A fortnight later the various guests had all arrived; the Dominé greatly approved of their coming. “Let others less favored share your happiness,” he said to his daughter. The good Dominé, while constantly eloquent of the battles of life, rejoiced at the peace which he dreamed round about him. Yet he still had “Tante Josine.” The light of his life had flitted away to the Manor-house.
Nobody could see Theodore van Helmont and contest the accuracy of Otto’s statement that the young post-office clerk wasn’t much to look at. One thing showed very plainly, and that was his peasant blood. But he made no attempt to hide it; he had a quiet and unassuming manner, like his lumbersome mother, and would hardly have attracted attention but for his peach-like coloring, which made him almost an Albino. He was awkward in the unaccustomed vicinity of ladies, and spoke little, dropping away into the shade, unless somebody touched on his hobby. This no one ever did, except indirectly, for that hobby was “social science,” a number of “ologies” unconnected with life. His mother often wondered that so good a man could also be so clever; her own philosophy was of the simplest, all condensed into one unconscious rule: never to remember an injury, while never letting slip an opportunity of doing a kindness. Her only attitude towards the old Baroness van Helmont was one of respectful sympathy. Of Tante Louisa she felt afraid, for Tante Louisa had asked her, on the evening of her arrival, whether she believed in woman suffrage, and she had not known what “suffrage” was. The Freule Louisa, it need hardly be noted, believed in no suffrage at all. “If only we could stop the million asses’ braying,” she was wont to remark, “perhaps we should hear the lion’s voice at last.” This remark was not her own. She had got it out of the Victory.
The quiet clerk, dull, with comparative content, over a merciful volume of engravings, had pricked up his ears when he heard the Freule start “a sensible subject.” It was small talk that did for him, reducing his brain to chaos. “The principle of government by majority,” he said, “being once universally accepted, there appears to be no logical reason for leaving that majority incomplete.”
“Government by majority is a pleonasm,” said the Freule, tatting away. She meant “an anachronism,” whatever she may have meant by that. The young man hastily returned to his engravings.
“The majority is always wrong,” interposed the Dowager Baroness, very decidedly, “and, therefore, the larger it is the more wrong it must be.” She had remained in the drawing-room chiefly from disgusted curiosity, and now sat listless, her delicate face like a sea-shell among her heavy weeds.
“But, Mevrouw,” began Theodore again, from a sense of duty.
“Hush, it is certainly so, young man; besides, my husband always said it was. I am so sorry to see a Van Helmont a Radical.” Her face flushed impatiently, and, in the awkward silence, Ursula said it was a beautiful starlit night.
“The stars are so pleasant in winter-time, are they not?” remarked Theodore’s mother, whose fat hands lay foolishly in her substantial lap; but the Freule van Borck was not going to stand such sentiments as these.