Now, again, as she sat watching the horse’s head, she perceived, without seeing them, some long-drawn side glances. Her nostrils tingled, and she wished there had been a groom on the back seat.
“Well, and did you enjoy your uncle’s Indian stories?” queried Otto, breaking a silence that was becoming acute. “Did he tell you anything very dreadful this time? How often did he find a tiger under his pillow at Batavia?”
She laughed, and they talked lightly of Uncle Jacóbus, and of the life out yonder in the Indies, where everything is gigantic compared to little Holland, even the money-making, and also the mortality.
“So your mind is made up more firmly than ever,” he concluded. “You would never go out to Java on any account?”
“No,” she answered, flushing. “And, besides, remember my father! What would become of him if I were to leave him alone with”—she pulled up—“himself!” she said.
“True,” he replied, exceedingly gravely. Both were occupied with their thoughts for a minute or two, and then they began to talk of something else.
They had reached a spot along the lonely country road where it suddenly curved among a solitary cluster of cottages. On both sides it stretches away, very narrow and smooth, and almost treeless, between parallel ditches and far-extending fields. Two landaus could not pass each other with safety, but it is largely used in summer-time by overloaded hay-wains. For those who know Holland it is unnecessary to add that a tram-line occupies two-thirds of it.
This tram-line, which runs largely through desolation, has to twist round the curve of the cottages. Where it does so it has just emerged from a thicket; and the whole is so arranged by nature and science that the locomotive can flatten the cottage-children without their being alarmed by seeing its approach.
On this slumbrous Sunday evening the women were enjoying a brief period of repose. The smaller children were in bed; the bigger ones had gone plum-stealing. Fathers and mothers sat stolidly by the door with slow pipe or slower speech. As the dog-cart came racing along, the men raised their caps. One of them, however, shouted something.
“The tram!” exclaimed Ursula, half-rising. Otto had already set his teeth tight; both knew it was too late. Even as the cry went up, the great engine, silent and deadly, loomed in front of them like a hideous, falling rock. There was just room enough between the rails and the cottage-walls for it to graze their lateral splash-board in rushing by. But a carelessly projecting shutter rendered this escape impossible. As the mare sprang aside, the off-wheel caught the obstacle, and sent it clattering back against the wall. For an instant—the hundredth part of a second—the double crash all around seemed to stun her; then up went her ears, down went her neck; she was off.