CHAPTER XXI
BARON VAN HELMONT
So Otto and Ursula were married with all the customary paraphernalia of vulgar exposure—paraphernalia which cause a sensible man to resolve, as he runs the gantlet on his way back from the pillory, that the first time in his case shall certainly be the last. Theirs was as quiet a wedding as unselfish people can get—which means that it was not a quiet wedding.
Their honeymoon trip was but an introduction to the longer journey; at Genoa the big Java steamship would meet them; meanwhile, creeping down the Riviera, they lingered for a fortnight in that Paradise of Snobbery, Cannes. Cannes is a beautiful garden, planted with princes; what more can be desired by the millionaire, or by the numerous curs to whom the far scent of the millionaire is as sausage on the breeze? Other towns contain elements manifold, paltry and noble; exquisite, sun-wrapped Cannes has nothing but the worship of gold by glitter, and the worship of glitter by gold.
The young couple, therefore, passed through it unperceived. It was only natural that they should appear in the “Strangers’ List” as Monsieur et Madame de Holmani. They held out their hands to nobody, and nobody held out his hands to them, a kind of negative Ishmaelism, which has its advantages, even outside a honeymoon.
To Ursula, crossing simultaneously the frontiers of Holland, home, and maidenhood, this fortnight never assumed the cool colors of reality. Before it could do that it was over. She was back at Horstwyk again, like an awakened dreamer in the dusk of a troubled morning.
While the trip lasted—on the Paris Boulevards, among the orange-groves of La Croisette—the farewell peep of home hung heavy before her eyes. She seemed to see them all photographed on the steps of the Manor-house—the Baroness, firm set and still, the Baron coughing and sneezing, not from emotion, but from the sudden effects of a violent cold which should have kept him away from the ceremony. And her father, his one arm drawn tight across the “Legion” on his breast, his eyes fixed not on his daughter’s last appeal for a farewell benison, but on some far beyond of sunlight after storm.
The thought of Otto blended with the thought of her father, and over these, which were her thoughts of love, lay ever the thought of separation. Sadness is not a good beginning for a young wife who “respects and admires.” The Sabines, under similar circumstances, actually consented to live with their parents-in-law.
“Yes, it is very beautiful,” she said, looking across the bay to the blue-black of the sunset Esterel. They were on the terrace of their hotel at Californie. “Oh yes, it is very beautiful,” she said. She spoke with that admission which is a protest. There are times when we think that nature, like some women, would be all the better for a little less flamboyant beauty, and a little more homeliness.
“Java is far more beautiful still,” said Otto, encouragingly. “There is nothing in all Europe to compare with Batavia.”