An Old Maid's Love ... A new edition

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A DUTCH TALE TOLD IN ENGLISH BY MAARTEN MAARTENS AUTHOR OF 'THE SIN OF JOOST AVELINGH,' 'GOD'S FOOL,' 'THE GREATER GLORY' A NEW EDITION LONDON RICHARD BENTLEV & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET Publishers in ©rSinarg to pjrr fflajestg tfje ©ueen 1894 All rights reserved TO REGINALD STANLEY FABER THE AUTHOR OFFERS THE DEDICATION OF THIS BOOK, AS A RECOGNITION OF KINDNESS IN THE PAST AND A PLEA FOR FUTURE FRIENDSHIP. So many kindly critics have spoken of my former book, ' The Sin of Joost Avelingh,' as being a trans lation from the Dutch, that I must here state that it was originally written in English, and that the present story, now for the first time published, has also been written in English only, a language which, though not my native tongue, has become to me quite as dear and, I would fain hope, almost as familiar.

M. M. Koopstad, Holland, January 8, 1 891. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Calm before the Storm . . i II. Aunt and Nephew ... 7 III. In his Teens . . . .16 IV. And out of them . . . .20 V. Knight-Errant . . . . 23 VI. On Hospitable Thoughts intent . . 30 VII. Parson Jakob . . . . -35 VIII. First Appearance of Tante Crœsus . . 39 IX. Who cooks a Pretty Kettle of Fish . 48 X. Punctuality and the Paragon . . 56 XI. Grapes, Sour and Sweet . . . .66 XII. Dorothy asks a Question and receives an Answer . . , . . -74 XIII. A Storm in an Egg-Cup . . . S7 XIV. Un Abbe k Marier . . . -97 XV. The Beauty of Danger . . . .112 XVI. The Danger of Beauty . . . 123 XVII. Suzanna's Victories . . . .131 XVIII. The Pursuit of Vice . . . 1 37 XIX. Arnout's Portmanteau remains unpacked . 148 XX. Rejected ...... 157 XXI. 'Carmen' . . . . .164 CONTENTS X CHAPTER PAGE XXII.

Suzanna's Ordeal . . • 179 XXIII. Afterwards . . . . .196 XXIV. The Domine's Advice . . . .212 XXV. A Dim, Religious Light . . .231 XXAT. A Daughter of Eve .... 242 XXVII. Mevrouw Barsselius gives a Party . . 254 XXVIII. The Sun in his Zenith . . . 272 XXIX. The Stranger from Home . . .291 XXX. The Mistakes and Mishaps of Karel Donselaar ..... 302 XXXI. 'A'ou bore us, Papa' .... 316 XXXII. Grace pour Moi .... 325 XXXIII. Miss Donselaar has no Troubles . 330 XXXIV. Suzanna speaks her Mind . . . 345 XXXV. Doyer tells Suzanna's Story . . 350 XXXVI. Mevrouw Barsselius goes to see a Baby . 362 XXXVII. The House in Auteuil . . . 3S3 XXXVIII. The Vicomte's Scruples . . . 395 XXXIX. The AA'oman's Renunciation . 409 XL. And the Man's .... 424 XLI. The Prodigal's Return . . . 438 XLII. The Fatted Calf .... 446 XLIII. Arnout understands ....

Chapter I The Calm Before The Storm

It was on a golden summer evening — a long June sunset, soft and silent — that Mephisto crept into the quiet old heart of Suzanna Varelkamp. She was sitting in the low verandah of her cottage on the Wyker Road, with her grey knitting in her hands. She always had that grey knitting in her hands. If it rested on her knees for one brief moment, her friends could tell you that some singu larly difficult question — probably of abstruse theology, or else about the linen-basket or the preserves — was troubling Suzanna's mind. Suzanna was a woman of industrious repose. She loved her God and her store -cupboard. She did not, as a rule, love her neighbour over much — little unpleasantnesses in con nection with the overhanging apples, or Suzanna's darling cat, were apt to intervene and stifle the seeds of dutifully nurtured benevolence.

Nor did she love herself to any excess of unrighteousness, knowing, with a perfervid knowledge, that she was altogether I abominable and corrupt, and ' even as a beast before Thee,' from her mother's womb upwards — a remote period. The gentle laburnum at her side was slowly gild ing over in the sinking sunlight, fragile and drooping and a little lackadaisical, very unlike the natty old woman, bolt-upright in her basket-chair. Just across the road a knot of poplars quivered to the still air, and in the pale, far heaven companies of swallows circled with rapid, aimless swoops. Nature was slowly — very, very slowly, tranquilly, dreamingly, deliriously, settling itself to sleep — silent already but for a blackbird shrilling excitedly through the jasmine bushes by the porch. Another bird woke up at that moment, and cried out from Suzanna's bedroom — through all the quiet little house — that it was half-past seven.

Then he went to sleep again for exactly half an hour, for, like all man's imitations of God's works, he is too hid eously logical to be artistic. And Mejuffrouw Varel kamp began to wonder why Betje did not bring out the ' tea-water,' for every evening the sun went down at another moment — Providence, being all-provident, was able to superintend such irregularities — but every evening, at half-past seven to the minute, Mejuffrouw Varelkamp must have her ' tea-water,' or the little cosmos of her household arrangements could not survive the shock. ' It is difficult enough for one woman to superintend one servant ! ' said Suzanna. ' It is possible, but it is all-engrossing, and requires concentration of power and of will. And, not being Providence, I cannot regulate disorder.' The ' regula tion of disorder,' as she called it — the breaking away THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM 3 from straight lines and simple addition — was one of Suzanna's bugbears.

And so Betje was efficiently superintended ; none but she knew how engrossingly. And, evening after evening, the cuckoo stepped over his threshold, and Betje out of her kitchen, so har moniously, that you might almost have fancied they walked in step. Somebody was coming up the quiet road, a Dutch road, straight and tidy, avenue-like, between its double border of majestic beeches, — somebody whose walk sounded unrhythmic through the stillness — two people evidently, and not walking in step, these two — one with a light, light-hearted swing, the other with a melancholy thump, and a little skip to make it good again. But their whistling, the sweet, low whistling of an old Reformed psalm -tune, was in better unison than their walking, though even here, perhaps, the softer voice seemed just a shade too low.

Had there been all the falseness of a German band in that subdued music, Suzanna would not have detected it ; her heart — and that far more than her ear — recognised with tranquil contentment the drawn out melody, calm and plaintive, and her bright eye brightened, for just one little, unnoticeable moment, at the accents of the clearer voice. That sudden brightening would flash every now and then over a face hard and cold enough by nature ; nobody ever noticed it except Suzanna's sister, the rich widow Barsselius, not Suzanna herself, least of all the young scapegrace who was its only cause. Dutch psalm -singing leaves plenty of time for the singers to go to sleep and wake up again between each succeeding note. The whistlers came into sight before they had finished many lines. They stopped suddenly upon perceiving the old lady under the verandah, and both took off their hats. ' Domine,' said Suzanna, ' how can you counte nance whistling the word of God ? ' The young man thus addressed looked up with a quiet twinkle in his eye.

He had a pale face and a thoughtful smile ; he was slightly deformed, and it was he that walked lame. ' With pipe and with timbrel, Juffrouw,' he answered gaily. ' Old Baas Vroom has just been telling me that he won't give up smoking, in spite of the doctor, because he has read in his Bible how the people praised the Lord with their pipes.' Suzanna never smiled unless she approved of the joke. She reverenced the minister, and she patronised the young believer ; it was difficult sometimes properly to blend the two feelings. But, at the bottom of her tough old heart, she thoroughly liked her nephew's friend. ' He will make a capital pastor,' she said to herself (unconsciously), ' when he has unlearned a little of his so-called morality and taken in good sound theology instead. Not the milk of the Word with Professor Wyfel's unfiltered water, but strong meat with plenty of Old Testament sap.' ' Come in here,' she said severely, ' I want to talk to you about that Vrouw Wede.

I told her this morning that she could not have any more needle work from the Society unless she sent her son to the catechising. She says the boy's father won't have him go, because it tires his head. And I warned her I should report her to the Domine.' Mejuffrouw THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM 5 Varelkamp's voice always dropped into exactly the same tone of hereditary reverence over that word. ' Come in, Jakob, and you shall have a " cat's tongue," 1 even though it isn't Sunday.' Betje had brought out the tea-things meanwhile, triumphantly, under cover of the minister's presence, the shining copper peat-stove and the costly little Japanese tea-cups, not much larger than a thimble, on their lacquered tray. ' Take away the tea-stove, Betje,' said Suzanna. ' The peat smells.' She said so every now and then — once a week, perhaps — being firmly convinced of the truth of her assertion, and Betje, who never believed her, and who never smelled anything under carbolic acid, whisked away the bright pail and kettle from beside her mistress's chair and brought them back again unaltered. ' That is right, Betje,' said Mejuffrouw. ' How often must I tell you that a stove which smells of peat is full proof in itself of an incompetent servant ? ' ' Humph,' said Betje.

For even the very best of housekeepers have their little failings, and fancies, and fads. ' Come in, Jakob,' said Suzanna. ' Not you, Arnout. You can go down to the village and fetch me a skein of my dark grey wool. The dark grey, mind, at twelve stivers. You know which.' ' You know which ! ' The young man had grown up with the dark grey wool and the light grey wool and the blue wool for a border. Ten stivers, twelve stivers, fourteen stivers. He knew them better than his catechism, and he knew that very well too. 1 A kind of biscuit. He touched his hat slightly — he was always courteous to his aunt, as who would not have been ? — and he strolled away down the green highway into the shadows and the soft, warm sunset, taking up, as he went, the old psalm-tune that had been on his lips before.

It was the melody of the fifty-first psalm. Suzanna had good cause to remember it in aster years. And it was into this calm green paradise of an old maid's heart, a paradise of straight gravel-paths and clipped box-trees and neat dahlia beds, that soft Mephisto crept. -y

Chapter II Aunt And Nephew Arnout

— or Arnold — Oostrum was twenty ; straight-limbed — not, thank God ! with that gnaw ing pain in the thigh like his friend Jakob te Bakel : broad-chested and strong-hearted, or, at least, so he thought. A young fellow with a capital digestion, and a bright contentment with himself and all the world about him. Ready to please everybody — himself included — as much as lay in his power, and convinced that a good deal did lie in his power, as what young fellow of twenty is not ? A good digestion. Oh, mystic charm of the words to those who have lost their meaning ! Men speak of a proud stomach. They should speak also of a happy, a contented one. No wonder he carries his head high who can rely upon that lower organ. No pestilence can smite him by day, no poisonous heart-pang by night. The conscience seldom awakes till the stomach has gone to sleep.

And our bowels of compassion — ah well, some sad thoughts are best left unspoken, for fear of a world that too easily cries ' Fie ! ' Is life worth living ? The question has been debated by many of the wisest through the ages ; and at last there came a great unknown philosopher, and he quietly laid the answer at the feet of that sage of sages, Punch. ' It depends,' said that great teacher, ' on the liver.' To Arnout Oostrum life was very much worth living indeed. He had never felt another pain than toothache or a thrashing. Not that his aunt had ever struck him in her life. No, no ; that would have seemed a ' ruit ccelum ' to the boy, whose punish ments, insignificant enough in themselves, had been terrible because so rare. His masters, with whom he had more frequently come into conflict, had only treated him to that civilised torture of extra tasks which has completely replaced corporal chastisement in Dutch schools ; the blows and buffets, therefore, which he had received during his passage through the world thus far were such as fall to the lot of each one of us, and are usually dealt us by our most familiar friends.

Early in life, some of his school fellows had licked him, and he had licked many more. And nature had been very gracious to him, and had permitted him to swallow with impunity a larger number of unripe apples than can be safely stowed away by most other boys of his size. His very earliest recollections were of content ment and enjoyment — play, pleasure, and sugar plums ; a placid sea, with occasional storm-flashes ; a kind lady who was always kind, and a kind gentle man who could sometimes be passionate ; and then the kind lady alone, kinder than ever, but often very sad ; and then — Then the first bright flash in the haze, fixed in a clearness of unchangeable light, against a dark background. The low room, looking out into the garden, with the bunches of red flowers on the carpet, and himself, at five years old, in a black frock.

He had been playing with the old soldier-doll that had lost its head, ' Napoleon,' and an old lady came in to see him. An old lady ! a female Methuselah, thought Arnout, though in reality Suzanna Varelkamp was then barely five-and-forty ; but, if anything, it seemed to him as if she had grown younger since that dull autumn day when she had first dawned upon his vision, prim, grey, and neat, in the silence of the house grown desolate. ' Your mother is in heaven, Arnout,' she had said, by no means unkindly, ' and your father is in— Ah, well ! God Almighty and the devil must settle that between them — it's no business of yours or mine, thank the Lord — and you must come away with me. Don't cry ! ' — this rather nervously ; not that he was thinking of crying — ' it's babyish to cry. I shall get you a new doll, and you mustn't break its head.

Good children never break their toys. I have all my own toys at home, done up in tissue-paper, that I played with when I was a little girl ; and you shall see some of them, perhaps, when you are very good indeed." A bold promise, that last one. She made it with some trepidation. She could have given no greater proof of her anxiety to please her little nephew. ' That must have been a very long time ago,' said Arnout, with a child's grave stress upon the word. The antiquity of toys had never been so clearly borne in upon his mind. But he hugged Napoleon tightly to his breast. He had no intention of giving up Napoleon. LO VE 10 His aunt laughed. She could always enjoy a joke at her own expense ; and cheap every-day vanities were not a part of her nature. ' We shall get on very well, I have no doubt,' she said afterwards to the child as they sat in the railway carriage. ' You are not accustomed to old ladies, and I am not accustomed to little boys.

But we shall manage. You must always be literally obedient, and I shall always be absolutely just.' ' Where do the cows sleep at night ? ' queried little Arnout. ' They lie down on the ground,' replied his aunt shortly. She had hoped that her words would impress him more. But at this answer Arnout burst out crying — much to the good Juffrouw's dismay. She had seen children cry before, undoubtedly, but she had never had to bear the responsibility of their tears, and, worst of all, had never been required to arrest them. She tried kind inquiry into the cause of his sorrow, and then, finding that unavailing, stern injunction to desist. She felt that she must be gentle, but, above all things, she must be just. Why not tell her what had made him unhappy ? The boy shook his tearbegrimed countenance and choked down the sobs.

It was the first little tiff between guardian and ward. She feared that he would not be open with her. And, in the very first place, he must be open with her. That was the basis of all intercourse between pedagogue and pupil. Her system Arnout pressed his face against the window, and gasped, and gurgled, and clenched his little black gloved fists. He could not confess to his aunt that the servant-girl had said that his mamma was under ground, and that he dreaded that perhaps a great fat cow would lie down on her at night, and that she might not like it He could not tell her that. ' And if your mother, who is in heaven, saw you,' said Suzanna Varelkamp softly, ' she would like you to tell me why you are unhappy. And she would like you to respect me, and to — to love me, as a child should those that are set above him, and that are wiser than he is, and willing and able to instruct him.' That was a compromise with her system, an improvement on her system, and, unconsciously, she obtained her end.

The child did not know where heaven was, but it was recognisedly a pleasant place, and he felt very frightened of cows. There could be no cows in heaven. He turned round from the carriage -window. With one hand he clutched Napoleon, and with the other he plucked at his aunt's stiff shawl. ' I will love you, Tante Suze,' he said. And he did. But there are many kinds of love, and it is not always easy to hit on the right kind towards a particular person. A good deal of affection is squandered or misapplied in that way, and one often thinks we should be surprised to discover how well we could supply each other's wants, if only we learned to understand them better. Arnout began by being afraid of his aunt, and anxious to appease her. He seemed to have an idea that, like most heathen deities, her duty was to make things unpleasant for all around her, and that, in all estimations of her character, this her unavoidable vocation must be taken into account.

His mother's object in life had been to make herself amiable. That, emphatically, was not his aunt's. Hers was rather to make herself, and everybody else, better than nature had intended them to be. And, as he grew older, Arnout had sense enough soon to perceive that Suzanna preferred what she thought good to what she thought agreeable. With wide-opened eyes (of the soul) he discovered that her life was a struggle. Marvellous discovery ! She did not do what seemed most pleasant, but what she considered she ought to do. And she did not want him to act merely as she thought fitting, but to do what she believed to be right, whether he — or she, for that matter — liked it or no. In spite of slips and inconsistencies, the idea of duty stood out in the woman's dealings with those around her. It forced itself into Arnout's comprehension and compelled him to respect his aunt's sternness, even when he rebelled against it.

If she was stern to him, she was almost sterner to herself. Not that he liked the sternness. Arnout most unmistakably preferred doing what was pleasant. It was wonderful — it seemed to him — how often the good and the agreeable fall together. Why always strive to separate them ? The benevolent and beneficent Power that rules over the affairs of men had arranged that they should combine. Aunt Suzanna was always pulling them apart. Things were right, with her, because they were disagreeable. Women were bad because they were beautiful. Arnout had a weakness for a pretty face. During all the dull tenor of his childhood he had never known his aunt so angry as when she caught him kissing neighbour's Cornelie behind the hen-coop — neighbour's Cornelie, seven rosy summers to his ten, and lips that could not stop laughing even while they kissed him.

If Suzanna had ever been near striking her nephew, it was on that occasion. She dragged him roughly, almost fiercely, to his little room over the porch, and she locked him up with a chapter of Proverbs to learn, of which he did not understand one word. And a good thing too. ' You have more reason than most,' she said severely, ' to be afraid of the snares of the evil one. You have a tendency to give way to them. Beware of it in the days of your youth.' As he grew older he questioned her, half laugh ingly, half curiously, about his ' tendency ' to which she so often alluded. Why was he more wicked than most boys ? Was he ? 'God forbid!' Suzanna's uncompromising justice compelled her to avow. ' Then why ? ' ' Silence. You have a tendency. " Unto the third and fourth generation." And none of us are better than we need be.' ' But my mother was an angel,' persisted the boy. ' Yes, your mother was an angel,' snapped Suzanna smartly, ' and you are not' Arnout was not satisfied, and he thought within himself that, the stronger was our tendency to unrighteousness, the less could he be blamed for indulging it just a little now and then.

There were points, however, in which he equalled, nay, even distanced, his aunt's fine distinctions of black and grey. Everything that was mean, or low, or dishonourable, his soul revolted from. ' My aunt's game is little foxes,' he used to say laughingly to his friend the Domine. ' She has a splendid nose for smaller sins.' And therein he wronged her, in so far as he should have added that, if she hunted, it was ever first on her own estate. But Suzanna herself had not her nephew's keen scent of what a gentleman should do or leave undone. Had there not been that battleroyal between them, when Arnout refused to bear witness who had broken the pantry window ? ' It is your duty,' said Suzanna solemnly, ' your duty towards God and your superiors to further the ends of justice by all the means in your power.' ' It is my duty,' said Arnout stubbornly, ' to myself and to my brother gentlemen ' — this latter very grandly — ' not to sneak.' ' You are worse than a heathen,' cried Suzanna excitedly. ' Go up to your room immediately.

You shall live on bread and water for a week.' Which he did, much to Suzanna's fiercely crushed misgiving ; but no one ever knew that the culprit was Karel Donselaar. But, in spite of battles-royal and differences of opinion, aunt and nephew got on far better than any of the village gossips had ventured to predict. Arnout could not but respect his grim relative, and as long as a man respects a woman, their intercourse is all right. And so he endured her severities, because he saw they were never caprices, and, with his far more easy-going nature, he accepted her conscientious conclusions, whenever they agreed with his instincts or his tastes. Fortunately, his instincts were honourable, and his tastes refined. And in many matters appertaining to his manliness, his aunt developed a most unexpected and most unrighteous sympathy. ' Don't let a bigger boy hit you,' she said ; ' strike him back, and beat him if you can.' Arnout was nothing loth to obey. Perhaps Suzanna understood the nature of boys better than she dared to imagine.

Chapter III In His Teens And

so Arnout Oostrum grew up to be a jolly young fellow, in love with all the world around him, even with his ugly old aunt. A bright young fellow, with a shock of yellow hair and big good-natured eyes, one of those faces that older women smile upon because they look so innocently happy, and that young girls turn away from because they seem so dangerously full of life and fun. Young Arnout Oostrum ! People smiled to each other when his name was mentioned, and nodded their heads. ' There's no harm in Arnout Oostrum,' said the old gentlemen. But to that the old ladies demurred. ' There is always harm,' remarked one of them enigmatically, ' in a man in whom you can see so much good.' And all the girls of the village agreed that he had the ' loveliest eyes.' But Arnout at eighteen thought little of the girls of the village, though, certainly, if he noticed any of them, they were the pretty ones.

He liked his male com panions, and such time as the grammar school of the neighbouring town still left at his disposal he spent in rowing with them, and fencing, and flying IN HIS TEENS 17 north and south over the dull green plains of his fatherland, all huddled up and bent double on the top of a two-wheeler. And they made him captain of the school eleven. Start not, athletic reader ; you are still in Holland. The Mynheers have taken to cricket. Well, never mind ; they do their best, and the flannels look picturesque everywhere. So everybody liked young Arnout Oostrum. There are qualities which are good in themselves, and qualities which we often think far better because they prove the absence of others the world par ticularly dislikes. Arnout had a good supply of the former, but he possessed perhaps still more of the latter class.

And he had none of that obstreperous virtue which rendered people so afraid of his aunt. So he had yielded to her, and made himself no virtue of so doing. He yielded, because really, you know, it does quite as well aster all. Not in the important points, mind you. A fellow must keep a clear eye on his honour, when dealing with women. They've no idea of that, poor things, and can't help themselves. But as for the rest, what does it signify ? That was Arnout's creed, and he got on very comfortably with it. He had a sharp tug with the old lady, when he came to leave the grammar school, and the important decision had to be taken what course of study he should take up at the University. Suzanna had but one idea, one aspiration with regard to this matter. With her own overpowering reverence for the ' Domine ' she hoped to see her nephew a minister of the Established Church.

And he, if he AN OLD MAID'S LOVE had owned to any definite opinion on the subject, would probably have said that preaching, on the whole, was preferable to being preached to. No, now he came to think of it, he would rather not be a parson. ' But what then ? ' says Suzanna, pale with suppressed agitation. His life — not a paltry seventy winters — his life, earthly and eternal, the whole immensity of a soul, his soul, hung in the balance. She clasped her knitting down tight upon her knees. ' Oh, anything, you know,' says young Hopeful. ' Pilldriver. Ride about in a little carriage. Keep down surplus population. Or — ah — lawyer. Open prison gates, and that sort of thing. And set the captive free.' And then he threw his arm round his aunt's neck and kissed her, and wondered (to himself) how her tough old heart could thump like that under the coarse stuff gown. ' I've been thinking about it in the night,' he remarked at breakfast next morning, breaking an egg, ' and I fancy I should like to study theology.

Aster all, it is, as you often say, aunt, the one engrossing subject in the world. And so it deserves attention. I've talked it over with Jakob te Bakel, and, yes, I may as well study theology.' Thinking about it in the night ! Well, if from ten to a quarter-past and from half-past seven to eight be night, then Arnout was not the victim of an erroneous impression. And he had certainly talked about the subject to Jakob te Bakel, the son of a neighbouring clergymen, a young minister himself now, some half a dozen years Arnout's senior, and much admired by the latter youth. Arnout, by-the bye, was great in admiration. He had said to his IN HIS TEENS 19 friend, 'And now you are a parson, Jakob, do you like it ? ' And Jakob had answered, ' Yes,' very quietly, and had added to himself in an undertone, ' Thank God ! ' For all the awfulness of a possible ' No ' had been borne in upon his soul.