“I’m off to Drum. I sha’n’t come back as long as you’ve got Otto. The house can’t hold us both.—G.”
Father and elder son stood with downcast lids, watching each other through inner eyes. The Freule laid down her newspaper.
“He will think twice,” she said, sharply. “Gerard is not the kind of man to desert the fleshpots of Egypt because Moses has come with a plague or two.”
The Baron’s gloomy face rippled over with sudden sunshine.
“That’s just like you, Louisa,” he cried, “to select the most unfortunate simile in a hundred thousand. The worst of all Moses’s plagues was the removal of the eldest son!” He laughed, looking for the first time at his heir. “I am speaking from Gerard’s point of view,” he added. “Of course, of course, from Gerard’s point of view.” And he laughed again, but half-way the laugh died down into a pathetic little murmur. “It is exceedingly annoying,” he said, plaintively. “And I who detest unpleasantness! We have never had any unpleasantness before.”
“He means it,” interposed the Baroness, in a dull tone. “I know he means it, because of the little hook to the ‘G.’ When Gerard makes that, he is in earnest. It corresponds to a jerk in his voice. None of you understand Gerard. He is so good-natured; you fancy he is all sunshine and no fire.”
“Deplorable!” exclaimed the Baron, stopping, helpless, in the middle of the room. “And incomprehensible. All about a horse. We will buy Louisa’s present, the sooner the better, and send it to bring him back.”
“Ah! but is it all about a horse?” asked the Freule’s high-pitched voice. Once more she emerged from behind her newspaper, her own particular newspapers, the Victory! It would be difficult to say what the Victory wanted to conquer; but you received a general impression from its pages that in this world the battle was always to the strong.
“Ah! but is it all about a horse?” asked the Freule, amid a darkening silence. “Or could Otto tell more if he would? You consider me none too sharp-sighted, my dear brother and sister; but it strikes me you are blind not to perceive that you would have had a daughter-in-law Ursula anyway, whether your eldest had come back or not, eh?” She shot out this last interjection at her nephew, rising, meanwhile, all in one piece, with an abrupt sweep back of her stand-up silk.