“Silence! Keep calm,” answered Ursula, long ago accustomed to recognize the poor creature’s insanity. “If you can calm yourself, tell me what is wrong.”
“There’s no time,” burst out Hephzibah, “for calmness. They are coming—the people, up the avenue! They swear they will murder you, or burn down the castle! Save yourself! Save yourself! Down by the stables.”
Ursula, hearkening, distinguished indeed the fierce roar of an approaching mob.
“Hush!” she said, white to the lips. “Go up-stairs to Freule Louisa. Tell her to reassure the Baroness. Nothing will happen—do you hear me?—if you all keep calm.” She spoke slowly and impressively. “But if there is to be shrieking and screaming, I cannot answer for the consequences.”
Then, brushing past the momentarily paralyzed servant, she went out into the entrance hall. Its white pillars shone dimly in the insufficient lamplight, half hidden behind gay patches of flowers. The house had not been decorated for the occasion, but the stands had been refilled and freshened up, and a floral “Hail to the Hero!” of the head-gardener’s fabrication, still hung unfaded over the great dining-room door.
The loud menace of the swiftly approaching danger rolled up with increasing distinctness under the lowering heavens. Ursula could plainly distinguish enthusiasm for the rightful Van Helmont and denunciation of the usurper. “After all, they are right,” she thought, bitterly; “they little know how right.” Somehow the reflection seemed to bring her assurance. She now remembered, without bitterness, all the manifold charities which the usurper, unlike the rightful lords, had constantly dispensed, as bread from her own mouth, to both deserving and undeserving poor.
She went out on to the wide steps and stood waiting; the hot air struck her pallid face, and the clouds seemed to sink yet lower.
In another moment the cries all around her struck a yet crueler blow. A dark mass, yelling and drunken, was surging vaguely across the blackness of the lawn—the lowest rabble of the purlieus of Horstwyk, and all the aristocracy of the Hemel.
“Down with the usurper!” “Down with the tyrant!” “We won’t have any thieves in Horstwyk!” “Long live the hero of Acheen!” “Down with the parson’s daughter!” And, cruelest of all, “Down with the light o’ love!”
For one instant, as those mad words reached her, Ursula shrank back, and a torrent of crimson swept over her cheeks. Juffers, the constable, had supplemented Adeline’s stories, telling how, even in her early widowhood, Mevrouw had despised all decorum.