by fetching An- 
 toine." 
 
 Antoine, who had been lying down for too short a rest, 
 appeared with sullen face. " I am too lonely," said the 
 Marquis. " I must have something to amuse me. You, 
 to-morrow you will have your wife. I do not know 
 whether she amuses you, but she keeps you occupied. I 
 think I should like to have some of the horses ; there is 
 sure to be plenty of room at that place. Write and tell 
 them to send ' Jeanneton,' and ' Sooty Jack,' and ' Yeuve 
 Cliquot.' It will amuse me to look at them. And I
 
 THE MARQUIS'S HEIRS. 157 
 
 might as well have the dogs — the house-dogs — from Brus- 
 sels." 
 
 " But, if Monsieur le Marquis wishes it to remain un- 
 known that he is here — " 
 
 " Tiens, that is true." How weak his head must be 
 growing ! " I fear I shall have to give up the idea. I am 
 sorry. But tell them to send 'Jeannetou.' A groom can 
 travel with her to the frontier, and you must fetch her 
 there. I have been thinking, if there was anyone I should 
 care to take leave of, and I have set my heart on seeing 
 ' Jeanneton ' again. She certainly is the one creature who 
 loves me." 
 
 " Monsieur le Marquis forgets the dogs," said the valet 
 calmly. 
 
 " She must be lonely, poor beast, among a lot of servants. 
 She cannot abide servants, like myself. And perhaps, after 
 all, I shall get better, and ride her. These doctors are con- 
 stantly mistaken." 
 
 " They are," said Antoine. 
 
 The Marquis abandoned his listless attitude. " Do you 
 know," he asked eagerly, " of their making a mistake in a 
 case like mine ? " 
 
 " Yes," replied Antoine, who had that morning heard 
 tlie tale, through Bulbius, from Veronica. " I know of a 
 case of a lady whom all the doctors had given up." And 
 he launched into a wonderful account of some homeopathic 
 cure. " I do not believe a word of it," interposed the sick 
 man occasionally, as he sat drinking in the glad details, 
 lie was quite vexed when the arrival of the notary and his 
 two clerks interrupted the story. A few minutes later the 
 Baron appeared. He held out his hand to Strum, m'Iio ig- 
 nored it. 
 
 The deed was read, the usual formalities were gone 
 through, the necessary arrangements were made for the 
 transfer of the purchase-money. The only " incident " of 
 any Importance occurred when the Baron van Eexelaer
 
 158 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 passed across a slip of folded paper to M. dc la Jolais. The 
 Marquis read " "Will you iiermit the clause to be added, that 
 the chapel remain intact ? " 
 
 " But certainl}'," said M. de la Jolais. 
 
 And then came the signing of the names. For the last 
 time the Baron, now signing away his manorial rights, 
 would call himself by the name which had been handed 
 down to him through five slow centuries. He laid down 
 the pen. Then, hurriedly seizing it, he sprawled the words 
 across the page. And he buried his hands deep in his 
 pockets, lest any should notice how they trembled. 
 
 Under this signature came the Marquis's in neat little 
 letters : Josejihe Xavier Hippolyte de la Jolais-Farjolle de 
 Saint Leu." 
 
 " Et de Deynum," said the Baron aloud, in the bitter 
 scorn of his heart. And then he coloured scarlet, for regret 
 of the unheeding insult, as it seemed, to M. de la Jolais. 
 Xo one sjjoke. 
 
 TThen, all being over, the Baron van Eexelaer was pre- 
 paring to slip away, M. de la Jolais called him back. To 
 Strum the Marquis said : " Wait downstairs, if you please. 
 I may still have need of you." Strum bowed, with a grin. 
 
 The Baron put down his hat again, greatly flurried. 
 Had the Belgian perhaps heard — through that villain Strum 
 — of the impending bankruptcy ? Was he going to offer 
 help? If so, it must be declined, but the offer would ren- 
 der easier and more acceptable the Baron's own proposal, 
 that terrible inevitable proposal, to which he had been 
 screwing up his courage all day long. 
 
 The Marquis waited till they were quite alone — in that 
 quite-alone-ness which does not come until a few moments 
 after the door has been closed. Then he said : " Do you 
 know any cases, Monsieur, in which doctors have been seri- 
 ously mistaken in their diagnosis of diseases of the stom- 
 ach ! "
 
 THE MARQUIS'S HEIRS. 159 
 
 " I know very little," replied Mynheer Eexelaer, " about 
 any diseases at all." " He wants to lead up to something," 
 he thought, " I wonder how." 
 
 " You will know some day," said the Marquis grimly, 
 " about one disease — your own. Then you do not think you 
 can answer my question affirmatively." 
 
 " I fear not." 
 
 The Marquis had been suddenly elated, he was now as 
 unreasonably cast down. Dying men do not only catch at 
 straws ; they see them floating where there is merely a rip- 
 ple on the w^ater. 
 
 " Then forgive me for retaining you. Let me thank you 
 once more. Monsieur, now we are alone, for your great kind- 
 ness in abandoning to me your beautiful mansion so soon." 
 He closed his eyes. 
 
 But the Baron stayed on. " Forgive ?»f," he began, '' if, 
 before I leave you, I venture — " 
 
 But the Marquis, who never consciously interrupted his 
 equals, had not even heard the other speak, so busy was he 
 with his own thoughts. " My heirs must give the place its 
 due," he said. 
 
 The Baron was much disconcerted. " I am deeply grate- 
 ful, at any rate," he replied, " that it will remain in Catholic 
 hands. The Vicomte de la Jolais, I have no doubt, when 
 the effervescence of youth is past, will make an excellent 
 lord of Deynum." 
 
 " The Vicomte will never make an excellent anything. 
 Monsieur. There is one fault for which I know no pardon, 
 it is disrespect and disobedience to the head of the house. 
 For these I have disinherited nearer relations than the Vi- 
 comte." 
 
 " I do not believe in disinheriting," said the Baron gruff- 
 ly. " Family-money is family property. For the chance 
 possessor to divert it to strangers is a crime." 
 
 " The word is a strong one," protested the Marquis, net- 
 tled. " And a woman, then, who disgraces herself?"
 
 100 THE GREATEIl GLORY. 
 
 " Her children are not to blame for that," answered 
 the Baron obstinately. " And if the woman be the 
 God-appointed heiress, then that woman in God's name. 
 Never a stranger. Xot as long as the blood-claim is 
 there." 
 
 " Tiens, Madame Cochonnard ! " said the Marquis. 
 " Well, perhajos you are right, although it is you — permit 
 me to say so. Monsieur — who have just resolutely excluded 
 Count Eexelaer fi'om Dej'num." 
 
 The other's face grew purple. " There is no blood-claim 
 there,'''' he said vehemently. " Xever now — thank Heaven 
 — shall Count Eexelaer have any connection with Dey- 
 num." 
 
 Monsieur de la Jolais fixed his eyes upon the speaker's 
 excited face. " I am in doubt what to do," he said slowly. 
 " Advise me. The poor are one's relations, say the preach- 
 ers. Why not leave one's money to them ? " 
 
 " I am a good Catholic," replied the Baron, unhesitat- 
 ingly, " but I would not rob those of my own house to buy 
 a mansion for myself in heaven." 
 
 " Well, I daresay you are right, though it is strange that 
 you should be the man to give me this advice. Under all 
 circumstances you think the natural law should take its 
 course ? So be it. Making wills is a nuisance ; I have 
 always avoided it. I fancy it attracts death. Good- 
 night." 
 
 The Baron retained the door-handle in his hand, awk- 
 wardly. " There is still one thing," he stammered. " One 
 moment, Monsieur de la Jolais. I — I find there are a num- 
 ber of articles — plate and so on — and — and jjictures, ex- 
 cluded as private property, for which I should have no use 
 on my travels. Some of the objects, and portraits are very 
 valuable — " He hesitated. 
 
 " I am much obliged to you, mon cher Baron," said the 
 Marquis stiffly. " I wish you had mentioned the subject 
 sooner. Plate marked with jour crest, or family-portraits,
 
 THE MARQUIS'S HEIRS. 161 
 
 1 should hardly require. But we might see later on. Good- 
 night, cher Baron ; I am very tired." 
 
 He rang for his valet as soon as the Baron had departed. 
 " Send that Notary away," he said, " I do not require him. 
 I have changed my mind."
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 J'OSE ! 
 
 The results of the unusual fatigue the Marquis had un- 
 dergone soon made themselves felt. After a short and rest- 
 less slumber he awoke in an agony of suffering. It was 
 eleven o'clock. He called for Antoine and demanded mor- 
 phia. The drug was given him, but, for the first time, it 
 seemed entire!}' to miss its effect. A paroxysm of mingled 
 passion and despair seized hold of him and shook him. 
 Doubtless there was something wrong with the solution. 
 He must have it seen to. He must have a different opiate. 
 He must have a doctor. Till now he had resolutely refused 
 to call in the little practitioner from Eollingen. 
 
 A messenger was immediately dispatched with a country- 
 chaise. Then followed a horrible hour of anxiety and fruit- 
 less activity for the valet, the sister, all the peojDle of the 
 inn — a ceaseless hurrying to and fro, and Avhispering, and 
 preparing of various things that were Aainly passed from 
 hand to hand. The patient lay among his pillows and 
 moaned. 
 
 At last the doctor came. They had hoped everything 
 from him ; he could do nothing. The quality of his morphia 
 was inferior to that of the Marquis's. He stood irresolute 
 by the bedside. The sick man motioned him nearer. " Go 
 out of the room, you others ! " cried the Marquis. " Go ! " 
 
 Then, turning to the doctor : 
 
 " This is cancer," he said. 
 
 The doctor nodded and replied in a low voice. " So I 
 feared." He was a kind-hearted man.
 
 J'OSE! 163 
 
 " I have had these attacks of late. How long will they 
 last?" 
 
 " Ah, Monsieur, it is impossible to say. They may — " 
 
 " J3o not lie to me. The case is absolutely hopeless." 
 
 The doctor looked down at his boots. 
 
 " Absolutely hopeless," repeated the invalid, with a ring 
 of hope and the faintest interrogation in his voice. He 
 sat up, clutching at his breast. " Answer me. You need 
 not answer. I see it in your face. I have known it for a 
 week, for centuries. Absolutely hopeless." He fell back. 
 
 " But, my dear sir," began the doctor in that terrible, 
 encouraging doctor's voice, " you have still many months 
 before you. It is impossible to say what may occur." 
 
 " A year ? " gasped the patient. 
 
 " Oh, most certainly a year, I should say. Very prob- 
 ably more." 
 
 " And this pain? It will increase? " 
 
 " You must not think too much of the future. For the 
 moment — " 
 
 " Thank you," burst out the sick man, with sudden 
 strength. " Go ! Thank you ! Antoine ! Where is that 
 scoundrel, Antoine?" He struck his hand-bell, till it 
 broke under his hand. The servant came running in. 
 " Get me paper and pen and ink. The quicker the better. 
 Farewell, doctor ; my servant will pay you. I am better. 
 The pain is gone. I do not feel it. The paper, you block- 
 head ! In the dressing-case. Be quick." He lay back and 
 wrote a few rapid words. " I liave never done it before," 
 he said to Antoine when he had finished, " but I daresay it 
 is right like that. You can sign your name underneath : I 
 suppose somebody must witness it. It is valid, I know it is 
 valid. There, I have done my share of the business, and the 
 good God must do His." 
 
 The thing was done. In the half-light of the shaded 
 lamp the signatures were appended. The Marquis handed 
 tlic paper to Antoine. " Take good care of it," he said. 
 12
 
 104: THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " And now, remember, I died of pneumonia. Swear on the 
 little image. AVhercisit? Swear." 
 
 In the stillness of that strange sick-chamber Antoine 
 swore, trembling, the oath required of him. 
 
 " That is right," said the Marquis. " You can leave me. 
 Go downstairs. I am going to sleep." 
 
 He closed his eyes but, as soon as he was alone, he again 
 opened them wide. He stared vaguely, into the black dis- 
 tance. 
 
 " Peut-etre," he said aloud. 
 
 Then he got up slowly, out of bed. It was true, as he 
 had said, that he felt no j^ain for the moment. But he was 
 so weak that he had to drag himself along the floor. He 
 Avas old, and white-haired, and very weary. As he labori- 
 ously jDUshed along, he struck his arm against a shaky little 
 table. The costly bouillon-cup upon it fell to the ground 
 Avith a crash. " Aha," he said. 
 
 He dragged himself towards a black leather-bag which 
 lay in a corner. This he opened and from its recesses he 
 drew a small velvet case. Out of the case he extracted a 
 toy revolver, ivory inlaid, and, placing the weapon against 
 his left temple, he drew the trigger.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE HOME OF POESY. 
 
 A LARGE lionse on a grim canal — a number of flat, un- 
 interesting windows in a flat, uninteresting fa9ade. A low 
 front-door, with a heavy greystone coping, and on each 
 side, along the narrow " stoep," a row of stumpy stone jiosts, 
 connected by iron chains. The rest of it a great daub of 
 dirty orange plaster, without any excrescence or salient 
 feature, except just one little rusty spy-glass sticking out 
 on the basement floor — the whole building like a meaning- 
 less, rich man's face, in its ugly and insolent self-con- 
 tent, comfortably dull. Young Reinout's home at the 
 Hague. 
 
 And opposite, and on both sides of it, similar dwellings, of 
 darker colour, flat and grey, under the lowering sky and the 
 general gloom and primness, with the foul canal asleep in 
 the middle of the grass-grown street. A grand house in a 
 grand neighbourhood. 
 
 Count Hilarius van Rexelaer drove up to his own door 
 in the neatest of little broughams and entered hurriedly. 
 His whole manner betrayed anxiety, but, then, as we have 
 seen, he had an irritable way about him and a liabitual 
 nervous twitch of the eyes. He was a man harassed by 
 many things, who took life restlessly. 
 
 He passed through the low entrance-hall with its damp 
 marble floor and ran upstairs to a comparatively brighter 
 ])art of the house. He looked into his wife's boudoir; it 
 v\'as empty, but sounds to wliich lie was well accustomed
 
 1(36 "I'lll^ GKEATER GLOKV. 
 
 were issuing from tlie conservatory beyond. A sweet voice 
 was shakily crooning some French words : 
 
 " D'uii seal regard il m'a tuee 
 Car ce regard resta le seul." 
 
 The singing stopped at the sound of the opening door. 
 A copper-coloured mulatto woman, in iridescent drapery, 
 rose lip from the floor and made obeisance, as her master 
 entered. The Countess Eexelaer lifted a slow head from 
 her divan : " Ah, mon ami ! Bonjour ! " she said, and let it 
 fall again. 
 
 " It is most vexatious," began the Count, spitting his 
 words, as the French inelegantly but aptly put it. " There 
 is nothing but worry. I can't stand the strain. I shall 
 have to resign." He stopped, and scowled at the waiting- 
 woman. 
 
 " Laissa," said the Countess languidly, " fetch me a glass 
 of Cape-wine and a biscuit — " and as soon as the mulatto 
 had crept noiselessly away — " It is no use, my dear Rexelaer : 
 I tell her everything you tell me." 
 
 The husband pushed aside a green parrot which had 
 slipped from its perch on to a low chair by the couch, and 
 having thus freed a seat for himself, he sat down, unheed- 
 ful of the disturbed favourite's flutter and fuss. " Come 
 here, Eollo. Poor Rollo. Pretty Rollo," interposed the 
 lady. " Oh, bother, listen to me, Margot," said the Count. 
 "When he called her " Margot," she knew that he was 
 either very much pleased or very much put out. She her- 
 self had officially decreed, on becoming a Countess, that 
 her name should henceforth be Margherita. " Pearl, for 
 you, if you like, Hilarius." He had long ago left off call- 
 ing her " Pearl." 
 
 " Well, what is it ? " she asked faintly. " You must not 
 tire me to-day. The damp has given me my headache." 
 
 Said Count Hilarius solemnly : " The King had a bad 
 egg for breakfast this morning."
 
 THE HOME OF POESY. 167 
 
 The Countess laughed, but indolently, as one who has 
 more serious things to occupy her thoughts. 
 
 " You laugh! " cried the Count in sudden wrath, "be- 
 cause you do not understand. By Heaven, it is no laugh- 
 ing matter. Who is responsible for the eggs ? I. If it 
 happens again, I shall resign." 
 
 " Nonsense," she said, sitting up, alert and sharp. 
 
 " Ah, that brings you round, does it ? I tell you my 
 nerves can't stand the strain. This is the third time since 
 Tuesday week. The eggs are new-laid, of course, but some 
 wretched little red mess gets inside them. I suppose it's 
 the food. Xone of the under-people can explain, and his 
 Majesty is furious — rightly — and says it never occuri'ed be- 
 fore. And I only three weeks in office ! " 
 
 " It must not occur again," said Margherita, " not if 
 we have to lay the eggs ourselves." 
 
 " To have chickens here, you mean ? " 
 
 " Of course, I mean that. I do not believe the poor ani- 
 mals are to blame. It is the result of a conspiracy. You 
 say yourself that all the Court people are against you, be- 
 cause they wanted your place for the Chamberlain's cousin. 
 Be sure that an enemy inserts into the eggs the unjileasant- 
 nesses which his Majesty finds there." 
 
 "You think so?" he said doubtfully. 
 
 "I am sure of it. We can keep the fowl here in the 
 conservatory, if needs must, and Laissa can feed them." She 
 was sufficiently animated now. 
 
 " True," said the Count, rising, " you could easily add 
 them to the menagerie. But, perhaps it were better to 
 abandon the whole thing. These Court cliques are terri- 
 ble in their dead-set against a new-comer. They are mer- 
 ciless." 
 
 "What?" cried the Countess, leaning on one brown, 
 jeweled arm. Then she added in softest scorn : " Cow- 
 ard ! " 
 
 " Oh yes, it is easy enough for you to speak. You haven't
 
 leg THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 got to face them ! You simply stop at home and say : 
 " Make a great lady of me ! " 
 
 " Already ? " she went on. " Three weeks of failure 
 after six years of struggle. Coward, Coward, Coward ! " 
 She leaped to her feet with the last words, her eyes flash- 
 ing. " Yes," she said, " I am going to be a great lady. I 
 have paid for it. And I again say : Go and make a great 
 lady of me. Go ! " Then, suddenly, she laughed, and threw 
 herself back on the sofa. " You should have studied poul- 
 try-fancying in your youth, my lord Comptroller," she 
 said. " We must get Reinout some pigeons, pretty inno- 
 cent things. My uncle de Cachenard — " 
 
 " Ah, spare me your uncle de Cachenard," he said an- 
 grily, and walked from the room. 
 
 The Countess, left alone, arranged the coils of her mag- 
 nificent black hair and smiled to her Creole face in the 
 glass. Then she looked round and said, " Coo-ee, Coo-ee," 
 and the mulatto-woman came gliding back. 
 
 Count Hilarius had not been wrong in speaking of the 
 menagerie. " Aviary " would perhaps have been a more 
 accurate term, for the whole place was in a flutter of exotic 
 birds. It was suffocatingly hot, an unavoidable concession 
 to the animals in question, and not an unwilling one on the 
 part of their mistress, whose natural tastes preferred the 
 sun to any and every thing in creation except herself, but 
 awarded the third place — a long way below — to a blazing 
 hot fire. " A good stove," she used to say, " is like a hus- 
 band — 9a rechauffe. But the sun is like a lover — 9a 
 brule." 
 
 She had built out this large glass house at the back of 
 her dull little boudoir, and had stocked it with a store of 
 greenery, feathery ferns and wide palms and a number of 
 prickly tropical plants. She had orange-blossoms in it, and 
 a mass of gardenias, and the strong perfume of these starry 
 flowers mingled very perceptibly with the odour of the
 
 THE HOME OF POESY. 1(]9 
 
 birds. As for these, a whole lot of them lived in open 
 cages among the verdure, a bright-plumaged, twittering, 
 unmusical rainbow of colours — " nature's jewels," said the 
 Countess, toying with the diamonds she persistently wore 
 on her arm. " If I am to be buried alive," she had said, 
 when first brought to the house in the Hague, "at least, I 
 will have a hole in my grave, through which to see the earth 
 and the flowers." She lived in her conservatory. She was 
 always cold, and she used to repeat with an unpleasing grin, 
 that she never expected, to be warm again — on earth. 
 
 The Countess sipped her wine. She was very sensitive 
 and could only take nourishment at irregular hours. And. 
 her digestion was a weak one ; wholesome food disagreed 
 with it. She ate sweetmeats and cakes in indefinite quanti- 
 ties out of boxes and bonbonnieres which were always left 
 lying about. Often the various animals would get at these 
 receptacles, and then would ensue much brief exultation 
 and subsequent sorrow, and stains on the oriental carpets 
 and silk hangings, not that anybody noticed the more recent 
 ones among the many of earlier date. 
 
 The copper-coloured woman crouched down at a little 
 distaiice from her mistress's divan, and one of the parrots, 
 settling down on her shoulder, began screeching " Lai'ssa," 
 which name, by-the-bye, was a corruption of Eliza. For 
 the mulatto's mother, an exceedingly vain personage, had 
 declared herself and her daughter, in a moment of presump- 
 tion, to be of English extraction, and had stuck to the story 
 ever after on account of its unreasonableness. Black? 
 There were many Englishmen born black. Satan himself 
 was an Englishman, as every good Catholic in Rio could 
 have told you. 
 
 " You want to know, I suppose," said the Countess. 
 "Eh?" 
 
 "I? But no, M'am Rita. Let me sing you your song 
 again, and you can go to sleep." And once more Laissa 
 bcKan rockiuff herself to and fro and inoaniuir :
 
 170 'i'lll-' (-illEATHR GLOKY. 
 
 " Sous les tilleuls j'etais couchee. 
 II a passe sous les tilleuls. 
 D'un seul regard il m'a tuee, 
 Car ce regard resta le seul." 
 
 The woman crooned tlie words over and over without 
 paying any attention to their meaning, while her mistress — 
 who was the author of their being — lay listening with half- 
 closed eyes of content. 
 
 "The idea is beautiful," said the Countess at last, inter- 
 rupting the endless chant, " but the execution might be bet- 
 ter. Rhymes a, a, are all right, but not rhymes b, b. Do 
 you think, Lai'ssa, that ' tilleuls ' rhymes with ' seul ' ? " 
 
 " Very well indeed, M'am Rita," replied the mulatto. 
 
 "Ah, you always say 'very well indeed,' but that does 
 not satisfy my literary aspirations. You are not a literary 
 character, Lai'ssa." 
 
 " Xo, M'am Rita," said the woman submissively. 
 
 " Do you know, you stupid, what a literary character 
 is?" 
 
 " Xo, my jewel. Is it something bad?" 
 
 " It is the grandest thing on earth ; it is an angel. Es- 
 pecially when it is a genius. I often think that I should 
 have been a genius, Lai'ssa, had I not been a woman." 
 
 " A woman is a very good thing too," said La'issa. " I 
 daresay men like the women best." 
 
 " Do not expose your boundless ignorance, even to me. 
 Pass me the rhyme-dictionary ; Rollo is scratching it. 
 Xaughty Rollo. I must look up another rhyme for ' seul.' 
 Aieul. How would that do ? " 
 
 " • Sous les tilleuls il m'a passee 
 
 Sous les tilleuls de mon aieul.' " 
 
 " I don't care for tlie repetition of the same sound, 
 though some people might consider it musical. Xo, I have 
 it. This is better, and has a delightfully aristocratic 
 ring:
 
 THE HOME OF POESY. 171 
 
 " ' Dans le jardin il m'a trouvee 
 
 Dii beau chateau de mon aieul, 
 D'un seul regard il m'a tuee 
 Car ce regard resta ]e seuL' " 
 
 "Sing it, Nursie; let me hear how it goes. Ali me, 
 the words awaken painful memories. A castle of our 
 fathers ! I shall never forgive the Count that he has not 
 been able to procure me one." 
 
 " The saints will help, dearie," said the mulatto sooth- 
 ingly. 
 
 " For shame, how often must I tell you not to talk of 
 the saints ! They are angry with me for turning Prot- 
 estant. Let sleeping dogs lie." 
 
 " Well, then we must try the cards," said the mulatto. 
 " Shall I lay them for you, my pet, while you eat some 
 chocolate-creams ? " 
 
 " Yes, do," replied the Countess cheerfully. " I must 
 compose a second stanza this afternoon ; my head is too 
 tired. Give me the box, oif the watering-pot. No, no, 
 Rollo. Go away. Down, Flora ! Ah, there is a capital 
 conjunction — the aces ! — the aces ! — turn up the other ace 
 — that's right ! Oh you dear, good LaTssa ! " She bent 
 forward over the cards, a chocolate-cream in her hand. 
 " Something fortunate is going to happen ! Delightful ! " 
 And she unthinkingly clapped her hands and smashed the 
 sweetie. 
 
 " Something fortunate is going to happen," repeated the 
 mulatto gravely, as she continued to spread the cards on 
 the Turkish carpet before her. " Great riches — but these 
 you do not want, honey. You have enough." 
 
 "Never enough," dissented the Countess vehemently, 
 pushing her hand in among the cards. " My uncle de 
 Cachenard was a rich man ; I hate him for not leaving me 
 everything." 
 
 " In my country," said the mulatto, " a yard of cotton 
 and a few figs. It is enough."
 
 ][72 THE GREATER GLORV. 
 
 " Less than that," cried ]\Iargherita passionatel}'. " Xo 
 cotton at all, and one fig, and the blazing sunshine ! For 
 the animal it is enough. But for the soul within me a 
 hundred millions, to buy splendor and power and great- 
 ness ! I want rivers of diamonds, oceans of diamonds. 
 And emeralds, and sapphires, and rubies I " She stopped 
 for breath and bit off a fragment of chocolate. 
 
 "Yes, diamonds are pretty : I was not thinking of dia- 
 monds," replied the waiting woman, still continuing her 
 combinations. "And other jewels; you shall have them, 
 my pretty ! See, here comes the Queen of Diamonds again. 
 You shall have a beautiful castle. It is coming, just the 
 kind that you like." 
 
 The Countess laughed. "An ancestral home," she 
 said, " ordered in from the bazar ! Xo, my good Laissa, 
 the old man at Deynum says ' no ' to the Queen of Dia- 
 monds. It is impudent of him, for he has not the neces- 
 sary money himself, and should make room for his betters. 
 You may have my brooch with the turquoises ; I shall not 
 wear it again." 
 
 " Thank you, child," replied Laissa. " But, for me, I 
 believe in the cards."
 
 CHAPTER XXril. 
 
 AJTD OF STATECRAFT. 
 
 The master of the house meanwhile, in his library, 
 stood disconsolately gazing at the imitation bindings be- 
 hind which his cigar-cases reposed in security. They could 
 afford him as little assistance as the long line of the " Tasch- 
 enbuch der grilflichen Hiiuser," or even the encyclopedia. 
 He had built his hopes upon the latter, and had vainly 
 looked out a couple of words, Avinding up with " alimenta- 
 tion." And now he had sent round his man to the book- 
 seller's. 
 
 Little things always troubled him largely, but this, as he 
 well knew, was not a little thing. It is a merciful dispen- 
 sation that, in the moment of achievement, we first begin to 
 realize the difficulties which await success. Count Rexe- 
 laer, on his smiling entry into Paradise, found all Paradise 
 smiling back hostility. You think his Paradise ridiculous ! 
 That is, because it is not yours. But in that case, once 
 more, put down this book. You cannot understand it. 
 
 " All the world is against me," said Count Rexelaer bit- 
 terly. He was not exaggerating. He knew no other world 
 than his little own. Nor does any of us, talk how we will. 
 And if his world looks very small to yon, that is, perhaps, 
 because you stand so far below it. 
 
 From his youth upwards he had laid himself out to 
 " serve his King," set aside for that service as much as was 
 ever Levite in a worthier temple, and in the due perfection 
 of that service he had found his glorvand crown — coronet —
 
 174 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 of rejoicing. His fatliev, a nobleman of William the First's 
 easy creation (1832 : llilarins, therefore, had not been born 
 in the purple), had struggled and schemed and fought him- 
 self into the front rank only to fall out of it again into the 
 background of discontent through some caprice of a mon- 
 arch's disfavour. There had been several children and a 
 small fortune. Hilarius, the eldest, had behaved admirably, 
 as soon as he was old enough to understand. Excellent 
 financier that he was, he had avoided the common fallacy 
 that all expenditure must necessarily be regulated by actual 
 assets, and had shown the good sense to keep up his posi- 
 tion, like a European state, by borrowing money which a 
 subsequent combination must pay. It would have been 
 fatal, as he said, to " drop out," a mistake which so many 
 have committed under the influence of temporary misfor- 
 tune. " We are too recent to recede," he told his parents 
 when they complained of his bills. " If people are saying 
 that we are poor, mamma, you should order in a lot of fine 
 new clothes." The old lady Avould certainly have liked to 
 do so — for the sake of the fine new clothes — but she lacked 
 her son's pluck. Her father had been a draper ; she had 
 bourgeois ideas of honesty. 
 
 It must be admitted, on the other hand, that Hilarius 
 never wasted a penny on himself. What he spent he spent 
 for his object. And he systematized both his expenditure 
 and his debts. 
 
 When he left the University, where he had lived " cor- 
 rectly," Hilarius had obtained a small post in the diplomatic 
 service — it was convenient to him, for various reasons, to 
 remove himself from his surroundings at the Hague. He 
 did his work well for a great many years, which means that 
 he did nothing, decently, and with the necessary self-re- 
 spect ; in the meantime his brother married at home, fairly 
 well, and his sister settled down into respectable old-maid- 
 ism, and his mother (who had been a draper's daughter) 
 died, and things began to look brighter for the family.
 
 AND OF STATECRAFT. 175 
 
 Then Count Hilarius's reward came at last. It was not a 
 First Prize, and he felt rather inclined to cavil at its second- 
 rateness ; still it was better than the empty Certificate of 
 Merit, with which he had been hitherto obliged to content 
 his meritorious self. He was attached to the Dutch Lega- 
 tion at Rio — no more — he was getting on for five and thirty 
 already, and his light hair was beginning to thin at the top, 
 when little Rita de Cachenard — Margot Magot, as she was 
 called in the French colony — old Croesus Cachenard's niece 
 and presumable heiress, fell franctically in love with him. 
 She was sixteen, and very handsome, not an easy character 
 to read, for, although she was naturally an object of inter- 
 est, opinion remained divided about, not her charms (they 
 were indisputable), but her virtues. According to some she 
 was passionate but pure ; according to others she was cold, 
 and cool, as marble. She wrote verses to the object of her 
 adoration, and blushed after having played them into his 
 hands. There seems no great harm in that. She was six- 
 teen, and her eyes were large and black. Perhaps her soul 
 was as large, though not as black, as they. She wanted to 
 marry him ; that was all. She had his willing consent, but 
 perhaps she would have tried to do it without. 
 
 Her uncle was delighted that his little Margot should be 
 a Countess. He was a fat old Frenchman and a republican. 
 It is perfectly impossible to set down here in what manner 
 he had amassed his very considerable fortune. Suffice it to 
 say that the blackest brand of blackguardism was indelibly 
 stamped upon every loathsome ducat which the young 
 Countess Rexelaer poured into the hollow exchequer of the 
 noble Dutch family. She poured in a good many. And 
 yet more followed when, shortly after, the old rascal oblig- 
 ingly retired from the scene of his compromising successes. 
 But he left his niece just one half of that whole she had ex- 
 pected ; the other half he squandered and scattered among 
 a lot of obscure individuals wliom nobody hud ever heard of 
 before. Fortunately their name was in no case de Cache-
 
 170 'i'UK GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Hard. Nor, for the mutter of that, was the old man's ; tlie 
 disagreeable people who remember what they ought to have 
 forgotten, could have given you an earlier and less elegant 
 version. As for the " de," the " merchant," good patriot 
 and republican though he was, had been obliged to forfeit 
 his nationality and pay down no less than twenty pounds to 
 obtain it. 
 
 Count van Uexelaer returned to Holland with his wife 
 and her money-bags, and her tropical animals, habits, plants 
 and waiting-woman. He made a point of remembering the 
 money-bags — conscientiously — and they got on very well to- 
 gether. He also made a point of reminding his relations of 
 these same money-bags, and the relations made a point of 
 reminding everybody else and of doubling, in conversation, 
 the number, size and weight of said money-bags. The sub- 
 ject was thus treated with mutual goodwill, and the family 
 behaved admirably. Mevrouw van Rexelaer-Borck, Hila- 
 rius's brother's wife, smiled sweetly when one of " the black 
 thing's " birds went messing over her new silk dress. But 
 then, they were so intensely relieved to find that the new 
 member of the family was " not actually black, you know, 
 though we called her so in fun ; she is dark, and really 
 quite handsome. Like a Spaniard." This much Mevrouw 
 Eexelaer confided to her mother, the old Baroness Borck, a 
 connection of the lord of Eollingen. To her intimate friends 
 she said : " My brother-in-law's young wife comes of a no- 
 ble French family, ' de Cachenard.' He met her in diplo- 
 matic circles at Petropolis. Our only objection would be 
 the great difference of age (he is double hers), but, after all, 
 that is their look-out. She is a most charming thing. Just 
 a little — how shall I call it ? — exotic. Her parents have 
 kept her out there too long, perhaps, as a queen among 
 slaves, you know. Like the children of Steelenaar, our own 
 Indian Governor-General." 
 
 " Was the father French minister there ? " asked a 
 friend.
 
 AND OF STATECRAFT. 177 
 
 " Yes — uo," replied Mevrouw van Rexelaer quickly, re- 
 membering, at the last moment, the inconvenience of 
 printed lists. " Not minister, you know. But second-best. 
 What is it they call it? A Councillor of the Embassy, I be- 
 lieve." 
 
 " Ah yes. Like the Comte de Hautlieu." 
 
 " Exactly so," rejoined Mevrouw van Eexelaer, " like the 
 Comte de Hautlieu." 
 
 In the meantime no one took the trouble to inquire 
 what were the sentiments of the poor girl herself. The 
 creature was now Countess van Rexelaer. What more could 
 she want ? 
 
 But, if the truth must be told, the creature had actually 
 had the impudence to want more. She had wanted love — 
 stormy, passionate adoration of the " kill-your-neighbour- 
 and-kiss-your-neighbour's-wife " kind. Something grand, 
 terrific, imposing — love with a capital L. Not affection ; 
 poor thing ! she knew nothing of affection. That is a plant 
 which must be trained in the home-garden, while love 
 springs up in the wastes. Father she had never known ; 
 her mother she had lost at the age of five, which was a mis- 
 fortune, the mother, with all her vagaries, having been born 
 and bred a gentlewoman. Margherita had grown up at 
 hap-hazard, in a lazy, sunlit mansion among a crowd of 
 obsequious, villainous slaves and mongrels who pandered to 
 her early faults, lest their own vices should be checked. 
 She had been taught nothing, except French and Portuguese 
 — and dancing and riding and fencing, and playing out of 
 tune on the guitar. Even these accomplishments she had 
 chiefly taught herself. She could fence splendidly, ami that 
 was about all. 
 
 It is to be appreciated in her, then, that she read such 
 books as she could lay hold of — trashy novels. And one 
 day, utterly bored by the emptiness of her existence, she 
 had demanded a "professor of French literature." Old 
 Cachenard, who held that woman's only mission was to be
 
 178 I^IIK GREATER GLORY. 
 
 fair, foud, foolish uiul, possibly, foul — there are many such 
 men : God forgive them ! — had vainly tried to dissuade his 
 uiece. Margherita liked her uncle (in all justice to her it 
 must be confessed that she had no inkling till after his 
 death how he had gotten his money), but she hated him 
 with a fierce hate when he contradicted her, which he very 
 rarely did. A Frenchman was procured who read Musset 
 with her — " Kolla " — and Victor Hugo — " Le Roi s'amuse," 
 and she felt that she loved literature and took to devouring 
 more novels, with a preference for the days of chivalry, and 
 she wanted a knight to lift up her glove and kiss it (she 
 had very small hands) and make noble speeches to her, 
 beautiful, sentimental speeches — not crack disgusting jokes, 
 like uncle Cachenard. 
 
 So, when she was sixteen years old, she fell head over 
 ears in love with Count van Eexelaer. He was a noble of 
 exalted rank, a descendant of a long line of Knights and 
 Crusaders, a son of Kings. His very name declared it. 
 Rex Hilarius — she called it Rex Ilario — he had told her 
 about it (he was rather fond of telling) ; this King Hilarius, 
 his great grandfather, had ruled over a mighty people long 
 before South America existed ! He was greater than the 
 Emperor. He was stately and splendid {i. e. tight-buttoned 
 and thin) ; and his bearing was noble and knightly [i. e. he 
 bowed very low when he met her). She loved him, im- 
 mensely, like an ocean. She would have liked him to die 
 for her, but not the other way, please. And she threw her- 
 self at his feet, and he picked her up, very politely, and 
 they were married. And not only had he no desire to die 
 for her, but he was not even anxious to live for her, nor 
 with her, more than necessary, after a time. 
 
 When the Countess realized that one cannot always have 
 what one wants — at least, not in our northern hemisphere — 
 she first had a bad time of it, violently bad but brief, and 
 then she felt fairly comfortable. She made up her mind to 
 want a lot more things, and to get them, so, resigning the
 
 AND OF STATECRAFT. I79 
 
 unattainable, she cultivated her caprices. She fortunately 
 took a liking to her little boy, who was handsome. Phys- 
 ically there were seventeen years between them ; psychically 
 less. And she interested herself, from a lazy distance, in her 
 husband's climb to that starry canopy which shone forth as 
 his blue and vaulted heaven. Her position, unfortunately, 
 debarred her from the poetic greatness she had been born 
 to. Ah, what an artist was lost ! But she cheered her 
 solitude with song, while waiting for her husband to make 
 a grande dame of her. It was very cold and bleak in Hol- 
 land. But she had made up her mind to be a grande dame. 
 Mevrouw van Eexelaer-Borck kissed her. 
 
 And her husband worked for two. He was a quiet 
 faber sum fortuncB, whose weak point was want of nerve at 
 a crisis, and whose strong point was want of feeling. He 
 plodded up slowly, but with an indomitable resolve never to 
 slide back. It was hard work for him at first. He was not 
 a favourite, his father's disgrace still clung about the fam- 
 ily ; he had none of those stilts and stays which are such a 
 help in climbing. His sister-in-law, Mevrouw Rexelaer- 
 Borck, however, was a host in herself. She had brought 
 excellent connections into the family, almost a costlier treas- 
 ure than gold. And she had managed, by one of her won- 
 derful strokes of luck, to acquire for her husband an extra 
 territorial title attached to a few acres of heath, dirt-cheap. 
 Frederik van Rexelaer was Rexelaer van Altena. Ililarius 
 — the head of the family, and, as such, the Count — was all 
 the more anxious to be Rexelaer of something. 
 
 Gradually he prospered. His great policy was never 
 to feel kicked. And by dint of this he sidled past better 
 people and even pushed in front of more powerful ones. 
 The High and Mighty began to remember that his father 
 had been one of them ; for years they had only remembered 
 to forget. He was admitted into the Koyal Household be- 
 fore he was fifty. There was not a part of his body which 
 was not blue from ill-treatment, there was not a corner of 
 13
 
 ISO THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 his soul which was not black with lying and licking — nn- 
 charitableness, immanliness, and uncleanuess, — but he was 
 a Groat Man at last. Of course he was an exception ; it is 
 said these are apt to prove the rule. 
 
 During three bright weeks he had borne his new-culled 
 honours, as a maiden bears her betrothal- wreath. Bright, 
 truly, but Avith flashes of lightning, amid the distant roll of 
 thunder. And often it wants a little climbing to realize 
 the unclimbed heights above. 
 
 He paced his study-floor with gloomy eyebrows. It was 
 almost a relief when a servant knocked, and brought the 
 news that a man was waiting to see him. 
 
 " What sort of a man ? " 
 
 " A common man," replied the well-drilled domes- 
 tic, with thankful consciousness that he was not one of 
 these. 
 
 Count Rexelaer walked out into tlie hall. 
 
 " Who are you ? " he asked sharply. 
 
 The individual thus addressed seemed to cower away 
 into the very ground. " I am a poor man," he said. " A 
 humble man, Heer Count. Have pity on a father of four 
 little children. I have been turned away from the service 
 of the palace. I was clerk there, for twenty years I have 
 kept the kitchen accounts. I earned nine florins a week. 
 It isn't much, but it was always something. And I 
 have always been honest. Highborn Heer Count. I 
 have—" 
 
 " I remember," interrupted Count Rexelaer impatient- 
 ly. " You were discharged a fortnight ago. I forget 
 why." 
 
 " There was a story. Highborn Heer, about a kitch- 
 enmaid. There was not a word of truth in it, I swear 
 before God in Heaven ! " — he lifted a lean hand on high 
 — he was a worn-looking creature, with a big nose, 
 the only big thing about him, and bright fever-fed 
 eves.
 
 AND OF STATECRAFT. ISl 
 
 "And what was the girl's name?" queried Count Rexe- 
 laer, staring at the ceiling. 
 
 " Dora Droste, Highly Nobly Born Heer Count." 
 
 " Of course," said the Count, still staring aloft. " I re- 
 member all about it perfectly." He brought his eyes down 
 to the level of the man's face. " How dare you come 
 here ? " he said furiously. " You were turned away and 
 you richly deserved if. We shall soon teach you, and such 
 as you, what to expect." 
 
 " But I swear I am innocent," replied the man 
 in earnest tones. " A father of four children, Heer 
 Count." 
 
 " Just so. A father of four children." 
 
 " I was teaching her to read, in my free time, most 
 noble Heer Count. She had begged me to teach her to 
 read." 
 
 Count Rexelaer smiled. " I remember all about the 
 case," he said. " You may feel thankful you were not pros- 
 ecuted. Get out of the house this moment. Jan, show 
 this person out." 
 
 " Is that final? " asked the fellow. 
 
 " Absolutely final." Count Rexelaer retreated to his 
 study-door. 
 
 But the man intercepted him. " Count Rexelaer," he 
 said, almost in a whisper, "you'i-e playing a bold game. It 
 won't do." 
 
 The Count drew back. " You are mad," he said. 
 « Jan ! " 
 
 " Unhand me," cried the fellow, bursting out violently. 
 " ISTo one dare to touch me ! You — you ! it is villains like 
 you who make socialists, revolutionists, murderers ! Oh 
 you blackguard ! But I swear that as sure as my name is 
 Wouter Wonnema — " 
 
 Count Rexelaer closed his study door. 
 
 " Here, get out of this ! " said the man-servant. " What 
 do you mean by pitching into master like that? If he
 
 182 'I'l'K GREATER GLORY. 
 
 were to give me uotice to-morrow, I should simply griu 
 and go." 
 
 The other looked as if he were about to launch into a 
 long explanation ; then he thought better of it, and rapidly 
 stumbled downstairs, cursing and threatening.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 A WINDOAV OPENS. 
 
 Reinout, turning the far corner of the quiet street on 
 his homeward way from a lonely walk, was astonished to 
 perceive an individual stationed opposite the house and ges- 
 ticulating at its smooth front of many panes. The man 
 stood out solitary against one of the long line of trees, 
 melancholy canal-trees, in little rounds among the stones, 
 fresh from a German toy-box. His appearance was needy, 
 but not untidy. His figure much shrunk, yet nowise abject 
 in its indigence. 
 
 Eeinout, as has been said already, knew nothing of the 
 actual world. He understood that the poor were part of 
 the divinely ordered plan, created to give the rich an oppor- 
 tunity of exercising the virtues, especially of charity to- 
 wards their brethren and of gratitude towards God. And 
 had he been told that the poor lacked bread — which he 
 was not — he might easily have added his name to the list 
 of those favoured ones who are credited with having an- 
 swered : " Then why don't they buy cakes ? " 
 
 There could be no mistaking the strange man's mean- 
 ing. He shook his fist menacingly with fierce glances and 
 mutterings, and then, after a final thrust of his lean arm, 
 he turned and crept in the direction from which Reinout 
 was coming. 
 
 As soon as they were close together : " Wiiy did you do 
 that ? " asked Reinout, reproducing the other's threat. 
 
 The man started and stared. " Because a villain lives
 
 184 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 there," he answered sullenly, " if it's any satisfaction to yon 
 to know," and he sought to co7itinue his way. 
 
 But Eeinout interposed, with flushed cheek and trem- 
 bling lip. lie had all his mother's impetuousness and much 
 of his father's caution. He had the former's strength of 
 passion, and none of the latter's nervousness. In his indig- 
 nation he was going to burst out : " But that's my father ! " 
 when curiosity checked the words. 
 
 "Why a villain?" he questioned, a trifle imperiously. 
 Wonnema stopped again. No one could look closely at 
 Eeinout and not recognize the Jonker's social status. " All 
 rich men are villains," replied Wonnema evasively. Pru- 
 dence fortunately kept him from particularising the Count's 
 offences to the first boy that questioned him. 
 
 " But w' hy are rich men villains ? " persisted Eeinout, 
 greatly relieved, meanwhile, to find the charge so much ex- 
 tended. 
 
 " Why ? Because they're born to 't. Because they suck 
 it in with their mother's milk. Because God has given 
 them the right, they think. Because a rich man's happi- 
 ness is built up of a thousand poor men's sufferings. That's 
 why." 
 
 Only the last " because " conveyed a definite meaning 
 to the questioner. It struck straight with all its newness. 
 Surely things were the other way round. 
 
 " That's why," continued the strange man, warming to 
 his subject. " Because the rich can do no .wrong, and if 
 they have done wrong the poor must suffer for it. Here am 
 I starving, because my innocence must cloak a rich man's 
 guilt. Go your ways, boy, you'll be a villain some day, if 
 you aren't one already. You're born to it." He passed 
 into the road and walked a few paces farther. Then he 
 turned for a final easement of his over-burdened heart. 
 " And yon's the biggest villain of all," he said, once more 
 lifting a thin finger of scorn in the direction of the orange- 
 plaster wall.
 
 A WINDOW OPENS. 1S5 
 
 " Hold jour tongue," cried Eeinout boldly. " My father 
 lives in that house." But Wonnema had already resumed 
 his trudge. The boy stood hesitating. Of the other's last 
 speech he had again understood one sentence only, which 
 reached his heart. " Here am I starving." The man was 
 of course a beggar. What other connection could there be 
 between rich and poor? He had been turned off at the 
 door and was angry. People were turned off, as Reinout 
 knew, for the Count disapproved of almsgiving. The boy 
 had a whole florin in his pocket, half the month's pocket- 
 money. "Starving?" He ran after the retreating figure. 
 " Here, poor man ! " he said. And to his utter amazement 
 the beggar struck the coin to the ground. " My children 
 are famished," said Wonnema thickly, trembling with emo- 
 tion. " I would rather see them dead than take home one 
 penny of yours ! " The florin lay glittering in the mud. 
 
 Reinout retreated in dismay. He did not look round 
 again, from a delicate instinct that the other was still star- 
 ing hungrily at the silver-piece. But Wonnema let it lie. 
 
 The boy crept into the house, all his heart and head in 
 confusion. For the first time in his life he had come into 
 contact with the Spirit of Protest against things that are. 
 He knew of course of the existence of wickedness and sor- 
 row — vaguel}^ — these were unavoidable and to be endured. 
 He knew that wickedness incorporate — mad ambition — had 
 slain blessed saints and martyrs such as Louis the Sixteenth. 
 For there had always been thieves and murderers, big and 
 small. But an honest, if mistaken, cry against Evil in High 
 Places, an arraignment of divinely-instituted Order before 
 the bar of God Himself, of this he could make nothing. 
 Irresistibly he felt that the poor Avretch had been sincere. 
 " A rich man's happiness is built up of a thousand poor 
 men's sorrows." " Some day you will be a villain ; you are 
 born to it." He sat down on a bench in the hall to tiiink 
 it out. And, his eye falling on some letters in the letter- 
 box, he carried these in to his father, as was his custom, and
 
 1S6 THE grp:atkr glory. 
 
 tlion went buck to liis seat. It was no use asking Papa 
 about the poor. Papa felt no interest in the subject. And 
 he differed from M. de Souza. " You should never give to 
 beggars," lie had often said. " It encourages them to ask 
 for more." 
 
 Eeinout lay back on the open bench and closed his eyes. 
 That refusal of money. What did it signify ? There was 
 no room for it in the whole little system of his calm exist- 
 ence. And the more he thought of it the more bewildered 
 he grew. 
 
 "While he still lingered there, he heard his father calling 
 his name in the library, in a strange "strangled " voice. As 
 he started up, the door flew open, and the Count came rush- 
 ing out, his face distorted with excitement. " Eeinout," he 
 stammered, " Reinout ! " and catching the boy to his breast 
 he covered him with kisses, laughing and sobbing by turns. 
 Eeinout kept quite still ; a horrible fear traversed his brain 
 that his father had become insane ; he set his teeth tight. 
 
 " My boy, my boy," said the Count at last more calmly, 
 holding his son at arms' length and looking into his eyes. 
 " Imagine, what wonder ! What triumph ! God has given 
 us Dej-num. In the most wonderful of all manners, it is 
 ours : " 
 
 " Ours ? " repeated the lad, bewildered. 
 
 " Ours, yes, ours. Mine, yours. Ever afterwards. Yours. 
 Yours, some day when your poor father has been laid to rest. 
 Yours, Eeinout, Count Eexelaer van Deynum ! " He once 
 more drew his heir towards him, and kissed him, solemnly 
 this time, between the eyes. " And now I must go tell your 
 mother," he said, and turned to the staircase. " Gracious 
 Heaven," he thought to himself, as he mounted it with 
 dancing step, " how queerly things work round ! " Yet, he 
 was not one of those who feel that Heaven is gracious, even 
 when things work round — queerly. 
 
 Eeinout, left to himself, repeated : " God has given us 
 Deynum," More money, then. More grandeur. Did that
 
 A WINDOW OPENS. 187 
 
 mean more " villainy " ? Nonsense. The man was crazy. 
 God has given us Deynum. What is " God " to Eeinout ? 
 An image set np at very rare intervals, special " points de 
 vue," along the road of life. It is a double-visaged image, 
 like Janus, One face has angry eyebrows : Fate ; the other 
 smiling glances : Luck.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 MISS PIGGIE. 
 
 Alterxately slapping and stroking lier lapdogs, Flor- 
 izel and Amanda (abbreviations by Eeinout, regardless of 
 inverted gender, Flora and Ami), Madame van Rexelaer lay 
 humming her second stanza, which, translated into English, 
 would have run somewhat as follows : 
 
 " Then let me sleep the sleep of death. 
 And bear me where my fathers are. 
 My dying sob was the final breath, 
 Of the noble house of Cachenard." 
 
 She was purring over this poetical effusion when the 
 Count suddenly burst in upon her. 
 
 " Prepare yourself," he said, "for the most extraordinary, 
 the most incredible good news ! " 
 
 " Rex," she exclaimed, flushing with j^leasure. " You 
 don't mean to say I'm invited to stay at the Palace of 
 Loo?" 
 
 "Rex" was the name she had given him in the earliest 
 dawn of her enthusiasm. Richard ! Hilaire ! mon 
 Roy ! She hardly ever made use of it now, but the moment 
 was one of ecstatic abandonment ; visions floated before her 
 of delicious new dresses, three a day, and the intimate inter- 
 course of an august home-circle for half a week, so different 
 from the tumult of an omnium gatherum where you made 
 your bow in the crowd and sank back like a wave on the 
 sea. She screamed aloud with expectation.
 
 MISS PIGGIE. 189 
 
 "No, no, that another time!" said the Count. " ilow 
 can you talk such nonsense, when you know the Court is 
 here? Just listen to me, and put down those dogs for a 
 minute." 
 
 " I thought it was an invitation," pouted the lady, " I 
 don't care if it isn't an invitation. I don't want anything 
 else." 
 
 "It appears," the Count continued, without taking any 
 notice of the last remarks, " that your mother had connec- 
 tions of whom you never knew anything — very respectable 
 relations, to say the least." 
 
 " My mother's name was Dupuys," replied the daugliter 
 of the noble house of Cachenard, removing her face from 
 behind Florizel, whither she had retreated in her sulkiness. 
 " It doesn't sound a very aristocratic name. My uncle once 
 told me that she had come from the north of France. He 
 never said anything about her relations." 
 
 Count Hilarius had always carefully avoided glancing 
 down into the depths from whence his wife had ascended to 
 his side. Not to know is the safest way of lying. It was 
 enough to live in constant recollection of the uncle's career, 
 without discovering what the parents had done. lie had 
 grumbled at the dishonour and he had also grumbled, the 
 price being so heavy, that his wife had not brought him 
 more at the price. Fortunately Rio was far ; and the par- 
 ents were still farther. 
 
 " I cannot make it out very clearly as yet," he now said, 
 " but, as far as I can see, your mother was a very different 
 person from "what she pretended to be. The Belgian lawyer 
 who writes presumes that I am acquainted with her ante- 
 cedents and is therefore far /from explicit. But it seems 
 that she was neither more nor less tlian a Demoiselle de la 
 Jolais-Farjolle, of the Belgian house of la Jolais de Saint- 
 Leu. She seems to have run away with a — a-^her hus- 
 band." He stopped, and eyed his wife curiously. 
 
 " And what is that, la Jolais?" asked tlie (Jountcss.
 
 190 'I'll I' (iKKATER GLOHV. 
 
 " It is Olio of tlio greatest families in Europe," replied 
 the Count dril}'. " The head of the house is the Marquis 
 de la Jolais-Farjolle." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Cachenard clapped her hands. " How 
 delightful ! " she cried with a bright little laugh. " How 
 pretty ! A Marquis ! It is more than a Count. What a 
 good thing I did not know when I married you, that my 
 mother had been a Marchioness, Hilarius. I might not 
 have been satisfied with a Count, after that." 
 
 " Your mother was not a Marchioness," answered Rexe- 
 laer irritably, " no more than your uncle Cachenard. What- 
 ever she was, she seems to have had the good taste after her 
 — adventure, to sink all her past down a well, henceforth to 
 be known as Dupuys. But, now, as to results." 
 
 " Xo, no, you are jealous ! How charming it sounds I 
 De Cachenard, nee de la Jolais-Guignol. Much nicer than 
 Rexelaer. I wish I had known ! " And she hugged Flori- 
 zel to her face till he squeaked. 
 
 " De Farce rare, nee de la jolie guinguette," cried the 
 son of all the Rexelaers, exasperated by these taunts. 
 " Your mother was a gentlewoman — more shame to her ! — 
 and she ran away with a groom out of her brother's stables, 
 and his name was Cochonnard ! " 
 
 " What ? " shrieked the Creole, dropping Florizel with a 
 thud on the floor. " It isn't true. Oh you horrid vulgar 
 man to come and tell such stories ! " And she burst into a 
 tempest of screeches and (audible) wishes she was dead. 
 
 " Allons, allons, how can you behave so childishly ! " in- 
 terposed the Count, somewhat disturbed by this exceptional 
 ebullition of feeling. " You have known all along how 
 your uncle got his " de," and that you were not even legally 
 entitled to use it." 
 
 " I was my uncle's heiress," wailed Margherita, " and I 
 don't care. I won't be called Cochonnette." 
 
 " You are called at present," said her husband soothing- 
 l}', " the Countess Van Rexelaer."
 
 MISS PIGGIE. 191 
 
 " I don't care," slie interrupted liim with a fresh burst 
 of tears. " I wo-wo-won't be called Miss Piggie — Miss Pig- 
 gie, indeed ! I wo-wo-won't." 
 
 " But for goodness sake, listen to reason. There is the 
 bright side yet to come, and it is almost incredibly fortunate. 
 The Marquis de la Jolais, your mother's half-brother, is 
 dead. He died, intestate, about a fortnight ago, and if, as 
 they imagine, you are his only near relation, all his private 
 property will come to you." 
 
 " I don't care," said Margherita, opening her eyes, never- 
 theless. 
 
 " Xonsense. They have been telegraphing to Eio, and 
 the answer has come that they must apply to me. As in- 
 deed they must. There is quite a distant cousin, they tell 
 me, who succeeds to the Belgian estate by a contract inde- 
 pendent of wills, but you, being the niece, are the heiress 
 who comes into the rest." 
 
 " All the other money was mine too," said Margherita. 
 
 She stung him. " Yes," he said, " it was, Mademoiselle 
 Cochonnard." 
 
 Then Margherita screamed once more and fainted dead 
 away. 
 
 Years ago, when this used to happen, the Count would 
 pull down the bell-rope. Now he walked out of the room.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 SPLEXDIDE MEXDAX. 
 
 A DAY or two later, further advices having been re- 
 ceived meanwhile, the great news had obtained sufficient 
 consistency to allow of its being communicated to the Rexe- 
 laers-Borck. 
 
 The facts as to Margherita's mother were briefly these. 
 The Marquis de la Jolais, — the Marquis J'ose — himself his 
 mother's only child, had had a step-sister many years 
 younger than he, the late darling of the whole family. He 
 had been as a father to her during many years, and just as 
 he had arranged that she should be most desirably married 
 to (not with) an old friend of his own, she had eloped with 
 a stable-boy. The head of the house had immediately 
 erased her name from its annals, and, having been apprised 
 later on that she was living at Lyons with her spendthrift 
 husband in absolute destitution, he paid her over the sum of 
 ten thousand francs, on consideration of her sacredly bind- 
 ing herself to sink all her antecedents and to assume hence- 
 forth the name of Dupuys. The bargain was faithfully 
 kept. The man Cochonnard died early from drink ; his 
 broken-hearted wife did not long survive him, and their 
 little daughter Margaret was left with her rich bachelor- 
 uncle. The Marquis remained unaware of all particulars. 
 He had forbidden his lawyers to communicate with him on 
 the subject, and he had caused it to be generally understood 
 that his half-sister had died without a child. Nevertheless, 
 one of those rumours that always come knocking at barri-
 
 SPLENDIDE MEXDAX. I93 
 
 caded cars had vaguely informed him of some facts con- 
 cerniug the Cochonnards and their money-making. He 
 had loved his sister as much as he was capable of loving 
 anything ; a hundred times he wished she had died in her 
 bloom. 
 
 Once his eye had fallen on an announcement in the 
 Paris Figaro of the marriage of a Count Eexelaer, of whom 
 he knew nothing but the name, with a Mademoiselle Eifca 
 de Cachenard, of whom he knew nothing at all. He had 
 glided on to the next paragraph. But a few weeks later he 
 received a short letter from the old uncle. In the joy of his 
 heart Cochonuard had thought the moment was come to 
 reconcile his little Margot with her mother's noble relation. 
 That gentleman tore up the letter, furious at having his 
 uncertainty thus rudely broken into. As for the improve- 
 ment in the young lady's original patronymic, it filled him 
 with unfathomable contempt. 
 
 Nevertheless, he now knew what he knew. His sister 
 had a daughter living, and that daughter was a Countess 
 Eexelaer. Of the Eexelaers of Deynum. He was not as 
 well up in Dutch families as the Baron was in Belgian. 
 But even the Baron had known nothing of Mademoiselle 
 de la Jolais except that she had run away, long ago, with 
 some footman, and had died shortly afterwards, in Paris, 
 he believed. The Marquis was not sorry to think the child 
 should have done well. But he washed his hands — literally, 
 laboriously — after having torn up the old man's letter. 
 
 One summer he had gone to spend a week with some 
 friends at their seat near Blankenberghc, and fickle, foolish 
 Fortune had cast the child Eeinout straight across his path. 
 He had fled from the association that night with both 
 hands to his ears. But the memory clung to his dried-up 
 old heart. He liked the look of the boy. He liked his 
 manner. He had liked, above all, that bold dash into 
 danger. The Marquis J'ose knew good blood when he 
 saw it.
 
 194 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 And on that terrible night of his flight from Amster- 
 dam, the word " Deynum," as it crashed through the car- 
 riage-window, had struck comfort to his soul, in the midst 
 of its agon}'. " This is nothing," the guard had cried, 
 " this is Deynum," Truly, it was nothing to him ; he had 
 willed that it should be nothing, but it was the only name 
 which, at that hour of supremest loneliness, had conveyed 
 to the wretched sufferer a remote idea of relationship. He 
 knew nothing more of the Eexelaers than that they had 
 their home at Deynum. He could travel no farther. The 
 place fascinated him. He would keep up, all the more 
 strictly, the incognito he had already assumed. He would 
 look out for himself. Perhaps — who knows? — he would 
 find ultimate pleasure in this daughter of his race. He 
 would see the boy again. He was dying. Death strangely 
 alters our perspectives. 
 
 He remained, therefore, a day or two at the village-inn, 
 whence he would in no case have been anxious to depart, 
 and tried to feel his way. He soon perceived that there 
 were complications which his ignorance was unable to un- 
 ravel. He was too proud to write off now, for information, 
 to his lawyers at Brussels. These were the wrong Eexe- 
 laers. Of course they were related. There were jealousies, 
 evidently, and bickerings. The Marquis was too much 
 occupied with himself to take any great interest in these. 
 Then came the incident of the house. He wanted the 
 lonely castle with all a rich man's sudden, irresistible want. 
 And if later on it should, in the course of life's accidents, 
 become young Eeinout's property, well, that was no in- 
 ducement, but it was certainly no objection to buying 
 it. As for the clause about never " letting or selling to 
 Count Hilarius van Kexelaer," he could easily subscribe to 
 that. Count Hilarius would either inherit the property 
 through his wife or never possess it at all. But the sick 
 man had not as yet settled these things in his mind ; per- 
 haps, later on, he would make a will. He was bitterly irri-
 
 SPLENDIDE MENDAX. 195 
 
 tated at the failure to discover his niece in the hour of need. 
 Yet he wanted to die unknown. He wanted to be nursed. 
 He wanted both extremes. He wanted neither. And in 
 the midst of his uncertainty the catastrophe spread sudden 
 silence over all. 
 
 Reinout went up to his room with the wonderful dis- 
 covery that the mysterious old gentleman of his long boy 
 fancies had now developed into a blood-relation, a fairy 
 god-father, a great giver of gifts. The splendour of a 
 powerful position, large landed proprietorship with all its 
 responsibilities and advantages, the sudden uplifting into a 
 " great family," this had come to his mother, and through 
 his mother, to himself, direct from the dead hand of his 
 secret friend. He understood the importance of the inher- 
 itance as few boys of his age could have done. Yet it was not 
 so much an uplifting as a restoration. He knew all about the 
 fief of Hohenthal-Sonnenborn, and the Countship of the 
 Holy Roman Empire, and " I will make you Baron Butter- 
 worth." The hero of the latter story he revered as the 
 founder of " our branch." At last, then, after the lapse of 
 three centuries, a Count Rexelaer would again ascend the 
 ancestral throne. He understood all that. You cannot 
 help knowing thoroughly what your father tells you at least 
 once a month. 
 
 He locked himself into his room with " Prince." He 
 could not have told you why he liked to lock himself in, 
 although nobody ever disturbed him. It was a fancy, a 
 craving of the lonely child for absolute loneliness. Next 
 door was the schoolroom, bare and tiresome ; this was his 
 own sanctum, dull and dark like the rest of the house, but 
 bright to him with all a boy's accumulated treasure. He 
 had a fine collection of seals, and a smaller one of postage 
 stamps (neglected), and he was now busy in getting to- 
 gether, at the Chevalier's suggestion and under his super- 
 intendence, a set of engravings of " distinguished " pcrson- 
 U
 
 100 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 ages, native and foreign. Some good swords and rapiers 
 hung against tlie wall, a present from his father ; in one 
 corner stood a turning-lathe, in another a complete suit of 
 armour from a children's ball (William van Rexelaer, first 
 Count Ilohenfels) and an out-grown toy uniform of a Prus- 
 sian Hussar, for in earlier days Reinout had loved to dress 
 up. The place of honour, however, was occupied by a 
 small glass cabinet, in which were carefully arranged a 
 variety of old-fashioned gloves and mittens, half a dozen 
 centuries of hand covering, big and little, silken, leathern, 
 or velvet, embroidered, bejewelled and laced. The Cheva- 
 lier's life-long hobby, gloves of celebrated women — (he had 
 spent on the hands what the hearts had left him) — solemn- 
 ly made over to his darling pupil on the hitter's twelfth 
 birthday, " the termination of childhood." " Collection- 
 nez, mon enfant," said Monsieur de Souza. " It is good ; 
 it supplies a vocation. When next we are in Paris I will 
 take you to see the fans of the Vicomtesse de Rovilly. 
 They are worth several hundred thousand francs and she 
 shows them to no one, but she and I are friends of the 
 days gone by. That is the distinction of the collectionneur 
 comme il faut. He does not show his collections." Xature 
 was represented by a pair of gorgeous stuffed birds from 
 Brazil, all glitter, and pricked-up-ness, and pride. 
 
 Reinout threw himself down on a magnificent tiger- 
 skin, the j)resent of an Indian Prince to Margherita, but 
 neglected now and a little moth-eaten in places. The great 
 black retriever fell over his young master, and they curled 
 themselves into each other, warm and soft. Two things 
 were troubling Reinout's thoughts, in spite of his eager de- 
 sire to rejoice in his father's triumph : the lean finger of 
 earnest protest upraised against the " villainy '* of Greatness, 
 and the strange Marquis's last, sad words : " Try to do your 
 duty. I have not." 
 
 " I will," said Reinout, sitting up, with his arm round the 
 dog's neck. " If only one always had somebody to tell one
 
 SPLENDIDE MENDAX. 197 
 
 exactly what was right, it would be so easy. Why isn't 
 there? I don't suppose anybody wants, purposely, to do 
 anything wrong. Of course there's Monsieur de Souza. 
 He always used to know, I think, but perhaps he doesn't 
 always. I don't think he'd quite understand what this beg- 
 gar-man meant, he knows so little about poor people. A 
 gentilhomme devoir fait loi. That means to do your duty's 
 always right. At any rate, it's always right to choose the 
 disagreeable and be kind." And then he began to ponder 
 the approaching St. Nicholas festivities and the presents 
 he was going to buy for his cousins, the Rexelaers-Borck, 
 especially for Topsy, his twelve year old favourite and play- 
 mate. He always received ten florins extra to purchase 
 these presents with. He still hesitated, for Topsy, between a 
 canary and a card-case (!). True, that was a subject on which 
 he could ask his mother's advice. There were some subjects, 
 you see, on which he could ask his mother's advice. He got 
 up, and wandered downstairs to find her, the dog at his heels. 
 Prince was not permitted to enter the winter-garden, be- 
 cause of his sweeping tail. He knew it, and the prohibition 
 was a very sore point with him on account of Ami's and 
 Flora's insolent manner of yapping against the glass-doors. 
 He sneaked in to-day unperceived, and then turned with 
 loud-voiced protest at Eeinout's command to retire, backing 
 and barking and bounding till, in another moment, he had 
 upset a couple of pots by the entry. Margherita came into 
 view from behind a great stand of chrysanthemums. Her 
 eyes were still sulky ; she looked down at the snapped 
 stems with their helpless pink blossoms. They were her 
 dear Brazilian lilies, just come back from the florist who 
 had reared the seeds for her at much trouble and expense. 
 
 She did not say a word, but her face grow suddenly 
 ugly, and she went back for a little wliip wliicli she kept 
 to rule her own pets. 
 
 Reinout had scan his mother beat Prince once before, 
 till she drew blood. He trembled from head to foot.
 
 198 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " Miimma," he cried, " it wasn't Prince's fault, it was me. 
 I brought him in and I knocked him uji against the flower- 
 pots." 
 
 She hesitated, with uplifted whip. One moment he 
 thought she was going to strike him ; then she said, in a voice 
 as ugly as her face, " Very well, Rene ; your St. Nicholas 
 money can pay for new ones," and turned her back on the 
 boy and the cowed creature at his feet. 
 
 Eeinout silently got his copy-books and went up to 
 Monsieur de Souza. He felt that he had done his duty by 
 his defenceless friend, whose entrance he should have fore- 
 stalled. 
 
 His tutor and he were busy with Italy, which was- by no 
 means a united kingdom yet in those days. " And now re- 
 peat to me, Eene," said Monsieur de Souza, "what I told 
 you yesterday about Xaples. How did there come to be a 
 Bourbon reigning at Xaples? Go on." And Eeinout be- 
 gan. " You are forgetting about the Casa Crocida's," inter- 
 rupted the old gentleman presently. " I am coming to that, 
 Monsieur," replied Eeinout, colouring. " But the King, 
 seeing the battle was hopelessly lost, turned and fled down 
 a narrow ravine. After a long ride he reached the lonely 
 house of a peasant by some cross-roads, and the peasant, 
 recognising him, gave him a fresh horse. And the King 
 said: 'Swear that you do not betray me,' and the old peas- 
 ant swore on the cross of the King's sword. But just when 
 the King was gone, flying to the left, a troop of the enemy 
 rode up and they asked which way the King had passed. 
 And the peasant said, ' To the right,' but they did not be- 
 lieve him, and they made him swear on the cross again, and 
 he told them that he hated the King because he had taken 
 his only son for a soldier, and then he saw that the enemy 
 had got his son with them as a prisoner ! And the captain 
 of the enemy said : ' We will turn to the right ' — for they 
 had to choose, you see, by the old peasant's cottage — ' and 
 if the King is not caught to-night, we shall slay your
 
 SPLENDIDE MENDAX. I99 
 
 son.' And the peasant said : ' The King is gone to the 
 right.' 
 
 " And wlien the war was over the King sent for the old 
 man and made him a baron. And the son, who had escaped, 
 became a great generaL That was in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury " — " Fifteenth," corrected M. de Souza — " and the 
 King gave them as a motto ' Splendide Mendax,' and the 
 present head of the house is Prince Paul Casa Crocida, who 
 was ambassador at Paris under Louis Philippe, and ar- 
 ranged the treaty of Maisons-Douillette, and whose wife is 
 a Paniphigliosi and an aunt of the Italian minister here." 
 
 Presently the Count came in. He liked to think he re- 
 mained in touch with his son's education. " Well, my dear 
 Chevalier," he said beamingly, " I hope we shall be able to 
 move to Deynum in time for Christmas. We can hardly be 
 ready as early as St. Nicholas (5th Dec), but we must have 
 a regular Christmastide with all my brother's family. They 
 are so English, you know. The air is dry ujd at Deynum. 
 It will do your rheumatics good." 
 
 " It will do good then unto the good and to the evil," 
 said the old Chevalier, smiling. " Like the good God 
 Himself." 
 
 " And you, Rene," continued the Count, turning to his 
 staring son, " you must keep your presents till Christmas. 
 We shall have a splendid time." 
 
 " There will be no presents," said Eeinout, a little sul- 
 lenly. 
 
 " Nonsense, Why not ? " 
 
 " Mamma has taken away my money," replied the son 
 of the house, with his elbows on the table. 
 
 "Have you been misbehaving? Oh, never mind. We 
 can't have the whole thing spoiled just now. I'll let you 
 have an extra gold piece for the sake of Deynum." And 
 Count Ililarius fingered the money in his waistcoat-pocket. 
 As a rule he, with his pecuniary preciseness, was a complete 
 stranger to " tips."
 
 200 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Rciiiout did not move from liis ungraceful pose. 
 "I'd rather not, Pajia," he said, in liis young pride of 
 «iartyrdom. " Mamma wouldn't like it." 
 " Xonsense. Catch ! " 
 And Eeinout, not being a prig, caught.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 LOW LIFE, FOR A CHANGE. 
 
 A FEW evenings before the memorable Cliristmas-tide of 
 that memorable year, a group of heavy-browed peasants sat 
 solemnly smoking their pipes round the stove in the tap- 
 room at Deynum. The stove glowed red-hot in the centre, 
 the room was ill-lighted and stuffy, amid its perfumes of 
 gin and paraffin, and its slow- wreathing clouds of smoke. 
 Could you have pierced beyond the lowering beams of the 
 ceiling, you would have found in the chamber above a 
 dark stain hid away under the square of carpet. They had 
 scrubbed the boards repeatedly, but the stain remained. 
 
 The "memorable" year 18 — . Surely, in all human 
 language, there is no more ridiculous word than " memo- 
 rable," the bellow^s with which we try to rekindle our little 
 dead sparks. To the lookers-on at Deynum the year was 
 memorable, because it brought events which interested and 
 amused them, " pained " them also, but even pain, in a 
 great catastrophe, is a form of amusement to the lookers-on. 
 To you, who live in the centre of the Universe, my epithet 
 looks extravagantly oversized, but to you the Christmas of 
 that year is memorable because of Tenorelli's magnificent 
 debut at the Scricci, or because the festivities of the season 
 brought your first attack of gout in their train. Or perhaps 
 it is memorable to all the hundred millions of this rolling 
 world of Koopstud, because of that great victory which 
 " changed the course of history." So be it. It is memo- 
 rable to Tante Suze, because peat was a halfpenny cheaper 
 that winter than it has ever been before or since.
 
 202 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 The peasants of our poor little village sat round the fire 
 on that winter's evening, and smoked. But they alwa3's sat 
 there, of winter evenings, and they always smoked. They 
 sat inotionless, in great, black hulking lumps, with their 
 caps drawn over their eyelids, and their eyelids sunk over 
 their immovable cheeks, enshrouded in lazy mists from 
 each man's pendent pipe. And mine host tried to make 
 them talk, as in duty bound, while he filled their little 
 glasses with thick white gin, for was it not his duty to pro- 
 vide entertainment, and his profit to provoke thirst? 
 
 The remarkable circumstance on the particular evening 
 here mentioned was this, that the guests talked of their own 
 accord, and without any prompting. It were erroneous, 
 however, to imagine a babel of conversation. In the silence 
 of the heavily-shadowed bar-room some tight-coated, rusty 
 creature — the only bright spot about whom was probably 
 his vermilion face — would suddenly hazard a few slow sen- 
 tences, frequently without removing the pij^e whicli pulled 
 down his lips. And then, after a brief pause, during which 
 the clock against the wainscoted wall ticked with stimulat- 
 ing preciseness, a few solemn words of reply would ooze 
 forth from another creature, exactly similar in features, and 
 manner and accent, to the one who had spoken last. And, 
 however insignificant the opinion emitted, each speaker wore 
 an air, in emitting it, which would have done honour to a 
 conclave of dignitaries of the Church. 
 
 " Yes, it's true enough," said Jaap Hakkert, the butcher. 
 " I met Fokke Meinderts myself this afternoon driving a 
 cart-load of boxes from the station. The family are coming 
 next week." 
 
 " "What do they want cart-loads of things for ? " queried 
 a voice from behind the peat-basket. " Wasn't there moun- 
 tains in the Castle already? And didn't the old Baron 
 leave them all ? " 
 
 " Everything," broke in the landlady's fat voice, " ex-
 
 LOW LIFE, FOR A CHANGE. £03 
 
 cepting the plate and the pictures and the family papers and 
 things. Those the Baron had removed to Father Bulbius's 
 two days after the — the accident." 
 
 There was an especially long pause this time, heavy with 
 thought. At last Job, the landlord, remarked, as he medi- 
 tatively took down a bottle of spirits : " There's nothing 
 coming but ' personal effects,' Dievert tells me. Whatever 
 those may be, great folks require a good deal of them, it 
 seems. They can't be clothes only, for nobody would want 
 such boxes of tltem.'''' 
 
 "Much you know about it," burst in Hendrika with a 
 scornful slap of her red hand on the bar. " Great ladies 
 have hundreds of dresses, a couple for every day in the 
 year ! " She cast aggressive glances at her cumbrous hus- 
 band from her bright, bold eyes. Evidently an old subject. 
 
 " The Baroness hadn't dozens of different dresses, re- 
 torted Job, on the defensive. " One always saw her in the 
 same black silk." 
 
 "The Baroness wasn't a fine town lady." 
 
 " She was a real fine lady ! " cried the landlord. 
 
 " She was the greatest lady that ever was," said a feeble 
 old man, who sat nearest the stove. 
 
 They all spoke of her in the past. To the villager one 
 who has definitely quitted the village is dead. 
 
 " I mind me when you never came across her but in a 
 white robe, like ah angel," the " oldest inhabitant " went 
 on. But at this several of them cried out. They all re- 
 membered that, they said. Uncle Peter must not give him- 
 self airs. The old man subsided querulously. " I mind the 
 Baron's grandfather," he muttered, " with a bag to his hair, 
 and buckle-shoes." But nobody heeded him. Their loss 
 was too recent. And besides, they had heard all his stories 
 before. 
 
 Everyone sat staring gloomily and smoking. Presently 
 Jaap Ilakkert " screeched " his chair along tlio sanded floor. 
 
 " There's one thing I can't understand," he said very
 
 20 J, TJIE URP:ATER glory. 
 
 loud. " This old gentleman that — tliat died was a good 
 Catholic — eh ? " And he looked round fiercely, daring the 
 whole circle to deny it. Not that he cared much, but that 
 was his'bullying way. 
 
 " He was a Catholic," re])lied Ilendrika, " but not good. 
 Now, his man was a pious, amiable gentleman, and so pleas- 
 ant to speak to." She smirked a little, half frightened un- 
 der the furious glances of her lord. 
 
 " And these people, his heirs, are nought but beggarly 
 Protestants," Hakkert went on, ignoring the landlady. 
 " And what I want to know is, how ? " 
 
 Most of the peasants lifted up their eye-lids for a mo- 
 ment and gazed stolidly at each other ; then they drojiped 
 them again. The butcher sat np, his whole bulky body a 
 mass of indignant interrogation. " And Eexelaers too," 
 said one man who had not spoken before. 
 
 " It doesn't seem in nature," said the voice from behind 
 the peat-stove. There was a general murmur of ai^proval. 
 The old man spat on the ground. " God forgive them ; 
 perhaps they can't help it," muttered a gentle-faced 
 personage, who sat a little outside the circle, the village- 
 tailor. 
 
 But this sentiment did not find acceptance. 
 
 " Some people are born so," added the tailor, with a 
 twinkle in his eye. 
 
 " Not Eexelaers," declared the butcher violently. And 
 he struck the ashes out of his pipe on to his raw, fleshy 
 palm. 
 
 " Well, whatever they may be," interposed the ever con- 
 ciliatory landlord, " we shall have them among us in a week, 
 and we shall see." 
 
 "And we shall hang out flags and put up a couple of 
 triumphal arches," said the tailor. " It's a pity the season 
 is too late for flowers." 
 
 " No arches ! " burst out a young fellow, who now spoke 
 for "the first time. lie sjjoke with great vehemence. And
 
 LOW LIFE, FOR A CHANGE. 205 
 
 he came forward from a little side-table, by wliicli be had 
 been sprawling in the darkness, bis hands in his pockets, a 
 stumpy brown pipe between his lips — a big bright-looking 
 young fellow, with a shock of yellow hair. The others all 
 stared slowly round at him. 
 
 " I'd like to see the sneak would dare to hang out a bit 
 of colour," he cried, slowly edging his w^ay into the circle. 
 He held up the little brown pipe in one huge brown hand, 
 the other he clenched in a threatening lump in the pocket 
 of his tight black breeches. " Who of you wants to rejoice 
 at the old lord's downfall '? Xot I." 
 
 " Xot I," said the man behind the peat-basket, 
 and then most of the others said " Kot I." " Ah, but 
 what does the Commune do?" said the tailor. And he 
 smiled. 
 
 The Commune, in Holland, has a Burgomaster, a couple 
 of assessors and a village-council. The Burgomaster is al- 
 most always a man of birth and position, by preference a 
 large landed proprietor. The Baron had been Burgomaster 
 of Deynum ; the post was vacant. 
 
 All eyes were turned — with a long, slow movement which 
 left the heads unaltered — in the direction of a portly farmer 
 whose rubicund full moon shone with the radiance of fifty 
 years' prosperous butter-making. This was the Deputy 
 Burgomaster. "We must see what Dievert says," this 
 Avorthy made haste to declare. Dievert, the Baron's stew- 
 ard, was the other assessor, and had been, for many years, 
 practical ruler of the Commune. 
 
 " If the village-council do anything in the way of an 
 official welcome, they deserve to be hung," declared Thys, 
 as he turned on one heel. " They won't," assented some- 
 body. " No, that they won't, nor none of us," cried tiio 
 landlady energetically. " Bravo, Thys ; are you off to Lise 
 up at the Chalkhouse-farm? He! He!" The landlady, 
 like all her sex, dearly loved a bit of love-making ; other 
 i)eople's was always second-best. Thys was Lise's sweet-
 
 206 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 heart, you rcmeiiibcr. 'i'liey "were to be married in 
 spring. 
 
 " No, they won't," affirmed Jaap Ilakkert, who was a 
 member of the Council, " not for beggars of Protestants. 
 
 AVe don't want no d beggars of Protestants at Dey- 
 
 num." 
 
 " Ilist," interrupted Job, who was another member, lie 
 looked round anxiously. For Protestants, though they do 
 not thirst for the true religion, may still be made welcome 
 at a Catholic bar. At Deynum the Pharisees of both sects 
 visited the Publican's house with a beautiful readiness which 
 would have been deemed reprehensible eighteen hundred 
 years ago. But to-night, as it happened, the landlord's eye 
 beheld none of these men of false faith and honest pay, such 
 as his soul both scorned and cherished. 
 
 "No, that the Council won't," said Job, disgusted by 
 their absence. " Damn beggars, whether masters or serv- 
 ants." 
 
 " Best take your masters as they're sent," said the tailor. 
 
 Thys turned threateningly by the door, already half in- 
 visible, looming terrible through the darkness. " It's my 
 belief you're glad," he said illogically. " Boys, let's shame 
 him. Hurrah for the old Baron ! The Holy Virgin help 
 him. Hurrah ! " 
 
 Dutchmen are not easily moved to exliibit feeling. Nor 
 did these now spring to their feet with uplifted caps. But 
 most of them took up Thys's cry, with a clumsy grin on 
 their faces and a doubt, at their hearts, of young Thys's 
 foolish fuss. In those same wooden-walled hearts, however, 
 there was but one prayer of sympathy for the poor great 
 ones so suddenly driven from their midst. The Dutch 
 peasant, as a rule, thinks and feels true. The Baron had, 
 all his life, been a good lord to his people ; the Baroness, a 
 very patron Saint. The new man was a fine city gentleman, 
 despicable for having been born in a street. And, besides, 
 as far as they understood, he had not even paid for, but had
 
 LOW LIFE, FOR A CHANGE. 207 
 
 stolen the property, which the Baron had expressly condi- 
 tioned should never be his. " We will insult him," said one 
 fellow aloud, giving voice to the general sentiment. The 
 tailor sat gazing immovably at the red eye of the stove. 
 Some ashes fell, and the red eye winked at him.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 REIXOUT II. 
 
 A LIVERY servant of Count Rexelaer's, with heavy fur 
 coHar and orange cockade, stood iu lonely grandeur on the 
 little Deynum platform, under the glimmering oil-lamp. 
 Two carriages were waiting beyond, their lights radiant 
 across the snow of the starry December night. 
 
 The whole family came bundling out of their compart- 
 ment, in an avalanche of winter wraps, the parrot, the yelp- 
 ing lap-dogs, a couple of attendants, a chaos of baggage, 
 animate beings, and cold. " Oh, there's John," called out 
 Eeinout. " How's my pony, John ? " For he had received 
 the promised pony from his father a conple of weeks ago. 
 
 The station-master came sidling up, with awkward curi- 
 osity, which the lord of the manor suddenly felt and re- 
 sented. He hurried his wife into the foremost of the con- 
 veyances and they drove rapidly off, along the bleak country- 
 road. " The cold is nnbearable," whispered the Countess, 
 shuddering. " Oh, Mamma, how can you say so? Look at 
 the lovely softness of the snow," the boy's eyes were dancing 
 with excitement. " We are going to have oceans of fun. 
 There is a lake, and when my cousins have taught me to 
 skate, I will teach you." " Thank 5'ou," said Margherita. 
 " Happy child, you have forgotten ! " 
 
 They drove through the village presently in the soft 
 snow-light ; all was deserted and still. The Count looked 
 towards his wife uncomfortably. The horses pattered briskly 
 on, past the little square with its silent church, and round 
 into the avenue of the park. " Ah ! " gasped the Count.
 
 REINOUT II. 209 
 
 They came out into the clearing and saw the dark mass 
 of the Castle rise up on the other side of the water. Sud- 
 denly the bell in the tower began to ring, a pitiful call to 
 meals, very unlike the triumphant harmony of church-bells. 
 The horses' hoofs went clattering over the bridge and up the 
 courtyard. The great doors were thrown open, and a flood 
 of light poured down across two bending figures. Strum 
 and Dievert, on the steps. Count Hilarius gave his wife a 
 nervous hand and led her past the Steward's unnoticed 
 " Welcome to your noble Countships " into the hall of his 
 fathers. The place was full of people. " Ah, the tenants, 
 of course, and the villagers! Very kind, very kind," mur- 
 mured the fine gentleman. The Steward came hurrying 
 up behind him : " Hurrah for my lord the Count and his 
 lady ! " A feeble shout responded in which Eeinout's voice 
 rang out above the rest. The lap-dogs sprang forward, 
 barking irritably. 
 
 All eyes were fixed on the outlandish waiting-woman, 
 with the parrot on her arm. And at lier appearance the 
 stupidest lout among the peasants realized, with terrible 
 distinctness, that here were aliens indeed. 
 
 Margherita paused under the great stained-glass lamp. 
 " This vestibule is terribly bare," she said, in French. Strum 
 understood her and moved uncomfortably. And indeed the 
 great panels showed only too plainly, to all but the owners 
 of the house, where the portraits and suits of armour had 
 been taken down. " In summer," interposed the Notary, 
 " there are more flowers. The rest of the house is well fur- 
 nished. Of course some personal — items — ' The Count 
 winced. The Countess, without heeding the speaker, had 
 passed on into the dining-room, 
 
 "And these are all the tenants?" said Count Hilarius. 
 He swept his hand along the crowd of staring, unemotional 
 faces. 
 
 " As good as all, Hecr Count," was the enigmatical 
 answer.
 
 210 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " All ! Well, my good people, we shall doubtless be ex- 
 cellent frieuds. This is my son, the Jonker* Keinoiit.'" 
 The familiar name fell like a dead weight. 
 
 Iveinout, not knowing what else to do, as his father 
 pushed him forward, held out his hand to a couple of 
 burly old farm-people opposite. " Good evening," he 
 said. 
 
 The motherly farm-wife seized the hand and grasped it 
 warmly. " Good evening, little Heer," she answered, " the 
 saints preserve you ! " A murmur of approval ran through 
 the half-defiant ranks. Count Hilarius turned to go. 
 
 But Dievert detained him, dragging forward an un- 
 willing personage, who had hitherto been trying to look in- 
 visible, Boterton, the loco-Burgomaster. " Now then, Boter- 
 ton ! " Boterton's face was purple. " The Commune bids 
 your Nobleness welcome, Heer Count," he stuttered. " In 
 the name of the village," he added, " and the Council." 
 After the enunciation of which profound sentiment he 
 lapsed into silence. 
 
 And the careless walls of Deynum looked down upon 
 this scene also. 
 
 " Oh yes," said the Count. " Who is the Burgomaster? 
 Eh?" 
 
 " There is none, Heer Count," replied the Notary. 
 " Not at present." 
 
 Count Hilarius flushed. " Good-night," he said. And 
 fled. 
 
 Somehow the Avhole thing reminded him of — of what? 
 Suddenly he remembered. Of the return of the Bourbon 
 to his capital, when the enemies of his country brought 
 him back. It was not a bit like coming home to his own. 
 
 " Laissa," said the Countess, " I am dead with fatigue— 
 and emotion. This, then, is the chateau de mes peres. It 
 
 * Title for unmarried sons of noblemen. Pronounced Yonker.
 
 REINOUT II. 211 
 
 is handsome, but 'faut qu'on s'y habitue.' Ugh, what a 
 country ! Had Brazil not been discovered so late, M. le 
 Comte's ancestors might perhaj^s have been Brazilian ! " 
 
 " The chateau has come true," replied the mulatto. 
 She did not love this marsh of her indwelling, " but the 
 cards had foretold, M'am Rita, that it would lie in a 
 laud of knavesy 
 
 The departure from the Hague had indeed been fraught 
 with emotions. The birds, all but Rollo, the parrot, had 
 been left behind, their doctor refusing to sanction the jour- 
 ney. Margherita had wandered disconsolately from cage to 
 cage, and taken poetical leave of them. " Adieu, Fifi. Tu 
 dois rester ici. Et moi, Je vais partir. Adieu, mon Casi- 
 mir." She herself would not have travelled, but for tlie 
 Count's threat to receive the Eexelaers of Altena just the 
 same, without her. 
 
 And then the terrible journey itself. At the station 
 she had been met by a refusal to admit her poor little 
 curled darlings into her compartment. They must be 
 thrown into a luggage-van, plush-baskets and all, there to 
 die ! The authorities were inflexible. The Countess still 
 more so. There had been a scene on the platform, and a 
 crowd. Laissa had pushed over, with impassive arm, an 
 official who happened to interpose, and the pets had been 
 ensconced upon the carrriage cushions, and Margherita, 
 as she lay back among her furs, had hissed " Canaille " in 
 the station-master's face. Proces-verbal had been drawn 
 up ; the nervous, distinguished-looking gentleman had been 
 compelled to give his name : Count Rexelaer van Deynum, 
 a Lord of the Household ! 
 
 ." I will never travel with you again, Margot," Count 
 Hilarius had declared, as the train slowly glided into mo- 
 tion, tlie spaniels, at their mistress's instigation, barking tri- 
 unipli against the glass. " Had you been a man," ]\Iarghc- 
 
 rita had answered, panting, " you would have beaten that 
 15
 
 ._)12 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 cowardl}' dog-torturer within an iucli of his life." " And a 
 pity of the inch," she added, " niais 11 faut bien respecter 
 les convenances." 
 
 " And the Court ? " suggested the little-souled Count, 
 touching, in his little-souled anxiety, the one point where 
 she would wince. " In these Democratic times, such a row, 
 with its possible consequences, may cost me my jDlace." 
 
 " I don't care," replied the Countess, caring very much.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE MESSAGE OF THE SILENCE. 
 
 The boy, left to himself, a,s the crowd slowly melted 
 away from around him, stood staring, between the marble 
 columns, up into the dai'kness of the roof. He could dimly 
 discern, emblazoned high above, the well-known lions with 
 their shining swords. The familiar faces of the royal 
 beasts made him feel at home immediately. He nodded 
 to them. And then he ran to the glass front-doors, and 
 looked out. 
 
 The landscape lay before him, clear in the tremble of its 
 snow-smitten waiting for the moon — the white courtyard, 
 and the dull glitter of the trees beyond. Away, where the 
 bridge was, there must be water. He wanted to find out 
 about the skating he had promised his cousins ; in another 
 moment he was racing through the pleasant snow-sheltered 
 air. 
 
 Reinout had never beheld the face of nature. He re- 
 tained a vague, delicious recollection of the Paradise of his 
 infancy, glorified by Marglierita's never-ending regrets. 
 The loveliness and the sensuousncss of living, as felt by 
 every beetle and by every bud, had lapped him body and 
 soul ; he had rioted in happiness, nothing to do but to 
 breathe where every breath was heavy — sometimes too 
 crushingly heavy — with enjoyment; liis young existence 
 voluptuously prostrate beneath tlie splendour of its own 
 excess. That sun-sick dawn had left its flush upon his face 
 and heart ; the child of the equator would never freeze into
 
 214: THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 a cool, white Dutchman ; but there had been no intercourse 
 with nature in the constant seclusion of awnings and shut- 
 ters, the shrinking, the ceaseless protection from all that is 
 pernicious in reptile, insect or flower. From these climates 
 European children come away with the light of the sun in 
 their eyes. That is all they remember. 
 
 He was still young when they brought him to the 
 Hague. There was an apple-tree in the garden there. It 
 never bore any apples, and Eeinout's interest in it had al- 
 ways been Platonic. 
 
 But now ! — oh the sudden revelation, the personal con- 
 tact which lay in that one thought : this is home. The 
 trees, the fields, the water, these were " ours," not with the 
 sense of proprietorship, but with the power of enjoyment. 
 Xature, henceforth, wonld stand ready as a playmate, and 
 her abode, with its fathomless treasures, would be his. 
 What matter, if at this their first embrace she hid behind 
 her wintry coverlet? He could hear her laughing under 
 it, and the gaunt trees whispered endlessly some wondrous 
 mystery of her life. 
 
 He stood for a few moments gazing intently into the 
 moat — he conld not get down to its shining surface from 
 here — and then he turned and ran in among the towering 
 beeches, eager to have them on every side. 
 
 The very glamour of the scene brought it more impres- 
 sively home to him. We never hear Xature breathe so 
 close to us as in the luminous, listening silence of a wind- 
 stilled night of snow. Eeinout, suddenly, heard her. 
 
 that fairy soul-seeing, into the unreal presence of the 
 snow-scape ! It is all so actual and yet so visionary ; yester- 
 day it was not, to-morrow it will have vanished for ever. 
 We know that it is a beautiful illusion, both of shape and 
 colour, a dream momentarily materialised, fading away 
 from us even as we touch it, into the hard blacks and 
 browns of daily life — but oh the virgin purity that tempts 
 us and escapes us, that seems to breathe in death and bid
 
 THE MESSAGE OF THE SILENCE. 215 
 
 us grasp it ; surely this is not the world we live and suffer 
 in, and the glamour melts away, and it is the naked, naked 
 world after all. But perhaps it broke ujdou us as a dim 
 foreshadowing — nay, fore-lightening — of that life in whicli 
 the snow will lie upon our hearts and eyes for ever, white 
 beneath the burning Light of God. 
 
 You smile at the thought of a boy of fourteen, with his 
 head full of skating and the holidays, suddenly crushed 
 beneath such an avalanche as this. It did not reach him. 
 But he heard its voice afar off and stood vaguely listening 
 for a moment, ere he bounded away in search of something 
 new. 
 
 He was wild with the prospect of the ice-sports, the 
 sleighing, the fun with his cousins, although all these, ex- 
 cept Topsy, were too old to play with him. Poor little fel- 
 low ! He was boy enough at heart, had he but known how 
 to show it to other boys. There was not a manly sport 
 which he did not take to, often with a zeal far beyond his 
 slender frame. Several times before this wonderful acqui- 
 sition of the pony, he had ridden away recklessly on any- 
 body's horse. The Count was no equestrian. 
 
 He ran along the Holy Walk, by the merest chance, and 
 presently was attracted to a faintly glimmering light in the 
 distance. This drew him towards a little building, of which 
 the door stood ajar. He stole into the Chapel. It was dark 
 but for the lamp at the altar. 
 
 The boy stood spell-bound on the threshold. A Church, 
 like those " at home " — Roman Catholic, therefore — but full 
 of statues and tombs. A sudden awe came over him. Was 
 this also a dream or a reality, this conclave of the dead, in 
 the wood? He felt terrified, and started back. 
 
 Somebody moved at the noise. Somebody else, then, 
 was in the building. Somebody rose from his knees by the 
 chancel and came towards Reinout, a boy like himself. 
 
 " Who are you ? " asked the boy. 
 
 "Reinout van Rexelaer," replied Reinout stoutly.
 
 216 THE greatp:r glory. 
 
 « Oh, wliat a lie ! " 
 
 " Say that again ! " cried Reinoiit furiously. " IIow dare 
 you? AVho are you? I am Eeinout van Rexelaer, from the 
 ilague." 
 
 They could hardly distinguish each other in the dusk of 
 the building. 
 
 "N-o-o-o," said the other boy, in long-drawn wonder. 
 ." You don't mean to say so. Oh my eye, what luck. This 
 comes of praying. I say, come outside. I want to ask you 
 something. I can't ask it here." 
 
 They went out into the night together. Said the strange 
 bo}', as soon as they were outside : " Will you fight? " 
 
 " Fight ? " echoed Eene in amazement. " Xo. Why ? " 
 
 " I suppose you're about as old as I am. IIow old are 
 
 you?" 
 
 " Fourteen." 
 
 " That's all right. Fm tliirteen ; and I'm smaller. 
 Now. Will you figlit ? " 
 
 " No," replied Rene, moving off. 
 
 " Ah, you're funking. Coward. And you won't fight 
 because I'm not a jonker, like yourself." 
 
 " Won't I ? Look out then ! " replied Reinout, and fiew 
 at his adversary. 
 
 They had a hard battle of it for a few moments under 
 the shadow-shrouded trees. There was nobody to see fair 
 play, but they managed honestly without. At the end of 
 three minutes, however, Eeinout had to give in ; his antago- 
 nist had vanquished his superior sparring by brute force 
 and by a vehemence which the taller boy was very far from 
 feeling. The little noble was fairly licked. 
 
 " I've thrashed you," cried his antagonist triumphantly, 
 " I'm glad I thrashed you." He left off pummelling Rene, 
 and drew back, out of breath. 
 
 " Yes," said Reinout, wondering where his left eye was. 
 " You have. I don't know why, I'm sure." 
 
 The other had run off. He stopped, and came back.
 
 THE MESSAGE OF THE SILENCE. 217 
 
 " Eemember," he cried, " I said I was glad I'd thrashed 
 you. Be sure and remember." 
 
 "You certainly are not a jonker," Eeinout could not 
 help retorting under this provocation. " That's not the 
 way to end up. Here, give me your hand." 
 
 " I won't," replied Piet Poster, and scampered away.
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 " JACK-SXAPS." 
 
 Next morning Father Bnlbius drew on his stoutest 
 boots — under Veronica's personal supervision — and marched 
 away through the snow. " To draw on stout boots " in 
 Dutch is to brace oneself for bold endeavour. Well, Father 
 Bulbius drew them on and proceeded to the Castle, to pay 
 due homage to the new Lord. The visit was not a very 
 satisfactory one — how could it be? — in spite of Count 
 Eexelaer's studied condescension ; the good priest hung his 
 head dejectedly, as he came away. 
 
 He had heard from Dievert that the Countess had been 
 born a Catholic. Count Hilarius deeply regretted that this 
 had not been the case with himself ; " it would have looked 
 so much more genuine." He would have gone over, but he 
 dreaded inquiries into the reason, and discoveries by the 
 Baron. Better talk about Eovert van Eexelaer. Who be- 
 came a Protestant, you know. 
 
 Father Bulbius shook his head at intervals all the way 
 home. " A renegade 1 " he said, thinking of the Countess, 
 who had remained invisible. "You cannot help being 
 born of the devil, but you can help asking him to adopt 
 you." And he sighed. 
 
 " Well ? " said Veronica, waiting in the porch, her arms 
 a-kimbo. 
 
 " You were right," replied his Reverence, " the snow is 
 melting. It is very wet." 
 
 "But the Chapel?"
 
 "JACK-SNAPS." 219 
 
 " We shall see." The Father tried to edge past her : 
 the entrauce was narrow, Yeronica bony : we all know that 
 the good Father was stout. He stuck. 
 
 " But tlie contract ? You told him the Baron has it all 
 in the contract ? " Yeronica persisted excitedly. 
 
 " I dare say the Heer Count will do all that is right. 
 My feet are damp, Yeronica ; I think that I ought to change 
 my shoes." 
 
 " So you ought to, poor lamb," cried Yeronica, and 
 hurried to fetch the slippers she had kept toasting be- 
 fore the fire. " I shall have to look sharp after that 
 Chapel," she said to herself, " or they'll take it away from 
 him yet." 
 
 The Father's sanctum now presented a very different 
 appearance from that under which we beheld it last. It 
 was swept and cleaned — trium2)h of the Broom ! — but it 
 contained more litter than ever. For the whole room was 
 packed full of the treasures from the Castle, massed to- 
 gether under the guardianship of a number of fierce-lookiug 
 knights, with closed visor, who stood ranged beneath their 
 banners, strange sight in the dwelling of a soldier of Peace. 
 The plate-chests were in the Father's adjoining bed- 
 room ; the pictures, lords and ladies, in all their bravery 
 of ruffs and doublets, of wigs and powder, crowded the 
 o-arret. The quiet cottage overflowed with the glory of the 
 Rexelaers. 
 
 The Father said he slept with one eye open and dreamed 
 of tramps. Through the door he could see the plumed 
 knights nodding in the moonlight. He had borrowed a 
 revolver from Dievert, but he had energetically refused to 
 borrow the bullets as well. " Do you take me for a mur- 
 derer ? " he had demanded indignantly. 
 
 He had been very proud and pleased, nevertheless, when 
 the Baron had sought admittance for his treasures on the 
 day after the suicide. He would gladly have harboured the 
 living Noblenesses as well as the dead ones. " Oh, not
 
 220 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 that," said the Baron. " We must never come back. We 
 are going to live at Cleves and forget." 
 
 The deserted Castle had been bad enough ; the Castle 
 bright with unusual gaiety was worse. 'No longer did the 
 Father venture to creep up the avenue, as he had done daily, 
 before the arrival of the servants and carriages, to get a 
 melancholy peep of the lines of closed shutters. " Crows 
 they call us ! " he sighed. 
 
 So he kept away, and grieved, and grew more indolent 
 than ever. He discovered that he regretted his e carte of 
 evenings, and this discovery involved another. It was for 
 his own sake, then, and not for the Baron's, that he had 
 continued to play. He did not stop to inquire what he re- 
 gretted, the game or the partner. " What hypocrites we 
 are ! " he mused, and he eyed his little book of penances 
 suspiciously, Avondering how much of its contents would 
 prove false. And one day he impatiently threw the whole 
 catalogue into the fire. Decidedly, adversity was improving 
 Father Bulbius. But he jDuUed it off again before it was 
 burnt. Improvement is uphill-work. 
 
 The lonely Father turned in his easy chair — oh, but it 
 was deliciously easy ! — and thought how excellent had been 
 Veronica's fish-cake. The day was a fast-day ; he had had 
 nothing else ; and he had eaten too much of it. He nodded. 
 The fierce warriors around him seemed to nod haughtily 
 back. He stretched out his hand to a favourite book — it was 
 a Horace — on the floor. He found that he could not reach 
 it, and nodded again. And the whole room slowly went to 
 sleep. 
 
 " There's a woman to see your Reverence," said Veronica, 
 standing in the doorway. She considered his Reverence 
 had slept long enough. On the whole, she was very gentle 
 to him in these days, showing her angry sympathy, like the 
 wise woman she was, by constant abuse of those that were 
 gone. She had seen what she had seen in the Baronial 
 kitchen, said this excellent housekeeper. " The Baroness
 
 "JACK-SNAPS." 221 
 
 was always liberal," Father Bulbins would plead. " Just 
 so," replied Veronica, ostentatiously scraping the butter- 
 knife. 
 
 " There's a woman to see you ! " she repeated aggres- 
 sively. 
 
 The Father started awake. " If it's a beggar," he said, 
 with an apprehensive frown, " send her away with a hunch 
 of bread." 
 
 " It's not a beggar, your Reverence ; it's Vrouw Poster." 
 
 The Priest's face cleared. He disliked all petitioners, 
 because of his incapacity for saying " No." But, good man 
 that he was, he had a good man's weakness for a chat with 
 the fair sex, if not too alarmingly fair. " Vrouw Poster," 
 he echoed brightly. " I'll see her here." 
 
 " Very well," replied Veronica, accentuating each sylla- 
 ble. She introduced the visitor, still aggressively, and, as 
 soon as the door had closed again — too soon, therefore, for 
 prudence — that visitor, a comely peasant woman, burst into 
 tears. 
 
 " Good Heavens ! " cried the Father. " Is Poster dead ? " 
 Simple-hearted man ! All wives are doomed to weep once 
 for their husbands ! some after the husband's death, some 
 before. If not after, then all the more before. 
 
 " No, your Reverence," sobbed the gardener's spouse. 
 " It is Piet ! " 
 
 " How shocking ! " cried the Father. " How dreadfully 
 sudden ! " He rose from his chair. " Well," he said reflect- 
 ively. " The boy was a good boy — on the whole." 
 
 " It's not that, your Reverence. He's not dead — " 
 
 " You said he was," interrupted the Father, annoyed. 
 It seemed that Vrouw Poster had taken a liberty with his 
 feelings. 
 
 "Leastways not altogether. Not tluit I know to the 
 contrary. But he's run away." 
 
 " Fetch him back," said Father Bulbius, and sat down 
 again.
 
 222 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " That's just what I mayn't do, your Ileverence. His 
 father says, let him stay away till he comes back of his own 
 accord." 
 
 " Well, his father, though harsh, is not a man without 
 sense." Bulbius began leisurely to fill his pipe, messing the 
 tobacco over his already snuffy cassock. 
 
 " Oh your Reverence, but he won't ! I know I^iet. lie's 
 that dogged. Often and often he's said to me : ' Mother,' 
 he's said, ' if father don't treat me better, I shall run away 
 to sea.' And I used to laugh at him ; the blessed Saints 
 forgive me. But he's never been the same since the Baron 
 W'ent away; he was terribly partial to the Freule. And 
 yesterday evening his father beat him for not having gone 
 up with us to the Castle to see the new Lord come in. And 
 this morning he's gone, and his bed's not been slept in, and 
 he's left a paper with ' Good-bye to mother and Xicky ' 
 (that's his goat), and he's out in the snow — Oh Lord ! " and 
 the poor woman began to cry afresh. 
 
 " My dear creature," said Bulbius, considerably disturbed 
 by these symptoms of distress, " he will doubtless return 
 before nightfall, as soon as he has had enough of the cold. 
 And if not, it will be easy to recapture him." 
 
 " He won't come back," sobbed Yrouw Poster. " He'd 
 rather die on the heath. And his father's a harsh man, 
 though I say it that shouldn't." 
 
 "Xo," said the Priest, gravely. "You shouldn't. 
 Don't." He could think of nothing else to comfort her. 
 Presently he added : " His father's lesson may do him a lot 
 of good. He is an exceedingly mischievous boy, as we saw 
 in that affair of the betting. Let him find out that there 
 are worse places than home. He won't stay away long, 
 and, meantime, you have seven other children to look 
 after." 
 
 The woman stopped crying and stared at him. Sud- 
 denly she realized that he was childless. " Your Reverence 
 does not understand," she said quietly, and quitted the
 
 " JACK-SNAPS." 223 
 
 room so abruptly that Veronica had not time to get away 
 into the kitchen. 
 
 He called after her through the open door. His con- 
 science smote him. " Come back," he said, " I want to 
 understand. Now, what can I do for you, Vrouw Poster ? " 
 
 " I had hoped that your Reverence would reason with 
 my husband. The child must be fetched home imme- 
 diately. It is wicked. It is cruel." 
 
 Just what Bulbius had dreaded, argument with a man 
 like Poster ! He gave a long pull to his pipe. 
 
 " Well, I will go with you," he said. 
 
 The Head-gardener, like many men, had no objection to 
 pastoral exhortations, provided they were given from the 
 pulpit, when, if unfortunately not asleep, he could hear 
 without accepting them, Now, placed between assent and 
 dissent, he dissented. Father Bulbius was well acquainted 
 with his various jDarishioners, all the better, perhaps, for 
 keeping a little aloof. He disliked receiving a " No " from 
 others as much as uttering it himself. He had foreseen 
 this refusal, and therefore he had sought to preach resigna- 
 tion to the gardener's wife. 
 
 " In a day or two, when he has got tired of begging for 
 crusts, he will come back," said Piet's father, " to the best 
 beating he ever had in his life." 
 
 But obstinate people are often mistaken, and cruel peo- 
 ple always. Piet Poster did not come back. 
 
 His mother, therefore, was compelled to seek comfort 
 in the care of her other children, as Bulbius liad suggested, 
 and the Priest went occasionally to add his equally effectual 
 consolations, not sorry, in spite of his shrinking, to find 
 himself once more within the well-loved precincts. He 
 was returning late one afternoon from such a visit, in the 
 ashen-grey December air, when his path was crossed near 
 the vegetable garden by the new heir of the house, on his 
 all-glorious, all-delectable pony. Reinout quickly lifted his 
 cap. It was a little thing, but the frank grace with which
 
 224 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 it was done, wont straight to the good priest's heart, not a 
 distant or a tortuous road. He was so afraid of these 
 strangers, afraid of their inevitable dislike of himself. " A 
 pretty pony," he said, timidly, with a ceremonious salute. 
 
 " Isn't it a beauty ? " cried Eeinout, only too delighted 
 with this fresh opportunity of showing his "treasure." 
 " I'm so glad that you like him, Mynheer. And you 
 haven't even seen him gallop yet." "Mynheer" to the 
 priest from a Rexelaer ! Alas the day ! 
 
 " Would you like to see him gallop ? " suggested Eein- 
 out. 
 
 " Very much indeed, Jonker." 
 
 "Then would you mind holding this for a moment? 
 Please keep the paper down tight, or they'll jump out. I 
 lost one coming along, and had an awful hunt for him." 
 And the Jonker extended a small paper-covered bowl to his 
 new acquaintance. 
 
 Father Bulbius was prejoaring to take it, when a new 
 thought struck the boy. 
 
 " Oh, perhaps, Mynheer," he said eagerly, " you could 
 tell me what they are called." He edged up closer, driving 
 the Father unconsciously against a tree. " Nobody knows 
 at home. They all say ' bugs ' of everything. One of the 
 labourers gave me these ; they were in the vinery. But he 
 says they're just beetles. Look, this is one. Take care. 
 They pinch awfully with those little pincers. Can you tell 
 me ? I should so like to know." 
 
 Bulbius had not been a peasant boy at Deynum and 
 afterwards a seminarist for nothing. The two heads bent 
 over the bowl in the dim light. " Those are not beetles you 
 have got there," he said, " but, then, the common people 
 call most insects beetles. These are called ' Jack-Snaps ' in 
 our parts. They have got a long Latin name, I daresay, but 
 I should have to look that out for you." 
 
 " Oh, would you ? How very kind of you, Mynheer. 
 Have you got a book, then, witli all the names inside? I
 
 "JACK-SNAPS." 225 
 
 want to find out immensely. I am so glad to know that 
 these are ' Jack-8naps.' I shall tell Sam ; he gave them to 
 me. There are lots of animals in the green-honses ; what a 
 quantity there will be everywhere in summer ! I had no 
 idea there were so many in the world. It is capital fun ! " 
 
 "You like being here, Jonker '? " said Bulbius, a little 
 sadly. 
 
 "Oh don't I just! It's splendid. And to-morrow all 
 my cousins are coming ! And we are going to keep Christ- 
 mas. And they are going to teach me to skate ! " 
 
 As he talked thus excitedly, the brown pony, which had 
 been standing beautifully still, gave a sudden and terrific 
 leap, almost unseating its rider. Father Bulbius retreated 
 with wonderful alacrity behind the tree, and peeping from 
 thence was spectator of a struggle during which the pot and 
 its contents were tossed away on the snow. At last, having 
 probably freed itself from the pincers which had first caused 
 its restlessness, the animal quieted down and Reinout tri- 
 umphantly patted it, as the Father gingerly emerged. 
 
 " I nevei' knew him do that before," said the young 
 master reproachfully, and the pony unfortunately could not 
 explain. "But oh the Jack-Snaps! I must find them ! " 
 And he leaped to the ground and began eagerly hunting in 
 the snow. 
 
 It was almost dark. The Father struck match after 
 match in the wind-still air, and bent his burly figure as best 
 he could. They searched together, but vainly. " It can't 
 be helped," gasped the Father at last. " You must get Sam 
 to find you some more animals, Jonker, and if you come to 
 my Parsonage, I'll tell you their names." 
 
 " I'm so sorry to have lost these," said Reinout, " and, 
 besides, they will die in the cold." He rode off soberly. 
 The Father watched his figure disappear into the evening 
 mist. " No," said the Father aloud, " it could never be 
 done. Besides, mixed marriages are a very great evil. But 
 a nice boy, nevertheless. A really nice boy."
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 reixout's cousins. 
 
 Xext afternoon Reinout went down to the little station 
 with a couple of carriages, and all the Rexelaers van Altena 
 were let loose out of the crowded Christmas train and came 
 driving back with the young heir through the startled vil- 
 lage. The village was very much interested. The former 
 lords had lived in the silence of an approaching dissolution ; 
 the curtain had now risen for another and a brighter play. 
 The village criticised the smart town carriages and the smart 
 town ladies, and the liveries and the horseflesh, especially the 
 horseflesh. It still said " Well ! " but the tone was sinking 
 from doubt to content. Jaap Hakkert, the butcher, agreed 
 with the two bakers that a full table and a full purse at the 
 table had their advantages. The tailor smiled. And the 
 oldest inhabitant said that things reminded him of the 
 Baron's father's father's time. 
 
 Thys looked into his Lise's eyes. " Do you remember," 
 he asked, " how hard pressed the Baron was when he refused 
 to sell the Chalkhouse Farm ? " 
 
 " Of course, Thys ; we all remember," said Lise. Thys 
 was Lise's cousin, as well as her lover. He had lived all his 
 life at the Chalkhouse Farm. 
 
 Count Eexelaer's younger brother Frederick, as every- 
 body knows, had married a daughter of the great Gelderland 
 family of Borck, a cousin of that powerful Baron Borck of 
 Rollingen whose estate Joined on to Deynum. The lady had 
 brought her husband a little money and a number of influ-
 
 REINOUT'S COUSINS. 227 
 
 ential connections. He was a quiet, insignificant, sat-upon 
 little man, a member of the magistrature and an utter failure 
 as a lawyer. But he played whist very well. And she was 
 comfortable and florid, and managed everybody and every- 
 thing. You got on excellently with her if you said " Yes " 
 in the pauses of her talk. They made Frederick van Eexe- 
 laer a judge before he was forty. Her cousin E — was min- 
 ister at the time. 
 
 " My dear Betsy," his Excellency had said, suddenly sur- 
 rendering after a long tussle, " as you have got his name 
 proposed — Heaven only knows how you managed it ! — I will 
 appoint him in spite of — " 
 
 " Thank you, Herman, that is like you — " 
 " Superior claims. But on one condition only. He 
 must solemnly bind himself to me never on any account to 
 express a separate opinion. He must always ' concur ' with 
 his colleagues.* You understand me. I can have no awk- 
 ward questions cropping up." 
 
 " I understand perfectly," replied Mevrouw Eexelaer- 
 Borck. " I promise." 
 
 " But I would rather have his own word bind him — " 
 " Eeally ! " said Mevrouw with a peculiar smile. " Well, 
 of course you know best. I am much obliged to you, Her- 
 man. You are the best friend we have." 
 
 But she had more best friends. The judge faithfully 
 kept his promise, and he found it very easy to keep. And 
 they knew the right people, whom to know renders utter 
 misery impossible. Besides, they were anything but misera- 
 ble, although they experienced some difficulty about always 
 making both ends meet exactly in the manner they wanted. 
 She liked children. Slie liked managing. And he liked 
 whist. 
 
 And the five children, as they grew up, liked themselves, 
 
 * Verdicts, in Holhuid, nre pronounced by juries of judges. 
 16
 
 22S THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 which is always a great advantage. Aud the}' liked their 
 mother's numerous relations — a rarer coincidence — and their 
 large circle of acquaintances. Of course they all believed, 
 heart and soul, in the Greatness of the Eexelaers, and tried 
 to forget that the brand-new title of this branch was not — 
 officially, at least — a revival of the Holy Roman one. Grand- 
 mamma Rexelaer (the haberdasher's daughter) had never 
 existed at all. Grandmamma Borck was alive, and a very 
 great lady indeed. 
 
 The chief event of these good people's life had been the 
 arrival from foreign parts of the head of the family with his 
 wife and his olive-coloured cherub and all their delicious, 
 if rather disquieting, paraphernalia of foreignness. And 
 the Rexelaer liveries once more shone in the streets of a 
 city of flunkies, and the lion's-paws stretched forth their 
 swords from the panels of the Creole Countess's brand-new 
 carriages — ipsa glorior infamia — and her family arose and 
 called her blessed. The children were rather disappointed 
 about her colour. Rolline, the younger girl, had long iden- 
 tified her aunt with her nigger-doll Jumbo ; Jane, the elder, 
 avowed a preference for cafe au lait. Margherita was not 
 a bit like Jumbo. She was very handsome, and the whole 
 family talked, in public, of her beauty alone. 
 
 " My dear," said the venerable Baroness Borck to her 
 daughter, " I asked Madame de Jercelyn about the Cache- 
 nard family. She said she had never heard the name. And 
 there, I think, we had better stop." 
 
 There were five young Rexelaers van Altena — where is 
 Altena? — two sons, Guy and George, the younger Just out 
 of his teens, and after these three daughters, Jane, Rolline 
 and Antoinette. They were all golden-haired and good- 
 looking and stupid, except Jane, who was sharp of features 
 and of soul. Guy was at Leyden preparing to follow his 
 father's career with all his father's chances of success; 
 George, the beauty, foolish, good-natured, Apollo-faced 
 George, was nowhere, everlastingly plucked in the A B C.
 
 REINOUT'S COUSINS. 229 
 
 " George will have to marry," said Grandmamma Borck. 
 The girls, too, would have to marry, though what could 
 anyone make of plain-featured, plain-spoken Jane ? They 
 were always well-dressed, and they were " altogether Eng- 
 lish," which means that they spoke Dutch with an English 
 accent and English with a Dutch one. That was the proper 
 thing among their " set " at the Hague, and you must on 
 no account make use of any language but English in public 
 places and conveyances, and very nice it would be if the 
 Nemesis of Pronunciation did not infallibly rise and mock 
 you. And the Freules van Rexelaer never wrote other than 
 English notes to their intimates, and, if they wanted to be 
 particularly affectionate and undyingly faithful, they signed 
 them — " yours truly " ! Yes, they were very English, in- 
 deed. 
 
 Reinout's especial friend, twelve-year old Antoinette, 
 therefore felt much aggrieved at the French name she 
 bore. She had been called after the wife of the minister 
 who had given her father the Judgeship, and she went about 
 as a living monument of gratitude. To comfort her the 
 others had dubbed her Topsy, and the nickname suited her ; 
 she was a shock-headed tomboy in those days. She had 
 been wild to get to all the glories which Reinout had graph- 
 ically foretold. Almost before the train had stopped, she 
 plumped, past her cousin's extended hand, down on the 
 platform, flinging her arms round the retriever's neck. 
 " Prince first," she said, looking up, with all a child's pre- 
 cocious coquetry, at her " preux chevalier." 
 
 Mevrouw Elizabeth ascended the castle-steps with state- 
 ly smile. She never worried her children, leaving all these 
 things to governesses and to time. Her heart, at this mo- 
 ment, was full of the bitter sweet of the first visit to Dey- 
 num. The whole family rejoiced and envied. " The home 
 of our fathers ! " Up till now the only real sorrow in the 
 life of this daughter of the Borcks had been the harrow- 
 ing conviction that the entire city of the Hague was con-
 
 230 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 staiitly couscious of the distinction between real Rexelaers 
 and false. Most people in the Hague, had she but known 
 it, were thinking, as she did, of themselves. 
 
 There had been some trouble about getting away, at this 
 time of the year, from Grandmamma Borck. That won- 
 derful old lady had originally taken but very little interest 
 in her daughter's common husband's still more common 
 sister-in-law. She took no great interest in anything now- 
 adays, excepting the dual contentment — culinary and con- 
 versational — of that active member, her tongue. She lived 
 to eat (little, but well), and to talk (well, but much). And 
 she had managed to preserve her figure. And she liked 
 tyrannizing over a rich orphan grandchild, whose money 
 ported them both. 
 
 She woke up to a firework of questions, however, when 
 the great news of the inheritance suddenly fell with a hiss 
 on a hundred spluttering tongues. Mevrouw Elizabeth, 
 who faithfully visited her mother at least three times a 
 week, now had to go daily, and tell all she knew. A little 
 more, under the pressure of much questioning and pro- 
 gressive irritability. 
 
 " Of course I remember the Marquis la Jolais at Brus- 
 sels," coughed the Dowager over her laced handkerchief 
 and scent-bottle by the blazing fire. " He was handsome, 
 though a little bit of a dandy. They used to call him the 
 Marquis J'ose. He was very courteous to women, but then 
 everybody was that in those days. Don't ring, Cecile. Put 
 on the coals yourself. And to think that this little no-one- 
 knows-who should be his niece ! I remember all about the 
 affair with the groom and the business at Eio. Leave 
 the room, Cecile, and your aunt and I can talk it over 
 again." 
 
 "Yes, grandmamma," answered Cecile demurely, where 
 she knelt, tongs in hand, a pretty figure, before the fire. 
 "Grandmamma and you are quits," Topsy Eexelaer used 
 to say. " Each makes life as hot as she can for the other."
 
 REINOUT'S COUSINS. 231 
 
 Graudmamraa was cold-blooded and exceedingly " f rileuse " ; 
 Cecile was warm-hearted and chilled. 
 
 " They are wanting us to go and spend Christmas with 
 them," Mevrouw Elizabeth began a little hesitatingly. "It 
 would be good fun for the children, in spite of Margherita's 
 affectation of grief. She has gone into mourning, Mamma, 
 preposterous mourning, an extra inch for each additional 
 nought of the legacy. She makes a fool of herself. You 
 remember how everybody laughed at Clara van Weylert's 
 crape." 
 
 " I do," said the Dowager grimly, " and I remember the 
 joke about the additional inch ; it was Dolly Weylert made 
 it. You ought to bring me some new jokes, instead of 
 spoiling old ones in the telling. I go out so little ; I hear 
 nothing. I often wish I was dead." 
 
 Mevrouw van Rexelaer knew what this meant. " We 
 won't go to Deynum, unless you like," she said. And then 
 she added with her ready tact : " The children will feel it's 
 their duty to stay and cheer up grandmamma. You always 
 get miserable at this time of the year." 
 
 The Dowager angrily shook off her daughter's arm. 
 " Cecile can dress me a tree," she said, " with bonbons and 
 a doll ! Wait till you arc my age and Jane tells you to feel 
 young. I shall be thankful to know you are all revelling 
 at Deynum without any trouble to me. To a woman, after 
 seventy, life is a humiliation and a disgrace. There, there, 
 I am tired." 
 
 Mevrouw Elizabeth rose with a sensation of relief. Poor 
 Mamma ! Her gout, you know ! And the festive season. 
 "It is a great responsibility for Ililarius," she said, "tbis 
 large property. And Margherita is hardly the woman — " 
 
 " Fiddlesticks. I daresay she will give away soup tickets. 
 Tell Cecile, as you go out, to bring me up my bouillon."
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 MARGHERITA DISCOVERS THAT YOU CAX MAKE EVEN" A 
 COLD COUXTRT TOO HOT TO HOLD YOU. 
 
 "Yes, it is very beautiful, Hilarius," said Mevrouw 
 Elizabeth at dinner. " But it is an immense responsibility." 
 
 The Count jumped at the idea. He, who had always 
 been known in his own family as " The Grumbler," was 
 rather embarrassed in the presence of his relatives by his 
 great good fortune. " It is indeed," he answered, pulling 
 down his face. " I have no end of worry already, in con- 
 nection with the repairs and accounts, and things." 
 
 " I was thinking of the souls," said Mevrouw Elizabeth. 
 
 " Oh ; ah, yes, of course. "Will you have some claret ? " 
 He smiled across the table nervously to his brother, who, 
 on his part, was praising everything, as in duty bound, to 
 Margherita. 
 
 " Yes," said Margherita. " And for me, of course, there 
 are many touching memories. But we are going back as 
 soon as possible. Immediately after Christmas. I do not 
 like the country. At least not one which is all white 
 blanket. In my home the country was all flowers." She 
 turned to Guy. " How I envy you at Leyden," she said, 
 " They tell me that the students have a magnificent library 
 there. You can get all the new books. Have you already 
 read — I am reading it — ' Les Maitresses a Papa ' ? " 
 
 " X — n — no," stammered her nephew. " I've asked for 
 it several times. But some professor's always got it, don't 
 you know."
 
 MARGHERITA'S DISCOVERY. 233 
 
 " Well, you can read it here. I have brought it with 
 me. And anything else you like. There is a large library." 
 
 " I should like some of your own poems best, aunt," re- 
 plied Guy with a bow. He was a fool, but his career at the 
 University had taught him, as he called it, " liow to man- 
 age women." None but a fool ever thinks he has learnt 
 that. 
 
 " Flatterer ! Do you fancy I believe you ? I reserve 
 them for Laissa. It is the bane of my sex and my rank 
 combined that I cannot aspire to literary fame." 
 
 This was a favourite illusion of Margherita. She had 
 even embodied it in the following lines : 
 
 " Vous me donnez, o dieux, bicn plus que je reclame 
 Vous m'ecrasez, o dieux. Quel bonheur est le mien ! 
 Je suis poete — assez ! — et noble — assez ! — et femme. 
 C'est trop — car ce n'est rien." 
 
 The idea left an unlimited margin for dumb-j^oet-ship. 
 
 Young Eeinout was telling his neighbour Topsy all 
 about the glories and discoveries of his new abode. He 
 had barely stopped talking to her ever since her arrival, 
 and still there was so much to tell ! Already had he shown 
 her his " favourite " nooks and crannies and taken her up 
 to the little oriel window in the west turret, from which, 
 " if you squeeze your neck round so " (" Oh don't, Kcin ! I 
 can squeeze my own neck, please ! ") "you can see (what 
 milksops girls are !) the little spire there — don't you see ? — 
 of the church. And, oh, Topsy, that reminds me ; there's a 
 delightful old priest, who is going to tell me the names of 
 all the animals in existence. You and I must go and see 
 him together." And he had taken them all to admire the 
 great stained-glass window in the upper hall. " It is very 
 nicely done," said Jane, who painted a little. The cousins 
 had wondered whose were the roses argent that blended 
 with the other shield. But the owners were dead as the
 
 234 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 roses, and their glory had certainly nothing in common 
 with these upstarts of to-day. 
 
 And now, at dinner, Reinout was full of the coming 
 festivities, an English Christmas with holly all over the 
 house (alas, mistletoe is unattainable) and a genuine flam- 
 ing plum-pudding. — " As long as I needn't touch it," said 
 the Countess Margherita. He was so excited that he was 
 behaving badly — he who never had an opportunity of be- 
 having badly ; the opportunity and the use he made of it 
 were things to be thankful for ! Monsieur de Souza was 
 away for a holiday in Paris, " to look np old friends," he 
 had said (" de vieilles amies "). " Allez, my dear Chevalier, 
 I understand you ; to make young ones." " Monsieur, 
 what do you think of ? These things, in a few years, they 
 will be for your son." Well educated, well cared for, of 
 boundlessly magnificent future, happy Rene ! 
 
 So thought Mevrouw Elizabeth. " What a charming 
 pair they make," she said comjilacently to her brother-in- 
 law. 
 
 Before Count Hiiai'ius could answer, Eeinout, wheeling 
 round to whisi^er in Topsy's ear what he had bought for his 
 mother, threw out his arm and upset his wine-glass with a 
 great smashing splash over the dessert-dishes. A sudden 
 flame leaped up in the Countess's dark eyes. " Rene," she 
 cried in a voice hot with passion, " leave the table immedi- 
 ately. You are not fit to sit down with your aunt ! " He 
 got u-p unwillingly : " Mamma ! " he began. " Silence. 
 Your manners are like a pig's. It makes me sick to see 
 how you behave." He walked out of the door, and first 
 longed to slam it and then closed it carefully. And as he 
 crept heavily upstairs, he muttered : " She has a right to 
 send me away, but not to insult me. And who is she to 
 talk of cochonneries ? " For he had heard a whisper — some- 
 how ; who shall say how in a house of many servants ? — of 
 Mademoiselle de Cochonnard. 
 
 Well, he only knew that the name of his mother's noble
 
 MARGHERITA'S DISCOVERY. 235 
 
 family had originally been spelt and pronounced as above. 
 Probably there was some interesting story connected with 
 its old-time origin. Wheu he was older, he would find out 
 what the legend was. Some stirring tale like that of the 
 maiden Wendela and the grand old lion — oh how he loved 
 him ! — who had come with his flaming sword to set the 
 maiden free. 
 
 He locked himself in with his dog ; he felt sore, for his 
 mother had publicly humiliated him. And he got together 
 his few beetles and bugs and sulked over the boxes and 
 bottles. It was a new mania. And then he leaned out on 
 the stone jjarapet, over the water, with his nose against 
 Prince's, and wondered who lived in the moon. 
 
 Frederik van Eexelaer found time for a few words of 
 quiet chat with his brother, as they stood side by side in the 
 smoking-room over their coffee — the two young men were 
 playing billiards a few paces off. 
 
 " What is this that I hear about an unpleasantness at the 
 railway-station ? " he began, " Nothing really important, I 
 hope ? " 
 
 " Nothing," replied Hilarius, tapping the parquet with 
 his foot. " I wonder Margherita was so foolish as to men- 
 tion it. She does not take kindly to our rules of implicit 
 obedience. That is all." 
 
 " It was not Margherita that I heard it from, Hilarius. 
 Simmans told me of it, the young Clerk of the Police Court. 
 One of his officials drew his attention to the names." 
 
 " Good Heavens ! " cried the Count, standing horror- 
 struck, cigar in hand. " You don't mean to say they are 
 going to follow it up ? " 
 
 " They evidently are. She will be summoned for resist- 
 ing the constituted authorities." 
 
 " And locked up ! Or set to oakum-picking ! The idiots 
 who manage these things in this country are capable of any- 
 tliing. She is right. AVe should have stopped in Tirazil ! "
 
 236 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 The Count stamped up and down the room. The billiard- 
 players looked wonderingly across. 
 
 " I would thank you, Ililarius, to speak more advisedly 
 of the organisation of which I form a part." The meek lit- 
 tle man was nettled. This prospect of a coming scandal 
 was anything but pleasing to him in his official posi- 
 tion. " It is not the fine," he added, "but the — the social 
 complications. The whole thing should never have oc- 
 curred. " 
 
 " Then keep it from going farther." The Count irrita- 
 bly chewed his sandy moustache. 
 
 " How can I ? We do not live under Louis XIV. The 
 whole scandal will be in all the paj^ers to-morrow. It comes 
 as a Godsend to the Ministry, who at this moment, as you 
 know better than I, are at war with the Court-party. They 
 will make much of it. ' Scene at a Kailway-Station ! ' 
 ' A great Court Lady resists the Authorities ! ' Under 
 ordinary circumstances the affair would be too insignificant 
 to mention. At this moment it is almost a Political 
 Event ! " 
 
 Hilarius beat a tattoo on the border of the billiard-table. 
 He listened but abstractedly to the rest of his brother's 
 small-talk. He was anxious for an opportunity to be alone 
 with his wife, and as soon as this presented itself — in her 
 dressing-room, late that evening — all his pent-up vexation 
 burst forth. 
 
 " And if the thing really becomes a weapon in the hand 
 of the Eadicals," he added, after repeating the information 
 which Frederik had brought him, " I shall never hold up 
 my head at Court again." 
 
 "Then stop it," said the Countess, toying with her 
 bracelet. She spoke with seeming indifference, her eyes on 
 her arm, but a flush played over her sullen cheek. 
 
 " Frederik says that is not within his power." 
 
 " He wants to make himself important by magnifying 
 the difficulty. I shall not ask him myself, but please tell
 
 MARGHERITA'S DISCOVERY. 237 
 
 him that I expect him to stop it. What else is one a judge 
 for, even so stupid a judge as he ? " 
 
 " Margherita ! " 
 
 " Is he a genius, your brother ? I had not perceived it." 
 
 " No, he is not a genius. Would that some other peo- 
 ple were not." He ground his heel into the hearthrug. 
 " Heaven only knows to what this preposterous business 
 may lead." 
 
 " If you mean me," she answered quietly, lazily lifting 
 her handsome head, " I am not a genius. I am a fool. 
 This is your good fortune. And mine. I cannot under- 
 stand the little ways of your little country. I know noth- 
 ing of your party-intrigues. But I am going to be a great 
 Court Lady, Hilarius. That was agreed when we married." 
 
 " You are setting about it in a rational manner ! " he 
 cried, and flung himself back against the mantelpiece. 
 
 She took no notice. " Who is the person responsible ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 "A man called Simmans, I understood Frederik to say." 
 
 " Ask him here." She shut her bracelet with a snap.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 A COUNTT-MAGXATE. 
 
 " AxD now," said Count van Eexelaer to himself, as he 
 slowly drew his chair towards the writing-table and made 
 himself comfortable, " pleasure " — he pulled a face — " being 
 over, I may give my mind to business at last." 
 
 It was true that pleasure was, for the moment, a thing 
 of the past. The house had grown quiet again. The Cal- 
 endar between the windows marked an early day in Janu- 
 ary. It was one of those calendars with a text for every 
 day in the year, and his sister had given it him. Occasion- 
 ally Count Hilarius's eyes would thoughtfully linger over 
 the text. 
 
 The Freule van Eexelaer, the two brothers' only sister, 
 was a timid maiden lady, living in a small jirovincial town on 
 a small income and doing a great deal of unnoted good with 
 it. She had come to Deynum to see the old year out, hav- 
 ing declined to share the Christmas gaieties, for the simple 
 reason, which she wisely kept to herself, that to her mind 
 the commemoration of the Nativity should be a religious 
 festival. The great house and its splendours flurried her. 
 
 " Oh, how thankful I am," she said to Mevrouw Eliza- 
 beth, " that I have not these servants to look after." 
 
 " Xot these servants. Xo," replied Mevrouw Eexelaer- 
 Borck with due emphasis. " But people with one servant 
 are always afraid of them. I am not." She rested her 
 crochet on one knee, looking over her nose at her thin 
 little sister-in-law.
 
 A COUNTY-MAGNATE. 239 
 
 " Ah, but then you are such an excellent manager," said 
 the old maid timidly. 
 
 " I certainly see a few things which escape Murgherita's 
 attention. No fear of her being worried, poor thing i 
 Thank Heaven, / have eyes." Mevrouw van Eexelaer- 
 Borck was always thanking Heaven, not so much for bless- 
 ings received by herself, as for blessings withheld from 
 her friends. 
 
 " Yes, my dear," replied the Freule quickly. " And I 
 was telling you about the Coffee-stall Mission to Paris Cab- 
 men ; " and so she led the conversation on to safer ground. 
 Mevrouw Elizabeth, who liked the philanthropy of circulars 
 and Lady Patronesses and paragraphs in the press, was 
 anxious to introduce the coffee stalls into the Hague, the 
 only difficulty being the absence of cabstands. Perhaps 
 these could be created. 
 
 Utterly dissimilar as the two ladies were, they had in 
 common that sympathy of lifelong surroundings which no 
 later intercourse can replace. They understood each other 
 when they differed. Xeither ever quite understood the 
 foreign sister-in-law, even when they most appreciated her 
 intentions. Fortunately the Countess did not court their 
 friendship ; she lay in the old Baroness's simple boudoir, 
 and Laissa read her frequent bulletins from the Hague, 
 sent by the maid who had charge of the pets. And some- 
 times they would consult the cards to find out when Me- 
 vrouw Kexelaer-Borck was going away. That lady once sur- 
 prised them at such a moment and denounced the heathen 
 superstition in no measured terms. "The wicked folly, 
 Margherita!" she said. "Why, /could tell you as much 
 about the future as these senseless bits of card." " I 
 wish you would then," replied the Countess meaning- 
 ly. Mevrouw van Iicxelaer turned away in lofty scorn. 
 "Does this creature understand English?" she asked. 
 She especially disliked Laissa as being more " exotic " 
 even than the parrot. Tbe mulatto looked u}) from the
 
 240 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 floor, with her great white grin. " Laissa no understand," 
 she said. 
 
 Reinout introduced everybody to the Chapel, in which 
 he already took an especial pride. " I hope you Avill alter 
 this, Ililarius," said the Freule van Rexelaer earnestly, after 
 a silent survey of the chancel. And then she drew on her 
 galoches again, because the floor felt damp. 
 
 ]\[evrouw Elizabeth had expressed herself with more 
 commendable distinctness. " This popish mummery," she 
 had said, bringing down a heavy hand on the altar, "of 
 course must go. I wonder, girls, at your uncle having left 
 it so long. And, good gracious, the flowers are — fresh ! " 
 Not even Me^Touw van Rexelaer's indignant stare could 
 dim the pure sweetness of the chrysanthemums. Vrouw 
 Poster had renewed them, according to custom. With an 
 extra prayer for vanished Piet. 
 
 " Hilarius," said Mevrouw Elizabeth in the course of the 
 evening, " our dear Margherita has surely abjured the errors 
 of her youth." 
 
 Hilarius colored painfully. " What do you mean, Eliza- 
 beth ? " he cried. " If your mother has been talking 
 shameful slander — " 
 
 " I was alluding to the Scarlet Woman," interposed 
 Mevrouw van Rexelaer hastily. " To the Beast," and then, in 
 answer to his astonished stare : " Hilarius, how can you be 
 so ignorant? I mean that your wife is no longer a Papist, 
 but we must not underrate early influences, and there is 
 positive danger in these popish surroundings. Unless you 
 take care you will have her going back to her bead-telling 
 and bone-kissing, or whatever the people do. I should not 
 speak, if it were not for the risk to Rene. You know 
 very well that the Jesuits have an eye exclusively to rich 
 men's sons. Already the old priest here has made friends 
 with the boy. He took Topsy to see the man, but I forbade 
 her going again. He gave them sweets, Hilarius. Mark 
 my words. He gave them sweets." Deep down in her
 
 A COUNTY-MAGNATE. 241 
 
 heart she had an honest, though not clearly explicable, 
 fear that the sweets — for the new heir of Deynuni — might 
 be poisoned ! 
 
 Count Hilarius had been startled by her evident good 
 faith. He had lived too long in a clime where all men ac- 
 knowledged the same form of religion without practising 
 any to take note of the flowers and frippery in a sacred 
 edifice ; he was too indifferent to understand much of the 
 fierce yet tremulous distrust which still lingers, on the field 
 of Alva's achievements, in the hearts of the degenerate 
 children of a nation of martyrs. He had no large experi- 
 ence of pious women ; and yet he felt that Mevrouw van 
 Rexelaer was not like his sister the Freule. But it does not 
 require any very active piety to dread the idea of being 
 burned alive. 
 
 As he now sat in the Baron's room, his eyes vaguely 
 fixed on that old gentleman's guns, Hilarius reverted to 
 Mevrouw Elizabeth's words. He wanted no complications, 
 religious or otherwise. What he dreaded above all things 
 was unpleasantness. It hampers one so. 
 
 His steward appeared before him, smooth and se- 
 rene. 
 
 " I have been looking at the list of the tenants," said 
 the Count, taking up a paper from the table before him. 
 " Most of them I remember seeing at the New Year's Con- 
 gratulation. A pleasing custom. Is it general in these 
 parts ? " 
 
 " At your service. Mynheer the Count," replied the 
 steward. " It was always so in the old — time of your an- 
 cestors." 
 
 " But there are some names I cannot recall. Here, for 
 instance, is a man called Hummel. Who is he ? " 
 
 " He is old and bedridden," replied the steward. The 
 man was a neighbour of his own, who often did him good 
 service. 
 
 " Well. But here is a large farm, the Chalkhouse. I
 
 24i> THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 do not remember the people at all. ' Driest ' the name is. 
 What of them?" 
 
 The steward, who had long been expecting this ques- 
 tion, coughed gently. "As Mynheer the Count pleases," 
 he said. 
 
 " What do you mean ? Why don't they come to pay 
 their respects ? " 
 
 " Because they are — Ah, I wish Mynheer would ask 
 them himself — they have not the proper feeling of the 
 other tenantry." 
 
 " You mean that they are dissatisfied with the new 
 order of things ? " 
 
 " If Mynheer the Count pleases to put it so." 
 
 " I understand. They pose as champions of the old 
 regime. And the opposition — about our reception — ah, 
 you see I know — had they a hand in that ? " 
 
 " Mynheer the Count knows so much, it is improbable 
 that he should not know all." 
 
 The Count made a mark on his register. " Why were 
 not tlie church-bells rung ? " he asked suddenly. 
 
 The steward smiled a peculiar smile. " I am a good 
 Catholic, Mynheer," he said. " The affairs of the church 
 are not mine to control." 
 
 And then they discussed various matters pertaining to 
 the estate. On these occasions Dievert found sufficient rea- 
 son to regret the past, for the new master went into every 
 item and never paid a penny without knowing what for. He 
 even had no ready perception of the steward's all-conclusive 
 argument that " it had always been so in the old Baron's 
 time." Dievert understood that Count Hilarius was no 
 gentleman. 
 
 They were still busy when Strum was announced. And 
 the one man of business bowed himself out, as the other 
 bowed himself in. 
 
 The Count liked the bowing. This was pleasanter than 
 dancing attendance on his Majesty's representative at the
 
 A COUNTY-MAGNATE. 9-t3 
 
 Court of the Sultan of Tierra del Fuego. Even pleasanter 
 than living, as an officer of the Royal Household, in a dull 
 house on the Orange- Canal, with a dark-visaged wife. 
 There is no real greatness without the territorial element, 
 the rent-roll, its votes and all its complicated influence. 
 " In the same family, you know, for nearly a thousand 
 years. Quite unique." Count Rexelaer felt kindly con- 
 cerning his spouse. 
 
 " Sit down, Strum," he said with comfortable gracious- 
 ness. The Notary considered that his new patron had 
 dro]3ped the " Mynheer " unconscionably soon. He re- 
 called the time when the Baron was wont to say " Sit down, 
 Strum," and when he had waited thus, on the edge of his 
 chair, and cracking his fingers. He would still flush up to 
 the roots of his red hair, by day or niglit, the great clumsy 
 booby, when his thoughts reverted to the last visit here, 
 and the insult he had received. He hated the Baron with 
 relentless hate. 
 
 " I have been looking through the deed of purchase,' 
 said the Count, rousing himself, as Strum gave an awkward 
 little cough. " It is plain enough. In his dying hours the 
 thoughts of the Countess's venerable uncle were evidently 
 all of her and her child. He was deeply attached to my 
 little boy. That prohibitory clause, — how he must have 
 chuckled over it ! — well, it was a legitimate stratagem, the 
 only means he had of eluding the Baron's vindictive oppo- 
 sition to myself." 
 
 Strum acquiesced, thinking to himself what bores these 
 rich people were. 
 
 " The contract says the Chapel must remain as it is. 
 Now what do you take that to mean, my good Notary ? " 
 " A Catholic place of worship, Mynheer the Count." 
 "Ah, it strikes you in that light because you are a 
 Romanist yourself." — " A I^omanist, if you will, but no 
 bigot," began Strum — the Count waved his hand benig- 
 nantly; he did not approve of being interrupted by his
 
 244 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Notary — " to me it means ' a burying- place of the Rexe- 
 laers,' " he said. 
 
 Strum gave one of his sudden, sprawling kicks, causing 
 the 'Count to start aside. The Notary understood perfectly 
 what the other was driving at. " My father used to say," 
 he answered slowly, " that in law every interpretation, how- 
 ever absurd, must be considered as if it might be correct." 
 
 " I do not consider this interpretation absurd," inter- 
 rupted the Count. He might interrupt. " On the con- 
 trary, it is the only rational one." 
 
 " That is what I mean," answered Strum. He took off 
 his spectacles and wiped them. And he blinked his eyes 
 before the rising sun. Never mind, he might be as insolent 
 as he chose to the Baron, in the shade. 
 
 " I sent for you," continued the Count, " to speak chiefly 
 about another matter. AVhere is my cousin at present? 
 Do you happen to know ? " 
 
 " I believe the Baron is at Cleves," said Strum. 
 
 " I have an inventory here of the things he has taken 
 with him. It is a great pity. They should have gone with 
 the house. He must want money. You could not sound 
 him on the subject ? " 
 
 " I could write to him directly in your name, Mynheer 
 the Count." A great leap of gi-atification crossed the 
 Notary's face. 
 
 " I did not mean that. All these things are at present, 
 I am told, at the parish priest's ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mynheer the Count." Strum hated the Baron 
 too much to willingly concede him so advantageous a 
 market. The Baron's views on the matter he could not 
 bring himself to understand. 
 
 " That is all," said Count Rexelaer. " Good-day." And 
 to himself he added : " A very useless Notary." 
 
 Strum went home in a bad temper. But, then, inter- 
 views with the great always put him out of sorts. He was 
 the worst kind of person for a Notary ; other people's busi-
 
 A COUNTY-MAGNATE. 245 
 
 ness bored him. " I am as good," he thought ceaselessl}^ 
 " as any of these." At liis core, therefore, he Avas dumbly 
 overbearing, as many shy people are. 
 
 "Your father used to tell me everything," said his 
 mother a little complainingly (a fond illusion on her part), 
 " and he would bring me such sweet messages from tlic 
 Baroness, and pots of her own orange-preserve." 
 
 " It must taste very bitter in her mouth, if she's got any 
 left," said Strum. 
 
 " She was an Angel," protested his mother warmly. " I 
 wonder if this new lady is also good." 
 
 " Good ? Of course she is good. All great ladies are 
 good, mother, without jDro's or con's. It's only the honest, 
 hard-working ones that have to prove their goodness." 
 
 "Nicholas, Nicholas," said Mrs. Strum, gently shaking 
 her old head, " you are very different from your father." 
 
 Now these words from a mother — even from Mrs. Strum 
 — bear a tacit reproach in them. Nicholas was not accus- 
 tomed to reproach from his mother. But the " White 
 Baroness " was that lady's patron saint. 
 
 " We can't all be like each other," he grumbled roughly. 
 " I'm as good a man of business as father was." 
 
 " Oh, yes, Nicholas. I know you are much cleverer," 
 said Mrs. Strum, as she took up her stocking again.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE TWO KEIXOUTS MEET, 
 
 CouxT HiLAEius found Eeinout enjoying a series of 
 lonely tumbles on the ice. The boy had reached that stage 
 of skating when the tumbles are a dozen yards apart. His 
 father called him to the side of the pond. 
 
 " Eene, I don't want you to go and see this priest any 
 more." 
 
 " Father Bulbius ? Oh, papa, he is a dear old man. He 
 has given me a live salamander. And he knows all about 
 the Castle, and the people that used to live here. And he 
 tells such beautiful stories. There was a little girl here 
 once. Have you heard about Lady Bertha's oak ? " 
 
 " Xo. But I don't want you to go and see him again. 
 By the bye, did he ever speak to you about the Chapel in 
 the Grounds ? " 
 
 " Yes, Papa, the day after Christmas. He told me it 
 was the first time in five-and-twenty years that he hadn't 
 said mass there on Christmas day. He looked very sorry ; 
 I thought he was going to cry." 
 
 " Just so. Xow, Eeinout, you will promise me never to 
 go and talk to this man again. And there is another thing. 
 I don't like your skating about in this manner all alone. 
 You must always have one of the men with you. Kow 
 promise about the priest." 
 
 Such a sullen look spread over the boy's dark face that 
 his father noticed it. " My dearest child," said Count 
 Hilarius, drawing his son towards him, " cannot you believe
 
 THE TWO REINOUTS MEET. 247 
 
 that I am acting for your best? You are the sole hope and 
 pride of my life, Rene, the one thing I love with all my 
 heart. If anything happened to you — " his voice shook, 
 '* there would be nothing left worth living for." 
 
 Reinout stood silently looking down at his skates. Pres- 
 ently something drew up his eyes — rather against his will — 
 to his father's bended face. And he said, illogically, but 
 with great earnestness : " I will. Papa." Xevertheless, he 
 was angry. Only the rare display of the Count's affection 
 always melted his heart as sunshine tinges the snow. He 
 loved his father, perhaps not quite as energetically as he 
 loved Prince, because Prince and he understood each other 
 so much better. But, then, Prince was a dog ; the com- 
 parison was absurd. Reinout did not make it. 
 
 He called after Count Hilarius's retreating figure. " I 
 must go and say goodbye. Papa," he said, " and explain." 
 
 The Count had a habit of considering his son's entire 
 existence, in its pleasure and profit, from the parental point 
 of view. " No," he called back, " it would be better not. 
 Explanations, Reinout, are usually a mistake ! " 
 
 " Oh, but I shall," said Reinout to himself. Obedience 
 has its limits, and the child's education, if it had taught 
 him anything, had taught him that courtesy transcends it. 
 He ran off in the direction of the village. 
 
 Already he had many friends in the village, where he 
 had fraternised with the lame child first, and then, through 
 him, with the other boys. These country lads had a de- 
 lightful acquaintance with the wondrous world around 
 them, on whose threshold he stood entranced. And, al- 
 though his intercourse with them might seem somewhat 
 awkward, yet he was always splendid in his own queer way 
 and certainly far preferred his new companions to the gen- 
 teel children at the Hague who mocked " his gracious 
 Majesty." The transfer to Deynum had given him a 
 glimpse of reality : the Life of Nature, the Life Unmasked. 
 He liked the face.
 
 248 THE GREATER GLORY, 
 
 He threw a smile to Tony, behind the narrow cottage- 
 panes, as he ran on towards the Parsonage. He had prom- 
 ised the boy an old box of soldiers of his own ; he must 
 bring it to-morrow. It was a beautiful thing to be rich and 
 great and patronise. The threatening beggar had been 
 quite wrong. The great lord shone at the Castle and the 
 world beneath his feet lay flourishing in his smile. Monsieur 
 de Souza had explained it all. 
 
 He ran through the Parsonage garden, round by the 
 stables to the good Priest's study. He knew the way well 
 by this time. But in the door he suddenly checked him- 
 self. An old gentleman was sitting thoughtfully by the 
 fire. The old gentleman looked up at the intruder, frowned, 
 hesitated, and recovered himself. 
 
 " Father Bulbius is out," said the old gentleman shortly. 
 
 Reinout bowed and apologised, with that ready courtesy 
 which young people found so exasperating, but which old 
 ones were unable to resist in this our latter-day of ill-breed- 
 ing. 
 
 As he was going, said the old gentleman with an effort : 
 " I suppose they call you Eeinout van Rexelaer ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mynheer," replied Reinout. 
 
 "Father Bulbius has told me a great deal about you," 
 said the Baron. And then he added, as if talking to him- 
 self, " But I pity the child I " and Reinout crept away be- 
 wildered. 
 
 The evening before, the good Father had sat, in all the 
 cosiness of drawn curtains and howling winds, warming his 
 feet against the stove and his hands around his glass of 
 steaming grog. The kettle was singing its agreeable prom- 
 ise of more. Father Bulbius felt comfortable though lonely. 
 For Veronica was away on her yearly visit to her friends in 
 town. 
 
 " A holiday for me," Veronica used to say with some 
 truth, " means two days of extra hard work." Undeniably,
 
 THE TWO REINOUTS MEET. 249 
 
 the catastrophe of the year in the Father's small household 
 whatever it might happen to be, would always choose the 
 thirty-six hours of Veronica's absence to occur in. Never- 
 theless did she amply enjoy her excursion on account of the 
 manifold occasions for grumbling it was bound to afford. 
 And the Father enjoyed his brief liberty in the pleasant 
 prospect of her return. 
 
 He was sitting now luxuriating in the tranquil sadness 
 of his reflections. There was much to grieve him in his 
 present circumstances, and it pleased him to dwell thereon. 
 The new master of Deynum, though indiSerence itself in all 
 matters religious, had yet given encouragement, by the 
 very fact of his Protestantism, to the persecuted here- 
 tics of the village. They were beginning to hold up 
 their heads, and even — distinctly — to crow. And it was 
 reported that the Baroness Borck of Kollingen — that 
 Jezebel — had, during a state-visit at the Castle, succeeded 
 in arousing its owner's interest by a terrible account of 
 the poor "Beggars'" sufferings and the bad impression 
 these sufferings had created in the neighbourhood. The 
 Baroness Borck had been anxious for years to get a Protes- 
 tant pastor appointed to Deynum, her own minister find- 
 ing the double duty too heavy. Count Rexelaer, in his 
 eagerness to conciliate the great people around him, 
 would probably accede to her request, and a rival parson- 
 age-house would arise on the village green. Meanwhile 
 the Count had closed, and double-locked, the small chapel 
 in the grounds. 
 
 Father Bulbius sighed, and gently sipped his grog. To- 
 morrow evening Veronica would mix it. There would be 
 less rum, but boiling water. 
 
 He was roused from his slumbrous regrets by a gentle 
 knock at the front-door. It was ten o'clock, and an ugly, 
 windy, snow-tormented night. He started to his feet, lias- 
 tily swallowing the too darkly coloured mixture ; his one 
 thought was that something must have happened to bring
 
 250 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Verouica back. Only she seemed to him strangely patient, 
 as he slowly stumbled to the door. 
 
 He opened it, and there stood the Baron van Eexelaer. 
 
 " How do you do, Bulbius ? " said the Baron. " Any- 
 body with you besides Veronica ? " 
 
 Father Bulbius burst into tears. 
 
 " Tut, tut," said the Baron, and hastily walked into the 
 Sanctum. 
 
 When Father Bulbius joined him there a moment later, 
 he was standing in the middle of the room. He had taken 
 the shade from the lamp and its full glare fell on all the 
 piled-up lumber from the castle. He looked much the 
 same as ever, excepting that perhaps his bearing was a trifle 
 more erect than in those last slow months of his suspense. 
 As the priest stole in, he turned and replaced the lamp-shade. 
 " Well, and how are you getting on ? " he said. " x^ny- 
 thing new in the village?" Oh yes, there were several 
 things new in the village. Father Bulbius only muttered 
 the name of some old creature recently dead. 
 
 " Dead," repeated the Baron meditatively. He walked 
 up the room once, and down it again, and then, stopping 
 abruptly : " May I take off my cloak ? " he asked. Father 
 Bulbius fell forward in the eagerness of his response. He 
 hung up the Baron's hat, without knowing it, on one 
 knight's protruding visor, and over another's mailed shoul- 
 ders he carefully and awkwardly spread his patron's well- 
 remembered queer-fashioned Inverness. The dead soldier 
 looked worse than grotesque under his plaid-lined mantle; 
 he looked dumbly insulted. The Baron went over and re- 
 moved it. 
 
 " The damp, you know," he said apologetically, and be- 
 gan softly polishing the shining metal. Father Bulbius's 
 soul burned with sudden shame. 
 
 He plied his guest with a number of questions, while 
 pressing upon him the slippers he had just taken from his 
 own feet. " I have others," he said, and went into his bed-
 
 THE TWO REINOUTS MEET. 251 
 
 room, and came back with a pair of galoches. And then, 
 in sudden alarm at his overflow of curiosity, he excused it 
 with the necessity of finding out the Baron's requirements. 
 "And when has your Nobleness eaten last?" he said. 
 " Ah, but I dread that the house contains nothing but 
 bread." 
 
 " I want nothing, my friend," said Mynheer Eexelaer. 
 " Mevrouw and the child are well, like myself. But how 
 about Veronica ? I miss her." 
 
 " Your Nobleness does her too much honour. She has 
 gone to see her relations. Her usual visit, you remember." 
 
 " Oh certainly," rejilied the Baron. " I hope she will 
 find her aunt in health. It is fortunate, perhaps, that she 
 should not be here. Ah no, I forgot; it is unfortunate," 
 he added, rising hastily, and making for the door. 
 
 Father Bulbius intercepted him with wonderful plump 
 alacrity. " The room upstairs is ready," he said, " or will 
 be in a minute. As for supper, I will run over and see if 
 Hendrika — " 
 
 " No, no, my good Father. To tell you the truth I had 
 not intended to disturb you. The last train having brought 
 me to Deynum, I found myself unexpectedly in your porch. 
 But it is quite time I left you in peace, and so I am going 
 away again." He got his cloak and hat, overhearing the 
 Father's anxious "Whither?" and stumbled along the pas- 
 sage. The Father followed in desperation. " But shall I 
 not see your Nobleness again?" he almost sobbed. Sud- 
 denly the other turned and caught both his hands. " I am 
 behaving like a brute and a fool," he said thickly. " It is a 
 great, true happinesss to see your face again. May I stay, 
 in spite of Veronica's absence? In spite of all the trouble 
 I shall give?" 
 
 "Don't," replied the Father, vainly trying to steady the 
 workings of his gutta-percha cheeks. 
 
 "But one thing you promise me. It is already past 
 your bedtime. You go now, as if Veronica were here, and
 
 252 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 you leave me to sit up as long as I like — amoug these." 
 He pointed to his re-found treasures. 
 
 " But there is so much to speak of," pleaded Bulbius. 
 
 " There is not," repeated the Baron, wearily reseating 
 himself. " To tell truth, I feel nowise inclined for sleep. 
 I may take a short turn presently ; I like the snow. Never 
 mind me. I shall not set the house on fire." 
 
 " The whole house is at your Xobleness's service," said 
 Bulbius, He ^ould say that, freely, for the next f our-and- 
 twenty hours. " But see. Mynheer the Baron, it is not yet 
 eleven ? " 
 
 The Baron looked into his face and actually laughed : 
 " And when was Father Bulbius ever known to resume his 
 game — " he asked — " when once the Castle-clock " — the 
 laugh died from his voice — " had struck the hour of ten ? " 
 
 " To-day," said the Father boldly, spreading his fat fin- 
 gers on the table, " to-day, if your Xobleness pleases, he will 
 play as long as you like." 
 
 " Nonsense, Bulbius, you never had a card in your 
 house." 
 
 For only answer the priest went to his cupboard. " I 
 have been obliged of late," he said apologetically, " to play 
 a little ecarte by myself of nights. But I find it very dull 
 work." 
 
 " So I can understand," replied the Baron quite seriously, 
 as he shuffled the cards. The old antagonists had settled 
 down to their game, almost before they realized what they 
 were doing. It came as a relief from a well-nigh unendur- 
 able strain. 
 
 The wind struck against the casement, as they bent 
 by the lamp. Father Bulbius looked up apprehensively. 
 " Only bluster," said the Baron, " I mark the King." And 
 in another moment the player's ambition had got hold of 
 them and both were anxious to win. The Baron became so 
 increasingly successful, that Father Bulbius could hardly 
 resist feeling a little annoyed. But no interest in his cards
 
 THE TWO REINOUTS MEET. 253 
 
 could keep his sleepy head from noddiug, and at one time 
 he had six cards in his hand, and about midnight he re- 
 voked. Then the Baron got up. " Just a whilf of air ! " 
 he said. " It will do me good. Give me your key, Bul- 
 bius, and if I find you up when I come back, I depart for 
 good and all, as, perhaps, I ought to have done at first. 
 Good-night." 
 
 The Father let him go and then set about preparing the 
 guest-chamber. A couple of the most richly framed lords 
 and ladies which had been deposited here, he dragged away, 
 with much labour and some damage to gilding, into Ve- 
 ronica's chamber. " Let the poor gentleman sleep, if he 
 can," he said ; he knew well enough where the Baron was 
 gone. He came down, wiping his hot face. There was oil 
 in the lamp ; the fire would smoulder on indefinitely. He 
 sent up a little petition to his patron Saint to remind the 
 hens of their duty for the morrow, and then — at last ! — he 
 sank on the bed to await his guest's return, and in another 
 moment was fast asleep.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 A STKAXGE LIGHT AXD XEW DARKXESS. 
 
 Meaxwhile the Baron van Eexelaer walked rapidly 
 through the wind and dark. He had waited for the dark. 
 " I shall take the last train," he had said to the Baroness, 
 " and go to the inn. So doing, I shall see nobody till to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " Why ? " asked the Baroness. She could not under- 
 stand this j)ostponement of the inevitable. The quiet lady 
 had steeled her heart in reposeful pride. 
 
 But the Baron, although unable to explain himself, felt 
 that between to-day and to-morrow, if we live by emotions, 
 would lie a long period of time. He must first see the place 
 again, aloue ; he must fight his fight. When he had hur- 
 ried away, three months ago, he had hoped never to return. 
 Which of us, having buried our dead out of our sight, would 
 bid love lift the coffin-lid ? 
 
 " I onust consult with Bulbius, but I shall not go up to 
 the Castle." This thought had repeatedly risen to his lips ; 
 he had checked it ; he did not want his courageous wife to 
 consider him a coward. He crossed over to her and kissed 
 her on the forehead where she sat in her high-backed chair 
 by the poor little Pension-window. 
 
 That was not much more than half-a-dozen hours ago. 
 He had promised his wife to eat something on his arrival ; 
 he did not like breaking even a trivial promise to his wife. 
 He ought not to have minded giving Bulbius a little trouble. 
 " I am a coward," thought the good gentleman, as he walked
 
 A STRANGE LIGHT AND NEW DARKNESS. 255 
 
 on through the silence. After midnight all Deynum, ex- 
 cept its watchman, was asleep. Sometimes the watchman 
 also. 
 
 In another moment he passed under the shadow of his 
 own trees. Here the night lay j^itchy dark, in spite of the 
 driving snow, which melted as it fell. The Baron, hasten- 
 ing unhesitatingly on, emerged into the avenue. Then, 
 suddenly, he became aware of a light approaching at the 
 farther end and stopped, disconcerted. Should he go back ? 
 As he stood staring stupidly at this twinkle in the distance, 
 he became aware that it was stationary, and then he under- 
 stood. An innovation. A lantern by the bridge. And in 
 that small discovery the hopelessness of his loss fell upon 
 him as it had never fallen before. 
 
 " They need not have broken their necks any sooner 
 than we did," he muttered, bitterly. And presently he 
 stood beside the water, shrinking from the tell-tale bright- 
 ness of a varnished street-lamp of Margherita's erecting. 
 Another glimmered half-way down the " Cour d'honneur." 
 Eight opposite towered the black mass of the Castle, with 
 the wind howling round it, a melancholy wail. 
 
 The snow, which had been falling all night in fitful 
 sweeps, now slowly checked itself, and, among lifting clouds, 
 the outlines of the stately building stood dimly forth in a 
 changeful play of light and shade. And instantaneously 
 the whole of it, each nook and angle and curl of tracery, 
 shone out into the darkness, illumined by his love. We are 
 but sensuous creatures ; talk as we will of visions of the 
 mind, we see with our poor physical sight and with very 
 little else. He stood staring, staring, as if his eyes could 
 never drink their fdl, and then a veil crept over them. 
 When he looked again, the vision was newly shrouded in 
 darkness ; only a dull broad shaft still fell, from where the 
 clouds were closing, across old Atlas, on the topmost pin- 
 nacle, bending beneath his world of cares. Another mo- 
 ment, and this ray also hud sunk from sight ; the snow be-
 
 250 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 gau to thiekeu upon the lessening wind. With a shuddering 
 sigh the Baron turned to go. Ever afterwards he remem- 
 bered that parting glimpse of the patient hero, beneath the 
 drooping sky. 
 
 " Away," he said softly. 
 
 He crossed the sward, not without anxious glances to- 
 wards the windows, behind which Hilarius and Margherita 
 were peacefully slumbering, arid crept towards the Holy 
 Walk. Before returning to the Parsonage he must stand 
 for one brief moment — and one brief prayer — among the 
 dead, in their unbroken rest. That alone would calm him. 
 " I am a vainglorious old fool to have come," he told him- 
 self. And he thought of that repose which no agony of 
 wounded jDride can ruffle, and which comes so soon to all. 
 
 Xo light was burning in the chancel. He tried the 
 door ; it was locked. Never had the lamp hung thus ex- 
 tinguished during all the years the Baron could recall. 
 " They light up thei-r own yard ! " he said aloud, " God 
 help me ; I am becoming the bitterest of men I " 
 
 Half an hour later he was back in Father Bulbius's 
 sanctum. Walking on tip-toe, he softly stirred the dying 
 embers and drew forward a chair. The lamp burned low. 
 The clock on the mantelpiece struck half-past one. And 
 the sound suddenly told him that the stable-clock at Dey- 
 num had not struck while he was out. He rose in some 
 perturbation, wondering if anything could be wrong with it. 
 And then he laughed ; what was Count Rexelaer's stable- 
 clock to this stranger and sojourner ? 
 
 No, he was more than that. Come what might, he was 
 still the last of Deynum's historic lords. He strengthened 
 himself in his seat, and then, drawing a bunch of keys out 
 of his pocket, opened an oak chest which stood near. The 
 keys of the Castle he could lose and had lost, but not 
 these. 
 
 Presently Father Bulbius, awakening in dismay and 
 discomfort, saw a light streaming through the chinks, and
 
 A STRANGE LIGHT AND NEW DARKNESS. 257 
 
 seized his unloaded revolver. And then he remembered 
 that he himself had left the lamj) on the table. "Dear 
 me," he said, '• I must have had a few minutes' nap," and 
 he rolled off the bed, and was making for the door when 
 his attention was arrested by the rustle of paper. Letting 
 himself down somewhat laboriously to the keyhole, he saw 
 in the gathering gloom of the silent study the Baron van 
 Eexelaer, with parchments and papers heaped untidily 
 around him, a yellow charter upon his knee. The Father 
 crept back softly into bed.
 
 CHAPTEE XXXVI. 
 
 THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE. 
 
 Next morning, over their frugal breakfast, tlie Baron 
 explained to Bulbius the object of his coming. On leaving 
 Deyuum he had still lacked fifty thousand florins to pay off 
 his debts. This money, not being able to touch the 
 " Lady's Dole," he had found himself obliged to borrow 
 at ruinous interest, for six months. Not to have done so 
 would have meant bankruptcy, disgrace. 
 
 " Bankruptcy is not always disgrace," interposed the 
 Father, who prided himself on his knowledge of the world. 
 " Yours would not have been." 
 
 " This loan, in any ease, must be paid off," said the 
 Baron, " before it reduces us to beggary. So I have made 
 up my mind to sell whatever trumpery I still possess. I 
 can't help it. It's no use fighting any longer against 
 fate." 
 
 What could the Father reply ? Three months ago he 
 had advocated this sale. And the Baron had answered : 
 Never to the one man who would buy. Father Bulbius 
 regretted the Baron was so bad a man of business. 
 
 Confessor though he was, he knew nothing of his pa- 
 tron's money-transactions. Do we ever confess ? Even to 
 ourselves ? 
 
 "No use fighting against fate," repeated the Baron 
 thoughtfully, and then suddenly he burst out : " Observe 
 my strange experience with the Marquis de la Jolais ! I 
 cannot make him out at all. It looks as if he did it on 
 purpose. And if so, he acted a lie."
 
 THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE. 259 
 
 " I fear that is the only explanation, Mynheer," assented 
 Father Bulbius mournfully. 
 
 " So the Baroness tells me, and the Baroness is always 
 right. But I cannot understand it ! A la Jolais ! Surely 
 gentlemen do not lie ! " 
 
 The Baron held a view — not a theory, for he did not 
 consciously theorise — that men were turned out in groups, 
 like machine-made statuettes. A soldier was a soldier ; a 
 sailor a sailor, and so on. Each group had its inevitable 
 virtues — and vices, but the Baron noticed the virtues 
 most. 
 
 He was agitated now ; all references to Count Rexelaer's 
 vile stratagem or marvellous good fortune upset him. Fa- 
 ther Bulbius stole away on the plea of ordering some din- 
 ner from Hendrika, the landlady. It was during his ab- 
 sence that Reinout unexpectedly appeared before the Baron, 
 Eeinout, whose praises the Father had discreetly brought 
 forward by an occasional word in a letter, a word that said 
 little and left much to be divined. " I pity the child," said 
 the Baron. He did not allude to the subject when the 
 Father came back. Together they began looking over the 
 scattered heirlooms and appraising them. Some of the 
 pictures were valuable ; the costliest plate had already been 
 disposed of before. Both realized, with growing distinct- 
 ness, that fifty thousand florins is a very large sum. 
 
 They were so occupied that a loud ring at the front 
 door came upon them with a start of alarm. " Possibly a 
 tramp," said the Father. The villagers usually went round 
 to the back, there to be barked at by the now absent Ve- 
 ronica. Nobody ever rang. 
 
 "With rumpled hair and dusty cassock Father Bulbius 
 went to open the door. His grumble changed to an un- 
 comfortable smile of recognition in the presence of Count 
 Hilarius van Rexelacr. That gentleman had never called at 
 the Parsonage before. 
 
 " This way, if you please. This is my ' state '-room, 
 38
 
 200 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Heer Count," cried the Father iu a flurr}', shutting one 
 door and opening another. The visitor entered an apart- 
 ment whose chill glories — the pride of Veronica's cleansing 
 — froze the marrow iu his bones. Count llilarius was a 
 Southernized Hollander. He looked round in dismay. 
 
 " Take a seat, M^'uheer the Count," said the Father, 
 benignly. 
 
 The Count's teeth chattered. He had intended to be 
 circumsjiect, but the cold made him forget his diplomacy. 
 " I came to ask you, Mynheer," he said brusquely, " about 
 the articles which have been removed from the Castle and 
 which you have in your keeping." 
 
 " They were excluded by the contract, Mynheer," cried 
 Bulbius in a flutter. 
 
 The Count arched his sandy eyebrows. " I should 
 hardly have waited so long," he said, "had that not been 
 the case. But I am anxious, if possible, to acquire them. 
 Strum says all the cupboards are locked, but I should like 
 to see the other things." He paused inquiringly. 
 
 " That is quite impossible," replied Father Bulbius with 
 a vehemence born of agitation. " I may show them to no 
 one." 
 
 Count Hilarius felt the cold settling on his bald head. 
 He put on his hat, and he also rose from the red velvet sofa. 
 
 " You misapprehend me," he said stiffly. " I wish only 
 to see the pictures, the armour, etcetera. All these things 
 are heirlooms which should remain with the family, and 
 sliould never have left the Castle. I am going to offer my 
 cousin, Baron Rexelaer, to re-pnrchase them." 
 
 " I can show you nothing, Mynheer the Count," repeated 
 Bulbius in a tremble. " I am very sorry. It is quite out of 
 the question." Would his visitor never go ? 
 
 But the visitor, who had only been one moment in the 
 house, already felt quite willing to leave it. He was furious 
 at this behaviour from his parish priest, and he hurried out 
 into the hall, drawing his fur-coat around him.
 
 THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE. 201 
 
 lu his haste — or was it done intentioually? — he threw 
 opeu the wrong door and walked straiglit into the Sanctum. 
 Tlie Baron was not there — Bulbius gave a gasp of relief — 
 but the whole room was littered with his treasures. 
 
 Count van Rexelaer's eyes travelled slowly over the open 
 cupboards and boxes and their scattered contents. At last 
 they arrested their pale gaze on the Father's burning face, 
 and Bulbius read an accusation in them Avhich was simply 
 monstrous. 
 
 " I had understood that these receptacles were locked," 
 said Count Eexelaer at last. " If their owuer left them in 
 this peculiar condition, he cannot have attached much im- 
 portance to their contents." 
 
 Father Bulbius felt utterly annihilated. 
 
 " If," repeated the Count with unmistakable stress. 
 Meanwhile his eyes literally danced and gloated over all 
 these glories of his house. He had never beheld any of 
 them before. 
 
 " The Baron begged me to ari'ange them," stammered 
 Bulbius. 
 
 "Indeed? And do you do so every day?" Count 
 Hilarius was furious to think of these inestimable splen- 
 dours abandoned to an ignorant and unscrupulous priest. 
 He had brought away with him from Rio the conviction 
 that all priests were unscrupulous. He stamped his foot in 
 his agitation. " I distinctly understood from Strum," he 
 continued, " that these cases were locked." 
 
 " You accuse me of neglecting my trust, Mynheer ? " 
 cried the Father, losing patience. 
 
 " I said no such thing. Had I wished to do so, I should 
 not have used the word ' neglecting.' " 
 
 " Violating, perhaps?" screamed the Father, Ixtuiidiug 
 like a fiery ball. He cast prudence to the winds. O tliis 
 Protestant upstart ! All the wrongs of the flock flared up 
 in the shepherd's heart, like tallow round a, wick. 
 
 " You forget yourself," said the Count stiffly. " I came
 
 202 TliE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 here because I am anxious Baron Rexelaer should be in- 
 formed of my offer to purchase these articles for which he 
 can have no further accommodation. If that be part of 
 your duty as a caretaker " — he had all a little soul's spite, 
 and Avas now intentionally insulting — " have the goodness 
 to transmit my message immediately. I should certainly 
 have preferred, if possible, his answering me himself." He 
 leant against the same inlaid gentleman who, the night be- 
 fore, had resented the Baron's Inverness, and his eyes rested 
 scornfully on the Father. 
 
 " He will do so at once," said a cold voice behind him. 
 " Would you have the kindness to lean less heavily, Myn- 
 heer ? " A gray gentleman, — gray of hair, not only, but of 
 face and eyes — stood in a door which had suddenly ojDened 
 in the wall. Count Rexelaer knew immediately who the 
 strange gentleman was. " I — I," he stammered, altogether 
 disconcerted, " I was not aware — I am Count Rexelaer." 
 
 " I could not help hearing you, Mynheer, from the ad- 
 joining room. I am the owner of this lumber. It seems 
 simpler to tell you at once that I shall never sell any of it 
 to you.''^ 
 
 All the words were calmly polite, excepting that final, 
 over-emphasized "you." "But why?" pleaded the other, 
 .somewhat . recovering his sangfroid. " The things are 
 wanted at Deynum. They have left horrible, noticeable 
 gaps " — a flash of satisfaction died across the Baron's eyes — 
 " and as head of the family — " 
 
 " Stop," interrupted Baron Rexelaer in a voice of thun- 
 der. " G-od knows I do not wish to be discourteous, but 
 never shall I allow you to use those words to my face ! " 
 
 " The higher title — " burst in Count Hilarius fiercely, 
 while Father Bulbius shrank aside. 
 
 " Pooh ! " said the Baron more calmly. " Money, even 
 such money as yours, ]\[ynheer, can buy almost all things 
 nowadays. But it cannot buy — and you know it cannot — 
 one drop of the blood of these." He laid his hand quite
 
 THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE. 263 
 
 gently on the shoulder of the knight beside him. To him, 
 at that moment, tlie empty armour was a living presence. 
 " There, there," he continued softly. " I have no wish to 
 insult you. I cannot give you these things, because you 
 would make them live a daily lie. Surely you can under- 
 stand that. If you like, you may have the silver ; 5'onr 
 father, wrongly enough, was permitted to assume our arms, 
 and you may buy the forks and spoons." 
 
 " And the archives ? " cried the Count. 
 
 Mynheer van Rexelaer looked at him and smiled. 
 
 " I will take nothing ! " screamed Hilarius. " Mind you, 
 you" — he turned to Bulbius— "and you! I came here in 
 all charity to see what could be done. It is unwise to anger 
 me. Rexelaer or not, I still am Lord of Deynum." He 
 ran out into the passage. This time he found the front- 
 door. 
 
 " Of course he is not of the family," said Bulbius, wiping 
 his face. " How could I ever think he was ? " 
 " I am sorry," said the Baron. 
 
 Count Hilarius ran home in a rage, and, as misfortunes 
 never come singly, he was stopped in his own park by a man 
 who had evidently been waiting for him there. 
 
 "A word with you," said the man. 
 
 The Count drew back. He was no craven. 
 
 " Let me pass," he said haughtily. 
 
 " One moment. This girl. The child lives." 
 
 " What girl ? " cried the Count impatiently. 
 
 " Villain, have you such wealth of choice ? Dora 
 Droste." 
 
 " I know nothing of what you mean," replied the Count, 
 endeavouring to push past. " Who arc you ? You have no 
 business in this park." 
 
 " You know who I am. I have told you before. Not 
 that it matters. I have nothing in common with the girl
 
 9(;4 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 hut lior misfortune." The fellow, a miserable-looking crea- 
 ture, held one lean arm across the path. 
 
 " If you Avant to extort money, you won't get it," said 
 the Count, pressing forward, 
 
 " You will do nothing for the girl '? " 
 
 " No." Count Rexelaer lifted his cane. 
 
 The fellow struck it aside and, in doing so, knocked over 
 his puny antagonist, saw liim tojjple back into the slush, and 
 ran off and out of sight.
 
 CHAPTER XXXYIL 
 
 " ALL THE COMFORTS OF A HOME." 
 
 That night tlie Barou went back to Cleves. 
 
 An hour or two before his arrival Wendela sat strumming 
 wearily on the boarding-house piano. It was a very bad 
 l^iano, but this, to Wendela, was no additional affliction, 
 
 " One, two, three," counted the Baroness. " Wendela, 
 you are not keeping time." 
 
 " Oh, what does it matter, Mamma ? The tune comes 
 right all the same." 
 
 " Not to those who distinguish properly. I thought it 
 was my daughter's ambition to do everything well ? " 
 
 "So it is. Mamma. Oh dear; one, two, three!" And 
 Wendela paddled on. 
 
 Presently a nervous little Swiss body thrust her head 
 through the door, then drew back with a couple of openings 
 and shuttings, and finally entered and sat down. Many 
 people cannot enter a public sitting-room in any other way. 
 "Shall we be disturbing you, Mademoiselle?" asked the 
 Baroness. " Not in the least," replied the little lady, in 
 much trepidation, certainly saying the reverse of what she 
 meant. Friiulein Drix was " exceedingly musical," and as 
 AYendela's ten fingers went staggering over immovable stum- 
 bling-blocks, the poor creature vibrated behind the Review 
 she was endeavouring to read. 
 
 Tlie clock struck, and the musician dropped the piano- 
 lid with a bang, which covered lier mother's sigh of relief. 
 The piece Wendela had been playing was Haydn's " Sur-
 
 O(]0 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 prise." Verv surprised would lie luivc been to hear it was 
 his. 
 
 " Do you consider it advisable, Madame," said Frilulein 
 Drix, in a flutter of sudden resolve, " that «// children should 
 be taught the piano?" Wendela, who was gathering her 
 books together, paused to listen. The Friiulein gasped at 
 her own temerity, as she met the stare of the Baroness's pale 
 eyes. Pale eyes can look haughtier than dark ones, and it 
 was the one lady's look which answered the other. Aloud 
 ]\Ievrouw van Eexelaer merely said : " I like my daughter to 
 learn it," in leaving the room. The doctor remarked next 
 morning that Friiulein Drix was not so well. 
 
 The Baroness was white to the lips as she took her usual 
 seat by the window. She was a woman of immeasurable 
 pride ; she had always been accustomed to a tranquil su- 
 premacy of gentle patronage, unassuming, doubtless, where 
 only condescension was required. Seclusion — intermediary 
 servility, — it is the one great blessing which rank and wealth 
 bestow. The Baroness knew little of the world outside her, 
 till she differed with " Auguste " about the cleanness of the 
 dinner-plates. Xor did she know too much of the world 
 within her — what stronghold still lay there unconquered — 
 till intercourse with the ladies of Frau Schultze's second- 
 rate Pension came unpleasantly to her assistance. She 
 loathed the little, squalid, quarrelsome life. 
 
 " But Mamma," began Wendela abruptly. " Perhaps 
 she is right. I hate playing. And you said yourself I had 
 an excellent voice." 
 
 " Your ear must be trained first, Wendela ; it is far too 
 imperfect. Allow your mother to judge. And do you re- 
 member : Seedtime is my time : Harvest-time is God's." 
 
 Wendela threw her arms round her mother's neck with 
 a warmth of embrace which would have astonished Fj-iiu- 
 lein Drix : " I wonder whether it ever really happened," 
 she said, " Guido van Eexelaer casting his seed on the sub- 
 merged fields in the Spanish troubles, and the harvest com-
 
 "ALL THE COMFORTS OF A HOME." 2G7 
 
 iug up just the same. Tell me about it again, Mother. 
 When you tell me, it sounds true." 
 
 " Of course it is true. How often have I not told you 
 before ? " 
 
 "Yes, I know. But it all seems too beautiful to be 
 real. Beautiful things never really happen, I think. It's 
 only the ugly, and nasty and wicked that come true." Tlie 
 girl spoke with passionate conviction, shaking back the 
 brown locks from her honest brow. Then, suddenly, she 
 embraced her mother again with vehement hugs and kisses. 
 " You tell me, mother," she repeated, " about good things, 
 and God, and the Saints. When you tell me it sounds true, 
 and I think I understand." 
 
 " Hush, hush," answered the Baroness, gently disengag- 
 ing herself. " My little daughter must not wish to under- 
 stand too much. Go and wash your hands, dear child ; it 
 is nearly time for supper." 
 
 Wendela ran off to her own room, a pale-cheeked, ear- 
 nest-eyed child, impetuous of thought and movement, yet 
 dreamy withal. In the hideousness of the present, the 
 dream-life had deepened around her as a sheltering 
 cloud. Nurturing her beauty-sick soul upon the splen- 
 dours of fairy tales, she had escaped into regions of 
 blissful unreality, where she delighted to wander, in end- 
 less imaginings, with a fairy hero of her own creat- 
 ing, to whom she did homage as her lord. Of course 
 he was handsome, though she had never distinguished 
 his features, virtuous as one of her mother's saints, and as 
 a lion strong. 
 
 She would not have been a daughter of her race had she 
 not identified this fairy-prince with one of her own great an- 
 cestors; he was Pilgrim van Rexelaer, the " Knight Pilgrim," 
 whose marble effigy sleeps in the Chapel (its visor closed in 
 its saintly humility), the Crusader to whom the modern 
 version of the family legend ascribes the deliverance of the 
 maiden W^endela. Not for one moment did the irirrs
 
 20S THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 strong brain confuse the actual and the unreal. All 
 things existent, as she had said to her mother, were 
 ugly and evil ; she deliberately turned her back upon 
 them and roved away into the mystic forest, where a 
 Saracen Chieftain pounced forth from behind the pine- 
 trees and Knight-Pilgrim came riding up on a milk-white 
 steed. 
 
 " For shame, Wanda ! " said her mother, entering. 
 " The supper-bell has rung ! " 
 
 Wendela tumbled off the bed : " Oh, ]\Iamma," she said, 
 " I wish you need never have disturbed me. I was so haji^jy, 
 over yonder, in the wood. In the dear wood." 
 
 The Baroness knew nothing of her daughter's dream- 
 ings, excejot that she was too often dreamy, but it did 
 not require any such knowledge to understand the allu- 
 sion to De3-num. " God sends us the present to live 
 in, not the past," she said. " Get ready, child, and come 
 down." 
 
 They went into the supper-room together, and there 
 they found the meal and its appendages awaiting them : — 
 tea, made from hay, fat liver-sausage and frizzling potato- 
 pa7icake, and, furthermore, half a dozen superfluous-looking 
 personages who talked, dismally, at intervals, about the 
 Aveather and about themselves. " Superfluous-looking," 
 because there really seemed no reason why any of these 
 creatures should exist, excepting the fact that each of them 
 probably possessed a pittance to spend upon herself and 
 thus to keep herself carefully, grumblingly and uselessly 
 alive. Before the repast was concluded. Mynheer van 
 Rexelaer joined the party and was greeted with a little 
 cackle of interest. Most of the ladies felt a certain tender- 
 ness for the good " Heer Baron " ; true, he was married. — 
 My dear, if you will shut the door, we will have a talk 
 about that wife of his — he was married, undeniably, but he 
 was the only gentleman in the house. As a rule, he gave 
 them very little satisfaction. To-day, again, after lengthen-
 
 "ALL THE COMPORTS OF A HOME." 2G9 
 
 ing periods of silence, they picked themselves wp one by 
 one, and carried themselves away, for thus only can the 
 manner be described in which they departed from the 
 table with their various shawls, work-bags and other weak- 
 nesses. 
 
 Even when left alone with his wife and child, the Baron 
 did not break through his reserve. He confiiied his brief 
 utterances to the incidents of the journey, and answered 
 all questions with reluctance. " But I want to know every- 
 thing about everything," said Wendela. He told her that 
 her pets at the Castle had been disposed of : " Then I want 
 to hear nothing about nothing any more," said the girl. A 
 year ago she would have burst into a passion of crying ; now 
 she sat gazing silently, until, with an especially affectionate 
 farewell to the Baroness, she wished her parents good- 
 night. There was a barrier between her and her father, 
 unrealized, though not altogether unfelt, by him, unac- 
 knowledged by her. 
 
 The Baron took uji the little German " Tageblatt." 
 Presently he said, without lifting his eyes from it : "I hope 
 you have been comfortable during my absence?" 
 
 " Oh yes, we are comfortable. How can you ruin your 
 eyes, mon ami " — the Baroness did not read German — " by 
 this wretched light? The lamp smells again; tlie woman 
 refuses to clean it." 
 
 The Baron laid down the newspaper. He sat shading 
 his face with his hand, and presently he said, as one who 
 thinks aloud : " The old home." 
 
 Madame van Eexelaer dropped her cards. " Tell me," 
 she said, " I am longing to know. It is that still." 
 
 He drew back his hand quickly and looked full at her. 
 " Is it ? " he said eagerly. " To you ? " 
 
 " I envy you, dearest, for having seen it again." 
 
 He started to his feet. " \Vt)iild you," he said in a 
 trembling voice. " Could you — " He remained looking 
 dumbly at his wife, unable to proceed.
 
 270 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 She stretched out both her arms to him. " Come here 
 to me," she said. " It is the one tiling I have been longing 
 for, but not daring to ask." 
 
 And thus it was that the old Kexelaers came back to live 
 at Deynum.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 THE BORCKS. 
 
 The village meanwhile had got accustomed to the new 
 ones. 
 
 As, day after day, the green shutters were flung open, to 
 the slow rising of the winter-sun, all round the weather- 
 beaten sides of the Castle, those villagers whose errands 
 brought them up to the offices gazed in pleasant approval of 
 the fact that these numerous eyes still smiled down upon 
 them and their merchandise. The saying had been that the 
 family was only coming for Christmas. They were still 
 here, and Joost Hakkert's monthly bill alone exceeded a 
 hundred and fifty florins. Joost Hakkert was delighted. 
 The Baron had left no debts, it is true, but he had always 
 paid slowly while buying little ; Count Rexelaer's ready 
 money came pouring into the village, and the village, as it 
 felt, smelt, jingled and crackled it, hurrah'd for Count 
 Rexelaer. One morning the tailor met Hakkert's youngest 
 son in the Castle-courtyard bending beneath his basket-load 
 of meat. " And does your father still insult the strangers? " 
 he asked in passing. The foolish, beefsteak-faced lad 
 stopped and stared. 
 
 One class there was which had full cause to regret the 
 White Baroness. It is a large one, and at Deynum that 
 lady had perhaps unnecessarily enlarged it. Margherita, 
 on her part, had no wish not to be charitable, but that very 
 common attitude is of little practical avail. The Count en- 
 trusted his systematised charities to Dievcrt, and every gen- 
 tleman who has found out his steward (some, alas, have not
 
 L'72 
 
 Till-: (iREATI-:R GLORY. 
 
 yet done so) will understand Avhat that meant. Dicvert 
 now often deplored that he had not had the management of 
 the old Baron's largesse. 
 
 Meanwhile the whole regiment of workmen were busy 
 all over the Castle, and herein he could find sufficient cause 
 for rejoicing. Margherita, who possessed genuine taste 
 and considerable knowledge of the lower forms of art, 
 had thrown herself, with fitful energy, into the work of ren- 
 ovation and redecoration, and her husband did not check 
 her capricious expenditure, although, unfortunately for Die- 
 vert, he checked the resultant bills. He was glad to afford 
 some relief to the melancholy which would settle on the 
 Creole's face as she stood looking forth on the ice-bound 
 moat, and the snow and the scraggy trees. Much as she 
 had complained at the Hague, she had never yet understood 
 how wintry winter is. Would she go back ? Ah no ; she 
 had a nervous dread, at this moment, of the city's tittle-tat- 
 tle about the " Scene at the Eailway Station," which was 
 being diligently worked by the " Eads." Margherita had 
 plenty of passion at her command for a fine burst of emo- 
 tion, but she could not stand the wear of a lagging, nagging 
 annoyance. 
 
 After a few weeks Mevrouw Elizabeth van Rexelaer re- 
 turned to her relations at the Castle. She brought Jane 
 with her, and also Cecile Borck, her dead brother's child, a 
 shy, simple-hearted girl. Grandmamma Borck had her 
 dear friend, the Countess de Bercy, staying with her, and 
 Cecile's presence hampered their talk. In spite of her 
 orphanhood and modesty, Cecile was not a nobody in the 
 Borck family ; her father had misallied himself to one of 
 the Koopstad Lossells and had left her fifty thousand 
 pounds in the funds. Grandmamma looked after her and 
 them. 
 
 She came, therefore, to see, and be seen of, her cousins, 
 the Borcks of Eollington, and Mevrouw Elizabeth, her aunt 
 (who had missed the dear people at Christmas), ostensibly
 
 THE BORCKS. 273 
 
 did the same. The new owners of Deyuum were glad of 
 this bridge of communication with their powerful neigh- 
 bour, but they would hardly have tolerated Mevrouw Eliza- 
 beth's early reappearance, had not other considerations come 
 to the fore. Young Simmans, the functionary charged with 
 the Countess's " proces-verbal," was very intimate at the 
 house of Judge Eexelaer ; he was even credited with aspir- 
 ing to the hand of the Freule Jane. Had Jane been less 
 plain, this presumption would have been resented, for Sim- 
 mans was nobody's son but his father's. 
 
 " When you are down there," said the Dowager to her 
 daughter, " you can write to Henry Simmaus to come and 
 see you and find out the facts from Margherita. She is a 
 fool. I barely know her, but you can tell her so from me. 
 In my youth the populace took pleasure in the noble arro- 
 gance of their superiors ; the times have changed, and the 
 best thing for us to do is to keep as quiet as we can. Like 
 the rich Jews of the Middle Ages that used to wear the 
 filthier rags. From the height of my eighty years' experi- 
 ence I say : Society scandals to-day are society suicides, and 
 should be punished by society as such." She struck her 
 cane on the floor, and sat angrily twitching her poor old 
 mouth, which was fallen in over her peaked chin. She was 
 seventy-three, but her daughter knew better than to contra- 
 dict her. She had been thirty till she was fifty, and had 
 tlien leaped into precipitate old age. 
 
 " Live as badly or as madly as you will," she added, after 
 a moment, " but build your park-walls high." 
 
 " Quite so," said Mevrouw Elizabeth, who was nothing 
 if not practical. " And I shall take down Jane, Mamma, 
 and I might also take Antoinette. Dear Rene is so at- 
 tached to Antoinette." 
 
 "They are child reu," replied the Dowager. "I have 
 never paid much attontioTi to the attachmeuts of children, 
 liut, by all means, take Jane. It will be dull enough for 
 Simmans."
 
 274: THE GKEATEli GLORY. 
 
 " Wc shall liave him proposing from ennui," laughed 
 Mevrouw Elizabeth, with an attempt at playfulness which 
 did not at all " suit her style." 
 
 " As most men do," retorted the Dowager. 
 
 So Mevrouw van Eexelaer departed for Deynum with 
 Jane and Cecile, the Countess having declined the pleasure 
 of Topsy's company, " because Eeinout was once more oc- 
 cupied with his lessons." " As if / could not have brought 
 Miss Wilson," said Eeinout's disappointed aunt. Jane had 
 pulled a face at the prospect of more Deynum in winter. 
 " You can draw, you know," suggested her plump sister 
 Rolline. " Yes ; that's what I'm taken for," said plain- 
 spoken Jane. 
 
 The Borcks of Eollingen called the day after their 
 cousin's arrival, most unfortunately missing the Count, wdio 
 had left for a period of " duty " at the palace. They were 
 almost cordial to Mevrouw ■ Elizabeth, aud gracious to 
 Margherita. " And was that dark, olive-complexioned boy, 
 the Countess's son ? " — the lady from Eollingen put up her 
 eye-glass. " He is very handsome ; do you not think so, 
 John ? He understands French ? Oh, never mind ; plenty 
 of people will tell him that." " I am glad we are co-re- 
 ligionists," she said to Margherita in parting, not knowing, 
 or forgetting, the Countess's change of creed. She prom- 
 ised to call again. 
 
 Margherita " did not care," as long as she knew people 
 to bow to. Just now she was entirely engrossed by the con- 
 struction of a glass excrescence to her sitting-room, which 
 would hang like a huge balcony over the moat. She took 
 her visitors to see this. " It does not match a bit with 
 the rest of the fortress-like building," said Elizabeth. " It 
 does not," admitted the lady of Eollingen, frankly. Mar- 
 gherita knew that better than her visitors, but she must 
 have a corner for her plants and her pets. " Did Mevrouw 
 Borck like pets?" Mevrouw Borck detested them, and had 
 fortunately not observed the recumbent Florizel, who had
 
 THE BORCKS. 275 
 
 soiled the train of her dress during the visit. It was Cecile 
 who timidly hinted, in her desire to say something kind, 
 that houses built out of the water were known to be less 
 damp than houses beside it. The Baroness Borck, tactless 
 as she herself was, lifted her perpetual eye-glass and looked 
 kindly at this young bearer of her name. " You must 
 come and stay with us some day, my dear," she said. " We 
 ought to know you better." Cecile blushed crimson : " I 
 should be delighted, Mevrouw, but I am always witli grand- 
 mamma Borck." The Baron of Eollingen said little about 
 the visit on the way home. Once only he opened his eyes, in 
 the midst of his wife's chatter. " A tragedy in six words," 
 he said. "I am always with grandmamma Borck." 
 
 And Harry Simmans came down to the Castle, to visit 
 Mevrouw Elizabeth, and the Count asked him, after dinner, 
 to stay for a day or two. Margherita took no notice. The 
 weather being milder, the transfer of the tropical birds had 
 been sanctioned by their medical attendant. They travelled 
 down in glass cases, heated by spirits of wine. 
 
 " They are all that is left me of home," said the Count- 
 ess. She cried as she let them loose in the " excrescence." 
 
 The Countess's only son, meanwhile, released from his 
 early solitude, made friends with all the animate and inani- 
 mate world around him. As long as his tutor remained 
 away, he multiplied unpleasant pets and fraternized with 
 village urchins ; Monsieur de Souza, on his return, rej^re- 
 sented this terrible state of affairs in no measured terms to 
 tlie Count. " Rene s'encanaille." The words fell like a 
 thunderbolt. It was the one thing which his whole educa- 
 tion had been destined to avoid. The poor boy, who had 
 been debarred from the friendship of his equals, found 
 pleasure in the society of such children as could not dis- 
 tinguish his peculiarities. The Count listened horror- 
 struck. " Ren6 s'encanaille." 
 
 "lie never reads," said the Countess. "Intercourse 
 19
 
 270 ' THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 with great minds is the sole education. I have always said 
 so. Go into the library, Rene." And Keinout, who felt 
 bored, wandered away, with his hands in his pockets, along 
 the endless lines of books. 
 
 " Ma chere, I regretfully disagree with you," said the 
 Count, following his wife into her boudoir. " The boy will 
 get no good from all the rubbish in there. I never read 
 through half a dozen books in my life, except when I was 
 working for my degree. Reinout is to enter the diplomatic 
 service. And for that he is being fitted as few men have 
 been. He is learning by De Souza's experience what others 
 have to learn by their own." 
 
 " Of course he will become a diplomatist," replied Mar- 
 gherita, languidly arranging some strij^ed camellias. " But 
 that is only the background. My son is to be more than 
 that — a prophet, a teacher, an immortal ! " 
 
 " Eh ? " said the Count. " Oh, you mean : verses. 
 Don't put foolish ideas into his head, Margot. Literature 
 wouldn't keep you in bonbons, and, besides, it isn't work for 
 a gentleman." 
 
 "And Hugo, then, who is a Count? And Musset? 
 and Chateaubriand ? And Lamartine ? " 
 
 " Chateaubriand?" repeated the Count. " He is a beef- 
 steak — or he invented one, or something. AVhat has he to 
 do with Rene ? " 
 
 "Go back to your — diplomatic avocations," replied the 
 Countess quietly. " And leave me to build up the future 
 glory of my child." 
 
 " But why not ? " said Van Rexelaer carelessly, looking 
 at his watch. " As long as you make a gentleman of him 
 first." 
 
 The Countess Margherita dashed her flowers violently to 
 the ground. " Gentleman ! Gentleman ! " she repeated, " I 
 am sick of the refrain, and you, Monsieur le Comte, I sup- 
 pose you are a type of a gentleman ? " 
 
 " But— Margherita— "
 
 THE BORCKS. 277 
 
 She came close to him. Involuntarily he shrank back. 
 " A gentleman," she said, " is a man who breaks all the com- 
 mandments — genteelly, and who keeps his — linen scrupu- 
 lously clean." And she quitted the room. 
 
 Hilarius was left standing opposite his own rather stupid 
 face in the glass. " Follies ! " he said, and went to keep his 
 appointment with — never mind. 
 
 Surely no woman was ever wholly bad. Surely not even 
 the best of men was ever entirely worthy of a good woman. 
 
 Eeinout loitered to and fro along the great, dim library. 
 The weather was dreary outside, in the drip of a wide-spread 
 thaw. There had been no books at the Hague, except his 
 mother's boxes of novels. Novels were not books. These 
 latter were for schoolmasters, professors and such-like. He 
 now pulled out one or two from curiosity, philosophical 
 works of eighteenth-century Frenchmen. 
 
 " Merci, Maman," he said, with a yawn, as he replaced 
 them. He knew, disastrously, that his father thought his 
 poetastic mother a fool. 
 
 He knew also tliat they differed about himself. Even 
 now, as he left their presence, he had heard the Count be- 
 gin : " Ma chere, I regretfully disagree with you — " A 
 moment before he had had to endure the most vehement 
 reproaches on account of his intercourse with the village- 
 lads. Count Hilarius had been irritably violent, seeking 
 offence where Reinout felt there was none.' The boy con- 
 sidered himself aggrieved by the thought that his father was 
 constantly stopping him somewhere. 
 
 Still with his hands in his pockets, he wandered into a 
 little nondescript turret-cliamber, where he found Cecile 
 engaged at an old piano. His was not a deeply musical na- 
 ture, but at this moment the melodious majesty of Beethoven 
 swept solemnly upon his sullen mood. 
 
 He stood listening, and when she paused and looked at 
 him — with those kind gray eyes of hers :
 
 278 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " What do you do, Freule," he asked suddenh', " when 
 you dou't understand?" 
 
 " How so, Rene ? " This, evidently, was a case in point. 
 
 " About what people want you to do, I mean. And what 
 you ought to." 
 
 " I ask God," said Cecile softly. 
 
 " Dear me ! I thought you were too old to say your 
 prayers ! " 
 
 The young Freule's eyes grew troubled, and she looked 
 as if she were anxiously searching for fit expression. But 
 she only blushed, and murmured " Poor Eene." 
 
 Eeinout wandered off into the hall. Why did all good 
 people pity him ? Ever since he could remember. Monsieur 
 de Souza had called him "Fortune's Favourite." 
 
 He went uji to his afternoon lessons. Tutor and pupil 
 were reading together the memoirs of a Gentilhomme de la 
 Chambre of Louis le Bien-aime. Eeinout thought it dull 
 work. He was blase at fourteen. But that was what the 
 Count had always wanted : " There is no strength in the 
 world," said Count Eexelaer, " equivalent to beginning life 
 blase." 
 
 But it had never struck him that Eeinout, weary of his 
 great world's littleness, might look out for another. Count 
 Eexelaer did not know there was another world.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 HONEST HEAETS. 
 
 The Chalk-house Farm was sinking to sleep under the 
 dying day. Across its low brown roof the massive shadows 
 broadened, seeming to pull down the heavy thatch, like a 
 nightcap, over little windows, that blinked drowsily, black 
 against the fading light. The few gaunt beeches which 
 overtop the prostrate building stretched out their straggling 
 arms to Heaven, in appeal for a covering too long withheld. 
 Heaven answered by dropping its clouds among them and 
 gradually wiping them out of sight. In the red-brick court- 
 yard, between the bake-house and the living-house, a belated 
 chicken was nervously over-doing its supper, if meals can be 
 distinguished in a chicken's twelve hours' uninterrupted 
 feed. A brown mongrel lay by the door and, occasionally 
 opening one eye, stared vaguely at the four poles of the 
 empty hay-stack. Over the whole landscape hung a gloomy 
 calm. The gloom, not the calm, hung over Lise, who stood 
 waiting by the long white fence which separates the farm- 
 yard from the high-road. 
 
 Her motlier came out into the twilight with a bright 
 blue milk-pail. " He'll know soon enough, child," she said. 
 " You needn't be in a hurry to tell him." 
 
 " Don't, mother," said the girl. Young people have no 
 taste for irony. Lovers least of all. 
 
 " But of course your father knows best," continued 
 Vrouw Driest, and disappeared through the low door, 
 muttering. Hardly an hour went by but Lise heard those
 
 280 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 words from her mother's lips. They were the farm-wife's 
 all-sufficient solace among the misfortunes and failures of 
 life. She forgot them when anything turned out well. 
 
 Tliere had heen a time when Lise had occasionally an- 
 swered : " But, mother, it was you that said — " " llush, 
 child, how can you bo so headstrong ! Of course your 
 father knows, though / should not have sold that cow." 
 
 " She is over-anxious to tell him," repeated Vrouw 
 Driest as she returned to the farm-kitchen. Peasants al- 
 ways communicate a thouglit to a number of people in suc- 
 cession. " I tell her he will hear it soon enough," she 
 added, bending over the pot which simmered on the fire. 
 The husband, a ponderous, slow-smoking man, whose very 
 arm, Avhere it lay inert on the table, was heavy with depres- 
 sion, never even moved in reply. 
 
 " I always thought it would come to this," said the wife, 
 bustling about the kitchen. How often had she not de- 
 clared that no power on earth would drag her to the Castle ? 
 But Driest, who had earned a quiet life by playing scape- 
 goat, could not refuse the role to-day, when on the point of 
 being hunted into the wilderness. 
 
 " There's the chaise," said the wife presently, and went 
 to the door. " He's sold the filly," she added, and turned 
 away again, " Let them do their kissing and nonsense 
 alone," she thought, and cast a sad smile across at her hus- 
 band's bent head. 
 
 " Thys," said the girl, at the gate, in the twilight. " It 
 has come. Dievert told father this morning. The lease is 
 not going to be renewed." 
 
 The young man checked his horse with a jerk, and, 
 falling back, from the shock, in the light wooden chaise, he 
 swore aloud at Count Rexehier. 
 
 The girl said no more, walking beside the horse, as her 
 lover slowly guided him into the stable. He also spoke 
 very little, unharnessing, while she helped him, and begin- 
 ning to whistle meditatively as he shook out the straw.
 
 HONEST HEARTS. 281 
 
 Presently she caught up a pitcher and, perliaps as an apol- 
 ogy for her ill-tidings, went to fill it at the well. Without 
 a word of thanks to interrupt his whistling, he took it from 
 her, but as they crossed the courtyard together he said : 
 " This will put off our marriage, Lise, till the Lord knows 
 when." " Mother doesn't understand about my wanting to 
 tell you," answered Lise, " but it didn't seem like knowing 
 till both of us knew." He did not ask her to explain her 
 meaning, though perhaps he hardly understood it. " Poor 
 mother," he said, and they passed into the kitchen, where 
 the meal lay spread beneath the dismal lamp. 
 
 " Well, Thys?" said the farmer, moving at last from his 
 stolid despair. " Pve done well," rej^lied Thys, and, even at 
 this moment, a note of triumph penetrated his voice. He 
 had been away for three days, to the great Easter horse- 
 fair at Utrecht. " There were French traders. These 
 Frenchmen pay well." His uncle — he called him " father " 
 — nodded solemn approval, and said " Good." That is a 
 great deal for a farmer. 
 
 Then they sat down to supper in silence, till the mother 
 began : " The family are back, Thys. They arrived on the 
 day you left." 
 
 "Did they?" said Thys. His heart was heavy, but he 
 cut himself an enormous chunk of bread. 
 
 " Yes, and I think the old Heer might have come to see 
 us. But no doubt your father knows." 
 
 The old man looked straight across into his foster-son's 
 eyes. " Lise has told you," he said. Thys nodded, with his 
 mouth full. 
 
 " It's worse for you, boy. Mother and I are old." 
 
 " Speak for yourself, father," broke in his spouse. " I 
 hope to make butter yet for twenty years, please God." 
 
 " And where'll you make it ? " said the farmer. 
 
 After that a thoughtful silence fell upon the little com- 
 pany, not even broken when the Baron van Rexelaer sud- 
 denly stood in their midst. They shuffled awkwardly to
 
 282 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 their feet, in a movement of general embarrassment, around 
 the half-finished meal. 
 
 " Can you let me have a cup of coffee, Yrouw Driest ? " 
 said the Baron, with extended hand. 
 
 The woman was a sonr-visaged woman, but, at this mark 
 of condescension, her expression grew positively fierce with 
 emotion. She had lived all her life at Deynum; the Baron, 
 to her, was still sovereignty personified. She hurried into 
 her parlour to get one of her grandmother's eleven Japanese 
 cups. Alas that there should be eleven ! Had not Vrouw 
 Driest's sister-in-law, on the occasion of Lise's birth, in 
 dusting — There is an old saying, by one who knew, about 
 " renovare dolorem." The sister-in-law is still ashamed. 
 
 There was a moment's interruption of washing and 
 wiping. " No one that we know of has ever used this cuj) 
 before, Mynheer," said tlie farmer's wife with pardonable 
 pride, as she placed the bit of blue china before the Baron. 
 " You and I, Driest," began that gentleman, abruptly, " are 
 companions in misfortune. Bat I want to think that yours 
 is preventable. Can nothing be done?" 
 
 " Ah, that's what I say," remarked the wife. 
 
 " You should have said it sooner then," retorted the 
 farmer, turning angrily upon her. " If the Count says 
 ' Go,' landheer, go we must." 
 
 " But need he say it ? Don't think I don't love you for 
 what you've done." He held out his hand, which the slow 
 farmer took deferentially. " There, now that's settled, I 
 want you to do me another favour, the next best. I 
 want you to go up to the Castle and see the Count your- 
 self." 
 
 " N"ever. We need no Counts here," burst in the wife. 
 Then she pursed up her lips and fixed her eyes on the 
 Baron's cup. Thys had moved his long legs under the 
 table. Lise signed to him to keep still. 
 
 " It's no use," continued the Baron. " We poor people 
 must bend or break. I'm broken. You'd better bend."
 
 HONEST HEARTS. 283 
 
 " "We did it for the best," said Driest, a little sore. 
 
 It was this very soreness the Barou dreaded. He was 
 not a dijilomatist, but he was resolved to save these poor 
 people. 
 
 " Look here," he said. " If the Count renews, 
 you'll go up and thank him. Eh?" He turned to the 
 wife. 
 
 " The farmer knows best, landlieer," replied that lady 
 promptly. Site was a diplomatist. 
 
 " He's a thief," said the farmer slowly. " He's no Rexe- 
 laer. D him." 
 
 " Father ! " cried Lise. 
 
 " Ay, ' father ' ! What's the likes of him to come among 
 the likes of us? As soon have some false stock of my 
 grand-uncle's breeding — he was a wild chap and went to 
 Town for a hair-dresser — setting up at the Chalk-house 
 Farm as a Driest ! " 
 
 Music as all this might be to the Baron's ears, he saw 
 the danger of it. " And who knows what will happen at 
 the Chalk-house Farm," he said, coming round quickly to 
 the practical side, " when you are no longer master here?" 
 Vrouw Driest heaved a notable sigh. 
 
 " I don't care to be," replied the farmer, doggedly, " not 
 under the new lord. Deynum isn't Deynum with a Gueux 
 at tlie Castle. The Rexelaers have gone, and they were 
 here longer than we by a matter of many hundred years. 
 We can go where Mynheer the Baron's gone. It isn't so 
 far as America, I suppose. Eh, Vrouw ? " 
 
 " We've come back to remain," said the Baron huskily, 
 moved to the very bottom of his heart. " I can't live any- 
 where else, Driest, nor can the Baroness. Now, how about 
 you ? Don't deceive yourself, my good, faithful friend. 
 Old clodhojipers can't breathe on any clod but their own." 
 He waved his hand to them all, and hurried away. Tlie 
 farmer brought down his enormous fist on the table with 
 a crash that set all the dishes dancing. Thys smiled sav-
 
 28 J: THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 agely. Yronw Driest canglit up her graiuhnotlicr's cnp, 
 and laid it in her lap. 
 
 Tlie Baron, slowly returning homewards, halted for a 
 moment upon the little village-green. At this hour the 
 ])lace was quite deserted, but in the darkness you could 
 trace the shapes of the Church and School, and other few 
 buildings scattered around. That light yonder was Job 
 Ilenniks' ! There the cronies of the village were doubtless 
 assembled, discussing the old lord and the new. 
 
 " Mynheer van Eexelaer, might I speak to you for a 
 moment?" said a polite voice, which he did not recognise, 
 at his side. He turned. " They told me at the priest's 
 you would be coming this way. I am John Borck. It is, 
 unfortunately, many years since we met." 
 
 " It is," said the Baron, stiffiy, to his wife's old antago- 
 nist. They walked along the road, side by side, the Baron 
 painfully exjiectant. 
 
 " The matter is purely one of business," began the 
 Lord of Rollingen, stammering out the central thought of 
 his previously prepared speeches, " and it is always best, I 
 think, to transact business personally. I — I — if I under- 
 stand rightly, there are some objects from the Castle you 
 wish to do away with. If I am mistaken, I beg pardon." 
 
 " I have decided nothing as yet," said Baron Reselaer, 
 not in a pleasant tone of voice. 
 
 " Still, supposing you should resolve to — I understood 
 from Cecile Borck, who is staying — look here, Eexelaer, we 
 used to know each other well enough once. I don't want 
 to do you a favour. Not I ; I want you to do me one. 
 You knoAV I'm a great man for antiquities and family- 
 histories " — Baron Eexelaer knew nothing of the kind — 
 " now what's the use of selling portraits, for instance, to 
 brokers? The Eexelaers and the Borcks have been closely 
 connected in the centuries when nobody differed about re- 
 ligion, and a lot of your belongings must be of esi^ecial 
 value to us. Now, why shouldn't you sell them to me, as I
 
 HONEST HEARTS. 285 
 
 want them? If you like, we could easily make out an 
 agreement, that, in the next twenty years, you or your 
 d?iughter could take them back — at the same price. I think 
 that would be fair. Or the same price and four per cent, 
 interest. Yes, that would be fairer." This last inspiration 
 came to John Borck in the moment of speaking and huge- 
 ly delighted him. 
 
 " It can't be, Borck," said the Baron, in an unsteady 
 voice, now. " For one thing, my wife wouldn't like it." 
 
 " Nor would mine," rose to honest John Borck's lips, 
 but he checked the words. " It is merely a business trans- 
 action," he repeated. 
 
 " JSTevertheless, I am most deeply grateful for your 
 generous offer" — Baron Borck would have interrupted — 
 " No, no, do not think I cannot comprehend. Your kind- 
 ness even emboldens me, while refusing one service, to ask 
 for another. Will you let me ? " 
 
 " What is it ? " queried cautious John Borck. 
 
 " There is a man here, one of my old farmers, who can- 
 not get on under the new regime. He is a good man ; the 
 question is a — a personal one, regarding m^yself. It is 
 Driest, of the Chalk-house, which you have long wanted to 
 buy. If you had a farm for him, on the other side of 
 Eollingen, I — I should look upon it as a great kindness to 
 myself." 
 
 " I shall bear it in mind," said Borck. They had reached 
 the Parsonage. " Permit me one question in parting," con- 
 tinued the Lord of Eollingen. " If you sell these things to 
 strangers, how will you prevent Count Rexelaer's ultimately 
 acquiring them ?" 
 
 And now it will seem incredible to those who live in 
 Koopstad and are wide-awake that this sleepy, single- 
 thoughted country-gentleman had never even caught a 
 glimpse of his danger. 
 
 " Remember what happened about the Castle. That 
 was a dirty trick, I thought. I know a good deal about the
 
 2SQ THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Eexehiers, more than you tliiuk. I was in no hurry to call 
 on the people. But my cousin, you remember, married the 
 brother." * 
 
 " There is a good deal to know," said the Baron. 
 
 "Perhaps I know it. I know about the 'k' in their 
 name, for instance. Ah, you didn't expect that, did you ? 
 I told you I was a bit of an antiquary. Now, to a great 
 many people, that ' k ' wouldn't matter a brass cent ; it does 
 to you and me, because we are old fogies. The old fogies 
 ought to stick together in this brand-new day. You can 
 take time to consider my projjosal. I am in no hurry. 
 Good night." 
 
 " Good night and God bless you, John Borck," said the 
 Baron van Eexelaer. Here was a kind Av^ord from one of 
 his own class at last. 
 
 The Lord of Rollingen was one of the richest and most 
 powerful nobles in the country. He was a strange quiet 
 man, of strong idiosyncrasy, who allowed his wife to do 
 whatever she chose, except on the rare occasions when he did 
 not w^ant her to do it. When his young cousin Cecile, who 
 scarcely knew her mighty kinsman, had penetrated into his 
 room that morning with much fear and trembling, he had 
 first been taken by surprise, then interested, then greatly 
 pleased. He was an aristocrat down to the bottom, and 
 therefore a just man as well as a proud. It is only your 
 nine-tenths aristocrat who is prejudiced beyond the limits 
 of justice. 
 
 " You are right, Cecile," had said Baron John Borck.
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 OF SOME THAT KETURKED TO DEYNUM AND SOME THAT 
 DEPAETED THEXCE. 
 
 As spring went slowly deepening into summer — the pro- 
 cess takes a long time in our Northern region ! — the Countess 
 Margherita's heart began to soften a little towards Deynum. 
 It was by no means a cold heart ; it was a warm heart be- 
 numbed. From her new conservatory — the excrescence — 
 she would sadly watch the sun in liis daily struggles to 
 climb higher behind the gaunt rampart of distant trees, and 
 when suddenly, one pale morning, the grim wall stood col- 
 oured over with a faint shimmer of silver-green promise, she 
 screamed aloud to Laissa, and went dancing away among 
 her plants, like a butterfly, Avith all the parrots yelling and 
 all the dogs wildly capering around her. Count Hilarius, 
 who seldom took any notice of her " extravagances," looked 
 in at the door. " AYhat now? " he inquired, as she whirled 
 past him, holding the furiously barking Florizel triumph- 
 antly aloft. " It is spring ! " she cried back at him. " Sum- 
 mer is coming, your summer, the pale one, the second-best ! 
 Houp-la, Amarinda, ma belle ! " " Oh Printemps, 6 mon 
 roi, que j'adore ! Oh Printemps qui — qui — qui — 6 Flore ! 
 Go away, Ilario ; I cannot compose while you are by ! " 
 Count Hilarius most willingly went away. 
 
 " Laissa," said the Countess, stopping out of breath, " I 
 have often thought during the last long months that pur- 
 gatory mnst be like this, all black. If only it gets a little 
 greener, — a little greener ! "
 
 288 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 "You did not like it any bettor wlien it was wliite," re- 
 plied Laissa. 
 
 " And you then ? " cried Margherita impatiently. 
 
 " All, M'am Eita," — the mulatto shivered — " You speak 
 of jKirgatory ; it is hell. Paradise is flaming-hot. Hell is, 
 like Holland, co/c?." 
 
 At the Hague things had been different. In a city the 
 seasons do not change; only the temperature changes. And 
 the Countess Eexelaer's temperature had been regulated by 
 the heating-apparatus. 
 
 The great event of the season had been the return of the 
 old family. It was reported in the village that Count Eexe- 
 laer, when told, had grown white with rage, and had sworn 
 by high and low that such a thing should never be. Yet 
 he could not prevent it, albeit all Ueynum was his. In by- 
 gone days Father Bulbius had obtained from the Baron a 
 life-long lease, at a nominal rent, of the house he still occu- 
 pied, with the right to under-let. The Father now immedi- 
 ately availed himself of this privilege, and the Baroness 
 reaped the reward of her early bounties to the Church. The 
 old man appeared before Veronica one Sunday morning, 
 after mass, in the full pomp of his sacerdotal robes. " We 
 are going to occupy the house by the Church," he said. 
 " The long walk is too much for me." Veronica bent her 
 head, with a snort. 
 
 TThen Dievert brought the Count the few florins of the 
 house-rent, that great jDersonage screamed out that it was a 
 conspiracy and he would have the law of the lot. But he 
 left his new tenants in peace, nevertheless ; his sister-in-law 
 had dropped him a hint. 
 
 He scowled fiercely, with averted face, the first time he 
 met the Baroness and Wendela in the village. But Marghe- 
 rita, venturing out in a close-carriage, passed an old-fash- 
 ioned gentleman who made her an old-fashioned bow. She 
 was charmed by his manner and said so at dinner, and re-
 
 SOME RETURNED AND SOME DEPARTED. 289 
 
 gretted that circumstances prevented their knowing their 
 cousins. " What do you think, chevalier ? " " Madame," 
 responded the gallant de Souza, " I never disagree with your 
 excellent judgment," and Count Rexelaer understood that 
 his son's tutor had just given him a lesson in manners. 
 
 The various grandees of the neighbourhood hastened to 
 call at the quondam Parsonage, and showed themselves 
 anxious to imply all permissible admiration of the comfort 
 the Baroness had conjured up around her. It was impossi- 
 ble for a room to look poor which the Baroness van Rexelaer 
 inhabited, and everyone declared that the Villa — " Villa," if 
 you like, but the Baroness preferred " Farmhouse " — was 
 really a delightful old place. As indeed it was ; numberless 
 souvenirs and personal treasures lay scattered over the half- 
 furnished rooms, and Gustave looked after these relics of 
 the past, Gustave, who had returned to the family from an 
 enforced retirement, during their Pension-life, in the house 
 of a sister, whose many shiftless children had worried his 
 neat mind into despair. Such of the heirlooms as still pos- 
 sessed any market value had been sold ; the rest Mynheer 
 van Rexelaer had ultimately ceded to Baron Borck. The 
 latter gentleman would have brought his recalcitrant wife 
 to visit the Baroness but that he dreaded to patronize in 
 misfortune. Everyone else came, however, except the rich 
 Amsterdam bankers, who forgot. 
 
 There was money enough now for simple wants, and 
 freedom from anxiety. The family subsisted on the annual 
 payment from " the Lady's Dole," and a remnant of the 
 Baroness's little fortune. Wendela resumed her lessons with 
 the village-schoolmaster. They could not make out whether 
 she was glad to be back or not. " I like the lessons," she 
 said. 
 
 Baron Borck intimated to Mynheer van Rexelaer that 
 the Count " would have no objection " to the family's occa- 
 sionally walking in the park. He had asked him. I'aron 
 Borck was a very influential num. Mynheer van Rexelaer
 
 290 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 received the intimation with tlianks, but did not avail him- 
 self of the permission. He walked out among the villagers, 
 who stood aloof, deferential, but awkward ; his sole pleasures 
 were a game with the Father or a chat at the Chalk-house 
 Farm. 
 
 For the Driests Avere still at the Clmlk-house Farm, and 
 likely to remain there. It had happened on this wise. One 
 evening Thys had returned home from the village with the 
 news that there were to be flags and fireworks next week on 
 the occasion of Count Eexelaer's birthday, and a state-visit 
 of congratulation from the Commune. 
 
 " We shall soon be quit of all that," said the Farmer 
 roughly. " Fm well-nigh through with Baron Borck's 
 steward." 
 
 Thys went and drew off his heavy boots in the passage. 
 Then, returning to the great blue-tiled fire-place which takes 
 up one wdiole side of the kitchen, he stationed himself be- 
 hind his foster-father's chair. " Well, Fll say it," he began 
 aloud, " I've talked it over with Lise, and she says I'd better- 
 Look here, father, now the Baron's back in Deynum, how 
 about Joost Hakkert and Job Henniks and the rest ? " 
 
 " What are you driving at ? " replied old Driest. " Speak 
 out, Thys. And come round from behind my chair." 
 
 But this latter command Thys — the great, long lout — 
 preferred to ignore. " He'll be lonely here, will the Baron," 
 said Thys boldly, " and he'll want someone to speak up for 
 him, now. Father, I'm thinking: as the Baron's come 
 back, it won't do for us to run away." 
 
 "You should have thought that six months sooner, 
 then," cried the exasperated farmer, bounding in his ample 
 arm-chair. " Get to your work, Thys, and leave thinking 
 to clearer heads than yours." 
 
 The young fellow was slinking away obediently, but his 
 uncle still called after him : " And you say that Lise's 
 thoughts are as Avise as yours ? " 
 
 " Lise fancied I might be right, Father."
 
 SOME RETUKNED AND SOME DEPARTED. 291 
 
 " ' Fancied.' Is that the way you young ones love each 
 other ? Hey, there she is — the hussy ! " — for Lise appeared 
 in the doorway, bearing a steaming tub — " and how about 
 your mother ? Does she also ' fancy you might be right ' ? " 
 
 " Oh, mother knows yoii are, father," said the girl de- 
 murely, and she added, when her lover had left the room : 
 " So you see we are all four agreed." 
 
 Thus it came about that Farmer Driest went up to the 
 Castle and had an interview with the Count. He came 
 back and said he would rather not speak of the Count, nor 
 of the interview. He did not understand the new Squire, 
 he said. Being only a farmer, he could not know that even 
 a great noble has sometimes, in little things, to do as his 
 neighbours want him to. " You have behaved most dis- 
 gracefully," Count Eexelaer had said. " You can stay on at 
 the farm. Good-day." 
 
 " They are winning their way to the widest popularity," 
 Mevrouw Eexelaer-Borck informed her mother. " Mina 
 Borck says so, and she is the best person to know. Hilarius' 
 pays for a Protestant parson, who is to be inducted next 
 autumn, though I fear he is somewhat lukewarm in the face 
 of papistical presumption. As for poor Margherita, with 
 her painful antecedents, dear Mina lends her excellent 
 books, but I warn her it will prove not the slightest use." 
 
 " Mina Borck is a fool, and so you may tell her," replied 
 the irascible Dowager. — "If!" thought Mevrouw Elizabeth. 
 — " If Hilarius intends to stand for the States Provincial 
 in the Conservative interest, he cannot afford to make 
 trouble with the Catholics." 
 
 " Ikit, Mamma, ought that thought to deter liim ? " 
 
 The old Baroness grinned at her daughter with a full 
 display of her pearly teeth. 
 
 " Especially, Mamma, as the Liberal Majority is over- 
 whelming, in any case. John Borck sees to that." 
 
 " Majority or not, Rexelaer has his way to make at 
 Court, and he must avoid all complications. He is a very 
 20
 
 292 'J'HK GREATER GLORY. 
 
 clever man ; I admire him exceedingly, in spite of Ins nerv- 
 ous ways. I should not wonder if he died an ' Excel- 
 lency.' He is worth two of your husband, Eliza, as far as 
 brains go." 
 
 " He cannot hold a candle to my husband ! " cried Me- 
 vrouw Elizabeth indignantly, forgetting, for a moment, her 
 awe of the hooked nose and chin, " neither in looks, nor in 
 temper, nor in manners, nor in anything ! His brains are 
 just merely his wife's money that was scraped together out 
 yonder, selling — " 
 
 " Well, I only said he had enough," interrupted the 
 Dowager impatiently. " And how about the police-sum- 
 mons? Is that little difficulty not yet out of the world?" 
 
 " Xo, indeed. Simmans purjjosely keeps the thing 
 going. I am certain he does it on purpose. He has been 
 down there three several times to examine her, as he says. 
 It is absurd." 
 
 " Is that your word ? " said the fierce old Dowager. " I 
 should have selected another." * 
 
 It Avas quite true that Simmans, the young functionary 
 with the sleepy stare, had been very often to Deynum. He 
 lounged about the Castle and grounds, and sometimes was 
 momentarily amiable to Jane, if she happened to be stay- 
 ing in the house. That young lady ignored him, or, sud- 
 denly awakened to his presence, endeavoured to make him 
 conversationally ridiculous. With poor success, for he had 
 a habit of lazily falling on his feet. 
 
 Mevrouw Kexelaer-Borck was much pained by her 
 daughter's behaviour, more by the young man's, and most by 
 her sister-in-law's. On no account would she have brought 
 Simmans to the house, could she have guessed that he sang- 
 nigger songs to the banjo. In her respectable drawing- 
 room he had never even hinted at this unjileasiug accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 She quarrelled with Margherita about more things than
 
 SOME RETURNED AND SOME DEPARTED. 293 
 
 these musical performances which formed the delight of 
 the whole menagerie, with the exception of the howling 
 dogs. She had quietly arranged, for instance, to have the 
 idolatrous emblems removed from the closed chapel. Sud- 
 denly the Countess intervened — " with disgraceful vehe- 
 mence," Elizabeth afterwards complained to her husband — 
 " and language ! You would have said a Scheveningen fish- 
 wife ! " " They are my ancestors," cried Margherita, who 
 had really taught herself to believe this, and she stamped 
 her foot. " And it is my religion ! " " Pooh," replied the 
 indignant daughter of the Borcks. " Your ancestors and 
 your religion ! They are both equally genuine. I would 
 not give two-pence for either, or both ! " After that, she de- 
 parted from the Castle, which was a pity, for she took Jane 
 with her, and Jane's hesitating lover ungallantly remained 
 behind. He explained that he must " comj^lete his in- 
 quiry." 
 
 And this is how he comi^reted it. With a rapidity which 
 astounded him. 
 
 " Ah, pooty Miss Jemima, why-y-y 
 You make dis han'some niggali cry-y-y ? " 
 
 • — " chorus, Laissa, chorus ! " Margherita clapped her hands. 
 Laissa and the parrots shrieked undistinguishable sounds, 
 riorizel, seated at his mistress's feet, protested dismally, 
 with uplifted head, in spite of slaps. The singing-birds all 
 sang their loudest, increasing, as the hubbub rose higher, in 
 their efforts to overpower it. IMargherita laughed and 
 shouted for glee. 
 
 " ' You'll be sorry nuf , when han'some uiggah die ! ' " 
 
 Simmaus stopped, out of breath, and laid aside his in- 
 strument. " I like it," began Margherita presently, and 
 her voice had entirely changed its tone. " Almost, if one 
 closes one's eyes, it were possible to imagine oneself out in
 
 094 'i'1'1'' GREATER GLORY. 
 
 the soft warm moonlight, away yonder, beneath the veranda. 
 Of course the words are very different, but the sing-song is 
 just the same. Laissa does the crooning far better than you, 
 Monsieur Simmans ; still, you do it quite well enough for a 
 poor ignorant European." Laissa grinned. " The gentle- 
 man's songs are good, are they not, Laissa?" 
 
 " Ours are better," said the waiting-woman mechan- 
 ically. 
 
 " You are rude. I feel thirsty Avith laughing. Go, get 
 me something to drink. Something cool, and very sweet, 
 and that quenches one's thirst." The mulatto slipped away. 
 
 " Oh the loveliness of that moonlight ! " began Mar- 
 gherita, left alone with her " judge," as she was pleased to 
 call him. " You JS^ortherners have no idea of ' living.' It 
 is not worth one's while to Je." 
 
 " I can see loveliness," he replied, fingering his banjo, 
 " everywhere. It is a thing of environment. Xever, before 
 I came here, had I an idea how lovely this country can be." 
 
 " Indeed ? " she said. " Deynum ? But you must have 
 a most extraordinary taste." 
 
 " The dead earth," he continued, " is not beautiful till 
 the sun rises upon it. I have seen the sun rise on Deynum, 
 Comtesse." 
 
 " At this time of the year ? Do you expect me to believe 
 that? Since when do young gentlemen from the Hague 
 get up to enjoy a November sunrise ? " 
 
 True, it was November. How long was this kind of 
 thing to continue ? Was she only a beautiful clod, or as sly 
 as she was beautiful? No matter; this long-drawn senti- 
 mentalism led nowhere. 
 
 " I'm so sorry about the annoyance you have endured," 
 he said briskly, " but, of course, the affair will be hushed 
 up. I hear it has created much ill-feeling at the Palace. 
 Your husband's official position, you know. Nevermind; 
 I have the whole thing in my hands, and^you shall not hear 
 of it again."
 
 SOME RETURNED AND SOME DEPARTED. 295 
 
 "At last?" said Margherita, "and when, Monsieur, will 
 you take that final step ? " 
 
 " Immediately." He struck a few notes on his banjo. 
 " Shall I sing to you again ? " he said. 
 
 " Yes, do. It is rather fun. Eollo, Jocko, attention, 
 mes amis ! We are going to begin ! " 
 
 " Ah, but what I sing is for you alone ! " 
 
 " I could not jiossibly be so selfish. Flora enjoys it too 
 much." 
 
 " You will not be offended ? " 
 
 "No. Why?" 
 
 And with an expression of tenderest feeling pouring 
 from his half-shut eyes he sang in a rollicking, joking, 
 devil-may-care voice : 
 
 ' " Oh, pootiest M"am Rita, why-y-y 
 
 You make dis wretched niggah cry-y-y ? 
 Will you nevah hear him sigh-igh-igh ? ' " 
 
 The countenance of the lady on the sofa suddenly 
 clouded over. She flung herself forward, with a flash like 
 a snake's, and struck the instrument, in the vehemence of 
 her lithe brown arm, out of the singer's hands, across the 
 brick floor of the conservatory. 
 
 " Encore une contravention ! " she said, and looked him 
 fiercely in the face. " Dressez proces-verbal. Monsieur le 
 Substitut." And then, as Laissa entered with a tray, " Tell 
 the Jonker Eeinout, Laissa, that I should like to look at his 
 sketches, now." 
 
 That evening the family at the Castle sat down to din- 
 ner alone. 
 
 A fortnight later " the Countess R , wife of an Oflicer 
 
 connected with the Royal Household," was sentenced to a 
 fine in one of the petty courts. And shortly before Christ- 
 mas the engagement was announced of the Freule Jane van 
 Rexelaer with Simmans, " the son of Simmans, the Secrc-
 
 296 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 tary-Geiieral, you know." Presently the young lady received 
 a parcel from her kind aunt at Deynum, containing a guitar- 
 player, one of those beautiful " etrennes " which overflow 
 the Paris confectioners' windows at that season of the year. 
 The doll's head was empty, but the next post brought a box 
 of the perishable sweets called " fondants." 
 
 " Insert them from the outside, my dear Jane," wrote 
 the Countess, " in this mannikin I send you from Dey- 
 num." 
 
 "Is there a joke?" asked Mevrouw Elizabeth, who, at 
 that moment, forgave even Margherita. 
 
 " No, indeed," replied Jane gravely. 
 
 " The ' Fondants ' are delicious," said sweet-toothed 
 Kolline.
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 " rinT^QTXTQ " 
 
 COUSINS 
 
 So summer faded into winter, and winter blossomed 
 into summer at Deynum, and " the Family " went away to 
 the Hague before Christmas and did not return till quite 
 late in the spring. Count Hilarius was now an important 
 personage in Court circles. Everybody liked him ; he was 
 so obliging and unpretending, and he had plenty of money. 
 "And that magnificent place in the country, you know, 
 which had fallen into the hands of the younger branch of 
 the family, till it came back to the Count through his wife. 
 An extraordinary story. Yes, he is a very great man, is van 
 Eexelaer van Deynum." 
 
 Margherita went to several balls and looked splendid in 
 her diamonds. She began to like society, pleased with her 
 success, once she had picked herself oif the sofa and ad- 
 mired her figure in the glass. " I shall be ugly soon 
 enough," she said. People declared that she had " du 
 chic," and stopped to stare with sudden interest at the 
 heiress of the house of " La Jolais-Farjolle — one of the 
 greatest families in Europe ! You can see it by the way 
 she carries her head." Nothing is more amazing than the 
 ignorance, in these matters, of " the few who know." 
 
 And the Countess even gave a couple of great recep- 
 tions, one towards the encT of the season, a second-best 
 one, in honour of the marriage of the Freule Jane. " Rol- 
 line must do better," Count Hilarius remarked pointedly 
 to his sister-in-law. When she repeated the words — two
 
 298 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 hours later — to her husband, " He is mad with ambition," 
 said the tranquil judge. 
 
 A week or two after the house at Deynum liad been 
 definitely shut up, the Baron one morning stole timidly 
 into the jaark. This day he did not get farther than the 
 sight of the shuttered windows. Twenty-four hours later 
 he was trying to pat one of the deer. It was a mistake. 
 His wiser daughter curtly refused to accomj)any him. 
 
 And their life flowed on smoothly, monotonously, not 
 unhappily withal. The Baroness went among her poor 
 more diligently than ever ; the Baron pottered about in the 
 village, surrounded by a halo of pitiful respect. He was 
 too gentle-natured to resent the pity. And of evenings 
 Father Bulbius would drop in for his game and a glass of 
 " King's Wine." 
 
 " The Count has not got this,''^ said Mynheer van Rexe- 
 laer, tapping his glass. " Hush, mon ami," interposed the 
 Baroness M'ith a smile. " You are right, my dear," said the 
 Baron. 
 
 Wendela alone found no strength in her heart for rec- 
 oncilement with life. Perhaps because to her that loss 
 was an anticipation which for her parents was only a re- 
 gret. She had resolved, from the first, to remain pitiless 
 to her own sorrow, and they who have the metal to make 
 such a resolution seldom lack the grij) to maintain it. Be- 
 tween her parents and herself it had built up a barrier 
 which she hated and resented without the power, or the 
 wish, to remove it. She lived an emotional existence, not 
 outside but inside her even life with them, in an inner 
 chamber of which her firm hand kept the key. Silent al- 
 most to moroseness, she would occasionally break out into 
 demonstrative affection towards her mother, but always 
 with a perceptible jerk, as if recalling how much she loved 
 her. To her father she was dutiful and reserved, with a 
 conscious check on her thoughts of him. For she felt 
 herself, unadmittedly, to possess one of those strong-willed
 
 " COUSINS." 299 
 
 yet impulsive characters which are habitually rendered 
 wretched by the consciousness of having spoken — and 
 thought — not at all, or too much. A faithful, truthful 
 woman's nature, strong-hearted and clear-brained, one of 
 those women the superficial write down " disagreeable," 
 because of their straight lips and solemn eyes. 
 
 Considering all things, she was receiving a fair educa- 
 tion, from the schoolmaster and her mother combined, an 
 education which would prove absolutely useless in these 
 days of diplomas and examinations, but of such things the 
 Baroness knew nothing, excejiting that they were a sin 
 against Genesis iii. 
 
 One evening Wendela looking up from " Ta douleur, 
 Duperrier," which she was committing to memory, abruptly 
 apostrophized her father, in his arm-chair by the fire. 
 " Papa, when I am grown up, shall I be obliged to earn my 
 own living ? " " No, Wendela ; girls like you cannot earn 
 their own living. What makes you ask ? " "I wanted to 
 know," replied Wendela. The Baron smiled contentedly in 
 the shade. AVendela, on her parents' death, would be en- 
 titled to the entire capital of " The Lady's Dole." For, 
 then, at any rate, Strum must rest convinced that there 
 would never again be a Baroness Eexelaer. 
 
 If the girl had a pleasure, it was her hidden dream-life, 
 to which she clung, even while conscious of having long- 
 outgrown it. She still loved to weave brave fancies around 
 her Pilgrim Knight, not pretty little fairy idylls, but strong, 
 bright tales of chivalry ; wrong redressed and innocence 
 upheld. Life was dark and thunder-threatened, — devil- 
 haunted, as her mother said ; through it rode her Hero of 
 the Closed Visor, in a trail of light. 
 
 " There is a boy," she said once to her mother, break- 
 ing one of the long periods of silence, so common between 
 them. 
 
 " What do you mean, child ?" 
 
 " At the Castle. There is a boy ? "
 
 300 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " Yes, certainly ; you know there is." 
 "I hate him." 
 
 " Wendela, you are now fifteen. You arc too old for 
 such childish sayings." 
 Wendela bit her lips. 
 
 There was no reason for anyone to hate Eeinout. Cer- 
 tainly the reason could never be envy. He was now six- 
 teen, and the least enviable of youths. 
 
 When first the boredom of Monsieur de Souza's stories 
 settled heavy on his powdered and periwigged young head, 
 Reinout had turned right and left, as has been shown, in 
 vain hope of escape. The dry books of the Deynum library 
 disgusted him ; if he dashed away into the wide liberty of 
 the woods and fields, he saw a scornful smile go wreathing 
 his father's bloodless lips. And as he grew in years, he un- 
 derstood more clearly that his bringing-up was not like that 
 of other boys. Old people thought him charming — a dan- 
 gerous sign. He told the Countess de Bercy at dinner a 
 long story about the late Empress of Russia's strange pas- 
 sion for bananas which were brought over direct from the 
 West Indies, and " after her death no one ever rescinded the 
 order, and recently the Emperor came on a cellar piled up 
 with baskets of rotting fruit." He kissed the Countess's 
 hand as he bowed her from her chair, and he caught the 
 scowl of disgust at his " confounded priggishness " in her 
 student-nephew Ivo's eyes. 
 
 " Papa," said Eeinout next morning to his father, 
 " I should like to learn about everything, like other 
 boys." 
 
 " Y^ou can have masters, when we got back to the Hague, 
 as you had last wdnter, Rene," replied the Count. " What 
 is it you want particularly to learn ? " 
 
 " All about everything," burst out Reinout, and then he 
 felt what a stupid answer that was for a lad of his age. " I 
 mean," he added hastily, " I want to know why things are
 
 • " COUSINS." 301 
 
 like this and what is going to change them. And about 
 right and wrong, and suifering, and the end of it alL" 
 
 " You will attend a confirmation class in a year or two," 
 said Count Eexelaer coldly. " As for the rest, you are rath- 
 er vague. If you mean political economy, you will have 
 enough of that for your diplomatic examination. You will 
 find it is all empty talk." And Count Eexelaer walked out 
 of the room, leaving his son considerably nonplussed. 
 
 In sheer despair Reinout precipitately leaped into inde- 
 pendent thought at an age when most boys still allow their 
 teachers to think for them. He became a source of con- 
 stant vexation to M. de Souza. " Why," he said one morn- 
 ing to that estimable "Court Circular," "do the villagers 
 live in little houses and we in a Castle ? " 
 
 " You know very well that such is God's Ordinance," re- 
 plied the Chevalier impatiently. 
 
 " But all men are equal," persisted Eeinout mischie- 
 vously. " And there seems to be no reason wdiy all men 
 should not be gentlemeu, too." 
 
 " All men are not equal, and you know it. That was a 
 lie of the French revolution. But if you mean that money 
 has nothing to do with being a gentleman, you are right." 
 
 " I like the French revolution," retorted Rene, knowing 
 nothing about it. " I wish it had succeeded." 
 
 After this, Monsieur de Souza felt that his mission was 
 ended. He continued to live with the family, but, shortly 
 before Reinout's sixteenth birthday, the boy received an- 
 other tutor, a very clever scholar although not a cultured 
 one. Reinout preferred Monsieur de Souza, with his old- 
 world ideas of honour, yet he could not complain, having 
 asked for the change. Besides, he now studied the Dutch 
 Constitutional System and Political Economy, and Inter- 
 national Law and a number of other sciences, useful and 
 ornamental. 
 
 Count Rexelaer warmly thanked the Chevalier for the 
 complete success of his plan. Undoubtedly it had worked
 
 302 '^IlE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 well in many wa3's. Informed iu a pleasantly cynical man- 
 ner, of tlie littleness of all the world's greatnesses and the 
 insipidity of its pleasures, Reinout never even experienced 
 that delightful curiosity of naughtiness which leads so many 
 boys astray. He did not want to lift a veil which had al- 
 ready been lifted for him with a neat arrangement of dra- 
 peries. He had " seen the world." That is, he had been 
 shown, as in a peepshow, one little corner of it, tastefully 
 laid out in flower-beds, an Eden, whose Adams and Eves 
 have long ago lost all that made a Paradise, except, perhaps, 
 their naked shamelessness. 
 
 He did not like the city, at least not that stuccoed part 
 of it in which he lived. He was eager to get back to Dey- 
 num and glad of the Count's permission to start a day or 
 two before the others, with his tutor. " And see the fires 
 are lighted," said Margherita. " I feel sure we ought to 
 have waited till June." 
 
 Eeinout, immediately on arriving, went out into the full 
 beauty of the May afternoon. The place looked glorious, 
 he thought, so fresh and green and quiet. He drew a deep 
 breath of healthful air, air strong with the awakening of 
 springtide, amid the rustle of the mighty oaks. " Oh, de- 
 licious," he said. 
 
 The great park lay peaceful around him, in its own ma- 
 jestic loneliness. Here and there the sober deer moved 
 vaguely behind the trees. A dragon-fly Avent sailing past, 
 and suddenly Reinout felt how spacious God is. Only Man 
 is cramped. 
 
 Presently the chapel came in sight, in its tangle of shel- 
 tering ferns. He smiled as he remembered a recent differ- 
 ence of- opinion between his mother and aunt ElizaTjeth. 
 Mevrouw Rexelaer-Borck had suggested utilizing the little 
 spire as a dove-cot ; Margherita had objected, strenuously, 
 and there had been a scene. 
 
 Reinout stepped off the path and went round by the
 
 "COUSINS." 303 
 
 chaucel, where a sight met him for which he was certainly 
 not prepared. High up, on the broad ledge outside one of 
 the arched windows, a tall girl was perched, her feet hang- 
 ing down ungracefully, her face pressed against the glass. 
 Of course he recognised her at once, though he had never 
 seen her before but from a distance. And she, hearing the 
 soft swish of his approaching steps, turned round hastily, 
 in a whirlwind of long, dark hair, lost her balance, gave a 
 cry of impatience, and came down with a rush. He ran 
 forward and caught her. 
 
 " Not hurt, I hope ? " he said, steadying himself, and 
 her, under the shock. 
 
 " You needn't have stopj^ed me, thank you," she an- 
 swered roughly, and stood panting, not only from the fall. 
 " I was coming down," she said. 
 
 The twinkle which came into his eyes said plainly : " Is 
 that your usual way of doing it?" But that kind of coura- 
 geous fib was not one which Reinout, " splendide mendax," 
 would take excej)tion at. 
 
 If Wendcla had a good quality, however, it was straight- 
 forwardness. " Of course I lost my hold," she added hastily, 
 *' But that was your fault." She felt furious with him for 
 having caught her dangling there. 
 
 "lam so sorry," he said meekly. "I hadn't an idea. 
 Nobody ever comes near this place, you know." 
 
 " They used to come," she answered quickly. " And 
 that didn't use to be there then." She pointed to an ugly 
 stain of orange damp. " But they were our people," she 
 added. " It is different." 
 
 " They are my people too," said the youth, smiling. " I 
 am Reinout van Rexelaer." 
 
 She flushed. " They are not everybody's people," she 
 replied recklessly. She felt very high and mighty, though 
 conscious of discovering the very weaknesses she would fain 
 have hid. Being fifteen, and a woman, she was tremulously 
 scornful of male children of seventeen. " I suppose I must
 
 304 THE GREATER GLORY, 
 
 apologise for intruding," she said magnificently, and gath- 
 ered her scant skirts about her and dejijarted. 
 
 Eeinout asked his father, as soon as that gentleman ar- 
 rived, to have the chapel cleaned. 
 
 "Why not?" said the Count, who always said "Why 
 not ? " when careless what he said, 
 
 A month or two later the young fellow met his ungra- 
 cious " cousin " again. He was riding down a quiet lane in 
 the full white flame of a July noon. The dusty trees and 
 half-hid wayside-flowers slept, still but dreamy, beneath the 
 blazing splendours of the sky. Eeinout's horse heaved its 
 moist and fragrant flanks to the creak of the saddle, in all 
 the deliciously strong reserve of a walking-jjace, Eeinout 
 himself was moodily thinking of nothing, and he came 
 upon Wendela where she dozed against a hawthorn-hedge, a 
 book and a basket of wild roses in her lap. 
 
 She stoj)ped him with a gesture, as he took oif his cap. 
 She had been dreaming of her dear " Knight Pilgrim," and 
 she looked up, — out of the dulness of her daily life, at this 
 courtly cavalier with the checked knickerbockers and olive 
 cheeks. " Thank you," she said, " about the Chapel." She 
 blushed, and suddenly he saw that she was charming. 
 
 " Oh, my father ordered that to be done," he answered 
 lightly. 
 
 "ISTo, it was you," insisted Wendela. "When Papa 
 came home and told Mamma, I knew it was you." She 
 hesitated. " I want you to do me one more favour. You 
 couldn't let me into the Chapel, I suppose, just once ? " 
 His answer did not follow immediately, and, as the seconds 
 slowly fell upon her waiting heart, she turned and fled. In 
 a moment he had caught her up. " Freule, Freule," he 
 cried piteously, " you are losing all your flowers ! " She 
 stood still, gasping, in the broiling July sun. " Of course 
 you can go to the Chapel," he added, " I will ask my father 
 for the key." 
 
 " Pooh ! " she said, so vigorously that his horse shied.
 
 •' COUSINS." 305 
 
 She lifted her firm eyes to his, and suddenly he saw that she 
 was also beautiful. " Nobody must know that I asked you," 
 she continued. " I want to go in the dead of night. Just 
 once." 
 
 "Nonsense. And the watchman?" 
 
 " I knew the watchman's hours, before ever you had 
 heard of him," she retorted. " Do you think / am afraid 
 of the night in Deynum ? " 
 
 " Freule," he made answer in " a still, small voice," " I 
 shall be outside the Chapel to-night, at twelve o'clock, with 
 the key. At the risk of my life I shall abstract it from my 
 father's desk ! Till then the Holy Saints have you in their 
 keeping ; fair maiden. Good day." 
 
 She thought he was laughing at her religion, but what 
 can you expect of a Gueux ? With nervous hand she drew 
 a little book from under her tumbled flowers. " Take this," 
 she said. " Don't tell anybody I had it. The schoolmaster 
 gave it me a year ago." 
 
 " But why should I take it?" 
 
 " Because it's the dearest thing I have. There ! " And, 
 dropping the book on his knee, she left him. This time he 
 did not follow her. 
 
 " Eather a disagreeable child," he thought, as he sat 
 looking after her retreating figure, twisted in the saddle, her 
 book in his careless hand. 
 
 Said she to herself on her way homeward : " We are 
 quits. I've paid him, for what I wanted most, with the 
 dearest thing I had. I hate him. And, as Papa says, pay 
 your enemy, however you may treat your friend. Mamma 
 doesn't know ; she hates nobody. As if it were right to love 
 thieves."
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 THE DAWN OF THE HIGHER LIFE. 
 
 Reixout, walking his horse in the blazing sunshine, 
 peeped curiously into the cheaply-bound little volume which 
 was her " dearest thing on earth." 
 
 "• Verses ! " he said with ready scorn. " All women are 
 alike." 
 
 He knew enough about verses. Sometimes he read the 
 books his mother brought him and sometimes he praised 
 them unread. " Always say 'yes' to a woman," the Cheva- 
 lier was wont to remark, " if you feel it would hurt her to 
 hear you say : No." 
 
 " mon ame. 
 " ma.flamme. 
 " que je t'aime. 
 
 That is poetry. 
 
 " Toujours du meme." 
 
 " None of my talent has descended to my child," sighed 
 Margherita. " And yet I feel sure he will be some sort of a 
 genius. Perhaps a Prime Minister." "A what?" asked 
 the Count, and walked away to dissemble his laughter. He 
 rejoiced, however, to think that his wife had come round to 
 his view, whatever her road. 
 
 " Well, she begins young with her love-ditties," thought 
 Reinout, but, nevertheless, on his return, he settled himself 
 in a window-seat with the book. It was a Belgian edition 
 of Victor Hugo's " Les Voix Interieures."
 
 THE DAWN OF THE HIGHER LIFE. 307 
 
 He glanced at the first page. The opening words 
 struck him. 
 
 " This Age is gi"eat and strong . . ." 
 
 The quietly impressive words, so unlike much of Victor 
 Hugo's later redundancy, sank slowly into his soul. Here 
 was a gospel of the time, which met him half-way on his 
 hap-hazard path. " Are you looking for me ? " It said. 
 " I am here." 
 
 When he had finished, he turned back and began again. 
 He had never read other poetry before than love-songs and 
 bouts-rimes. 
 
 And then he plunged headlong into the piece which fol- 
 lows, that magnificent poem on the death of the exiled 
 Charles X. Here the novice soon floundered out of his 
 dejith, but he still held on, borne irresistibly forward by the 
 rush of the rhythm, as all must understand who appreciate 
 the sublimest of spouters. It is impossible to stop ; the 
 very bewilderment of the reader twists him helplessly on- 
 wards amid those whirlpools of eloquence. And in all the 
 Titan's endless volumes Reinout could not have lighted on 
 a poem more calculated to impress him than this one. 
 Aristocrat as he must ever remain in all the prejudices of 
 his bringing-up, lover as he had been destined to become, 
 from childhood, of that lowly human greatness which your 
 mere aristocrat ignores, this song of tenderest reconciliation 
 struck chords within his being of whose existence his incom- 
 pleteness had never been aware. And when he reached, 
 with palpitating heart and eager breath, the great finale : 
 
 "Oh Poesy, to heaven on fn'ghtetl wing thou lliest!" 
 
 he started to his feet, and stood staring before him, into a 
 new gulf yawning ahead — or was it a visionary ladder, 
 whose top is hid in Heaven ? A world of illusion, Idea — 
 the soul-world of beautiful hopes and fancies — the world in 
 which all men are brothers, great and strong and greatly
 
 308 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 wortliy — a world at which the cynic laughs, with tears for 
 laughter — ; at last he beheld it; uplifted on the pinions of 
 his ignorance, into cloud laud, — and beyond that, — to the 
 sun ! He will never forget that moment, although to this 
 day he cannot tell yon, in intelligible prose, what took 
 place in his soul, the sweetness of it ! The sadness 
 of it ! The beautiful, sorrowful hope ! He did not 
 know what he was saying, as he stumbled on through 
 a wilderness of magnificent words. But gradually a sin- 
 gle thought stood out clear among all this confusion 
 of greatnesses, the majesty — not of your highnesses and 
 excellencies and eminences — but of the naked Soul of 
 man. He had been yearning for it, searching for it, 
 unwittingly ; at last he could gmsp it, and read the riddle 
 of life. 
 
 All that afternoon he hurried upwards, a breathless ex- 
 plorer on Alpine heights. Like an Indian Prince from his 
 father's palace, he had escaped out of the gilded cage where 
 the neat canaries warbled, away into the regions of the 
 angels' song, " Peace on earth, good-will among men. Hal- 
 lelujah ! " His soul was drunken with poesy. He tore off 
 the kid glove from his heart. 
 
 He was utterly unreasonable and nonsensical, full of 
 clap-trap and tall- talk and foolishness. Yes, thank God ; 
 he was all that at last. 
 
 " What is it ? What is the matter, Kene ? " asked the 
 Countess at dinner. " Oh nothing." Of course. She 
 wearied of asking him. But she found him in the library, 
 late that evening, poring over a large volume, half a dozen 
 others scattered around. He looked up impatiently, as she 
 came closer, and tenderly laid her hand on his shoulder. 
 " What have you got there ? " she asked. " Ah, that is 
 right. He is pretty ; is he not ? " 
 
 " Oh yes," he replied savagely, but he went and opened 
 the door very courteously for her and touched her brow
 
 THE DAWN OF THE HIGHER LIFE. 309 
 
 with his lips. Theu he returned to his Propliet, his Priest 
 of the Most High ! 
 
 A couple of hours later he was standing, in the soft sum- 
 mer darkness, before the empty altar of the hushed little 
 chapel, by Wendela's side. 
 
 " It is desecrated," said the girl in a low voice. " You 
 have desecrated it. I am glad to have seen it once more. 
 From the window up there I could just reach the tip of the 
 Pilgrim's helmet. Do you know which is the Pilgrim ? 
 No, poor boy, you know nothing. I will show you." 
 
 The chapel was very softly lighted by the radiance of 
 the moon-filled night ; busts and tablets stood out gently in 
 a glamour of silvered gloom. 
 
 Mechanically Reinout followed the daughter of the real 
 Eexelaers as she led him from monument to monument, 
 telling in an awe-struck whisper, stories of the men and 
 Avomen whose passion-laden existences had sunk to rest be- 
 neath these effigies and urns. " Perhaps they are listen- 
 ing now," she said, " to hear if I tell you right ? " The 
 heavy night-air breathed warm about the pair. A little 
 rustle awoke in the aisle. She caught hold of his arm. 
 
 " Isn't it a strange thought," whispered Reinout, " that 
 all the lives of these dead men and women are concentrated, 
 as it were, in you and me ? You and me, come to visit 
 them together in the dead of night." 
 
 " Papa says—," she began, and then she turned passion- 
 ately upon him : " These are mine," slie said, " mine only. 
 Do you understand, you— Reinout Rexelaer ? All the rest 
 was mine once too, and these are still." 
 
 " But, Freule— " he stammered. 
 
 "Oh don't pity me; I won't have your pity. I am 
 proud of our shame. Some day, perhaps, my dead, who are 
 not really dead, might recover me the rights of which 
 your father robbed us. And then what would be left to 
 you ? "
 
 310 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " Only myself," he replied, with a sorry, half-amused 
 smile. 
 
 This answer impressed her, but she fought against the 
 sensation. " And what is yourself ? " she asked, her deli- 
 cate little nose high in air. " With us it is different. Eich 
 or beggared, high or humble, as Papa says, what need we 
 care ? For, ours is the greater glory, even in disgrace." 
 
 " I envy you that conviction," he answered thoughtfully, 
 and with no suspicion of a sneer. 
 
 She held out her hand on the Chapel-steps. 
 
 " Good-bye, Knight Pilgrim."
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 THE DAWN PROVES CLOUDY. 
 
 " Well, I shall say it," declared Veronica. " Why not ? " 
 
 " What ? " asked the Father. 
 
 " Does your Eeverence not know ? Then I shall keep 
 my own counsel. But my opinion is : why should anyone 
 be afraid of their betters ? If really our betters, the less 
 reason to be afraid. And if not — " Veronica whisked a 
 dish off the table and herself from the room. 
 
 Father Bulbius bent over the tattered volume on his 
 knees, leisurely filling his pipe with the finest of Turkish 
 tobaccos. He was no longer the happy possessor of an un- 
 tidy snuggery ; the new house contained but two rooms on 
 the ground floor, and Veronica had refused to abandon the 
 "parlour." Occasionally the latter uncomfortable apart- 
 ment would be honoured with a state visit from the Cheva- 
 lier de Souza, who was both a freethinker at heart and a 
 Catholic in etiquette, and confessed and communicated at 
 Easter. Other intercourse with the Castle there was none. 
 The brief enjoyment of Eeinout's friendship had ended in 
 a ceremonious salute. 
 
 Veronica, on her part, had no proper appreciation of 
 ceremony. Having made up her mind to bestow a piece of 
 it on the gentlefolks, she called out one day from the door of 
 " our hovel," as she chose to designate the Parsonage, 
 " Hey, Mynheer ! You are the Jonker from the Castle ? " 
 
 " Of course I am," replied the young man, standing still. 
 
 " I know you are. There's something I want to say to
 
 312 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 you, Jonker. Fve no more reason to love tlie Baron's 
 family than you have. They've turned us out of our house 
 as you've turned them out of theirs, and without paying, 
 which is worse. But when it comes to keeping a woman 
 away from the place she is used to pray in, twice a day for 
 years, and all her ancestors lying round awaiting her, I say 
 that it's a cruel thing. And I'd say the same to the Count 
 your father, if I thought he'd listen to the likes of me. But 
 I think he looks prouder than you, in spite of your haughty 
 face that God gave you to go and be a Count with, as 
 Counts there must be in this world below, though not in 
 the hereafter." And she retreated into the house, leaving 
 Eeinout very much troubled in mind. 
 
 He did not willingly ask favours of a father who never 
 conceded anything unless it was not a favour ; after con- 
 sultation with the Chevalier, he broached the subject to 
 Margherita. To his surprise the countess immediately sat 
 up, said, " Quite right. I understand," and went in to her 
 husband ; but that gentleman, immersed in his buttery- 
 books, and annoyed by the interruption, contented himself 
 with answering : " The question, like the people, is buried. 
 "What is buried had best lie still." Margherita came out 
 to her son in the hall : " He won't," she said with flashing 
 eyes. " And yet the whole place is mine." She went back 
 to her occupation, which was teasing Florizel. 
 
 Eeinout shrugged his shoulders and returned to his 
 books. He had favourite authors nowadays, and they were 
 fast molding his opinions : Byron, Shelley, De Lamartine, 
 the aristocrat singers of freedom, and that incomparable 
 Seer who had first flashed the light o'er his path. Of the 
 " Eevolt of Islam," for instance, he could reel off whole pas- 
 sages, though never quite clear as to who revolted or against 
 what. He had not spoken to "W'endela again ; sometimes, 
 when happening to awake at night, he would erroneously 
 imagine her standing alone by the chancel window — as if 
 Weudela ever broke promises, good or bad. But as a rule,
 
 THE DAWN PROVES CLOUDY. 313 
 
 he slept excellently well, and awoke in the morning, from a 
 dreamless slumber, to dream. 
 
 " My dear Count," said M. de Souza one day, the qniet 
 old gentleman who did nothing but dance attendance on 
 the Countess and complain of the weather. " Things are 
 going wrong with Rene. He is nearly nineteen, and he 
 reads in the woods. Your system was wise, but you are 
 prolonging it — excuse me — unwisely. He is farouche." 
 
 The Count tapped the ground nervously with his foot. 
 " The other man says he is doing excellently," he replied, 
 " and hopes to get him ready for his diplomatic examina- 
 tion in eighteen months more." The '\other man " was 
 one of those silent haters of the rich who fawn upon them. 
 A republican himself, he tried imperceptibly to influence 
 his pupil. The pupil distrusted him. 
 
 Count Rexelaer, while rejecting advice, set himself 
 quietly to watch his son. And these observations soon 
 culminated abruptly in the question : " Why do you never 
 go and see so-and-so, Reiuout ? And so-and-so? Or what's- 
 his-name ? " 
 
 " Oh, bother what's-his-name ! " said Rene. 
 
 " Still, it seems to me, that, as young men of your own 
 rank — " 
 
 " I hate young men of my own rank." 
 
 The following academical year found Reinout at Ley- 
 den. A Dutch university is not a nice place. To enjoy its 
 life you must be both exceedingly childish and exceedingly 
 dissolute. The pupil of M. de Souza found himself utterly 
 at sea, and retired into his shell, which he beautified by all 
 the means in his power. To say that at this period he re- 
 sembled his hero Shelley would be to create an erroneous 
 impression, yet, with his far greater (hearsay) knowledge of 
 "society," he had much of that poet's splendidly ignorant 
 scorn of the conventionalities which galled him. He was 
 full of a passive yearning for the Millennium, the Apotheo-
 
 314 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 sis of the Human by itself which Victor Hugo believes to 
 be an approaching fact. lie had no clear notion how the 
 thing was to be started, bnt, meanwhile, he bought statuettes 
 and engravings, and studied a little art, and disliked dirt 
 and beggars (always giving to the latter), and loved the 
 poor. The young men at the University did not share his 
 horror of dirt (some kinds), and they loved the poor in a 
 less platonic manner than he. They said he was queer. 
 That was the greatest of sins in their eyes, for they were all 
 exactly alike.
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 THE IKOX HAND. 
 
 " I SHOULD like to speak to you a moment, Father, if 
 you please," said Reinout one memorable autumn evening, 
 as the family rose from table. He was now twenty-two, 
 and had spent four lazy, luxurious years at Leyden. He 
 was handsome and well dressed, and outwardly pleasingly 
 proper. 
 
 " Certainly, my boy," responded Count Rexelaer, gra- 
 ciously. " Come and have a cigar." Inwardly he said : 
 "Debts?" Few fathers of undergraduates would have re- 
 quired the interrogation. 
 
 Reinout placed himself leisurely in front of the mantel- 
 piece, and deliberately lighted his pipe. He had come down 
 unexpectedly to Deynum. 
 
 "I took my degree to-day," he said, -quietly pressing 
 down the burning tobacco with his fusee. 
 
 " What ? " cried the Count, in a tone of genuine indig- 
 nation. " And how about your farewell banquet ? Reinout, 
 you are joking." 
 
 Inviolable custom requires that the Dutch student shall 
 leave the University in a blaze of prescriptive festivity. 
 In justice to Reinout it must be added that the whole thing, 
 like all Dutch student-festivals except " Masquerade," means 
 merely : drink. 
 
 "There wasn't any farewell party," replied the young 
 man. " I'm not going to have one. I think it's a 
 bore."
 
 316 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Then he took his eyes off his pipe aud looked anxiously 
 across at his father. 
 
 Count Rexelaer did not return the look. He sat gazing 
 moodily into the fire ; the autumn night was chilly. At 
 length he said, in quite a sad voice, " I was poor, and I had 
 eleven four-in-hands." * 
 
 A moment afterwards he added : " You must have gone 
 to a lot of other men's parties, and it seems very shabby to 
 make no return. Perhaps the matter doesn't strike you in 
 that light? I'm sure I don't know how it strikes you." 
 
 " On that score you may make yourself easy," replied his 
 son. " 1 never went to anybody's jDarties. I joined some of 
 the better societies, of course, but when I discovered the men 
 were always getting drunk, I stopped away. Besides, I'm 
 the first of my year to leave." 
 
 " You must have done nothing but work ! " cried the 
 Couut. 
 
 " No, indeed ; or I should have gone a year sooner." 
 
 " I rejoice that I have so clever a son." Count Hilarius 
 rose and walked to the door. " You must have understood, 
 Reinout," he said, with one of his irritable glances, " that I 
 did not send you to the University to rush through it. 
 Your news has taken me disagreeably by surprise. You 
 must allow me a little time to digest it." 
 
 " I have no debts," began Eeinout. 
 
 " I wish you had," said his father, bitterly, and closed 
 the door. 
 
 Reinout remained standing, a meditative, graceful, re- 
 gretful figure, with drooping pipe. He had expected some 
 pleasure from the announcement of his sudden and success- 
 ful termination of a career he had loathed from the first. 
 " The Chevalier and Victor Hugo," he was wont to aver, 
 " surely that is enough education for any man. The Chev- 
 alier for the fictions and Hugo for the realities." He was 
 
 * Dutch University custom.
 
 THE IRON HAND. 317 
 
 shocked by the sincerity of the Count's disappointment. 
 Unfortunately, he could never understand how clear, to the 
 man himself, were the Court Comtproller's lights. 
 
 " Ah well ! " he said, listlessly, and opened the door be- 
 cause the room was so hot. Then he took up a number of 
 the Bibliothuque Universelle ; the smoking-room table was 
 covered with reviews — his doing ; " As long as you leave me 
 my Figaro," his father had said. 
 
 Laissa's voice sounded across the vestibule, singing softly 
 to her mistress : 
 
 " rose, o fleur, 6 jeune fiUe ! " 
 
 With an exclamation of impatience, the son of the house 
 crossed over to the door again and shut it. 
 
 Next morning the Count did not put in an appearance, 
 but M. de Souza dawdled over his coffee cup, with hands as 
 transparent as the porcelain, humming and hawing and 
 gently coughing as he sopped his roll. Margherita always 
 breakfasted in her room. " I can take nothing before noon," 
 she protested, " but chocolate." So she had a big bowl of 
 that, with an abundance of cream and half a dozen French 
 almond cakes. 
 
 For a long time the Chevalier said nothing. He was too 
 perfect a gentleman to " make conversation," unless it was 
 wanted. Besides, he was growing old, and the difficulty of 
 disguising this fact at table sufficiently engrossed him. At 
 length he began flicking a crumb or two from his sleeve. 
 
 " Your father has told me, Rene," he said, gently. " Of 
 course he is grieved ; so am I. You disappoint all our 
 hopes. They were many." 
 
 Reinout listened humbly. He might despise the old 
 nobleman's teachings ; the teacher he could never otherwise 
 than love. 
 
 " That, perhaps, might appear of but little account to 
 you — " 
 
 "N"o, indeed," interrupted Reinout, eagerly.
 
 318 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 The Chevalier waved his hand. " So I willingly believe. 
 Disregard of the feelings of others, that most vulgar of 
 faults, has never been yours. But I was desirous to add : 
 You disappoint your own hopes as well. Your father says 
 he does not know ichat you want. Nor do I. But of one 
 thing I am sure ; you want to be a good man, and a great. 
 Good, certainly ; great, probably. Is it not so ? " 
 
 "I am much obliged for your kind opinion of me," 
 murmured Eeinout. 
 
 " Xot a bit. We know each other, we two. Well, you 
 insist upon going your own way to your object. You re- 
 fuse all advice ; you reject all precedent ; you are eccentric, 
 neio. It is an immense responsibility. If you fail, it is 
 you, personally, that bear the blame. Most men prefer that 
 their faults should be those of the system they live in. 
 And there is every chance of your failing. Whatever may 
 be permissible at the end of a great career, nothing, at the 
 beginning, is so fatal as eocentricity." 
 
 Eeinout sat chijDping a crust on his plate, with a vigour 
 which scattered the crumbs. 
 
 " And, my dear boy " — the Chevalier bent forward, 
 kindly confidential — " I think you have hardly realized 
 how great that career is likely to be. You are placed, by 
 an Almighty Providence, on a summit, destined to influ- 
 ence the history of your country, and benefit your com- 
 patriots. You turn and, in quest of the sunlight above 
 you, you deliberately walk down hill. Once more, the re- 
 sponsibility you assume single-handed is immense." 
 
 " My God ! " cried the pupil, with suddenly uplifted 
 eyes. " I assume no responsibility ! I only want to leave 
 off being a gilded gentleman and to become a manly man 
 at last." 
 
 M. de Souza paused in the act of rising, his keen eye 
 filling with affection. " Be thankful," he said, " that your 
 chains are gilded. We all have to wear them. I had not 
 half your chances, Rene. I threw them away. And I am
 
 THE IRON HAND. 319 
 
 — here." He wheezed a little — liis asthma was very bad of 
 late — and then tottered, with his failing dance-step, from 
 the room. 
 
 Eeinout remained alone, twisting the seal-ring upon his 
 little finger. " The velvet glove," he muttered. 
 
 A few minutes later he met his father in the hall. The 
 Count held a newspaper in his hand. 
 
 " It is true, then," said the Count, and pointed to the 
 paper. " Do you know, Eeinout, to the last I half hoped 
 you were joking." 
 
 " I should not have ventured." 
 
 " The reality is worse than the joke could have been. 
 And your academic dissertation ? Am I to be permitted to 
 see that ? " 
 
 " I have a copy for you in my portmanteau," rejDlied 
 Reinout. He had meant to give it to his father the night 
 before. " Hang it all ! " he thought, " I ought to have let 
 him have the thing before he asked for it." " Father," he 
 continued aloud, " I am sorry to have vexed you. I — I 
 daresay I am a bit of a fool at times. I will do whatever 
 you desire." 
 
 " My good child ! " cried Hilarius, jerking round at the 
 foot of the great staircase, among the oleanders, and facing 
 his stalwart son, " you talk as if / were your enemy ! I 
 desire nothing but that, while you are preparing for your 
 appointment as ' attache,' you ' go out,' this winter, like 
 other young men ! And, look here, Eene, I'll give you a 
 phaeton and pair of your own." 
 
 Eeinout clasped his father's proffered hand and wrung 
 it silently. And his heart was soft with love and shame.
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 couxT rexelaek's troubles. 
 
 CouxT Eexelaer was, at heart, a melancholy man. 
 But he was also constitutionally a grumbler, whose ever- 
 anxious ambition no good fortune could appease. And to 
 his honour be it said that he confined all his grumbling to 
 his family-circle, while heroically smiling all day at 
 Court. 
 
 And every man has his troubles ; at least, so every man 
 says. At Court the Count's sun was still in the ascendant, 
 but at Deynum it had never fought its way out of the 
 clouds. Truth to tell. Count Hilarius was not born to 
 country-squiredom. His neighbours laughed when he stuck 
 in the mud with his varnished boots, and shot a setter. He 
 bullied his farmers in the wrong way, and patronized indis- 
 creetly, and whatever he did " different " was writ down to 
 the good of his predecessor. A vacancy having occurred 
 in the States Provincial, the Count and the Baron were 
 pitted against each other, much to the latter's initial dis- 
 may. And the Lord of the Manor actually found himself 
 beaten by eight votes, chiefly through Baron Borck's re- 
 maining neutral at the eleventh hour. " It is not a Parlia- 
 ment-election ; let the poor old man have this small com- 
 pensation," the Baron of Rollingen had obstinately re- 
 plied to all his wife's appeals. She did not argue with 
 him. She had tried that during the first year of their 
 marriage. 
 
 The defeated Candidate, in his fury, talked of shutting
 
 COUNT REXELAER'S TROUBLES. 321 
 
 up the Castle, to avoid contact with his rival. And this 
 imfortunate election only accentuated the religious squab- 
 ble which had so long agitated the village ; trust an election 
 in Holland to do that. The Protestant minister, Count 
 Eexelaer's protege, who had zealously visited the voters, 
 found but one word of counsel for his patron in defeat. 
 " You must strengthen the Protestant element," he said. 
 Count Rexelaer reflected that eight votes are not much. 
 He did all in his power to strengthen the Protestant ele- 
 ment. Father Bulbius wept tears of indignation, and then 
 he girded on his sword. Meanwhile the. tragi-comedy of 
 birth and death played through its little scenes beneath the 
 shadow of the cross. 
 
 The Countess Margherita also commenced, about this 
 time, to cause her noble consort — " Hilaire ! mon 
 roy " — some considerable anxiety. As she grew older and 
 her charms began to wane — she was not yet forty and still 
 sufficiently handsome — her extravagances deei^ened beyond 
 the bounds of risibility, and a coquetry revealed itself of 
 which her younger beauty had perhaps not felt the need. 
 From indifference concerning society she had passed to 
 fondness for it, and from fondness to an incessant craving 
 after gaiety. " I must make the most of my sunset," said 
 the passionate Creole, who borrowed her metaphors from 
 the god she adored. She laced tightly of evenings, after 
 the morning's sweets and sofas, and she powdered her yel- 
 lowing complexion while mercilessly displaying it. The 
 " abandon " of her manners was charming, so delightfully 
 un-Dutch. " Oh, yes, she is a La Jolais, but — well, her 
 mother died early. She was educated out in South America 
 where her father was Ambassador." 
 
 Tlie Rexelaers van Altena had not, on their part, pleased 
 the Head of the House as much as wise Duty required of 
 them. Jane had had any number of children and was 
 obliged to rent a large house in a bad part of the town. 
 Her rich father-in-law, who had suircrecl, at the time of the
 
 322 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 engagement, from a cough warranted to kill in a year, was 
 now coughing his way up into the eighties. He was hor- 
 ribly stingy and had behaved outrageously to his son, whose 
 allowance he diminished jDroi^ortionately at the birth of 
 every child. 
 
 Then, Rolline had married a poor Jonker for love. 
 " You ! " her grandmother had snapped at her, " who are 
 so fond of nice things ! " "I think being in love is a very 
 nice thing," Eolline had answered, undaunted. " I saw 
 Jane's marriage work round." Her mother had resisted her 
 as long as was i^racticable. The worst of it was, they had 
 to forgive her afterwards; her husband was so very well 
 connected. 
 
 Antoinette was still at home ; she had grown up jjretty, 
 if a little pert in expression. She was to capture her cousin 
 Reinout. 
 
 Guy also was to capture a cousin. His mother had long 
 ago explained to him that he must marry Cecile Borck's 
 sixty thousand pounds ; he was weary of hearing her ex- 
 plain. PerhajDS, although nearly thirty, he was bent upon 
 previously increasing his debts, his " persuaders," as he 
 openly called them. " My dear mother," he said, " I am 
 not yet sufficiently persuaded." Mevrouw Eexelaer did not 
 comprehend. 
 
 As for George, " He is the stupid one," said the Dowager. 
 " It's the stupid ones that most surely look after their own. 
 Some day, with that quiet way of his, George will make, or 
 take a fortune." 
 
 " Meanwhile," protested the placid Judge, " let Hilarius 
 go driving in his carriages, and leave us to our cabs. I am 
 sure we are comfortable enough." In which view the 
 whole family, though eager for the carriages, concurred, 
 excepting Jane, who was soured by her irrationally un- 
 fortunate circumstances. " I should not have minded a 
 reasonable contretemps," said Jane. " And what do you call 
 a reasonable contretemps?" queried her husband, who was
 
 COUNT REXELAER'S TROUBLES. 323 
 
 somewhat afraid of her. "Your father's living to be 
 seventy, not eighty," replied plain-spoken Jane. So clearly 
 had this couple got to understand one another. 
 
 As soon as the great people remained away from the 
 village, the village began to miss them, and one half of it 
 railed at the other half. Therefore, when they returned 
 after eighteen months' absence, Joost Hakkert was hot to 
 propose floral arclies of welcome, which the Baron's faction 
 as vehemently denounced. None regretted these dissensions 
 as much as that gentleman himself. His bitterness had 
 melted away from him, notably after his election to the 
 States. 
 
 " My good Thys," he said one day to that prosperous 
 liusband and father, whom he met on returning from what 
 had now become his daily walk in the park, " you are acting 
 ungraciously and unwisely. I tell you so frankly, for I 
 know you mean well. And what you are doing is 7iot done 
 on my behalf." Thys scowled. We do not like Herod, of 
 all men, to bring under our notice the fact that we are busy 
 out-Heroding him. 
 
 But the Baron, having eased his conscience, continued 
 his way content. He found Bulbius and the Baroness com- 
 fortably engaged in alternate monologue of reminiscence, 
 Wendela bravely enduring the talk about Deynum. The 
 Baron's entrance stopped it. 
 
 The Baroness Gertrude was aging rapidly. She had 
 always been in advance of her years, and the last decade 
 might surely count for two. She would look for her words, 
 till her daughter tapped the floor with impatient, self-re- 
 proachful foot. 
 
 " I disapprove of all opposition to constituted authori- 
 ties," said the Baron, walking into the room. " I wish 
 these good people would listen to me. We ought to have 
 no point of contact with the Castle. As it cannot be love, 
 
 it should never be hate." 
 22
 
 324 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 "Wendela looked up quickly. " "Why not a little hate ? " 
 rose to her lips, but she was grown up now and sometimes 
 suppressed her rashest thoughts. 
 
 " You are too charitable, Mynheer," burst forth Father 
 Bulbius. " As for me, I have no patience with persecutors. 
 For I call it persecution to compel this poor lady, in her 
 infirmity, to drag all the way to the other end of the 
 village.'' 
 
 " Stay to dinner," said the Baron, to whom this subject 
 was especially obnoxious. " I will tell Gustave." And he 
 rang the bell. 
 
 " Nonsense, Father ; you speak as if I were losing the 
 use of my limbs," interposed iMevrouw van Rexelaer nerv- 
 ously. " Like Joost Hakkert's old mother." 
 
 " Xo, no," replied the priest pettishly, " I did not mean 
 that. By the by, I was telling Mevrouw, when your AVor- 
 ship came in, that I had been to see Lise of the Chalk-house 
 Farm, who has Just had twins." 
 
 " Tiens, and he never told me I " exclaimed the Baron, 
 vexed that Thys should have been so much vexed. 
 
 "Did your Reverence kiss the babies?" questioned 
 Wendela. 
 
 She liked to provoke Father Bulbius, having retained 
 her aversion to priests. " It all comes," she would say, " of 
 that unconscionable catechism." 
 
 " I ? Xo," cried his Reverence in alarm. " Besides, 
 they were girls." 
 
 " But then, old Vrouw Hakkert is twenty years older 
 than I," continued the Baroness. " At that age people can- 
 not complain, if their strength begins to give way." 
 
 The Baron went over to her chair and gently stroked 
 her white forehead. " You are still young," he said. 
 
 When Count Rexelaer's carriage, shortly after, passed 
 under a red-lettered " Welcome," he was not particularly 
 gratified to learn from his steward that he owed its erection
 
 COUNT REXELAER'S TROUBLES, 325 
 
 to the Baron's forbearance. Besides, " unusual demonstra- 
 tions have exceptional causes," declared the ex-diplomat. 
 He felt that the old lord was much in his way. What 
 would he have said, had he known how that gentleman was 
 steadfastly schooling himself to play the role of a humble 
 petitioner ? Yet, so it was. For, when duties became plain 
 to the simple-hearted Baron, he did them. And one morn- 
 ing the White Baroness returned from her daily pilgrimage 
 to the distant parish-church, leaning heavily on Wendela's 
 arm, even more than usually exhausted. 
 
 " I cannot," the proud, silent woman had gasped as she 
 tottered to her bed-chamber. Presently W^endela came 
 back to the sitting-room where her father was tramping 
 stolidly to and fro. Had he noticed? she wondered, as she 
 seated herself, with a book, in the window-seat. She had 
 long understood that her mother's ailment was some sort of 
 rheumatic or chalky gout, a gradual stiifening of the joints. 
 
 " This must end," exclaimed the Baron without check- 
 ing his walk. He seemed to have forgotten his daughter's 
 presence. Five minutes' more tramp were got through, be- 
 fore he spoke again. " Fll go this afternoon," he said. 
 " There's a reason for it now," He walked out at the open 
 door, and locked himself in his room. 
 
 Left alone, Wendela slipped off the window-sill and out 
 of the house. She hurried up the lane, and into the 
 coppice which leads to Lady Bertha's oak. 
 
 " He shall not so humiliate himself," she repeated. " He 
 shall not so humiliate himself." She passed the oak with- 
 out daring to look at it. Here, eight years ago, she had 
 parted from Piet Poster, the boy-sweetheart whose name 
 still hung motionless in the prayers she repeated by rote. 
 Unlike her father, she had never beheld the oak, nor the 
 house, nor the gardens since that day wlien she had bidden 
 them Good-bye. How long ago was it, that she had crept 
 up the avenue to catch one last glimpse of " Knight-Pil- 
 grim " ? Five years. Often she had wondered if Ileinout
 
 326 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 still retained the dear volume she had given him. " I had 
 done better to keep it," she thought. 
 
 "Was it fancy that told her she remembered each stone of 
 the building as soon as it came into view ? She sped on- 
 ward, with beating heart, across the courtyard, between 
 the orange-trees, and rang the loud door-bell with a 
 crash. 
 
 " You must be mistaken again. I wish you would pay 
 more attention," said the ever-cautious Count Eexelaer to 
 the servant who announced her. Then he went into the 
 vestibule and found himself confronted by a lithe, hazel-eyed 
 damsel in a light muslin dress. 
 
 " I am the Freule van Eexelaer," said the damsel with a 
 quiver in her earnest voice. " No, thank you, I would rather 
 remain here." 
 
 " And what can I do for you, Freule ? " 
 
 She told him. 
 
 Count Eexelaer fretted indignantly under his efforts at 
 self-control. He believed in a ruse of the enemy invented 
 to render refusal impossible. " Will you allow me," he de- 
 manded, " to consider the matter and communicate my 
 reply ? " 
 
 " No," said Wendela quickly. " I mean, I hope not. I 
 am longing to surprise them. It was that made me 
 come." 
 
 " My dear young lady," said the Count, " who could re- 
 sist so fair a petitioner ? " 
 
 "You consent then, Mynheer?" cried Wendela with 
 sparkling eyes. 
 
 " If your father really wishes it, yes," he replied point- 
 edly, and then, in obedience to a motion of her hand, he 
 drew back the glass door. 
 
 She ran all the way home. In the garden she met the 
 Baron. " I have been to Deynum," she panted. 
 
 " To Deynum ? " Her father did not understand what 
 she meant.
 
 COUNT REXELAER'S TROUBLES. 327 
 
 " I have been calling on the Count. He is an amiable 
 gentleman, too amiable, Papa." 
 
 But that evening came a letter from Count Hilarius van 
 Rexelaer. He had consented, of course, where refusal had 
 been rendered impossible, and if the Baron was really con- 
 tent to extort a concession, well, Count Rexelaer, having 
 once passed his word, must admit himself bound. 
 
 " Oh, but this is infamous ! " cried Wendela with burn- 
 ing cheeks. 
 
 " My dear," replied the Baron mildly, " the gentleman 
 is true to our motto. Perhaps he enjoys disgrace. Never 
 mind ; I shall accept." 
 
 " Oh, you dear, dear Father," she said, and threw both 
 arms round his neck.
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 FOKEIGX AFFAIRS AND OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS. 
 
 True to his promise, the Jonker Eeinout returned with 
 his parents to the Hague. And, decked out with ribands 
 and flowers — white ties and gardenias — he was led, like a 
 lamb, to the slaughter. 
 
 In the morning hours he worked resolutely at the For- 
 eign Office, helping to wind and unwind the red tape with 
 which international knots are tied and untied. At the Uni- 
 versity he had early discovered that the study of civil law 
 means the study of casuistry to avoid it ; these pains were 
 superfluous, diplomacy soon told him, with regard to the 
 professor's elaborate jus gentium. " Let the professor look 
 after the law," said the Minister, his father's friend. Count 
 
 L , " and we will take care of the profits." Eeinout's 
 
 virgin acquaintance with statecraft befell in those days when 
 the affluent doctrine of " might is right " was leisurely over- 
 spreading the sand-centred tower of the Holy Alliance. 
 The ante- Alexandrian teaching that right is one thing and 
 a good, might another and a better, was dead past revival ; 
 Bismarckian effrontery had not yet persuaded a hyper-civil- 
 ised, hyper-covetous community that a man may serve God 
 well by serving his neighbour right. Europe was waiting 
 for a compromise between her popularised politics and her 
 increasing morality, and meanwhile " the two have nothing 
 in common " was the catchword with which she strove to 
 content herself. " Oh my God, help me to understand ! " 
 prayed Reiuout van Rexelaer.
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 329 
 
 In tlie afternoon and evening, and night-time, when the 
 slow hours tolled for making merry, he dragged about from 
 place to place after either parent, or more rarely after both. 
 The Countess was now become an indefatigable pleasure- 
 liunter, gobbling gaiety like a lap-dog which foresees the 
 withdrawal of its mess, "Rene, mon petit, es-tu pret?" — 
 night after night he would see his mother standing in the 
 doorway, with fan or opera-glass, and he would lay down his 
 book and follow her. 
 
 Of course he knew everyone, willy-nilly. His father had 
 secured his election to those clubs from which nobody is 
 excluded, as well as those clubs to which nobody, unless not 
 a nobody, gains admittance. This latter emprise had called 
 for a little manoeuvring. There were plenty of young men 
 who remembered that Rexelaei*, at College, had deemed 
 himself too good to get drunk. But people fought shy of 
 offending the Count, high at Court and soon destined to be 
 higher. 
 
 With the ladies of the Eesidency, as the Dutch call the 
 Hague, Reinout was far more successful, and also more at 
 his ease. In the first place, women openly loved him for 
 one of the chief causes of masculine dislike : he was by far 
 the best " parti " in society. He might have been endowed 
 with round shoulders, or even with a wooden leg. As for a 
 wooden head, that " goes without saying." And yet he was 
 as good-looking and generous-hearted as if these things had 
 been worth his while. Besides, while he had long since 
 abandoned the graceful, obsolete forms which the Chevalier 
 had taught him, he had unconsciously preserved much of 
 the manner of that gentleman's courtlier day. He could 
 still think, and even speak, of a woman with reverence. 
 
 In many ways, otherwise, his education had been a gigan- 
 tic failure. He had fingered the gilt clay-ball his father had 
 laid in his boyish palm till all the gilding came off. That 
 was not what the Count, himself so successfully worldly, 
 had bargained for. He had wished his son to despise men,
 
 330 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 that he might freel}' employ them as means to an end. 
 He had not expected him to despise the cud as well as the 
 means. 
 
 Meanwhile the young man rode round in the whirligig 
 of pleasure, aud got his fair share of enjoyment out of it. 
 He was by no means above dancing and flirting, or racing 
 and riding. But at bed-time especially, like Titus, he would 
 feel that he had lost a day. " I have never done anything 
 for anybody. I am twenty-three, and if I were to die before 
 sunrise, my life would have been a blank ! " It would 
 always remain so. There is no more futile occupation con- 
 ceivable on earth than the diplomatic representation of a 
 state with no international influence. But it could not be 
 helped. For there is also no prison like " position." 
 
 One morning the young aspirant-ambassador, upon 
 reaching the Office, was struck by a look of unusual red- 
 ness about the eyes of the old door-keeper there. The dis- 
 covery startled him : he did not remember having ever seen 
 the symptoms of sorrow on the face of a grown-up man. 
 He would have spoken; but the sacredness of sorrow sealed 
 his lips. 
 
 He spent the morning in hard work. They had put 
 him into the passport-department, and there, amid the 
 muddle of international births, marriages and deaths, he 
 might watch the woof of History. A delightful squabble 
 had recently arisen like a ripple upon stagnancy, because a 
 tourist's auburn locks had been written down red. The 
 gentleman was exceedingly abusive, from the safe side of 
 the frontier, and actually offered personal violence to his 
 Excellency. Whereupon Reinout most humbly submitted 
 his willingness to go out to Italy as proxy. His Excellency 
 frowned. He had two frowns at his service : a shrewdly 
 puzzled one and a solemnly determined. The two had made 
 him minister. 
 
 By noon the usher's eyes had lost their border, but it
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 331 
 
 was lie who broached his trouble, as he swung back the 
 door. 
 
 " This'll be the last day, Jouker," he said. 
 
 " How so ? " questioned Reinout in surprise. 
 
 Then the man told him. An order misunderstood ; a 
 door left unlocked with important papers behind it; the 
 l)eace of the nation in danger ; more than twenty years' 
 service and dismissal at the end. 
 
 " It's a great pity you did it," said Eeinout severely. 
 " I suppose there's no hope ? " 
 
 The man shook his white head pathetically. "Ah, if 
 you only knew," he said, " I misunderstood the order, 
 Jonker, because I was intended to misunderstand. There, 
 there ; it's no use talking." 
 
 Nothing more could be extracted from him. He mut- 
 tered something about "a candidate before there was a 
 vacancy" and "a man's servants are nearer to his hand 
 than the state's." The Jonker turned helplessly away. He 
 felt himself again in the jjresence of one of those immense 
 little abuses which seem to be society's daily bread. He 
 was fast learning to believe that all human flocks are tended 
 by wolves in shepherd's clothing. No need any longer to 
 speculate what the lean wretch had meant with whom he 
 had parleyed as a lad. " A thousand poor men's tortures 
 go to make a single rich man's comfort." What can one 
 do? Solve the riddle? Are not all the world's best and 
 wisest, at this moment, floundering in the marshes of solu- 
 tion, lured by every Jack o' Lantern that shines bright ? 
 
 " I shall tell my father about this," reflected Ileinout. 
 His father was to him an upright pillar of power. Not a 
 lamp-post of futurity, but an Atlas that bore the existent 
 world. According to a father's fallible lights, the Count 
 could be trusted to do present-day right. Keinout believed 
 in his father. 
 
 There was to be a small dinner-party at home that even- 
 ing in honour of Margherita's birthday. A family party,
 
 332 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 the Rexelaers van Altena, and a couple of intimates, sixteen 
 in all. Count Eexelaer had frowned over one name. " It 
 is absurd," he had said, " to ask that man on such an 
 occasion as tliis." Margherita had laughed in his face. 
 But an hour or two later she had invited her husband into 
 her menagerie. " Mon cher," she had commenced, " I 
 should like to recount you a little anecdote." 
 
 " Well ? " said Hilarius, nervously snatching at Ama- 
 rinda's tail. 
 
 " Don't hurt more creatures than you can help. You 
 remember, Hilarius, how desperately melancholy I was when 
 you first brought me to your land of everlasting twilight. 
 You knew at the time ; but I don't think it ever interfered 
 with your digestion. Well, one evening I had been crying 
 and said something to Laissa about feeling I was going to 
 die. The poor foolish creature, in extravagant anguish, 
 appealed to the Chevalier, and the Chevalier came and 
 mingled his tears with mine and confessed that he too was 
 dying for want of a ray of sunshine. You need not scowl ; 
 he is a better man than you. You, by the by, were in Am- 
 sterdam ' on business.' I have noticed that your business 
 more commonly calls you to Brussels now. I was desperate 
 with home-sickness ; I resolved to start by the night-train 
 and take ship at Havre ; I promised the Chevalier to let 
 him accompany me. Everything was arranged, and when 
 the time came, I woke the boy. He looked up at me, drunk 
 with early sleep. 'Are we going to Papa?' he asked. 
 Suddenly I seemed to realize " — the Countess's harsh voice 
 faltered — " the disgrace which, innocent though I was, an 
 esclandre would bring upon the child. I sent for the 
 Chevalier and told him he must go alone. I still see him 
 bend over my hand. ' An old sinner can live where an 
 angel can,' he said. Ridiculous logic, was it not ? Besides, 
 I have never been an angel. Far from it. And two days 
 later you returned from Amsterdam." 
 
 " I do not understand " began the Count, hurriedly.
 
 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 333 
 
 " To-day I am forty. Somehow we have drifted astray 
 from our only child, or he from us. But a woman of forty 
 will certainly consider the position of her son, even sooner 
 than a woman of twenty. Ay, and her own." 
 
 " And her husband's ! " cried the Count, rising as if to 
 escajDe. 
 
 " And her husband's. The money is mine, and it pays 
 for your trips to Brussels." 
 
 "Have you anything else?" asked Hilarius at the door.- 
 
 " Just one word. You will have the grace, I feel sure, 
 not to refer to this very old stoi-y in the presence of the 
 Chevalier." 
 
 " The Chevalier has behaved very badly," exclaimed Hi- 
 larius. " I thought he was a trusty friend." 
 
 " He behaved like a true cavalier to a woman in distress. 
 Nothing more. Understand me, Hilarius ; this matter ends 
 here. And also, I am now a woman of forty. I have 
 wasted my whole life in your horrible country. I have 
 shown that I, like yourself, can be trusted to keep up ap- 
 pearances. As for the rest, it is no business of yours. You 
 will allow me, if you please, to do what I choose with the 
 remnant of my youth and my happiness." She threw her- 
 self back on the sofa and waved both her hands to her 
 birds. The whole chorus of them responded to the signal, 
 and Count Eexelaer retired from the scene in a burst of 
 joyous song.
 
 CHAPTER XLVIL 
 
 A MYSTERIOUS POET. 
 
 A COUPLE of hours later Marglierita, in amber velvet, 
 was receiving the congratulations of her husband's kin. 
 Eeinout had bought her a brooch, with the florins ob- 
 tained by brief betting at a Club ecarte-table. Eolline 
 stood admiring it wistfully under one of the huge lace 
 lamp-shades. 
 
 Mevrouw Elizabeth Rexelaer came sailing in with her 
 judge among her skirts. When Mevrouw Elizabeth entered 
 a room, there was no vacancy in it during the first few mo- 
 ments for anyone else ; to-day, by the time she had settled 
 down, it became apparent that the master of the house had 
 slipped in after her. He was in excellent spirits. " I have 
 got some splendid news ! " he said. 
 
 " Splendid for us ? " asked Jane. 
 
 " Splendid for all, my dear, in so far as we all hang to- 
 gether." 
 
 " Ah, but we don't," murmured Jane, in a spiteful aside 
 to her brother George. " Thank Heaven, we are not yet all 
 dependent on Uncle Hil. 
 
 " Oh, shut up," replied handsome George. He had re- 
 cently succeeded in extracting a loan from his uncle, to the 
 envious admiration of the rest. The latter gentleman was 
 ofifering his arm to his sister-in-law. The company rustled 
 into pairs. And as they did so, the fond mother pointed to 
 Eeinout and Antoinette : " How charming they look," she 
 whispered. " Yes, don't they?" responded Count Eexelaer
 
 A MYSTERIOUS POET. 335 
 
 hastily. The heir-apparent of Deynum, restricted like 
 Royalty, must choose from among half a dozen high-born 
 maidens that humbly awaited his pleasure. He might be 
 gracious to Topsy meanwhile, if he chose. 
 
 Everybody should be gracious to everybody. Mevrouw 
 Elizabeth was delighted with Hilarius's expansive complai- 
 sance. " It is that low-born Margaret who spoils him," 
 she reflected. " And now, my dear brother, tell us your 
 news ! " 
 
 Hilarius was eager to do so. A silence fell upon all the 
 nej^hews and nieces as he told. " It has pleased his most 
 gracious Majesty " — the Courtier's face assumed a fold of 
 half ironical humility — " to confer the exalted post left va- 
 cant by Count Frank de Bercy's death upon his Majesty's 
 faithful servant — ?we.^" 
 
 Of course there was an outburst of perfunctory con- 
 gratulation. But if anybody really cared, it was the old 
 Chevalier. " The blessed saints be with him ! " mumbled 
 that perfumed relic in his immaculate shirt-front. And 
 mentally he added, " If blessed saints there be." 
 
 The judge rose and toasted " His Excellency ! " and the 
 yellow-robed Creole beside him looked up with a vainglori- 
 ous smile. Yes, it was nice. They all felt it was nice. 
 " Admit that it is," said Topsy, turning her pretty, plucky 
 little head towards her neighbour. " Oh, nice enough," re- 
 plied Reinout, " Pharaoh's footman promoted to the place 
 of Pharoah's butler deceased." But the girl only laughed 
 at him. " You are very young," she declared. " You may 
 always say those things to me." 
 
 In the smoking-room Count Rexelaer had to listen to 
 the lisped congratulations of the gentleman whose presence 
 he had striven to prevent, an attache at the French Lega- 
 tion, " my compatriot," averred Marghcrita, " model your- 
 self, my dear child, on the manners of Monsieur de Bonna- 
 venture." Reinout had slipped away from an endless tale 
 of his eldest cousin's gambling losses and taken refuge with
 
 336 THE caiEATER GLORY. 
 
 the ladies, two of whom were differing politely on every 
 subject they approached, while Jane sat buried in a pile of 
 much coveted reviews and Rollins lay back dreaming of her 
 dear little peacli of a baby, all sweet and soft and good 
 to eat. It was a relief when the gentlemen came upstairs. 
 Count Rexelaer with a bundle of newly-arrived letters in 
 his hand. His excellency halted in the middle of the 
 room. " Marglierita," he said, while avoiding his wife's 
 eyes, " I am very much annoyed. I have just heard from 
 Dievert that the people I so unwisely re-admitted to the 
 chapel have kept some sort of religious anniversary there. 
 A Catholic service, in fact." 
 
 " This is truly shocking," said Mevrouw Elizabeth, from 
 among the perplexed audience, in her most impressive 
 tones. 
 
 " Oh, I daresay they only celebrated mass," interposed 
 Margherita lightly. She was angry about the reopening of 
 the chapel, because it had been refused to herself. " Do 
 not let us quarrel about religion, pray." 
 
 " It is not a question of religion, but a question of de- 
 cency ! " fumed the Count. " The old Barebones does noth- 
 ing but tease me with his tranquil impertinence. I Avould 
 give a good sum, could I drive him from Deynum ! " 
 
 He squeaked out the words in his irritation. j\Iargherita 
 caught a smile of careless contempt beneath the French 
 diplomat's waxed moustache. She appealed to him to cre- 
 ate a diversion. " C'est bete," she said, " has nobody any- 
 thing amusing?" 
 
 Jane wheeled round from her table. " Here are these 
 verses," she interposed, " that people are talking about, in 
 the ' Revue Parisienne.' Have you seen them. Aunt Mar- 
 garet, you who are such a lover of poetry ? " 
 
 " No. Read them to us," replied Margherita, glad of 
 any escape. 
 
 " Oh, poetry ! " murmured Guy, and, winking at Reinout, 
 he wandered away to pause vacantly in front of a female
 
 A MYSTERIOUS POET. 337 
 
 statuette. Reinont at the first mention of the review and 
 the poem, had fallen back hastily into impenetrable shade. 
 
 The poem was a short one in honour of an incident 
 much discussed at the time. In a South American repub- 
 lic — of all places ! — a murderer's execution had been twice 
 interrupted by the breaking of the rope ; whereupon the 
 mob had invaded the scaifold and rescued the criminal, 
 actuated, said the poet, by an impulse of heaven-born pity. 
 " Brotherly sympathy," though perhaps a shade more accu- 
 rate, would hardly have rhymed so well with — the senti- 
 ments of the singer. 
 
 Hitherto, said the poet, all light had arisen in the East, 
 and he appealed to the nations of Europe to be foremost in 
 heralding the daybreak of mercy. Else would its morning 
 be not sunlight but storm. 
 
 " Car c'est dans roccident que rouragan s'eleve 
 Dont la grande maree effacera la Greve ! " 
 
 Jane read well, and therefore enjoyed reading whether 
 people listened or not. She had rung out the last lines with 
 real spirit. Why did Eeinout, in the silence which followed, 
 shrink still farther back ? 
 
 " It ends in a pun," said the diplomat. " That is bad." 
 
 " A pun ! No ; where ? " cried Mevrouw Elizabeth. 
 Her daughter hastily intervened. " The whole thing is mod- 
 elled on Victor Hugo," she said. " Capital punishment is 
 his hobby. But it is attracting a great deal of notice, and 
 I think it is distinctly good." 
 
 " It isn't poetry at all," complained Margherita. " It is 
 merely rhymed talk about politics. Poetry deals with the 
 nobler affections." 
 
 The diplomatist beside her bowed low over her fan. 
 " You have expressed it exactly," he said. 
 
 " The sentiments are French," declared Mevrouw Eliza- 
 beth, " and would meet with no sympathy here." 
 
 " You think not ? " asked lieinout's voice from the
 
 338 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 depths of a bay window. He came slowly back into the 
 light. "As it happens," he said, " I can favour you, if you 
 like, witli a translation of Jane's poem. I bought it, by the 
 merest cliance, on my way home this afternoon." And, 
 drawing a newspaper from his pocket, with a word of 
 apology to the Frenchman, he gave them the whole thing 
 over again. 
 
 " That is how it sounds in Dutch," he said. 
 
 " And very ugly too," said Margherita. 
 
 " The translation is not half bad," protested sententious 
 Jane ; " whom is it by ? " Gf^eorge yawned audibly. Sim- 
 mans had taken the paper from Reinout's hand. " Queer lit- 
 erature," he said, " for the Jonker van Eexelaer," and passed 
 it on to the Count. That gentleman glanced at the title, 
 and dropt the red-hot, revolutionary coal. 
 
 Eeinout laughed. Mevrouw Elizabeth smilingly shook 
 a substantial finger. " Rene, Rene ! " she said. " You 
 are an enfant terrible. But we know it is only your 
 fun." 
 
 " What is it all about ? " inquired the judge, pulling 
 himself together and definitely waking up. " What has 
 Eeinout got there ? I suppose it is the ' Cry of the People.' 
 Well, Simmans, we have it at the Law Courts and the Min- 
 istries. I agree with him ; it is far better to know what 
 these foolish people say." 
 
 " Oh, the socialists, you know ! " remarked. Rolline's 
 Jonker, screwing his eye-glass tight. 
 
 His fond young wife stretched forth her fan to playfully 
 tap his arm. " Don't," she said, " you horrid boy." 
 
 But Simmans was resolved to have his say. " It is dif- 
 ferent for us," he declaimed, " who stand forth to protect 
 society. But Eeinout is one of life's favoured butterflies. 
 We, on the ramparts, must accustom ourselves to the smell 
 of the powder." 
 
 " Yes, that is what I always feel," interposed Margherita, 
 turning from her earnest conversation with her attache.
 
 A MYSTERIOUS POET. 339 
 
 " The smell of poor people is so very disagreeable. It pre- 
 vents one from being as kind as one might." 
 
 " But who' is this Dutch revolutionary poet ? " per- 
 sisted Jane. 
 
 Simmans picked up the paper. "An anonymous hero," 
 he answered, " who signs with a P. P stands for Peter or 
 Paul." 
 
 " Probably Paul," put in Reinout. "A prince of revo- 
 lutionaries, if men had but obeyed him ! " 
 
 Half an hour later the Rexelaers van Altena were driv- 
 ing home. "A dull evening," opined Mevrouw Elizabeth. 
 " Jane was stupid with her poem. And Reinout pushes his 
 jokes too far." 
 
 " The salm.i was good," replied the judge. 
 
 "Do you know. Mamma, I believe Reinout is in ear- 
 nest?" said Antoinette. 
 
 " In earnest ! " cried her mother, much flurried. " How ? 
 What do you mean ? What did he say ? " 
 
 Antoinette shrieked with laughter. " In earnest, I mean, 
 as regards the poor," she said as soon as she could speak. 
 
 " He knows nothing about the poor," retorted Mevrouw, 
 turning away from her irritating daughter. 
 
 Guy and George, walking home together, discussed their 
 relations with far greater freedom. They both agreed that 
 the evening would have been most insufferably dull, but 
 for the amusement of watching Margherita's " exotic 
 vivacity." 
 
 "A flirt of forty!" remarked Guy. "I don't think 
 Uncle Hil half likes it. The more fool he. Besides, he's 
 got more than his share of luck already." 
 
 " Uncle nil's not half a bad fellow," said George. 
 
 " I don't wonder you think so. I wish you'd tell me 
 how you managed to extract all that money out of him." 
 
 "Ah, wouldn't you like to know," said George. 
 
 " Yes, I should. Truth to tell, I don't think there was 
 23
 
 3-10 TUE GREATER Gl.ORY. 
 
 any ruse about it. You're too stupid. You just asked him, 
 and he said Yes." 
 
 " Perhaps so," replied George. " You might try it." 
 
 Keiuout was putting on his overcoat in the hall, when 
 his father came out to him. 
 
 " My dear bo}^" began the Count, " I have been wanting 
 to say a few words to you for many days past. Of course 
 you are quite welcome to spend your nights at the Club or 
 wherever else you prefer to spend them. Only don't overdo 
 it. Sometimes we see nothing of you for fort3'-eight con- 
 secutive hours. There, I am sure we understand each other. 
 Exaggeration in all things is an evil. Good-night." 
 
 My Lord High Seneschal glided up to his bedroom, 
 humming a bright little tune. Before extinguishing the 
 light he nodded complacently to His Excellency in the 
 glass, a mealy-faced, wiry-haired Excellency in a night-shirt. 
 And although he had forgotten the quotation which, ten 
 years ago, had spurred him on to scorn the lowest rung of 
 his Jacob's Ladder, yet the thought was in his mind to- 
 night. " So doth the greater glory dim the less." Nothing 
 — absolutely nothing — was left him to desire. He sank into 
 the blissful repose of an unshadowed success. 
 
 The Baron, at Deynum, laid down the Provincial Gazette 
 with a smile.
 
 CHAPTER XLVIIL 
 
 STAINS. 
 
 Geoege Rexelaek had always been Grandmamma 
 Borck's favourite. " He was so delightfully stupid," she 
 said ; she did not add that she had retained a quondam 
 beauty's weakness for good looks. Grandmamma Borck 
 would have married George to Cecile, — George, not Guy — 
 could she have afforded to let Cecile marry at all. " Come 
 and tell me everything, George," she would say. " You're 
 too weak to stand alone." 
 
 She even helped him with a little, carefully counted, 
 money. It was Cecile's. And she resigned herself to his 
 being " a man about town," in these days when the turnstile 
 of " examination " guards the old paths of honour and 
 glory. " There are other heiresses," she said, " besides 
 Cecile." 
 
 But the heiresses held aloof — honest Dutch maidens — 
 God bless them ! any one of them is worth six of the men. 
 Once, indeed, the old woman succeeded in concocting an 
 engagement, but in a mouth it was broken off. " I could 
 marry a beautiful statue," said the damsel frankly, " for a 
 statue would not open its mouth now and then to say a 
 foolish thing." 
 
 George was content not to care. Even in his salad days 
 he had been as cool as a cucumber. " I want," he admitted, 
 " to have a great deal of money ; it's the sole thing I care 
 for, and some day I shall manage it. I know I could get it 
 now, if they would but let me alone." " How?" the Dowa-
 
 342 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 ger once asked him. " In business," said stupid George. 
 Tlie old lady laughed herself purple. 
 
 But a couple of months later he came to her with an 
 important face and a tiny parcel. He had a habit of con- 
 versing with everyone on his slow life's journey — in trains, 
 on steamers, in places of amusement — " for want," Jane 
 nsed to tell him, " of something to say." Well, that morn- 
 ing he had been to Delft, in the barge, and had come across 
 a sailor just returned from the Indies, and that sailor had 
 proved the happy possessor of a magnificent secret which he 
 was desirous to share, for a consideration, with somebody 
 else. He had told George all about it, except, of course, the 
 secret itself. Having strayed from his ship, it appears, on 
 the coast of New Guinea, this man had fallen into the hands 
 of a tribe of Papuans — the genuine Tatua-Papuas — and the 
 Tatuas had tattooed him all over, in their own peculiar 
 manner, and he had lived among them and done duty as a 
 medicine-man. The tattooing of the Tatuas is of course 
 ineradicable, but they paint themselves also with paints, 
 greases and gums, and these paintings the sailor perceived 
 they could easily remove by means of a plant called Papti. 
 In fact, each lady used to be done np fresh from time to 
 time, said the sailor, when the spring fashions came in ; his 
 own wife had shown him the trick. He had escaped from 
 the tribe, and had got back to Europe, bringing the secret 
 away with him, though not the wife, and here that secret 
 was. He had extracted a dirty green lump from his pocket 
 and shown it to George. " Warranted," he said, " to remove 
 all stains, spots, blots, and blemishes on the human com- 
 plexion or any other soft material, silks, velvets, woollens, 
 genuine kids, etc., etc. Will not clean pots and pans. Will- 
 ing to dispose of it for three thousand florins down, and dirt 
 cheap." 
 
 " I like the reservation," said the Dowager, after listen- 
 ing to this ridiculous story. " I always think it looks 
 so well in the advertisements. Throw away that dirty
 
 STAIXS. 343 
 
 little ball, George. You know I have a horror of in- 
 fection." 
 
 But foolish George had taken the matter seriously. 
 Only three thousand florins, and a fortune to be made ! " I 
 assure you, grandma, there is something in it," he entreated, 
 " I only wish you would let me shew you — " he bent for- 
 ward, uplifting the little green ball between finger and 
 thumb. " If you only had a grease-stain somewhere about 
 
 you " said George with scrutinising glances. But the 
 
 Baroness's glossy black silk lay serene and spotless about 
 her meagre limbs. " Nonsense," she said sharply. " Throw 
 it away at once. And talk about something else." 
 
 But fools rush in exactly. " No, no, I must show 
 
 you. It's too wonderful ! " cried George. He caught up a 
 pen from an inkstand at his grandmother's elbow and, be- 
 fore she could stop him, he had dropped a small blot on the 
 crimson plush tablecloth. The dowager screamed with in- 
 dignation. She, who considered the smallest visible blemish 
 the greatest of sins. " Only Avait till it dries. Ma'am," ex- 
 postulated George, " and I'll shew you " She refused 
 
 to be shewn. She ordered her grandson out of her presence. 
 And he departed, leaving behind him, in his flurry, the 
 little green ball. 
 
 The Dowager remained in her chair, gasping with in- 
 dignation before the black speck on the cloth and the anti- 
 dote which the criminal had left lying beside it. She sat 
 thus a long time, in utter disgust, and watched the ink dry ; 
 then, partly from curiosity, partly from inability to endure 
 the sight of the stain any longer, she took up the little 
 strong-smelling pea, in the most gingerly manner, with her 
 skinny, slender fingers, and began slowly rubbing the spot 
 beneath the fading light. Presently she got up to fetch a 
 candle from her bureau, and Cecile, when she came in half 
 an hour later, found her grandmother mopping ink all over 
 the tablecloth. 
 
 Next morninfr Georcre received an invitation to come
 
 344 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 uml see his forgiving Granny. He found her in a most 
 amiable mood, and they discussed pro's and con's in a busi- 
 nesslike manner. " 1 am sure I could work it," reiterated 
 George. But the far-seeing Dowager had doubts. " Why, 
 you would have to spend a hundred thousand florins the 
 first twelvemonth in advertisements alone ! " she said. The 
 great thing was to possess oneself of the secret. That done, 
 the rest would " develop itself " by means of a company or, 
 still better, a syndicate. But how raise, within twenty-four 
 hours, the preliminary three thousand ? " Unfortunately," 
 said the cautious old lady, " I have barely a penny of my 
 own." 
 
 " Uncle Hilarius ? " suggested George, very doubtfully. 
 
 " I have been thinking of that " ; she sat and pondered. 
 " That little story you told me a month ago," she said 
 presently, " about going to call on your aunt and running 
 upstairs unannounced into her sitting-room. You remem- 
 ber, eh?" 
 
 " Of course I remember, Granny," said George with 
 downcast eyes. 
 
 " I told you to lay it by and sjoeak to nobody about it. 
 Put it in the bank, so to say. Perhaps the time has come 
 to take it out. But, mind you, only in case of extremest 
 necessity, for of course it will cause unpleasantness. So 
 use all your other arguments first. You understand? And 
 now go and speak to your uncle." 
 
 " Ko, I don't quite understand," said George. 
 
 " Dear, dear, how stupid you are. I feel convinced you 
 will die a Croesus. Well, I must tell you more plainly." 
 And she did. 
 
 When Count Eexelaer had listened to his nephew for 
 fifteen seconds, he said : " No, he never lent anybody any- 
 thing ; it was against his principles. He only gave." 
 Even George was not simple enough to suggest : " Then 
 give." But he pushed his appeal nearly five minutes
 
 STAINS. 345 
 
 longer, till the Count said " No " again, so exceedingly irri- 
 tably and with such ungracious additions that George felt 
 the moment was come to expose this particular nejihew's 
 discreet claims to more consideration. " I think you owe 
 me a good turn, Uncle Hil," he began, as his grandmother 
 
 had instructed him, " if only because " And then the 
 
 unhappy Comptroller of another and a more august house- 
 hold than his own found himself treated to that little story 
 which had so much diverted the Dowager five Aveeks ago. 
 How Nephew George had come to the house to call on Aunt 
 Margherita, and how he had run up unannounced to the 
 back drawing-room, and how 
 
 When the enterprise was launched, in due time, it 
 " took " almost immediately. The money had been found 
 by a couple of wealthy contractors, of the name of Kops, 
 Abraham and Benjamin, who had become partners in the 
 business of which George and one of the young Kopses were 
 managing directors. "Papuum! Papuum ! " (as the new 
 product was called) spread all over th'e country, with a 
 placard exhibiting a bright-coloured Tatua-Papua washing 
 the paint off one side of his face. They first advertised 
 " Will not clean Metals ! " again and again ; nothing else. 
 That was an idea of the Dowager's, who entered into the 
 fun of the thing and was responsible for two thirds of her 
 grandson's success. " Papuum ! Papuum ! Will not clean 
 Metals!" Everybody wanted to find out what it would 
 clean. There was a young lady at the offices, always in 
 attendance, most willing to shew you. You might spill 
 whatever you wished to — in reason — on herself or her wliite 
 satin dress. George was going to be an extremely wealthy 
 man. He was as good as engaged to the daughter and 
 heiress of Benjamin Kops (no Jewish blood traceable), 
 whose empty little heart went bumping up and down at the 
 idea of a handsome husband and a coronet. And it must 
 be confessed he worked hard at the business. The delight
 
 346 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 of watching moucy breed seemed to have sharpened all his 
 faculties. He sent round to every house in the Hague, a 
 pea of the wonderful mixture with accompanying verses 
 (which, bad as they were, he had not composed). The 
 wooden-seats in the public gardens and all the tramcar 
 cushions everywhere were renovated — once — with Papuum. 
 A cake of it was given away to any orphan-child that could 
 prove its parent's demise to have preceded " the greatest 
 discovery of the age." Thrice over an attempt was made 
 to import genuine Tatuas to parade the streets and sit in the 
 offices ; they all died on the voyage, but even that was an 
 advertisement. The chief difficulty consisted in breeding 
 the plant fast enough in enormous conservatories. The 
 supply gave out once, and that was by far the best advertise- 
 ment of all. There was a perfect battery at the doors, and 
 a clamour for Papuum ! 
 
 And the noble, the illustrious Eexelaers, they were petri- 
 fied by this disgrace to their immaculate name? They 
 were, till they found that this Papuum produced not thou- 
 sands but tens of thousands of florins, and then even Mar- 
 gherita remembered that the money, unlike its producer, 
 "did not smell." Besides, now-a-days, there are but a 
 couple of countries remaining in Europe — Austria, for 
 instance — where it is still possible to associate any earning 
 of money with disgrace. Holland is not one of them. In 
 the twentieth century there will be none at all. 
 
 The Rexelaers of Altena, the brother and sisters, chaffed 
 George a little at first. They were always finding specks on 
 his clothes and crying out for "Papoosel!" Once Topsy 
 even dabbed him with paint from her colour-box, but he 
 soon frightened them, by his rages, into letting him alone. 
 He permitted no allusion, out of business hours, to his busi- 
 ness side. This rule the old lady had especially impressed 
 upon him. He went out into society just the same, but 
 onlv after four, and in the office he wore coronets on his
 
 STAINS. ?A7 
 
 cuff-studs. Many people compared him most favourably 
 with his elder brother, Ouy. But he could not prevent the 
 roar of laughter which went up on all sides, when he acci- 
 dentally sat down on a freshly painted seat, in the German 
 minister's garden. 
 
 His father and mother were even pleased to sanction his 
 engagement to Miss Kops. Of course she must be con- 
 sidered " faute de mieux," but the match would consolidate 
 the business: Unfortunately the Kopses happened to be — 
 of all things! — Roman Catholics. Mevrouw Elizabeth 
 hesitated. 
 
 " They could not possibly be anything better," said her 
 mother, whom she consulted. " It looks less Jewish than 
 anything else. The girl's name, I hear, is Maria Christina, 
 a very judicious selection. I should at once make a rule 
 that she be known as Christina. You can say that there 
 are Maries in the family already." 
 
 " But there are not, mamma ? " remarked Mevrouw van 
 liexelaer. 
 
 " How tiresome you can be, Elizabeth," said the Dowager 
 peevishly, " and so rude."
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 THE lady's dole 
 
 " I'll do it," said Count Rexelaer aloud. " I ought to 
 have done it before. But 1 was alwa\'s too good-natured." 
 
 A couple of hours later Notary Strum, at work in his 
 office, received a telegraphic message summoning him to 
 My Lord of Deynum's presence by eleven on the morrow 
 morning. 
 
 He rose from his desk with a growl and lumbered across 
 the little entrance-hall, to the room where his mother sat 
 knitting, as ever. 
 
 " Here's a telegram," said Xicholas. " Order from 
 Pacha to come up to town to-morrow. Xever mind rain, 
 hail, wind or snow. Pacha says : ' Come. I whistled.' " 
 
 " Oh, Nicholas, with your chill ! " said the old woman, 
 and laid down her work. 
 
 " Yes, ^cith my chill ! " retorted Nicholas. " I couldn't 
 well go without." 
 
 " I suppose you must," said the widow thoughtfully. 
 "You see his Excellency doesn't know you are indisposed. 
 And it is a great privilege for you to act as the confidential 
 adviser of so magnificent a patron, Xicky." 
 
 " ' Magnificent ' is the word," replied Nicky, and went 
 back to his office, banging the door. 
 
 All these years mother and son had jogged on side by 
 side, or rather son a-top. " A wife and children would cost 
 me a second servant," reasoned the notary. " Mother looks 
 after me and the maid." But her company was not only
 
 THE LADY'S DOLE. 349 
 
 convenience and complacency ; for she had a maddening 
 way of ignoring — from incompetcTicy to comprehend them 
 — all the dear fellow's favourite fads of thought and expres- 
 sion, and having lived her whole life in submission to God, 
 the priest and the gentlefolks, she could not remember that 
 Nicholas believed, or said he believed, in the Almighty but 
 vaguely, in her other divinities not at all. She" would 
 gladly have sacrificed her life for her son — in fact, she did 
 so, in a long-drawn daily sacrifice — but she was incapable 
 of sparing him her old-fashioned utterances, from which he 
 vainly fled. If he grew ironical, she took him in earnest. 
 If he flew out at her, she would meekly cite his father. 
 Nicholas quoted his father at the clients, not to himself. 
 
 When Nicholas started next morning at daybreak, he 
 was safely wrapped up and galoshed and comfortered, and 
 his mother came running after him, in the cold, with pocket- 
 handkerchiefs and lozenges, of which he had already procured 
 a supply. He sent her back with a growl. 
 
 He had the pleasure of travelling all the way to the 
 Hague with a man who lamented " the decrease of defer- 
 ence in social relations." He bore this with the fierce si- 
 lence on which he had long nourished his spites and dis- 
 contents. " No use quarrelling," he would tell himself, 
 " with one's bread and butter, because the butter's bad." 
 
 His "magnificent patron" received him with unusual 
 friendliness, even thanking him for coming. " I wonder 
 what he wants," thought Strum. 
 
 Count Eexelaer immediately proceeded to enlighten him. 
 " Strum, I am going to do it," said his Excellency in his 
 hasty way. " I mean, about ' the Lady's Dole.' You were 
 quite right. I ought never to have allowed them to settle 
 again in Deynum." 
 
 The Notary's heart leapt within him. He forgot all 
 about the cold or the discomfort of coming. For years he 
 had vainly been endeavouring to convince Count Eexelaer, 
 and now that fine gentleman, just like a fine gentleman,
 
 350 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 sent for him, in the middle of winter, to say : " I am con- 
 vinced ! " Xo matter ; he would be avenged on his enemy 
 at last. 
 
 " I am greatly relieved," he said, blinking cheerfully be- 
 hind his glasses. " Your Excellency knows with what in- 
 creasing compunction I have paid the annual instalments 
 where they were no longer due." In his heart he wondered : 
 What has happened to set his Excellency still more 
 against the Baron ? 
 
 " Of course I knew that your view was the only correct 
 one," replied Count Rexelaer coldly. " But from charity — 
 pure charity — I declined to enforce it. Had the Baron 
 seen fit to show that reserve which I had a right to expect 
 from a gentleman, instead of assuming from the first an at- 
 titude which I may well call aggressive " He paused 
 
 and looked at Strum. 
 
 " Just so," said the Notary in sullen obedience, cracking 
 his huge finger-joints. 
 
 " Just so," repeated his Excellency. " He has developed 
 among the villagers the spirit of faction ; he has openly 
 opposed me on every occasion. I have borne it all in a 
 magnanimous spirit, for I cannot bear striking a man when 
 he's down. But at last our position has become quite un- 
 tenable. One of us must go. Write him a letter to say 
 that the money will no longer be paid." 
 
 Strum drew himself up eagerly, with one of his un- 
 couth jerks ; his speckled face was bright with exultation. 
 "I could write it here," he said, and let your Excellency 
 see it." 
 
 " There is no such hurry. But you will find pen and 
 ink on yonder table." 
 
 The Notary availed himself of the permission. " I won- 
 der what has done it," he repeated. " Surely not that mass 
 on the anniversary of the death of the Baron's mother which 
 they say he was so angry about." 
 
 It was but a straw which had caused Count Rexelaer's
 
 THE LADY'S DOLE. 351 
 
 long-gathering resentment to brim over. True, the Baron's 
 majority at a re-election had been over a hundred ; Father 
 Bulbius, embittered by Veronica's increasing perversity, had 
 taken to preaching distinctly polemical sermons, and such 
 of the country gentry as remained still untouched by the 
 corruption of the Hague had increased, since his Excel- 
 lency's appointment, in invidious cordiality to his rival. 
 For all these things Count Rexelaer hated — secretly, nerv- 
 ousl}^ deeply, according to his character — Deynum, its 
 Baron and its surroundings. Now that he had, not one 
 foot in the stirrup, but both hands on the bridle, he resolved 
 to hit back, the delightful feeling ! Not even life-long 
 cringing can teach the worm not to turn. 
 
 Still, he waited for the last little something. It took 
 the shape of a letter from the Baroness Borck of Rollingen 
 to her cousin Elizabeth, containing the information that a 
 wide-spread conviction was obtaining in the neighbourhood, 
 that all difficulties would be ultimately set right by a mar- 
 riage between Wendela and Reinout. Ridiculous as the idea 
 might be, it had commended itself to the country peojole 
 as a definite " restitution " ; " No need to inquire who first 
 started it," wrote the Baroness of Rollingen. " This is just 
 like their scheming Jesuitical ways" — the lady here thought 
 fit to ignore the engagement to Christina Kops, "a disgust- 
 ing alfair altogether" — "but I should be curious to know, 
 tliough we shall never do that, in how far your nephew, by 
 his conduct, may have given to the story a semblance of 
 foundation." 
 
 It was this last sentence which had set Count Rexelaer 
 thinking, for of course Mevrouw Elizabeth had shown him 
 the letter. He himself had been struck by the appearance 
 of that tall, dark girl the day she came up to the Castle. 
 He believed his son to be a great admirer of the weaker 
 sex ; why else these prolonged disappearances from home ? 
 Well, he had taken him behind the scenes himself, and was 
 the last man to object to a measure of dissipation.
 
 352 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 But Wendela? — that was another matter. Dull as Dey- 
 num undoubtedly was, notwithstanding the numerous 
 guests at the Castle, young twenty must be taught to dis- 
 tinguish. That was why fathers were created older than 
 their sons. 
 
 The Baron van Eexelaer had been to see Lise and her 
 three sturdy children. The old Squire enjoyed sitting of 
 evenings with Farmer Driest by the kitchen-hearth or on 
 the bench outside the Farmhouse ; they were contemporaries 
 and had in common a long life of insignificant little all- 
 important country-experiences. They could talk of these 
 for hours, in the quiet gloaming, over their solemn pi];)es, 
 while the dear music of the lowing cattle fell soft ujDon 
 the Farmer's ears from the winter stables or the summer 
 fields. 
 
 The Baron would talk on, in leisurely accents, about 
 Deynum, Deynum, Deynum. The farmers and their chil- 
 dren and their morals and their cows and their diflficulties, 
 and their quarrels, and all their financial ins and outs, and 
 a further infinity of " ands." His whole little universe of 
 Deynum. Driest, on his side, would carry on the conversa- 
 tion with that mixture of deference and independence in 
 "which the Dutch peasant excels. 
 
 But perhaps the Baron liked jilaying with the children 
 even better. He was foolishly fond of " babies," and grand- 
 children of his own he had none. The wee bits of human- 
 ity at the Farm adored him. Yes, he had many compensa- 
 tions. 
 
 He kept thinking of these during his trudge along the 
 frost-broken lanes. Like many men whose troubles are very 
 real, he loved to look upon the brighter side. He was far 
 better off than he had any right to be. For his conscience 
 reproached him still. 
 
 Some children were trying to slide in the slush. They 
 nudged each other and jerked their caps. For "Mynheer "
 
 THE LADY'S DOLE. 353 
 
 was the tangible Presence ; the other, up at the Castle, could 
 only be an August Xame. 
 
 Veronica came round from behind the wall of the Par- 
 sonage, dragging a basket of peat. 
 
 " Good-day, Veronica. How is his Reverence ? " said 
 the Baron amiably. 
 
 " Poorly," replied Veronica. " He can't stand the 
 draughts of this house." 
 
 "Dear me, I am sorry to hear that." — "Ah, I should 
 think so," muttered Veronica — " I wonder whether I could 
 go in to him for a moment ? " 
 
 " I suppose you may," replied the housekeeper ungra- 
 ciously. " He won't keep as quiet as I want him to." 
 
 " Ah, you let him have quiet ? " said the Baron ; even 
 the mildest of men like their morsel of malice at times. 
 Baron Rexelaer was perfectly aware that Veronica pro- 
 claimed him, whenever she dared, a spoiler of other men's 
 goods. He had turned her meek priest out of house and 
 home ; worse than that, he had appropriated the small 
 square of oilcloth she had left in her kitchen, a square 
 bought with her own earnings some twenty years ago. That 
 unconscionable, and unconscious, confiscation of oilcloth 
 formed a grievance still greater than the loss of the whole 
 of the former Parsonage. 
 
 The Baron knocked briskly at the living-room door. 
 " I don't want anything," cried Bulbius in querulous reply. 
 He turned a slow head in his arm-chair by the fire, and 
 pushed back the bowl at his side which had evidently con- 
 tained some unpalatable form of slop. Veronica had half- 
 a-dozen mildewed health-dicta, which she reverenced like 
 Gospel-truths. " Starve a cold," was one of them. The 
 Father would sometimes buy biscuits, but these grew terri- 
 bly stale in their paper bag. And he rejoiced that Veronica 
 had not as yet discovered the bottle in the cupboard, nor 
 the two glasses, which he never loashed. 
 
 " You coddle yourself, Bulbius," said the Baron bluntly.
 
 354 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 He had barely felt illness himself, and could not compre- 
 hend it unless, as in his wife's case, it assumed a visible 
 form. 
 
 " I am not robust like your Xobleness," pleaded Bulbius. 
 "You see, t am too stout." 
 
 " I do," said the Baron. 
 
 " But what is a poor creature to do." 
 
 ^' Gymnastics," said the Baron. 
 
 Father Bulbius spread out his vast body, which looked 
 still more mountainous under his shawl. 
 
 " The roj^e would break," he said helplessly. 
 
 " There are other things besides the trapeze. You might 
 try a ten-mile walk. But there ; when a man has once made 
 up his mind to die of apoplexy, no one can stop him. lie 
 must just have his way." 
 
 *' But I don't want to die," protested the Father piteously. 
 *' Neither of heat in the head, as you now predict, nor of 
 cold in the feet, as Veronica prophesies. There's the post- 
 man. Baron. Shall we have him in ? " And he rapped his 
 fat forefinger against the windowpane. 
 
 Y'"es, there was a letter for ilynheer the Baron. It was 
 Strum's letter. The old gentleman looked down at it, as it 
 lay in his hand, with a quick presentiment of coming ill. 
 Y^'et it was eight years now since he had been in the habit 
 of watching for misfortune per post. He opened the 
 envelope leisurely and took out the enclosure. And 
 having read it carefully through, he laid it down on the 
 table. 
 
 " God is strong," he said aloud, and nothing else. His 
 voice was unbroken. 
 
 Yet its calm, deep passion frightened the priest. " What 
 is it, dear Baron ? " he queried anxiously. " Nothing amiss, 
 I hope?" 
 
 " Oh no, nothing amiss," replied the Baron van Rexelaer. 
 He talked for a few moments of other things — the weather, 
 the village-school — and then he rose and departed. But
 
 THE LADY'S DOLE. 355 
 
 his steps trembled under liim, as he vainly tried to steady 
 them. 
 
 The Lady's Dole, it will be remembered, was a fund 
 which a seventeenth-century Baron van Eexelaer had insti- 
 tuted by settlements assigning the annual interest to " tlie 
 Spouse of the Lord of the Manor, as long as the Lord of the 
 Manor shall be a van Eexelaer." The words of the deed did 
 not sti^julate descent from the donor ; the money was to re- 
 vert to the last lady of Deynum or her heirs. The notary 
 of the place was perpetual trustee. 
 
 Immediately on the acquisition of the estate by Count 
 Eexelaer, Strum, his intellect sharpened by hate, had point- 
 ed out to that gentleman that henceforth the Countess 
 Margherita alone was entitled to the annual payment of 
 the appanage, she being " the spouse of the Eexelaer van 
 Deynum." But the Count had repudiated this suggestion 
 with disgust, even after the return of the other had so se- 
 riously disconcerted him. Gently, though vainly, the No- 
 tary persisted. Times change and opinions work round. 
 One evening his Excellency telegraphed. 
 
 The Baron, walking home with Strum's letter in his 
 pocket, refused to believe the incredible. He knew well 
 enough, none better, that there was not a droj) of his ances- 
 tors' blood in the veins of the Eexelaers van Deynum. " It 
 is mere intimidation for some object of their own," he 
 thought, and, without mentioning the matter to wife or 
 daughter, he, next morning early, sought out tlie Notary. 
 
 The office-door was still closed when he arrived, but 
 
 as he stood knocking and scraping, it was opened by old 
 
 Mrs. Strum, who immediately dropped into a succession of 
 
 curtsies. " Walk in. Mynheer the Baron," she began in 
 
 awestruck tones, " I hasten to inform my son. It is long 
 
 since your Nobleness accorded us the honour of a visit." 
 
 And pushing forward her own easy chair — the room was 
 
 manifestly a niggard's — she bustled away to find Nicholas. 
 
 " Shew him into the waiting-room," said Nicholas. 
 24
 
 356 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " Nicky ! The Baron ! " 
 
 " Shew him in, do you hear ? Say I am engaged." 
 
 " Nicholas, vour father would never have approved of 
 that." 
 
 " Why didn't you go with my father, then, if you can't 
 manage without him ? Do as I say." And this hater of 
 tyrants, who called Count Rexelaer " the Pacha," pointed 
 with the tip of his quill to the door. 
 
 The old lady turned aAvay with a sigh. " Your Noble- 
 ness will be more comfortable here," she said, leading the 
 way. " It is so hot in the sitting-room." The Baron, ut- 
 terly indifferent, sat down. 
 
 Twenty minutes' wait ensued, during which two peas- 
 ants came in who, seeing their former lord, remained stand- 
 ing. One was an old man. " Sit down, sit down," said the 
 Baron. Strum's clerk bent scribbling by the window, his 
 fingers blue wath cold. 
 
 At last a bell rang in the inner room. As the clerk put 
 his head through the door. Strum's voice was heard saying : 
 " Mynheer Eexelaer." 
 
 " Please to walk in, Mynheer the Baron," said the clerk, 
 standing deferentially aside. A faint flush of colour crept 
 over the old gentleman's wan cheeks. 
 
 " Good morning, Mynheer ; take a seat," said Strum, 
 and continued his writing for the tenth of a minute. Then 
 he looked up. " Well," he said. 
 
 " I have received a letter from you. Strum," said the 
 Baron, " I should wish to know what it means." 
 
 " What it says," replied .Strum. 
 
 " I should like to know what is the object of the threat 
 it contains." 
 
 " No other object than the threat itself, which is not a 
 threat, but a notification." 
 
 " In other words, I am to understand, that it is your 
 unalterable resolve to substitute the Countess Eexelaer for 
 my wife as recipient of the Lady's Dole?"
 
 THE LADY'S DOLE. 357 
 
 " My unalterable resolve. What else can I do ? 
 My movements in this matter are dependent on the 
 Count's generosity. Excuse my saying, Mynheer the 
 Baron, that you have been living all these years upon his 
 bounty." 
 
 " I — on his bounty," stammered the Baron. 
 
 " Undeniably." Strum cracked his thumbs for pleasui'e. 
 Yet he could not quite overcome the tendency to lapse into 
 civility. He brought himself to "with a jerk. 
 
 " A Notary's duty is seldom doubtful," he added, " as 
 my dead father used to say." 
 
 " Ah, leave me in peace with your dead father," 
 burst out the Baron, " God grant he rest quiet in his 
 grave ! " 
 
 Strum passed his great hand through his untidy hair. 
 He looked like a beaten school-boy as he joined his splay 
 feet. " I am very busy this morning," he murmured, " and 
 if there is nothing else " 
 
 " Once more, the money will not be paid next month?" 
 queried the Baron anxiously, despite his efforts at self-con- 
 trol. " It will never be paid again ? " 
 
 " 'No, for it cannot be. It is claimed by the owner." 
 
 " You know perfectly well that only the testator's own 
 family is meant. You, the descendant of the N'otary who 
 drew up the deed." 
 
 " The deed does not say so. I have no opportunity of 
 consulting my ancestor." 
 
 " It is starvation," groaned the Baron, breaking down 
 for one moment. " What object have you in taking the 
 bread from our mouths? " 
 
 A suppressed gleam of triumj)]! played behind the 
 Notary's spectacles. " I am only doing my duty," he said. 
 " Once before, when I was doing my duty, you struck me, 
 Baron Eexelaer." 
 
 " I know it," replied the Baron, " I was not sorrier then 
 than now."
 
 358 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Strum got up and faced his former patron. " I also re- 
 gret it," he said. lie opened the door into the waiting-room. 
 " Xo, Mynlieer the Baron," he continued, raising his voice, 
 " I cannot give you that money, because it is not mine to 
 give." 
 
 The old gentleman eyed the big lout before him with 
 gentle scorn : " I will not tell my friends," he said in a low 
 voice. " It would ruin you." 
 
 The Notary's mottled face twitched nervoush', and 
 though his attitude remained the same, yet his whole 
 personality seemed to collai^se. " I — I am nowise afraid, 
 Mynheer," he stuttered. " I feel that, whatever my 
 duty " 
 
 " Did you not hear me say I would not tell ? " asked the 
 Baron, and he passed out through the well-filled ante-room, 
 under a cross-fire of curious eyes. 
 
 Mother Strum stood curtsying at her window. For a 
 moment the wild impulse shook him to claim her help. 
 Then he recognised the hopelessness of such humiliation 
 and smilingly took off his hat. 
 
 As he passed the Parsonage, he heard Veronica's voice 
 intoning her only song — lame of rhyme and of reason : 
 
 " A fair, a merry maid was I, 
 With dancing step and laughing eye ! " 
 
 " She may be back sooner in the old place than she ex- 
 pects," he thought. 
 
 Suddenly he found himself in his own sitting-room. 
 " Wherever have you been so early ? " asked Wendela. He 
 tried to answer her. To his astonishment he could not. 
 The room was clouding over and twisting round. He 
 reeled forward to steady himself, and fell with a dull thud 
 on the floor. 
 
 The Baroness, unable to assist him, shrieked once and 
 then sat still, with trembling lips. Wendela had sprung 
 forward. "It is onlv a fainting fit," she said. "Only
 
 THE LADY'S DOLE. 359 
 
 the sudden coming into the heat ! " and she strove to 
 restore her father to consciousness. " Oh mon Dieu, 
 mon Dieu ! " repeated the Baroness, folding her useless 
 hands. With her the words were no vain ejaculation, but a 
 prayer.
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 XEW SCENES AXD OLD FACES. 
 
 Whex the Baron was " fully recovered " from his 
 stroke, even the Baroness noticed the change in him. She 
 herself, poor lad}', was now become a constant sufferer, with 
 little to do but to watch the slow ascent of her gout. Her 
 head was growing feeble ; she could be utterly broken-down 
 at times, and querulous. And Wendela, the headstrong, 
 the impatient, " born to conquer her fate," sat humbled in 
 this school of suffering. The actual physical sickness com- 
 manded and obtained her helpful sympathy. She could 
 speak of it, readily, for here was no one's fault but God's. 
 " It anyone has blundered," said the sceptical girl, " it must 
 be mother's Saints." 
 
 To her father also she was good ; almost happy, in his 
 weakness, to show him a tenderness free from reproach. 
 But the Baron rebelled against himself. "Face the en- 
 emy ! " he repeated, and he tried to do it with his stiffened 
 leg. This seizure was nothing, he said. Had he not had a 
 similar, if slighter, one many years ago on the evening 
 when the Marquis had found him ? He was well, for he 
 had no time to be ill. 
 
 It was true that he had no time. The three weeks sped 
 on rapidly to the first of March ; on that day the " Dole " 
 fell due. As the hours wore on without bringing the ac- 
 customed packet, the Baron, still very partially recovered, 
 grew more and more restless ; he shut himself up, foodless, 
 in his room and sat starinc^ at the inevitable end. Yet at
 
 NEW SCENES AND OLD FACES. 3(31 
 
 niglit-fall his very desperation roused him. He wrote a 
 hurried note, after lengthy inspection of that part of the 
 newspaper which he had not glanced at for years, and sent 
 Gustave to the post with it. The old servant shook his 
 head over the superscription. And the Baron lay awake all 
 night, alternately building up dreams of daily bread (no 
 longer of prosperity) and debating with himself whether he 
 should not telegraph a recall at dawn. Why should he ? 
 Failure could not make matters much worse, and success 
 was become a necessity. 
 
 He trusted to his wife's noAV almost ceaseless orisons and 
 bead-countings, although these were never for temporal sal- 
 vation. The Baroness, stiifening in her chair, in a little 
 alcove of crucifixes, images, and invocations, was rapidly be- 
 coming " devote," dead already, but for her physical pains 
 and her still active charity, a white, worn shadow. She 
 would ask for her poor to come and see her — hers by the 
 mastery of hearts ; she knew them well : the resjiectable, 
 the disreputable, the professional, the needy that are 
 ashamed, and she sent Wendela among them with creature 
 comforts ; the spiritual fared but ill at that young lady's 
 hands. Once the daughter, after long impatience, inter- 
 rupted her mother's monotonous mumbling. " Are you 
 happy. Mamma ? " she asked abruptly. " No," whispered 
 the Baroness, her pale eyes uplifted, as ever, to the solemn 
 dying Christ. The girl went up to her room and threw 
 herself down in a passion of weeping, her eyes averted, long 
 after, in dull, rebellious thought, from that great Sufferer 
 who had watched her slumbers ever since she was a cradled 
 babe. 
 
 Slic rose at last to get her father his beaten-up e^^, 
 Wendela Rexelaer was a thoroughly incompetent house- 
 keeper, and naturally hated both her incompetency and its 
 object. She stopped to inquire at the Baron's door, almost 
 hoping that he would refuse ; the mess was such a weari- 
 ness to make. " Oh no, I don't want it," called the Baron's
 
 362 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 feeble voice. She went into the kitclien and dutifully pre- 
 pared it. And he swallowed it without complaint. 
 
 In a few days the Baron knew the worst. The last few 
 thousand florins of his wife's small fortune had been swept 
 away. He looked up from the letter at Gustave, who had 
 brought it and who, in his tutored indiscretion, was linger- 
 ing with averted eyes over a distant rearrangement of 
 chairs. 
 
 " Gustave," said the Baron, " come here. Ten years ago 
 you told me you were a rich man. Are you still ? " 
 
 " Richer, Mynheer," replied Gustave promptly. " I 
 can't leave ofiE; for nobody can. It's like sliding down a 
 hill-side into the valley of perdition. I'm winning your 
 Nobleness's money still." 
 
 "I give you my word I had not speculated all these 
 years," said the Baron hastily. " But you're right. It's 
 gone. "We are penniless. And " — his eyelids trembled ; he 
 stammered painfully — " I want you to lend me a little 
 money — now.'''' 
 
 For only reply the servant ran to the door. " Listen. 
 Let me explain I " cried the Baron after him, desirous to 
 tell about the Lady's Dole. 
 
 " Just one moment while I fetch it, sir," said Gustave, 
 on the threshold. 
 
 " God foi'give me," cried the Baron. " There are good 
 men yet ! " and his voice failed him. Gustave, meanwhile, 
 who knew all about the Lady's Dole, had evidently made 
 up his mind that the whole of his little fortune would just 
 do to replace it. But he would not have presumed a second 
 time to offer any suggestions thereanent. 
 
 " I only want a little at first, a very little," said the 
 Baron presently, " just at first. "When I get stronger I can 
 do something, I dare say, and the Freule has a very fine 
 voice. I should prefer to go to a large city. Your sister in 
 Amsterdam who takes lodgers, perhaps we might go to 
 her?"
 
 NEW SCENES AND OLD FACES. 363 
 
 The servant had the delicacy to keep back the rush of 
 imploring protest which rose to his lips. " Amsterdam will 
 be brighter for your Nobleness than Deynum," he said, 
 " and for the Freule also. My sister will be proud. And 
 you can always return later on." 
 
 " Never," replied the Baron. " Not even to be buried 
 here I " And he broke down utterly and buried his face in 
 his hands. 
 
 After a moment of hesitation Gustave slipped away with- 
 out leave. " I wonder whether I did right," he debated 
 with himself in the hall. " It looked almost more like a 
 liberty to stay." 
 
 On the evening of their departure the Baron handed 
 over to Gustave a correct I.O.U. for a fraction of the latter's 
 savings, promising, with restless reiteration, punctually to 
 repay. The valet carefully buttoned up the precious paper 
 in his pocket-book, and subsequently, emboldened by a 
 couple of parting glasses at Job Hennik's, he as cautiously 
 tore it up, lest his heirs should at any time discover and en- 
 force it. 
 
 So the family arrived in Amsterdam on a windy March 
 night, and drove to Juffrouw Donders's lodging-house. 
 This house stands — or stood — on a narrow canal in one of 
 the humbler, middle-class parts of the city ; the frowning 
 houses look very forbidding; on both sides the stagnant 
 water froths with garbage and weeds. But Wendela could 
 see nothing of this, as she found herself blown, amid a 
 whirl of sleet and general rawness, into a low, white-tiled 
 passage, illumined by a far-away paraflfin-lamp. The others 
 were still busy with the Baroness ; stout Juffrouw Donders 
 came rolling forward and immediately overflowed. She 
 was all abundancy and redundancy, all double-chin and 
 shaking jaw. You fled away with the impression that 
 there was too much of her, bodily, mentally, and especially
 
 364 THE GREATKR GLORY. 
 
 orall}'. But, ouce out of reach of her shapeless good-iiuture, 
 you looked back with regret. 
 
 " And this is the Freule van Rexelaer ! " she began, with 
 perceptible promise of very much more. "Oh, Ereule, I 
 seem to have known you from a child, so much have I 
 heard of you, and your dear honoured parents ! Everyone 
 in this household knows everything about them ! It will 
 not be like coming among strangers to find yourselves in 
 our midst ! " 
 
 " They are bringing in my mother," said Wendela. " We 
 should like to go to our own rooms at once, if you please." 
 
 " And so you sball, my dear Freule," replied the land- 
 lady with prominent sympathy, lumbering slowly to the 
 front-door, meanwhile. She was not to be cheated of her 
 welcome to the Baroness. She knew what was due to 
 gentlefolks, as well as Gustave did. 
 
 Fortunately for the family from Deynum, she stood 
 greatly in awe of her brother, who had often afforded her 
 substantial support. During the first few days of their stay 
 among these uncongenial surroundings, the old servant 
 stood on guard twixt his masters and the world, warding off 
 JufErouw Donders's exuberant kindliness. The Baron 
 seemed not ill-content. " This time, thank Heaven, there 
 are no debts," he said. " And here I trust we shall live 
 and die in peace." 
 
 Wendela looked away in silence. The house was dark, 
 with the darkness of a great city's evil heart. It was stuffy. 
 If you lifted the sash, the smell from tlie canal came stream- 
 ing in. " A healthful smell," said Juffrouw Bonders. 
 " Just see what it has made of me ! " Gustave having de- 
 parted to look after the sale of the furniture, the good 
 woman fell on Wendela, like a feather-bed, with endless 
 laudation of her brother and disparagement of her departed 
 husband. The birth of the one and the death of the other 
 she considered the two chief blessings of her life. She had 
 had a hard time of it with manv mouths to fill. " Yet mv
 
 NEW SCENES AND OLD FACES. 365 
 
 Own was never empty," she said, with a pat on her portly 
 frame " though God knows I filled it last." 
 
 " Life is hideous," said Wendela more resolutely than 
 ever, and she buried herself in the glorious past. She 
 would draw her chair beside her mother's and ask for the 
 tales she had heard as a child. " Wanda, "Wanda," the 
 Baroness murmured in gentle reproof, " Heaven alone is 
 steadfast. The pomps and vanities fade away." " I know 
 that," said Wendela bitterly. 
 
 Yet the lodging-house was not all noisy loneliness to the 
 country-girl. A day or two after her arrival, as she was 
 coming down-stairs earlier than usual, she met a young man 
 who shrank aside with unwilling mien. The light from a 
 little dusty window fell full upon his face ; his eyes were 
 irresistibly drawn towards hers, and as his blush deepened to 
 the old familiar apple-red, she recognised him. " Piet ! " 
 cried impetuous Wanda. Then she stammered : " I beg 
 your pardon. I thought you were someone else," and stuck 
 fast. 
 
 " I am Piet," said the young man. " I am glad you re- 
 cognised me, Freule." 
 
 She leant up against the banisters, and it amused him to 
 see how little changed her manner was. " However came 
 you here ? " she said. " I shall want you to tell me all 
 about it." 
 
 There was not very much to tell. Having made his way 
 to the capital, with the intention of " going to sea," he had 
 met with good people who had kept him as their errand- 
 boy. One day he had run up against Gustave, who was liv- 
 ing with Juffrouw Donders, during the Baron's absence at 
 Cleves, and Gustave had procured him a garret in the lodg- 
 ing-house. " And here I have been ever since," concluded 
 Piet, " and wasn't it good of him to look after me, 
 Freule?" 
 
 " But why didn't he tell us?" questioned Wendela, be- 
 wildered. "And oh, your mother, Piet ! "
 
 366 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " Mother knows I'm doing well. She don't know any 
 more. I can't help it," Piet went on doggedly. " Myn- 
 heer Gustave agreed with me. It's all father's fault. You 
 know all about father, Freule." 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Wendela gravely. " But I thought 
 that we all should be subject to our parents." She greatly 
 admired herself for the propriety of this sentiment. She 
 also admired herself for the faithfulness with which she 
 practised it. 
 
 He looked grieved but not convinced. " I'm doing 
 well," he said in self-defence. " Better than I should have 
 done at home, though I've not made the fortune I had 
 hoped to make. I am clerk to a solicitor, Freule." 
 
 She said she was very glad to hear it. He must come 
 and see her father. And she continued her way, confused 
 by the strangeness of this meeting. " He is just like a 
 hundred other clerks," she told herself, but in her heart she 
 thought this handsome, well-grown youth as superior to 
 other clerks as her boy-lover had been superior to other 
 peasant-boys. " He is just Piet," she said. 
 
 " A solicitor," said the Baron anxiously, " is the very 
 person I am most desirous to meet, but one fights shy of 
 them, especially after knowing Strum." 
 
 Piet Poster appeared before the Baron and Baroness. 
 His manner was that of a page in the presence of his lieges. 
 
 " And what is the name of your solicitor, Piet ? " 
 
 " Mynheer Spangenberg, landheer. Everybody says he's 
 amazingly clever." 
 
 " So much the better. And where does he live ? " 
 
 " He has his office on the Prinsengracht, landheer." 
 
 " I want you to ask him when he can receive me." 
 Wendela looked up in protest. " Yes, my dear, yes ; I can 
 go in a cab." 
 
 " Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the 
 world," repeated the Baroness with her back to the others. 
 
 " There's only one thing, landheer," began Piet, awk-
 
 NEW SCENES AND OLD FACES. 367 
 
 wardly fingering his pot-hat. " Master's a very great radi- 
 cal. One of the extreme Left, he calls it." 
 
 " Ah," said the Baron. Then he added, after a thought- 
 ful pause, " I dare say there are honest men among them." 
 
 " And you, are you of the extreme Left ? " asked 
 Wendela, with laughing eyes. 
 
 " I am a clerk, Freule," he replied quickly. 
 
 " Hush, Wendela. Please, if possible, make an early 
 appointment for me with your employer, Piet." 
 
 Wendela followed the young man into the passage. 
 " You must no longer call my father ' landheer,' " she said. 
 
 " Oh but, Freule, I can hardly help it." 
 
 " You must help it. The landheer out yonder, forsooth, 
 is Count Kexelaer ! " She stamped her foot aiid then, 
 ashamed of this ebullition, retreated hastily to the sitting- 
 room. Juffrouw Donders's voice was heard downstairs, 
 soundly rating the maid of all work.
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 LITTLE PARADISE. 
 
 "Another poem from Volkert," said Spangenberg, ad- 
 vocate and editor, tentatively dangling the manuscript in 
 question over the editorial waste-paper basket. 
 
 " And who is Volkert ? " a^ked the editor's compan- 
 ion, an untidy old man with a peaked beard, like a 
 goat's. 
 
 " Your question proves what no longer wanted proving," 
 replied Piet Poster's master, laughing, " namely, that you 
 poets recognize no contemporary colleagues. This Volkert 
 is a mysterious young gentleman at the Hague, of perfect 
 manners — he has been here once or twice — and evidently of 
 gentle birth. He is also a Priest and Proj)het of the Peo- 
 ple, but then all the great poets are that nowadays." 
 
 "/ take no interest in the lower classes, and you know 
 it," replied the other, leisurely warming his knees. " Odi 
 profanum vulgus, et arceo." 
 
 " I forgot," said the young editor carelessly. " Volkert 
 does, a poetical one. He signs his contributions to my 
 ' Cry of the People ' with a single enigmatical P. By-the- 
 bye, that might stand for ' Profanus.' Now what shall I do 
 with his latest ? The basket or the bays ? Surely an edi- 
 tor's responsibility is unique under heaven !" 
 
 " Let me judge it," proposed the untidy man, senten- 
 tiously, and he took up the paper. In a very short time he 
 laid it down again. " Nicht einem jeden ward des Sanger's 
 Kunst gegeben," he said.
 
 LITTLE PARADISE. . 369 
 
 Spangenberg's honest face twitched with sudden resent- 
 ment. " I shall put it in," he declared coolly. 
 
 The poet rose, majestically gathering his dressing-gown 
 about him. " You should not have asked my opinion, 
 Christian ! " he said with suj^erb unreason, and stalked to- 
 wards the door. 
 
 " No, but, look here. Mynheer Morel ! " cried the good- 
 natured editor. "This is really fine; just listen! One 
 would like its author to proclaim it in the ' salons ' of the 
 Hague ! " But the other was gone. 
 
 The office of " The Cry of the People " was situated at 
 that time in a little court just off the public thoroughfare. 
 Since then it has been removed to more commodious quar- 
 ters, but Spangenberg is still editor of the paper, Spangen- 
 berg the Socialist. Yes, he is a clever man, unfortunately. 
 But Piet Poster was mistaken in vaunting the extent of 
 his law-practice. People who employ lawyers possess prop- 
 erty, and only a poor man makes money out of an " ism." 
 
 The name of the court was " Little Paradise." Hyper- 
 bolic that name may have been, but we know so little of 
 Paradise. It is long since our ancestors lived there, and 
 families which have " known better days " are too apt to 
 exaggerate. Present Paradises go by comparison. The 
 street was very narrow, very noisy, very dirty, and redolent 
 of all the vegetable produce of Jewry, " given away," from 
 slow hand-carts to thanklessly haggling Gentiles by hook- 
 nosed, rag-bedecked benefactors. All day long the street 
 was a babel of cucumbers and oranges. You were glad to 
 escape from that bawling, brawling crowd, through a neat 
 brick archway with a cheerfully grinning Death's head over 
 it, into a little square of houses round a grass-plot and a 
 central bed of roses. Mevrouw Morel had begged the roses 
 from Juffrouw Spangenberg. 
 
 The whole place belonged to Christian Spangenberg's 
 parents, who lived in the substantial house alongside the
 
 370 • THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 archway; in fact, they had turned tlieir unprofitable garden 
 into an Eden of rent-producing bricks. Their back- win- 
 dows looked out on the cottage-like buildings, which were 
 low, like the rents, so that Heaven appeared nearer in the 
 trim little court than in the tall, loud street, outside. The 
 distant, deadened yell of " Cheap ! Dirt cheap ! " only 
 beautified the silence, and Mrs. Spangenberg would let the 
 children play upon the grass-plot, when Spangenberg was 
 out. And children, romping on a grass-plot, will laugh 
 and shout, even in the Jew-quarter of Amsterdam. 
 
 Mevrouw Morel " thanked her Maker " for bringing her 
 here. But, then, she was a thankful soul. She " thanked 
 her Maker " constantly, and also " her stars," and " good- 
 ness," and even " herself," so there may not have been 
 much in the gratitude she scattered so freely. She knew " 
 well enough what she meant when she thanked Mrs. 
 Spangenberg. She meant eggs for the ailing, cakes for the 
 diligent, kindness for all. There were nine Morels, includ- 
 ing parents, in one of the cottages, whom Spangenberg 
 would never have accepted as tenants — only think of the 
 woodwork ! — but for Mrs. Spangenberg's broad admiration 
 of the " dear little golden-haired, pale little dears." 
 
 Not that Spangenberg was by any means a hard-hearted 
 man. He was a contractor ; I do not know what he con- 
 tracted in the course of his money-making except a gruff 
 manner, but it certainly was not his heart. He made money, 
 and his wife liked that, and they enjoyed it together in a solid, 
 substantial, middle-class way ; they had been poor together 
 once. They sent their clever only son, who was always " want- 
 ing to know," to the Grammar School and then to the Uni- 
 versity, but when even this latter Babylonic Tower of 
 Learning (as vast and as confused) still failed to supply 
 young Christian's need, they began to fear that he wanted 
 to know too much. There had been a daughter, much 
 older than the late-born darling, who had married " against 
 them," as they called it, and, sailing to the Indies with her
 
 LITTLE PARADISE. 371 
 
 husband, liad dropped out of their lives. Henceforward 
 Mrs. Spangenberg had a fretful dread of " thwarting," 
 which maintained itself even when Christian (?et 20) be- 
 gan to rant about the Eights of Man ! " Don't put his 
 back up, John," she constantly pleaded. " If we'd let 
 Jacoba see more of her Arthur, perhaps she'd have found 
 out what a duffer he was." The father unwillingly ac- 
 quiesced, partly because of a manner young Hopeful had of 
 throwing back his head as soon as the "thwarting" began. 
 The worst blow befell the old man when his go-ahead son 
 deliberately plunged into the sea of social miseries and 
 thence sent up his " Cry of the People." The young advo- 
 cate called himself a socialist, because with that party alone 
 he found sympathy, political, with suffering. In reality he 
 was one of the few whose pulses beat quicker when they 
 hear of injustice — to others. His gorge rose against incom- 
 petent nepotism and pampered monopoly, against the sweat- 
 ing of women and the torture of children, things we all dis- 
 approve of theoretically, in our slippers by the fire. But 
 Christian Spangenberg was an incipient Dutch Kingsley, 
 with the poetry left out. He started a people's Mission and 
 Social Club in the wretched quarter near his own respect- 
 able home. Furthermore he edited the " Cry of the Peo- 
 ple," thereby stamping himself a " Socialist " at once. 
 
 And his unfortunate father possessed money in tlie 
 funds. The mother — desperate with the horror of a child- 
 less old age — flung her love between these combative ele- 
 ments and effected an armistice. Christian was to remain 
 in the house and continue his law business. But his social- 
 ism must be banished to one of the cottages in Paradise 
 Court, there to be left under lock and key when he rose to 
 go home. The " Cry of the People " was never heard 
 within Spangenberg Senior's doors. All the relations and 
 connections, hard-working, hard-fisted burghers, looked on 
 Christian as crazy. The chamber-cloaked father sat over 
 his strong-box of evenings in property-laden snugness ; the 
 26
 
 372 TDE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 eagle-faced son trod the boards of his Office at the back, de- 
 nouncing the " gilded obesity of the bourgeois." And when 
 they met at supper, sincerely affectionate, they got on very 
 well. 
 
 It was Mevrouw Morel's birthday, the greatest event of 
 the year in Little Paradise, far greater even than Juffrouw 
 Spangenberg's. For, if this latter good- and heavy-natured 
 body was the Lady of the Garden, bright, clever little Mrs. 
 Morel was its Guardian Angel. 
 
 In the morning — " at dawn of day," said the poet — the 
 seven children, six of whom had spent the night packed, 
 like sardines, in boxes, gathered outside their parents' bed- 
 room, the baby having been fetched out previously, to com- 
 plete the surprise, while mother pretended to be asleep. 
 And a surprise it was — as it had been for the last half-a- 
 dozen years — when the whole lot of them, led by the baby, 
 struck up an Ode to the Day. She came hurrying out and 
 stood in the doorway, smiling upon them with the comeli- 
 est of faces, in her night-cap and woollen shawl, this mother 
 of seven and an eighth baby coming, and she kissed them 
 all round, on both cheeks, when the song was completed, 
 and then had to kiss them again, because she had surrepti- 
 tiously given Peterkin, the lame one, an extra hug and the 
 others had seen it. Only her husband hung back, just a 
 little ashamed. " It wasn't my own," he said with some 
 hesitation; " I had not time to complete it. Xext year, if 
 I am spared, they shall sing you my own." 
 
 " I know, dearest," she said, " I recognised it. It was 
 Pottema's. Yes, next year, please God ; and then it will be 
 the finest ode that ever poet sang." 
 
 "Do you think so?" he questioned dubiously. "I tore 
 up what I had done. Pottema's poetry has faults, but, on 
 the whole, it is not undeserving." 
 
 She sighed a little passing sigh. Lina, fifteen and her 
 mother's right hand, had been a little toddling thing when
 
 LITTLE PARADISE. 373 
 
 Homerus had first spoken of that ode to his wife. " She 
 will not be able to repeat it, dear," the mother had said. 
 
 But the poem was not yet ready ; none of Homerus's 
 poems ever were. " Not for want of the power," said his 
 wife, and perhaps she was right. Homerus Morel was a 
 seer of visions and a dreamer of beautiful dreams, his vast 
 brow bursting with ideas, all in motion for an exit, like 
 gases, a man full of thought, and yet often incaj^able of 
 thinking. His father, an indolent scholar and gentleman, 
 had given him a luxurious education, while spending the 
 boy's small inherited fortune ; in those days Homerus had 
 only been Hendrik, the change was a late inspiration of his 
 own. He believed himself the one supreme poet of his 
 epoch, but he suffered from terrible sjiasms of doubt. With 
 an artist's perception of the greatness beyond him, he would 
 suddenly tear up whatever he had written, and sob out his 
 weakness on the breast of his faithful spouse. And that 
 lady would comfort him and send him for a walk in the 
 Court. Once there, he could trudge round the grass-plot 
 for hours, his lank body drooping forward beneath his 
 knotted hands, his balloon-shaped head uplifted, with its 
 pointed nose and beard. " There goes the poet," said some 
 busy neighbour, at her lattice, " then it can't be twelve 
 o'clock." 
 
 For punctually at noon Mevrouw Morel would call : 
 " Homerus, come to dinner ! " She never bade him come 
 and hold the baby, even when her own three hands were 
 more than full. 
 
 She must have had at least three hands, for she looked 
 after all the children, including this year's and last year's 
 baby, and she even found time to have a girl-help and look 
 after her. Moreover slic looked aftiM- her husband and kept 
 him as comfortable, though she could not keep him as tidy, 
 as the rest. Incidentally she also supported the family, while 
 the poetry was getting ready which was one day to enrich 
 it. The whole lot of them believed in this beautiful con-
 
 374 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 summation, even the smallest, who, having no inkling what 
 poetry was, were certainly least to blame. Father was their 
 gold-mine ; some day he would be famous, and then there 
 would always be plenty to eat. They nudged each other, 
 at their play, suddenly hushed by the sight of the poet at 
 his desk. " What is riches, mother? Only money?" little 
 Homer, his father's namesake, had asked one day. The 
 parents looked at each other, struck to the soul. Mevrouw 
 Morel had been down-hearted that morning, and had 
 grumbled somewhat. She kissed both Homers for only 
 reply. 
 
 The mother supported her family by writing children's 
 gift-books to order, the order mostly including the moral of 
 the tale : " To illustrate the evils of greediness, about 15,- 
 000 words. Little girl must have curly hair, and greengage 
 jam must be medium of punishment, as per picture. Eeady 
 by 15th of next month." It was easy, and not unprofitable, 
 if only you wrote two stories a month. 
 
 The little woman's deepest depth of soul, however, was 
 not centred in her tale-concocting nor even in her house- 
 keeping ; those leisure moments which she had in common 
 with all intensely busy people she devotod to the composi- 
 tion of a many-volumed work on " The Social Position of 
 the Child in the Development of European Civilisation." 
 For she had been great since her childhood in the science 
 of sociology, of which her father had been professor and she 
 his favourite pupil. He?' book will be finished some day, 
 you may be sure. " Scientific works do not sell," she would 
 say to her husband. "Not like poetry, first-rate poetry, of 
 course. Not as yours will." She apologised for her hobby. 
 Other luxuries she had none. 
 
 " Good morning. Mother ; many happy returns of the 
 day," said young Spangenberg, looking in on ^Nlevrouw 
 Morel. " I couldn't come sooner, being detained by law- 
 business on the Prinsengracht."
 
 LITTLE PARADISE. 375 
 
 " You mustn't call me ' mother ' any more, Christian, as 
 I told you last birthday. I am getting too old to be pleased 
 with a grown-up son." 
 
 " You old ! " the young advocate laughed merril)^ 
 " Your youth is as perennial as the Child's of which you 
 write. What says baby? Grandma? " 
 
 She joined in his laugh, as she bustled about among her 
 dinner-things. 
 
 " I wanted to ask," Christian Spangenberg went on, 
 " would you let me bring Volkert this evening ? — I have 
 spoken of him recently — you remember — the poet ? " 
 
 " Oh, you may bring him of course. But is he one of 
 your Socialists, Christian? Because, you know, I do not 
 believe in your Socialists." 
 
 " Nor I in sociology, Mevrouw, you remember. Good- 
 bye, then, and thanks, till to-night." 
 
 " That boy does too much," remarked Mevrouw Morel, 
 hurrying from the table to the oven. 
 
 " A man cannot do too much," said the poet, from his 
 arm-chair by the fire. 
 
 " But he can do too many things at a time," protested 
 the housewife, who mostly did three. 
 
 " True ; he should give his whole mind to one," re- 
 sponded Homerus, "would he excel."
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 
 YOLKERT. 
 
 Spangexbehg rushed on to liis office — his editorial 
 office. " Anyone been, AVonnema ? " he asked of the single 
 clerk. 
 
 " Only a man with some copy. Mynheer Volkert's up- 
 stairs." The clerk, a meagre-looking individual with ever- 
 lastingly hungry eyes, handed a packet across to his " chief." 
 
 " All right. You can go and have dinner." Spangen- 
 berg ran up to his den. " Hallo," he cried on entering. 
 " Glad you managed to come. Doing nothing, as usual?" 
 
 " I was thinking," re2)lied the individual thus addressed, 
 without altering his lazy position by the stove. 
 
 " That need not have prevented your keeping up the 
 fire. Or supposing you had looked through this stupid pile 
 of newspapers — but that was expecting too much." 
 
 " True," said the other. " Don't bully me. You know 
 I've no head for practical politics." 
 
 " Practical politics unfortunately have but little to do 
 with the ' Cry,' " muttered the young editor, pausing, with 
 a very satirical grin, by his over-loaded desk. 
 
 " But look here," began Yolkert suddenly, " I really had 
 something to occupy me. I found this on coming in." 
 He flung across a paper to his friend. 
 
 It contained these few words in a firm feminine hand : 
 
 " Your poem last week was noble and true. Go on ; you 
 are doing a great work." 
 
 Spangenberg turned the paper round, then he looked
 
 VOLKERT. 377 
 
 hesitatingly into Volkert's handsome expectant face, and 
 burst into a shout of laughter. 
 
 " Of course she is young ! " he cried, " and very beautiful. 
 I don't wonder yon are charmed." 
 
 " I don't care about that," replied the poet earnestly. 
 " I have touched a human heart." 
 
 " Can yon pardon me, if I inquire what particular verses 
 the lady is alluding to? She has taken her time about 
 writing, and I grieve to say I forget." 
 
 " It's the one called ' Noble Nobles,' " replied Volkert, 
 sullenly staring at the neglected stove. " You remember, 
 the one beginning : 
 
 " ' They are not noble who but bear the name, 
 
 While deeds and words a bastard's birth proclaim ; 
 But they whose heart and intellect have fed 
 Upon the truths for which their fathers bled.' " 
 
 " Quite so," said Spangenberg. " And do you know ex- 
 actly what it means V " 
 
 " Why did you insert it? " asked the poet with spirit. 
 
 But Christian, his eyes upon the letter, musingly re- 
 peated Volkert's first two lines. " I have it," he said slowly. 
 " Some poor little shop girl or sempstress, ruined by a sprig 
 of the aristocracy, ' whose words and deeds a bastard hirth 
 ])roclaim.' No2U she finds out he won't marry her. Poor 
 little creature : I wish I could help." He got up and came 
 and stood in front of Volkert : " Yes," he said, " you have 
 beautiful thoughts. It is very nice and pretty to have 
 beautiful thoughts." 
 
 " It's not that," replied Volkert. " Here is a human 
 creature whose heart I've touched. It's a wonderful ex- 
 perience. I have touched some grateful stranger's heart. 
 I never felt anything like it before." 
 
 " It is grand," said Christian, solemnized by the other's 
 evident emotion, " to know that one man can help another 
 by something else besides a copper tossed in the dirt. Did
 
 378 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 you never feel that before? Gifted, graceful, graceless 
 sleeper, you feel it — do you ? — at last ? " 
 
 The " mysterious young gentleman from the Hague " 
 spread a pair of white hands towards the sooty stove. 
 " I suppose I had not your opportunities," he replied, a little 
 moodily. 
 
 " The more you feel it the better," cried his youthful 
 Mentor, unheeding. " I wish I could trample the feeling 
 deep down into your heart. Don't mind me or the mistakes I 
 am making. Go down on your knees to whatever God you 
 believe in and vow, at this crisis of your soul's existence, 
 never to let the new feeling slip away. Give yourself in the 
 future, not your money only, not only your beautiful 
 thoughts. Give your jjosition which I believe to be high ; 
 give your talents which I know to be great. There are so 
 few of us who think as you do. Give yourself in the fight 
 against oppression and injustice, against ignorance and 
 crime." 
 
 "I will," cried the other. "I have always wanted to; it 
 sounds so beautiful. But I am waiting for my opportunity; 
 some day it will come ! " 
 
 " Look through these newspapers then," replied Chris- 
 tian, pushing forward a pile ; " mark all passages alluding 
 to the trial of the boy Smits for insulting the Minister of 
 Justice. Poor little fellow ! they had imprisoned his father 
 for speaking the truth. There ; that will do for to-day. 
 To-morrow will take care of itself." The poet pulled a 
 face, but he drew up his chair to the table and began doing 
 as he was bid. 
 
 Presently Spangenberg looked up from his own work : 
 " For doing only is the true believing," he quoted. " Some- 
 body says that ; I forget who." 
 
 " Why, it's in one of my sonnets," said Volkert. " You 
 know it is." 
 
 " On my honour, I did not. Oh you poets, you 
 poets ! "
 
 VOLKERT. 379 
 
 In the evening the two men met again at Spangenberg's 
 hiw-oflfice, on their way to the Morels'. " I must just look 
 in at the ' Club,' " said Christian, as they emerged ints the 
 street. 
 
 The " Club," then the first of its kind, would be consid- 
 ered a poor affair nowadays. It stood in a back street of 
 one of the humblest parts of the city ; the double parlour 
 downstairs being occupied by workmen smoking and 
 drinking beer over their newspapers or chess-boards ; while 
 in one of the upstairs rooms a reading-class was going on 
 for street-arabs over twelve. Everybody knew Christian, 
 the founder of the whole concern, and several men expressed 
 regret that to-night's weekly lecture had been postponed. 
 The subject was announced : " Why and how must we 
 reach the North Pole?" Last week's had been " The Fol- 
 lies of the Paris Commune." 
 
 Piet Poster was the teacher of the upstairs boys, a 
 disciplinarian sturdily jolly and strong. As the young 
 men entered his class-room, a dirty ragamuffin came 
 slouching in behind them ; the poet drew hastily aside. 
 " Coffee," called out Poster, " go downstairs again im- 
 mediately. You know you mayn't come up till you're 
 washed." 
 
 The boy hesitated. Spangenberg turned quickly: "My 
 dear Volkert," he said, " it's late already, and I must be 
 busy a few minutes with Poster. Take this urchin down- 
 stairs — there's a good fellow ! — and wash him." 
 
 The couple departed — it would have been too silly to 
 refuse. As they wound down the narrow staircase, Vol- 
 kert, anxious to cover his embarrassment, commenced con- 
 versation. 
 
 " Why do they call you ' Coffee '?" he asked. 
 
 " Because of what came off when I washed first," said 
 the boy. 
 
 They found a pantry in which stood several tubs of tepid 
 water, under a fiaring gas-light. " I won't," said the boy,
 
 380 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 when he saw them, and hung up, dogged and dishevelled, 
 against the whitewashed wall. 
 
 The young dandy opposite twirled his cane and felt 
 ashamed of his orange gloves. He resolved to try argu- 
 ment : " Why not ? " he said, persuasively. 
 
 " 'Cos it makes one feel cold," replied Coffee. 
 
 " But then you can't go upstairs again. Don't you want 
 to learn to read ? " 
 
 " Yes, I shall too," said Coffee. He stared intensely. 
 He was lost in contemplation of the gentleman's gold chain. 
 The Lover of all Mankind grew weaker than water before 
 this refractory brother, but vanity recoiled from an un- 
 washed return to the class-room. " Look here," he said, 
 " I'll give you this silver florin, if you'll clean your face and 
 hands." The effect Avas instantaneous. " You needn't 
 mention the florin," said Volkert, as they wended their way 
 upstairs again. But at the door he halted, ashamed. " Say 
 what you like," he whispered. A cheer greeted the van- 
 quished Coffee, who stole silently to a seat. " I congratulate 
 you. Mynheer," said Piet in an eager aside to the visitor. 
 " For days I have been regretfully sending that boy away. 
 You manage them better than L" Volkert coloured. " I 
 gave him a florin to do it," he said. 
 
 Mevrouw Morel's frequent evening-parties would have 
 delighted William Wordsworth, for their material pleasures 
 were " j^lain," and their " thinking " was " high." This 
 occasion of her birthday, however, Avas always distinguished 
 by mixed company, and drinks. Spangenberg Senior's an- 
 nual contribution consisted of a bowl of punch, and his wife 
 sent a cake from the confectioner's which the children de- 
 clared vastly inferior to their mother's homemade. 
 
 There was little Miss van Dolder in her grandmother's 
 brooch and a black silk which might also have been her 
 grandmother's. Miss van Dolder represented Hereditary 
 Wealth in Little Paradise, with an income, from somewhere
 
 VOLKERT. 381 
 
 in the funds, of nearly a hundred pounds. She had seri- 
 ously considered the duty of removing when the " Cry " 
 first arose in the Court, but she dreaded, the possible dam- 
 age to her grandmother's inlaid cabinet. She professed 
 an inherent distaste for all children and manifested a 
 consistent affection towards the seven little Morels. And 
 there was Balby, the poor old lodger at the dressmaker's, 
 Homerus's especial protege, because he devoted whatever 
 remained to him of life to the silent accompaniment of the 
 poet on his interminable walks round the square. Homerus 
 discoursed of all things in heaven or on earth, or beneath 
 the abysses of the sea ; if he halted for breath, his compan- 
 ion would remark, with a shake of the head : " It is mar- 
 vellous indeed " or " It sounds quite incredible," and the 
 poet would complacently proceed. One day he had been 
 telling how a famous contemporary had acknowledged his 
 genius : " And what do you think of that ? " he inquired. 
 "It sounds quite incredible," said Balby, meditatively eying 
 the pump. 
 
 And there were the parent Spangenbergs, upon whose 
 arrival the extra candles were lighted. Miss van Bolder re- 
 fiiained anxiously debating with herself whether she had 
 taken offence at this on the previous occasion. Spangen- 
 berg, on his part, was considering, for the fiftieth time, if 
 the hostess was entitled to " my dear " the wife of the owner 
 of the property. Fortunately Ilomerus sat oblivious of 
 these doubts. Was it not " Mevrouiu Morel " and " Jvf- 
 frouio Spangenberg " ? Only a Dutchwoman can fully 
 fathom that distinction. 
 
 Presently Christian put in his head. " Good evening, 
 everybody. Good evening. Miss van Dolder," he said, " how 
 solemn you all look. Might I ask you something, Me- 
 vrouw?" 
 
 She came out to him on the landing. " I was just mix- 
 ing the punch," she said reproachfully. 
 
 " Oh, it can't spoil under your hands. I've got Tipper,
 
 382 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 the tailor-evangelist I was telling you of. May I bring him 
 up as well as Volkert? He isn't as tiresome as you'd 
 think." 
 
 " But what's the use of bringing all these people here, 
 Christian?" 
 
 " Oh, I want them to know you. It does them good." 
 
 " True," said the little lady thoughtfully. " Any- 
 one might consider it a privilege to listen to Mynheer 
 Morel." 
 
 " Exactly," replied Spangenberg, bounding downstairs. 
 
 " But your parents will object," she hissed over the ban- 
 isters. 
 
 " They always do," sang back this graceless product of 
 parental love. 
 
 Volkert, immediately on his entrance, held all the ladies' 
 hearts in the hollow of his unconscious hand. In that 
 humble little comjjany he shone unassumingly, like a still, 
 white star, his one unattainable desire to remain unnoticed 
 and give no trouble. Tipper on the other hand, a good 
 young man and first cutter to a tailoring firm, shrank back, 
 fussy from shyness and irregularly assertive on principle. 
 It was his religious belief he asserted, not himself. 
 
 The clock ticked slowly, and the resjiectable company 
 sat in a circle of boredom. Juffrouw Spangenberg praised 
 the eldest daughter, Lina, to her blushful face, causing the 
 damsel's mother to wriggle on her chair, and the contractor 
 tediously told a lengthy story, which everyone had read the 
 day before in the Amsterdam Gazette, about an Emir of 
 Blucherstan (as he called him) who, travelling on a tour of 
 inspection in famine-stricken provinces, had requisitioned 
 provisions from the starving inhabitants and been fed upon 
 roast child under the designation of veal. The little hostess 
 cast terrified glances at the wall behind which five of her 
 own offspring were sleeping ; the advocate murmured a 
 " pereant ! " over his punch. 
 
 " It was one of that family that conquered Napoleon ? "
 
 VOLKERT. 383 
 
 suggested the dressmaker's lodger, speaking for the first 
 time. 
 
 " Of course, Balby," replied Christian heartily amid the 
 general hesitation. " So I thought," said the lodger, taking 
 snuff. 
 
 But it was not till the elder Spangenbergs had departed, 
 accompanied by Miss van Dolder (in a flutter of irritable 
 self-reproach for having once more forgotten to rise before 
 the contractor's wife) that the simple enjoyment, such as it 
 was, of the evening began. Half a dozen men drew their 
 chairs round the bright fire and the plenteous punch-bowl, 
 and little Mrs. Morel sat down to her squeaky piano and 
 played them Chopin. Then Spangenberg sang a couple of 
 songs, and one of these brought a thrilling surprise to the 
 stranger ; the words were his own, a lament from the " Cry," 
 set to music, by whom ? The tears stood in his big dark 
 eyes. " Magnificent eyes," whispered the little musician to 
 Christian. But Christian was busy proposing her health in 
 terms of abundant laudation and trying to get Tijjper, the 
 teetotaler, to drink it in a glass of the golden fluid. Then 
 a silence fell upon the company that Mynheer Morel — they 
 all called him " Mynheer " — might have his share of the 
 fun and orate, which he did, warmly and well. 
 
 " You young men are mistaken, as I often tell Chris- 
 tian," he was saying to the new-comer, " in striving and 
 straining, for a millennium. History should tell you that a 
 nation's greatness, like an individual's, is absolutely depend- 
 ent on present suffering and future hope. I trust, I sin- 
 cerely trust, that the human race will never live contented. 
 Fortunately there is now less chance than ever of that." 
 
 " The people " began Spangenberg. 
 
 " Don't interrupt me, Christian. Pah, tlie folly of your 
 talk. You are shamed by the Greeks or the Jews, who, like 
 you disbelieving in a future life, at least believed, unlike 
 you, in the Joys and griefs of the present. Almost I would 
 prefer the patient Man of Sorrows, with his glories of ad-
 
 384 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 vcrsit}' and his ' yet a little while.' At least, experience can 
 never disprove bis ideals, as it speedily will yours. And 
 although we may think that he grossly exaggerated the 
 ethical value of suffering " 
 
 The quiet tailor stretched his arm across the table as if 
 warding off a blow. " I cannot hear my Lord and Master 
 spoken of like that," he said. 
 
 Ilomerus started, uncertain what to do, and turned to 
 Balby to hide his confusion. 
 
 " It is truly marvellous," said the lodger, waking up. 
 
 " Well, well, I am doing all the talking," continued 
 Homerus, " which is uncivil " — sancta simplicitas ! — 
 " you young men ought to furnish me with novel ideas. I 
 have often contemplated writing a poem on ' The Coming 
 Creed.' In fact, I have begun one, but the subject is mo- 
 mentous." 
 
 " Surely the coming Creed will be Love," ventured Vol- 
 kert. 
 
 " Ah, young man ; that is no novel idea. It is the old 
 one which each good man newly starts with. Have you 
 ever heard, you youngsters, of the love which speaks 
 through pain? Love? — what do you, what do I know of 
 love ? Some of us, the best, the highest, are struggling to 
 read, in the blinding sunlight, a few letters of that sacred 
 Name, and to shout them down to the chattering, chaffer- 
 ing masses below. These are the poets, the prophets, on 
 the uppermost rungs of the ladder. One of them, soaring 
 beyond the power of eyes to follow, has cried back into our 
 darkness : ' God is Love ! ' There we may leave it, in the 
 inmost heart of Heaven." He stopped abruptly, and with 
 a hasty, unconscious fervour, swept his long hand across the 
 tablecloth. 
 
 Spangenberg leaped to his feet. " Eros ! Anikate 
 Eros ! " he cried, " I am not a poet, like Mynheer or like 
 Volkert ; I am only a common -place mortal, but my heart 
 sings the paeans my lips are unable to s^ieak. AYhat fitter
 
 VOLKERT. 385 
 
 temple than this to recite the praise of the Prince who 
 holds rule here, a merciful tyrant? Gentlemen, hurrah for 
 Love in this house, where he gilds every day with his 
 presence. Hurrah for a sun that ascends through the years 
 without danger of setting. Gentlemen, I fancy I am talk- 
 ing nonsense. Hurrah for Mevrouw Morel, the Queen of 
 Love in her own little kingdom ! Hurrah ! " 
 
 They all shouted and emptied their glasses, and soon 
 after that the little party broke up. Not, however, before 
 Christian had told Volkert about the hostess's wonderful 
 work on the " Social Position of the Child." 
 
 " A study in evolution," added Mevrouw Morel, blush- 
 ing. " Thank you. Christian ; I have reached the Mero- 
 vingian period. I should progress faster but that I so seldom 
 find time to go to the library for books." 
 
 " Couldn't I fetch them for you ? " asked Volkert im- 
 pulsively. 
 
 The little lady blushed with pleasure. " Oh, I couldn't 
 
 really " she began, but Sj^angenberg cut her short. 
 
 " That's right, Volkert," he said. '^ He's got oceans of 
 time, Mevrouw, and you've nobody else " — a quick glance at 
 the white-headed seer, who was gazing abstractedly into the 
 lamp — " He can come to you about it to-morrow." 
 
 The young men took leave. At the door the tailor 
 
 stopped, irresolute, and then faced round. " There is " 
 
 he began, " I — I should just like to say this. You have 
 been kind in asking me here. I — perhajis wo shall never 
 meet again. You have been speaking a great deal about 
 human happiness and the King of Love ! Oh the King of 
 Love ! " — he clasped his hands. " If only you knew him ! 
 He leads his servants in patlis of perfect peace. Ho is my 
 King. Would to God the Lord Jesus ruled in every heart 
 here present to-night." He had spoken the closing sen- 
 tences quite fluently. He gave them all a sort of little fare- 
 well bow and was gone. 
 
 Christian and A^olkcrt followed more slowly, passing in
 
 386 '^'11 K GREATER GLORY. 
 
 silence across the desolate court. By the Spangeubergs' 
 door they halted, under a solitary gas-lamp. 
 
 " ^lyuheer Morel talks well," said Christian. " He has 
 beautiful thoughts, like you, and he has talked about them 
 all his life." 
 
 " And this is what you call a convivial evening?" asked 
 the other young man. 
 
 " Yes," replied Christian, latch-key in hand, " this is 
 what I call pleasant intercourse. Would you prefer a ball ? " 
 
 Volkert w^ent on alone. For a long time Christian's 
 words kept ringing in his ears, but gradually they gave 
 place to the other strange impressions of the evening : 
 Mevrouw Morel, Mynheer Morel, that humble home of 
 valiant love and lofty effort. How they loved each other, 
 these two, how they understood each other ! This, surely, 
 tliis unity of love and art w^as life. And was it the jDoet's 
 fault if poetry doesn't pay ? 
 
 Then he remembered Tipper and smiled. Yet deep 
 down in his heart lay the tailor's solemn message : " He 
 leads His servants in. paths of perfect peace." 
 
 " Well," he mused, " I shall have to spend the morning 
 in the University Library. After that I must hurry back, 
 for I am due at my aunt's ' At Home.' Christian is right, 
 but he sees only his one side of the question. I made a 
 fool of myself at his ' Club.' A gentleman's duty is to re- 
 main a gentleman. Then what right have I to break loose ? 
 I accept my dull weight of ' Fortune's favours,' and drag on 
 alone."
 
 CHAPTER LIII. 
 
 THE WILL. 
 
 " "Who is that ? " asked a passer-by, as the brougham 
 with its beautiful grey thoroughbreds swept at a sharp 
 angle out of the Noordeiude into the square before the 
 Palace. 
 
 " His Excellency Count Rexelaer," replied his compan- 
 ion. " Doubtless on duty. One can see you are a stranger 
 in the Hague." 
 
 " Of course I am. And who is Count Rexelaer ? One 
 of the Rexelaers of Deynum? " 
 
 The other laughed aloud. "And who is King William ? " 
 he said. " And who is the Pope ? It is something, at least, 
 that you know there are Rexelaers of Deynum." 
 
 The " provincial " was nettled. " That is altogether dif- 
 ferent," he said. " Everyone knows that ; it is a matter of 
 history. But as for distinguishing each little mannikin at 
 Court " 
 
 " Hush, hush ! you are still in the Hague. Keep those 
 sayings for when you get back to Friesland. He is the 
 Rexelaer of Deynum; will that suffice you? And more- 
 over, or perhaps on that account. My Lord the High Sene- 
 schal." 
 
 " Well, at any rate, he had a nasty, sneaking sort of face," 
 said the Frisian, as they walked on. 
 
 Count Rexelaer alighted from his carriage and passed 
 through the great glass doors. The doorkeej)cr checked 
 him deferentially. 
 20
 
 388 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " There is a foreign gentleman waiting to see your Ex- 
 cellency," he said. 
 
 Count Eexelaer found the foreigner in his bureau. He 
 was a tall man, correctly dressed and neatly shaven, a man 
 with a settled expression of worry on his smooth, pale face. 
 Count Eexelaer measured him at a glance. One of those 
 persons whom everybody but a gentleman, even a Royal 
 doorkeeper, mistakes for a gentleman. Count Rexelaer was 
 a gentleman and knew. 
 
 " My name is Loripont, Excellency," said the stranger 
 politely, in French, "Antoine Loripont, at your Excel- 
 lency's service. I can hardly flatter myself that your Ex- 
 cellency remembers it." 
 
 " No," said the Count, " I do not." After a moment's 
 indecision he waved his hand in the direction of a chair. 
 
 Loripont took no notice of this permission. All through 
 the interview he remained standing in a " correct " attitude 
 by his Excellency's writing-table. 
 
 " I was valet," he continued, " to the late Monsieur the 
 Marquis de la Jolais-Earjolle de Saint- Leu et de Deynum" 
 — was it deference which prompted this final addition, or 
 rather a desire to annoy ? — " I was with Monsieur the Mar- 
 quis at the time of his death. Shortly after, I wrote to 
 your Excellency." 
 
 " Ah, that I remember," said the Count. " I replied to 
 your letter by asking for fuller information, which was 
 never received." 
 
 " It is so. Monsieur le Comte. Most humbly I hope for 
 your Excellency's pardon. From the tone of the rejjly I too 
 rashly concluded that further attempts would be useless. 
 And so I gave the matter up." 
 
 " If it was ' chantage ' you meditated," said the Count 
 frigidly, " as I believed at the time, your etforts were indeed 
 superfluous. They would be so still." 
 
 " It was not ' chantage,' Monsieur le Comte, if your Ex- 
 cellency will forgive me. I have no wish to extort money.
 
 THE WILL. 389 
 
 The Deynimi Notary told me, immediately after my la- 
 mented master's decease, that the document was valueless. 
 AVhen your Excellency answered me that you were willing 
 to perform whatever the law of the country required of you, 
 I said to myself : I can do no more. The good God must 
 look after his own." 
 
 " You showed judgment," said his Excellency, with 
 downcast smile, drumming his polished finger-tips on the 
 table. " Has time rendered you less discreet ? " 
 
 " Not so. Monsieur le Comte, but time has taught me 
 better. Perhaps the Deynum Notary did not know ; per- 
 haps he did not want to know. I have discovered that the 
 document was not absolutely valueless. It is a valid will 
 and testament." 
 
 Count Eexelaer looked up with an oath. " That is a 
 lie," he said shrilly. " An infamous, blackguardly, black- 
 mailing lie. Not a penny shall you get." Then his gaze 
 sank slowly down again, upon his polished finger-tips. 
 
 " I must beg of your Excellency not to swear at me," 
 said Antoine ; " it awakens too painful recollections. I was 
 about to remark that, in my country, the will was perfectly 
 valid. I am speaking the truth. It would have been valid, 
 even had there been no witnesses." 
 
 " It was not binding in Holland," said the Count, " and 
 that is enough." 
 
 " The paper," continued Antoine, without heeding the 
 interruption, " cancelled the Dutch will the Notary had 
 just drawn up, and directed that the entire estate of Dey- 
 num and the sum of two hundred thousand francs should 
 pass to the Convent of Crevort, to the little sisters of the 
 poor, to be spent exclusively in charity. Madame the 
 Countess, your lady, was again completely disinherited." 
 
 " Had this ' paper ' been of any value, you would have 
 turned up eight years ago," said the Count. 
 
 " Three years after the decease of Monsieur le Marquis 
 I learned, from a Belgian lawyer, exactly what its value
 
 390 '^HE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 was. "We could not have touched your Castle, Monsieur, 
 which — luckily for you — lies in Holland, but the Belgian 
 money should never have been paid. That was a mistake." 
 
 " Mistakes are often difficult to remedy," said the Count 
 with a smile. 
 
 " Surely that depends upon who was erroneously benefited 
 by them ? " suggested Loripont, who had always been per- 
 fectly at ease in the extremes of servility and insolence. 
 " Your Excellency has received from Belgium two hundred 
 thousand francs to which you had not even a legal claim. 
 Had I shown my little paper sooner, you would never have 
 received them." 
 
 " Are you come to ask them back ? " asked the Count. 
 
 " As for that, I am come to ask everything back." 
 
 His Excellency cast a quick glance at the bell-rope. 
 
 " There can be no doubt that your Excellency is not 
 entitled to Deynum. My master left his property to the 
 Church. I am only a valet. I ask you, a Christian and a 
 nobleman : Have you a right to retain it ? " 
 
 " The property," replied the Count, " is both naturally 
 and legally mine. Allow me to say that my time is much 
 occupied. The Marquis, just before his violent death, can- 
 not have been responsible for his actions, and that paper, 
 if it be genuine, represents a crazy whim. Good morning." 
 
 Loripont did not stir from his respectful pose. " As for 
 whims," he replied boldly, " the first will was no less a 
 whim than the second. But I hardly dared to expect that 
 your Excellency would give back the estate. With the 
 money, however, it is a different matter. That was paid in 
 legal error. I am told it cannot be legally redemanded. I 
 am not a judge of such matters. To me your law, which 
 sets aside a dead man's wish, seems monstrous." 
 
 The Count veered round in his chair, politely contem- 
 plative. " On the contrary, my good man," he said. 
 " Allow me to explain. The Dutch law is exceedingly judi- 
 cious in requiring the assistance of a Xotary. "Were the
 
 THE WILL. 391 
 
 rule generally introdiiced, a contested succession would be- 
 come an exceeding rarity. In this country such cases are 
 almost unknown." 
 
 " I understand nothing of these matters, your Excel- 
 lency. But one thing I know. That money is not yours. 
 It belongs to God." 
 
 " Is that why you come and ask for it ? " 
 
 " Monsieur le Comte, I do not ask a penny for myself. 
 I can no longer bear the idea that the owners have been 
 defrauded through my negligence. That idea haunts me 
 night and day." 
 
 " Nevertheless, I am unable to employ you as a go-be- 
 tween in paying my dues to the Almighty. That is final." 
 
 The Count blinked irritably and pushed about his writ- 
 ing-things. 
 
 " Monsieur le Comte," Antoine laid one hand on the 
 table, " it is the religion — can you not understand ? You 
 know how my master died ; I have kept my oath to him, 
 and Brussels does not. For pardon he gave it all in that 
 desperate moment — to buy pardon for his crime. And now 
 it is useless, and a curse must rest upon it, while, perhaps, 
 he endures the pains of purgatory. Do you dare to leave 
 him ther-e 9 " 
 
 Once more Count van Eexelaer smiled. " My friend," 
 he said, " you are melodramatic. You can hardly expect 
 me to purchase a release for all my relations whom their 
 own misbehaviour may have landed in hell. But these are 
 superstitious ideas, the outcome of a corrupt religion. With 
 us Protestants Hell or Heaven is a question of grace, not of 
 gold. There ; of course you cannot understand. To come 
 down to business : How much do you want ? You were 
 long my uncle's valet and, once in a way, I do not mind as- 
 sisting you with a couple of hundred francs, but, take 
 notice, you mustn't come again." 
 
 " My God, it is hopeless ! " exclaimed Antoine, and fell 
 back with a lurch, and stood silent.
 
 392 TUE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " Yes, my offer is conclusive. It's no use trying these 
 things on with me, my man," — the Count held out a bank- 
 note — " Here, thank me, and get you gone." 
 
 " Listen, you ! " the quondam valet bent forward eagerly. 
 " I used not to care so much about being quite sure. But 
 as a man gets nearer the end, he wants to doubt on the 
 right side. When your wdfe's uncle killed himself (and I 
 hadn't grown rich in his service), I paid money to have 
 masses said." 
 
 " That was very wrong," interrupted the Count. " It 
 is a foolish, futile superstition." 
 
 "Listen, please. From this paper" — he tapped his 
 breast — " I knew the suicide had hoped to spend his thou- 
 sands where I could but give hundreds. I could not help 
 that. Three years later I learned that I co^ild have helped 
 it. my God, what a thought ! It was my fault, then, 
 that the money had not been paid ! I have a small busi- 
 ness ; my wife is frugal and it prospers, but every penny I 
 can scrape or save I bring to the priests in payment of my 
 debt. My wife does not comprehend and our menage is 
 disunited. I shall never pay it off. I shall die before 
 it is done. I also have a complaint" — he clutched at 
 his chest ; his words came hoarse and fast — " I am dy- 
 ing. I dare not die with that unpaid debt. I dare not 
 meet the dead man, beyond, perhaps, in those flames 
 in which my fault has chained him. Voyons, Monsieur 
 le Comte — you are a mighty Noble — even you, you do 
 not knoiD.'''' 
 
 An awe-struck silence sank upon the little room. The 
 sick man stood panting, his eyes fixed, in eager doubt, on 
 the other's face. The Court Favourite was calming his fret- 
 ful nerves. At last he spoke, smoothly enough : " Your 
 religious ideas are all wrong, my good man," he said. " I 
 wish I could get you to speak to one of our pastors, for I 
 see you are in earnest. You are the victim of a system 
 which trades upon human credulity. Were the sum but a
 
 THE WILL. 393 
 
 trifle, my scruples would forbid me to squander it on 
 priests." 
 
 " I have refunded forty," said Antoine doggedly. " It 
 has taken all these years. And a hundred and sixty re- 
 main." 
 
 " So you say. But this wonderful will, I have not even 
 seen it ! " 
 
 A flash of hope played across the suppliant's face, as lie 
 softly inquired : " Is your Excellency near-sighted ? " 
 
 " No. AVhy do you ask ? " But the Count knew why, 
 and even he winced under this menial's measureless con- 
 tempt. 
 
 Antoine fell back a few paces : " I am not as strong as I 
 used to be," he said apologetically. Then he drew a paper 
 from his breast and held it aloft with one hand, while the 
 other remained concealed in a bulky side-pocket, which, the 
 Count felt convinced, contained a revolver. 
 
 " It is the Marquis's crest," said Antoine. " If you 
 knew his eccentric hand, you will easily recognize it." 
 
 " I cannot read it from here," replied Count Rexelaer 
 indifferently. " Besides, the matter is of no account. You 
 
 may take your hundred florins " he got up and rang 
 
 the bell. 
 
 Antoine Loripont put back his paper, buttoned his coat, 
 and folded his arms across his chest. " And now," he said 
 in accents of desperate restraint, " it becomes ' chantage.' I 
 will make you do it. In the organs of the opposition, in 
 the socialist journals, I will publish this valid will, valid but 
 for a fluke. Now, will you listen ? " 
 
 " In the papers of the opposition, the socialist journals? 
 My good friend, pourquoi pas? I do right in upholding 
 the law of the land. There, admit my incredible good- 
 nature, in a man of my exalted position. Monsieur my de- 
 parted uncle's would not have held out so long," 
 
 Stejjs were heard in the adjoining anteroom. Antoine 
 Loripont pressed close to the Head of the Household, who
 
 394 TllP] GREATER GLORY. 
 
 involuntaril}' shrank back. "I will tell," said the man in a 
 clear whisper, " what I know — it is not much, but it is 
 enough — of the wealth of Mademoiselle Cochonnard. 
 Now, Monsieur the Court Dignitary, here in the Eoyal 
 Palace I ask you again : Will you pay back the money or 
 not?" 
 
 For the second time during that interview the Count 
 
 swore a fierce oath. " D ," he said, " I knew it was 
 
 black-mailing all along. How much do you want? Will 
 five thousand florins do ? " 
 
 " All or nothing," answered Loripont, retreating to the 
 door. 
 
 The Count started up and came running after him. 
 
 " Ten thousand," he hissed out hurriedly. " I can't 
 make it more than ten thousand. Twenty thousand francs. 
 Consider. Nobody would offer more." 
 
 Loripont opened the door and left him.
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND. 
 
 An hour later Count Eexelaer quitted the August Pres- 
 ence renewed and refreshed in all the tissues and fibres of 
 his moral being, as by a bath of sunlight. For we all of us 
 are strengthened by a draught from our Source of Life, 
 physical or psychical, and the Court Functionary left the 
 Court Atmosphere, refilled, re-corked, re-labelled and re- 
 polished, a bottle full of sweetest Essence of Orange-flow- 
 ers, with a soft little kidskin mask and a ribbon. Not that 
 it wore the ribbon to-day, but it always felt it there. 
 
 " I may as well look in on Elizabeth," he said to him- 
 self, as another flunkey was helping him on with his coat. 
 " Perhaps Gratia will be there, and that will save me a visit." 
 Gratia was his old, unmarried sister, come to stay for a week 
 with some quiet friend of her own. 
 
 He satisfied himself, on entering, that Gratia was there, 
 and a great many other people also. Mevrouw Elizabeth, 
 in her hospitable, comfortable life, liked to see her spacious 
 rooms well-filled. Hilarius was an unusual visitor at her 
 receptions ; she received him with effusion. 
 
 " How is Jane's baby? " he asked, from the tips of his 
 colourless lips. " Accept my congratulations." 
 
 " As for congratulations, my dear Hilarius, his abomi- 
 nable father has again cut them down." 
 
 " Fathers can't live for ever, not even old Simmans," the 
 Count said lightly. But the words struck back, cold, with 
 a swift reminiscence : " Even your Excellency, wlio is a 
 great noble, does not knoiv.''''
 
 306 TOE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 He glanced across at his own son and successor in sjDir- 
 ited conversation with a vohiminous somebody in a promi- 
 nent pink boa, the Russian minister's wife. Then he edged 
 away to his sister, whom he found the centre of an amused 
 little group. " Doubtless, making a fool of herself," he re- 
 flected, as he greeted her. " I am sorry we so seldom meet, 
 Hilarius," said the timid lady. " We were wanting to ask 
 you to dinner, but we thought Margherita would hardly 
 care to come?" The Count murmured something about 
 pressing duties, and Reinout also came lounging up, dodg- 
 ing a beautiful woman who was evidently seeking to attract 
 his attention — you remember the Duchess de Vanhas Ver- 
 millanas and her recent infatuation for Scriccini, the tenor ? 
 Well, twenty years ago, in the full flush of her beauty and 
 her scorn for the Duke, she was deeply in love with Reinout 
 van Rexelaer. His portrait still stands on her toilet-table, 
 amid rouge-pots and essences. She bought it when he be- 
 came famous. 
 
 " Hilarius, I want your subscription, too," said the 
 Freule. " And Reinout's as well," — she turned to the lady 
 beside her, a Privy Councillor's wife — " it has really done 
 excellent work " — she looked up at her brother. " I am 
 speaking of the Society for furnishing Layettes " 
 
 " Fie," said his Excellency, holding up a playful flnger. 
 There was a general giggle. How witty he was, his Excel- 
 lency ! " What a subject," he continued, " for an unmar- 
 ried lady ! " 
 
 " Hilarius ! " she looked at him for a moment with her 
 gentle, guileless eyes ; then she turned to her nephew : 
 " We only supply, to the poorest of the poor, what is abso- 
 lutely indispensable ; I assure you the work is good." 
 
 " I believe it," he said, and her face quite brightened 
 under unaccustomed sympathy. He was written down a 
 member on the spot, though declaring himself unable, to 
 his father's disgust, to produce the humble florin of mem- 
 bership. Half an hour ago he had emptied his purse, with
 
 THE SLOUGH OP DESPOXD. 397 
 
 the old unthinking generosity, into the hands of a woman 
 overflowing with woe. 
 
 His immediate neighbour stood twitting him with his 
 novel duties. " You will have," she said, " to take the 
 baskets round, yourself, and " — she screamed with merri- 
 ment — " you will have to pin on the — the things ! " Plump 
 Eolline, an early matron, drew nearer to enjoy the joke. 
 " Oh, how funny ! " she said. " I should love to see the 
 dear little baskets, with the dozens of little caps and 
 chemises all done up with coloured ribbons and frills. I 
 must ask Aunt Gratia to put me down for a florin too." 
 
 In another corner of the room George, looking hand- 
 somer than ever, was telling a story to an admiring circle 
 of girls, amongst whom sat, in a clumsy, crimson heap, his 
 own especial Miss Kops, the single untitled person in the 
 room. The story, in spite of its silver-gilt wrappings, had 
 dirt at its core. Eeinout stood watching for a moment ; 
 two of the girls who were listening belonged to the half-a- 
 dozen from whom he was expected to choose a wife. He 
 flushed scarlet as he turned away. 
 
 " Your cousin is evidently a wit," remarked Monsieur de 
 Bonnaventure at his elbow. " When young ladies smile in 
 that unwilling manner, the joke is always to their taste. I 
 regret the more that I cannot speak the language." 
 
 " You know languages enough already," replied Eeinout 
 with a sneer, " to speak to women in." 
 
 The attache smiled. " What will you have ? It is part 
 of the profession, as you will learn soon enough. Have you 
 any idea where they are going to send you ? Your fatlior 
 spoke of St. Petersburg. The climate is cold, but not the 
 ladies. At any rate it is never dull." 
 
 Eeinout, already several paces off, stopped and eyed the 
 Frenchman from head to foot. " You find the Hague 
 dull ? " he said slowly. 
 
 " I ? — forgive me, but yes. Wherewith should I amuse 
 myself ? "
 
 398 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Antoinette, who was standing in a corner with the 
 Count, here beckoned to her cousin to join them. 
 
 " Fallait endormir le petit," muttered the Frenchman 
 as he sauntered away to take leave of the lady of the house, 
 with tenderest enquiries after her venerable parent, whose 
 wonderful health formed, in all Dutch society, a subject of 
 amused admiration. 
 
 " Come here, Eeinout," cried Topsy. " I am trying to 
 get Uncle Hil to admire these verses. They are in the same 
 review as those which Jane read out the other day, and by 
 the same writer. I see that he signs ' Eene,' a namesake of 
 yours. They are so good I wish you had written them ; but 
 uncle Hil doesn't care a bit." 
 
 The Count was looking bored. " Thank Heaven he has 
 not," he said with awakening fervour. " One poet in the 
 family is quite enough. No, Topsy, our future diplomat 
 is certainly not poetical." 
 
 " Father, are you going away soon ? " asked Reinout, de- 
 taining him, " because I should like to accompany you 
 home." 
 
 " In a quarter of an hour," replied the Count. " Ta, ta, 
 Antoinette. Don't read too much." 
 
 " Eeinout," said his cousin, " come out into the conserv- 
 atory for a minute." She passed into a little glass passage, 
 bright with greenery and azaleas, and there stood silent, gaz- 
 ing down upon the open page. " Blessed are the pure in 
 heart," she said presently. The French poem before 
 her, some five and twenty lines, bore this title : " The 
 Pure in Heart." The words of the close — but is 
 poetry not untranslatable? — might be inadequately ren- 
 dered as follows : 
 
 Eyes that would soar — Almighty God, Thou knowest — 
 
 Unto the whitest secrets of Thy breast, 
 
 Must they still sink, from lower depth to lowest, 
 
 By their own weight depressed ! i.
 
 THE SLOUGH OF DESPOND. 399 
 
 Hearts held enchained by weeds and muddy coatinjj, 
 Shall they not burst their bond, 
 And rise at last, in Thy pure sunshine floating, 
 Like lilies on a j^ond ? 
 
 " For they shall see God," murmured Antoinette. 
 
 She looked up and gave Reiuout her hand. Her eyes 
 were full of tears. 
 
 "You will not betray me?" he asked, breaking the 
 silence. 
 
 " Of course not," she answered. " But why ' betray ' ? 
 Don't you want, at least, to pluck your laurels ? " 
 
 " In there ? " he asked, pointing to the crowded room 
 from which they had just escaped. There was such a world 
 of misery in his voice that she dropped her eyes again. 
 " My father and I," he added, inconsequentially, " in our 
 own way, we do love each other." 
 
 A commotion had arisen meanwhile among the gay com- 
 pany inside. Rolline appeared in the framework of the 
 window, filling it with her healthful prosperity. Even at 
 that moment a flicker of amusement played over her per- 
 turbed features at sight of the pair in the greenhouse. 
 
 " Oh, Topsy, haven't you heard ? " she said. " Grand- 
 mamma's had a fit. Isn't it dreadful ? She's dead." 
 
 Ten minutes later Count Rexelaer and his son, side by 
 side in the silence, were driving rapidly home. They had 
 nearly reached their destination before Reinout began : 
 
 " Father, this is what I had wanted to say : Monsieur de 
 Bonnaventure comes to the house too much." 
 
 " Surely, Reinout, I am the best judge of the question 
 whom I think fit to receive." 
 
 " Father, I only wanted to say this : IMonsieur de Bon- 
 naventure comes to our house too much." 
 
 " It is an improper thing to say, a ridiculous thing. 
 Oblige me by speaking of something else, or holding your 
 tonorue."
 
 400 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 "You will remember — will you not? — that I said it?" 
 
 " No, I will try to forget." 
 
 They did not exchange another word. The carriage 
 stopped. Eeinout was nearest the door. He got out first 
 and hurried up the steps. In the entrance-hall he paused 
 and faced his father. A well-known hat and stick lay on 
 an oaken seat. Their glances met and dropped away. 
 The servant who had opened the door stood motionless, at 
 attention, with his eyes fixed on the buckles of his shoes.
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 HUMILITY AND HUMILIATION". 
 
 The Canal of the Roses, despite its fragrant name, is 
 not a pleasing water whereby to pitch one's tent ; the roses 
 smell too strong. Yet when Vrouw Poster sent, as a fare- 
 well gift, a great nosegay of " Baroness" blossoms, " What 
 shall we do with these ? " said the old lady to her daughter ; 
 " take them away." 
 
 The Baroness was now completely dependent on Wen- 
 dela's care. The landlady's advances she repelled with chill 
 hauteur ; she would have no sympathy, not even from her 
 daughter. " God withholds all His mercies," she said be- 
 tween her prayers, " even deatli." 
 
 With part of the produce of the Deynum sale the Baron 
 repaid Gustave's loan and at the same time he dismissed 
 him. " I cannot even afford," he said, " to give you the 
 pitiable wages you at present receive." 
 
 " Yes, Mynheer the Baron, I understand," said Gustave, 
 standing very straight. 
 
 " I shall not insult you by praising your faithful service. 
 I heartily thank you. Give me your hand." 
 
 Gustave took his master's worn fingers gently in his own, 
 looked upon them for a thoughtful moment, and then def- 
 erentially laid them down. 
 
 " Mynheer the Baron," he began, " it has always been 
 my intention, on leaving your service, to settle down with 
 my sister. I suppose this need make no difference?" 
 
 " I would not disturb your plans for the world," said the 
 Baron.
 
 402 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " My sister has a hard struggle to make both ends meet 
 and it is only fair I should assist her ? " 
 
 " But a rich man like you, Gustave ? " 
 
 " I beg your Nobleness not to speak of my miserable 
 money, which is really more yours than mine. I would not 
 live on it for the world, and, besides, I should be so dull." 
 He had made a will, in fact, in which he had ventured, 
 with due circumspection, to leave the produce of his specu- 
 lations to the daughter of the man who had lost where he 
 won. 
 
 And so Gustave quitted the Baron's service and waited 
 on his sister's lodgers. 
 
 " I must go and see this Mynheer Spangenberg," said 
 the Baron day after day. " I shall be better to-morrow and 
 then I shall go." 
 
 Meanwhile some means of subsistence would have to be 
 devised ; for hours together the Baron sat revolving this 
 problem in his weary brain. On one point his mind was 
 made up. He would accept of no man's charity. 
 
 " You have, in fact — forgive my saying it — been living 
 all these years on Count Eexelaer's bounty." The words 
 burned in his heart. " I must prove them a falsehood 
 before I die," he said, throwing back liis grand old head. 
 " I have borne everything and kept silence. I will not bear 
 that." 
 
 He did not wish to see anybody, but John Borck came. 
 " Papa, here is Mynheer Borck," said Wendela, and, before 
 anyone could object, their former antagonist was in the 
 room. " I wanted to consult you about a horse, Eexelaer," 
 began the lord of Rollingen. " I hope you won't think I 
 intrude, but I happened to be in Amsterdam and I remem- 
 bered that nobody in all our country-side is as good a judge 
 of a horse as you. I wish you would give me your advice." 
 
 " Gladly," said the Baron, much gratified, though not 
 altogether the dujje of the excuse.
 
 HUMILITY AND HUMILIATION. 403 
 
 " I bought a horse here a week ago " began Baron 
 
 Borck, and soon his companion was very much interested. 
 
 " And now, I wonder whether you would forgive me, if 
 I said a few words about something else? " 
 
 A troubled look came over Mynheer Kexelaer's face. 
 
 " Of course this business of ' the Dole ' is infamous. I 
 cannot understand — excuse me — your acquiescing in what 
 is practically robbery. The money no more belongs to that 
 gin-seller's son than it belongs to me. Yes, don't look at 
 me so ; I know what I am saying. Have you any idea why 
 my Lord Count was so anxious to drive you from Deynum ? 
 They say he was afraid of your lovely daughter's charms." 
 
 The Baron checked the fierce words that came rushing 
 to his lips. " We never met," he said simply. " I was glad 
 of that, though my wife has always had a foolish softness in 
 her woman's heart for the unknown boy whom they call 
 Reinout Eexelaer. My daughter, if ever she marries, will 
 marry one of her equals, I hope." 
 
 " He will be hard to find," said friendly John Borck. 
 " But, look here, you must recover this money. Frankly, 
 Rexelaer, I want you to authorize me — me, Borck of Rol- 
 lingen — to undertake this lawsuit. Not on your behalf, 
 but in the interest of us all. The thing ought to be known. 
 There ; I have set my heart on this, and I hope you won't 
 refuse." 
 
 " My dear friend, I must. As soon as I am able, I shall 
 speak to a lawyer ; the money is undoubtedly mine. As for 
 these Rexelaers, whose story you appear to know, I liave 
 allowed them to call themselves my cousins and to parade 
 as such even at Deynum. I have never — God is my witness ! 
 — shewn up the sham, while scandal alone would have been 
 the result. But, now, it is they who have forced the revela- 
 tion upon me ; I must defend my wife and child." 
 
 " I am delighted to hear you say that," cried Baron 
 
 Borck, rising. " As a favour, I hope you will let me do 
 
 what I can. By the bye, I bought the historical articles at 
 27
 
 404 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 your sale, to complete my collection. And, before coming 
 here, I slipped this into my pocket. It has no value for 
 us; my wife would burn it. I thought perhaps yours 
 might care to have it. My respects to her. Good-bye." 
 
 The Baroness had not put in an appearance. She could 
 not bring herself to think kindly of " the Atheist." 
 
 Baron Eexelaer opened the parcel his visitor had left on 
 the table. It contained the costly fifteenth-century livre 
 d'heures, with its beautiful initials and miniatures, which 
 has ever been the greatest treasure of the Chatelaines of Dey- 
 nura. They call it " the Lady Bertha's Closet-book." 
 
 But you cannot make bread out of books, except you 
 sell them, — not even then, unless they are not your own. 
 And the means of procuring bread were growing scarce ; 
 they all three knew it, while hiding it from each other. 
 
 One evening Wendela came back to the Baron, after 
 helping her mother to bed. Even this depth of sorrow 
 could not bring father and daughter together, while between 
 them lay the angry shadow of their loss. 
 
 " Wanda," began the old man, " I have been thinking of 
 late I should like to find something to occupy my time in- 
 stead of moping here all day. I feel much stronger. I 
 have made up my mind to have in some little boys to teach 
 them " — he went on hurriedly — " I shall teach them French. 
 I have spoken about it to JuSrouw Bonders, who is a very 
 sensible woman and quite sees what I mean. She has been 
 most kind about finding me the pupils. I mention this to 
 you, because they are coming to-morrow morning, and I 
 should wish you to explain to your mother what it is, when 
 they are come. I will have them in the bedroom ; that will 
 do very well." 
 
 Wendela sat opposite her father, gazing, without re- 
 sponse. 
 
 " They are little Jew-boys," the Baron continued mus- 
 ingly. " I cannot help wishing they had not been that.
 
 HUMILITY AND HUMILIATION. 495 
 
 But the feeling is one of foolish prejudice ; I am heartily 
 ashamed of it, and I daresay it will wear off in time." 
 
 " Did you say they were coming to-morrow morning?" 
 asked Wendela in a constrained voice. 
 
 " To-morrow morning at nine. They are quite small 
 children, and I apprehend no serious difficulty. I consider 
 it better to tell you that I am to receive — remuneration, so 
 that we must not look upon the lessons as a favour we are 
 doing them. I am to receive tenpence j^er hour for each 
 child." 
 
 " Tenpence per hour," echoed "Wendela. 
 
 " I admit that I myself did not consider that very much. 
 But then we must take into account how little I have to 
 offer. Speaking a language is a very different thing from 
 teaching it. And I have never taught." He said these last 
 words in a tone of apology, for himself, or his patrons, or 
 both. 
 
 Wendela did not reply, and they sat opposite each other, 
 neither disturbing the other's thoughts, beside the gloomy 
 lamp. 
 
 At last "Wendela rose. " Good-night, Papa," she said, 
 and held out her hand. 
 
 " Good-night, my dear. God bless you." 
 
 She turned away and moved slowly to the door. She 
 had reached it and laid her hand on the knob ; then she 
 came back and, without a word of explanation, sank on the 
 floor by his knees and covered his hands with her kisses. 
 " "Voyons, voyons," he said, his lips trembling under his 
 white moustache. " What is it ? "What is wrong ? Voy- 
 ons." 
 
 But she did not reply. She gathered herself up slowly 
 and left him to his thoughts. They cannot have been so 
 very dismal, for he smiled. 
 
 Next morning, the four little Jew-boys being shut up in 
 the bedroom with their new preceptor, Wendela went down
 
 40G THE GREATER GLORY, 
 
 to the basement to look for Juffrouw Bonders. She found 
 her in the kitchen, making a pudding with her own dumpy 
 hands. Much ruffled by the Freule's intrusion on her 
 privacy, Juiirouw Donders was eager to explain that she 
 never demeaned herself by household work — no, never ; only 
 once in a way she had tried a new receipt, which her cousin, 
 the pastry-cook, had sent her. She was accurate and vo- 
 luminous in this assertion of her dignity, Wendela, mean- 
 while, standing by in patient disgust, conscious of her 
 father's occupation upstairs and her own errand at the mo- 
 ment. Juffrouw Donders was not as charmed with her 
 poor, proud lodgers as she had been three weeks ago. Her 
 brother's reticence annoyed her. " Give them of your very 
 best," was all that Gustave said. 
 
 " JuSrouw," said Wendela resolutely, "do you happen 
 to know of anyone who wants to learn to slug ? " She had 
 sought out that sole accomplishment all through the sleep- 
 less night. 
 
 " Good gracious, I can't find pupils for the whole fam- 
 ily ! " said the landlady. After a moment she added a little 
 more civilly : " You might advertise," and then she resumed 
 her pudding-making, leaving the Freule to appreciate, slow- 
 ly and fully, the beauty of a humble heart. Wendela crept 
 upstairs again. 
 
 An advertisement attracted two families, one with an 
 only daughter and one with a brace of girls. A young man 
 also presented himself, but him the Baron vetoed. Ulti- 
 mately the only daughter — a cheesemonger's — agreed to pay 
 the stipulated price of fifty cents * an hour, but the mother 
 of the pair of pupils — a butcher's lady — after having re- 
 quested the singing-mistress to shew her powers (" First a 
 serious piece, please, and then a gay one ") declared very 
 decidedly that she could not give more than eighteenpence 
 the two. Wendela came away from that interview a differ- 
 
 * Eqnals tenpence.
 
 HUMILITY AND HUMILIATION. 407 
 
 ent creature. Till now her innocent wrongs, endured in 
 isolation, liad hardened and, if the word be permissible, 
 haughtened her. For the first time humiliation struck her 
 straight, soiling her soul with mud. Where now was the 
 glory of this sordid shame ? A hot flush melted the pure 
 proud ice, and, as it melted, she saw it turn to mire. At 
 last she understood that no greatness of ancestry can save 
 tis from disgrace. And her heart was emptied, of all but 
 bitterness. 
 
 In the shelter of her early girlhood it had been easy for 
 so high-souled a nature to fly from the hateful present 
 into the calm splendour of a mythic past. The woman, 
 face to face with life's vulgarity, laughed aloud. Knight 
 Pilgrim, riding away into the darkness, never even turned 
 to look back. 
 
 " Mine are at least Gentiles," she said to her father, 
 fiercely. 
 
 " Hush, Wanda. They are very nice little boys." When 
 the first lesson was over, the Baroness had called softly to 
 her husband. " Come close," she said, and as he bent over 
 her : " Mon ami, you are still so weak ! " 
 
 " No, it was quite necessary," he answered. " But when 
 I have settled with the lawyer, all will be right. I cannot 
 make any more debts, I cannot. You must not mind." 
 
 " Mind ? " she repeated wistfully. " I cannot be prouder 
 of you than I am, Reinout. As for lessons, Louis Philii^pe 
 gave them, and he was not even a gentleman." 
 
 Two days later the Baron called on Spangenberg. " I 
 will look into the matter as soon as possible, Mynheer," said 
 the busy young lawyer, " and I earnestly hope we shall be 
 able to set it right." 
 
 " I should like to know whether the expense to be in- 
 curred — in no case should I care to incur great expense." 
 
 " Oh, never mind the expense," said Christian. 
 
 The Baron drew himself up stiffly. " No, but I must
 
 408 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 beg of 3'ou," he said, " if possible, to furnish me with an 
 approximate estimate " 
 
 " Ten florins," said Christian, The Baron gave a great 
 gasp of relief. Why, his watch must be worth at least a 
 hundred ! 
 
 "I am much obliged to you. Mynheer the Advocate," 
 he replied with his old-fashioned bow. 
 
 In the street, as he went limping home, he twice re- 
 peated to himself, " There is nothing more humbling than 
 being a man to whom all men may shew kindness. Yet, 
 had I been truly a good man, I should never have found 
 that out."
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 
 A CLANDESTINE CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE LOVE 
 LEFT OUT. 
 
 VoLKERT duly fetched books from the University Li- 
 brary for Mevrouw MoreL After a time he began to think 
 she required a good many. He brought them to " Paradise " 
 in cabs, for he was not yet accustomed to walking the streets 
 with a parcel. 
 
 " Tell me honestly," said Spangenberg one day, " does 
 not Mother Morel's gratitude cause you greater pleasure 
 than any number of letters admiring your beautiful senti- 
 ments?" "I like the letters too," replied his friend. 
 " You are jealous because you never got any." " Forgive 
 me, Volkert ; remember I am your officially appointed Men- 
 tor." " Yes, but I did not say you were always to be on 
 duty." " True," said Spangenberg, holding out his hand. 
 
 Still, in his heart of hearts, Volkert would have been 
 obliged to admit that his first endurance of personal incon- 
 venience, after twenty -four years of facile generosity, friend- 
 liness and almsgiving — had brought him a completely new 
 sensation. He recalled with a sneer at himself, how, before 
 his meeting with the editor, all men about him, himself not 
 least, had praised him for being so "free of his money," so 
 " condescending to inferiors," so " good." And for the first 
 time in his life, in some strange revulsion of reasoning, he 
 gave the calmian who brought him and his books from the 
 library no more than his legal fare. " Charity," he began 
 to feel, meant something of whicli he had never heard.
 
 410 THE GIIEATP]R GLORY. 
 
 " Spangenberg is exceedingly busy," said Mynheer Morel. 
 The old poet had got hold of the young one as an agreeable 
 substitute for Balby. " And that too is a good work," re- 
 flected Christian. " And what a privilege for ^lynheer Vol- 
 kert," said Mevronw Morel, running to the window to catch 
 a glimpse of the perambulating pair. " Spangenberg is ex- 
 ceedingly busy," said Mynheer. " It is his mission to be 
 always doing something, as it is some men's to remain ap- 
 parently inactive. The latter are the more important class. 
 Believe me, my dear young friend, the world owes most 
 things to its laziest men. Conquerors and statesmen are 
 rockets and catherine-wheels. The courses of the human 
 race are guided from the thinker's easy-chair." 
 
 Yolkert liked Mynheer Morel, not only for this alSnity 
 which caused Christian such alarm. He liked the gentle, 
 reposeful courtesy of the philosopher, the avoidance of all 
 that was coarse and loud. In the midst of the turmoil of 
 his tiny home the old gentleman sat composed, and mo- 
 tioned his visitor to a chair with quiet dignity, as if unaware 
 of the hole in its covering which even Mevronw Morel's 
 dexterity could no longer conceal. To the young man, 
 lapped in luxury, it was delightful to discover how utterly 
 careless of creature comforts some of the world's best and 
 wisest can be. He had never before met with men of edu- 
 cation and refinement who could not distinguish vintages 
 or who did not cavil at the taste of their cheese. 
 
 He enjoyed being present at the harum-scarum tea among 
 a tumbling crowd of healthful children. There was not 
 always enough to eat, but Avho shall say when seven chil- 
 dren have enough? " Mevronw," said her guest on one oc- 
 casion, " with your permission I shall present to Freddie 
 (set. 8) your book on ' Amanda's Appletart or the Fatal Ef- 
 fects of Greediness.' " " I never go in to Mevronw Morel 
 at meal-times," explained little Miss van Dolder to her more 
 fashionable friends, " the feeding of the children is too pain- 
 fully distressing." With this dictum Mevronw Morel would
 
 A CLANDESTINE CORRESPONDENCE. 41 1 
 
 have agreed, as she wiped her pen at two in the morning. 
 Juffrouw Spangenberg had no patience with her. " Why, 
 indeed, must she write about the convolutions of the child ? 
 The medical men knew all about them already, for Julirouw 
 Spangenberg's own Christian had had them as a two-year- 
 old baby, and their doctor had pulled him through ! " 
 
 Meanwhile " The Cry of the People " continued to pub- 
 lish the young poet's effusions, still signed with a single 
 " P." And letters addressed to that " P " continued also, 
 at fitful intervals, to arrive at the office, always anonymous, 
 always written in the same female hand. Gradually, in 
 these letters, the soul of the writer began to reveal itself 
 before the poet's fascinated gaze. It was a delight- 
 fully mysterious manner of making an acquaintance. 
 He answered, as best he could, through the columns of 
 " The Cry." 
 
 In the beginning the letters had been completely imper- 
 sonal ; the first half-a-dozen did not contain a single " I." 
 The fair writer admired the poems and frankly said how 
 and why. " The present is hideous," she wrote, " the past 
 is dead. Oh the relief of meeting, in this world of tranquil, 
 smiling evil, with a soul that believes in the future, with a 
 heart that burns red, like a beacon, in the light of the com- 
 ing day." Christian would have objected : " Her metaphors 
 are mixed." Mynheer Morel would have declared ' She is 
 young.'" Volkert felt: "Such beautiful thought must be- 
 long to a beautiful face." 
 
 In the seventh scrap — they were all short, a rare merit 
 — the " I " put in its appearance. " I have suffered wrong 
 all my life," it said, " but I have always believed it divinely 
 ordained. From the ' Cry of the People ' I have learned 
 for the first time that wrong is wrong and may be combated, 
 that men must combat it so as to leave to those who come a 
 better world than ours." 
 
 I'or reply he took the economist's pleasant maxim " All
 
 4lL> THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 is for the best in the best-reguhited of worlds " and, in burn- 
 ing verses, tore it to shreds. 
 
 " I am trying to understand," said the next letter. 
 " My parents have always believed that God guides and 
 orders all things, and of the most monstrous injustice which 
 befalls them they say : ' It is His will.' The world is di- 
 vinely based on law and justice, wealth and poverty, sin and 
 suffering ; only change is evil. Wrong is right because it 
 is. Devout Christianity seems so like Mohammedanism, 
 "with a little personal appeal thrown in to make all suffering 
 worse. But I am bewildered ; I have always rebelled. Is 
 it possible, as you think, that an era is approaching, when 
 our snug, smirking society will stand out in the face of God, 
 a naked lie ? If so, if in the far-away ages a new world 
 were possible, then the life of each stone on the path were 
 worth living indeed. God bless you ; you have given me 
 hojje.^'' His next poem was entitled " Kismet." 
 
 But her answer was in quite a different tone. " You are 
 still young," — the words startled him; he was somewhat 
 ashamed of the keenness of their pang — " When you 
 have suffered as much as I have, you will not cast your 
 self with such glowing confidence on ' the Eock of 
 God's Eight.' The shipwrecked are afraid of rocks. Xo, 
 let us give up demanding our own happiness, analyzing 
 our own sufferings. To work for others ; that is the task. 
 The glory of the world's future; that, perhaps, may be the 
 reward. So much you have taught me ; I can never thank 
 you enough for it. Strange that I should have selected 
 your scarce-launched vessel to tow my broken hulk into 
 port." 
 
 The poet did not like the "broken hulk" at all. It 
 sounded suggestive of an old maid with a miniature, an up- 
 ward glance of the eye, and a cat. 
 
 Spangenberg, on the other hand, was delighted with 
 " Kismet." " You are actually beginning to see some good 
 in ' to-day,' " he said. " That is encouraging. Xo bene-
 
 A CLANDESTINE CORRESPONDENCE. 413 
 
 factor of the human race was ever made up entirely of 
 wrath." 
 
 The letters now ceased for some time. Volkert reflected, 
 ungratefully, that they had been written by an elderly sen- 
 timentalist to a boy. And he remembered how frequently 
 of late his thoughts had reverted to the beautiful image of 
 his " Muse." Well, she was straightforward, and had 
 stopped him. By-the-bye, he had signed his last verses in 
 full: " Pelgrim," and this he now continued to do. "A 
 charming name ! " said Spangenberg, " I had always thought 
 your P stood for Peter or Paul." 
 
 About this time, unfortunately, Spangenberg fell ill from 
 over-activity and was obliged to stop at home, fretting, for 
 so do busy men rest. The " Cry " not being allowed to 
 enter his father's house, he could not even see what a mess 
 his sub-editor was making of the business. But his mother 
 brought him some excellent jelly and coddled and cuddled 
 him in a flurry of tranquil enjoyment.
 
 CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 THE STORY OF RI-KSI-LA AXD THE DEY KOUM. 
 
 UxDER these depressing circumstances Volkert stopped 
 away longer than usual from " Little Paradise." Xone of 
 them knew what became of him during the intervals. He 
 followed no profession ; he appeared to be possessed of lib- 
 eral means. " Have you a mother ? " Mevrouw Morel had 
 once asked him in the ordinary course of conversation, with 
 a gentle lingering over the word. The young man had 
 paused, as if for a moment's reflection ; then, abrujotly, he 
 had answered, " No." 
 
 One morning he remembered with sudden compunction 
 how pathetically Mevrouw Morel had complained, the last 
 time they met, of the absence from all the public libraries 
 of that absolutely indispensable work, Schlafenmiitzers 
 Kinderjahre der Deutschen Kaiser. He had searched for 
 it everywhere in vain. He now telegraphed for a copy 
 from Leipzig (in eleven quarto volumes) and had it ad- 
 dressed to the office, whence he fetched it a few days later, 
 carrying over about half as a foretaste, to Mevrouw Morel's 
 door. Finding this open, he bumped his way upstairs and 
 staggered into the lady's presence, there suddenly to halt in 
 awkward and annoyed surprise. For a woman, a stranger, 
 lay with her head on the table, completely thrown forward 
 upon her hands. Her shawl had slipped back and hung 
 loose, revealing a beautiful neck ; she was dressed tawdrily, 
 vulgarly, not as good women dress. Little Mevi'ouw Morel 
 stood beside her, smoothing, with one affectionate hand, her 
 coils of chestnut hair, and speaking rapid, earnest words
 
 THE STORY OP RI-KSI-LA AND THE DEY NOUM. 415 
 
 meanwhile. The woman, who was sobbing convulsively, 
 lifted her head with a frightened jerk, and the unwelcome 
 visitor let all his books drop in a crash on the floor. The 
 face was unknown to him, it must have been a j^retty face 
 once ; now it was oh so despairing in its practised effrontery. 
 The young man stammered a few words of apology and 
 fled; Mevrouw Morel followed him out to the landing. 
 " It is nothing," she said, " but oh the books from the 
 library ! I hope you have not injured them ! " Volkert, 
 as he walked back to the office, rejoiced in the i)icture of 
 her surprise. 
 
 The hungry-faced clerk was seated at his desk as usual, 
 his protuberant nose inclined across his work. The office, 
 like the clerk, was gaunt, unkempt, aggressively wretched. 
 It looked as if it had never been new, the clerk as if he had 
 never been young. 
 
 " Wonnema," began Volkert, " do yon know a young 
 lady" — his socialism largely consisted in calling everyone a 
 " lady " or " gentleman " ; with some people it takes that 
 form — " do you know a young lady who comes to see Me- 
 vrouw Morel in a light-green shawl ? " He was not ashamed 
 of his iuquisitiveness ; the poor bold, sorrowful face had 
 fully aroused his pity. 
 
 " Has the ' lady,' " asked the clerk with a sneer, " a red 
 face and pale-blue eyes ? " 
 
 « Yes." 
 
 " Then I can tell you about her, if you really care to 
 know. That girl is called Dora Droste. Ten years ago she 
 was a kitchen wench in the Royal Palace ; she was ignorant, 
 foolish, and honest. Nowadays she is none of all three. 
 If you want to account for the change, you must ask one of 
 the king's great lords, but I fancy you will experience some 
 difl^iculty, for he is a very great lord indeed. I have asked 
 him twice without receiving an answer ; the last time I did 
 so I had the satisfaction of knocking him down, I think 
 that's about all."
 
 416 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " Not all," objected the auditor, putting together the 
 remaining volumes of Schlafenmiitzel which lay beside 
 their box on the floor. " I don't see how the nobleman was 
 responsible for what she is now." 
 
 " Xor did the noble man, as you correctly style him. 
 Tliis noble man was at the head of the Eoyal Buttery- 
 department ; she was under him. He dismissed her with 
 contumely, when her disgrace was consummated, seeking, 
 and finding, safety for himself in the vehemence of his 
 persecution. The girl's future was irremediably ruined. 
 She came to me — I also was a slave in the Palace at that 
 time — and I lost my situation for taking her in. But 
 she had a proud spirit and would eat her own bread. 
 My lord of the Buttery had left her but one way of earn- 
 ing it." 
 
 " And what has Mevrouw Morel to do with her ? " 
 
 " Mevrouw Morel, were she wiser, would leave her in 
 peace. She lives near us ; I don't mind her, nor do the 
 children. It's not she that's to blame." He ground his 
 heel into the floor. 
 
 " You must not blame the noble too much," said Volkert. 
 " He was like other nobles. He didn't know." 
 
 " Not know ? I took care that he knew ! " cried Won- 
 nema. " I appealed to him for her, for the child, which is 
 long since dead I He laughed. I believe he said the child 
 was mine. Xot know, indeed ! An easy excuse ! " 
 
 " I only meant to say," rei^lied Volkert, pausing by the 
 staircase, " that you cannot understand. That class looks 
 upon these things so differently. I have no doubt but this 
 lord of the buttery is, according to his lights, a most 
 honourable man." 
 
 The words seemed to infuriate Wonnema. He thrust 
 back his desk. " An honourable man ! " he cried violently. 
 " And you venture to say that here ! " He flung across a 
 newspaper. " Take that upstairs with you and talk about 
 honourable men 1 "
 
 THE STORY OF RI-KSI-LA AND THE DEY NOUM. 417 
 
 " I did not mean to offend you," said the young man 
 calmly. " How long ago did all this happen ? " 
 
 Volkert went upstairs to the editor's room with the 
 newspaper in his hand. It was the most recent number of 
 " The Cry of the People " ; he threw himself on the sofa 
 and leisurely looked it through. First he read his own 
 verses and was annoyed by an awkward misprint, and then 
 his eyes dropped to the paragraph immediately beneath 
 them which he saw marked with a pencil cross. It was 
 named : " Two Stories about One Gentleman " and ran as 
 follows : 
 
 There was a great Chinese Mandarin called Ri-Ksi-La, 
 the first favourite of the Emperor. His wife's uncle died, 
 and Ei-Ksi-La succeeded to a vast estate bequeathed by the 
 uncle to the niece. But soon after came a priest to the 
 Mandarin and said : " Lord, here is another will, a later 
 one. And it proves that my Lord, your Lady's dead uncle, 
 wished all his possessions to pass to Buddha, that good 
 might be done with them." " Let Buddha come and fetch 
 them," said Ri-Ksi-La. Buddha has not come yet, and Ri- 
 Ksi-La is still first favourite of the Emjieror. 
 
 There was a great Turkish Pasha, called the Dey Noum, 
 and he was first favourite of his master, the Sultan. He 
 had a beautiful wife who had brought him all his money. 
 And one morning there came a stranger to his divan and 
 said : " Dey, your wife's father was a slave-merchant in 
 the far markets of Asia, and the slaves whom lie sold were 
 white." And the Dey Xoum made answer : " I know it. 
 The markets are far, and the money is near." The money 
 is still there, and the Dey Xoum is first favourite of the 
 Sultan. 
 
 The young man from the Hague sat a long time motion- 
 less, with the paper in his hand. Presently Wonnema 
 looked in. " Can I have that paper back ? " he said. " I
 
 418 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 had marked it. I am going to send it to the great noble 
 we were speaking of just now." 
 
 " What farrago of nonsense is this ! " the other burst 
 out. " You know how vehemently opposed the chief is to 
 personal scandals. The thing will cost you your situation, 
 as likely as not." 
 
 " I have thought of that," replied the clerk with quiet 
 intensity. " ^Yhen, after ten years' waiting, a man's re- 
 venge falls ripe within his reach, he does not withhold his 
 hand." 
 
 " And what proof have you," cried the young man pas- 
 sionately, " of these covert charges against Count Eexelaer 
 van Deynum? Probably none at all." 
 
 Wonnema produced a couple of documents from a 
 locked cupboard. " Be careful, please," he said, with a 
 white flicker in his fierce eyes. " I have seen the originals. 
 They were brought by a foreigner. He will be here again 
 to-morrow, and you can speak to him if you like."
 
 CHAPTER LVIII. 
 
 A HUNTED HARE. 
 
 " I CANNOT understand Mamma," said Jane, arranging 
 her tea-cups. It was evening, and Rolliue was having tea 
 with her. " Nor need I. As for me, perhaps because of 
 the failure of her attempts to enrich me, I do not think 
 money is everything. And I would rather not have had it 
 than sit opposite Miss Kops." 
 
 " Oh, he needn't sit opposite to her more than he 
 chooses," replied Rolline, gently stretching herself in a 
 lady-like manner, and admiring her feet, the only part of 
 her person which remained resolutely small. " And I must 
 say I envy him the way Papuum succeeds. My husband 
 says that they use it at the Palace. It has just been intro- 
 duced into England, where ten thousand pounds are being 
 spent on advertisement. They've got two Tatua Papuas 
 there in some public building, the Westminster — Westmin- 
 ster Hall,* I believe, and everybody's allowed to come and 
 tattoo them all over and rub out the marks again. And 
 every night all the Harries of London come and scribble 
 their names over the wretched creatures' arms." 
 
 " I know, I know," said Jane impatiently. " Well, I 
 may be old-fashioned, but for me there is honourable and 
 dishonourable money still." 
 
 " And what do you call honourable money?" 
 
 " Inherited money," replied Jane promptly. " Like 
 
 * Aguariuin ? 
 28
 
 420 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Uncle Ilil's, for instaneo. Or Cousin Borck's of Eoirin- 
 gcu." 
 
 " You are less tolerant than poor grandmamma, ■who 
 ought to have known. Did I tell you what Monsieur de 
 Bounaventure w'rote in my album ? " 
 
 " No. I don't like Monsieur de Bonnaventure." 
 
 " Nor do I, but I asked him to write in my album. 
 Everybody does. And he wrote : ' Mon experience de la 
 vie se resume en un seul mot : L'or dure.' It was very 
 nasty of him and in execrable taste." 
 
 " I wish," said Jane meaningly, " that jieople would not 
 speak so much of Monsieur de Bonnaventure." 
 
 Eolline modestly dro2iped her eyes. " As for that," she 
 said presently, " there are a good many things I wish peo- 
 ple would not speak so much about. What do you say to 
 the two little stories in the ' Cry of the People ' which have 
 been all over the place?" 
 
 " I say, as my husband does, that nobody ought to have 
 read them. People ought not to know such a paper exists." 
 
 " People didn't, but this number, they say, is out of 
 print. I go out more than you do, and I assure 3^ou I see 
 the story in everybody's face. My husband made me a 
 terrible scene, as if it were any fault of mine." 
 
 " Pleasant for Eeinout," said Jane, beginning to wash 
 up. 
 
 " Oh, it won't hurt Eeinout, for the will is undoubt- 
 edly valid here. It is worst for Aunt Margherita, but one 
 can't pity her, she makes such a fool of herself. The best 
 (thing she could do would be to retire definitely among her 
 cockatoos and canary-birds and never be heard of again. 
 But she goes out more than ever — tight-laced, over-dressed, 
 powdered and rouged — since this thing got about." 
 
 "And it is this money which Mamma wants Topsy to 
 marry." 
 
 " Poor Topsy, I don't think she has a ghost of a 
 chance."
 
 A HUNTED HARE. 421 
 
 " She knows it," said June angrily, " and she doesn't 
 care." 
 
 "Jane " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " I wonder whether Uncle Ilil knew when he married 
 her." 
 
 But the baby cried out in the adjoining room, and Jane 
 went to look at it. When she came back, she said, pursuing 
 her thoughts : " I pity Keinout all the same. He is an hon- 
 ourable man." 
 
 " Oh, I don't pretend to understand Keinout ; he is dif- 
 ferent from everybody," said Rolline. 
 
 " Eeinout's education was destined to deaden every feel- 
 ing but worldliness ; with most men it would have succeed- 
 ed, and what a success ! He might have been a Talleyrand, 
 as Uncle Hilarius once said to me. But other feelings have 
 survived and caused the whole man to fail. He is like 
 those two life-long prisoners released from the Bastille who 
 did not know what to do with their freedom. He knows 
 that he ought to feel nobly, and doesn't know how and yet 
 can't live without it. I believe he is a miserable man." 
 
 " Nonsense, Jane, how excited you are ! Quite a romance 
 about poor, good-natured Eeinout. I meet him constantly 
 — at least I used to before this scandal ; it looks rather cow- 
 ardly in him to hide. He always seemed to enjoy himself 
 and he flirted a good deal, I fancy. He is going out to 
 Russia in a month or two, and he will die an ambassador, 
 covered with stars, at his beautiful seat of Deynum. Poor 
 Reinout, indeed ! " 
 
 "All that is true," replied Jane, "the worse for him. 
 He is hedged in on every side. Nobody can nnderstand 
 what that means, until he has tried to break loose. Suppos- 
 ing you and I were suddenly to wish to become Roman 
 Catholics " 
 
 " I ? " cried Rolline, sitting up. " How preposterous 
 you are, Jane ! "
 
 422 THE GREATER GLORY, 
 " It is only b}' way of comparison " 
 
 " Conrad's family would never allow it." 
 
 " That is just what I mean. Perhai^s our husbands 
 would threaten to deprive us of our children, and we might 
 end by becoming Catholics on the sly. I imagine that 
 Eeinout, deep down in his heart, lives a life of his own. 
 The life that we see is his father's." 
 
 " You talk of him as if he were a cat," said Eolline. " I 
 don't want to hear anything about any man's two lives, and 
 I think it's rather a shame of you to suggest such things of 
 Eeinout. I should sooner think it of Guy from the horrid 
 tales that I hear." 
 
 " Guy ! " said Jane with ineffable contempt. " I don't 
 know what set me talking to-night. I have never men- 
 tioned the subject to anyone but Antoinette. I will tell you 
 something about Eeinout, though. One evening, more than 
 a year ago, when ever\'body had been speaking of his bril- 
 liant prospects, he came up to me suddenly and burst out, 
 ' I would give it all to be a man ! ' He was strongly moved, 
 as I saw, but he walked away immediately, and a moment 
 later was laughing with Dolly Foulise." 
 
 " lie isn't a woman," said Eolline sulkily, but Jane did 
 not heed her. " Perhaps these revelations will help him," 
 she thought to herself, over her tea-tray. " Perhaps ! " 
 Aloud, she changed the subject : " As for Guy, it is to be 
 hoped he will marry Cecile and settle down at last." 
 
 " She will hardly make him a good wife," said Eolline. 
 " However, Mamma is set upon it, and has not left Cecile 
 an hour of peace since the poor thing went to live with 
 them." 
 
 " Cecile is certainly a ' poor thing,' but she deserves a 
 nicer husband than Guy. However, she is nearly thirty and 
 must look after herself. But I suppose she's been bullied 
 too long by Grandmamma not to have forgotten how to 
 say no." 
 
 " Come, Jane, you, who had never been bullied by Grand-
 
 A HUNTED HARE. 423 
 
 mamma, forgot how to say no, when Mamma nagged at you 
 from morning till night." 
 
 " True," replied Jane, and a slight flush spread over her 
 sallow face. " And you, who were less strong-minded than 
 I, yet got your own way. Perhaps Mamma would tell us 
 she never Avas shortsighted." 
 
 After that Eolline looked cross, and neither sister was 
 very sorry when the cab came at half-past nine. 
 
 Jane remained thoughtful, with her pointed chin on her 
 hand, in her poor little drawing-room. She was musing on 
 the irony of life, which always grins at you, even when it 
 hurts you most. At first, when she had married a husband 
 she did not care for, she had comforted herself with the 
 thought of all the pleasant things his father's death would 
 bring her. She would buy any quantity of costly books and 
 have a " salon " and invite the clever people whom her own set 
 never saw. There was one man who daily passed her father's 
 house with whom she had long desired to pick an acquaint- 
 ance, a man with flowing hair and a pale, thought-laden 
 face — perhaps an artist ; she had even been a little " smit- 
 ten," as a girl. She would give private theatricals — pretty 
 little pieces, purposely written — and the papers would speak 
 of them. And, above all, she would have a real studio and 
 devote herself in earnest to what Eolline was wont to call 
 her " nasty, sticky painting-mess." Girlish fancies : in her 
 plain-spoken manner she had stipulated for these things, 
 and the thought had reconciled her to marrying Simmans. 
 That was eight years ago and more : her father-in-law Avas 
 now eighty-two. She loathed herself for desiring his death ; 
 the idea was the misery of her life. Yet she knew he would 
 not die. ITo would never die. Xor would it matter much 
 now if he did. She had got to like her husband ; she was 
 overburdened with children ; her painting, and poetry, and 
 all the rest of it, had died away from her life long ago. She 
 hardly found time, nowadays, to read a good book, when
 
 424 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 slie could get one. It had been her life-long desire to pos- 
 sess a complete Thackeray; Mevrouw Elizabeth only paid 
 for dress ; Simmans could not always pay satisfactorily for 
 that. If any lover of literature and the human race (are the 
 two not one ?) read this page and be able to do a good deed 
 at no great sacrifice, let him send a cheap edition — the 
 green cloth one will do — to Mevrouw Simmans van Rexe- 
 laer, Bankastraat, the Hague. Last AVednesday was old 
 Simmaus's birthday ; the old gentleman gave a family din- 
 ner-party, and Jaue had to go. 
 
 A ring at the house-bell ; Jane glanced towards the 
 clock — a quarter past ten. She did not expect her husband 
 till eleven. It Avas not her husband ; the maid announced 
 in accents of mildest astonishment : " The Freule van 
 Borck," and Cecile came hurriedly in. 
 
 " What has happened ? " cried Jane, starting up. " Pa- 
 pa ? " All the children van Eexelaer liked their quiet father 
 best. 
 
 Cecile sank down on a chair. Her face was white, her 
 whole manner distraught. She could not sj)eak, but Avith 
 trembling fingers she fumbled at the clasp of her heavy 
 cloak, till it fell from her shoulder, disclosing her soft white 
 dinner-dress. 
 
 " What is it ? " cried Jane, now thoroughly frightened. 
 " Which of them is ill ? Why can't you speak ? " 
 
 " Xobody is ill," gasped Cecile. " Oh, Jane, you must 
 help me ! " and she burst into hysterical weeping. 
 
 " Hush, hush," urged Jane tenderly. Hers was not a 
 nature that easily showed pity, either to herself, or to others. 
 She stood awkwardly beside her cousin till the latter's sobs 
 subsided. Then she said : " Xow tell me." 
 
 But Cecile did not lift her face from the hands in which 
 she had hidden it. Once or twice her throat moved vainly, 
 and at last she whispered through her knitted fingers : " I 
 can never go back again." Jane bent low to catch the 
 words ; she was utterly at a loss to understand.
 
 A HUNTED HARE. 425 
 
 " I can never go back to your mother's again. Oh, Jane, 
 I am not safe there ; " and now Cecile began to cry afresh, 
 but quietly, with that heart-broken continuance which 
 comes of a lasting wound. 
 
 " If Guy has insulted you," said Jane with horrible per- 
 spicacity, " why didn't you tell Mamma, instead of running 
 away here ? " 
 
 " I don't know," replied Cecile without altering her atti- 
 tude. " Don't let us speak of it. Only you must help me, 
 that is all." 
 
 " But if I am to help you, I must understand," pleaded 
 Jane. " What do you want me to do ? " 
 
 " Hide me. Shield me. Oh, Jane, perhaps I am very 
 foolish. I have never been accustomed to look after any- 
 thing. But I can't marry him." 
 
 " Well, then, tell him so plainly." 
 
 " I have done that, more than once. And I told Aunt 
 Elizabeth — I really did — that she might have all my money, 
 but she only grew very angry and said I had insulted her. 
 And — and " — the Freule's voice again failed her — " I canH 
 go back," she burst out passionately. "Antoinette helped 
 me to get away and told me to come here. I ran all the 
 way. Help me, Jane." 
 
 Jane rose from the floor, on which she had sunk to 
 listen, and stood pondering. " It is my own mother," she 
 said at last, " Henry is just expecting his promotion, and 
 we are looking to Papa to help us through with it. If 
 Mamma knew I had thwarted her, she would never forgive 
 me." 
 
 For the first time Cecile lifted her terror-struck face. 
 
 " You are not going to desert me ? " she cried. " I have 
 nobody. Topsy said she felt sure you would help." 
 
 " Let Topsy speak for herself," replied Jane ; she felt 
 goaded. " Of course I will help you," she added more 
 kiudly. " Yes, I will This, I think, will be best. :My 
 Aunt Gratia Rexelaer is staying with her friend the Freule
 
 426 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 van "Weylert ; I ^vill (j:\\e you a letter to lier. You arc so 
 agitated, perhaps you had better spend the night with them, 
 and, if to-morrow morning your impression remains the 
 same, well, you are of age, and nobody can force you to 
 return home. I should advise you, in that case, to consult 
 with Cousin Borck of Eolliugen." 
 
 Her calm, strong voice did not lose its effect on the flut- 
 tering soul. " But Aunt Elizabeth has always said," Cecile 
 began timidly, " that, as I am not yet thirt}-, my guardian 
 can force me to marry whom he likes." 
 
 "Mamma confuses two different laws," replied Jane 
 firmly. " You have no guardian and, your ^lai'ents being 
 dead, you are free to do as you will " — an immense expres- 
 sion of relief came over the poor girl's anxious face — " Dear 
 Cecile, you will have to look after yourself a little ; none of 
 us must trust too much to others to look after them." 
 
 " I must try," said Cecile desperatel}^ " but I haven't 
 any money. Xothing but the few florins in my purse, and 
 even that I left on my toilet-table." 
 
 JanS" smiled. " That excuses Mamma's saying Papa 
 must take care of you. Now I shall send for a cab. You 
 can't go much farther in that dress." 
 
 " Won't you come with me, Jane? I hardly know your 
 aunt." 
 
 " I can't : I don't want Henry to know ; he is already 
 sufficiently worried about his promotion. It is as likely as 
 not Aunt Gratia will tell, for she can't keep a quiet tongue 
 in her head. But we must risk that. I really think it is 
 the best thing for you to spend the night in a neutral house. 
 Why, they may be here at any moment, inquiring for you ! " 
 
 " They may," screamed Cecile, starting up, as if she 
 already heard footsteps in the street. " Save me, dearest, 
 for your children's sake ! Oh, Jane, hov>' long the cab is 
 coming ! " 
 
 " I have sent for it," said Jane soothingly. " I daresay 
 Topsy has told them you were in bed with a headache."
 
 A HUNTED HARE. 427 
 
 " I couldu't lock my own door," said Cecile, and then 
 silence lay heavy between them till the cab came lumbering 
 round. 
 
 The Freule Alette van "Weylert and the Freule Gratia van 
 Rexelaer were sitting quietly and comfortably in the former's 
 softly lightly, thickly curtained, darkly furnished back 
 drawing-room. Each elderly lady had her knitting beside 
 her and in front of her a costly old Japanese plate, from 
 which she had just partaken of her nightly flavourless 
 "joap." The knitting was missionary kniiting. The 
 Freule Eexelaer was very tliin and frail, the Freule Weylert 
 broad and substantial. At the Freule Weylert's elbow lay 
 a great gilt Bible from which she was about to read a chap- 
 ter before the two ladies retired to rest. The Freule was 
 looking for her spectacles. The gilt clock on the seven- 
 teenth-century mantelpiece sang out the hour of eleven, 
 and its great Dutch comrade in the hall boomed adhesion. 
 
 AVhen Cecile was introduced, the reposeful room, the 
 kind faces of the two old maids, above all the open Bible, 
 seemed to inspire her with confidence. She gave Jane's 
 letter to the Freule Gratia. The Freule Gratia read it in 
 silence and passed it on to the Freule Alette. The latter 
 looked up at Cecile, over her spectacles, and nodded, but a 
 firm expression settled about her chin. 
 
 " You can certainly stay here if you wish, child," she 
 said. "Sit down, my dear; ring, and I will tell them to 
 pay the cab. .It's no use wasting money." 
 
 " I promised Jane to ask you to tear up that note, 
 Freule," began Cecile, addressing the Freule van Rexelaer. 
 
 " Oh but, Cecile, I must read it again." 
 
 " But you will, after that — won't you ? — because I prom- 
 ised Jane to see it done." 
 
 " Now, I like that," remarked the comfortable mistress 
 of the house, " always keep your promises and don't make 
 any you can't keep. You are right to come here, my dear.
 
 42S THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Will you have some pap ? Xo ? Well, I must tell them to 
 air you a bed. I am afraid you will have to put up with 
 my maid's things. Mine would hardly fit you." She 
 smiled. 
 
 " And to-morrow she will have to come down to break- 
 fast in that dress ! " said the Freule van Rexelaer, folding 
 her hands. This idea seemed esjiecially to preoccupy the 
 quiet little lady. 
 
 " She can send to your sister-in-law's to-morrow and she 
 can stay here as long as she likes," answered Freule van 
 Weylert, searching for the place in her Bible. 
 
 " It is very kind of you, Alette. And quite right. 
 Only, I am sorry. My sister-in-law will be so vexed." 
 
 " You cannot help that, nor can I. Some one of my 
 relations has been vexed with me all my life. You cannot 
 endeavour to act right and please relations who want you to 
 act wrong." 
 
 " No, no," said the Freule Gratia hurriedly, " poor 
 Cecile ! " 
 
 The mistress of the house settled her spectacles on her 
 nose, and once again shot across one of those sharp glances 
 at Cecile. 
 
 "My dear," she said, "I am very rheumatic. Would 
 you come here for a moment ? I should like to give you a 
 kiss." And, as the young girl bent over her, Freule Alette, 
 looking up into her troubled face, laid one hand on the 
 open volume. 
 
 " Do you know, at all," she asked, " where to look for 
 comfort in the sorest trouble ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Cecile verv softlv.
 
 CHAPTER LIX. 
 
 THE baron's CONFESSIOlSr. 
 
 When^ " Pelgrim's " correspondent had not written for 
 three weeks he began to find, out how much he missed her 
 letters. " I am vain," he said to himself, as we sometimes 
 do, liking ourselves for saying it. But this poet was not 
 spoilt by over-encouragement. Literary men did not see 
 " The Cry." 
 
 He felt quite glad one morning to find the familiar 
 handwriting awaiting him. " I do not know why I write," 
 said the letter, " I had made up my mind not to address 
 you again, but how often have I not done that, and torn up 
 the page ! There seems some bond between you and me ; 
 you have robbed me of my old reliance ; I am looking to 
 you for future strength. I am weary of the old dead great- 
 ness; you, the plebeian, though you cannot understand us, 
 you have taught me that each man's own soul is his only 
 pride or shame. There is no outward splendour, no adven- 
 titious sorrow, there is nothing in all the world but this 
 naked ' I ' and God. It is naturally a lesson for a man of 
 the people to teach. 
 
 " For that you are a man of the people all your poems 
 prove. That you are no longer young I knew when first I 
 wrote ; for a moment I was led to doubt, but your last 
 verses again proclaim me right. I can now say frankly that 
 I like you. I am sure you are a good man." 
 
 The poet smiled as he folded up the sheet. 
 
 " She jumps at conclusions," he said to himself. " Poor 
 old lady, she is charmingly prude ! "
 
 430 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Spangenberg was up again and hard at work. His first 
 week was spent in alternate disapi^roval of AVonnema and 
 commendation of Piet. " I should certainly send Wonnema 
 about his business," Spangenberg confessed to Volkert, " if 
 I could take away his children's appetites first." So AYon- 
 nema stayed. " I've had my say," said the clerk unrepent- 
 antly. Like so many, he was a " personal " socialist, made 
 such by personal wrong. His master, on the other hand, 
 was a practical, hard-working idealist, striving by all the 
 means in his power to embody his beautiful hopes. Piet 
 Poster, poor fellow, was devoid of political opinions. He 
 saw the nearest duty and did it. 
 
 He was working desperately hard just now for his Law- 
 examination. " And when you are a notary and a gentle- 
 man, Piet," Spangenberg once said to him, laughing, " you 
 can propose for the hand of your Freule." " Don't, sir, 
 l^lease," said Piet, scribbling hard. The lawyer was going 
 to add something about a better-dowered bride, but a look 
 at the young clerk's face suddenly checked him. " My ill- 
 ness has thrown back the Baron's business," he merely said 
 as he turned awa}'. 
 
 Certainly Wendela would not prove a well-dowered bride. 
 " Fifty cents an hour," declared the butcher's lady, " is more 
 than sufficient remuneration in the case of a young person 
 who is more remarkable for her airs than for her tunes." 
 Wendela had a hard time of it with the butcher's lady, but 
 she honestly did her best, and fortunately she was too proud 
 to feel offended at the woman's vulgarity. " The girls don't 
 improve," said the butcher's wife, " in spite of their excep- 
 tional talent." "Would you wish to stop the lessons?" 
 asked Wendela, lifting indifferent eyes to the fat, red face 
 above the piano. " Xo, Juffrouw, but for you to take more 
 pains," said the woman, glorying in the deeply Dutch 
 insult of that " Juffrouw " to the daughter of the Eexelaers. 
 
 Wendela hurried home to build up the imposing struc-
 
 THE BARON'S CONFESSION. 431 
 
 ture of her mother's snow-white coiffure. It is a ridiculous- 
 ly small detail, but it came back every day, remorselessly. 
 
 " It can't be helped," said Wendela. We never say that 
 till the spirit of protest awakens within us. But hers sank 
 to rest again as she looked across at her father and heard 
 him telling how pleased he was that one of his little Jews 
 had repeated the verb " aimer " without a single hitch. Yet 
 again she reasoned : " He has brought his trials on himself. 
 / am innocent." That thought was the long sorrow of her 
 life, worse, a thousand times worse, than the loss of all the 
 rest. She was angry with this estimable, this beautiful old 
 man ; and in the daily presence of his virtues she hated her 
 bootless wrath. From a few careless words, caught up at the 
 time of the loss of the Castle and erroneously interpreted, 
 she had gained an impression that her father had wasted his 
 property. She did not know what " speculation " meant, 
 but she knew it to be a very wicked sin. Was her mother 
 aware of her father's crime ? She fancied not. Even in 
 her childhood she had hidden away his guilt and wept over 
 it and prayed till all faith in prayer died away in her heart. 
 
 The Baron tottered feebly across the dingy room, from 
 his chair to the window, from the window to his chair. 
 " It is quite amusing, my dear," he said, " to watch the 
 movement on the canal. Human activity, after all, is 
 more interesting than stones and trees. Let me wheel you 
 into the sunshine." The Baroness roused herself with an 
 effort. She hated the canal. " It smells " ; that was all 
 the impression it conveyed to her, even while March winds 
 still kept the windows closed. But when spring came 
 round, the slow Dutch spring, and the watery sun peeped 
 out from time to time and a couple of consumptive trees 
 began to swell a little at their finger-tips, what did she say 
 then? Tlie overpowering odour of garbage penetrated 
 everywhere, and yet it was but a herald of the fcetid op- 
 pression which summer would bring. Even the Baron 
 grew sorrowful with the approach of the mild weather. He
 
 432 TOE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 liad been contented in the city while nature still lay dead. 
 But the breaking of the poor grey-green shimmer over the 
 canal- trees seemed to stir him in the depths of his soul. 
 He would sit looking out for hours, but no longer at the 
 bustle of human activity — at green fields, perhaps, and golden 
 buttercups ? "I should like to see some grass again," he 
 once said, not to his wife or daughter, but to a new friend 
 who came in of evenings, the landlady's only other lodger, 
 besides Piet. And one day he brought home a little pot of 
 pale mauve crocuses ; mother and daughter looked up in 
 amazement at such extravagance. But next morning he 
 gave it away again, to one of his little Jew-boys. 
 
 JuSrouw Donders's other lodger had been with her for 
 thirty years, as she was proud of repeating to all and 
 sundry. He had gone, fresh from the Amsterdam " Athe- 
 nffium," to teach Greek and Latin to the lowest form at the 
 Amsterdam Grammar School, and he was teaching there 
 still. Boys might come and boys might go, but he went on 
 for ever. On that evening when the crocuses were spread- 
 ing their promise of summer all over the place, this gentle- 
 man dropped in for a chat. " Oh — ah, flowers ! " he said. 
 " I find they vitiate the air so." He knew the way from 
 the Canal of the Eoses to the Grammar School and round 
 home by his five-o'clock ordinary. He must have been 
 aware that the world was bigger, because he himself had 
 been born on the other side of Amsterdam, and Amsterdam 
 is a large city, but, if he knew, he kept the secret well. 
 
 Between the Baron and his fellow-lodger, who, by-the- 
 bye, had mistaken the crocuses for tulips, there was nothing 
 in common but the house they lived in, a strong bond in 
 itself. The two would sit smoking their pipes together, 
 and once the old gentleman treated his guest to a glass of 
 " the King's Wine." There were only half a dozen bottles 
 left, which the Baron had refused to sell. 
 
 And they would converse on trifles. The Baron rarely 
 reverted to his brighter past or dwelt upon his present
 
 THE BARON'S CONFESSION. 433 
 
 troubles. If anyone spoke of troubles, it Avas the old school- 
 master, Avho had never been able" to manage his class — 
 surely no creature on earth is worthier commiseration. "It 
 must be so hard to teach bigger boys," said the Baron 
 sympathetically. " My little fellows were tiresome at first, 
 till I told them very seriously how sorry I should be if we 
 did not get on well. Big boys, of course, would have paid 
 no attention to that." 
 
 Though the Baron did not speak of his fallen greatness, 
 Gustave proclaimed to all the neighbourhood what a very 
 great man the Baron was. The neighbours would look up, 
 in vague curiosity, for a glimpse of where he sat, behind 
 the small-paned window, scrupulously tidy and venerably 
 white. And some of them would take off their hats. That 
 reminded the Baron of Deynum, and hugely delighted 
 him. " The world is full of good people," the Baron 
 said. 
 
 " Is it true, Mynheer," asked Dr. Barten, the school- 
 master, one evening, " that ' Ipsa glorior infamia ' is the 
 motto of your noble house ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the Baron curtly, shrinking from the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 " Then, it ought to have been * ignominia,' Mynheer." 
 
 The Baron was very much taken aback. " Why V " he 
 asked, and his hand trembled. 
 
 " Infamia is used of some inner, moral shame," ex- 
 pounded the pedagogue with great relish, " Ignominia of an 
 outer perceptible blot. The latter is evidently intended." 
 
 " I am very sorry," said the Baron sadly. " It has 
 always been infamia." 
 
 " Yes, it is a pity ; with dead languages we should be 
 particularly careful, for they cannot look after themselves. 
 But, whether in ignominy or infamy, undoubtedly, dear 
 Baron, the right to glory is yours." 
 
 " Xo, no," said the Baron disconsolately, " so even that 
 is wronsr."
 
 434 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 A couple of diiys later he came to the Baroness after his 
 morning's lesson. " ^ly dear," he said, " the little bo3's are 
 not coming back any more. I do not think it is right to take 
 money for teaching them and then not to do it. The last few- 
 times I have not been able ; my head gets too tired. They 
 are very good and do their best, but this morning I told 
 them they must not come to-morrow. I was sorry, and 
 they cried. But I must write to their parents. And God 
 will take care of us." 
 
 The Baroness looked up at him but did not speak. 
 
 " And, my dear," he went on quietly, " there is some- 
 thing else I want to tell you ; I can choose no better mo- 
 ment. Your own money, dearest, I used it — in speculation 
 — to avert the sale. It was very foolish of me, very wicked. 
 I have seen of late how surely my pride has worked my 
 ruin. Lest disgrace should fall upon my head, I have 
 heaped it on my soul." 
 
 He stopped speaking, his voice tremulous, his head 
 bowed. " I knew it," said the Baroness. 
 
 The words startled him in their calmness. " Knew it," 
 he stammered. 
 
 " I knew," continued the Baroness simply, " that the 
 money had been there and I saw it was gone. Xever mind, 
 dear ; it was not much." 
 
 " Gertrude," he murmured, " you will love me to the 
 end — will you not ? — as you have alwa^'s done. It is only a 
 little way." 
 
 And then the old lady began to cry. The husband had 
 to find her pocket-handkerchief and wipe the tears from her 
 stiff, pale face. There was rain beating against the win- 
 dows. The lodging-house room was full of a murky mist. 
 
 ~Sext morning the Baron did not get up, and "Wendela, 
 in the pauses between her lessons, had two of them to 
 nurse.
 
 CHAPTER LX. 
 
 REKSELAAR. 
 
 " I FEAR the contents of this letter will surprise and vex 
 you. I entreat you to believe that not for one moment did 
 I foresee the possibility of asking you a favour when I 
 began our correspondence, if correspondence it can be 
 called. 
 
 " Yes, I am asking you a favour. You are a literary 
 man, an associate of literary men. Could you procure me 
 copying or translation or some such work ? You can judge 
 of my hand-writing. It is true, as I told you, that I am a 
 woman of high rank — doubtless, you dislike me on that ac- 
 count — but I am also a woman in great poverty, struggling 
 to earn a livelihood ; and for that you will think none the 
 Avorse of me. I am not- ashamed to claim your help; if you 
 can assist me, appoint some place of meeting, but promise 
 on your word of honour never to find out my name or ad- 
 dress." 
 
 Volkert placed an advertisement in tlie following num- 
 ber of " The Cry." " Come to Mcvrouw Morel's, 5 Little 
 Paradise, to-morrow at noon." " She will be surprised," he 
 thought to himself with a smile, " to see her kind old man." 
 His interest in his unknown admirer definitely sank under 
 her request for " literary work." He could easily picture 
 the kind of creature, ringlcttcd, mittcncd, melancholy, old- 
 maidish. 
 
 At the appointed time he went to Mevrouw Morel's. 
 29
 
 436 TilK GREATER GLOKV. 
 
 " I am so thaukf ul you are willing to protect me," he said, 
 " I feel horribly nervous." " And to protect the lady, 
 eh ? " retorted Mevrouw. " Quite so," said Volkert 
 gravely. 
 
 Punctually at uoon a ring at the street-bell announced 
 the aspirant for hard labour on bread and water. " I like 
 that," said Mevrouw Morel, " you can do twice as much, if 
 only you are precise." A quick footstep was heard ascend- 
 ing the stairs ; the room-door was thrown open, a tall, strik- 
 ing-looking girl appeared on the threshold, stopped, gave a 
 sharp glance at the couple who rose to receive her, turned 
 and fled downstairs again, flinging-to the door. 
 
 Mevrouw Morel remained staring at her companion, 
 with round eyes of amazement. 
 
 " Wendela ! " said the young man aloud, to himself, in 
 utter discomfiture. 
 
 " What is it? I don't understand. How absurd ! Tell 
 me quick," cried little Mevrouw Morel, her comely face 
 alive with curiosity. 
 
 " I have met that young lady before," answered the 
 poet. " More, dear Mevrouw, I myself do not under- 
 stand." 
 
 Piet Poster, standing expectant outside, every nerve on 
 the " qui-vive," was terrified to see the Freule van Rexelaer 
 come rushing down, her face aflame. 
 
 " But, Freule," he burst out, " what has hap- 
 pened? You promised to warn me immediately. You 
 haven't been gone ten seconds. Let me run up and 
 punch " 
 
 "No, no, Piet," cried Wendela, "nothing is wrong. 
 Only come away quick, I beg of you. I don't want to re- 
 main in this place one moment longer ! " 
 
 So this time Piet Poster did not demolish the enemy. 
 In the silence of their rapid homeward walk the Freule once 
 only interrogatively ejaculated : " Pelgrim ! " and Poster,
 
 REKSELAAR. 437 
 
 sliyly glancing sideways, saw fresh blushes mantle her crim- 
 son cheek. 
 
 The young poet walked across to the office, altogether 
 bewildered, and sat down in Spangenberg's room. Vainly 
 he knit his eyebrows over this new experience ; he could 
 understand nothing of the Freule van Eexelaer's need. 
 But an immense pity and kindness filled his- impulsive 
 heart. 
 
 Presently Spangenberg arrived in a state of supreme 
 elation. " Hurrah ! " he cried, as soon as he saw his friend. 
 " Can you keep a secret, a secret which all the town will 
 know in a day or two ?" 
 
 " Of course I can keep a secret," replied the other testily, 
 thinking he knew too many already. 
 
 " No, but mine is one worth knowing, one I enjoy so 
 much I want you to enjoy it too. We have heard — too 
 much of late, and little thanks to Wonnema ! — of the Man- 
 darin Ei-Ksi-La, His Excellency the Count of Deynum, 
 Lord of the August Household of our sovereign Liege, the 
 King." 
 
 " We have," said the other. " Too much. Let us talk 
 of something else." 
 
 " Stupid fellow, luckily for you I know and forgive your 
 surly humours. You deserve to miss the story. Well, this 
 cliiof of one of the oldest, noblest families of Europe — tlie 
 van Eexelaers are that, — are they not ? " 
 
 " Of course," acquiesced the other wearily. 
 
 " Quite so — is the grandson of an innkeeper in a hamlet 
 near the frontier, a gin-shop-man called Eekselaar " — he 
 spelt the word — " just simple Mathew Eekselaar, not even 
 connected, as you see, by name with the great historic race." 
 
 " Another lie of W^onnema's," said Christian's com- 
 panion calmly. " One would feel for Count van Eexelaer, 
 if only on account of this vulgar persecution. For shame, 
 Spangenberg, you are as bad as your clerk ! "
 
 438 '^'IH'^ GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " His Excellency is a worthy object of your sympathy," 
 begun Christian in a scornful tone. 
 
 " He is," burst in the other with unexpected violence. 
 
 " Do I not say so ? liut, Pelgrim, you sliouhl not pre- 
 sume that I find such delight in slander. I had excellent 
 reason to sift this matter, and thereby do yeoman service 
 to a worthy man, a real noble, as it happens — I, Christian 
 Spangenberg, is that not a freak of fate? It apjjears there 
 was an error in the register at first, the fault of some rustic 
 clerk, and his present Lordship's father quietly added the 
 ' van.' Nothing easier, as everyone knows, than to effect an 
 erroneous entry in the registers, nothing harder than to get 
 it remedied later on. This family, you may be sure, has 
 never filed an application. It was the gin-seller's son who 
 worked himself up the backstairs into the palace ; he had 
 an exceedingly handsome wife, a haberdasher's daughter — 
 there are nasty stories why he got his Countship, but that's 
 slander ; I stick to business." 
 
 " Well, the title is genuine then, at any rate," cried the 
 Count Eexelaer's champion, turning a hot face, for one 
 moment, towards the lawyer. 
 
 " The new title is genuine, of course. Nothing surprises 
 one more than the ease with which upstarts start up. Be- 
 sides half a dozen genealogists, whose hobby is quite out of 
 fashion, who knows that this Holy Roman Count is the 
 coarsest of shams ? What, then, will his Lordship say to 
 see his gin-selling, tape-selling grandsires uncoffined and 
 his own name published in print, corrected and revised up 
 to date?" 
 
 " I said too little," declared the other bitterly. " You 
 are worse than Wonnema." 
 
 "And why have I ferreted out all this? The great lord 
 Avho arouses your pity, not content with stealing the real 
 Eexelaer's name and acquiring his property you know how, 
 has used the confusion obtained by fraud to seize on a reve- 
 nue due to the head of the house, for he poses as such. He
 
 REKSELAAR. 439 
 
 has broil gilt down his innocent rivals from honourable 
 poverty to honourable privation. "Whilst rolling in his filthy 
 2)rosperity, second only to the Sovereign, honoured, flattered 
 and envied, he is stealing their last crust from these people 
 who have never even risen against the lie of his life. Evi- 
 dently he hates them ; perhaps for that reason. It is said 
 that his wife is no better than he. It is said there is a son. 
 Poor fellow, I pity him. Perhaps he will never find out the 
 truth ; let us hope, if he does, he will take after his father 
 sufficiently not to care. God help him, else " — the young 
 editor was violently excited — " I would rather be one of my 
 match-boys in the streets of Amsterdam than that man's 
 pampered, envied, blood-and-dirt-nnrtured heir ! " 
 
 " For God's sake, stop ! " cried tlie other, facing round. 
 " I am he."
 
 CHAPTER LXI. 
 
 " HE LEADETH ME IX GREEX PASTURES." 
 
 " Let us go at ouce and tell him,'' said " Volkert" ten 
 minutes later. "Let me tell him; it is my right. I am 
 sure my father will refund the money, as soon as he under- 
 stands." Spangenberg let this view pass ; he had never 
 pitied Pelgrim Volkert half as much as he pitied the 
 Jonker Keinout Rexelaer. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, " the fact that the different spell- 
 ing can be proved nullifies any claim to ' the Lady's Dole.' 
 It was not so easy to unearth the evidence. Piet Poster 
 has done the greater part, travelling round from village to 
 village, till he found the right place and right entry at last. 
 He could not have worked with greater energy, had he 
 been working for himself." 
 
 " But if these things were so," protested Eeinout, " I 
 cannot understand the Baron's not showing us w]} be- 
 fore." 
 
 " You would, if you knew him. He would never have 
 stirred even now, had you left him bread to eat. He told 
 me himself : ' Count Rexelaer's family history is his busi- 
 ness, notinine. I need not expose its seamy side because his 
 wife was her uncle's heiress.' That's the kind of man the 
 Baron is." 
 
 " But the pedigree in the hall at home," groaned Rein- 
 out. " I have known it since my birth. All our ancestors 
 up to Rovert, the Protestant, who joins on to the main line 
 with Ruwert, his Catholic brother ? I cannot believe you.
 
 "HE LEADETH ME IN GREEN PASTURES." 441 
 
 It is all worked out and printed in the Archives of the No- 
 bles of Holland. It is matter of history." 
 
 " History will be none the worse for a few lies more or 
 less," said Spangenberg, smiling sadly. "As for you, you 
 will be a Count when your father dies. You must be con- 
 tent with that." 
 
 Eeinout lifted his eyes and slowly fixed them upon his 
 friend. Their depths were swelling with mute despair. 
 
 Christian rose hurriedly, unable to endure more. "Dear 
 old fellow," he said, unsteadily, " no one can help you but 
 yourself," and then he hurried away, lest the other should 
 see him break down. 
 
 When he came back several hours later, in the evening, 
 he found Eeinout sitting just as he had left him, moodily 
 pensive, with folded arms. At the noise of the opening door 
 the Jonker roused himself. " I want to go — at once — " he 
 said, " to Baron Eexelaer. Christian, you must take me 
 there." 
 
 " Very well," acquiesced Spangenberg, secretly delighted. 
 " I was going to-night, in any case, to tell of my success." 
 So, presently, they started together. 
 
 " There's a little waiting-room," said Christian, as they 
 neared the house, " where you'd better wait a minute while 
 I ask permission to brii]g you in. But first I must toll bim 
 about the ' Dole.' " 
 
 The pair passed down the long, ill-lighted corridor. 
 
 " That's the door," nodded Christian. " There's never 
 anybody there. I'll be back in a minute." 
 
 Eeinout turned the handle and found himself once more 
 — in a little box of a room — face to face with the Freulo 
 Wendela. The girl was concocting some mess or medicine 
 she needed for lier invalids. She put down the cup on the 
 table. "And so this is the way," she said, trembling, "in 
 which you keep your word, Mynheer ? " He paused on the
 
 442 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 threshold, secure in the thought that she could not pass him. 
 " I had uo idea," he stammered hurriedl}-. " I beg of you 
 to believe me. I came to see your father. You misjudge 
 me; it is only natural, but I swear that you misjudge me ! " 
 The spirit lamp boiled over in a spreading splutter. He 
 bent to extinguish the flame, and she caught uj) her cu]^ and 
 left him without another word. 
 
 He heard her speaking to Spangenberg outside. " I 
 thought you were the doctor," she was saying. " You will 
 find him very ill." 
 
 Eeinout waited for several minutes in the bare little 
 room, which was not much more than a cupboard for hats 
 and cloaks. The pale wall-paper had lost its pattern ; the 
 blind hung torn and crooked, there was a hole in the shabby 
 oil-cloth where the boards came staring through. He stood 
 beside a bright-green, varnished table, full of stains, a very 
 epitome, it seemed to him, of vulgarly pretentious poverty. 
 That dirty, gaudy table brought home to him his father's 
 guilt as nothing else had done. He turned away from it to 
 the open window. A mean little back-yard with tall houses 
 close behind it, a coujole of brilliant flower-pots on lofty win- 
 dow-sills, enhancing, not amending, the misery around, here 
 and there an overhanging towel or a barefaced sjDonge, the 
 whole of it gaunt and squalid under the early-fading light. 
 
 The weather was soft and warm ; after a mild ]\ray-day 
 of fruitful rain the clouds were lifting, and under slowly 
 gathering shadows the slumbrous earth lay hushed, heavy 
 with the travail of nascent life through every fibre of her 
 being. 
 
 Christian opened the door and looked in. His energetic 
 countenance was solemnized into repose. " Come," he said, 
 " I have told him about you. He is willing to see you." 
 Eeinout followed into an adjoining chamber, and there, 
 propped up on the pillows of a green-curtained lodging- 
 house bed, he saw lying the gentle yet haughty face he had 
 so often admired in silence at Deynum. Seated at the head
 
 "HE LEADETH ME IN GREEN PASTURES." 443 
 
 of the bed was the Baroness, straiglit and still ; behind her 
 stood Wendela ; the Freule had been weeping. And at the 
 other end of the small room, in the background, Eeinout 
 noticed, with a touch of surprise, Father Bulbius, the par- 
 ish-priest from " home." 
 
 That morning the Baron had asked them to send for 
 Father Bulbius. " I did not want to ask too soon," he had 
 said, " but I want to ask to-day." When the telegram came, 
 Veronica had of course said : " No." Her rule seemed ab- 
 solute now-a-days, and she at once explained to the Father 
 that he was hardly feeling well. " I should go if I were 
 dead," Father Bulbius had answered fiercely, and the pim- 
 ple on his face had openly scowled at Veronica. 
 
 All through the day the Baron had lain quiet, waiting 
 for his old friend. His wife thought he was dozing. To- 
 wards evening he roused himself and called to Wendela. 
 " There is a paper in my desk I should -like to have," he 
 said, " under several others, in the left-hand corner. Yes, 
 thank you. That is it." He waited until once more alone 
 with the Baroness, who sat immovable by his side. " Ger- 
 trude," he then began, " you know this parcel. The state- 
 ment it contains of Count Eexelaer's conduct towards us is 
 accurate, and, I honestly believe, impartial. I have resisted 
 your suggestion to send it to the King and now I can tell 
 you why. I had always intended to do so at my death, 
 hoping that from it some provision might result for you. 
 That is my one great sorrow that I must leave you like this. 
 But now the moment has come, I don't want to seek help 
 for you and Wendela by what, if not exactly an evil ac- 
 tion, is at least an ungenerous one. Gertrude, I want 
 your permission to tear up this document. God will 
 provide." 
 
 The Baroness could not answer him. " ]\ray I?" he 
 asked, holding up the papers. )She bent her head. An ex- 
 pression of great relief came over the sick man's features as 
 he sank back in his pillows and lay slowly destroying the
 
 444 'J'lIE GRf:ATER GLORY. 
 
 memorial on which he had spent many hiborious hours. 
 He had always been sluggish with his pen. 
 
 He was able to speak quite calmly with Father Bulbius, 
 when that gentleman arrived, towards Evening, hot with 
 travelling and anxiety. " It was like you to come at once," 
 he said. " I believe, dear Father, that I have not long to 
 live. Since my last stroke, three weeks ago, I have been 
 very tired. Yes, I had another stroke, or fit, or whatever 
 the doctors call it ; fortunately Gustave alone was with me 
 and I warned him not to tell. I am ashamed to remember 
 how tired I was, but to-day I am not tired, and so glad to 
 rest. And I am quite willing, Father, to do all that the 
 church requires of me. I myself cannot think that God 
 expects much more from us than humbly to cast ourselves 
 upon His mercy. And I should not care for masses to be 
 said on my behalf. But I do not wish to be wiser than 
 others, so tell me what you would have me do ? " 
 
 " It is not the last sacrament you are asking for?" said 
 the priest, forcing back his emotion. 
 
 " When the end is come," replied the Baron quickly, 
 " we must not shrink from the end." 
 
 Later on he did not talk much with anyone, but he sud- 
 denly beckoned to Bulbius. " Yoit are a cleric," he said. 
 " You must be a scholar. Tell me, is it ' ignominia ' ? " 
 
 " What do you mean, dear Baron ? " asked the priest 
 with troubled brow. 
 
 " Infamia, you know, glorior infamia? They have been 
 telling me that it was ignominia. The — the outer blot, I 
 think. I do not quite understand. Is it that?" 
 
 " Xo, indeed," replied the priest, with warmth. " They 
 who speak like that know little of ns. Obloquy and outer 
 degradation, smears that shift with every phase of thinking, 
 what are these to stir a Christian's pulse? With your an- 
 cestor it was indeed the inner humiliation, as the children 
 of this world must ever deem it, that revealed itself to him 
 as the hidden cjlorv of God."
 
 '•HE LEADETH ME IN GREEN PASTURES." 445 
 
 " [ am glad of that," said the Baron wearily, " It has 
 been my comfort all through life ; I did not like to think 
 it wrong. But the things that I have gloried in are after 
 all but follies. I have been a poor, erring creature. God 
 forgive me. It is better like that." 
 
 And then Spangenberg brought the news that Piet's 
 quest had at last been successful and that, in the face of 
 accumulated evidence, the money would be restored. Tlie 
 Baron said little, but his eyes wandered vaguely towards 
 a side-table on which the torn fragments of paper yet lay. 
 " I am glad the news has come to-day," he said. " Mynheer 
 the advocate, I am deeply grateful for your aid." He was 
 quite willing to see the son of his rival ; they brought Eein- 
 out to his bedside. 
 
 The poor fellow threw himself down on his knees, not 
 knowing what he did, in a passion of useless contrition. 
 All the blame of his father's actions seemed to weigh upon 
 him, the heir, and to crush him. On all sides, wherever he 
 turned his gaze, nothing but infamy ! 
 
 " Forgive me," he murmured, " say you forgive me. I 
 ask your foi'giveness for us all." 
 
 "My poor boy, you have done me no hurt," said the 
 Baron gently. 
 
 " We have, we have ; I cannot separate myself from — 
 them. The shame is ours; the curse is ours. Say you for- 
 give us. I have no right to ask, no right but my exceeding 
 need. I just want your forgiveness, and then I will leave 
 you in peace." 
 
 " Surely, if there be anything to forgive, I gladly for- 
 give," said the Baron in trembling accents. Spangenberg 
 drew Reinout away; he was exciting the feeble old man too 
 much by the violence of his regret, " I should like them to 
 give me a little wine," said the Baron, " I should like Gus- 
 tavo to give it me." Tlie old servant brought, with bent 
 head and unsteady hand, a glass of the King's Wine. His 
 master drank half of it. " Take the rest," said the Baron.
 
 446 THE greatp:r glory. 
 
 "You remember, (iustave? lu '30, eh? God save the 
 King ! " Gustave saluted silently, unconsciously, as he 
 lifted the wine-glass to his trembling lips. 
 
 Outside, the shadows were beginning to deepen. A 
 confused murmur of traffic came up vaguely from the 
 Canal. Someone had opened the window a little, for 
 the room was close with the hot May air. The sti- 
 fling Canal smell, rendered all the heavier by the day's 
 moisture, came spreading over them all. Even the dy- 
 ing man seemed to perceive it. He moved restlessly once 
 or twice. 
 
 Presently he beckoned to Wendela. " I should like," he 
 whispered, " to shake that young man by the hand before 
 he goes. I should like him to make sure — no malice ! And 
 there is still one thing I should like to ask." 
 
 And so AYendela led Eeinout to her father and joined 
 their hands, " With the others ? " murmured the old man, 
 eager interrogation in his eyes. "In the Chapel? Both. 
 If ever you have the power." " Yes," said Eeinout firmly. 
 " Let us go," whispered Spangenberg in his ear, and the two 
 friends crept out of the room together. 
 
 The Baron sank into a long, calm stupor, holding one of 
 his wife's hands all the while. 
 
 It grew quite dark in the room, dark and stifling. 
 Toward midnight he ojiened his eyes and fixed them full 
 on the dear, white face, " In fields," he said, " in fair green 
 fields." And that was the end. 
 
 Wendela and her mother remained alone. There were 
 three of them in the room still, and yet there were only two. 
 All the immensity of the change is there. 
 
 It was long before either moved. At length said the 
 Baroness in a firm voice : 
 
 "He was a perfect man. "Without reproach." 
 
 Even at that moment Wendela lifted a quick look of 
 surprised inquiry to her motlier's face. It was only a flash,
 
 "HE LEADETH ME IN GREEN PASTURES." 447 
 
 and immediately slie dropped her eyes again. But tlie 
 Baroness had seen it. 
 
 " A perfect man," she repeated steadily. " Sometimes I 
 have asked myself if you fully understood that. All the 
 actions of his life lie patent before me. There is not one of 
 them, even when they caused me the most serious loss, 
 which was not perfectly honourable and upright." 
 
 Wendela sank down beside the dead man. Her mother 
 knew, then, knew far more than she did, and approved. 
 " Oh, if I had only understood one day sooner ! " she cried 
 in a sudden tempest of tears. "Only a day sooner! 
 Father, father, I shall never be able to tell you now." 
 
 And so, at last, Wendela's peace of mind ^vas bought by 
 a lie. For it was a lie, one of those falsehoods by which 
 noble-hearted women shame the truth. 
 
 Eeinout, on his way home to the little hotel where he 
 was in the habit of staying under his assumed name of 
 " Volkert," hurried along unheeding, swayed to and fro 
 with the tumult of his thoughts. He did not notice where 
 he was going, as he passed along crowded thoroughfares, 
 noisy with the hundred vulgarities of every-night sale and 
 barter, or turned into little narrow by-streets, desolate be- 
 neath their solitary lamp. Presently he emerged upon a 
 quiet square, on one side of which a little crowd was col- 
 lected. Under a gaslight a man stood preaching ; Reinout, 
 looking aside carelessly in passing, recognised the evangel- 
 istic tailor. Tipper. He slackened his pace for a moment 
 to listen, and, as he did so, the words fell clearly on his 
 ears : " It's no use. You can't escape from yourself. No 
 man can. You must have peace with yourself. And you 
 can't make peace witli yourself till you make it in Clod." 
 
 " Tliree for a penny," said a Jew hawker close in front 
 of him, "and warranted to wear."
 
 CHAPTEE LXIL 
 
 NO TIIOllOUGHFARE. 
 
 "Come back immediately, Eeiuout. What does this 
 masquerading mean? I have just got you nominated to 
 Vienna, but the Minister wants to see you first. Not know- 
 ing where to find you, I was obliged to open your bureau. 
 I am disgusted to discover that you are doing things which 
 require an alias. I command you to return at once. 
 
 "YAif Eexelaeii." 
 
 " Dear Father, — I am not coming back. I am never 
 coming back. Do not be angry with me, I entreat of you. I 
 cannot act otherwise. Your life and mine lie so wide apart 
 it is no use trying any longer to link them together. 
 
 " Eexe." 
 
 The two papers lay spread out before him on the lodging- 
 house table, his father's summons, received that morning, 
 and his own reply, ready, with the ink still wet. 
 
 As soon as he had recognised the hand-writing of that 
 " Den Heer Volkert, Cafe Monopole, Amsterdam," he had 
 understood that the decisive moment, too long kept at bay, 
 Avas upon him and held him by the throat. The idea, even 
 as he gasped beneath it, brought him relief; he was glad. 
 There are those of us who decide quickly, mostly wrong. 
 There are those who decide slowly, mostly wrong also. He 
 was one of the few who decide slowly and right. 
 
 Since the horrible discovery — two days ago — of his
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE. 449 
 
 father's conduct in connection with " the Lady's Dole," he 
 liad lived in the consciousness that he had reached the 
 parting of the ways. He had seen it growing plainer as he 
 journeyed on, but now he had climbed up to it, and was 
 standing still. You cannot stand still long. Happy are 
 you if you can go on straight. Eeinout could not. He 
 hesitated, yet from the first he felt — thank God ! — that he 
 would turn to the right. 
 
 But it is an awful thing for any human heart to cast off 
 all its outer clothing, be that clothing soft or cumbrous, 
 and to stand out naked in the light of a laughing day. 
 Eeinout looked back down the past. He recalled how the 
 first flash of light had struck across his velvet-curtained 
 soul when, mazed with the beauty and sick with the sorrow 
 of the wondrous world they were hiding from him, he had 
 first learned, through a girlish gift, in a poet's prophetic 
 promise, that mystery which unlocks all mortal mysteries, 
 the Law of fraternal Love. To love his neighbour as him- 
 self — to do good. After all, that is not so very hard ! but im- 
 mortal mysteries rise beyond. To some little vision of these 
 also he had struggled through the thickness of the easy 
 years. To love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and 
 with all thy soul— to do right. 
 
 And, long ago, the prisoned song within his breast had 
 awaked, at the sound of other singing, and fluttered its 
 wings on high. He coiild not have sung in his cage. 
 
 He recalled his first meeting with Spangenberg. After 
 the acceptance of several of his enthusiastic poems by " The 
 Cry of the People," its editor had printed a request to their 
 author to call. He had gone to Amsterdam, retaining the 
 pseudonym under which he had written, and had naturally 
 become known in " Little Paradise " as " Volkert." He 
 had found there afresh and healthful and honestly-aspiring 
 life ; but his course lay elsewhere. A gentilhomme devoir 
 fait loi. 
 
 And he loved his shallow, friendly father, all whose yet
 
 450 'I'll^' GREATER GLORY. 
 
 unfulfilled ambition was centred on the son and heir. His 
 mother — hush, he paused before that sepulchre and flung 
 away the key. 
 
 Of the story of Dora Droste he could think more calmly. 
 He saw that Wonnema's account of it was coloured by per- 
 sonal spite, and he therefore refused to accept the discharged 
 servant's conclusions. The Count treated such matters as 
 all his acquaintances treated them. With a bleeding heart, 
 Eeinout could excuse him. 
 
 Against Loripont's accusations, also, he felt that he 
 could at least partially defend his father — in the heat of his 
 yearning to justify him altogether. After all, the hurried 
 scrawl of a man pain-maddened to suicide was not a rea- 
 sonable will ; after all, it might be presumed, might be 
 hoped, that the Count had been ignorant of the source of 
 Margherita's fortune ; after all 
 
 But no : "I cannot live any longer on that money," he 
 said. " It is no use reasoning about it." Xor was it possi- 
 ble to smudge away the clear-cut truth of Spangenberg's 
 revelations. For the first time he beheld his father's un- 
 varnished nature. And at the same time his own nobility fell 
 from him. All the chivalry of his 3^outh in a clatter of tin. 
 
 From the life, then, to which he had dutifully clung, 
 Avhile it only seemed distasteful, he now must break away, 
 because God had proved it evil. A gentilhomme devoir 
 fait loi. 
 
 He sat down and began a letter to his father ; he began 
 several times, with new confidence, after every false start. 
 At last it was finished, a lengthy document, summing up all 
 his difficulties, his doubts, his grievances, tacitly exonerating 
 his parents from any share in causing them. The writing 
 it all down in orderly sequence, the thinking out the tumult 
 of his thoughts, did him good. " It is no use reasoning 
 about it," he repeated when all was over. " I cannot live 
 on that money, and that settles the matter." 
 
 He carefully read the letter over again. Then he drew
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE. 45| 
 
 from his breast-pocket a small morocco case and sat looking 
 at the two portraits it contained. His father, with the 
 nervous, shifty features and silken whiskers, all the well- 
 known illustrious orders scattered over neck and chest ; his 
 mother, handsome still with a certain conscious comeliness, 
 stout and decolletee — too stout and far too decolletee — in 
 her laces, diamonds and flowers. Slowly he closed the 
 case and hid it away again. Then, with weary hand, he 
 took up the letter and tore it across. 
 
 Ten minutes later he had written the few lines of an- 
 swer recorded above and posted them in the letter-box at 
 the corner of the street. It was done, then. Yon let go 
 the last tip of the envelope and " it " is irretrievably done. 
 He walked briskly away in the direction of " Little Para- 
 dise." His thoughts were of Vienna, at first, and the ultra- 
 covetable small balls at the Hofburg : " I hope you like our 
 society. Monsieur de Kexelaer?" "Your Majesty is too 
 gracious ; who would not be charmed ? " And then he 
 drifted away to Deynum Castle, and the Chevalier — how 
 sorry that good old man would be ! — and the Countes«, his 
 mother, among her birds and flowers. Amarinda was 
 dead ; Florizel still tottered on three rheumatic legs. After 
 all, the starry career was his ; he had been born to it, edu- 
 cated for it : his whole life had been lapped in its super- 
 cilious luxury. The home was his, the beautiful resting- 
 place of that illustrious race which had been his from the 
 cradle. The great lady, the Countess, was his mother. In 
 all separation we cry out, there. It is no use casting away 
 keys, when lock and chain hold firm. 
 
 He turned into " Little Paradise " and nodded up at 
 Mynheer Morel. " Will you come and take a walk with me 
 round the square ? " the old man called down. " Presently, 
 Mynheer," Keinout answered back. " Please begin without 
 me. I must have a long talk with Spangenberg first." 
 The Master frowned ; he was unaccustomed to' the most in- 
 direct of "no's." 
 SO
 
 452 "I'iJl^ GREATER GLORY. 
 
 " For the moment, I am going to stop here," Eeinont 
 said bravely to Christian, " I am not going back to the 
 Hague. But that means tliat I must earu my own liveli- 
 hood. I have been wondering whether, if Poster passes his 
 examination and leaves you, you could engage me on trial 
 in his place? You know, I have taken my law-degree." 
 
 " My dear boy," cried Christian, " you are welcome to 
 whatever help I can give you, but you're too good for my 
 law-work. Why, with your education and your languages 
 — half a dozen at your fingers' ends — you can get a much 
 better post than that ! Don't you remember what I said to 
 you when first you came to me ? Well, you can earn 
 money ; be thankful for it." 
 
 " I believe that I could perhaps get something better, 
 but. Christian, I want to have just this. I v/ant you to 
 take me for one year only and to let me earn what Poster 
 earns. At the end of that time I shall probably go away. 
 You see I am perfectly frank with you." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 " That is my secret. A fresh secret. Xot a very im- 
 portant one." 
 
 " But wdiy don't you rather try literature?" 
 
 Before Keinout could answer, a pebble struck the win- 
 dow ; Father Morel, having twice completed the circuit of 
 the grass-plot and being big with sublimest thoughts, stood 
 making impatient signs. 
 
 "Yes, yes; in a minute," nodded Keinout; "Litera- 
 ture ! " he repeated, turning again to his friend. " Do you 
 seriously recommend me to earn my bread by that? Look 
 here, I will tell you a little story. Three or four years ago, 
 while I was a student at Leyden, a thin volume of poetry 
 appeared, entitled ' The IMorning of a Life.' The name 
 was not very original ; the book was a modest one. Have 
 you ever heard of it ? " 
 
 " No," said Christian. 
 
 " Nor has anyone else, except the man who paid the bill.
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE. 453 
 
 His name was ' Pelgrim Volkert.' When the little book 
 first came out, he watched anxiously — oh so anxiously ! — 
 for the opinion of ' the literary world.' Sometimes he 
 thought tliat little book contained the baldest rubbish ever 
 penned ; sometimes he fancied it so full of heartfelt beauty 
 that none could read it without tears. In his inmost con- 
 fidence he believed it would create a stir. Had it done so, I 
 am not sure whether there would not have been a student less 
 at Leyden, next term. Well, several weeks passed ; then 
 there appeared a long review in a provincial paper, saying 
 ■ — -I don't mind telling now — that the book contained some 
 of the most exquisite poetry in the language, and repeatedly 
 asserting that here was a new light at last in the waste of 
 Dutch literature. I suppose that the light was a Will-o'- 
 the-Wisp. The rest is silence. Three copies were sold, and 
 six months later the author paid the bill. I remember that, 
 on the evening of that most eventful day, he told his fath- 
 er : ' Yes, he should like the Diplomatic Service very much 
 indeed.' " 
 
 " Quite so," said Christian. 
 
 "And you propose to me to live by literature?" 
 
 " I was thinking of the by-ways, not the high-ways," re- 
 plied the editor, "reviews, articles, studies — journalistic, 
 compilatory, biograpliical work. But you are right. I 
 don't think you could make a living out of literature. At 
 least, not in this small country. And do you know why?" 
 
 " Why ? I should think l" did." 
 
 " No, but let me tell you what I mean. Ithink you can 
 stand it to-day, and, moreover, you deserve it, after what 
 you have gone through this morning. Don't laugh. You 
 are a genius. That is all." 
 
 Reinout staggered, almost as if he had received a blow. 
 
 " I — I don't think so," he stammered, stupidly. 
 
 " But I do. And I have seen a good deal of your work 
 in the ' Cry,' and I am a better Judge than yourself. There, 
 tiiat is enough for to-day. Now go and walk witli Father
 
 45i THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 Mort'l. He's another. But, then, fortunately, he has Me- 
 vrouw to take care of him." 
 
 Eeinout found the poet vexed by having been kept wait- 
 ing ; he was not good company. Said his fond wife to her- 
 self as she laid down her endless darning to watch them 
 turn in the little square : " There the good man goes, scat- 
 tering all his diamonds, as usual, for another to pick up and 
 set in his crown. Well, I'm glad the other's Pelgrira Vol- 
 kert. He's a genius. Like all geniuses, he will live alone, 
 and be buried by a crowd."
 
 CHAPTER LXIII. 
 
 ALONE. 
 
 A FEW days later Piet Poster snocessfally passed his 
 third and final examination. Immediately afterwards he 
 sought a situation as assistant-Notary in the Southern 
 Provinces and, being a zealous Catholic, easily obtained 
 one. He wanted to leave Amsterdam, he said. 
 
 He wanted to leave Amsterdam, although his Patroness, 
 as he persisted in calling the Baroness, still remained there. 
 The widowed lady had declined Father Bulbius's renewed 
 offer of the Parsonage. " Xo indeed," said "Wendela, " we 
 must never go back." 
 
 Besides, the Baron lay buried, — temporarily? — in the 
 public cemetery at Amsterdam, In spite of its modest ad- 
 juncts, his funeral had been a quietly imposing one, for a 
 large number of his old colleagues of the States Provincial 
 had come up to attend it, as well as many members of the 
 Order of Xobles of the Province, headed by Baron Borck. 
 Not one of them but had remarked with astonishment 
 among the mourners the young heir of the new lord of 
 Deynum. 
 
 A white cross was to be erected on the grave. Tlie 
 Baroness could afford it; what a vulgar, all-important little 
 point ! But even the ditch into which sorrow sinks has to 
 be duly paid for, as also the stone which affection puts up 
 to remember the spot by. " I should like to stipulate," 
 Count Rexelaer had said to Spangenberg, " that the family 
 do not return to Deynum." "If the money is refunded im-
 
 456 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 mediately," Christiau had replied, " there will be no prose- 
 cution." Shortly afterwards capital and interest were paid 
 over to her who was now become, indisputably, the last of 
 the Ladies Rexelaer. Count Hilarius said that he hated 
 the appearance of injustice and would rather err on the side 
 of too great generosity. He retained his opinion that the 
 testator had intended the money to go with the Castle, but 
 he rejoiced that the benefit of the doubt enabled him thus 
 delicately to succour the aged Baroness, of whose destitute 
 condition he had not been aware. Sj^angenberg was a 
 bright young fellow, as we have seen, but when he left the 
 presence of the Lord of the Household, he could not have 
 told you whether his Excellency, prior to this visit, had 
 been aware of that little inaccuracy in the spelling of his 
 noble name. " My father was very exact," said Count 
 Rexelaer blandly. " I can not understand a slip on his part 
 in so weighty a matter." 
 
 " Yes, Freule, I'm going to-morrow," said Piet. " And 
 you know who's to have my old room, don't you ? " 
 
 " Xo," replied TTendela indifferently. " Who ? " 
 
 " Don't you really ? The Jonker Eexelaer." 
 
 " Indeed I " said Wendela in the same tone. But the 
 news was distasteful to her. She had not seen Eeinout 
 again since the day of the funeral, nor did she wish to see 
 him. 
 
 " Before I go, Freule," said Piet Poster, a^vkwardly 
 standing by the ojien door, " I wanted to thank you for all 
 you have done for me." 
 
 Frank Wendela cried out, " It's the other way," she 
 said. 
 
 " Please don't say that," rej^lied the young man hur- 
 riedly. " I haven't been able to do anything, really. But 
 one thing I shall always be glad and proud of, that it was I 
 who was, indirectly, the cause of Mynheer the Baron's em- 
 ploying Mynheer Spangenberg. Do you know, Freule,
 
 ALONE. 457 
 
 when I ran away from Deynum, I had made up my miud 
 to sail to foreign countries and come back in a year or two 
 with barges full of gold-dust to repurchase the Castle, as 
 people do in story-books. I found out soon enough what a 
 fool I was ; I haven't been able to repurchase the Castle, 
 
 but — but " he hesitated. " The Jonker van Kexelaer is 
 
 a good man," he said. 
 
 "He told me," said Wendela, "about the beating you 
 gave him, when a boy." 
 
 "Did he, Freule? Those are not the kind of beatings 
 that hurt. I hope he will be happy some day, and I hope 
 you will be happy, Freule, very happy, and sometimes re- 
 member how we used to play together, how you used to 
 play with me, I mean, when we were children at Deynum." 
 
 " Goodbye, Piet," she said, holding out her hand. " I 
 shall not forget. I hope that you, too, will be very happy." 
 
 He gently took the extended hand and bent over it. He 
 would have liked to lift it to his lips, but he was a Dutch- 
 man and, above all things, dreaded making himself ridicu- 
 lous; he checked the impulse and drew back. "Goodbye, 
 Freule," he whispered, and went away. 
 
 After his departure complete monotony settled down 
 over the house on the Canal of the Koses ; there was mo- 
 notony in everything, even in the landlady's voice as she 
 harassed the slavey. " Your father was perfect," the Bar- 
 oness had said, yet there was an endless monotony in her 
 prayers for the dead man, and her sorrows for his sufferings 
 in purgatory. And for this worry of her mother's Wendela 
 could feel nothing but half-repressed disgust ; she rejoiced 
 in her new-found relief from the load of her father's guilt. 
 
 She tended the invalid as one nurses a little child, and 
 i)ore, without complaint, the placidity of her pleasurcless, 
 ])ainless existence. Surreptitiously she continued to buy 
 the " Cry of the People," which she had first seen, by the 
 by, through Piet Poster. She would meet Reinout on the
 
 458 'I'll^'^ OKEATER GLORY. 
 
 stairs, and from time to time lie paid a formal eveniug-call. 
 He was very quiet, and apparently very busy. Jutfrouw 
 Dondcrs informed the Freule that he used to sit up (juite 
 late into the night. And the landlady's opinion carried 
 weight, not only because she controlled the consumption of 
 paraffin, but also because of her habit of walking the house 
 at all hours, to superintend her lodgers, if possible, through 
 the key-hole. 
 
 After the first tornado of protest, things also settled down 
 into comparative calm at tlie Hague. In answer to discreet 
 inquiries the police had informed His Excellency the Lord 
 High Seneschal that a person called Pelgrim Volkert was 
 well known to them as a writer of seditious verses in that 
 obscure newspaper, the " Cry of the People." The police 
 always know so much, they seldom care to know all. 
 
 Count Eexelaer's supreme dread now was lest they should 
 find out who Pelgrim Volkert was. What would become of 
 a Court Official whose son was proven a socialist? Yet he 
 felt that such degradation was fast clouding over his coro- 
 neted head. 
 
 With this horror upon him he hazarded a wild effort to 
 get Reinout declared insane. It failed ; even the closest of 
 nets must have meshes. Whereupon he wrote him a letter 
 damp with tears, a father's heart-broken appeal, the prayer 
 of a man who was losing what he best loved on earth. 
 " Dearest, dearest father," the son wrote back, " let us give 
 up this infamous fortune, and the Castle, which is not even 
 ours ! " Everyone noticed how gray and worn Count Rexe- 
 laer was looking. He spoke angrily to Margherita. " The 
 Ijoy has covered with infamy the noble name which he 
 bears," he said. " It is your fault with your poetry and 
 nonsense. It is your roturier-blood. A hundred times 
 rather I had wished he was dead." " My poetry was always 
 sensible," retorted Margherita. " It is your ridiculous edu- 
 cation that has ended like this. And as for my blood, what
 
 ALONE. 459 
 
 is yours, Monsieur le Cabaretier? Do you not think I know 
 now — from your clear sister Elizabeth? Leave me in peace 
 with my terrible sorrow. You are insufferable ; only yester- 
 day Monsieur de Bonnaventure was remarking how irritable 
 you have grown." 
 
 The Chevalier wiped a~ tear out of his bleared old eye 
 with a silk handkerchief. It was given out that the only 
 sou of the Eexelaers had gone abroad for his health ; Me- 
 vrouw Elizabeth, who was exceedingly put out by Antoinette's 
 disappointment, added that the poor young fellow had al- 
 ways been a little wild. People touched their foreheads sig- 
 nificantly. Oh, the instability of human greatness ! Every- 
 thing, yes everything that Fortune could bestow. And now 
 this! 
 
 During all these months Reinout kejDt on very quietly. 
 He did his daily task for Spangenberg, and occasionally, 
 though more rarely, contributed a few verses to the " Cry." 
 
 " You never send me a letter now about my poems," he 
 once ventured to remark to the Freule van Rexelaer. 
 
 " No," replied that young lady shortly. 
 
 " Perhaps you have given u]] reading them ? " 
 
 « No." 
 
 " Or do you, having glanced at them, pay no further at- 
 tention to their contents ? " 
 
 " Oh no." But this last " no " was ambiguous. 
 
 Antoinette had faithfully kept her cousin's secret ; no 
 one knew of his writings in the French magazines. The 
 literary circle in " Little Paradise " looked upon him as a 
 Dutch writer of genuine genius, doomed to hopeless obscu- 
 rity by the very language he wrote in. But even such recog- 
 nition as Holland can bestow they never expected to be his. 
 He was not a " popular " poet ; the artisans who read the 
 " Cry " skipped his poetry, which had not even a chorus. 
 Besides the Dutch, great in painting, are dead to poetry. 
 Even in painting imagination is a sin. It was by imagina- 
 tion that our common mother fell. Had she been content
 
 400 'i'lll'' GREATER CLORY. 
 
 to perceive that an apple is an apple she might have been 
 in Paradise at this hour, as many ■ a substantial Dutch 
 burgher-mother is. AYoe to him that distinguishes apples 
 of discord and apples of Sodom and golden apples of the 
 Hesperides, in quest of which latter, perhaps, he sails away 
 into the Unknown. We live both comfortably and right- 
 eously in Holland — nowhere more so — but we do not live 
 by admiration, hope and love. We live by the fear of God 
 and the care of our purses. And we all of us, except the 
 poets, despise a poet Just a little for not being something 
 else. Reinout, therefore, was singularly fortunate in having 
 happed on the Morels. 
 
 He knew it, and thoroughly eujoyed those Sunday even- 
 ings — much Poetry and a little punch — which now formed 
 his sole recreation. Of the company which gathered about 
 Homerus none but Spangenberg was acquainted with the de- 
 tails of the new-comer's story. They had heard that he had 
 broken loose from old moorings in a comfortable haven to 
 row with his brothers against the stream. They also knew 
 that " Pelgrim Volkert " had been a literary pseudonym, but 
 they never connected its bearer in their thoughts with that 
 great historic house of which the Mandarin Ri-Ksi-La was 
 the acknowledged head. 
 
 Sometimes an allusion would cause the young fellow to 
 wince, as when Homerus, having discoursed on the limits to 
 man's self-suflficiency, wound up with the words : " Xo 
 human plant ever fully recovers from transplanting. Xo 
 organism has more than one ' home.' The uprooted heart, 
 whatever may become its future surroundings, goes througli 
 life alone." 
 
 Reinout pushed back his chair into the shade. 
 
 " When my father and my mother forsake me," began 
 the tailor. 
 
 "Then shall I be forsaken indeed," concluded Spangen- 
 berg. 
 
 " Then the Lord shall take me up," said the tailor.
 
 ALONE. 4(31 
 
 " That is finely put," remarked Reinout's voice. 
 
 " It is from the Bible," replied the tailor. " Have you 
 who are, I believe, an orphan never found it there ? " 
 
 " No," said Reinout awkwardly. 
 
 " Perhaps you have never looked for it, or for anything 
 else. If you have not got a Bible, I should be very glad to 
 send you one." 
 
 "I will get one," said haughty Reinout, and then in- 
 stantly repented : " I mean," he added, " that I should not 
 wish to trouble you." 
 
 " It will be a very simple one, mind you— outside. The 
 jewel's the same, whatever the casket." 
 
 " Thank you very much indeed," said Reinout.
 
 CHAPTER LXIV. 
 
 SUCCESS. 
 
 Whex Reinout abruptly brought his clerkship to au 
 end, his year of probation was only ten months old. April 
 had come around again with premature joys and uncertain 
 promises, foreshadowing a fairer, though not a fresher, sun- 
 shine in broad cloudsweeps of wind and rain. It had been 
 a bright, breezy day, full of the turmoil of Xature's restless 
 awakening, with sudden gusts of movement and floods of 
 warmth, one of those days on which all the young world 
 seems dancing merrily, from the bare trees and bold clouds 
 up in heaven to the dead leaves and swift brooks down on 
 earth. A great ripple of jollity spread over creation, the 
 clear wind played up to the dancers and the sly sun laughed 
 down on the dance. 
 
 Reinout had spent his day as usual at the office, doubled 
 wp over the endlessly useless entanglements of the law. 
 Spangenberg, who hated the systematized robbery of his 
 profession with a constantly increasing contempt, had gone 
 off early to his editorial business, and his clerk was glad 
 enough, at four o'clock, to shut up shop and betake himself 
 to the Canal of the Roses. They were a queer joair of law- 
 yers, and the greater j)art of the business of the office con- 
 sisted in unavailing attempts to protect the defenceless. 
 
 ■ At his lodgings Reinout found a foreign letter awaiting 
 him. This letter, which he had been daily expecting for 
 weeks, he now tore open as if his life depended on a hun- 
 dredth of a second of time. His eves flashed through the
 
 SUCCESS. 403 
 
 contents, and he was out of the door again and off to 
 " Little Paradise." " Good gracious ! " cried Christian, 
 looking uj) from his desk. " Is the Prinsengracht in 
 flames ? " 
 
 " No," gasped Reinout in joyous breathlessness, "but it 
 will be. Christian, when I have set the world on fire ! " 
 And he spread out his open letter in front of his friend. 
 
 Spangenberg read it and looked up with his brightest 
 smile. 
 
 " You only lose a bad clerk," said Reinout. 
 
 " Exactly," replied Spangenberg. 
 
 After a moment he added : " So this was your secret. 
 What a linguist you must be ! " 
 
 " Oh no ; I have always spoken more French than Dutch 
 at — home. But don't think that this bird has come falling 
 into my mouth ready-roasted. It has taken a lot of labour 
 and i^atience to catch and to kill. I've been hard at work 
 for years, trying to get things inserted in the Parisian re- 
 views. Nobody ever knew anything about it, except, quite 
 towards the end, a dear little cousin, who hid away my secret 
 as soon as she had discovered it. It used to be so funny, 
 sometimes, people asking me, for instance, whether I ever 
 read the French reviews ? " 
 
 " How can people find out if you don't tell them '? " 
 
 " True, but I couldn't. Nor would you have turned the 
 love of your bosom naked into a dancing-room. There, 
 I'm growing coarse and accurate. Do you think it wrong 
 of me to write in French ? " 
 
 "No more wrong than for the pastor of a small country- 
 parish to accept a call to a great city-church. Dutch is at 
 the best but the language of one family, with a large pro- 
 portion of deaf-mutes among its children. French is the 
 language of the civilized world." 
 
 " That's what I have always thought, and I considered 
 my efforts in Dutch altogetlier secondary, but of course 
 others may judge differently ; I can't help that. Well, it
 
 4(14 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 has been a hard strngs:le, but success, or something very 
 like the beginning of success, has come at last." 
 
 He took up his letter and read it over again. It was a 
 communication from a well-known Parisian publisher to 
 whose review he had already frequently contributed some 
 trifle. The publisher wrote that he accepted the manuscript 
 novel ^\'llich had been sent him, though suggesting a change 
 towards the close, and that he offered for the copyright, 
 not the enormous sums we so often see set down in the 
 story-books, but a bona fide price of nine thousand francs. 
 Out of the pure goodness of his heart he added some sen- 
 tences of warmest commendation, both of this work and of 
 former contributions to the " Eevue." 
 
 " Yes, I have come down to prose," said Eeinout sorrow- 
 fully. " It's no use, nowadays." 
 
 " But, dear fellow, do you know what makes me so 
 happy?" cried Spangeuberg with beaming eye. " AVheu 
 fame comes to you, as I am sure it will, world-wide fame, 
 they will be j^roud of 3'ou over yonder, in the Hague ! 
 They will be jealous — fiercely appreciative, j^erhajis, but still 
 appreciative." 
 
 " Do you think so ? " asked Eeinout, in the same sorrow- 
 ful tone. " I do not. How little you know, Christian, the 
 classes or the ' social conditions ' your paper makes war 
 against. "With the j)eople from amongst whom I came out 
 the smallest bit of ribbon of Franz Joseph's giving at 
 Vienna would far have excelled the laurel-wreath of Shake- 
 speare himself. I might have done anything vile, composed 
 in my leisure moments the bawdiest of love-songs, but not 
 preached sedition ! My own father will weep to think I 
 have not failed. He will endeavour to forget me. Perhaps 
 he will succeed." — Eeinout's voice faltered. — " I am told he 
 has sent for my cousin to De3'num. Listen. Only a few 
 months ago I met in society the grand-daughter of an illus- 
 trious French poet, a woman who had just bought, with her 
 honour, the title of ' Princess.' Unwisely I talked to her
 
 SUCCESS. 465 
 
 about her 'immortal grandfather' ; can you guess what she 
 answered me ? ' Immortal indeed, there is no escaping 
 from my grandfather. " Ce qu'il y avait d'infime dans son 
 origiue et d'iufame dans sa vie " is writ down in all the 
 dictionaries of Europe.' His life had not been disgraceful 
 in any sense, as you and I read the word. But he had been 
 a revolutionary, a passionate lover of freedom, a scorner of 
 kings. And his origin had been of the humblest, that 
 can never be denied. They will hate me all the more when 
 I call evil evil, because I am one of them." 
 
 " I observe," said Christian, referring to the letter, 
 " that you have called this book of yours ' Gloire In- 
 fame. ' " 
 
 " Yes. When I first began it, I still thought I was en- 
 titled to the motto which has been the secret strength of 
 my life. Let the title stand. N'o one, I have taken care of 
 that, will recognise the story. But it is none the less an 
 autobiograjihy." 
 
 Eeinout returned home earlier than usual that even- 
 ing, cherishing, all along the brightened streets, his 
 triumph of the moment and the prospects, financial and 
 other, which it opened up before him. Some perhaps 
 might have feasted so auspicious an event, but it is ill 
 feasting alone. 
 
 As he was passing the Baroness's parlour door, the sound 
 of Wendela's singing arrested him. He stood spell-bound 
 on the landing, in the half-light ; the spacious alto, clear 
 and warm, he knew and loved ; it was not that which now 
 enchained him. But never had he heard it singing to that 
 plaintive air those words of his own : air and words such as 
 Cliristiau had sung them on the first night at the Morels'. 
 
 " The white doves brood low 
 Witli innocent flight. 
 Higher, my soul, higher ! 
 Into the night ! 
 Into black night !
 
 4:Ge THK GKEATKR GLORY. 
 
 " Beyond where the eagle 
 Soars strong to the sun. 
 Nought hast thou, if only 
 Earth's stars be won. 
 Earth's stars are won. 
 
 " Beyond where God's angels 
 Stand silent, in might. 
 Higher, my soul, higlier ! 
 Into the light, 
 Straight to God's light." 
 
 "V\'hy had slie never snng these words to him. Why did 
 ghe choose for this singing the moment when she believed 
 him to be away? He knocked boldly and entered. "Mam- 
 ma is not very well to-night," said the young Freule, rising 
 hurriedly from the piano. " I have been rubbing her ; she 
 is trying to slee23." 
 
 In that sentence the long patience of her life of quiet 
 sacrifice stretched before him. She stood there, under the 
 cold, blue April sunset, in the beautiful perturbation of a 
 pure and haughty woman. Xo pretty darling this to be won 
 by an embrace. He went straight to the dimly-lighted win- 
 dow and si^read out his letter, as he had done for Spangen- 
 berg, and asked her to read it. 
 
 " This will not mend matters at the Hague," she said. 
 
 " Xo," he replied quietly, " I understand that. And so 
 do you. You and I, Freule, we JcnoiVy at least, what is this 
 ' world ' of which men sj)eak so much. We have held it in 
 the hollow of our hand. Earth's stars are won." 
 
 They were standing, looking out, beyond the still canal 
 between its smutty trees, beyond the heavy house-tops, up 
 into the pallid heaven, at solitary Hesperus, white and hard. 
 
 " And there is one glory terrestrial," she said ; her voice 
 had altered. He turned in astonishment and — oh marvel- 
 lous sight to him 1 — he saw that there were tears in those 
 strong brown eyes. " And another glory celestial, and the 
 glory of man is as the flower of the field."
 
 SUCCESS. 467 
 
 With a sudden impulse he drew forth a shabby little 
 brown volume. " Do 3'ou remember this?" he asked eager- 
 ly. " Do you remember giving it me, half a dozen years 
 ago? It was a revelation, in my sordid existence, of a love 
 of something else than gold and gilt. You told me, when 
 you gave it, that it was the greatest treasure you possessed." 
 
 " I should not say that now," she answered, taking from 
 the top of the piano a smaller, yet more faded book. She 
 held it out to him ; it was a Catholic copy of the New Testa- 
 ment. " My father left it me," she said simply, and then, 
 with splendid scorn : " Bulbius told mother I ought not to 
 have it." 
 
 lleinout broke the moment's thoughtful silence. "And 
 do you remember," he continued, " the night in the chapel, 
 and your bidding me choose, beyond all earthly splendour, 
 the glory of God-sent disgrace ? " 
 
 She turned fully upon him, in the gathering darkness. 
 "Yes," she said in a firm voice, " Knight Pilgrim," and then 
 trembled and shrank away. 
 
 " I used to think," he went on, " that surely it was my 
 duty to remain where God had placed me, tui-ning my back 
 on the life I really loved, and working for the best. But, 
 perhaps because he saw me sinking, he has called me, by the 
 voice of shat/ie, from the Slough of Despond. Xot all men 
 are compelled to choose as I was. 1 trust to God I have 
 chosen well." 
 
 " You will be rewarded," she said, still gazing at the star, 
 " by the good you will do in the future." 
 
 " Dear Freule," he answered earnestly. " In some other 
 way, in the old way, perhaps, I could have done as much, 
 and more. But this also I believe that God has taught me: 
 He does not ask us to seek to do most good, but only to do 
 right to-day." 
 
 " No, no ! " she cried vehemently. " You will do more ! 
 A great career will be yours; an immeasurable sphere of use- 
 fulness. The God wl)o gave vou genius lias wonderfully 
 31
 
 468 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 prepared you for tlie use of his gift. Enthusiasts are igno- 
 rant of life, and those who know life are no longer enthusi- 
 asts. From a cliild, as you said but a moment ago, you have 
 held in your hand this bauble of Greatness and Glory and 
 been schooled to appraise it. You can tell us what it is 
 worth, as you cast it away." 
 
 She had spoken with her old impulsiveness : she stood 
 panting. " The whole world will listen. We all shall be 
 your family I " she said. 
 
 He looked up quickly, with a sad smile : " It is very lone- 
 ly," he answered, " the human race, and nothing nearer. 
 One feels that, perhaps, most in a moment of success. And 
 my work is only just beginning. You see what this man 
 says " — he pointed to his letter — " ' Your story is not fin- 
 ished ; the career of your hero is left incomplete.' He has 
 seen clearly, too clearly. Unwillingly, I fear, you have borne 
 your large part in the chapters already written. Wendela, 
 can you join me willingly, if we try honestly, cleanly, to 
 write the rest ? "
 
 CHAPTER LXV. 
 
 RESPICE FINEif. 
 
 The carriages came creeping up in an apparently end- 
 less succession ; cavalry and police were keeping the crowd 
 back, pushing and prancing amid protests and exclama- 
 tions, occasionally of admiration, more generally of envy 
 or ill-will. One by one, slowly, in a consistent monotony 
 of variety, the landaus and broughams turned cautiously 
 into the square, their horses' heads gradually taking shape 
 under the gaslights with a glitter of harness and champing 
 of bits, to the soft guiding voice of the coachman ; some- 
 times there would be a pair of horses, sometimes a single 
 one : bays, greys, the President's old white mares — oh what 
 a big black beauty goes there ! — then several chestnuts, one 
 after the other, but always the same big frightened eyes, 
 looming in the damp mist, and the tall servants behind, 
 anxious also, under the steady rain, and a blurr of bright 
 opera-cloak or gold lace against the panes, and then fresh 
 champing and fresh glitter — steady ! steady ! — and another 
 pair of horses, wet and worried, and the lines of smeared 
 lamps down the distance, not a whit shortened or altered, 
 and another carriage — way there, way ! — as the wretched 
 spectators splash back into the shining puddles, and the 
 stream comes flowing on to that wide blaze of light under 
 the awning by the Entrance. 
 
 There was a great Reception at the Palace to-night, a 
 " raout," as they call it. Nearly a thousand invitations had 
 been sent out, and such members of tlie " Everybodv " as
 
 47(» THE GKEATKR (iLOHY. 
 
 ought to have been invited and were not, were weeping 
 their eyes out in the bitterness of home. 
 
 In the great hall and on the staircase there was decorous 
 confusion. For the flutter which is inseparable from Pal- 
 ace receptions caused all these birds of beautiful plumage 
 to ruffle their feathers in the fear of such ruffling, and 
 many a biped, provided with a third leg by way of orna- 
 ment, went stumbling and grumbling over that glittering 
 appendage on his passage npstairs. It must be a melan- 
 choly consideration for Royalty that nobody ever comes to 
 its entertainments for pleasure, but only to avoid the pain 
 of not having been there. It had done everything in its 
 power to welcome its guests, neither overheating its saloons 
 nor overcooling its wines, and yet everyone was anxious to 
 be home again and frankly confessed as much to everyone 
 else. " Delightful, is it not ? So well managed," said one 
 old man, miserable in a stiff gold collar, to another rickety 
 creature in perfectly- disgraceful calves. " Yes, Roose- 
 veldt understands his duty; I shall be glad, though, 
 when it's over." " So shall I ; " the collar-tortured in- 
 dividual turned to a bright-looking girl by his side. 
 " Ah, Freule van Rexelaer I " he said. "Now you, doubt- 
 less, would like such an evening to last for ever? 
 Very natural, my dear. So should I, when I was your 
 age, so should 1." 
 
 " Xo indeed," replied Antoinette, laughing. " I detest 
 these crushes. I am here to chaperon Mamma." 
 
 " Antoinette, come here at once," commanded Mevrouw 
 Elizabeth in a flustered whisper. "Are my feathers right? 
 Pretend not to be looking. I feel all crooked. I knocked 
 them against an overhanging palm." 
 
 " I think your hair's coming down," replied mischievous 
 Topsy. " Hadn't we better go back ? " 
 
 " Topsy, how can you be so provoking? I am especially 
 anxious for you to create a good impression. I don't want 
 you to remain on my hands for ever, though it's beginning
 
 RESPICE FINEM. 471 
 
 to look as if you would. What you meant by refusing the 
 two eligible partis I procured for you, nobody knows but 
 yourself, and since that infamous boy behaved so disgrace- 
 fully " 
 
 All the naughty merriment died out of Topsy's eyes. 
 " Yes, yes, I know," she said impatiently. Mevrouw Eliza- 
 beth cast an aggrieved glance over her ample shoulders, 
 but she let the ebullition pass. " I am anxious to get near 
 Christine," she said. " I told George that his w^fe was sure 
 to have all the best men about her. She is so uncommonly 
 attractive." 
 
 " Which means," cries Antoinette, " that she flirts so 
 shamelessly she amuses them all." 
 
 "Well, at any rate she amuses them, which is more, my 
 dear, than some people seem able to do." 
 
 Antoinette did not answer. She never crossed the first 
 barrier of her mother's outspokenness, and so managed to 
 live on the outskirts of peace. 
 
 The rooms were filling to overflowing, literally, for a 
 crowd was swaying to and fro between the great doors. 
 Gauzes, and diamonds, and animated faces — bored ones 
 also, and vexed and freely perspiring — and an overwhelm- 
 ing abundance of uniforms under the candles and greenery 
 in a blaze of colour and a cloud of perfumery amid the in- 
 cessant rustle and buzz. " It is horribly hot," said Rolline, 
 when she happed upon Guy in the press. " Not a bit," re- 
 plied that gentleman calmly. " You think so because you 
 are anxious about your dress." " Anxious : " that was the 
 prevailing impression ; the anxiety which is always attend- 
 ant upon the Sovereign, the fear of " something going 
 wrong." 
 
 The great folding-doors were thrown wide apart, and a 
 crowd of gilded oflftcials came trooping through. Then, in 
 the opening, there appeared, alone, a man clad in a hussar 
 uniform, with a great orange-gold band across his breast, a 
 man of magnificent bearing and commanding mien. He
 
 472 THE GREATER GLORY. 
 
 paused suddenly, and turned to the courtier who stood 
 nearest : 
 
 " And your son, my dear Count," he said in French. 
 " He is better, I hope ? He is here ? " 
 
 Count Rexelaer bent in reply as only they can bend who 
 have no backbone : 
 
 " Sire," he said, " Je n'ai plus de fils." 
 
 THE EXD.
 
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 77. Maid Marian, and Other Stories. By Molly Elliot Seatvell. 
 
 78. One Womaii's Way. By Edmund Pendleton. 
 
 79. A Mcrcifal Divorce. By F. W. Maude. 
 
 80. Stephen Ellicotfs Daughter. By Mrs. J. H. Needell. 
 
 81. One Reason Why. By Beatrice Whitby. 
 
 82. The Tragedy of Ida Noble. By W. Clark Russell. 
 
 83. The Johnstown Stage, and Other Storits. By Robert U. Fletcher. 
 
 84. A Widower Indeed. By Rhoda Broughton and Elizabeth Bisland. 
 
 85. TTie Flight of the Shadow. By George MacDonald. 
 
 86. Love or Money. By Katharine Lee.
 
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 87. N'ot All in Vain, By Ada Cambridge. 
 
 88. It Happened Yesterday. By Frederick Marshall. 
 
 89. My Guardian. By Ada Cambridge. 
 
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 91. Amethyst: The Story of a Beauty. By Christabel R. Coleridge. 
 
 92. Do}i Braulio. By Juan Valera. Translated by Clara Bell. 
 
 93. The Chronicles of Mr. Bill Williams. By Richard M. Johnston. 
 
 94. A Queen of Cu7-ds and Cream. By Dorothea Gerard. 
 
 95. " La Bella " and Others. By Egerton Castle. 
 
 96. ^^ December Eoses." By Mrs. Campbell-Praed. 
 
 97. Jean de Kerdren. By Jeanne Schl'ltz. 
 
 98. EtelkcCs Vow. By Dorothea Gerard. 
 
 99. Cross Currents. By Mary A. Dickens. 
 
 100. His Life's Magnet. By Theodora Elmslie. 
 
 101. Passinrf the Love of Women. By Mrs. J. H. Needell. 
 
 102. In Old St. Stephc7i\'i. By Jeanie Drake. 
 
 103. The Berkeleys and Their Ndghlors. By Molly Elliot Skawell. 
 
 104. Moyia Maclean, Medical Student. By Graham Travers. 
 
 105. Mrs. Bligh. By Rhoda Broughton. 
 
 106. A Stumble on the Threshold. By James Payn. 
 
 107. Hanging Moss. By Paul Lindau. 
 
 108. A Comedy of Elopement. By Christian Reid. 
 
 109. In the Sunt ime of her Youth. By Beatrice Whitby. 
 
 110. Stories in Black and While. By Thomas Hardy and Others. 
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 111. Commander Mendoza. By Juan Valera. 
 
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 113. Children of Destiny. By JIolly Elliot Seawell. 
 
 114. A Little Minx. By Ada Cambridge. 
 
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 116. The Voice of a Flower. By E. Gerard. 
 
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 118. Su,<tpected. By Louisa Stratencs. 
 
 119. Lucia, Hugh, and Another. By Mrs. J. H. Needell. 
 
 120. T7ie Tutor's Secret. By Victor Cherbulikz. 
 
 121. From the Five Rivers. By Mrs. F. A. Steel. 
 
 122. An Innocent ImjMstor, and Other Stories. By Maxwell Grkt. 
 
 123. Idcala. By Sarah Grand. 
 
 124. A Comedy of Mmks. By Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore. 
 
 125. Belies. By Frances MacNab. 
 
 126. Dodo: A Detail of the Day. By E. F. Benson. 
 
 127. A Woman of Fortt/. By Esme Stuart. 
 
 128. Diana Tempest. By Mary Cholmondeley. 
 
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 "It is impossible for Sara Jeannette Duncan to be otherwise than intTCsting. 
 Whether it be a voyage around the world, or an American girl's experiences in Lon- 
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 " It is like traveling without leaving one's armchair to read it. Miss Duncan has 
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 the street scenes, the interiors, the bewilderingly queer natives, the gayeties of the 
 English colony." — Philadelphia Telegraph. 
 
 " Another witty and delightful book." — Philadelphia Times. 
 
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 SOCIAL DEPARTURE: How Orthodocia and I 
 
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 Paper, 75 cents ; cloth, S1.75. 
 
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 D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 'AJ\rV INVENTIONS. By Rudyard Kipling. 
 
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 '"Many Inventions' will confirm Mr. Kipling's reputation. . . . We would cite 
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 reader." — Boston Times. 
 
 New York : D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
 
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 APPLETONS' SUMMER SERIES, 1891. 
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 /I DOTTING AN ABANDONED FARM. By 
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 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW. 
 
 Series 9482