“You may help,” and Willie walked away laughing. But the poor relations were Ursula’s real adjuvants, delighted to be useful while finding some occupation for their hands. The son stood on a ladder half the evening, the mother’s dumpy fingers fashioned innumerable little gold-paper chains. Willie started a conversation with Harriet Mopius, and was getting on very well till he unfortunately asked where she lived.
“Why, in Drum!” said Harriet, whereupon Willie felt annoyed.
“Yes, Gerard is my cousin,” cried Helena; “I am delighted to see him again! He is an old admirer of mine, an accepted lover before you were born, Herr Graf!”
She was all a-sparkle in palest pink and diamonds and her own pearly vivacity. The German beside her bowed solemnly. He was a very big German, five foot eleven by two, padded at the shoulders and pinched everywhere else so as to look twice his original size, like an enormous capital T. Mevrouw van Troyen called him her cavaliere serviente, and had naturally brought him to the Horst, with her maid, her King Charles, and her husband.
“You think me a child, Meine Gnädigste,” said the German. “Well, so be it. Cupid was ever a child, yet Venus played with him.”
“What nonsense,” laughed Helena; “but you Germans are all so sentimental; to us it is delightful, by way of change. My cousin is not sentimental; he is charmingly opaque. Come here, Gerard, at once; I want you to make friends with Count Frechenfels.”
There was an attempted challenge in her words and manner, as if she called upon her quondam lover to determine how completely the old wound was healed.
But Gerard had no intention of making friends with his belated rival. He disliked the man; he would have disliked him in any case, for, generally speaking, every Dutchman hates every German. The feeling is inborn, and very deeply regrettable, but it has little to do with the more recent annexation scare. Even the most ignorant Hollander must be aware that the near oppressors of his country have ever been, not Germans, but French. Racial discrepancies are at the bottom of the antipathy, accentuated by the irritating manner in which the overgrown young Teuton now often pats his dwarf of an elder brother on the head. The Count had been distributing pats all during dinner.
Gerard found it very hard work to be happy at the Horst. Even his mother had turned against him, worrying him about a subject he conscientiously avoided—his debts. And now Helena began bothering him with a sequel to Finis. He felt Ursula’s eyes upon him, as he had felt them all day; they were full of a dumb appeal, he could not tell for what. The eyes did not answer his question.
Their hunted look grew all the more alarmed if he approached. Did she already want him to leave the house? And if so, why? His thoughts of Ursula were growing more kindly, more like the old feeling of careless approval. That morning had revealed her to him in quite a new, and very beautiful, light.