The Bow of Orange Ribbon - Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (best book club books of all time txt) 📗

can you pray when you are disobeying your good father? God will not hear you."

The mother was not pitiless; but she was anxious and troubled, and Katherine's grief irritated her at the moment. "Go and tell Dinorah to bring in the tea. The work of the house must go on," she muttered. "And I think, that it was Saturday night Joris might have remembered."

Then she went back to Joanna, and stood with her, looking through the gray mist down the road, and feeling even the croaking of the frogs and the hum of the insects to be an unusual provocation. Just as Dinorah said, "The tea is served, madam," the large figure of Batavius loomed through the gathering grayness; and the women waited for him. He came up the steps without his usual greeting; and his face was so injured and portentous that Joanna, with a little cry, put her arms around his neck. He gently removed them.

"No time is this, Joanna, for embracing. A great disgrace has come to the family; and I, who have always stood up for morality, must bear it too."

"Disgrace! The word goes not with our name, Batavius; and what mean you, then? In one word, speak."

But Batavius loved too well any story that was to be wondered over, to give it in a word; though madam's manner snubbed him a little, and he said, with less of the air of a wronged man,--

"Well, then, Neil Semple and Captain Hyde have fought a duel. That is what comes of giving way to passion. I never fought a duel. No one should make me. It is a fixed principle with me."

"But what? And how?"

"With swords they fought. Like two devils they fought, as if to pieces they would cut each other."

"Poor Neil! His fault I am sure it was not."

"Joanna! Neil is nearly dead. If he had been in the right, he would not be nearly dead. The Lord does not forsake a person who is in the right way."

In the hall behind them Katherine stood. The pallor of her face, the hopeless droop of her white shoulders and arms, were visible in its gloomy shadows. Softly as a spirit she walked as she drew nearer to them.

"And the Englishman? Is he hurt?"

"Killed. He has at least twenty wounds. Till morning he will not live. It was the councillor himself who separated the men."

"My good Joris, it was like him."

For a moment Katherine's consciousness reeled. The roar of the ocean which girds our life round was in her ears, the feeling of chill and collapse at her heart. But with a supreme will she took possession of herself. "Weak I will not be. All I will know. All I will suffer." And with these thoughts she went back to the room, and took her place at the table. In a few minutes the rest followed. Batavius did not speak to her. It was also something of a cross to him that madam would not talk of the event. He did not think that Katherine deserved to have her ill-regulated feelings so far considered, and he had almost a sense of personal injury in the restraint of the whole household.

He had anticipated madam's amazement and shock. He had felt a just satisfaction in the suffering he was bringing to Katherine. He had determined to point out to Joanna the difference between herself and her sister, and the blessedness of her own lot in loving so respectably and prudently as she had done. But nothing had happened as he expected. The meal, instead of being pleasantly lengthened over such dreadful intelligence, was hurried and silent. Katherine, instead of making herself an image of wailing or unconscious remorse, sat like other people at the table, and pretended to drink her tea.

It was some comfort that after it Joanna and he could walk in the garden, and talk the affair thoroughly over. Katherine watched them away, and then she fled to her room. For a few minutes she could let her sorrow have way, and it would help her to bear the rest. And oh, how she wept! She took from their hiding-place the few letters her lover had written her, and she mourned over them as women mourn in such extremities. She kissed the words with passionate love; she vowed, amid her broken ejaculations of tenderness, to be faithful to him if he lived, to be faithful to his memory if he died. She never thought of Neil; or, if she did, it was with an anger that frightened her. In the full tide of her anguish, Lysbet stood at the door. She heard the inarticulate words of woe, and her heart ached for her child. She had followed her to give her comfort, to weep with her; but she felt that hour that Katherine was no more a child to be soothed with her mother's kiss. She had become a woman, and a woman's sorrow had found her.

It was near ten o'clock when Joris came home. His face was troubled, his clothing disarranged and blood-stained; and Lysbet never remembered to have seen him so completely exhausted. "Bram is with Neil," he said; "he will not be home."

"And thou?"

"I helped them carry--the other. To the 'King's Arms' we took him. A strong man was needed until their work the surgeons had done. I stayed; that is all."

"Live will he?"

"His right lung is pierced clean through. A bad wound in the throat he has. At death's door is he, from loss of the blood. But then, youth he has, and a great spirit, and hope. I wish not for his death, my God knows."

"Neil, what of him?"

"Unconscious he was when I left him at his home. I stayed not there. His father and his mother were by his side; Bram also. Does Katherine know?"

"She knows."

"How then?"

"O Joris, if in her room thou could have heard her crying! My heart for her aches, the sorrowful one!"

"See, then, that this lesson she miss not. It is a hard one, but learn it she must. If thy love would pass it by, think this, for her good it is. Many bitter things are in it. What unkind words will now be said! Also, my share in the matter I must tell in the kirk session; and Dominie de Ronde is not one slack in giving the reproof. With our own people a disgrace it will be counted. Can I not hear Van Vleek grumble, 'Well, now, I hope Joris Van Heemskirk has had enough of his fine English company;' and Elder Brouwer will say, 'He must marry his daughter to an Englishman; and, see, what has come of it;' and that evil old woman, Madam Van Corlaer, will shake her head and whisper, 'Yes, neighbours, and depend upon it, the girl is of a light mind and bad morals, and it is her fault; and I shall take care my nieces to her speak no more.' So it will be; Katherine herself will find it so."

"The poor child! Sorry am I she ever went to Madam Semple's to see Mrs. Gordon. If thy word I had taken, Joris!"

"If my word the elder also had taken. When first, he told me that his house he would offer to the Gordons, I said to him, 'So foolish art them! In the end, what does not fit will fight.' If to-night them could have seen Mistress Gordon when she heard of her nephew's hurt. Without one word of regret, without one word of thanks, and in a great passion, she left the house. For Neil she cared not. 'He had been ever an envious kill-joy. He had ever hated her dear Dick. He had ever been jealous of any one handsomer than himself. He was a black dog in the manger; and she hoped, with all her heart, that Dick had done for him.' Beside herself with grief and passion she was, or the elder had not borne so patiently her words."

"As her own son, she loved him."

"Yea, Lysbet; but _just_ one should be. Weary and sad am I to-night."

The next morning was the sabbath, and many painful questions suggested themselves to Joris and Lysbet Van Heemskirk. Joris felt that he must not take his seat among the deacons until he had been fully exonerated of all blame of blood-guiltiness by the dominie and his elders and deacons in full kirk session. Madam could hardly endure the thought of the glances that would be thrown at her daughter, and the probable slights she would receive. Batavius plainly showed an aversion to being seen in Katherine's company. But these things did not seem to Joris a sufficient reason for neglecting worship. He thought it best for people to face the unpleasant consequences of wrong-doing; and he added, "In trouble also, my dear ones, where should we go but into the house of the good God?"

Katherine had not spoken during the discussion but, when it was over, she said, "_Mijn vader, mijn moeder_, to-day I cannot go! For me have some pity. The dominie I will speak to first; and what he says, I will do."

"Between me and thy _moeder_ thou shalt be."

"Bear it I cannot. I shall fall down, I shall be ill; and there shall be shame and fear, and the service to make stop, and then more wonder and more talk, and the dominie angry also! At home I am the best."

"Well, then, so it shall be."

But Joris was stern to Katherine, and his anger added the last bitterness to her grief. No one had said a word of reproach to her; but, equally, no one had said a word of pity. Even Joanna was shy and cold, for Batavius had made her feel that one's own sister may fall below moral par and sympathy. "If either of the men die," he had said, "I shall always consider Katherine guilty of murder; and nowhere in the Holy Scriptures are we told to forgive murder, Joanna. And even while the matter is uncertain, is it not right to be careful? Are we not told to avoid even the appearance of evil?" So that, with this charge before him, Batavius felt that countenancing Katherine in any way was not keeping it.

And certainly the poor girl might well fear the disapproval of the general public, when her own family made her feel her fault so keenly. The kirk that morning would have been the pillory to her. She was unspeakably grateful for the solitude of the house, for space and silence, in which she could have the relief of unrestrained weeping. About the middle of the morning, she heard Bram's footsteps. She divined _why_ he had come home, and she shrank from meeting him until he removed the clothing he had worn during the night's bloody vigil. Bram had not thought of Katherine's staying from kirk; and when she confronted him, so tear-stained and woe-begone, his heart was full of pity for her. "My poor little Katherine!" he said; and she threw her arms around his neck, and sobbed upon his breast as if her heart would break.

"_Mijn kleintje_, who has grieved thee?"

"O Bram! is he dead?"

"Who? Neil? I think he will get well once more."

"What care I for Neil? The wicked one! I wish that he might die. Yes, that I do."

"Whish!--to say that is wrong."

"Bram! Bram! A little pity give me. It is the other one.