Said the young wife to her husband, as soon as they were alone, “But ‘laissez couler’ means ‘let the boat sink,’” and she laughed the prettiest protest into his face. She had plenty of brains.
He stopped her mouth with a kiss. “You are too young a married woman,” he replied, “to study ‘équivoques.’” He, also, had plenty of brains, but neither had the art of using them.
The old gentleman, his grandfather, had made a tranquil ending; he had lain on his death-bed unruffled except at the wrists. His was surely a bright civilization with its “What does it signify?” Our self-clouded century repeats the words, but with passionate inquiry. And, after all, so many things that torment us signify so exceedingly little. Yet, perhaps, none the less, we are wiser than our grandfathers, for “it,” in their case, signified the French Revolution.
The present Baron van Helmont could not, of course, be “pure Louis XV.” None of us can, not even our clocks. You are unable—it is a stale truth—to push back the hand on the dial. The Baron, for instance, could not contemplate dissolution with the composure of his grandsire. He tried hard not to contemplate it at all. “Live and let live” was one of his favorite sayings. One day, long ago, he had used it to close the discussion with regard to a case which had recently occurred in his village of what he would have labelled “unavoidable distress.” His hobbledehoy of a son—the only one then—had suddenly joined in the conversation. “But that means,” the boy Otto had said, “live well yourself, and let the poor live badly.” It was the first symptom. The father shrugged his shoulders. Otto must have been, if we use the scientific jargon of our day, a reversion to an anterior type. To judge by the discrepancy of any half a dozen brothers, most families must possess a good many types to revert to.
The Baron van Helmont was a good man, lovable, and universally respected. In his youth he had enjoyed himself and spent freely as a young gentleman should do. He had been gay, but no irretrievable scandal had ever been mixed up with his name. He had married a charming wife, who had brought him a little more money. They had spent that together, and had quietly enjoyed the spending; but their friends and connections had been permitted to enjoy it too. The Baron had one of the finest collections of curios in the Netherlands, and also some very good pictures. He was a gentleman to his fingertips, and thoroughly cultivated. No one could possibly be a better judge of bric-à-brac.
“Bric-à-brac,” said the Baroness to the pastor, “is in itself a vocation; and the best judge of bric-à-brac in Holland is better than a taker of cities.” She spoke under strong provocation. At intervals the Dominé would make himself superfluous by speaking in the Manor-house drawing-room of “righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” “As if we got drunk,” said the Baroness.
Undeniably, the Baron was a gentleman, courteous and comely. There is a story about him which he loved to tell in the privacy of his after-dinner circle. It happened in Paris, at the court of the Citizen King. The Baron, passing through that promiscuous capital, had received a card for a monster reception. He went, and somehow got astray in the crush at the entrance, so that when he tried to pass in at a side door he found himself stopped by a gentleman-at-arms.
“Excuse me, monsieur; but this door is reserved for the members of reigning families.”
The Baron hesitated. To withdraw was absurd. He straightened himself in his small but serene hauteur.