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 GOD'S FOOL
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/godsfoolkoopstad01maar
 
 GOD'S F O O I 
 
 H Ikoopstafc Ston? 
 
 MA ART EX MAARTENS 
 
 author of 
 
 'the sin of joost avei.ingh' 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 RICHARD BENT LEY AND SON 
 gubttshers in ©rbiiuirs to l)er J&*je0t]g the Queen 
 1892 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 \ v 
 
 
 
 f 
 
 
 nf&* 
 
 •,i 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 IS DEDICATED TO 
 
 ALL MY FELLOW -KOOPSTADERS 
 
 IN THE 
 
 FOUR VAST QUARTERS 
 
 OF OUR 
 
 MEAN LITTLE GLOBE.
 
 There was a man once — a satirist. In the natural course 
 of time his friends slew him, and lie died. And the peopi* 
 
 came and stood about his corpse. ' lie treated the whole round 
 world as his football,' they said, indignantly, 'and lie kicked 
 it.' The dead man opened one eye. 'But always towards 
 the Goal,' he said. 
 
 There wax a man once — a naturalist. And one day he 
 found a lobster upon the sands of time. Society is a lobster ; 
 it crawls backwards ' How black it is /' said the naturalist. 
 And he put it in a little pan oi'er the hot fire of his wit. 
 'It will turn red} he said. Tut it didn't. That 7oas its 
 shamelessness. 
 
 There was a man once — a logician. He picked up a little 
 clay ball upon the path of lift. l // is a perfect little globe,' 
 said his companions. But the logician sow that it was not 
 mathematically round. And lie took it in his hands and 
 rubbed it between them, softly. ; Don't rub so hard 1 , said his 
 companions. And at last he desisted, and looked down upon 
 it. It was not a bit rounder, only pushed out of shape. And 
 he looked at his hands. They were very dirty. 
 
 There was a man once — a poet. He went wandering 
 through the streets of the city, and he met a disciple. ' Come 
 out with me.' said the poet, 'for a walk in the sand dunes: 
 And they went. But ere they had progressed many stages, 
 said the disciple : ' There is nothing here but sand' ' To 
 what did I invite you T asked the poet. 'To a walk in the 
 sand-dunes.'' ' Then do not complain' said the poet. l Yet 
 even so your words are untrue. There is Heaven above. Do 
 you not see it .' The fault is not Heaven's. Nor the sands:
 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. SWEEPS THE READER INTO A CLOUD OK MIST I 
 II. SHOWS THAT THE STORY WILL BE A HIGHLY 
 
 RESPECTABLE ONE - 15 
 
 III. AND ALSO ALTOGETHER COMFORTABLE - 29 
 
 IV. THE NEW LIFE BEGINS - - 40 
 V. LIGHT AND SHADE - - 59 
 
 VI. * THUNDER '-STORMS - - - 7S 
 
 VII. STEPMOTHERS - - - 97 
 
 VIII. COUSIN COCOA - - 115 
 
 IX. ELI AS HEARS — THE TRUTH - 132 
 
 X. DR. I'lLLKNAAR'S REVENGE - 141 
 
 XL ' LIKE A STREAM UNDER A WILLOW-TREE ' - l6o
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER l'AGE 
 
 XII. VOLDERDOES ZONEN - - - - 182 
 
 XIII. THE HEAD OF THE FIRM - - - 209 
 
 XIV. NO THOROUGHFARE, AND THE WAY OUT - 232 
 
 XV. hendrik's TEMPTATION - - - 246
 
 GO D'S FOOL 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SWEEPS THE READER INTO A CLOUD OE .MIST. 
 
 Suddenly the horses shook themselves, 
 waking up. as it were, from their dull lethargv 
 of damp. They tossed the great drops off 
 their manes, in a quick splash of impatience, 
 once, twice — then once again, with a succes- 
 sion of those nervous shivers that run all 
 down a horse's sides and rattle the harness 
 in a dozen places together. And then one 
 of them neighed, pathetically ; and the other 
 hung down his head, as if neighing were 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 hardly worth while. Decidedly, Hendrik 
 Lossell's horses did not like the mist. 
 
 ' Fie !' said Chris from his box, drawling 
 out the word. And then he said it over 
 again, twice, very briskly. 'Fie! fie!' It 
 was the second warning did it. They did 
 not heed the first. 
 
 Chris never shook himself. He sat im- 
 movable in his long dark-blue winter-coat, 
 his gloved hands holding the reins in his lap. 
 An infinitesimal spray lay all over the surface 
 of the thick frieze. He didn't mind the wet. 
 It wasn't wet. For, in fact, the night was 
 dry, or so a Dutchman would have called it. 
 No rain had fallen. Only a soft white cloud 
 was trailing swiftly over the morasses in a 
 succession of innumerable puffs, as from the 
 mouths of a thousand cannon underground, 
 as if the spirits of the dead men in the waste 
 were warring against the climate that had 
 killed them. And a heavy mantle of gray 
 misery was soaking quietly downward in
 
 INTO A CLOUD OF MIST 
 
 shivering masses from the leaden sky, as if 
 the angels would shut out the consciousness 
 of so much condensing rheumatism, and 
 softly, imperceptibly, a bright glitter of 
 moisture was breaking out on every leaf and 
 blade and pebble, upon everybody and every- 
 thing. 
 
 The house was a lonely one. It stood by 
 itself, in its gardens, on the road outside the 
 town ; and the nearest group of cottages, 
 some hundred yards distant, had long since 
 sunk away in clouds of vapour. You could 
 not see much more than twenty feet in front 
 of you. And soon you would not be able to 
 see as much as that, for darkness was rapidly 
 closing in over such dull twilight as still 
 feebly struggled with the damp. Already 
 the 4 seeing ' was very blurred and indistinct. 
 It was an April night, by-the-bye, late in the 
 month. 
 
 A bakers boy came up the avenue and 
 passed round to the back of the house.
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 Presently he appeared again, whistling a 
 dismal tune. 
 
 1 Bad weather for driving,' he remarked, as, 
 he went by. 
 
 'So, so,' said Chris cheerily. 'One good 
 thing, it keeps dry.' 
 
 ' Yes, it keeps dry,' answered the baker's 
 boy. 4 That's one good thing. Good-night.' 
 
 And he sank out of sight into the mist, his 
 w r histle alone lingering a few seconds longer. 
 
 Another quarter of an hour crept by. The 
 darkness grew denser. And presently the 
 clock of the big church-tower — away down 
 in the town — boomed forth the hour of eight. 
 Its echoes crept along the dreary silence, and 
 lay faint upon the air. The chimes which 
 must have prefaced those final strokes had 
 got lost in the mazes of the mist. 
 
 Just before the striking of the hour the 
 front-door had suddenly opened, and a man 
 had come running out, and away into the 
 fog.
 
 INTO A CLOUD OF MIST 5 
 
 ' Whoever can that be ?' thought Chris ; 
 but he never speculated long on the unknow- 
 able. 
 
 He looked up at the lighted window in one 
 corner of the house, on the top story. There 
 were only two stories. 
 
 1 Terribly fond of the poor creature/ he 
 soliloquized, half aloud, ' one might think, 
 by the way he keeps the horses out. And 
 that with the infirmenza in all the stables 
 of the neighbourhood. And it's not he 
 will stop at home for fear of anybody's 
 catching it.' 
 
 Chris remembered his own experiences last 
 year, when he had been bad with this same 
 influenza, and had been obliged to drive his 
 master to the office through the rain, at least 
 a week too soon. 
 
 He shook his head reproachfully ; and as 
 the drops fell from his hat, he thoughtfully 
 shot them off his sleeve with finger and 
 thumb.
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 1 A bad master,' he murmured. 4 Seems to 
 me the bad masters get all the good servants 
 in these parts. Perhaps that keeps them bad.' 
 
 He gazed vaguely into the gathering 
 darkness, as if searching for a solution of this 
 mystery. And the clouds of white mist 
 drizzled upwards, and the clouds of gray mist 
 drizzled down. 
 
 One of the horses sighed — a long-drawn 
 sigh. With the swelling of his sides the 
 carriage creaked drearily forward, and then 
 sank back again. The other whisked his 
 tail. 
 
 Chris yawned. But even as he did so, he 
 straightened himself and arranged the reins. 
 A man's shadow had passed rapidly across 
 the white blind of the lighted window. 
 
 1 Up at last,' said Chris to himself. After 
 a pause he added cautiously, l At least.' 
 
 A few moments later, however, the house- 
 door was thrown open with a bang which 
 startled the horses. They bounded erect at
 
 INTO A CLOUD OF MIST 
 
 once in a tremble of expectation. ■ Wo — a !' 
 cried the coachman, tightening his grasp, and 
 reaching for the whip from its holder. The 
 little brougham quivered, as if recoiling for a 
 spring. 
 
 A gentleman leaped, at one rush, from the 
 dark hall into the dark carriage, throwing, as 
 he passed, the single word ' Home!' in the 
 direction of the box. 
 
 The carriage-door banged. ' Allez, boys !' 
 cried Chris, for so much French do all Dutch 
 coachmen understand, and all Dutch horses 
 also. The little brougham jumped forward, 
 and ran away into the fog. 
 
 It hurried along almost noiselessly in the 
 clinging whiteness that seemed unwilling to 
 let it pass, so tightly did the mist close round, 
 deadening every sound with its dull weight. 
 Presently, however, the door banged again. 
 Chris glanced round quickly, impatiently. 
 Only the close carriage behind him, and the
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 horses trotting briskly clown the road in 
 front. 
 
 1 I do wish he would learn to shut the 
 door when he gets in,' muttered Chris 
 angrily ; 'it's always falling open un- 
 expectedly. We shall have an ugly accident 
 some day in a crowded street,' and he 
 whipped up the horses, already going fast 
 enough. 
 
 Once within the town-gates, he found it 
 necessary to slacken his speed. The gas- 
 lamps, few and far between, lay like blurs of 
 yellow fog amidst the white. Streets, in 
 which there was barely room for two vehicles 
 to pass each other, were cut by steam -tram- 
 lines. Chris peered forward a little anxiously, 
 keeping his steeds well in hand. After a 
 minute or two he came to a narrow crossing, 
 near a corner, and here he checked them into 
 a walk. The streets seemed sufficiently 
 deserted, one would think, only you can 
 never be quite sure. ' See Misfortune before
 
 INTO A CLOUD OF MIST 
 
 she sees you,' says Chris's friend, the County 
 Almanack. 
 
 A moment earlier Chris had heard his 
 master in the carriage. That gentleman had 
 coughed, and struck something, doubtless in- 
 advertently, against the glass behind the box. 
 Now, in turning the corner, the coachman 
 was surprised, and heartily annoyed, by a 
 second click of the lock, softer this time, as 
 if the door were being gently drawn to. He 
 greeted it with a round oath at Mynheer 
 Lossells clumsiness, and, without deigning 
 to glance backwards again, he cautiously 
 wriggled round an awkward bend, and then 
 once more slackened the reins. After that 
 he did not check his pace till he turned into 
 a broad avenue, and drew up at his master's 
 door. No one moved inside the carriage. 
 The coachman cast a reproachful glance at 
 the lighted entrance. You could see the gas- 
 lamp rlaring steadily in the vestibule behind 
 the glass doors. Xo one moved in the hall.
 
 io GOD'S FOOL 
 
 Evidently the sound of the advancing wheels 
 had not been heard in the house. 
 
 He put his whistle to his lips, but, even in 
 the very act, he hesitated, and let it drop 
 again. He had never required to whistle 
 on behalf of Mynheer — only for Mevrouw. 
 Mynheer was often out of the carriage before 
 it had properly stopped, long before the 
 manservant had run down the steps to 
 meet him. 
 
 He peeped cautiously down over his 
 shoulder. He could make out nothing in 
 that manner. An uncomfortable, indefinite 
 wonder caused him to slip from his box, 
 speaking soothingly to his horses the while, 
 and so cautiously approach the brougham 
 window. One glance, and all hesitation was 
 gone — the carriage was empty. 
 
 He bounded on to his seat again, and, with 
 a cut of the whip at the astonished horses, 
 he swept round the short drive, and away 
 again into the mist.
 
 INTO A CLOUD OF MIST 
 
 Old Mulder, attracted at last by this rapid 
 exit, stood open-mouthed in the wide hall- 
 door, staring at the backward reflection of 
 the carriage - lamps, flickering like lucifer 
 matches in the darkness. And after a 
 moment even that faint flicker died away. 
 
 ' He must have fallen out,' said Chris to 
 himself over and over again, as he raced 
 down the road towards the corner where he 
 had last heard the door sink into the slot. 
 ' He must have fallen sideways in a fit or 
 something. See what comes of his careless 
 ways !' 
 
 He stopped abruptly at the cross-roads. 
 No one there. Nothing to be seen. Nothing 
 to be heard. He called —softly, then louder 
 — ' Mynheer !' Whiteness, stillness. The 
 drip of water, the glitter here and there of 
 smooth surfaces, and long lines of drops. 
 And the audible rustle of a Dutch mist. 
 Pat ! Pat ! Pat ! 
 
 ' Mvnheer !
 
 i2 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 He bent forward, following the stretch of 
 shining streets with scrutinizing eyes. The 
 chimes began to ring down tremulously from 
 the tower. Half-past eight ! 
 
 He drove on cautiously, still tracing the 
 road on both sides with careful question ; he 
 drove out of the city, into the deathly loneli- 
 ness of the shrouded fields, still repeating, 
 with bated cry, his masters name. 
 
 Xot far from the house in front of which 
 he had waited, he met them, a whole crowd 
 of them, confused, alarmed, excited in that 
 frenzy of mingled horror and delight which a 
 great catastrophe calls forth among lookers- 
 on. They were all crying together, in crazy, 
 distorted lamentation and amaze. Chris 
 threw back his horses on their haunches. 
 What was wrong ? For the love of heaven, 
 what was wrong ? 
 
 A new outcry greeted him. They sprang 
 back in alarm from the frightened, struggling 
 horses looming in a cloud of steam. The
 
 INTO A CLOUD OF MIST 13 
 
 light poured across their eager faces distorted 
 with fear. Over the champing of the horses' 
 bits and the screaming of the women a man's 
 voice rose. 
 
 1 Lossell's Chris, as I'm alive ! Would 
 you believe it ? Of all people, Lossell's 
 Chris !' 
 
 4 And why not Lossell's Chris ?' cried that 
 personage in a white fury, half rising from 
 his box-seat with uplifted whip. ' What's 
 the matter ? Where's my master ? What is 
 wrong ?' 
 
 ' Wrong ?' echoed a chorus of voices ; and 
 the shrieks redoubled. Somebody wailed : 
 ' Oh, how shall we tell him !' — a woman. 
 And then there was a lull of silence. 
 
 ' Wrong ?' continued the man's voice tran- 
 quilly. ' There's only this wrong, coachman. 
 There's murder wrong, that's all.' 
 
 And as he spoke a cry came from the 
 distant house, a cry as if of the voice of a 
 trumpet, deep and strong and irresistible,
 
 i4 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 over the sleeping country and all the tar 
 white fields : 
 
 'Murder! most awful murder! O Christ, 
 murdered yet living, dost Thou know of the 
 deed ?' 
 
 A man stood at the open window, his face 
 uplifted towards the starless sky.
 
 
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 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SHOWS THAT THE STORY WILL BE A HIGHLY 
 RESPECTABLE ONE. 
 
 The fool sat in his room, by the fireside, with 
 his hands in his lap. His eyes were closed. 
 They were always closed. God had closed 
 them. Many years ago. 
 
 In his youth ? Well, hardly in his youth, if 
 we distinguish our ages by their succession, 
 for the fool had always been a child. 
 
 But he remembered when he had been a 
 happy child. He remembered it vaguely, 
 objectively, as we remember a dream we have 
 dreamed or a book we have read. Not with 
 a poignant consciousness of loss, but with a
 
 1 6 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 distant envy cheered by hope. To know ot 
 happiness is to believe it possible. Whatever 
 has been, can be : whatever can be. may be 
 mine. And from moment to moment he lived 
 in the present, which is his all, expecting it to 
 change and grow pleasanter, more like that 
 other impression which still lies next to it ; 
 and. lo, the present is gone, and another 
 present is there, and hope remains. 
 
 Many of our best friends he missed ; but 
 our most cruel foe — memory — was also a 
 stranger to him. Xot that he could not 
 remember, only he could not call up and live 
 over again as past, with any degree of actu- 
 ality, half-forgotten phases of joy or sorrow, 
 the heart's experience, or the mind's. He 
 recalled how he had burnt his hand badly 
 more than a quarter of a century ago ; he 
 recalled it as if it were yesterday, and a 
 troubled look came over his face, and he 
 shrank back in alarm. But he smiled when 
 thev told him that his mother was dead, and
 
 SHOWS THAT THE STORY, ETC. 17 
 
 he said that it was not true, and pointed in 
 the direction of her young picture against the 
 wall. He knew that it hung there ; they had 
 told him. 
 
 How had they told him ? you will say. 
 This man to whom God had refused both the 
 light of His sun and the light of the human 
 voice ? What message from the outside 
 world could pierce the darkness in which he 
 lay, blind and deaf? Hush, hush! let me 
 tell my story in my own way. Yes. you are 
 right, he was blind and deaf. 
 
 He could not remember many things, he 
 had not many things to remember ; yet this 
 morning, as he sat there in the loneliness of 
 his room — the loneliness of his life — scattered 
 fragments of the past came rolling across his 
 mind like beads from a broken necklace. He 
 caught them up here and there as they passed 
 him, not heeding, unable to rearrange, the 
 lost symmetry of the string. , , 
 
 There had been a time, long years ago — 
 
 ^ VOL. I. 2
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 more than thirty years ago, only to him it 
 was not a memory, but a sensation — a time 
 when it had seemed as if all the gifts of 
 fortune had been showered down upon his 
 head, a golden, curly head, gilded by the 
 sunshine of half a dozen summers. All the 
 children of the neighbourhood that were old 
 enough to feel envy had envied little Elias 
 Lossell. His father was the great merchant 
 and town councillor, Hendrik Lossell, who, 
 from being a nobody, had suddenly risen to 
 the rank of ■ somebody's husband ' by his 
 marriage with the only daughter and heiress 
 of old Elias Volderdoes, the biggest rogue 
 and most respected tea-jobber in Koopstad. 
 For Koopstad, though only a little place, had 
 nothing provincial about it, and vied with 
 Amsterdam or any other great city in its 
 simplification of all social distinctions according 
 to the needs of the nineteenth century. The 
 only casts it still recognised were connected 
 with the Mint, and the one Order it now
 
 SHOWS THAT THE STORY, ETC. iy 
 
 invariably honoured was the money-order. 
 It looked down with supreme contempt upon 
 those out-of-the-way sister-cities which still 
 ventured to maunder about their ' old fami- 
 lies '; such ideas might have answered very 
 well in their day, but they would not do for 
 anyone in Koopstad (except the old families 
 themselves) since the railway had brought it 
 within forty minutes of the capital. You 
 were always getting into awkward predica- 
 ments for want of a definite limit ; now, 
 with the new standard, as imported by the 
 new train, no misconceptions were possible. 
 You applied the decimal system, with due 
 regard to proportion, and there you were. 
 A man possessed of a hundred thousand 
 florins was deserving of a certain amount of 
 respect ; a man possessed of two hundred 
 thousand florins had a claim to exactly four 
 times as much esteem, and so on. When 
 you got beyond a million, the good citizens 
 of Koopstad dropped their voices and folded
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 their hands, as their fathers had done in 
 church. Old Elias Volderdoes had got be- 
 yond the million. He had done so on that 
 last occasion when he had taken up the 
 Government commission for the damaged 
 cargo of the Ino. It's an old story. They 
 made him something after that— President 
 of the Chamber of Commerce, I believe. 
 
 And they took off their hats to him a little 
 lower. The worthiest of them — the ' well- 
 intentioned burghers,' as the rich people 
 called them — regulated the sweep of their 
 hats through the air by the same mathe- 
 matical rule which governed their hearts' 
 esteem. You might have set up an algebraic 
 equation — unconsciously, but automatically, 
 exact — between the angle of the circle of. 
 their salute and the income of the person 
 they saluted. The salute was old-fashioned, 
 but the idea entirely modern, as new as most 
 of the fortunes which graciously waved a 
 benedictory response.
 
 SHOWS THAT THE STORY, ETC. 21 
 
 I am not speaking evil of Koopstad. 
 Heaven forfend ! I am merely anxious to 
 prove that we are not out-of-the-way people — 
 you can get to Amsterdam in less than forty 
 minutes if you take the express — and that 
 these Lossells for whose tragic story I ask 
 your brief attention need not necessarily 
 have lived in our quiet neighbourhood, but 
 might have done honour to the big city which 
 you inhabit, unless yours is the melancholy 
 one where they only do homage to a tea- 
 jobber, when he doesn't cheat, and remains 
 poor. 
 
 Hendrik Lossell, then, from being recog- 
 nised by hardly anybody but his creditors, 
 suddenly dropped into the very obtusest angle 
 of salutation through his marriage with Mar- 
 garetha Volderdoes. He loved her — so he 
 said ; and it is very possible that he loved 
 Margaretha Volderdoes rich ; we need not 
 inquire whether he would have loved her 
 poor, for she wasn't. And she loved him ;
 
 22 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 she would have loved him under any circum- 
 stances, as long as he could lift to her pure 
 forehead those great black eyes, behind which 
 there was nothing but a machine for counting 
 dollars, but which seemed to spread like very 
 lakes of liquid tenderness. 
 
 So they loved each other, and it was all 
 very beautiful and sentimental ; but old Elias 
 did not properly appreciate sentiment, and it 
 seems an extraordinary thin^ that he should 
 have let them marry merelv because they 
 were in love. The old ladies of Koopstad 
 still shake their heads over this mystery ; but 
 they need not ask me about it. for I cannot 
 tell them any fresh particulars, no more than 
 the ' Christian Reformed ' ministers wife, 
 who knows all the scandals of the town, in- 
 cluding every original or unoriginal sin that 
 has been committed there during the thirty- 
 seven years of her residence in the place. I 
 have a shrewd suspicion, if you ask me. that 
 we all of us, however old or wealthy we may
 
 SHOWS THAT THE STORY, ETC. 23 
 
 be, retain a soft spot somewhere in our hearts 
 that hardens last ; and, if such spot there be, 
 you will probably find it is a mother or a 
 daughter — perhaps, more rarely, a sister or — 
 well, no, hardly a wife. 
 
 So they were married, and lived happily — 
 all through the honeymoon, in which better- 
 matched couples than they invariably quarrel. 
 It is a bad sign, that, too smooth a honey- 
 moon. And a few months later Margaretha 
 had learned that you must not marry a man 
 for his eyes. People tell you they are a 
 mirror of the soul. And yet Hendrik 
 Lossell's soul was far from — soft. 
 
 He was not a bad man ; he was worse — 
 one of those men who are not bad enough to 
 get better. He was not interested in much 
 except himself, and he was not even in- 
 terested in himself subjectively, as an in- 
 dependent 'I.' The object of all his attention 
 was the firm of ' Volderdoes Zonen, tea-mer- 
 chants,' incorporated, to the advantage of the
 
 24 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 civilized world, in the person of Hendrik 
 Lossell. 
 
 For old Elias had departed this life 
 alter having remained just long enough to 
 thoroughly initiate so apt a pupil as his son 
 in-law into the mysteries of money-making 
 wholesale. This fortunate dispensation — the 
 remaining, of course, not the removal — 
 Hendrik Lossell had accepted as a personal 
 attention to himself, and it had put him into 
 so good a temper with the government of the 
 world in general that he had written down a 
 double amount opposite the name of the firm 
 on the Church charity list for the year — ' Vol- 
 derdoes Zonen, six hundred florins. ' ' A worthy 
 successor !' said the minister's wife. But that 
 was the Church ministers wife ; Volderdoes 
 Zonen had nothing to do with Dissenters. 
 
 When the little Lossell was born they 
 called him Elias. The name was ugly, but 
 it was the fond grandpapa's ; and, besides, an 
 ugly name looks well in business. It sounds
 
 SHOWS THAT THE STORY, ETC. 25 
 
 old-fashioned, and 'established 1791, and all 
 that kind of thing. ' Our Puritan forefathers,' 
 you know, and the strict uprightness and 
 straightforward dealing of those good old 
 times. What a ' solid ' impression it would 
 make when young Elias was a middle-aged 
 man himself, and sat behind the great office 
 table, with old Elias's portrait above his head. 
 He would point to it, over his shoulder, benig- 
 nantly : ' My grandfather. I am named after 
 him. His father was the founder of our house. 
 If you leave the mixing to us, we can let you 
 have it at two seventeen and three-quarters.' 
 Lossell's heart glowed at the thought. 
 
 In the meantime the little Elias, having 
 wept the customary tears over that pre- 
 liminary sea- sickness which seems inseparable 
 from all infancy, sailed over as smooth a life's 
 ocean as falls to the lot of any human being, 
 big or little. His grandfather, who lived to 
 see the child's second birthday, worshipped 
 the very ground he trod on. His mother,
 
 26 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 having recovered in him his father's eyes, 
 poured out upon his small existence all the 
 love which had found no former outlet. His 
 father let him alone. In one word, his happi- 
 ness was complete. 
 
 And so, when he was five years old, his 
 mother died. Within a year his father 
 married again — married 'someone to look 
 after Elias.' The someone was a merchant's 
 daughter, a young thing, ready to hand, for 
 her father had business connections with 
 Volderdoes Zonen. She slapped Elias. 
 That was her way of looking after him. It 
 did not answer as well as his father's. 
 
 Presently there were two cradles in the 
 old house, and twins in the cradles, and that 
 put Elias's nose definitely out of joint. 
 Matters did not improve when his two little 
 half-brothers stepped out of their cradles and 
 on to his toes. I wonder : Is that why they 
 call them step-brothers, because they step 
 into your place in the heart of that imitation
 
 SHOWS THAT THE STORY, ETC. 27 
 
 article which your father bade you call 
 ' mamma ' the other day, and which seemed 
 so kind to you at first ? Elias's stepmother's 
 kindness had not even held out the regulation 
 nine months' length. 
 
 Hendrik and Hubert, the twins, now 
 began to enjoy life in their turn : their spell 
 of ' good times ' was to last longer, fortu- 
 nately for them, than Elias's. The land- 
 scape might have reminded you of one of 
 those Alpine scenes when it has already 
 begun to rain on the mountain, while the 
 valley is still bright with sunshine. Not that 
 the inhabitants of the valley can help it. Nor 
 that they feel any the happier because the 
 mountaineers are in the dark. 
 
 The younger boys were fairly fond of 
 their elder brother. They had no objection 
 to him. He was not in their way. And 
 they played with him, and bullied him, as 
 children will. He, on his part, adored them 
 with unreasoning worship. There was only
 
 28 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 a difference of some half-dozen years between 
 him and them. The second wife used to sit 
 watching the trio at their play. Elias had 
 retained that victoriously pleading look in 
 the lustrous eyes over which his poor mother 
 had so often sighed and prayed. He had a 
 noble forehead — high and pure, as hers had 
 been — and the golden curls fell clustering 
 over it and down to his shoulders. He was 
 tall and well-grown for his age, neither very 
 clever nor remarkably stupid — backward if 
 anything, and more eager to romp than to 
 study. He was fully seven years old before 
 his father put him to learn his letters — it 
 being Hendrik Lossell's theory that the best 
 leap follows on a recoil — and it took him as 
 long to distinguish U from V as if he had 
 been an ancient Roman. 
 
 The mother looked at her own boys. 
 They were sturdy little Dutchmen, the kind 
 of children no one but the mother looks at 
 twice. She hated that other child.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 AND ALSO ALTOGETHER COMFORTABLE. 
 
 Elias was nine years old when the world, 
 with all its good and evil, died away from 
 him, and left him alone. 
 
 It was his little brother Hubert who, half 
 in fun and half in wantonness, pushed down 
 a flower-pot from the ledge of the tall nursery- 
 balcony on the laughing face upturned to 
 greet him. 
 
 1 Hubby! Hubby! look at the yellow bird 
 on the big laburnum-tree !' 
 
 Crash ! 
 
 Hubby was leaning over the parapet, 
 kicking his white legs against its columns,
 
 30 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 with gravely puckered face, uncertain whether 
 to laugh or cry. 
 
 ' There is no hope, 1 said the doctor ; 
 ' there is not the slightest hope. It is a good 
 thing there is not.' 
 
 He said it harshly. Standing in the 
 darkened room by the small iron bedstead 
 on which the boy lay insensible, he looked 
 from the stepmother, dissolved in self-pity- 
 ing lamentations, to the father, hard and 
 impatient, annoyed, perhaps, to be called 
 away in business-hours. He did not think 
 they cared much ; and he said it harshly, 
 because he himself was sorry for the child. 
 
 1 Why a good thing ?' asked the father 
 abruptly. 
 
 4 It is better sometimes, especially at his 
 age, to die than to live on,' replied the 
 doctor. 
 
 Hendrik Lossell stood for a moment 
 terror - struck. Then he burst out : ' You
 
 ALTOGETHER COMFORTABLE 3 
 
 mean that he will recover ! That pro- 
 bably his brain will be injured — that he 
 will be mad, or an idiot, or whatever you 
 call it ! And he will live on for ever — these 
 idiots always, do ! Hey! speak out: do you 
 mean that ?' 
 
 The doctor busied himself with his patient, 
 disdaining to answer. 
 
 Suddenly Hendrik Lossell turned upon 
 his sobbing wife : 
 
 • Peace !' he said fiercely. ' Go out of the 
 room. What are you howling for ? For 
 pity of the child, perchance ! Go — go out 
 of the room — do you hear me ? — and pray 
 for yourself, not for him.' 
 
 She obeyed him, gathering her wraps 
 about her, and keeping her handkerchief to 
 her eyes, as she slouched out of his sight. 
 
 He shut the door carefully behind her, 
 and then he came back to the bedside. 
 
 ' Doctor,' he said menacingly, ' let us 
 understand each other. You are right ; that
 
 32 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 child must either recover completely, or not 
 recover at all.' 
 
 He spoke very quietly, but with such 
 concentrated meaning that the physician, 
 accustomed as he was to scenes of horror, 
 trembled at the words. 
 
 ' I shall do what I can,' he answered 
 gruffly. ' The issues are not in my hand, 
 Mynheer Lossell.' 
 
 For a few moments the merchant evidently 
 hesitated, at war with himself. He walked 
 up and down the little room in the dark, his 
 straight, strong figure swaying to and fro. 
 Then he said — slowly and distinctly — his 
 hand on the door-handle — his face averted : 
 
 ' I did not intend that you must, in any 
 case, have power to cure the child. But, if 
 he recovers, he must recover completely. If 
 he does not regain the full use of his faculties, 
 better that he should not return to life at all. 
 Should either of these eventualities occur — 
 I refuse to believe in the possibility of any
 
 ALTOGETHER COMFORTABLE 33 
 
 other — you will allow me to consider that 
 mortgage annulled which I still hold on your 
 house. Only, if you please, in the case of 
 cure or no cure. Half a cure is worse than 
 no cure. Half a cure, for me, would mean 
 foreclosure. Good-day, doctor." 
 
 The doctor answered never a word. He 
 swore under his breath in the silence of the 
 sick-room. ' Foreclosure it shall be,' he mut- 
 tered to himself, ' as far as lies in my power, 
 so help me, God ! But whatever can the 
 Right Worshipful mean ?' 
 
 He called him Right Worshipful, you see, 
 because his fellow-citizens had rightly con- 
 sidered that Hendrik Lossell's income was 
 entitled to a place in the councils of the town. 
 
 Foreclosure it was, accompanied by envy, 
 malice, and all uncharitableness ; so much so 
 that people began to ask each other whether 
 the rich merchant was angry with Dr. 
 Pillenaar for having saved his son's life. 
 
 vol. i. 3
 
 34 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 Lossell did his reputation severe injury in 
 Koopstad by the scandal he called up around 
 this matter ; but he did not mind such con- 
 siderations a trifle in comparison to the 
 satisfaction ol having his own way. He 
 knew that the burghers could not be guilty 
 of contempt, for any lengthy period, of a 
 man who drove his carriage and pair. So 
 he persecuted Dr. Pillenaar, because Dr. 
 Pillenaar had thwarted him, and left the rest 
 to time and the popular sense of what is tit. 
 
 Still, people wronged him when they hinted 
 that he was weary of his eldest son. He. was 
 quite willing that the boy should live, though, 
 perhaps, he would not have grieved over- 
 much to see him die. But the semi-recovery 
 of Elias was indeed a terrible blow to him, 
 and it was not till after the merchant's death 
 that Koopstad found out the exact reason 
 why. 
 
 In the meantime the object of all this 
 solicitude, after hovering for many days
 
 ALTOGETHER COMFORTABLE 35 
 
 between heaven and earth, turned the wrong 
 corner and decided to live. Much to the 
 doctor's astonishment, and no less to his 
 tierce satisfaction, E lias's strong little body 
 asserted its right to continued existence, 
 whatever might become of the poor child's 
 mind. He rose up, as it were, in his sleep, 
 and walked about, and even spoke — unintel- 
 ligible words at first, the indivisible rigmarole 
 of a dreamer ; then slow, short sentences, as 
 the sounds fell gradually into their proper 
 places again. But he could receive no 
 answer to his questions. Some fatal injury- 
 had been done to the apparatus of hearing 
 by the force of the blow. The doctors said 
 that the tympanum was intact in both ears ; 
 they could not account for the absence of all 
 power of perceiving sound. It would not 
 have been of much use to Elias could they 
 have explained the reason of his deafness. 
 He would not have been less incurably deaf. 
 Some subtler influence was at work, out of
 
 36 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 reach of the wise men's probing, eating away 
 the very strength of the child's brain. 
 
 He was deaf. Well, so be it. It was a 
 terrible affliction, but they must make the 
 best of it, said his father. Many men were 
 deaf who yet did their work — ay, and left 
 their mark — in the world. Elias, as soon as 
 he seemed sufficiently to have recovered from 
 his illness, was set to learn the deaf-and-dumb 
 alphabet. 
 
 4 An easy thing enough for him,' remarked 
 Lossell, 4 considering that he isn't even dumb. 
 He might have been dumb, you know, 
 Judith. He can very well go into the busi- 
 ness, all the same.' 
 
 Elias, however, did not find the deaf-and- 
 dumb alphabet as easy as his father had 
 expected. He struggled over it with almost 
 hopeless failure, and there was something 
 very pathetic in that constantly reiterated, 
 1 But I don't understand,' which he sent out 
 into the silence around him like a futile
 
 ALTOGETHER COMFORTABLE 37 
 
 appeal for help. His great eyes lighted up 
 for a moment with something of their old 
 lustre under the impulse of that passionate 
 questioning. But soon the strange dimness 
 again sank over them. ' He did not really 
 care to understand, said his teacher with a 
 shrug of the shoulders. ' He was the most 
 unintelligent pupil that he — the master — had 
 ever come across. 
 
 ' The child is too stupid,' Hendrik Lossell 
 groaned to himself. ' It is not his deafness 
 that is at fault, but his stupidity. If that fool 
 of a Pillenaar had only understood both the 
 boy's welfare and his own ! What am I to 
 do with him in this condition ? There ought 
 to be a law against wills like that of old 
 Volderdoes.' 
 
 And then he made some sotto voce allusions 
 to his deceased father-in-law, which were not 
 at all in harmony with the veneration which 
 he had vowed to the chief of the great house, 
 whether alive or dead.
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 Elias understood that he was very naughty, 
 and he ran away into the woods and flung 
 himself on the ground and cried. He did 
 not like crying, but sometimes he could not 
 help it. And he lost himself in the wood, 
 following after a bird of strange plumage 
 which he had never seen before. He thought 
 he knew all the birds that ever existed. He 
 was quite sure that he knew at least thirty- 
 seven kinds. He had counted them up on 
 his fingers. And he was acquainted with 
 any number of plants, and flowers, and funny 
 wild things, only it tired his head to re- 
 member the names. It tired his head now 
 far more than it used to, before Hubby threw 
 the flower-pot at him. His head never used 
 to be really tired before. And now, some- 
 how, he was always having the headache, 
 not always equally bad, but always that dull 
 pain over the eyes. He could not tell them 
 about his headaches. They would only say it 
 was naughty of him. As he dared say it was.
 
 ALTOGETHER COMFORTABLE 39 
 
 He came home late from that escapade in 
 the woods, and he read in his stepmothers 
 angry looks the reproaches he could no longer 
 hear. 
 
 Mind you, this is not a melancholy story, 
 and I will not have it designated as such, 
 however appearances may seem to be against 
 me. It is essentially a comfortable story, 
 intended to show the comfortable people that 
 this is really a comfortable world, and that 
 they have a right to be comfortable in it.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE NEW EIEE BEGINS. 
 
 There was a big dinner-party at the Los- 
 sells'. Now. what more cheerful than a 
 dinner-party ? Especially for those who. 
 snugly established by their own hreside, with 
 a book and a valid excuse, remember that, 
 but for such valid excuse, they too must have 
 been there. 
 
 There was a dinner-party. The Lossells 
 were old-fashioned people, and they sat down 
 to table at half-past five. They made up for 
 beginning so early by sitting on late. And 
 the children came in to dessert, also in the
 
 THE NEW LIFE BEGIXS 41 
 
 old-fashioned manner, somewhere near half- 
 past seven. 
 
 Sixteen ladies and gentlemen, including 
 the host and hostess, were gathered round 
 the oblong dining-table, the ladies mostly in 
 high dresses of some sombre silk, plum- 
 coloured or bronze or spinach-green, with 
 black-lace trimmings ; the gentlemen in but- 
 toned frock-coats and black ties — portly 
 gentlemen, with sparse hair and solemn, 
 stupid faces, and parchmenty cheeks, from 
 which the counting-house had drained away 
 all pulsation, leaving only a yellow smooth- 
 ness of unmeaning dignity. The long 
 narrow board — there was nothing festive 
 about it — stood covered with a number of 
 dessert-dishes in painfully perceptible lines : 
 plump, overladen dessert-dishes, full of hyper- 
 trophied fruit and sweetmeats, dishes that 
 seemed to say, 4 Look at me ; I can afford 
 to pay.' And the guests — especially the 
 ladies — stared back with depressing indifler-
 
 42 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ence. They also could afford to pay. Had 
 that not been the case, they would not have 
 been there. 
 
 There were no other flowers on the table 
 than the big bouquet of red and pink roses, 
 done up by the florist (done up tight), in a 
 crystal centrepiece ; but here and there 
 stood a fat silver candlestick, with a thin 
 candle, rising up like a plumed officer among 
 the martial array of crackers and pears. 
 And a couple of fat-bellied porcelain lamps, 
 garlanded with a splendour of blooms such 
 as Nature might vainly yearn to imitate, 
 dropped their oil with a tranquil solemnity 
 befitting the feast. The great gilt chandelier, 
 with its dozens of candles, was not lighted. 
 Only its covering of yellow gauze had been 
 removed. To tell the truth, Mevrouw Lossell 
 had made up her mind that she would light 
 the candles if the Burgomaster's wife had ac- 
 cepted her invitation. But the Burgomaster's 
 wife had written to say that she was indisposed.
 
 THE NEW LIFE BEGINS 43 
 
 ' Indisposed to come,' said Lossell in his 
 rough manner, as he threw the letter back to 
 his wife. ' She says she isn't well enough, 
 does she ? Not well enough with us, she 
 means.' And so the candles remained un- 
 lighted. 
 
 None the less, there was light enough — 
 what with the various lamps and candlesticks 
 scattered about [nay, pompously planted] 
 on mantelpiece and sideboard— to brighten 
 even that big room, with its mahogany furni- 
 ture and dark-red wall-paper. It was not the 
 absence of outer illumination which left the 
 assembly in the dark. You may put pounds 
 upon pounds of wax-candles round a coffin, 
 but you can't make it a cheerful object by so 
 doing. It was the dignity which did it, and 
 the consciousness — what ho, a moralist !— 
 that only poor people laugh. 
 
 Let us not speak irreverently of these 
 worthy people and their pleasures. The 
 occasion was, indeed, not such an one as
 
 44 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 warrants a smile. They were working their 
 way through a better dinner than falls to the 
 share of most rich men. It is an irritating 
 — nay, more, a deeply-saddening — problem 
 for a wise dyspeptic to ponder : the super- 
 abundance in this little world of ours of things 
 cookable, and the extreme rarity of cooks. 
 
 Mevrouw Lossell was telling all about the 
 Burgomaster's wife to a chocolate manufac- 
 turess — a cousin — who sat four places off. 
 Farther down the table Mevrouw Lossell's 
 sense of propriety would not have allowed 
 her voice to reach. 
 
 ' Yes, the dear Burgomasteress is ill,' she 
 was saying. ' She wrote me an affecting 
 little note. I was so sorry, but I could not 
 put off my party. The doctor has absolutely 
 forbidden her to go out.' 
 
 ' Except in an open carriage,' answered the 
 chocolate-makeress tartly. ' I saw her driving 
 in the Park yesterday with those fat-faced 
 children of hers.'
 
 THE NEW LIFE BEGINS 45 
 
 This lady could afford to be plain-spoken, 
 the Burgomaster's wife having honoured her 
 last year's banquet with her presence, and 
 she could enjoy a little quiet spitefulness, for — 
 incomprehensibly enough, as it seemed to her 
 judgment — the Koopstaders persisted in pre- 
 ferring adulterated tea to adulterated cocoa. 
 ' They don't know what is good for them,' she 
 would say, quoting from her husbands best 
 advertisement. ' Tea weakens the nerves, 
 but cocoa strengthens the blood." 
 
 If this be true, let us hope that the Koop- 
 staders will absorb Johnsonian quantities of 
 the emollient beverage. Their nerves will 
 be all the better for a little weakening. 
 
 1 Yes, so she tells me,' Mevrouw Lossell 
 remarked coolly, in answer to the information 
 she had just received. It was not easy to 
 discomfit Mevrouw Lossell. Her nerves 
 were of the genuine Koopstad type. ' I 
 must say I prefer healthy - looking chil- 
 dren. Some people's children make you
 
 46 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 wonder whatever their parents feed them 
 on !' 
 
 The cousin replied only by a nod and a 
 smile, Hung across to her hostess, over a 
 gathering swell of interposing voices. She 
 ignored the attack on her own chocolate- 
 nurtured offspring. And she contented her- 
 self by remarking to her immediate neigh- 
 bour : ' And some poor little creatures 
 look so pinched and wasted you cannot 
 help asking whether they get anything to 
 eat at all.' 
 
 But the stout tobacco-planter next to her, 
 even had he understood her meaning, would 
 have felt no interest in the subject. True to 
 the rule of his life, he had already eaten too 
 much that evening. It was impossible for 
 him to realize the condition of anyone who 
 could eat too little. And it more than sufficed 
 for him that Mevrouw Lossell had provided 
 him — John Pruim — with so capital a dinner. 
 They were beginning to hand the dessert. It
 
 THE NEW LIFE BEGINS 47 
 
 was seven o'clock. He loved Mevrouw 
 Lossell. 
 
 The dessert brought in the children. They 
 came through the great dark door behind the 
 red damask screen, and round into the full 
 light of the dinner-table, with its glitter of 
 silver and crystal. They advanced — with 
 children's solemn hesitation — -towards the 
 confusion of heaped-up fruit and disordered 
 wineglasses, bordered by that circle of 
 ponderous faces, all turned towards them 
 in a sudden lull of languid interest. They 
 saw nothing — absolutely nothing — but the 
 dazzling white of the tablecloth, and their 
 mother's meaningless face at the farther end. 
 
 The twins were in front, hand-in-hand, 
 their squat figures clad in black velveteen 
 blouses, and behind them came Elias, also in 
 black velvet, but in a tailor-made suit, with a 
 dainty white waistcoat, and black stockings 
 instead of red. For Elias was now nearly 
 eleven. His long fair curls poured down in
 
 4 8 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 silken streams upon his shoulders. Mevrouw 
 Lossell had wanted to cut them off long ago. 
 It was so silly for a great boy to wear curls, 
 she said. Elias had also wanted them cut 
 off, for the same cause. But some reason or 
 other made the merchant say 'No.' Perhaps 
 in the depths of his money-loving soul there 
 still occasionally stirred a soft recollection of 
 the woman who had loved him more than 
 money. It must have been so, for, one day, 
 after a fresh altercation about the hairdresser, 
 he suddenly said to Elias — on the fingers, for 
 the child had now learnt to understand that 
 language easily : 4 Your mother had such 
 curls as yours, Elias.' He did not say it till 
 his wife had left the room. Elias never asked 
 again to have the curls cut off. 
 
 The child was tall, too tall for his age, and 
 his high forehead and delicately-veined cheeks 
 were thin and pale enough to explain the 
 chocolate-lady's apprehension. Yet it was 
 not true that he did not get enough to eat —
 
 THE NEW LIFE BEGINS 49 
 
 not true, in fact, that he wanted for anything, 
 except affection. He was still the rich town- 
 councillor's eldest son. And he lived in the 
 lap of that substantial luxury of which the 
 Dutch have possessed the secret for centuries. 
 The landscape around him was the same as 
 it had always been, only the warmth had 
 gone out of it when his mother died. 
 
 His was a swinging, easy step, as a rule, 
 despite his deafness. Nature had accorded 
 him that mysterious grace of movement, most 
 intangible of beauties, which seems to mould 
 immediately and imperceptibly the most 
 various surroundings into a framework for 
 one consistent central figure. He was not, 
 perhaps, handsome according to the rules of 
 straight lines and clear colours. But the 
 child was interesting — interesting against 
 your will. And when in the middle of his 
 boisterous play he paused for a moment by 
 your side, and turned full upon you those 
 great eyes of his, already dimmed by the 
 vol. 1. 4
 
 5 o GOD'S FOOL 
 
 presage of deepening trouble, a something in 
 your heart awoke to say, ' God bless him !' 
 before you turned away to talk of yesterday's 
 dinner or to-morrow's dress. He could not 
 hear you. He would run away, shouting. 
 'Hubby! Henky !' with a voice that rang 
 out like a clarion-note, and their shrill cries 
 would come pealing back in futile answer — 
 forgetful of his infirmity with the forgetfulness 
 oi children, and grown-up men. 
 
 I do not think that infirmity weighed very 
 heavily upon him as yet. It was awkward, 
 he felt, and hindered him in his intercourse 
 with other children ; but it did not prevent 
 his playing as much as his heart could wish. 
 And whenever he wanted anything, he could 
 ask for it ; and children, as a rule, are far 
 more anxious to talk than to be talked to. 
 Being talked to means being ' don'ted,' as a 
 rule. Elias found that, notwithstanding his 
 deafness, people could easily don't him far 
 more than he liked. And his immediate
 
 THE NEW LIFE BEGINS 
 
 entourage had learnt to speak to him on the 
 fingers. There had been some talk at first of 
 trying to teach him to watch the movement 
 of the lips, but this had been postponed, by 
 the doctor's advice, till his head was stronger. 
 The father had taken comfort. He had 
 come across a couple of deaf and dumb 
 gentlemen in Amsterdam who read every- 
 thing that was said off the lips with perfect 
 ease. They even spoke, and it was quite 
 possible to understand them if only you took 
 the trouble. They were in business, both of 
 them. 
 
 ' Your son is not dumb, you tell me ?' said 
 the director of the great deaf and dumb 
 institute. ' I will guarantee that, with the 
 most mediocre intelligence, he will be able in 
 the course of eighteen months to understand 
 everything that is said to him by whosoever 
 chooses to speak slowly and distinctly. There 
 is no reason why he should not become as 
 eminent a man of business as yourself.' 
 
 L'r.RARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
 
 52 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 Lossell travelled back in a fever of delight. 
 He kissed Elias on both cheeks when the 
 bov came running out to welcome him. 
 
 The child's chief regret was that his little 
 brothers could not converse with him. 
 Mevrouw Lossell had positively forbidden 
 their learning to do so before they knew the 
 ordinary alphabet. She was afraid of some 
 disastrous results. She could not herself 
 have told you what. But Elias felt very 
 sorrv. He was not angry with Hubby. 
 
 And now, on the occasion of this dinner- 
 party, he followed the six-year-old twins into 
 the dining-room. He kept his hand on 
 Hub's shoulder, as the little group steered, 
 with uncertain movement, in the direction of 
 the mistress of the house. 
 
 ' What an interesting-looking child your 
 stepson is, Mevrouw!' said Judith Lossell's 
 neighbour, a white-haired old grandfather, as 
 they sat watching the boys draw near.
 
 THE NEW LIFE BEGINS 53 
 
 * I do not call him handsome,' answered 
 that lady shortly. She was thinking that the 
 old man might as well tell her that Henky 
 and Hubby were interesting-looking children 
 too. 
 
 1 Well, not handsome, perhaps, but striking. 
 Yes, striking. He ha*s the kind of look 
 peculiar to those children who make a noise 
 in the world when they grow up.' 
 
 * He makes quite noise enough already, 
 I am sure,' retorted Mevrouw Lossell in 
 differently. ' Come here, Henky ; let me 
 put your lace-collar straight. And say 
 " How d'ye do ?" Hubby, to Mynheer van 
 Veth.' 
 
 The chocolate -cousin was making over- 
 tures to Henky, smiling and nodding over 
 her shoulder, with an outstretched cracker 
 in her hand. She wanted him to come to 
 her, partly because she felt it was her duty 
 to notice the children, and partly because it 
 would give her an opportunity of telling her
 
 54 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 side of the table that her little Diederik 
 could read words of one syllable, while 
 Henky Lossell did not even know A from B. 
 
 Elias stood awkwardly near his step- 
 mother, still clinging, as if with a nervous 
 clutch, to Hubby's velveteens. Old Mr. van 
 Veth had offered him some sweetmeats. 
 The boy did not take them. The old 
 gentleman, looking up in surprise, saw that 
 Elias's eyes were staring vaguely in front of 
 him — away towards a dark corner of the 
 brilliantly-lighted room. 
 
 ' Good heavens !' he said to himself ; ' if the 
 boy is deaf, he should look at people. The 
 eyes are the only means of intercourse left/ 
 
 'Come here, Elias,' called out the Town 
 Councillor from his end of the table, as if his 
 eldest son could hear him. 
 
 He beckoned to the boy. They often 
 spoke to him in this manner, exaggerating 
 their gestures that he might read their 
 meaning thus unheard.
 
 THE NEW LIFE BEGINS 55 
 
 The stepmother turned round impatiently. 
 
 ' Why don't you go to your father, child ?' 
 she cried, pointing with her substantial arm. 
 ' Don't you see him calling you ? Don't 
 pluck at Hubby in that tiresome manner! 
 Can't you leave the poor child alone ?' 
 
 Elias seemed to take no notice of any- 
 thing. He stood staring, staring away to 
 that dark corner — over there. 
 
 A sudden silence fell upon the guests. 
 Mevrouw Lossell's voice, rising over the 
 buzz of conversation, had flattened it down 
 at a blow. People looked in her direction — 
 at her florid, angry features, and at the pale, 
 unconscious face by her side. 
 
 ' How naughty !' said her sister softly, yet 
 audibly, from a distance. 
 
 The chocolate-manufacturess cast an in- 
 dignant look in the direction of the voice. 
 'Poor child!' she interposed — out aloud. 
 ' Elias, boy,' ejaculated the father in amaze- 
 ment, ' come here.'
 
 5 6 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 Judith Lossell heard the remarks of both 
 ladies. The) r'j. irritated her still more. She 
 half turned in her chair, and seized her 
 stepson's arm, and shook it angrily. ' You 
 naughty child !' she cried. ' Why can't you 
 attend to what your father says ?' She 
 trusted to her expression to explain her 
 words — and pointed eagerly across the table. 
 
 The shake seemed to awaken Elias to 
 consciousness. He removed his eyes from 
 the cornice, and turned them full on the 
 attentive guests assembled round the dinner- 
 table. Evidently he felt that something was 
 expected of him. He must say something. 
 
 1 I can't see !' he said. 
 
 No one understood the meaning of the 
 words for the first moment. There was a 
 general movement of surprise, of uncertainty. 
 His stepmother sat in annoyed bewilder- 
 ment, not daring to make quite certain as 
 yet that this was some miserable trick. His
 
 THE NEW LIFE BEGIXS 57 
 
 father bent forward as if about to speak. 
 But the wall of his frightened reserve once 
 broken through, Elias burst out, pouring forth 
 all the flood of his childish terror and despair: 
 
 • 1 can't see ! I can't see one bit ! Papa ! 
 mamma ! where are you ? Didn't we come 
 into the dining-room ? I don't know where 
 1 am ! I don't understand ! Touch me, 
 Hubby ! It's all dark, and my eyes are 
 open! Oh. papa ! what has happened ? Oh, 
 papa, papa, papa !' 
 
 He burst into tears — -into passionate, panic- 
 struck, audible sobs. There was something 
 alarming in the thought that they could not 
 reach the child — alone in his silence and his 
 darkness. The guests started from their 
 seats. Some of the ladies fell back, and, 
 unable to bear the pain of that wild sobbing, 
 broke into sympathetic cries and weeping. 
 The wretched father ran round from his seat 
 with a groan. He caught the child to his 
 
 D 
 
 augj 
 
 arms, and drew him away to an embrasure.
 
 58 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ' Hush! hush!' he stammered, as he stroked 
 the golden head. ' It will be better presently 
 — better presently. He can't hear me!' he 
 suddenly cried, turning fiercely on the dum- 
 founded faces grouped at some distance from 
 the corner where he had taken refuge. He 
 looked from one to the other. ' Make him 
 hear me !' he gasped. ' Tell him, somebody 
 —make him understand that it will be all 
 right soon! It is some passing distemper. 
 Comfort him, somebody ! Here, you, Judith ! 
 No, not you !' He pushed her from him. 
 ' O my God ! can no one stop his crying 
 like that? It will be all right presently — all 
 right presently." 
 
 For a moment he had forgotten himself. 
 and all his hopes and his ambitions. He 
 lifted the child high in his arms, and bent 
 over him, face to face, cheek to cheek, and 
 so — motioning back all sympathy and all help 
 — he bore him away into the silent loneliness 
 of their individual loss.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 L IGHT A N D S H A D E. 
 
 Elias did not immediately become irre- 
 trievably blind. 
 
 After a few anxious hours his sight re- 
 turned. He looked round and feebly recog- 
 nised his father, and stroked his hand. 
 And a little later he sat up in bed and 
 smiled. Then the doctor took his hat and 
 went home ; and when the doctor's wife, 
 who had sat up for him, met him in the 
 passage, and said, ' Well ?' he answered her 
 abruptly, l Don't ask me," and brushed past 
 her into his study and banged the door. It 
 was not Dr. Pillenaar. Elias had cried in vain
 
 6o GOirS FOOL 
 
 for Dr. Pillenaar. The man who had ruined 
 Pillenaar dared not ask his aid. 
 
 The child grew better without it. For a 
 time, at any rate, he could see. But now, 
 under the stress of this new calamity, he 
 confessed to those continual headaches he 
 had not dared to complain of before. His 
 frightened stepmother reproached him for 
 his reticence. 
 
 k Yes, 1 very often have a pain over my 
 eyes,' he admitted ; ' but, mother, I didn't 
 think I might.' 
 
 This is not a melancholy story. I refuse 
 to be told that it is melancholy. It ' ends 
 well.' You who can see, and won't, and won't 
 hear, and can, you will envy my blind child 
 yet, when the lights and shadows change. 
 
 In the meantime he was more interesting 
 than ever, and the doctors talked him over at 
 the Club. 
 
 ' There is some permanent injury to the
 
 LIGHT AND SHADE 61 
 
 brain from the effects of the original blow,' 
 said the physician last called in. 4 The com- 
 munication between it and the organs of 
 sense suffers in consequence. First the hear- 
 ing was intercepted. Now it is the eyesight.' 
 
 ' I have always said the brain could not 
 entirely recover/ interposed Dr. Pillenaar. 
 He was heartily sorry for the patient, but he 
 was a little glad that his prognostic should 
 not have proved erroneous. 
 
 'It is like a volcanic territory,' began 
 another man, who liked to hear himself speak. 
 ' There has been a subsidence, or an erup- 
 tion, and the telegraph-wires have come 
 down. So long the boy is blind. As soon 
 as the communication is re-established, or 
 succeeds in re-establishing itself, he can see 
 again. You will have another upheaval 
 presently and another crash, and some day it 
 will be with the eyes as w r ith the ears, and 
 no one will be able to put the telegraph-poles 
 up again.'
 
 62 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ' Poor little chap !' said the doctor who had 
 witnessed the flash of the first telegram, after 
 the interruption, between father and son. 
 
 4 But, for Heaven's sake,' cried Pillenaar 
 excitedly, ' you, who have influence with the 
 father, get him to see some great specialist. 
 Get him to take the child to Utrecht, or 
 abroad, if he wants to 2fo farther and fare 
 worse.' 
 
 The other doctor mentioned this idea to 
 Lossell next time they met. The idea was a 
 good one. And the frightened lad went with 
 his stepmother to Utrecht, and had to undergo 
 the ordeal of the railway journey, and the 
 long wait in that sickening ante-room — all 
 doctors' ante-rooms are sickening, if you are 
 really ill — and the solemn trial with its 
 suspenseful watching of the great man's 
 kindly face. And then, because he was a 
 child, they mercifully sent him away before 
 the final verdict, as if it lightened the victim's 
 doom to leave the sword suspended over his
 
 LIGHT AND SHADE 63 
 
 head. Alas ! the sword was indeed sus- 
 pended there, and no medical science could 
 unhook it. The famous oculist could only 
 speak of possibility and hope. The eyes 
 were sound — strong, healthy, and beautiful 
 still. The danger lay in the brain. ' And 
 of diseases of the brain, my dear madam 
 — shall I be absolutely, straightforwardly 
 truthful ? — neither I nor the brain-doctors 
 know anything at all as yet.' 
 
 As long as the attack had not repeated 
 itself, however, there was every hope of its 
 not proving of serious importance. In this 
 all the wise men were agreed. A single 
 seizure might signify nothing ; a recurrence 
 would mean ruin. It must be avoided at all 
 cost. A residence of several months in a 
 milder climate was suggested. Could Myn- 
 heer Lossell see his way to arranging that it 
 should take place ? 
 
 ' I will sacrifice anything I possess to save 
 the child's eyes,' said Hendrik Lossell. ' It
 
 64 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 is a matter of life and death to me — of life 
 and death !' 
 
 1 Anything he possessed !' People smiled 
 to each other a little sceptically when those 
 words were repeated at the Club. Yet they 
 did wrong. They did not know, to begin 
 with, how much Hendrik Lossell possessed. 
 They could but take off their hats to his 
 carriage in the street, and not to the contents 
 of his strong-box. 
 
 So Elias was sent away to Clarens, and 
 instructed to play about in the open air, and 
 to drink as much milk as he could swallow. 
 He did not like the milk, but he liked driving 
 the cows, so they allowed him to combine the 
 two, and he was happy. It was his old nurse, 
 Johanna, who made this arrangement for him, 
 and many others. Mevrouw Lossell could 
 not leave the cares of her household, so 
 Johanna was sent for — Johanna, who had 
 watched over Elias's golden morning, who 
 had loved his mother with unreasoning affec-
 
 LIGHT AND SHADE 65 
 
 tion, and who had only left the family because 
 she could not endure the sight of another 
 woman in the dead mistress's place. 
 
 She had reproached herself a thousand 
 times for having deserted the orphan, and 
 she accepted Mynheer Losselfs proposal as 
 a message of reconciliation with heaven. 
 What mattered it that she was called to face 
 all the terrors of a foreign country, a land of 
 mountains and cataracts and other traps for 
 the unwary, a land where it would be impos- 
 sible for her to obtain that bi-hourly cup of 
 coffee which is the fetish of Dutch domestic 
 servants ? She bravely answered all the 
 forebodings of her terrified circle of acquaint- 
 ance with the words, ' I shall be caring for 
 Elias,' and she went forth undauntedly into 
 the jaws of the Unknown, like a female Stan- 
 Icy, with her charge and Mynheer Lossell in 
 a first-class carriage — change at Cologne. 
 Her old mother and three sisters watched 
 the fast train speed away — into the distance 
 
 vol. 1. 5
 
 66 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 — into an infinitesimal black vagueness — into 
 emptiness. There was nothing left of her. 
 Nothing but a memory and a prayer. 
 
 She had her coffee at Cologne, but she 
 had no coffee between Cologne and Bale. 
 She survived the omission. The spell was 
 broken, and I believe she is a contented 
 woman still. 
 
 Rooms had been found for her and the 
 child in the house of a widow, whose husband 
 had been Swiss watchmaker in a Dutch 
 country town. The landlady, therefore, 
 spoke a few words of Dutch, and understood 
 a good many more. Had this not been the 
 case, she could hardly have accepted the 
 charge of her lodgers, for Elias w r as pre- 
 vented by his infirmity from picking up 
 words of a foreign tongue, as other children 
 would have done ; and as for Johanna, to her 
 the whole French language appeared to pre- 
 sent no definite sounds of which a rational, full- 
 toned organ of speech could possibly lay hold.
 
 LIGHT AND SHADE 67 
 
 ' The people,' she said, ' are all butterflies, 
 and the French words are just like moths ; 
 they go flying, flying past you, and when 
 you succeed in grabbing hold of one of them, 
 it crumbles away to nothing in your hand.' 
 
 Johanna very seldom caught her moths. 
 
 They spent two months together at 
 Clarens, two months of a superbly fading 
 autumn, watching the crimson glow pale off 
 into an ashen gray. Around them the late 
 roses in neat beds of cultivated colour ; 
 before them the blue serenity of far-stretching 
 water, the limpid lake ; and opposite, ascend- 
 ing above the sloping masses of russet and 
 golden and faintest yellow — those sylvan 
 splendours of Nature's gorgeous death — -o'er- 
 topping all that changes with our changeful 
 seasons, towering high into the presence of 
 the unalterable : the pure summits of eternal 
 snow. The child, whose eyes had never 
 before lifted themselves to any earthly object 
 sublimer than a church weather-cock, now
 
 68 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 gazed with awe-struck wonder upon these 
 heights that yearn towards the stars. He 
 realized, untold, not so much their loftiness 
 or their purity as their unbroken silence, the 
 snow-bound unapproachableness in which 
 they rest throughout the ages. It must be 
 very still up yonder, he felt, always still, as 
 in the stillness of his own young heart, on 
 which no ripple ever broke of other laughter 
 than his own. And the mountains drew nigh 
 to him in his loneliness through one of those 
 inexplicable childish whims of sympathy 
 which sometimes bind our early years in 
 a communion with Nature which we never 
 quite lose in after-life. He would fancy 
 himself a mountain — the mite— tall, majestic, 
 untouched by the world's coming and going, 
 far away in the hush of God, nearer to 
 heaven in the solitude and the silent waiting. 
 And he would nod to the great gray pile 
 beneath the dropping clouds. 
 
 4 We are friends, you and I,' he said aloud.
 
 LIGHT AND SHADE 69 
 
 Johanna poised her uplifted needle in her 
 hand, and stopped to look at him. He was 
 gazing into the lofty distance, into limitless 
 transparent azure, away beyond the moun- 
 tains, beyond the clouds. Johanna shook 
 her head. 
 
 The next moment he was romping through 
 the little garden, the music of his own merri- 
 ment filling his desolate heart ; for Ton- 
 nerre had pounced upon him — Tonnerre, 
 the landlady's nondescript spaniel, who owed 
 his tremendous name to the unreasonable 
 rumble by which he invariably showed his 
 discontent. Tonnerre's discontent was 
 chronic. His health was perfect, though 
 Madame Juberton tried to make everyone, 
 herself included, believe that bodily affliction 
 accounted for his ill-temper. It was a pious 
 fraud, common to the womankind connected 
 with grumblers. As a rule, the people who 
 never cease complaining complain without 
 occasion, for you cannot possibly always
 
 7 o GOD'S FOOL 
 
 hit on a just cause of complaint. So they get 
 into the habit of discontinuing their search 
 for a reason, and they soon find out that they 
 can get on far more fluently without. 
 
 Illogically, then — for he was intensely 
 illogical, a human failing rarely found in 
 dogs — Tonnerre had taken a great liking to 
 Elias, which he showed him chiefly by 
 pouncing upon him unawares. He had early 
 perceived that the deaf boy could not hear, 
 but only see him, and he utilized the dis- 
 covery by inventing a game which would 
 suit these unusual circumstances. Elias 
 played with his four-footed companion as 
 often as the latter would permit. Sometimes 
 a little oftener. 
 
 The child was happy at Clarens. Every- 
 body was kind to him. Johanna loved him. 
 Madame Juberton, after he had been in her 
 house for nine minutes, loved him too. She 
 was not, you will notice, a very soft-hearted 
 woman. Most women love an afflicted child,
 
 LIGHT AND SHADE 71 
 
 when they meet with it, at first sight, and do 
 not take nine minutes to make up their minds 
 about the matter. God bless their motherly 
 hearts ! 
 
 4 Do you know,' said Elias one day, after 
 he had been sitting a long time pensive at 
 his nurse's feet, ' you are — I don't quite know 
 how — but I think, Johanna, I think you are 
 like mamma. I mean,' he added, after a 
 moment, in a solemn whisper — l I mean 
 mamma in heaven.' 
 
 Johanna vigorously shook her head in pro- 
 test, but his eyes were not turned towards her. 
 
 \ I can't say how I mean like,' he went on 
 thoughtfully, ' not like her portrait in the 
 library, but like her to me, somehow. Like 
 the smell of roses, you know. They look so 
 different till you smell them, and then they 
 are the same. And it isn't the smell, 
 Johanna. I don't know what it is. It's the 
 feel, I think. Since I am deaf, I seem to 
 feel different. And when it — it tingles, then
 
 72 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 it reminds me. And the tingles go together. 
 I can't make you understand. But I under- 
 stand for myself. It's the tingle does it, 
 not the smell.' 
 
 She understood — indistinctly, yet enough. 
 And she caught up the little fellow in her 
 arms. 
 
 Two days afterwards she found him cry- 
 ing in his bed — a great boy of eleven. Fie 
 upon him ! What was he crying for ? He 
 did not dare to tell her. At last it came out, 
 among the sobs. 4 It was so wicked of him, 
 and he was ashamed of it. But the thought 
 had come upon him that Tonnerre was like 
 mamma.' 
 
 And so love — the divine word beyond 
 human utterance — stammered forth its first 
 broken accents upon the silence of the deaf 
 boy's heart. 
 
 A glow of kindness spread around and
 
 LIGHT AND SHADE 73 
 
 over him, bringing with it undefined remin- 
 iscences of the opening scenes of his existence. 
 People not only made those necessary signs 
 to him, which they had always made since he 
 had lost his hearing, but they added super- 
 fluous ones — little unexpected nods, and 
 smiles, and twitches of the eyes, which came 
 to him now as so many gentle words and 
 terms of endearment come to more fortunate 
 children. Johanna would sit watching to 
 catch his eye : and his glad, frank flash of 
 recognition would amply repay her for 
 any tenderness she bestowed upon him. 
 Madame Juberton's increasing affection took 
 the form of increasing sweetmeats. The 
 more her heart warmed towards Elias, the 
 bigger she made her tarts. And it was not 
 till she reached the limit of her largest 
 pudding-mould that she found out how in- 
 convenient is the limitlessness of the human 
 soul. 
 
 He liked the tarts ; no fear of his not
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 liking them. For he was a bright boy with 
 a healthy appetite, and nothing about him 
 of those transcendental little wretches who 
 are too good to succumb to a weakness for 
 goodies. I am sorry to own I fear he was 
 not at all particularly good. His stepmother 
 was right in saying that there was no danger 
 of his dying from premature development of 
 wings. He did not want his wings to 
 develop. He did not want to die. He was 
 self-willed, and he always gave the preference 
 to his own view of his own requirements, as 
 older children are apt to do at times. And 
 he had occasional fits of mischief, as when he 
 put Tonnerre into the milk-pail, because 
 someone had explained to him the other 
 day that thunder had turned the milk. He 
 soon began trying to bully Johanna, and 
 sometimes he succeeded, and sometimes he 
 didn't. He did not mope about his deafness, 
 for, thank God ! he did not fully realize it. 
 And, with the insouciance of his age, he had
 
 LIGHT AND SHADE 75 
 
 forgotten all about the scare of his blindness. 
 He did not think he was going to be blind. 
 They had said it would be all right now the 
 weakness kept away. 
 
 He sat, with Tonnerre asleep on his knees, 
 and Johanna at work, as usual, by his side, 
 watching the hushed sunset of a beautiful 
 autumn evening. Johanna was knitting a 
 set of reins for him — crimson wool with 
 tinkling bells ; she had been busy over them 
 for some time, and he watched her work with 
 increasing interest. 
 
 4 When you are ready, I shall be your 
 horse,' he said ; ■ I am sure now I prefer 
 being horse. I have made up my mind, 
 because it is so nice to be able to run 
 wherever one likes.' 
 
 Johanna nodded back to him, and beamed 
 all over her genial face. Then she said 
 to him on her fingers — for she had learned 
 to use these signs with extreme facility — that 
 they would go for their long-planned ex-
 
 76 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 cursion to the mountains on the other side as 
 soon as the reins were ready — to-morrow, 
 perhaps, or the day after, and he should 
 lead her all the time. He flushed up with 
 pleasure, as he watched her nimble move- 
 ments. ' That will be splendid !' he answered 
 — 4 splendid !' He loved sweetmeats, un- 
 doubtedly, but he loved sweet words far 
 better, and those fond glances best of all. 
 
 The pale autumnal light was rapidly 
 shadowing over, so rapidly that it seemed 
 as if you could almost watch the folds of the 
 mantle of night come falling one by one 
 across the landscape. A moment ago the 
 whole mountain -side had been one great 
 mass of sunlit foliage, swept together in 
 tumbled waves of crimson, and sheets of 
 vari-coloured gold. The confusion of splen- 
 dour was already gone ; a wide smoothness 
 of dull orange was deepening into indefinite 
 gray. And the cold, still sky was shrouding 
 itself in mist. The sun had sunk from sight
 
 LIGHT AND SHADE 77 
 
 behind the mountains, yonder, where his 
 radiance still lay white. Elias sat looking 
 intently on the spot where he had dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 The nurse shuddered. The autumn air 
 was cold, and earthy, wet with decay and 
 approaching death. 
 
 4 Let us go in,' she said. 
 
 But Elias clung to her, and held her fast. 
 
 4 Oh, it is beautiful !' he said — 4 beautiful ! 
 What a beautiful thing to see !' 
 
 She drew him into the house, and helped 
 him to get into bed ; and she sat watching 
 him for many minutes after he had dropped 
 fast asleep. 
 
 And the next morning, when Elias again 
 opened his eyes, he found that God had left 
 him nothing in the world for them to open 
 on.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 'THUNDER -STORMS. 
 
 No, it was not unexpected, or unusual, or 
 unlikely. At least, not if we are to believe 
 the doctors, for the news no sooner got about 
 that little Elias Lossell was once more 
 stricken with blindness, than all the medical 
 authorities of Koopstad exclaimed that they 
 had foreseen this catastrophe from the first. 
 And the great specialist who had advised the 
 journey to Clarens remarked what a good 
 thing it was that they had followed his advice, 
 or the blindness might have come on almost 
 seven weeks sooner. Old Lossell hurried
 
 1 TH UNDER '-S TOR MS 7 9 
 
 over to see what could be done for his unfor- 
 tunate son. Nothing could be done. 
 
 It was not unexpected. At least, not to 
 Johanna, who had watched, with that fatal 
 perspicacity which only love bestows, for 
 every sign of approaching danger. She 
 could not deny to herself that of late Elias 
 had been constantly troubled by his old 
 enemy, the headache over the eyebrows ; that 
 he had complained of the restless flames and 
 circles which would not let him sleep at night ; 
 that he had 
 
 Ah me ! that morning, a few days ago, 
 when she had spelt out to him from her 
 window, ' Jasje, see the big balloon over the 
 water !' and he had called back out of the 
 garden, ' There isn't any balloon, Johanna — 
 there isn't any balloon at all !' How had 
 she, in the phraseology of her own people, 
 'held her heart fast,' lest it should drop from 
 her! 
 
 These and many other instances I have
 
 8o GOD'S FOOL 
 
 passed over, not wishing to dwell upon what 
 will be considered by many a sad episode in 
 the story of Elias ; anxious, above all, to 
 avoid any semblance of a wish to 4 pile up the 
 agony,' as it is vulgarly called ; but I am 
 conscious of few things with greater clearness 
 than of the fact that Johanna, when she 
 detailed her experiences to me in after-years, 
 repeatedly assured me that she had seen the 
 prophetic cloud lie heavy on Eliass brow for 
 many weeks before it fell. 
 
 It fell. The woman sat by his bedside, 
 the unfinished harness on her lap. From out 
 his sudden darkness the child poured out 
 question after question, appeal after appeal. 
 He wanted help — medical help ; would they 
 give it to him ? Was the doctor coming ? 
 Had he been already, perhaps ? What had 
 he said ? Would the blindness pass off as it 
 had passed off last time ? Of course it would 
 pass off — would it not ? would it not ? 
 
 No answer possible.
 
 THUNDER '-STORMS Si 
 
 The woman got up hurriedly, and rushed 
 from the room. She could no longer bear 
 that ceaseless cry into the void. And, then, 
 she could not bear to be away from it, beyond 
 the reach of his requirements and his sorrows, 
 and she came hurrying back again, and fell 
 down by the bedside, and took his little hand 
 and held it fast in both her own. 
 
 And she was almost glad that he could 
 not see her tears. 
 
 Already, in that first anxiety of desolation, 
 she taught him that the pressure of her hand 
 meant ' Yes.' 
 
 After a moment or two he understood her. 
 A look of passionate relief came over his 
 face. The inexpressible horror of complete 
 isolation died away from him — a horror of 
 thirty minutes' duration, never to be forgotten 
 — communication was re-established, imper- 
 fect, yet possible. He trembled over it, 
 cried over it, clung to it. and in a sudden 
 dash of inspiration he burst out : 
 
 vol. i. 6
 
 82 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 4 Stroke my hand, if you mean 4 ' No," 
 Johanna. It won't remain, will it? It 
 will go off, as it did last time. It can't 
 remain. Oh, Johanna, why doesn't the doctor 
 come ?' 
 
 k Let him stay where he is for the 
 present,' said Mevrouw Lossell, arranging 
 her teacups, and looking away from her 
 husband ; ' it will be much better both for 
 him and for the other children. You say 
 that the woman is devoted to him, and she 
 can give him her continual care. He is con- 
 tent to be with her, I presume ?' 
 
 'More than content,' said Hendrik Lossell 
 bitterly. 
 
 She rattled her cups slightly, still without 
 looking at him, 
 
 ' I have always deeply regretted,' she went 
 on, l that your son has not met my advances 
 with such confidence on his part as I believe 
 them to have merited.'
 
 THUNDER '-STORMS 83 
 
 ' The child !' burst out Lossell ; ' the poor, 
 wretched, motherless child !' 
 
 4 Not necessarily motherless,' she answered 
 coldly. ' You need not insult me without 
 reason, Hendrik. These recriminations are 
 as unseemly as they are unavailing. But, in 
 the interest of my own children, I must 
 discharge a present duty, though I can 
 afford to ignore the past. However pain- 
 ful the duty may be, I dare not shrink 
 from it.' 
 
 It is a thoroughly feminine trait to accuse 
 an opponent of having started an argu- 
 ment which can no longer be profitably 
 kept up. 
 
 4 And what is your duty ? asked the mer- 
 chant, with a palpable sneer. 
 
 4 To suffer misrepresentation,' she answered 
 quickly. ' Very well, I will endure it. And 
 therefore I venture to say, Elias must not 
 associate daily with his little brothers. The 
 strain would be greater than children of their
 
 8 4 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 age could endure. And I cannot allow them 
 to submit to it.' 
 
 * Pooh !' said the merchant. 
 
 Judith was not a woman of half-measures. 
 
 ' Brute !' she cried, turning on her hus- 
 band. ' Choose between my children and 
 your own.' 
 
 The phrase, inspired by jealousy, was an 
 unfortunate one. She felt this, even as she 
 uttered it. 
 
 4 Mevrouw,' said Lossell stiffly, ' you forget 
 yourself. Or rather, Judith, you are a fool. 
 Mind this, it is neither your interest, nor 
 that of your children, to estrange Elias. 
 Some day, perhaps, you will be glad enough, 
 both you and your children, to live in his 
 house, and to eat of his bread. Good-night ' 
 — and he walked out of the room with the 
 happy consciousness of having gained the 
 victory at least once in his life. 
 
 Some things are praised for their sweet- 
 ness, and some for their rarity. A husband's
 
 THUNDER 'STORMS 
 
 triumphs belong to the latter, not to the 
 former, class. 
 
 He was resolved not to leave the boy 
 alone in a foreign country. He fetched him 
 back without another word of excuse or 
 explanation. But he did not immediately 
 bring him home. ' Elias shall decide for 
 himself,' he said. ' He shall do what he 
 likes best.' But how to make him under- 
 stand ? There lay the difficulty ; for the 
 poor little patient had sunk into a state of 
 apathy. He was rapidly losing his touch, 
 such as it was, of the outer world. Walled 
 in on every side, he began to succumb to 
 the hopelessness of trying to look out. His 
 eager questioning — at first a very torrent of 
 anxious entreaty — was dwindling into one 
 ceaselessly - repeated, unanswerable, ' When 
 will the doctor make me see again ?' Those 
 about him grew to yearn for the stream of 
 appeals they had formerly dreaded as they
 
 86 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 watched him sitting silent, mournful, hour 
 after hour, with only the reiterated interrup- 
 tion of that slowly - decreasing hope. And 
 then even that restless flicker sank low, 
 and for long periods he would not speak 
 at all. 
 
 A lew days after the catastrophe. Johanna 
 suddenly snatched up her unfinished harness, 
 and began vehemently knitting at it. She 
 had been struck by the thought that though 
 Elias could no longer lead the way as horse, 
 he might still act the part of coachman. In 
 this manner she would perhaps succeed in 
 rousing him to a little exercise ; for as yet 
 he shrank back from all contact with the 
 outer world, and would creep brooding into 
 a corner when they came to fetch him for a 
 walk. He tore off the cap he felt placed on 
 his head, and cried out that he would wear 
 no more caps till the doctor made him see 
 again. Johanna came to him, having finished 
 the work in a hurry, and put the ends of the
 
 TH UNDER '-STORMS 
 
 reins in his hands. She had removed the 
 bells which she had first added at his express 
 desire. He had been very particular about 
 those bells. l For though I don't hear them, 
 I can see they are where they ought to be,' 
 he had repeatedly said. Now she cut them 
 off with a weary sigh. ' He will prefer to 
 know they are no longer there,' she said to 
 herself. But she was mistaken. She was 
 often mistaken at first ; and it took even her 
 yearning affection some time to find out the 
 idiosyncrasies of a peculiar case like E lias's. 
 Hendrik Lossell noticed this. He noticed 
 many things in those days of indecision, 
 anxious, waiting, longing to do the best for 
 the afflicted child who persisted in living on, 
 to his own detriment and that of them all. 
 ' It wants a lot of love/ said the loveless 
 father to himself, with a pang of self-reproach. 
 He thought of his smooth, self-satisfied wife, 
 and of chubby, happy Henkie and Hubbie. 
 How could he bring yonder wreck among
 
 8S GOD'S FOOL 
 
 them ? And yet how dare he thrust from 
 the door of his house its rightful lord ? 
 
 Yes ; let there be no secrets. Secrets 
 are only clumsy aids to interest, and this 
 story shall carefully avoid them. It does 
 not require them, for it is a true story. 
 Hendrik Lossell might be a great merchant, 
 but wretched little Elias was the only rich 
 member of the family. 
 
 When Johanna brought him the harness, 
 he immediately felt for the bells, and an 
 expression of pain came over his face. He 
 realized why she had removed them ; and a 
 little querulously he bade her put them back. 
 And so this rough peasant woman also learnt, 
 step by step, her lesson of devotion — the 
 devotion of her life. She was barely thirty 
 when she returned to her post as E lias's 
 nurse. She never deserted him afterwards. 
 
 The lad allowed her to persuade him, by 
 caresses, to creep out into the open air with 
 her. But the reins were a failure ; for he
 
 1 THUNDER 'STORMS 89 
 
 stumbled forward in his darkness and his 
 uncertainty, and fell and cut his face. And 
 again Johanna had to make a discovery — 
 that the blind must learn to walk anew. 
 
 Tonnerre, also, had to learn the lesson 
 that his friend could run no more. To him 
 it was an enigma, and he puzzled over it 
 with many growls. At last he gave it up. 
 and adapted himself to circumstances, which 
 had been altered without his consent. He 
 rolled away within easy reach on the floor ; 
 and, actually, Elias felt after him. And 
 then he rolled on a little bit farther, and 
 again a little bit ; and Elias rolled in the 
 same direction, and grabbed at his tail as he 
 whisked it up and down. And then Elias 
 actually laughed. 
 
 It was for the first time in several days, 
 ever since his seizure. Johanna threw her 
 apron to her face, and once more fled from 
 the room. It was such a bright little 
 laugh.
 
 9o GOD'S FOOL 
 
 She need not have tied from those sight- 
 less eyes. Undoubtedly. But one of the 
 last things for her to realize was the fact 
 that, if Elias was unable to see anything, he 
 could not see her. 
 
 Parting from Madame Juberton meant 
 parting from Madame Jubertons dog. And 
 here a serious difficulty arose. Neither his 
 lather nor Johanna dared inflict new pain 
 upon the sufferer. Yet neither, seeing the 
 affection the lonely old widow lavished upon 
 her only companion, dared at first suggest a 
 separation between them. Already Elias had 
 asked once or twice what was to become of 
 Tonnerre. But it was impossible as yet to 
 make him understand other signs than ' Yes ' 
 and 'No.' He knew it, and would soon 
 abandon all hope of an answer, only repeat- 
 ing his question from time to time lest they 
 should forget it. And once he had sug- 
 gested timidly that perhaps papa might buy
 
 1 THUNDER '-STORMS 9 1 
 
 the dog. He had always been a child of 
 great delicacy of feeling, and he evidently 
 shrank from the thought of Madame Juber- 
 ton's loss, while unable to bear the prospect 
 of his own. ' No,' he said, after a moment, 
 as if arguing out the matter with himself. 
 ' Papa cannot buy Tonnerre from Madame 
 Juberton." And he sighed. 
 
 Papa, however, resolved to think differently 
 about the matter. He went to the landlady, 
 and offered her twenty-five francs for her 
 favourite. The old lady sat up in her 
 chair. 
 
 ' No, monsieur," she said ; l I cannot sell 
 Tonnerre. I love your unfortunate little 
 son, but Tonnerre is the only friend I have 
 in the world." 
 
 Two pink spots spread out under her ears. 
 But Hendrik Lossell was not in the habit 
 of noticing such signs as these. They had 
 no connection with business. 
 
 ' I will give you fifty," he said, and then —
 
 92 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 as she continued to stare at him in silence — 
 4 well, madam, I will make it a hundred, and 
 that is the very last price I can offer. It is 
 six times his value ; but 1 am grateful for 
 your kindness to Elias. and the child is 
 attached to the little animal. You cannot in 
 reason, madam, do otherwise than admit that 
 I am paying an utterly disproportionate sum 
 for him.' 
 
 ' The price of the dog, Monsieur the Town 
 Councillor,' said Madame Juberton in a great 
 flutter, ' is three hundred thousand francs.' 
 
 She made him a very low curtsey, and 
 disappeared from his sight. 
 
 Yet the merchant was not to blame — not 
 from his point of view. His offer had been 
 as noble a conquest of self as a Dutch man 
 of business could achieve. To deliberately 
 offer for anything on earth — ay, or in heaven 
 —what he believed to be twice its value — 
 four times its value— six times its value — he 
 would rather have had any number of his
 
 THUNDER '-STORMS 93 
 
 teeth extracted, like that Israelite of the good 
 old Plantagenet times. He trod his most 
 sacred convictions under foot for the child's 
 sake — never mind whether the sum be little 
 or large — and having slaughtered his com- 
 mercial self-respect on the altar of paternal 
 affection, he was left standing gazing blankly 
 at the faded pattern of an empty chair, while 
 the growls of the insulted quadruped oozed 
 towards him under the bedroom door. 
 
 Madame Juberton was peeping through 
 the keyhole, and waiting for him to go. 
 
 There was no more talk after that of 
 buying Tonnerre. Elias sent for him con- 
 stantly now, as if he would make up for the 
 approaching separation, and he sat silent in 
 a corner for hours with the rough-haired 
 bundle in his lap. It was only during their 
 brief frolics on the floor that he seemed to 
 wake to any consciousness of enjoyment, 
 and even then he would very soon desist
 
 94 
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 with a ' Papa, when is the doctor coming 
 again ? Does he think I am better, papa ?' 
 
 Madame Juberton would stand watching 
 the playmates. She said nothing. Only 
 once, when Hendrik Lossell caught her in 
 the act, she broke out sharply : 
 
 ' I do not approve myself, monsieur, of 
 letting children play too much with dogs.' 
 
 1 I do not think,' the merchant had retorted, 
 ' that this child plays too much.' 
 
 Madame repeated those words several times 
 to herself in the course of the day. As often 
 as she did so, she carefully took off her 
 spectacles, and wiped them, and put them on 
 again. And she gave Tonnerre a lump of 
 sugar. That lump of sugar came upon him 
 as an unpredicted eclipse might come upon 
 an astronomer. It reduced all his calculations 
 to immediate chaos. For he only got lumps 
 of sugar on Sundays, and he never had 
 been out in his reckoning yet. Perhaps- he 
 thought that the Comtist calendar had been
 
 1 THUNDER '-STORMS 95 
 
 introduced, or that Madame Juberton had 
 altered her religion. 
 
 The day of departure arrived. With many 
 grumblings, and a few tears, Madame 
 Juberton prepared the farewell meal for her 
 guests, as well as a provision of cakes and 
 sweetmeats for Elias's special delectation on 
 the road. The dear child must eat, she said, 
 if they hoped to keep up his strength. And 
 there was the difficulty. For the child said, 
 ' I will eat,' and then left his plate almost 
 untouched. 
 
 As they sat, equipped for their journey, the 
 remnants of their meal on the table, Madame 
 Juberton hurried in, bringing with her the 
 final chef doeuvre of her dessert — an enor- 
 mous/*?// — which crowned with its majestic 
 dome of delicate crust the largest pie-dish in 
 her pantry. It was her farewell 'goodie' for 
 Elias, the last of a stately line, but the 
 last.
 
 96 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 She put it down in front of him, and 
 placed his hand upon it. And when he had 
 realized what it was, exclaiming, 4 Oh, what a 
 big pdtd. I never can eat it all, madame !' 
 she pressed down his fingers, down through 
 the crashing pie-crust, into something soft, 
 and slippery, and woolly. Something that 
 snapped at those fingers and then licked 
 them. I don't think the something bit them. 
 I fancy it understood. 
 
 Madame Juberton has never taken another 
 
 dog.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 STEPMOTHERS. 
 
 'And now what next ?' It was the question 
 which Hendrik Lossell kept repeatedly put- 
 ting to himself as he sat opposite the child 
 in the train. He found it difficult to look 
 at that miserable face without a sensation 
 of petulant disgust. However ashamed he 
 might be of the thought, he could not entirely 
 suppress a feeling of anger towards the child 
 for being what he was. 
 
 'It is not his fault,' he said to himself a 
 
 hundred times over ; ' but ' 
 
 He hesitated. The expression itself, ' it is 
 vol. I. 7
 
 9 8 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 not his fault,' struck him in the face with a 
 momentary tingle of self-reproach. 
 
 Elias must decide for himself whether he 
 would rather return home or remain with 
 Johanna. In the latter case a little cottage 
 would be prepared for him at a short distance 
 from his father's house. But what did he 
 himself prefer ? 
 
 4 Are we going back to mamma ?' he had 
 asked once — only once. 
 
 His father had indicated to him that this 
 was the case. No expression of feeling, 
 whether pleasant or painful, had been called 
 to his face by the news. 
 
 Yet Lossell had noticed that the child's 
 countenance was capable of expressing many 
 changes of emotion. And, most remarkable 
 of all, it had soon become evident that Elias 
 distinguished the touch of some persons 
 whenever or wherever they touched him. 
 This faculty had developed itself extra- 
 ordinarily in the first weeks of his blindness ;
 
 STEPMOTHERS 99 
 
 but he had always, ever since he had lost his 
 hearing, manifested an extreme delicacy of 
 nervous perception. If Johanna, for instance, 
 stole behind him and laid her hand on his 
 shoulder, his face would instantly light up 
 with a glad smile of recognition. He recog- 
 nised the touch of her hand among all others, 
 even without lifting his own to feel it. They 
 tried in vain to mystify him on the subject. 
 The only result was that he got to know 
 Madame Juberton also, to that worthy lady's 
 inexpressible delight. 
 
 Elias said little on the journey. Only now 
 and then he ejaculated l Tonnerre,' and the 
 accent with which he spoke the word would 
 have amply rewarded the widow could she 
 have heard it. He had been very angry 
 because they wanted him to travel with a 
 green shade — a useless precaution of the 
 Geneva oculist's — and he had torn it off and 
 kicked it from him. But later on he had 
 meekly resumed it, for his father had not had
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 the courage to disappoint him when he asked 
 whether it would do his eyes good and make 
 them see sooner than otherwise. 
 
 As they neared their destination Elias 
 seemed to awake from his apathy, and began 
 to manifest signs of agitation. He crept 
 closer to Johanna, and nestled up against her, 
 and then, unexpectedly, and with an evident 
 effort, he asked whether Johanna was going 
 to stay. 
 
 The maid looked quickly towards her 
 master, the same question palpitating into 
 her own cheeks with a flush of burning ap- 
 peal. How often had she longed to receive 
 a response to this demand of her heart ! 
 Hendrik Lossell could hesitate no longer. 
 He signed to the nurse to press her charge's 
 hand. 
 
 1 Of course." said Elias quietly, ' I could not 
 do without you, Johanna, as long as I am like 
 this. And when I can see again, I shall come 
 and visit you very often, as often as I may.'
 
 STEPMOTHERS 
 
 01 
 
 The woman could only press his hand 
 again, and cast grateful glances towards the 
 merchant. The naive, childish egotism did 
 not hurt her ; it was only natural. 
 
 ' That binds me to one condition in any 
 case,' thought the father. ' Wherever the 
 boy remains, this woman must remain with 
 him. But in the meantime, and as long- 
 as he himself makes no difficulties, I must 
 take him home, whether Judith likes it or 
 not.' 
 
 Judith did not like it. Of that there could 
 be no doubt. And surely it was impossible 
 altogether to disagree with her when she 
 said that the two healthy, noisy children and 
 their deaf and blind half-brother were not 
 fitting companions for each other. She stood 
 in the hall with the martyred air of a woman 
 who is resolved to have her own way. 
 
 A female servant helped Elias to alight. 
 ' Is it mamma?' he asked, as he took the 
 outstretched hand.
 
 o2 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 The woman pressed his fingers, and he, 
 mistaking this pressure for the sign of 
 affirmation to which he had now become so 
 accustomed, put up his face to be kissed. 
 The maid stooped down and kissed him — 
 almost involuntarily. 
 
 ' Jans !' cried Mevrouw Lossell, in stern 
 indignation, from the top of the steps. The 
 housemaid started and blushed. ' Bring 
 the young Heer to me,' commanded her 
 mistress. 
 
 And Jans carefully guided the boy to his 
 stepmother, whose outstretched hand he took 
 indifferently, thinking she was one of the 
 servants, and never dreaming of putting up 
 his cheek again. 
 
 'Poor child !' said Mevrouw, not without 
 some genuine pity at the actual sight of her 
 stepson. ' He has become completely idiotic 
 already. I know Pillenaar always feared it 
 would end like that.' 
 
 1 Where are Henkie and Hubbie ?' queried
 
 STEPMOTHERS 103 
 
 Elias, turning his sightless eyes as if he would 
 look for them in the hall. 
 
 4 Not so idiotic, after all/ thought his step- 
 mother quickly. k He does not ask after me 
 because he does not care to know. His 
 physical condition is very sad, very sad 
 indeed. But he never had an amiable 
 character, and it has been altogether warped 
 by his infirmities.' 
 
 Judith Lossell did not wish to be unkind to 
 her stepchild. Nor was she unkind to him. 
 She treated him with exemplary forbearance. 
 She kissed him cheerfully, when kissing was 
 unavoidable. His clothes and his toys were 
 quite as good as Henkie's and Hubbies. 
 Only she did not love him, that was all. 
 
 Do not let us be unjust. There is no law 
 why stepmothers should love their husbands' 
 children. On the contrary, there exists every 
 reason for them not to do so. If they have 
 no children of their own, they are jealous of 
 the dead woman in her grave, and if they
 
 io 4 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 have children of their own, they want the 
 living father to admire their children most. 
 If the father doesn't, then jealousy of the first 
 wife naturally steps in again. 
 
 There is no reason, if you come to think of 
 that, why anybody should love anybody else, 
 and, as a rule, they don't, unless the other 
 person is a bit of themselves, either by choice, 
 in the shape of passion, or by fate, in the 
 shape of birth. And this intense egotism of 
 the human race explains the frantic admira- 
 tion of our own offspring which goes by the 
 name of ' a mothers love," and which never 
 by any chance extends to anybody else's 
 progeny. Why doesn't somebody feel a 
 mother's love for somebody else's mother- 
 less babe ? 
 
 No, there is every reason, on the con- 
 trary, why we should dislike each other as 
 soon as we begin to argue about it. For in 
 all of us the disagreeable largely predomi- 
 nates over the agreeable side. I know it
 
 STEPMOTHERS 105 
 
 does in me, because I have frequently been 
 assured of the fact. And if you are not as 
 certain of the matter in your case, that merely 
 proves, not that you are more agreeable than 
 I am, but that my friends are more disagree- 
 able than yours. More truthful, if you like, 
 but I shan't scratch out my word because 
 you prefer a synonym. I don't know your 
 friends, still, I have no reason to doubt the 
 possibility of their being more amiable than 
 mine. 
 
 If, then, the disagreeable predominates, we 
 dislike people as soon as we begin to argue 
 about them. Fortunately, we rarely take the 
 trouble to think our friends out, and that 
 accounts for our retaining them. But this, 
 nevertheless, is the whole solution of the 
 stepmother question. A stepmother is always 
 arguing about her stepchildren's right and 
 wrong. She never argues about her own 
 children. 
 
 If she is a good woman, she will do all
 
 io6 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 she can to persuade herself that she is harsh. 
 And the very effort will make all the 
 blemishes stand out more. 
 
 I heard a good soul say the other day that 
 a friend of hers must be fond of her step- 
 children, because she was so very kind to 
 them- — kinder frequently than to her own. 
 As if she would have been so very kind to 
 them if she had loved them ! As if any 
 mother was ever kind to her own children ! 
 There are plenty of unkind mothers, mind 
 you ; but there never yet was a mother who 
 was ' kind.' 
 
 There was a lady once who said to her 
 little daughter, as they came out of the 
 pastrycook's : 
 
 1 Give that remnant of tart to yon poor 
 little girl, darling ! you have had more than 
 is good for you already, and you know, 
 besides, that you don't care much for this 
 sort.' 
 
 ' Thank you, kind ladv !' said the street-
 
 STEPMOTHERS 107 
 
 girl, as she seized on the cake. And she 
 was right — that lady was 'kind.' 
 
 There is another wide field which lies next 
 to this one of the world's stepmothers, a far 
 wider field, whose sterility can be demon- 
 strated in the same manner : it belongs to 
 the world's mothers-in-law. We have to 
 do here with another form of the very 
 identical disease, but we are not going to 
 speak of it, because that would lead to 
 digressions, and digressions are excrescences 
 and excrescences are faults. 
 
 A digression already ? Nay, this has 
 been anything but a digression — it is of the 
 very essence of the character of Judith 
 Lossell and her relation to the hero of the 
 tale. 
 
 Yet it is an awful thought — one word 
 only, forgive it- — it is a thought which must 
 trouble many a thinking man as he lies upon 
 his bed through the long hours of the night — 
 that, while but few people are troubled with
 
 10S GOD'S FOOL 
 
 stepchildren, almost everyone possesses- — or 
 is possessed by — a mother-in-law. 
 
 For shame ! this is cynical talk, which 
 leaves no one the better for its utterance — 
 except, perhaps, the cynic. But if that be 
 true, it is an impertinence here. And there- 
 fore peccavi. If the lire will but cease 
 smoking, and the tea-kettle commence sing- 
 ing, if that rat-tat at the front-door will but 
 bring me — not a bill I thought I had paid, 
 as the last one did — but a letter, let us say, 
 from the dear old mother at home — my 
 mother — I don't care tuppence about any- 
 body else's — we shall have no more cynical 
 talk. 
 
 Judith Lossell was very kind to Elias, 
 all the kinder because she was resolved to 
 remove him from the family circle, and 
 1 place him under proper care.' 
 
 Oh, by-the-bye, dear stepmother, whoever
 
 STEPMOTHERS 109 
 
 you are, who read this, don't write to me 
 to say that you have always loved your step- 
 children as much as your own. I know you 
 have. I didn't mean you. 
 
 But, despite all the efforts to make him 
 comfortable, Elias was not happy at home. 
 They could not procure him happiness — 
 that was natural — but they could not even 
 spare him those additional annoyances which 
 he had not felt whilst abroad. On the 
 evening of his arrival, after he had repeatedly 
 asked for them, the twins were brought to 
 him half asleep. 
 
 ' I disapprove of it,' said Judith sharply — 
 ' I disapprove of it altogether. The children 
 are just going to bed. This is not the 
 moment to frighten them, Hendrik, and 
 cause, perhaps, a lasting estrangement.' 
 
 ' If he asks for them, he must have them,' 
 replied the Town Councillor shortly. And he 
 stepped across the room, and rang the bell.
 
 no GOD'S FOOL 
 
 The issue proved Mevrouw Lossell right. 
 Henkie and Hubbie, called down at so 
 unusual a moment, shrank away from the 
 still figure sitting unconscious in the shade. 
 They hung back — fortunately, he could not 
 see that — and then, as their father forcibly 
 pushed them forward, they shrieked out in 
 abject terror — fortunately he could not hear 
 that. 
 
 1 I will not have it, Hendrik," cried 
 Mevrouw Lossell, starting up with indignant 
 eyes. Her husband hesitated. 
 
 ' And the boys ? When are they coming 
 to see me ?' asked Elias again, speaking out 
 into the void, as was his habit — -what else 
 could he do ? That question, suddenly 
 issuing from the living tomb before them, 
 even as they were unwillingly drawing 
 nearer to it, completely upset the two 
 children. They broke loose from their 
 father, and fled to their mother for protec- 
 tion, screaming to be taken away. And she
 
 STEPMOTHERS 
 
 in 
 
 drew them towards her and out of the room, 
 leaving Hendrik Lossell standing undecided, 
 staring stupidly at the wreck of his eldest 
 son. 
 
 Elias, though unable to realize this and 
 similar scenes, soon began to understand 
 that his little brothers did not care to play 
 with him, and that they did not come when 
 he called. It was a great trouble to him, 
 but he retreated into his solitude with all 
 the sensitiveness of disease. He shared that 
 solitude with Johanna and Tonnerre. The 
 last-mentioned personage, unfortunately, had 
 merited disgrace by his aggressive behaviour 
 towards Mevrouw Lossell's fluffy lapdog. 
 He had growled at the lapdog, and when 
 the lapdog growled back, he had flown at 
 him. Elias, alone in the room with them, 
 had remained entirely unconscious of the 
 catastrophe, And his stepmother, descend- 
 ing suddenly upon the combatants, had 
 beateri Tonnerre. Of this also Elias knew
 
 ii2 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 nothing, but he soon found out that his 
 friend was not happy except with him 
 
 Johanna, of course, was impudent. This 
 anyone could have foreseen. It was inevit- 
 able that mistress and maid should disagree 
 about Elias and his wants, and, as Johanna 
 was a ' menial/ and Judith a ' Mevrouw,' 
 there could not be the slightest doubt that 
 the former would be ' impudent,' or would, 
 in any case, find herself designated as such. 
 
 So Johanna and Elias and Tonnerre soon 
 got to spend their days together in a big 
 room at the top of the house which had been 
 set aside for their use. There was not much 
 opportunity for out-door life now, for when 
 the year is dying at Clarens, it has been 
 dead for some time in Holland, where, in 
 fact, its health has never been very robust. 
 And Elias refused, even more vehemently 
 than before, to go out into the streets, now 
 he was back in a place where everybody 
 knevv him. He would creep down the
 
 STEPMOTHERS 113 
 
 garden-path occasionally — -' foot by foot,' as 
 they say in Holland — leaning on his nurse's 
 arm. But, for the most part, he sat upstairs, 
 immovable, and waited for the doctor. 
 
 And the doctor came, and looked very 
 learned, and examined his eyes, and felt his 
 pulse. 
 
 4 It is the brain,' said the doctor. k It is the 
 brain.' 
 
 The sentence was not a long one, but it 
 only cost half-a-crown, for doctors are not 
 expensive in Holland, as a rule. 
 
 'And, Johanna, when does he think I shall 
 see again ?' asked Elias. ' Next week ?' 
 
 Constantly, Johanna found herself placed 
 between silence and a lie. 
 
 ' I shall tell him,' she said. ' Some day. 
 Soon. I cannot agree with his father. 
 Surely it is much better he should know.' 
 
 ' When he knows, he knows for ever, ' said 
 Hendrik Lossell. 
 
 vol. 1. 8
 
 ii 4 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 The merchant grew daily more tender- 
 hearted towards his child under the influence 
 of the spectacle of the servant-maid's love. 
 
 1 It brings her in two hundred and fifty 
 florins and her keep,' he said to himself. 
 4 And what a lot she supplies for the money ! 
 It is a cheap thing, is love !' 
 
 Ah, indeed, dear merchant, it is a cheap 
 thing, is love — the cheapest thing on earth — 
 and the one we pay most dearly for, when 
 the final reckoning comes.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 COUSIN COCOA. 
 
 And then Mevrouw Lossell's cousin came to 
 see Elias, the chocolate-manufacturess. She 
 was very self-confident and important, was 
 this lady, and that seems only natural, for 
 her husband's chocolate was the very best in 
 the world, as is the chocolate of everybody 
 who manufactures chocolate at all. Choco- 
 late and cocoa are just like sweethearts. 
 Each is better than all the others. In fact, 
 there is no better ; there is only everybody's 
 individual best. 
 
 Mevrouw Lossell did not fully appreciate 
 Mevrouw van Bussen's sterling qualities.
 
 u6 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 For Mevrouw van Bussen's great merit con- 
 sisted in knowing better than all her neigh- 
 bours what was good for them and their 
 children, and this admirable characteristic 
 Mevrouw Lossell had never succeeded in 
 finding out. Yet Mevrouw Lossell's ob- 
 tuseness in no way diminished Mevrouw 
 van Bussen's ardour. The latter lady, in 
 fact, only pulled all the more energetically 
 in the right direction, the more she saw- 
 infatuated beings turn towards the wrong 
 one. 
 
 1 There's none so blind as those that 
 won't see,' she said, when they carried off 
 Elias to Clarens. 
 
 And she also said it when they brought 
 him back again. She meant Elias's step- 
 mother, not Elias. 
 
 1 I shall go and call on Judith Lossell this 
 afternoon,' said this good lady to her hus- 
 band at breakfast. ' There are a hundred 
 other things I ought to do, undoubtedly,
 
 COUSIN COCOA 117 
 
 but I shall leave them all and go and call 
 on Judith Lossell.' 
 
 ' I should do what I ought to,' remarked 
 her husband quietly. 
 
 He was a very worthy man. He had 
 never looked farther than the tip of his own 
 nose ; and it was a short one. 
 
 1 I mean " ought to," if I consulted my own 
 convenience,' retorted Mevrouw van Bussen ; 
 4 but I rarely find occasion to do that.' 
 
 ' Can't always neglect it,' said the choco- 
 late-maker, with his mouth full, 
 
 ' If you mean to insinuate, Titus, that I 
 do not look after my own household,' flashed 
 out his wife, ' I can only advise you to go 
 and stay for three days with the Lossells. I 
 only advise you to. And she with her two 
 children and a half to my ten !' 
 
 1 Why should I go and stay with them 
 when we live in the same town, Amelia ?' 
 asked Titus. ' I wish you would give me 
 some more tea. And, if you are going, you
 
 ii8 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 might take Elias a box of chocolates. I'll 
 send you one up from the office.' 
 
 'Never!' cried Mevrouw, energetically 
 pouring out the tea. ' That woman would 
 say — behind my back — that I had poisoned 
 the child. I know she sent for a tin of Van 
 Houten's cocoa the other day from the 
 grocer's. I know she did, for my sister 
 Waalwyk's cook heard it from the Overests* 
 servant, who was in the shop at the time.' 
 
 1 Never mind, said Van Bussen good- 
 naturedly. ' Ours is the best. Van Houten 
 is well enough, when you can't get ours.' 
 
 By-the-bye, a strange misfortune befell our 
 good friend Van Bussen the other day. He 
 had paid the Koopstad Tramcar company a 
 swinging price to have boards put up outside 
 all their trams with ' Van Bussen's Cocoa is 
 the best ' in enormous letters. And when the 
 contract had been signed and sealed, and made 
 hard and fast for a twelvemonth, there came
 
 COUSIN COCOA li 9 
 
 his hated Rotterdam rival, and he paid the 
 company a still swinginger price to have his 
 boards put up just under the other man's. 
 And on these boards was written in yet more 
 enormous letters : ' When you can't get Van 
 S wink's.' 
 
 The company's shareholders now all drink 
 Van Swink's concoction. He says in his 
 advertisements that his cocoa is 'grateful.' 
 It is difficult to say what that may mean, but 
 it is certain that the shareholders are. 
 
 ' I shall not make any allusion to her un- 
 thankfulness,' said Mevrouw van Bussen to 
 herself, as she marched off to her cousin's. 
 She was alluding to Judith Lossell's pur- 
 chase of the rival brand ; ' I should consider 
 it beneath me to do so. And it's her loss, 
 not mine, if she ruins her children's healths. 
 On my part, I will do what I can for them. 
 " Strive to do good, and you'll learn to do 
 better," as the Domine said 50 beautifully
 
 i2o GOD'S FOOL 
 
 last Sabbath. But Judith doesn't even strive. 
 I wish Titus would go to church with me 
 more regularly. He says it interferes with 
 his Sunday rest. And yet it needn't do that.' 
 Her thin lips pinched themselves together 
 into a contortion which no one but a con- 
 noisseur in facial expression would have 
 understood to be a smile, as there rose up 
 before her mental vision that long line of 
 reposeful faces which nodded down at her 
 for a couple of hours every Sunday from the 
 pews where the gentlemen of Koopstad sat 
 enthroned — such of them as went to church. 
 Male Hollanders seldom do, for the service 
 consists almost entirely of sermon, and they 
 probably get enough of that at home in the 
 week. 
 
 1 Well, how do you do, Elias ?' said 
 1 Cousin Cocoa,' as the little Lossells called 
 her. She had just been ushered into the 
 room where the child sat alone with his dog.
 
 COUSIN COCOA 
 
 In spite of all her cleverness, Mevrouw van 
 Bussen constantly forgot either the boy's 
 deafness or his blindness in her occasional 
 intercourse with him. Now, however, in 
 the unaltered silence, she realized, and 
 blushed over, her mistake. She was one 
 of those people who are so convinced of 
 their own superiority that, to appear foolish, 
 even to themselves, for ever so brief a 
 moment, is absolute suffering to them. 
 Fortunately, with this kind of people, the 
 moment is always very brief indeed, and it 
 leaves no scar. 
 
 She stood hesitating near the door. 
 There was a strange dog on Elias's lap, 
 and this creature, a bundle of odds and ends 
 of brown untidyness, sat up and growled at 
 her. Mevrouw van Bussen had nerves of 
 iron ; it was something else in her then — 
 her calves, perhaps — that lived in constant 
 terror of little dogs. We are all of us afraid 
 of something — even the bravest — afraid of
 
 i22 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 either of these two : the indefinitely great, 
 or the infinitesimally small. 
 
 1 Who is there ?' said Elias. ' Come and 
 feel my hand, please.' 
 
 He could always perceive the entry of 
 someone into the room — the opening and 
 shutting of a door, or any other sudden dis- 
 placement of air being felt by him, though 
 he could not hear it. 
 
 Mevrouw van Bussen shrank back before 
 Tonnerre's redoubled growls, and Elias 
 vainly repeated his question. Then, sud- 
 denly frightened by the unexpected con- 
 tinuance of silence, smitten by one of those 
 panics which complete helplessness is apt to 
 produce, he started up from his chair, crying- 
 out : 
 
 4 To the rescue ! Danger ! Thieves !' and 
 fell over a footstool in his haste to get away, 
 bringing down with him in his fall a column 
 with a favourite statuette of his stepmother's. 
 Tonnerre flew straight at Mevrouw van
 
 COUSIN COCOA 123 
 
 Bussen, who, skipping back all too rapidly, 
 with her skirts drawn tightly round her, 
 sat down suddenly in a bowl of flowers. 
 
 Upon this confusion entered Judith Lossell, 
 as placid as concealed vexation can manage 
 to be — terribly placid. 
 
 1 Yes ; the child's condition is a great 
 affliction, ' she said smoothly, as she helped 
 up her dripping cousin out of the pool of 
 water and broken glass. ' I am sorry you 
 could not help frightening him, as you say, 
 for that flower-basket was given me by my 
 sister who is dead, and the statuette had 
 been my mother's, as you may remember. 
 Not that it matters ; only, of course, one 
 gets attached to these things. Oh no, I 
 should not say your mantle was entirely 
 spoilt, not if you take out the stained part, 
 and put in another piece, although I fear you 
 will not be able to match the colour exactly 
 — it is such a — a — peculiar colour. Be 
 quiet, do !' — here she turned fiercely on
 
 i2 4 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 Tonnerre, who had never left off barking — 
 4 that miserable animal is the worry of my 
 life. Oh yes ; he certainly bites ! — he nearly 
 killed my poor little "Fox" — never mind; 
 I can't help it. I don't fancy he will bite 
 you, Amelia, but if he does, you must 
 bear it.' 
 
 ' Judith !' cried Amelia, in disgust and 
 admiration. She was whisking round and 
 round in futile efforts to get a full view of 
 the damage to her mantle, and Tonnerre, 
 who believed she was attempting to amuse 
 him, was whisking after her in jumps and 
 snaps. She stopped suddenly. 
 
 1 My dear, I cannot help it. I am not 
 the master of the house,' rejoined Judith, 
 more placidly still. She had picked up 
 Elias, and was doing her best to reassure 
 him by kisses and caresses. This was her 
 duty, and she fulfilled it in the most ex- 
 emplary manner. Even after he had settled 
 down again contentedly on the sofa, she
 
 COUSIN COCOA 125 
 
 gave him two more kisses than her duty 
 required. These, therefore, were supere- 
 rogatory, and doubtless were written down 
 as such. 
 
 Not till Tonnerre had been turned into 
 — and a cane -bottomed chair had been 
 fetched out of — the hall (for not even the 
 removal of the mantle had rendered this 
 latter precaution superfluous) did Mevrouw 
 van Bussen resume her efforts to enter into 
 communication with little Elias. Then, 
 however, she sat down by his side, and 
 guided his hand over her face. 
 
 Mevrouw van Bussen had the bulbousest 
 of bulbous noses. As soon as the blind 
 child's hand reached it, he exclaimed, in 
 accents partly of vexation and partly of 
 amusement : 
 
 1 Why, it's only Cousin Cocoa, mamma !' 
 
 The reaction from the alarm he had just 
 experienced threw him completely off his 
 guard.
 
 126 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 The chocolate-makeress appreciated neither 
 the contentment of the ' only,' nor the 
 humour of the nickname thus suddenly flung 
 in her face. She was smarting with the 
 humiliation of her cousin's broken crockery, 
 and she. sprang delightedly at the retaliation 
 of a grievance of her own. She let go little 
 Elias's hand. 
 
 ' I am sorry to perceive, Judith,' she said, 
 bristling up, ' that you encourage your 
 children to speak disrespectfully of me. I 
 have always considered such matters from 
 a very different point of view. When my 
 children began to speak of Elias here as 
 " Deafly," I put it down at once with a high 
 hand, though he could not even hear it, and 
 I whipped one of the boys, with great pain 
 (to myself), when he disobeyed me. I see 
 now that I might have spared my wrath ; not 
 that I wish to do evil lest good should come, 
 but it is evident that you do not consider 
 it necessary to punish your children for the
 
 COUSIN COCOA 127 
 
 faults of mine, or rather, I mean, that what 
 is a punishment for my children should be 
 a fault in yours. I mean that the faults of 
 my punishment ' 
 
 4 Exactly,' said Judith, in her clearest 
 voice. 
 
 Mevrouw van Bussen preferred to scramble 
 out of her muddle as quickly as possible. 
 
 ' And even this afternoon,' she went on 
 excitedly, ' I came here, only actuated by 
 the sincerest interest in that child's welfare, 
 though I am no cousin of his, whether Cocoa 
 or otherwise ! I had better go, Judith, since 
 I am an object of derision and a source of 
 amusement. Do not, pray, think I am 
 vexed with Elias ; I pity him far too much 
 for that, but I certainly am of opinion that 
 your children ' 
 
 1 Of course, if you wish to go, I shall not 
 detain you,' interrupted Mevrouw Lossell, as 
 her visitor rose while speaking, ' but I should 
 advise you to consider the desirability of
 
 i28 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 waiting till your dress is dried. The stain 
 shows, you know — ahem — when you get up.' 
 
 Mevrouw van Bussen sat down again with 
 great rapidity, and said : 
 
 4 I cannot understand, my dear cousin, 
 why you have never tried the experiment of 
 treating Elias's case homceopathically.' 
 
 'You remember, dear cousin,' replied 
 Judith, ' that I experimented on Henkie's 
 chilblains homceopathically at your request. 
 I gave the child sips of vox populus and 
 bella-donna alternately every half hour for a 
 week, and somebody was always upsetting 
 the tumblers with their paper covers, and 
 making messes all over the room.' 
 
 Mevrouw Lossell's eyes wandered, perhaps 
 involuntarily, to the stain on the carpet. 
 
 1 Not " vox populus," " nux vomica," ' said 
 Mevrouw van Bussen, with a great air of 
 superiority. ' Besides, the chilblains got 
 better.' 
 
 1 Yes, when the warm weather came round ;
 
 COUSIN COCOA i* 9 
 
 but we had left off the medicines long before 
 that/ 
 
 ' After all, the homoeopathic system is 
 the only rational one,' said the chocolate- 
 makeress, again branching off to smoother 
 ground. k " Simile syllabubs," as my doctor 
 always says, which, you know, means 44 cure 
 like with like." Now, the reasonableness of 
 that must strike everyone immediately. It 
 "jumps to the eyes." ' 
 
 ' Why ?' asked Judith. 
 
 ' Oh, because — because Of course, it 
 
 is a law of nature, like gravitation, and all 
 that, you know ! And I think — not that I 
 wish to give you any advice on the matter — 
 that the system might well be tried on 
 Elias.' 
 
 ' I can't make him blinder,' said Mevrouw 
 
 Lossell, with a half-suppressed yawn. 4 You 
 
 could only put it into practice on a one-eyed 
 
 person. Elias hasn't got any eyes left to 
 
 put out, poor boy !' 
 
 vol. i. 9
 
 i 3 o GOD'S FOOL 
 
 1 You wilfully misapprehend me, Judith. 
 You ought to give him phosphorus for his 
 brain, and aconite for his — well, at any rate, 
 certainly aconite.' 
 
 ' Oh, undoubtedly aconite !' said Judith. 
 
 • It is your business, after all, and not mine, 
 if the child gets better. Not but that I 
 would do anything in my power, anything — 
 for 1 have ten children of my own — only I 
 am afraid of appearing to meddle. I have 
 spoken to my homoeopathic doctor about the 
 case, but he refuses to give an opinion until 
 he has seen the patient. So I thought you 
 might perhaps step down to his house with 
 Elias one of these days. His hours are 
 from one to three.' 
 
 ' Thank you,' replied Mevrouw Lossell 
 negligently. ' I will put him down on my 
 list. 1 shall hardly be able to get to him this 
 week, because I already have nine phy- 
 sicians, previously recommended, and a 
 magnetism -man and a somnambulist, not
 
 COUSIN COCOA i 3 1 
 
 to speak of Holloway's pills, and a family 
 ointment. But as soon as your man's turn 
 comes round, I shall give Elias his dose of 
 aconite. Do you think I might give it him 
 before the doctor says he is to have it, or do 
 you deem it absolutely necessary to wait 
 till after ?' 
 
 'Judith; replied Mevrouw van Bussen, ' I 
 will trouble you to ask your man to get me a 
 cab. When you feel sorry, you had better 
 come and tell me so.' 
 
 ' I feel sorry already,' said Judith — ' very 
 sorry.' And again her eyes wandered to- 
 wards the dark stain on the floor. 
 
 ' I know all about your goings on, Judith,' 
 continued Amelia, again making for the door. 
 ' If you think Elias's health will improve 
 upon inaction and Van Houten's cocoa, 
 you will find out your mistake when it is 
 too late.' 
 
 1 I know,' said Judith, k Van Bussen's is 
 the best.'
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ELIAS HEARS THE TRUTH. 
 
 4 Mamma,' said Elias presently, from his 
 corner in the great old-fashioned horse-hair 
 sofa. ' Mamma, do you know I feel sure 
 Cousin Cocoa was cross because I called her 
 Cousin Cocoa. I didn't mean to, but I was 
 so surprised, I quite forgot. I'm very sorry. 
 I should have liked to tell her so, only I 
 didn't dare.' 
 
 From her seat by the window, Mevrouw 
 Lossell looked round at the child without 
 moving. She was vexed with him for 
 tumbling about and breaking things. To 
 tell the truth, he had alreadv occasioned
 
 ELI AS HEARS— THE TRUTH 133 
 
 several of these smashes, for his blindness 
 was too recent as yet not to betray him from 
 time to time. ' I do my best,' he said, 'but 
 somehow the things get out of their dis- 
 tances.' 
 
 Mevrouw Lossell was in a very bad 
 temper, not with him so much, as with fate, 
 and with Mevrouw van Bussen. She was 
 very cruelly used, she thought, in being 
 saddled with this dead weight. Of course 
 she was sorry for the child. She was 
 extremely sorry. But did that, she asked 
 her husband a dozen times over, forbid her 
 being sorry for herself? When a man is 
 egotistical, he sometimes feels ashamed of it. 
 When a woman is egotistical, she never 
 even notices that she is. 
 
 But the disease is much rarer in females, 
 especially under a certain age. 
 
 ' Yes, I wish I could have told her,' con- 
 tinued Elias ; ' and, mamma, I am very sorry 
 I broke the vase.'
 
 34 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 4 He is a good child,' soliloquized Mev- 
 rouw Lossell, ' and he deserves to be happier 
 than we can make him here. 1 shall tell 
 Hendrik so once more to-night. 1 found 
 him crying again yesterday, because the 
 children wouldn't play with him. They 
 cant play with him ! How can he play, I 
 should like to know ? It is very sad for us 
 all ; but surely common-sense tells everyone 
 but Hendrik that the boy will be better off 
 outside the house.' 
 
 In the meantime Elias went on speaking, 
 partly to himself. 
 
 ' I knew she was angry, because 1 can feel 
 it," he said. ' I feel it, somehow, when people 
 are very cross with me, or when they are 
 very good to me. Only, sometimes, I make 
 mistakes. Sometimes, for instance, I fancy 
 you are cross with me, when I know I 
 haven't done anything wrong, and then you 
 come and kiss me, and so you see it's all an 
 idea of mine. I don't like to think people
 
 ELIAS HEARS— THE TRUTH 135 
 
 are cross with me, when they're not, mamma ; 
 and I suppose it's very naughty.' 
 
 Judith Lossell went over and kissed her 
 stepson. The colour had deepened upon 
 her substantial face. 
 
 ' It's nice that I can speak to people,' said 
 Elias, with a weary sigh, l but, what's the 
 use, when nobody can ever speak to me? 
 I want somebody to speak to me very 
 badly. Nobody has said anything for ever so 
 long.' 
 
 It was a yearning to which he had given 
 utterance again and again, but this time the 
 words were barely out of his mouth when 
 he started up, his pale cheeks aglow with 
 excitement, his whole frame trembling with 
 the anxiety of the idea that possessed 
 him. 
 
 ' I must go upstairs to Johanna,' he 
 stuttered. ' Please, please open the door,- 
 mamma. I can quite well find my way if 
 you will let me out. I have got something
 
 i/> GOD'S FOOL 
 
 to ask her immediately. No ; I can't wait 
 till she comes to fetch me. Oh, mamma, do 
 
 you know I think 1 might Please, 
 
 please let me out. Yes ; I have got the 
 balustrade. No, I shan't ' 
 
 He was gone. 
 
 He fell up the stairs in his haste, crying 
 'Johanna! Johanna!' through the house, 
 and as she ran out on to the landing to 
 meet him, he threw himself, gasping for 
 breath, into her arms. 
 
 ' Quick !' he cried ; ' make A against my 
 cheek, Johanna. A with your fingers. A, 
 B, C. Yes, yes. Quick ! put your hand so, 
 up against my face. A, B, C. Not so fast. 
 How stupid you are! D. D now; D, E. 
 Oh, Johanna ! 1 can hear everything you 
 say. I can hear quite well like that. Go 
 on ; say something. Quick ! quick ! Oh, 
 Johanna ! I am sure I can hear like 
 that.' 
 
 He burst into tears, but still he held up
 
 ELIAS HEARS—THE TRUTH 137 
 
 his sightless face, with the big drops coursing 
 down it, and pressed her hand against his 
 cheek. And she, in the agitation of the 
 moment, could think of nothing to say but 
 1 stockings,' and 4 stockings ' she said, gazing 
 steadfastly down at the unfinished one lying 
 in her lap. 
 
 ' K,' cried Elias, spelling out the Dutch 
 word as she slowly formed the letters, laying 
 her hands against his cheek — ' K — O — - 
 U— Not so fast. Do it over again. 
 
 U — S. You said "stockings," Johanna. 
 What made you say " stockings " ?' 
 
 He broke away from her, dancing round 
 the table as best he could, and crying : 
 
 ' Stockings ; what made you say stockings ? 
 But I understood it quite well. I shall be 
 able to hear them.' 
 
 He fell up against something in his 
 triumphant dancing, and tumbled back into 
 Johanna's arms, sobbing as if his heart would 
 break.
 
 138 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ' Tell me quick,' he sobbed, ' why you 
 said stockings. What made you say it, 
 Johanna ?' 
 
 1 1 was the first word except 4 Yes ' and 
 ' No ' he had heard for several weeks. 
 
 The woman could only spell back to him 
 ' Nothing.' Elias understood her. 
 
 ' Stockings ? nothing ?' He grew im- 
 patient. ' What do you mean, Johanna ? 
 Why cant you say something to me ? I 
 want dreadfully to hear you say something 
 to me. Oh, Johanna, how unkind you are!' 
 
 She folded him to her breast for only 
 answer, and it was not till several minutes 
 later that she began more calmly to practise 
 with Elias this spelling of the deaf and dumb 
 alphabet where he could feel, instead of 
 seeing it. Presently she selected the side oi 
 his neck in preference to his cheek, and this 
 communication once being established, she 
 soon agreed with him upon slight alterations 
 and simplifications better suited to these
 
 ELIAS HEARS—THE TRUTH 139 
 
 peculiar circumstances. That, however, was 
 the result of later considerations, when Elias 
 had already got to understand whatever was 
 said to him. It was not long before anyone 
 who took the trouble to master these signs 
 could converse with the boy, and soon he 
 read them far quicker than they were given. 
 And thus one great cloud rolled away from 
 his darkness, and the stars came out again in 
 the night. 
 
 ' And, Johanna,' he said, when the hrst 
 tremor of discovery was over, and he sat 
 enjoying, as it can but rarely be enjoyed, the 
 full delight of question and answer, ' now tell 
 me all the doctor says about my eyes. It is 
 that I have been wanting to know most of 
 all during the whole long time. And nobody 
 ever told me — not really. Of course, he says 
 I shall get better. But does he think it will 
 be soon ? Does he think they are better 
 already ?'
 
 i4o GOD'S FOOL 
 
 1 No, dear, you are not better,' Johanna 
 spelled back in return, with shaking fingers. 
 k You must not think too much about getting 
 better, Elias.'
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 DR. PILLENAAR S REVENGE. 
 
 For the next fifteen years Elias Lossell 
 lived with Johanna and a middle-aged under- 
 servant in a little cottage outside the town, 
 where his father came and saw him daily. 
 His stepmother came often — not daily — and 
 his brothers came also, from time to time. 
 The under-servant changed once or twice as 
 the years passed on ; Johanna, of course, 
 remained, and the flow of E lias's life was 
 almost as a lowland stream under an over- 
 hanging willow. 
 
 It had been decided that he should go and 
 live thus not long after intercourse had been
 
 i 4 2 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 re-established between him and the outside 
 world. Judith Lossell believed to her dying 
 day (she is dead ; she died some years before 
 the great catastrophe) that this decision was 
 the result of the scene between her and her 
 husband when she told him — quietly, as was 
 her manner, and without any screams or tears 
 —that Henkie and Hubbie, despite their 
 tender age, must be sent to boarding-school 
 as soon as possible, for that the gloom of 
 E lias's presence was ruining their infant 
 livers— not lives ; it isn't a misprint ; but 
 livers. Judith Lossell said so. Neither her 
 printer nor her historian is responsible for 
 what she said. If the chronicler of a woman's 
 many words were responsible for all their 
 foolishness, there would be more — alas ! no ; 
 there are enough broken -brained geniuses 
 already. There would be no chronicles 
 written at all. 
 
 Judith Lossell, however, was mistaken. 
 The decision had been taken without any
 
 DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE 143 
 
 regard to her opinions, and it had been taken 
 before the great scene, above - mentioned, 
 came on. That the merchant had allowed 
 his wife to fight it out, under the circum- 
 stances, was the result of his inability to 
 inform her of his reasons. He was not 
 accustomed to oppose her, and he positively 
 preferred her to think that she had bullied 
 him into submission. ' Anything for a quiet 
 life.' said this Town Councillor, to whom 
 everybody bent except his consort, but, none 
 the less, he stuck to his original resolution 
 that Elias himself should indicate what he 
 preferred. 
 
 And this was how the matter was settled. 
 They were alone together in the twilight, 
 after dinner, the father and son. Henkie 
 and Hubbie had just been sent off to bed, 
 and their mother had followed ' to tuck them 
 in.' 
 
 The merchant went over and spoke to the 
 child.
 
 144 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ' You can always perceive when Johanna 
 is in the room or when she touches you, can 
 you not ?' he asked. 
 
 1 Yes, papa,' said Elias. 
 
 ' And can you when your mother does 
 so ? 
 
 1 No, papa.' 
 
 'And me- — I ?' 
 
 A long pause. 
 
 ' Sometimes, papa.' 
 
 And so Elias went to live with Johanna. 
 And Johanna played with him, and was his 
 horse. Tonnerre also played with him. 
 Henkie and Hubbie occasionally came, by 
 their father's orders, and they, too. would 
 try to play with him. But Tonnerre did 
 not approve of their coming, and persisted 
 in barking at their shins. 
 
 At first, a master was procured for him 
 who, without exactly giving what could be 
 described as lessons, had instructions to slip 
 into his conversation such scraps of the most
 
 DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE 145 
 
 necessary information as could be conveyed 
 in this desultory manner. The master was 
 quite equal to the task thus entrusted to him, 
 and the plan would undoubtedly have worked 
 very satisfactorily had Elias's head been 
 stronger. But he grew tired, and he could 
 not remember. That was the worst of all. 
 He could only remember what he knew by 
 heart, what he had known for years, or what 
 constantly repeated itself in his experience. 
 Sometimes it almost appeared as if his 
 development had remained stationary with 
 the recurrence of his blindness. And then 
 again something would come out which 
 would prove that this was not the case. 
 Yet he would speak of the autumnal glories 
 of Clarens, as if he had beheld them yester- 
 day, while his teacher would vainly ask for 
 the fiftieth time : 
 
 4 Elias, what is the capital of France ?' 
 An attempt to teach him reading and 
 writing, according to the methods employed 
 vol. i. 10
 
 i 4 6 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 among the blind, proved a failure. The 
 writing, especially, with its confusing com- 
 bination of dots, greatly excited and fatigued 
 him. At the conclusion of one of these 
 lessons, in which he had strained his powers 
 to the uttermost in his nervous anxiety to 
 succeed, he was laid prostrate by a feverish 
 attack which caused the frightened Johanna 
 to send for the nearest doctor, and then for 
 Hendrik Lossell. The nearest doctor turned 
 out to be Elias's old friend, Pillenaar. He 
 came, magnanimously, and he was in the 
 sick - room when the merchant hurriedly 
 entered it. 
 
 ' You !' cried Lossell, thus suddenly thrown 
 into the presence of the man he had 
 wronged. 
 
 The doctor answered only by a repellent 
 gesture, and continued to busy himself with 
 his little patient. Hendrik Lossell walked 
 away to the window and drummed his fingers 
 against the pane. Presently he drew near
 
 DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE 147 
 
 again, attracted against his will by the silent 
 old man at the bedside. 
 
 ' Why are you here ? he asked. 
 
 ' I was sent for," replied the physician 
 quietly. ' And a physician is not in the 
 habit of asking where they are taking him, 
 but why he is fetched." He spoke without 
 looking up, and meanwhile he drew from 
 under the patient's arm the thermometer 
 which had been resting there, and walked 
 with it towards the light. 
 
 ' You cannot wish well to me or mine, 
 persisted Lossell, ' nor can it be an agree- 
 able thought for me that the life of one of 
 my children is in the hands of a man 
 who probably thinks he owes me a bad 
 turn.' 
 
 ' I am having my revenge,' said the 
 doctor quietly, as he turned back to the 
 bed. 
 
 The father walked up and down for 
 some moments with hesitating step. Then,
 
 i 4 8 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 stopping near Pillenaar, he asked, with a 
 visible effort : 
 
 k Do you mean that you are hurting the 
 child ?' 
 
 The doctor paused in the act of measuring 
 out some drops, and looked across at Lossell 
 with eyes full of tranquil scorn : ' Fool,' he 
 said. 
 
 The merchant received the word right in 
 his face, like a well-aimed snowball. He 
 started back. He was accustomed to being 
 called * Worshipful Sir.' 
 
 He did not speak again, till the other got 
 ready to go. Then he followed him down- 
 stairs, and asked, almost timidly, as they 
 were nearing the hall-door : 
 
 1 Is the child very ill ?' 
 
 The doctor stopped under the lamp, in 
 the act of shaking himself into his overcoat : 
 k No,' he said. ' Not now. The fever was 
 very high, when I came, but we have already 
 got it down half a degree. Did I not tell
 
 DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE 149 
 
 you I was having my revenge ? The boy 
 will get better, Mynheer Lossell, but there 
 will be no more lessons for him. His nurse 
 tells me he is learning to read and write. I 
 shall stop that. I have told her so. I shall 
 give publicity to the facts that I found your 
 son in this condition and that 1 have for- 
 bidden your continuing to " improve his 
 mind." And if I find that you disregard 
 my advice, I shall make public that little 
 conversation of ours which led to your nearly 
 ruining me in the mortgage affair. 1 have 
 never mentioned it to anyone yet. But I 
 shan't allow you to make away with this 
 unfortunate son of yours. Did not I tell 
 you that I was having my revenge ? Good 
 night.' 
 
 'Stop,' cried the wretched father, roused 
 by these unmerited, yet excusable, taunts. 
 1 You wrong me. Before God, you wrong 
 me. It was no intention of mine to hurt the 
 child. I do not deny that I would rather
 
 150 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 he had died when he was first stricken down. 
 It would have been happier, above all for 
 him. If you think these years of wretched- 
 ness have been preferable, I cannot help 
 differing from you. I was angry with you. 
 chiefly for your manner. I was unreason- 
 able. I admit it. But I have never lifted 
 a hand against one hair of his head, neither 
 then nor since !' 
 
 The doctor had stood curiously watching 
 Hendrik Lossell's face. 
 
 ' No,' he said, when the merchant ceased 
 speaking, ' I dare say not. You are not one 
 of those who kill, only one of those who 
 cause to die. I can't fathom your whys 
 and your wherefores, Right Worshipful Heer 
 Lossell, but I know that, for some reason 
 or other, you would rather have that poor 
 unfortunate out of the way — -do you dare 
 deny it ?' 
 
 The merchant winced. ' If Providence 
 thought fit to call him to a happier sphere.'
 
 DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE 151 
 
 he answered, ■ once more, who would dare 
 wish for his remaining here ?' 
 
 ' Providence !' interrupted the old doctor 
 testily, ' Providence ! That is only another 
 word for "timely foresight." Your pro- 
 vidence provides for yourself, Mynheer 
 Lossell. But I advise it to look out.' 
 
 ' 1 swear that it is false,' cried Lossell 
 hotly. 4 And to prove to you that you wrong 
 me, as well as to shield myself from your 
 attacks, I will follow your instructions in all 
 things concerning the boy. Nobody else 
 shall touch him in future. He has always 
 retained a liking for you. Doctor him as 
 much as you choose, and revenge yourself 
 for any wrong I may have done you by 
 charging me whatever sum you may please. 
 Do you accept ?' 
 
 The tea-merchant was indeed roused to an 
 unusual pitch of agitation, or he would never 
 have committed himself to so rash a proposal. 
 But he was growing old — with worry, more
 
 152 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 than with years — and his arithmetic was no 
 longer as hard and fast as it used to be. 
 
 ' I accept/ said Doctor Pillenaar, after a 
 moment's hesitation, ' for the child's sake. 
 My charge is a dollar a visit. And you 
 know it.' 
 
 No more lessons. No more struggling 
 after fleeting images, that ran and ran, the 
 harder he strove to retain them. Repose, 
 and fresh air, and tranquil enjoyments — and 
 then a blissful feeling as if the ache were 
 almost gone. 
 
 It was Dr. Pillenaar who called in another 
 great medicine-man to come and see Elias, 
 not an oculist, this time, but a learned pro- 
 fessor of 'psychiatry.' Very few people 
 in Koopstad knew what was meant by- 
 psychiatry ; it may be doubted whether the 
 wise man himself did, though he was pro- 
 fessor of it. An impression got about, how- 
 ever, that a phrenologist had been sent for
 
 DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE 15, 
 
 to feel E lias's bumps, and Koopstad was 
 perfectly satisfied, though some people did 
 say they would never have thought it of 
 Doctor Pillenaar. ' Elias has had one bump 
 on his head, I should think, which could 
 explain the whole matter,' said Henkie. 
 Henkie was an unfeeling lad. Hubbie 
 looked away. He did not like people to 
 speak of that terrible story, which was so 
 old, and yet daily so new. 
 
 4 It is the brain,' said the professor, saying 
 nothing new, but charging a couple of 
 hundred florins for saying it— and therein 
 will ever lie a subtle comfort for those of us 
 who can afford to pay for it, and especially 
 for those who can't. ' It is the brain. There 
 is undoubtedly a permanent lesion, and pro- 
 bably, in connection with that, as an outcome, 
 yes, I should say, as an outcome of it ' — he 
 irowned deeply — ' a slow malformation of 
 the brain. Has this deterioration ceased — 
 or has it not ? that, honoured colleague, is
 
 i 5 4 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 the question which, if I understand aright, 
 you are desirous of seeing solved ?' — Pillenaar 
 nodded acquiescence, a little impatiently — 
 'It is a question requiring mature considera- 
 tion, and requiring, above all, as many data 
 as can possibly be procured. Let us — ahem 
 —have luncheon first, and then we can talk 
 the whole matter over at our ease, as, if we 
 reckon half an hour for the meal, I shall still 
 have twenty minutes till my train leaves for 
 — ahem — home. ' 
 
 They called in Hendrik Lossell, as soon 
 as their conference had been hurried over, 
 and they told him the result. 
 
 1 Nothing could be settled with any degree 
 of certainty. On the whole, it was probable, 
 judging by the experience of the last years, 
 that the boy's brain would still suffer further 
 derangement. It might safely be assumed, 
 however, that such alteration, if it did occur, 
 would manifest itself very tardily. Years
 
 DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE 
 
 OD 
 
 might elapse before any noticeable change 
 took place. On the other hand, the patient 
 might ' — the professor paused and glanced 
 inquiringly from the father to Dr. Pillenaar. 
 The latter motioned to him to proceed — ' the 
 patient might lose other senses, as he had 
 already lost these. The eyes were sound ; 
 the ears were intact, the mischief therefore 
 lay in the channels of communication between 
 these organs and the central consciousness. 
 It was possible, however, that the work of 
 destruction had now come to a standstill. It 
 was also possible that, if it continued, the 
 patient might lapse into idiocy ' — Dr. Pillenaar 
 nodded. ' The great man did not think this 
 was likely, too long a period having already 
 elapsed. More could not be said with cer- 
 tainty. But what had been said before was 
 certain, taking the accompanying restrictions 
 into account. And, if the cab was waiting ? — ■ 
 thank you — perhaps it would be better to 
 wake the cabman.'
 
 56 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ' I understand,' said Lossell, confusedly 
 following the great light of science, ' that only 
 the brain is diseased ?' 
 
 ' Certainly. Undoubtedly. Probably. Of 
 course. The constitution is healthy, not 
 absolutely robust, but far from unsound. 
 Rather the reverse. Remarkably sound. 
 With care the child may live to be a 
 hundred. It is this very fact of his general 
 healthiness that proves there must be some 
 local Haw.' 
 
 ' Then, could we not,' stammered the 
 merchant on the steps, ' could we not — as I 
 see the great doctors do in Vienna — with 
 stomachs, you know, insert new ones of — of 
 pigskin — it's in all the papers — could we not 
 renovate the diseased part of the brain — 
 remove it, you know, and- — and insert new — 
 piece, professor !' 
 
 1 Pig's brains ?' queried the professor. His 
 cab was coming up to the front-steps. ' Well, 
 hardly. And what use would they be to
 
 DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE 157 
 
 your son, my dear sir, if he had them ? 
 How could he become a doctor or a lawyer 
 or a parson, with the brains of a pig ?' 
 
 ' I don't want him to become that,' said 
 Hendrik Lossell, innocently pursuing his 
 direct line of thought, without deferring to 
 his companion's. ' I want him to become a 
 merchant like myself.' 
 
 1 No, no ; he would only do for a doctor,' 
 interposed Pillenaar bitterly. 
 
 1 We have not got quite as far as that 
 yet,' said the student of the human soul (seen 
 from the outside), as he settled himself in his 
 conveyance. ' Nor has the Vienna doctor, 
 whatever he may do in ten years' time. But 
 we have done great things, none the less, in 
 psychiatry, very great things indeed, con- 
 sidering ' — he added complacently — 4 that 
 nobody ever did anything before us.' 
 
 1 And what have you done ?' asked Lossell, 
 thinking discontentedly of his departed bank- 
 notes, the open carriage-door in his hand.
 
 158 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ' We. have classified, my dear sir. We 
 have classified. And we have found a great 
 number of people to be mad whom nobody 
 ever imagined to be mad before/ 
 
 4 And have you,' asked Lossell, 'found a 
 good many so - called mad people to be 
 sane ?' 
 
 'Well no, hardly that,' replied the 'psychi- 
 ater,' somewhat taken aback, ' hardly that, 
 no. I should scarcely say that. Would you 
 tell him to drive to the Northern Station ? 
 Thank you. I am much obliged to you. I 
 have not the slightest doubt your boy will do 
 very well indeed.' 
 
 The carriage drove away. ' We have 
 been born too early,' said Lossell sadly, as 
 he turned into the house. ' It is our misfor- 
 tune. If we had only lived twenty years 
 later, the doctors would have spoken of a 
 new brain for Elias, as the parsons now 
 speak of a new heart, and he would
 
 DR. PILLENAAR'S REVENGE 
 
 *59 
 
 have been a good man of business yet. 
 and all would have been well.' He sighed 
 heavily. ' And now all is wrong,' he 
 said.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 LIKE A STREAM UNDER A WILLOW-TREE. 
 
 And so Elias grew up, with the old brain 
 that would not work as it ought to, watched- 
 over and cared for in his daily needs and per- 
 plexities by Johanna's motherly affection, and 
 protected, from a distance, by Doctor Pil- 
 lenaar, against all mistakes and misconcep- 
 tions. After some years Tonnerre died, of 
 old age, and that was the first intense grief 
 he had known since his blindness. His 
 father obtained for him — at great expense 
 and at almost greater pains — an exactly 
 similar little animal from a London dealer 
 who probably stole it as a last resource — but
 
 'LIKE A STREAM,' ETC. 161 
 
 Elias would have none of the little stranger. 
 ' It was ungrateful of him,' said Judith 
 Lossell, ' after all the trouble his father had 
 taken.' And therein she was right. She 
 was always right ; and you always had a 
 sneaking feeling that she ought to have been 
 wrong. She had a talent for stating tiresome 
 truths that nobody wanted to believe. 
 
 Tt was disagreeable for her, too, to find 
 this deaf duffer, this blind idiot that nobody 
 wanted to live, outgrowing her own children 
 daily in health and strength and outer beauty. 
 For Hendrik and Hubert — Henkie and 
 Hubbie no longer — had developed into little 
 business-mannikins such as you can find in 
 any number, if you care to look, on the ex- 
 change and mart of Koopstad. They were 
 small and spare, with close -cropped heads 
 and yellow complexions, and they smelt of 
 1 Jockey Club.' They were over-dressed, into 
 just that shade of over-dressing which is 
 peculiar to the sons of merchant - princes. 
 
 VOL. I. I I
 
 162 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 They had aristocratic tastes, for they hated 
 the Jews, and never swallowed a glass of 
 wine without saying that it might have been 
 better ; and they knew all about everybody 
 and everything. 
 
 Elias, on the contrary, living in God's 
 o-reat solitude of boundless fresh air and 
 almost unbroken silence, grew up with such 
 a frame as we all might be troubled with, 
 were civilization not there to refine us. 
 From a puny, pale - faced laddie he de- 
 veloped into a man of six feet two, with a 
 chest like a drum and a voice like a trumpet, 
 a man with the limbs of — no, no, not those 
 eternalized effeminate appendages of a Greek 
 god — with the limbs of an old Batouwer from 
 the forests by the Rhine. And there was 
 something unavoidably affecting in the com- 
 bination of this great display of physical 
 strength with a certain timidity of move- 
 ment — alas, much of the old childish grace 
 was gone ! — and a slight stoop of the head,
 
 ^LIKE A STREAM; ETC. 163 
 
 the natural results of his blindness. He had 
 retained that golden shimmer over his curly 
 locks which so seldom outstays the golden 
 sunshine of childhood, and his face had grown 
 handsome with the repose of harmonious 
 lines. The sightless eyes were usually 
 closed ; for long hours he would sit thus 
 silent, curtained from that outer world he 
 could not gaze upon ; but it was when he 
 swept up the long-lashed eyelids that you 
 understood how it came that women called 
 the blind fool, Elias Lossell, the most beauti- 
 ful man in Koopstad. 
 
 He had inherited, with his mother's rather 
 insignificant regularity of feature, the fathom- 
 less splendour of his father's eyes — those 
 eyes that had purchased Volderdoes Zonen. 
 But in the son's unillumined orbs there slept a 
 sadness, a tender, pitiful pleading, irresistible 
 as that attraction of deep, dark water which 
 compels you to look again. It was impos- 
 sible to realize that such glory of love and
 
 64 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 sorrow could fall back upon the beholder 
 from a soulless mirror. And who shall say, 
 indeed, that these tranquil depths could give 
 forth none of their own inner light because 
 they could receive none from the radiance 
 around them ? It was that gentle, fugitive 
 pleading which broke across the stillness, like 
 a ripple on a lake, a something indefinite, 
 something lacking, like a prayer and a regret, 
 that moved you to the very centre of your 
 being, you could scarcely have reasoned out 
 why. Eyes that look forth upon the 
 world's little ups and downs are swept by 
 every change of sentiment ; only sightless 
 repose could burn with such a steadfast flame 
 of sadness, and of love that conquers regret. 
 
 How well I remember those eyes of Elias 
 Lossell's — nay, forgive the epic poet that the 
 strength of a personal reminiscence should 
 break through your neat little rules — I have 
 good cause to remember. For they did me 
 brave service once, many years ago, when I
 
 'LIKE A STREAM; ETC. 165 
 
 was not as old, and therefore not as wise, a 
 man as I have become since. I had been to 
 hear a stupid lecture, which had impressed 
 me very much, because there were a number 
 of scientific terms in it which I could not 
 understand, and which, therefore, I knew 
 must all contain as many undeniable truths. 
 It was all about the origin of man, and it had 
 proved to me — irrefutably — that I, like the 
 rest of the human race, was nothing but a 
 perfected cell. I could appreciate that argu- 
 ment — about life, and humanity, being a 
 gigantic sell. In my darker moments I had 
 often reasoned it out for myself. And there 
 was nothing but matter and force, and 
 nothing worth living for, except life. It 
 was all very beautiful and simple, and you 
 had only got to persuade yourself you liked 
 it, even when you had the toothache or the 
 heartache, and there you were. I was thinking 
 it over, and wondering to myself why I could 
 not immediately realize that that perfected
 
 1 66 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 anthropoid ape, Graziella (my hearts queen 
 at the moment ; I found out afterwards that 
 her name was Jane), was not a bit more per- 
 fected than all other she-anthropoid apes. I 
 was reproaching myself with my foolishness 
 in not comprehending more readily that there 
 was nothing inside anybody's body except 
 that body itself. I understood perfectly how 
 all my good and evil instincts had developed 
 themselves out of my original cellular an- 
 cestor, and, the particulars having got some- 
 what jumbled in my head, I was ready to 
 affirm that I owed my dislike of mint-sauce 
 to the wolf's disagreeable habit of eating his 
 lamb raw, and my short-sightedness to the 
 eagle's equally unreasonable custom of staring 
 needlessly at the sun. For I had understood 
 the lecturer to say distinctly that everybody 
 was descended from everybody else, and that 
 all our qualities could be explained by the 
 fact that somebody else had had them before 
 us. In fact, I was converted to the very
 
 'LIKE A STREAM; ETC. 167 
 
 latest scientific discoveries of that day. Two 
 years afterwards I happened to hear the 
 same lecturer again, and I found that he was 
 most anxious to tell us that all he had told us 
 last time had been proved to be wrong. I 
 could have told him that sooner. I had 
 learned it, not from a wise man, but from a 
 fool. And I had found my soul again, while 
 he was still looking for his. I heard him say 
 that he quite expected to light upon it soon 
 in the development of the carrier-pigeon out 
 of the pigeon that can't carry anything at all. 
 I believe this has actually happened since, 
 for I was informed the other day that he was 
 perfectly happy in a scientific squabble with 
 a brother inventor — I mean discoverer — who 
 maintains that, wherever the soul of man may 
 be, the soul of woman can distinctly be traced 
 to the pouter. 
 
 I was wandering down the street, then, 
 with a jumble of these latter-day truths in 
 mv head, when I suddenlv remembered that
 
 68 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 Elias Lossell had been unwell of late, and 
 that I had promised my mother to go and 
 inquire after him. So I walked out of the 
 town towards the house where he lived, and 
 I found him sitting up by his fire, for he 
 was better. I talked with him a little — 
 you could always get Johanna to interpret — 
 and then I lapsed into silence, facing him, 
 with only the hearth between us. And 
 presently, in the darkness and confusion of 
 my thoughts, he lifted his drooping eyes 
 and turned them full upon me — turned them 
 with their sightless immensity of a sorrow- 
 that has conquered itself. I got up, and 
 pressed his hand, and went out. And ever 
 since, though I respect the earthworm no less, 
 nor the domestic pigeon, nor even the tailless 
 ape, I believe that the humblest human intel- 
 lect is the servant of a soul which sprang from 
 God, and that the loftiest is nothing more. 
 
 Elias had fortunately a small number of
 
 LIKE A STREAM; ETC. 169 
 
 hobbies which were practicable even to his 
 enfeebled intellect. Chief of these, strangely 
 enough, was the amusement — for with him 
 it could not be called an art — of gardening. 
 His great delight was to potter about in a 
 small bit of garden, with the aid of a 
 gardener, and to plant combinations of 
 brilliant colour, which his eye could never 
 behold. He would feel the flowers carefully, 
 and request that they might be minutely de- 
 scribed to him : then he would set to work, 
 taking them one by one from the heaps in 
 which his assistant had laid them and arrang- 
 ing them according to his fancy. And thus 
 it was also his supreme enjoyment to make 
 up his own flowers into nosegays and send 
 them to anyone that had shown him kind- 
 ness. But he could never remember for 
 any length of time where the various kinds 
 had been planted, and had to ask day after 
 day. if they were in bloom. 
 
 And gradually a number of pets were
 
 170 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 gathered around him, not to fill up Ton- 
 nerre's place, but to live and die beside him. 
 For Elias could never remember that Ton- 
 nerre was dead, and, when a new dog was 
 brought into the room, he would ask after 
 his old playmate, and he would even cry 
 because they said Tonnerre was gone. 
 Johanna could never quite succeed in break- 
 ing him of that petulant habit of crying when 
 he wanted to have his way. 
 
 Other pets, however, were given him by 
 friends, and he made them all welcome ; 
 white mice, a tame squirrel, a big cat whom 
 he taught to respect the mice, and a couple 
 of canaries. They were quite a family of 
 friends to him, with their separate names 
 and their individual peculiarities, and he 
 liked to tell you about them and their tricks. 
 The canaries were his favourites, ' because 
 of their beautiful song,' he said, and he 
 declared — was it a fancy of his or not ? — 
 that he could always know when they sang —
 
 LIKE A STREAM: ETC. 
 
 of course without distinguishing a note— by 
 the movement their music occasioned in the 
 air around him. Thus, in the care of his 
 'menagerie,' as Henkie called it, his heart 
 found opportunities of extending its affec- 
 tions, and Johanna often told him laughingly 
 that she was jealous of his winged and four- 
 footed loves. ' I don't know,' said Elias 
 slowly on one of these occasions. He 
 always spoke slowly, as if looking for his 
 words. ' I should like to love everybody, 
 only that it seems like loving nobody. 
 But I love you best, Johanna, except 
 myself.' 
 
 Presently he added : 
 
 ' I — I love myself very much, Johanna. 
 Do you love yourself better than me ?' 
 
 Any lie seemed preferable to the truth 
 for a moment, for the woman shrank from 
 the seeming self-complacency of the con- 
 fession. And then she said angrily aloud : 
 4 He is only he, after all,' and yet she
 
 1 72 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 blushed deeply as she spelled on his neck : 
 ' No ; I think I love you better, Elias.' 
 
 He sat quiet for a moment, and then he 
 said softly : ' I didn't know. I thought it 
 was very good of me to be so fond of you. 
 I think I should like to love you better, 
 Johanna, than I love myself. But I love 
 myself very much. And I think I would 
 rather have myself happy than anybody 
 else's happiness.' 
 
 Elias was about twenty, when he thus 
 spoke. He was too foolish not to distinguish 
 better between what is and what we suppose 
 to be. 
 
 'It is no use trying to develop his in- 
 tellect,' Dr. Pillenaar had repeatedly said 
 to Johanna. ' He can't stand it. And, 
 especially, he can't stand efforts to increase 
 his stock of knowledge. Working on his 
 memory is useless, and can only do harm. 
 Try what you can achieve with his moral
 
 'LIKE A STREAM; ETC. 173 
 
 sense, his affections, his standard of right 
 and wrong, and so on. I am not very 
 hopeful, but any improvement can only come 
 from thence. Instruction is out of the 
 question. I do not say that a certain 
 amount — a moderate amount — of education 
 may not be attainable with patience and 
 tact. I believe you have both, my good 
 woman, at least where this youth is con- 
 cerned. See what you can do for him. A 
 man may be a man, though he doesn't know 
 the multiplication-table, all the better, per- 
 haps, for never having realized that himself 
 and nine fellow-creatures only make an I 
 and a Nought.' 
 
 Johanna undertook her task and worked 
 it out with laborious devotion. In fact, she 
 had begun it long before Dr. Pillenaar men- 
 tioned the subject. At Clarens she had been 
 amazed to discover that Elias's whole idea 
 of moral distinctions was based upon 
 1 Mamma likes ' and ' Mamma doesn't like '
 
 i74 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 — a rule good enough in itself, perhaps, but 
 surely only as the outer court to an inner 
 temple. Elias reposed tranquilly upon the 
 consideration that wrong became wrong 
 through your mother's finding it out. Right 
 became wrong, for that matter, if it inter- 
 fered with the good lady's comfort, and 
 certainly wrong became altogether right, if 
 she happened — through ignorance or care- 
 lessness — not to object to it. It was, in its 
 way, a very complicated system, because its 
 single instances all had to be judged apart, 
 without any possible reduction to general 
 rules, but, on the other hand, it had the 
 advantage of offering a superficial, but fully 
 satisfactory solution of each difficulty, imme- 
 diately it supervened, so that you could 
 always know, for the moment at least, what 
 to do and what not to do. But, away from 
 his stepmother's scoldings, Elias was as a 
 vessel without a rudder. He was anxious 
 to find out Johanna's opinions on various
 
 LIKE A STREAM; ETC. 175 
 
 subjects, and he set himself to do so with 
 laudable earnestness. 'Mamma won't allow 
 me to keep my wet boots on when there's 
 company,' he said, 'but, Johanna, there's no 
 company here.' 
 
 Johanna devoted her life to the rousing in 
 his torpid nature of a consciousness of the 
 fundamental principles of right and wrong. 
 ' Elias good,' ' Elias not good' — as with a 
 little child. It was uphill-work, at first, not 
 that she found him unwilling to learn, but the 
 narrow limits of his horizon made it difficult 
 for him to oversee problems which belong to 
 the most intricate the human race must 
 grapple with, while yet he had natural sensi- 
 tiveness of conscience enough partly to per- 
 ceive them upon his path. ' If it's bad of me, 
 what makes me want to do it ?' he would ask, 
 for instance. And upon Johanna's replving 
 that it was the devil who tempted him, ' Then 
 why didn't God forget to make the devil 
 when He made all the rest ?' said the fool.
 
 7 6 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 And the worst of it was that his brain had 
 not elasticity enough to cast off a perplexity 
 which had once got itself wedged fast. He 
 would repeat a question like the above over 
 and over again during many weeks, always 
 forgetting the answer he had received a few 
 hours before. And Johanna would answer 
 with unaltering patience that she did not 
 know, or that nobody knew, or, at last, — 
 when this solution left him longing for some- 
 body who did know — that God did not make 
 the devil, but that the devil made himself. 
 
 He had not strength of mind enough to 
 leap beyond so satisfactory an answer, and 
 therefore found contentment in it, until he 
 forgot — and asked again. 
 
 But, whatever might become of the 
 theological abstractions, one practical lesson 
 Johanna found easy enough to drive home. 
 The simple duty of doing little kindnesses 
 was one which he understood with eager 
 aotitude ; in fact, there was considerable
 
 'LIKE A STREAM; ETC. 177 
 
 danger of his missing the idea of duty in 
 the pleasure which this fulfilment of duty 
 occasioned him. And soon it became the 
 greatest reward for good behaviour that he 
 should be allowed to give some trifle away. 
 
 His nurse encouraged him, in his dull life, 
 to seek this diversion as much as possible. 
 And they would go out into the country 
 cottages together, and with his own hand 
 Elias would distribute what he had brought. 
 He made friends in this way among the 
 cottage children. He would speak to them, 
 and some of them would get over their alarm 
 when they saw how gentle and kindly he 
 was. This simple philanthropy of alms- 
 giving, which estimable people will probably 
 think ought not to have been permitted, was 
 an ever increasing source of pleasurable oc- 
 cupation, and it brought him into contact 
 with his fellow-creatures as he would not 
 otherwise have been brought. Then, after 
 a time, it became not only mere alms-giving, 
 vol. 1. 12
 
 178 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 when Elias got to know individual cases. 
 And his serene presence in the cottages was 
 in itself a lesson which only they could over- 
 look who were blinder than he. 
 
 For, after the poignant hope and fear of 
 the first months, and the stagnant agony 
 which succeeded them, Elias sank into more 
 cheerful repose. At first they who watched 
 over him dreaded that this tranquillity might 
 deepen into apathy, but the untiring devotion 
 of his faithful nurse drew him slowly out of 
 his lethargic resignation into a taste for the 
 various occupations which have been indicated 
 above. And as the years passed on, and his 
 health grew stronger, some new interest 
 would be added from time to time to the 
 little circle which was already his. 
 
 Of games, unfortunately, he could only 
 play the simplest. His head was, of course, 
 not strong enough for chess, or draughts, or 
 even dominoes, in the study of which he 
 might otherwise have whiled away so many
 
 'LIKE A STREAM; ETC. i 79 
 
 a weary hour. But he could play an occa- 
 sional game of ' solitaire ' in his loneliness, 
 and, extraordinary as it may seem, he had 
 selected the game of 'spillikens' as his especial 
 favourite. The merely mechanical skill was 
 within his comprehension, and the extreme 
 delicacy of his touch enabled him to discern 
 if the piece he was lifting came into contact 
 with another. He learnt through long 
 practice to judge of the position of the set 
 by lightly passing his fingers over the little 
 heap, and, if he failed to notice a movement. 
 Johanna would be near to give a hint. He 
 attained great proficiency through constant 
 repetition, and it was a strange sight to watch 
 this blind creature bending, with contracted 
 brows, over the simple game which would 
 seem to require, as one might think, keenness 
 of eye quite as much as sureness of hand. 
 
 Very, very slowly the shadows deepened 
 over his already clouded intellect. With all 
 her love Johanna could not avert them ; with
 
 i So GOD'S FOOL 
 
 all her hopefulness she could not ignore 
 their coming. Almost imperceptibly in the 
 enforced seclusion in which he lived, hedged 
 in on every side, the lights of human in- 
 telligence went out one by one. He forgot 
 more and more, his little stock of knowledge 
 growing less — he experienced yet greater 
 difficulty in finding his words. He began to 
 speak of himself in the third person, as little 
 children do : 4 Elias wants to,' ' Elias will be 
 good.' 
 
 And yet — to her who knew him best 
 because she loved him, it seemed as if with 
 the increase of his manhood, he grew gentler, 
 kinder, more affectionate. 
 
 And his father knew only this. He knew 
 that he had constantly asked the boy : 4 Are 
 you happy, Elias ?' And at first, there had 
 been no reply possible, and then the lad 
 had sometimes said : l I suppose so, Papa,' 
 and now the man would often answer : 
 'Yes.'
 
 LIKE A STREAM; ETC. 
 
 181 
 
 And the days were like each other, and the 
 years were like the days, only longer, and 
 when Elias was twenty-five, Hendrik Lossell 
 died.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN. 
 
 Hendrik Junior was nineteen, and had 
 entered his father's office the year before. 
 Hubert, being more backward than his 
 brother, was to remain a little longer at the 
 School of Commerce. They had worked 
 together originally until Hubert, not having 
 4 passed ' on one occasion, had been forced to 
 see Hendrik move into a higher form with- 
 out him. This separation had naturally 
 caused a change in their pursuits, their com- 
 panions, their hours *and courses of work. 
 They had been compelled to go each his 
 separate way, and from being almost always
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN. 183 
 
 together, they had come to consider it natural 
 that the one should not know for hours what 
 the other was doing. ' I wish you would 
 help me with my work, Henk,' said Huib, 
 4 as you used to when we worked together.' 
 4 Oh, I can't bother,' said Henk. 'I've for- 
 gotten all that rot since I moved up. It 
 seems years ago since I learnt it.' Good- 
 natured Huib winced. 
 
 Dutch boys talk Dutch slang. Their re- 
 pertoire is small, and lacks the picturesque- 
 ness of English school-talk. Still, they are 
 as convinced as their coevals over the water 
 that there is a good deal rotten in the bill of 
 fare prepared for their intellectual nourish- 
 ment, and the term used above can therefore 
 certainly not be considered misplaced. And 
 schoolboy - talk is untranslatable. To the 
 connoisseur it always seems delightful, salt 
 and bracing and ever fresh, like a breeze 
 from the hills of youth. What a good thing 
 it is that the mammas so seldom hear it ! It
 
 i8 4 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 only reaches them, as a rule, through the 
 medium of the young ladies' schoolroom, and 
 from the lips of these it tastes like bottled 
 sea-water, and not a bit like bottled breeze. 
 No, a girl should not talk slang. She always 
 knows she is talking it. And therefore in 
 her it becomes affectation, while its very 
 essence is ' unavoidableness.' In the boy's 
 case it comes bubbling from the lips with 
 irresistible simplicity, and you feel that it is 
 the harmonious vehicle of his thoughts. It 
 is keen, supple, gleaming. And it strikes 
 straight. With the young lady whose gover- 
 ness is teaching her how to hand a parcel— 
 pooh ; cio you remember that old fable ? — 
 hush ; let us be polite, even to the slang- 
 talkster : 
 
 4 There once was a lion that went out 
 walking in a donkey-skin.' 
 
 1 And everybody noticed how much softer 
 a donkey's skin is by nature than a lion's.' 
 
 Fables are wearisome things till you get
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 185 
 
 to the moral ; and then they become pro- 
 voking. 
 
 At least, so I have always found them, but 
 most people whom I have questioned on the 
 subject have told me they considered fables 
 were very instructive, because they give you 
 such a much clearer insight into the faults of 
 your fellow-creatures. 
 
 It is unfortunately hardly correct that 
 Dutch schoolboys delight in slang. They 
 have but few idiomatic expressions, and 
 these are often of very unpleasing origin. 
 Alas that they should make up for the 
 deficiency by oaths. 
 
 Then, why, it may be asked, this disserta- 
 tion upon the subject ? There was a man 
 once who possessed a coat but no peg to 
 hang it on. So, having honestly earned his 
 coat, he stole a peg. He thought that the 
 coat would hide the peg. And so it did, but, 
 as it hung loose in the air, the detectives 
 cleverly remarked that the peg must be
 
 j 86 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 behind it. And they took the peg away, 
 and the coat, and the man ; and upon the 
 latter the critics sat down — no, I mean the 
 detectives. And so he died. 
 
 Hendrik went into his father's office. And 
 he began to talk about ' 'Change.' They call 
 it the ' Purse' in Holland, as everywhere on 
 the Continent, and Elias had long believed 
 that it was a great bag full of money, hung 
 up somewhere, and that his father and all 
 other people's fathers went down to it every 
 afternoon and took out as much as they 
 wanted. He asked why the ragged chil- 
 dren's fathers did not go down to the 
 1 Bourse.' ' Elias,' said Hendrik, ' is an 
 unutterable fool.' The adjective was pain- 
 fully true. 
 
 Hendrik Junior was not a fool. Even 
 the many who did not like him unhesitat- 
 ingly admitted that he was a smart young 
 man. His father's old clerks beamed upon
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 187 
 
 him, when he sat down before his office desk, 
 spreading out his spidery little legs on a 
 magenta - coloured sheepskin, and knotting 
 his little black eyebrows, as he struck a quick 
 hand through a thick bundle of papers, with 
 an incisive 4 Let's see.' ' Volderdoes Zonen ' 
 was not merely a wholesale tea-shop. It was 
 a great house in the best sense of the word, 
 a social institution, and — to a certain extent 
 — -what might be called a tribal family. All 
 those who were connected with it and its far- 
 spreading interests, were connected with 
 each other. The mighty head of the firm, 
 looming bald and sacred, in the far distance 
 of his sanctum behind glass doors that 
 opened into the outer office, was Volderdoes 
 Zonen incarnate, but the youngest errand- 
 boy, who stared timidly from the entrance- 
 hall, as he came up with his message, across 
 lines of desks and bended heads, towards a 
 solemn silence where mortals scarce dared 
 tread, felt that he, too, somehow and in
 
 88 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 some infinitesimal manner, was ' Volderdoes 
 Zonen,' and rejoiced in the thought. Out- 
 side, where he waited, was a perpetual 
 clamour of rail-cars, a babel of voices, the 
 continual thud of heavy cases, the mono- 
 tonous rush of ropes on the pulley — and 
 men, with grave, preoccupied faces, passed 
 him rapidly, going to and fro through the 
 great doors. Inside was silence, except for 
 the buzz of voices in the so-called ' Strangers' 
 Office ' — nothing but the occasional rustle of 
 a leaf, or a fragment of a whispered conver- 
 sation, as one clerk would step over for a 
 moment to consult with another. Sometimes 
 a handbell would ring with a sharp, electric 
 twang from the chief's table, and a name 
 would be called out — in a clear and impera- 
 tive key. Then some quiet worker would 
 lay down his pen and pass through the glass 
 division, into the presence of his sovereign. 
 The oldest of them never listened for the 
 name which must follow that electric signal
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 189 
 
 without a moment's quiver of expectation. 
 It was the only occasion on which Voider- 
 does Zonen's clerks laid down their pens 
 unwiped. 
 
 And from the yard and the quays beyond 
 it came the boom of the machinery, the 
 rustle of the descending lift, the ' heigh-ho's ' 
 to the horses among the clatter of hoofs and 
 the whistle of whips, hour after hour, day 
 after clay through the winter rains, when the 
 great stoves were lighted inside, and round 
 by the sweet soft, summer months when all 
 the windows were opened and, amid the 
 scents of tea and machine-oil and lilacs, the 
 twittering of the city-sparrows broke in upon 
 the ceaseless scratching of the pens. There 
 was not one of them from the oldest to the 
 youngest (not the sparrows, rather the pens) 
 but felt ' Volderdoes Zonen ' to be eternal, 
 without beginning and without ending, like 
 the world they lived in. 
 
 Hendrik Lossell himself, they felt, though
 
 i 9 o GOD'S FOOL 
 
 he was an incorporation and a symbol, was not 
 the eternal Idea, any more than William I. 
 or William II. is the Empire. He would 
 go, as he had come, and Hendrik II. would 
 come in his turn, and go also, but the unity 
 of which all the busy workers were com- 
 ponent parts was not dependent on any of 
 them for its existence, either the greatest or 
 the least. 
 
 Hendrik Lossell, however, was fully con- 
 scious that for the time being, at any rate, 
 the sceptre rested in his hand. Not that 
 he allowed it to rest ; he swayed it with 
 that kind of impersonal government which 
 is usually described as l stern ' by those who 
 are passively, and 'just' by those who are 
 actively connected with it. Disobedience 
 meant instant dismissal ; obedience could not 
 always mean immediate reward. That was 
 unavoidable, and the management of so 
 extensive a business required, you may be 
 certain, a firm hand as well as a quick one.
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 191 
 
 k Office hours are too short for good work, 
 as it is,' Lossell would say to some penitent 
 promising amendment ; k I can't pay for bad.' 
 k There's no room for repentance in business,' 
 he used to remark. ' If you want to repent, 
 I must leave you free to do so at home.' 
 Whoever might be head of his household, 
 there was no doubt who was master in the 
 office. Perhaps he found some sweet com- 
 pensation in the thought. Who shall tell ? 
 
 And when he himself was found out in 
 some omission, or some positive error ? 
 Well, that would occur at times, of course ; 
 and the moment was an awful one. It 
 happened upon one occasion that a mistake 
 had been made which involved a consider- 
 able loss. The confidential clerk who had 
 to broach the matter to his master trembled 
 in his shoes, not for himself, for the fault was 
 Lossell's. The clerk had been in the office 
 more than forty years ; he had served old 
 Elias long before anyone had thought of
 
 192 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 the present head of the firm. He spoke 
 calmly, despite his tremor, politely, positively. 
 The chief reddened, looked up with an 
 uncomfortable glance, looked down at the 
 papers before him. ' Yes,' he said, l Mr. 
 Hopman, there has been an altogether in- 
 excusable mistake. I am very much vexed, 
 very much displeased, that such a mistake 
 should have occurred, and I must bear the 
 consequences.' 
 
 The old clerk understood. It was Voider- 
 does Zonen scolding Hendrik Lossell, 
 
 But Volderdoes Zonen did not send 
 Hendrik Lossell away. 
 
 The walls of the private room were hung 
 with the firms historic mementoes ; diplomas 
 of honour, an appointment to the Jury of a 
 Great Exhibition, a framed and glazed letter 
 from a European sovereign long since dead. 
 They were spread out there as the captured 
 banners adorn the chapel of a conqueror. 
 And high above the monumental mantel-
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 193 
 
 piece, with its solemn clock, sat enthroned 
 the life-sized portrait of a Chinese Grandee, 
 a splendour of flowered silk under a pair 
 of little twinkling slits of celestial Cheatery, 
 a Li-Foo-Something, who had earned his 
 highest button by robbing his Imperial 
 Master in company with old Elias's father. 
 
 This heathen Chinee was the tutelary 
 deity of the house. He pervaded it, as 
 such a patron spirit should, for old Elias 
 had turned his father's friend into a trade- 
 mark — alas, the illustrious dead ! —and every- 
 thing belonging to the business, even the 
 charwoman's dusters, that came out of their 
 cupboard on Saturday afternoon, bore the 
 image of the tea-honoured Mandarin. He 
 was an actual Presence ; they believed in 
 him down at ' Volderdoes Zonen's,' and 
 spoke of him and to him, as if he really 
 were responsible for the fortunes of the firm. 
 The warehousemen had a superstition among 
 them, laughed at, yet not altogether despised, 
 
 vol. 1. 13
 
 i 9 4 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 that the great cases could not come to grief 
 as long as the Chinaman-label upon them 
 remained intact. And when old Volderdoes 
 celebrated his silver-jubilee as head of the 
 business, the whole of the staff clubbed 
 together, big and little, every member of 
 the vast family, the errand-boys subscribing 
 five cents, and presented him with a silver 
 dessert-service, in which silver mandarins 
 sat under silver palm-trees, bearing crystal 
 dishes. There were any number of silver 
 mandarins, fit type of the spoil which the 
 astute Li had divided between himself and 
 his Christian confederate. Judith Lossell 
 spread them over her table on all state 
 occasions, for she was a merchant's daughter 
 and had a merchant's daughter's pride. 
 
 'Fiddlesticks!' said Hendrik Junior. He 
 believed in silver, and in Chinamen, but he 
 did not believe in tutelary deities, nor, in 
 fact, in any deity, whether adverse or other- 
 wise. He did not even believe overmuch in
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 195 
 
 * Volderdoes Zonen.' At home he spoke of 
 it as 'the shop,' but not when any stranger 
 was by. It was an unavoidable formality 
 for making money to him, nothing more. 
 Money was the one thing worth having, 
 on this beastly planet. If you could have 
 got it without any trouble, so much the 
 better, but, as you could not, well, ' Voider- 
 does Zonen ' came handy. He considered 
 himself especially praiseworthy for looking 
 at matters in this light. He knew men 
 enough who wanted money but were too 
 lazy to work for it. He did not realize how 
 great his wish for money was. 
 
 Well, but he worked hard for it. And 
 when the day's work was over, he would go 
 and spend his evening quietly at the opera, 
 especially if there was a ballet, or at one of 
 the little theatres where you laugh without 
 knowing why. And if he wanted other 
 pleasures, he took them without troubling 
 anybody about them, and there was never
 
 i 9 6 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 any scandal or unpleasantness in connection 
 with young Hendrik Lossell's name. He 
 was altogether a most estimable young man. 
 There were many such in Koopstad. 
 
 He quite forgot in a month or two that 
 poor Hubert, still at school, was his twin- 
 brother. He thought of him, and soon 
 spoke of him, as the younger son. And 
 so, indeed, he was, though only by several 
 minutes. He grew younger daily, however, 
 in the new-fledged merchant's eye. 
 
 1 That's your brother, ain't it. Lossell ?' 
 said a fresh chum, also a merchant-princelet, 
 when they met Hubert coming along the 
 street with his books under his arm. ' Yes,' 
 said Hendrik, with a good-humoured smile, 
 ' c'est mon cadet, you know. He goes to 
 school.' 
 
 Elias also knew something, in his vague 
 way, of the greatness of Volderdoes Zonen. 
 He had grown up under the shadow of the
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 197 
 
 house, and as a child, before his troubles 
 came upon him, he had played in the ware- 
 houses and watched the men at their work. 
 The memory had remained with him, and 
 would abide in his heart for ever, as those 
 experiences of our earlier years become our 
 companions through life. He did not, cer- 
 tainly, know much of the intricacies of com- 
 merce ; but he did know, for his father had 
 repeated it to him almost daily for many 
 years, that ' Volderdoes Zonen ' was a thing 
 to be honoured and reverenced, as the source 
 of all good to himself and to all his relations. 
 It was as if the merchant had set himself to 
 inspire his eldest son with a cult of the 
 historic name, he who left all impressions of 
 religion or morality to a servant. Probably 
 he had good reasons for his conduct, and 
 could have told you why such strange con- 
 versations as the following were so common 
 between him and the son who had attained 
 to manhood, and who would live through his
 
 i 9 S GOD'S FOOL 
 
 whole existence, without ever coming into 
 contact with that busy world in which the 
 merchant dwelt. 
 
 ' Elias, what is your father ? Tell me, do 
 you remember ?' 
 
 ' Head of the house of "Volderdoes Zonen," 
 Papa. The great house of " Volderdoes 
 Zonen," I mean.' 
 
 4 And what was your grandfather ?' 
 
 ' He was the same, Papa.' 
 
 ' And what would you like to be best of all, 
 if you could work ?' 
 
 1 I don't know, Papa. I forget." 
 
 1 Yes, you do' — impatiently. ' Think.' 
 
 A silence. Then suddenly : ' I should like 
 to be a doctor, Papa, and make all the sick 
 people well' 
 
 4 No, no. You would like better still to be 
 what your father and grandfather have been, 
 would you not ?' 
 
 ' Henk may be that, Papa.' 
 
 ' Very well ; so he may, now you can't.
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 199 
 
 But you ought to have been it. And it is 
 the grandest thing in the world. But now 
 you will like Hendrik to be it, when I am 
 dead ; will you not ? What would you do, 
 Elias, if people came and told you, after my 
 death, that you mustn't allow Hendrik to 
 take my place ?' 
 
 ' I would kill them, Papa.' The strong 
 man clenched his fists, and involuntarily 
 spread out his massive chest. 
 
 1 No, no, that is not necessary. But you 
 would tell them that Hendrik must take it ; 
 would you not ?' 
 
 1 Yes, Papa, but ' — an expression of 
 extreme anxiety — ' you are not going to 
 go away, are you ?' 
 
 1 No ; I hope not. But, listen, Elias, 
 what would become of you, if Volderdoes 
 Zonen ceased to exist ?' 
 
 ' I should die of hunger," answered Elias 
 rapidly, and by rote. ' Or else people would 
 come and take me away, and lock me up in
 
 2oo GOD'S FOOL 
 
 an asylum, and everything would be very 
 miserable and poor.' 
 
 ' That is true. You will never forget it.' 
 
 ' No, Papa.' 
 
 And the merchant went his way. 
 
 It was like a catechism. 
 
 'Johanna,' said Elias presently, 'why are 
 some people poor and some people rich ?' 
 
 ' Because it's good for them,' replied 
 Johanna, who was an optimist, or she could 
 not have lived with the fool. 
 
 ' And am I rich ?' asked Elias. 
 
 1 Yes. Or at least your father is.' 
 
 1 And are you poor ?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 1 It seems to be very much the same thing,' 
 declared Elias, after a period of slow thought. 
 ' I suppose, the devil made the poor people 
 first, and then God made the rich people to 
 help them, and so He put it all right 
 
 again ?
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 201 
 
 Johanna did not answer him. 
 
 ' I am glad God gave us " Volderdoes 
 Zonen" to look after us,' he went on. 'It 
 was very good of Him. And I shall thank 
 Him for it every day.' 
 
 And he did. 
 
 It was a few days after the conversation 
 recorded above, the last of many, that Hen- 
 drik Lossell's tenure of office as head of 
 4 Volderdoes Zonen ' came to an end. 
 
 ' I have got a pain in the left side,' he 
 said to his wife at breakfast one morning. 
 ' Do you know, I think it must be something 
 the matter with my heart. I have felt it 
 once or twice before, of late.' 
 
 1 Oh, nonsense!' replied Judith carelessly. 
 ' How fussy you men always are ! It's just 
 nothing but a little wind. I know the feeling 
 quite well. I've had it, myself." 
 
 He did not continue the subject, but pre- 
 sently got up to go to the office, as usual.
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 Mevrouw Lossell followed him to the 
 door. 
 
 ' Don't forget to look in at Ramakers,' 
 she said, ' and tell them to be quite sure to 
 have the fresh turbot for Tuesday. It's a 
 bad day for fish. I wish we could have had 
 our dinner-party on another day.' 
 
 ' I can't help it, Judith,' he replied, a little 
 wearily, l as I told you before. I must 
 attend the Town Council on Wednesday, 
 and the meeting of the Chamber of Com- 
 merce on Thursday, and you won't have it 
 on a Friday or a Saturday ; so there you 
 are.' 
 
 'Ah, well!' she said, with an injured air. 
 ' In any case, don't forget.' 
 
 1 I shan't forget,' he replied, and was 
 gone. 
 
 He drove out to Elias first this morning, 
 as he noticed that he had plenty of time. 
 He had made it a rule, from which he only 
 deviated under stress of circumstances, to
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 203 
 
 give his eldest son at least a few minutes 
 every day, but he usually went to him in 
 the afternoon. 
 
 Elias was surprised and delighted to 
 receive his father at so early an hour. This 
 visit was a continual treat to him, the great 
 event of his uneventful day. For Hendrik 
 Lossell had acquired much facility in 
 Johanna's method of conversing with the 
 deaf man — Elias's method, as she proudly 
 called it, for had he not been its inventor ? — 
 and in his own peculiar way the father was 
 kind to his son, kind almost against his will 
 one would feel inclined to say. It was 
 against his will that he often wished Elias 
 dead ; it was against his will that he often 
 treated him with generosity and affection. 
 This unfortunate son was to him not so 
 much an unpleasing personage as an adverse 
 circumstance. But he did his best — he had 
 always done his best — to treat him well, 
 none the less.
 
 2o 4 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 1 Papa,' said Elias this morning, ' Elias 
 tired. Elias often so tired. And forget 
 words. Elias not talk much." 
 
 'It is one of his bad days,' interposed 
 Johanna, who had been bustling about the 
 room, getting things ready for her charge. 
 ' He has been complaining of headache all 
 the morning. When he has one of these 
 bad headaches, he is very dull and stupid. 
 I think they get rarer, as time goes on, but 
 — do you know, sir? — I think they get 
 worse.' 
 
 The father went up to his son and stood 
 looking at him intently for some moments. 
 Presently he groaned, audibly. And then, 
 turning suddenly away, as if to hide his con- 
 fusion, he said to the woman : 
 
 ' He is a beautiful man.' 
 
 ' Indeed, that he is, Mynheer,' assented 
 Johanna energetically. A vision rose up 
 before her of Henkie and Hubbie, yellow- 
 faced, sharp-featured, groomed and oiled
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 205 
 
 and smartened up, as she turned towards 
 the silent, statuesque figure, motionless in 
 its customary arm-chair, and stood gazing 
 lovingly upon that noble Olympian head, 
 with its glory of golden curls and the line of 
 patient suffering over the closed and tranquil 
 eyes. 
 
 4 Good-bye, Elias,' spelled the father. 
 
 ' Good-bye, Papa.' 
 
 ' You love me, after all — don't you ? — in 
 spite of all ?' 
 
 ' Of course I love you, Papa.' 
 
 Hendrik Lossell turned to go. The 
 woman passed out and opened the hall-door 
 for him. 
 
 k You yourself look far from well, sir,' she 
 said. ' Hadn't you better see a doctor too, 
 once in a way ?' 
 
 4 Oh, I'm all right, thank you, Johanna,' he 
 answered, as he got into his brougham. 
 
 ' If the boy becomes completely idiotic,' 
 he muttered as the carriage bore him away,
 
 2o6 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 1 he may as well become it without loss of 
 time. It would be the best thing that could 
 happen, I suppose, on the whole.' 
 
 He almost invariably alluded to this full- 
 grown son as ' the boy.' What more was 
 he ? Nay, in fact he was barely that. And 
 yet he was not a child, as other children 
 are. 
 
 The merchant's face twitched once or 
 twice, as if with sudden pain, and he gave 
 a sigh of relief when the coachman drew up 
 at last in front of the warehouse. He 
 thought to himself with a half-smile, as he 
 let himself slowly out and crossed the busy 
 threshold, that it was now more than twenty- 
 five years since he had entered the office at 
 that hour as a partner in the concern. Day 
 after day, month after month — but for an 
 occasional brief summer holiday at some 
 foreign watering-place — had he done what 
 he w r as doing now. The same twist through 
 the same side - door and down the same
 
 VOLDERDOES ZONEN 207 
 
 passage. The same ' Good -day's ' among 
 yesterday's unchanged surroundings. He 
 hung up his coat and hat on their accus- 
 tomed peg. And then, in turning to take 
 his place before his desk, he cast the same 
 invariable glance towards the clock. And 
 the clock marked the same invariable hour. 
 
 He sat down and drew the day's bundle of 
 business towards him. Hendrik would not 
 be in for an hour or so. 4 No use trying to 
 make young folks give up old habits,' he 
 said to himself. 
 
 And then he settled down to the day's 
 work. 
 
 A packer had been turned off for careless- 
 ness, and had appealed from his immediate 
 superior to Caesar. Hendrik Lossell went 
 into the matter as was his wont. He found 
 that the man had indeed been to blame, 
 though in no serious degree, but he main- 
 tained the dismissal, in spite of prayers and 
 entreaties.
 
 2o8 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ' Not time enough for good work,' he re- 
 peated, 'still less for bad/ And then he 
 returned to his own. 
 
 And when Hendrik Junior came in about 
 half an hour later, he found that our common 
 Master, Death, had touched the chief of the 
 great house of ' Volderdoes Zonen,' and dis- 
 missed him from his post.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM. 
 
 Hendrik Lossell, Hendrik Junior no longer, 
 stepped towards the glass doors and drew 
 them to. Then with one rapid jerk of the 
 wrist he swept the broad ' portiere,' which 
 hung handy, across that wide surface of glass. 
 From time to time the chief of the house 
 would thus close out the office, when he 
 wanted to be alone. And then the son went 
 back to his father's prostrate figure, thrown 
 forward across the desk. He did not for one 
 moment doubt that this was death. He saw 
 the seal set plainly upon the rigid face. 
 'Death,' he said in an undertone, and his little 
 vol. i. 14
 
 2io GOD'S FOOL 
 
 figure trembled from head to foot with a 
 couple of quick, nervous thrills. And then 
 he drew, with unsteady hand, the keys of the 
 great safe from his fathers trousers pocket, 
 where he knew they were always kept. He 
 had to unfasten a button of the pocket to 
 get at them, and for a moment he shrank 
 back in disgust. 'Allons,' he said, aloud. 
 And then he struck a quick blow on his 
 father's bell, and, holding the curtained door 
 ajar for one moment, he called out the name 
 of the head clerk, his father's right hand. 
 ' Meneer Trols.' 
 
 He started at the loudness of his own 
 voice in that chamber of death. 
 
 The person thus summoned came hurrying 
 up. He passed beyond the curtain, and 
 appeared in the sanctum, his face lighted 
 by a look of expectation he was striving 
 to restrain. Hendrik was standing by the 
 table, where lay his father's corpse. 
 
 1 Mynheer Trols,' he began nervously,
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM 211 
 
 ' something terrible has happened. Some- 
 thing very terrible indeed.' 
 
 1 Good God, sir, the master !' cried the 
 clerk, running round to the figure in the 
 chair. 
 
 1 Do not interrupt me,' fired up Hendrik 
 angrily. ' Yes, something has happened to 
 my father — — ' 
 
 ' He is dead !' cried the clerk, unheeding. 
 He had lifted the fallen head, and was striving 
 to retain it in his arms. 
 
 1 Hush, you fool !' burst out Hendrik 
 fiercely. ' Do you want the whole office 
 to hear you ? Don't you see its far worse 
 for me than for you, and I don't go on like 
 
 that. It's my father. Be a man. D 
 
 me, what a fool you are !' 
 
 For the clerk was striving in vain to 
 control the workings of his face. The old 
 fellow was crying. 
 
 ' Go back into the office, as soon as you're 
 fit to,' said Hendrik contemptuously, ' and
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 say that Mynheer has been taken ill, and 
 that I have gone home with him. But first 
 tell one of the men to run for a cab, and then 
 you and I will lift in — him. I don't want it 
 to be known he died in the office. Do you 
 understand ? It will be given out that he 
 died at home.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Trols, speaking as a man in a 
 maze. But why put it so ? If ' 
 
 k You understand me, Mynheer Trols,' 
 interrupted Hendrik. ' Please to order the 
 cab.' 
 
 When the clerk returned from this mission, 
 he found young Lossell sitting at his own 
 desk, with his back turned to — that thing — 
 on the table. 
 
 1 I will tell you, Mynheer Trols,' said 
 Hendrik, ' why I wish to return home with — 
 with my father. There is no reason why 
 the day's business should be disturbed. In 
 fact, it can't be, as you know. Not to-day, 
 of all days. The Jeannette sails this
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM 
 
 evening, and she must take our cargo with 
 her. It is a matter of forty thousand florins. 
 I can't shut up the office to-day.' 
 
 ' But, sir,' stammered the head clerk, ' I 
 believe that Mynheer had just spoken of 
 countermanding the consignment. He had 
 heard bad accounts of the firm in Copen- 
 hagen. And even if it were not so, would 
 it not be better, in the face of so appalling 
 a catastrophe ' 
 
 'Not a word more," interrupted Hendrik 
 haughtily. ' Remember, if you please. Myn- 
 heer Trols, that I am the head of " Yolder- 
 does Zonen " now.' 
 
 ' What will become of us ?' said Trols to 
 himself, as he went back to his desk, after 
 having aided his young master and obeyed 
 all his commands. ' A boy of nineteen ! He 
 cant be the chief, whatever he may say. 
 He isn't even of age, nor will he be for the 
 next four years. I wonder whether I am
 
 2i 4 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 right in executing this order. Well, I can't 
 help it. I suppose I must. But common 
 decency would have shut up the place for 
 the day.' 
 
 And so young Hendrik inaugurated his 
 reign. It may be a satisfaction to the reader 
 who likes to know everything to be told 
 that the Copenhagen house failed in the 
 course of a month or two, so that the little 
 job above mentioned cost Volderdoes Zonen 
 the sum of thirty seven thousand four 
 hundred florins and ninety-three cents. 
 
 'And now, mother,' said Hendrik, 'let us 
 see how matters stand. You may as well 
 call in Huib, and we can all talk it over 
 together.' 
 
 They were sitting lugubriously facing each 
 other by the dying dining-room fire. The 
 remnants of dinner — an untouched dessert — 
 stood on the table, under the dim light of 
 a lamp which left three-quarters of the room
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM 215 
 
 in mysterious gloom. The meal had been 
 a silent one, and Hubert had escaped from 
 it to his own room as soon as possible. 
 Hubert was frightened and saddened by his 
 father's sudden death. His was a gentle 
 nature ; and he attached himself to his sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 Hendrik got up, as his mother left the 
 room, and stationed himself in front of the 
 fireplace. He shuddered slightly as he 
 stared into the darkness of the dreary dis- 
 tance. 
 
 Over the whole house hung that incompre- 
 hensible atmosphere of death, which lights 
 up the monotony of existence with a sudden 
 glare of false electric light, bringing out in 
 lines of unexpected nakedness the littleness 
 of daily wants and duties and throwing into 
 full relief the reality of our turbulent con- 
 sciousness against the great still shadow of 
 the beyond. 
 
 ' I am alive,' said Hendrik to himself, not
 
 2i6 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 in so many words, but in a thought he was 
 unconscious of thinking. He had been feel- 
 ing it thus to himself all day. He rang the 
 bell. 
 
 4 Is there a fire in my mothers room ?' he 
 asked. 
 
 'No,' said the servant ; they had forgotten 
 to light it. The servants sat huddled to- 
 gether in the kitchen, describing to each 
 other all the corpses they had ever seen, 
 with comments upon their greater or lesser 
 beauty and upon the ravages caused by 
 various diseases. The cook had occasioned 
 a little unpleasant feeling by the statement 
 that she had owned an aunt the cost of 
 whose funeral had amounted to over a 
 hundred florins. To this poetic license the 
 others had taken exception, even when the 
 items, as described, had been carefully totted 
 up by the butler, and their voices had risen 
 for a moment in indignant discussion, only 
 to be suddenly hushed into whispers of
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM 217 
 
 mutual disparagement, when somebody re- 
 called the fact that their master was lying 
 4 barely cold ' upstairs. 
 
 The pretty housemaid rubbed her warm 
 arm approvingly with one rough little hand. 
 And the butler said sententiously that it was 
 a good thing the dead had to leave their 
 money behind them, and he dared say that 
 Mevrouw would keep up everything just as 
 it was. They all looked at each other. 
 That was an interesting subject, and it 
 caused them to forget the cook's ostentatious 
 relative. They were discussing probabilities 
 when the dining-room bell rang. 
 
 4 Bring a couple more lamps, then ; we 
 shall stay here,' said Hendrik to the butler. 
 4 Commanding like a king,' remarked the 
 latter gentleman on his way downstairs. It 
 was true that the nineteen-year-old son of 
 the house had at once assumed an air of 
 proprietorship. He felt that he was become
 
 218 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 the head of the family as well as of the firm. 
 And without noticing the change himself, 
 he had allowed his voice and manner to take 
 a shade of authority in consequence. 
 
 Yesterday, you see — whatever he might 
 think he merited — he knew that he was of 
 very little importance to anyone but himself, 
 while to-day — why, to-day he was almost as 
 important as his father had been yesterday- — 
 had been this morning. His father! who 
 had always seemed to him the ideal of a 
 social magnate, whose will governed as 
 many inferior wills as that of the colonel 
 of a regiment, and with far more unlimited 
 power. 
 
 He was a minor, of course, but he had not 
 the slightest doubt that he would imme- 
 diately obtain letters of dispensation. Who 
 else could manage the business but he ? He 
 was quite confident that he could manage 
 the business. That was the great weakness 
 in his strength, his overweening self-assur-
 
 THE HEAD OE THE FIRM 219 
 
 ance, and it was the chief cause of the many 
 misfortunes which befell him in his after- 
 life. 
 
 When his mother came back with her 
 other son, she found the lamps distributed 
 over the room as was customary on the 
 occasion of a dinner-party. The festive 
 impression thus effected struck unpleasantly 
 on her freshly- widowed heart. It called up 
 painful recollections of her last conversation 
 with her husband that morning, and of the 
 invitations for next Tuesday which had 
 already been sent round. 
 
 1 Why all these lights ?' she asked. 
 
 ' I hate a half-light,' answered Hendrik 
 abruptly. ' What do you care, mother ? 
 There'll be money enough to pay for a little 
 extra lamp-oil, I should think.' 
 
 4 Papa wouldn't understand, if he came in,' 
 interposed Hubert. 'The room never looks 
 like that.' 
 
 Hendrik glanced scornfully at his twin-
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 brother. ' I thought you knew our father is 
 dead,' he said. ' It's no use speculating on 
 what he would do if he wasn't.' 
 
 ' I know he is dead,' replied Hubert 
 quickly. ' But he is barely dead, Henk.' 
 And again the tears gathered in his 
 eyes. 
 
 Hendrik vouchsafed no answer. He drew 
 a chair forward for his mother, and then said 
 abruptly : ' Mother, here are father's keys.' 
 And he threw them down on the white 
 tablecloth. In his nervousness he threw 
 them more violently than he had intended. 
 They struck against a wine - glass, and 
 broke it. 
 
 4 Oh, Hendrik!' expostulated his mother, 
 4 one of your grandfather's set !' 
 
 ' Not my grandfather's,' replied Hendrik. 
 ' That's where the difference comes in. 
 These social courtesies are all very pretty, 
 but when it comes to legal documents you 
 soon find out that your stepbrother's grand-
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM 221 
 
 father never was yours. We shall have to 
 distinguish henceforth between Elias and 
 ourselves.' 
 
 4 Not as regards these matters,' said his 
 mother. She did not say what matters, but 
 they understood each other perfectly. 
 
 4 In these matters and in all others. And 
 therefore the sooner we know exactly how 
 we stand, the better. I shall go down to the 
 office to-morrow as usual, and Trols must 
 sign till I can get the proper authorization. 
 It's a good thing he is empowered to sign 
 for the firm.' 
 
 1 Couldn't you stay at home till after the 
 funeral ?' queried his mother. 
 
 4 Yes, if they shut up the "Exchange" till 
 then,' sneered the new head of the house. 
 ' Now, mother, there are the keys, as I said, 
 and the best thing we can do is to look over 
 my father's papers. It's no use waiting till 
 you feel inclined, for you won't feel any 
 inclineder to-morrow than to-day.'
 
 222 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ' I did not say I did not feel inclined,' said 
 Judith. 
 
 ' Hubert, you take one lamp, and I'll take 
 another,' Hendrik continued, suiting the 
 action to the word. And so they passed 
 together, the three of them, into the dead 
 man's room. 
 
 The dead man's room does not die with 
 him. On the contrary, it becomes far more 
 vividly, far more painfully alive than it 
 was before his death. It seems to be breath- 
 ing, almost audibly, and as you stand there, 
 lamp in hand, amid the twilight, all its 
 thousand and one little trifling objects seem 
 to be opening their new-found eyes and 
 staring gloomily at you. And when your 
 glance falls unexpectedly on the dead man's 
 hat and gloves, you realize, as you never 
 realized before, that he is dead. 
 
 Judith Lossell took up a woollen comforter, 
 which she had only recently knitted for her 
 husband. She had noticed that morning
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM 223 
 
 that he had neglected to put it on, and she 
 had felt a twinge of displeasure at the thought 
 of his holding her gift in such light esteem. 
 Now, as she took it meditatively in her hands, 
 a couple of tears dropped slowly on the 
 wrap. 
 
 1 Lift up your lamp, so I can see, Huib,' 
 said Hendrik. 
 
 He had set down his own and was trying 
 the keys on his fathers private 4 Chatwood.' 
 
 The safe contained two compartments, the 
 one, with a second door, being reserved for 
 stock, while in the other lay all important 
 documents, not actually convertible into ready 
 money. It was these that Hendrik drew 
 out, leaving the inner division untouched. 
 
 'We can't stop here, 1 he said, 'it's too 
 cold. Mother, would you mind carrying my 
 lamp ?' 
 
 ' Oh no, not here,' said Hubert, in a 
 whisper. 
 
 They went back to the dining - room.
 
 224 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 1 Lock the door, Hubert,' said Hendrik, and 
 he pushed away the dessert things to make a 
 clear space for the bundle he had brought 
 with him. His mother came to the rescue 
 of her crockery, as Hendrik flung down the 
 papers with a thud in a stream over the white 
 table-cloth. And then they gathered around, 
 and watched, the while he sorted them. 
 Presently a hungry flash passed through his 
 eyes. It was gone in an instant. ' This is 
 it,' he said, as he laid down the paper he had 
 just taken up. 
 
 It was the will. 
 
 He began reading it rapidly, the others 
 waiting impatiently meanwhile. Divested 
 of its legal preamble it was very short 
 indeed. 
 
 4 My eldest son Elias being otherwise pro- 
 vided for,' said the testator, k I bequeath to 
 him only that legal portion of which I could 
 not deprive him if I would, while I appoint 
 my twin-sons, his half-brothers, Hendrik and
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM 
 
 Hubert, heirs of all other property of which 
 I die possessed.' 
 
 In Holland a parent cannot entirely dis- 
 inherit his or her child, but must leave it a 
 fraction of the inheritance. 
 
 Hendrik laid down the document. ' That 
 was the best arrangement father could make,' 
 he said with a complacent smile. 4 What's 
 the use of leaving money to a half-witted 
 creature like Elias, who already has his 
 mother's money probably, besides ? You and 
 I must be Yolderdoes Zonen, henceforth, 
 Huib.' 
 
 1 But you haven't found out about Elias's 
 money yet,' said Hubert quietly. 
 
 ■ Oh, that's his mother's fortune, of course, 
 which has been invested in Government 
 securities during his minority. The law 
 arranges all that, Hubert.' 
 
 • I know,' said Hubert, without any sign 
 of impatience. 
 
 'Wait till you see,' interposed Judith. 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 226 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 She recalled several dark threats of her 
 husband's, and her heart was not at 
 rest. 
 
 * Find Papas marriage -settlement,' sug- 
 gested Hubert. He often thought, while 
 Hendrik was busy. 
 
 ' Here is yours, mother." said Hendrik, 
 fumbling among the papers. 
 
 ' I know,' answered Judith angrily. ' It's 
 the other woman's you want.' 
 
 They found it. It was a lengthy docu- 
 ment, a marriage-settlement in propria forma. 
 It settled the sum of one hundred thousand 
 florins on Hendrik Lossell's first wife, and it 
 tied down all the money she would ever 
 possess to herself and her heirs for ever. 
 The money was tied down as tight as family 
 pride can tie. 
 
 ' Of course,' said Hendrik, ' and quite right 
 too. One hundred thousand florins at her 
 marriage. The only question which now 
 remains to be answered is this : What did
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM 227 
 
 old Elias Volderdoes's death add on to that 
 original sum.' 
 
 ' No trifle probably,' remarked Judith. 
 
 ' We shall hardly find an answer to that 
 here,' said Hendrik, pushing the various 
 documents apart with his hand. 
 
 But they did. For they found a copy of 
 old Elias's will. By-the-bye, all these papers 
 were copies. Dutch law recognises no wills 
 except such as are deposited in the hands of 
 the attorneys, who are Government officials. 
 
 And these were the contents of old Elias's 
 will. 
 
 The old gentleman disinherited his 
 daughter, thereby setting the example which 
 that daughter's husband afterwards followed 
 with regard to their child. He decreed that 
 the large sum of which he could not deprive 
 her was to be taken from the money which 
 he had invested in the funds, and this sum, 
 according to the marriage-settlements, would 
 pass to her children at her death.
 
 226 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 And then he came to the capital which 
 was invested in the business. This capital 
 had been divided, shortly before the old 
 man's death, into one hundred shares of ten 
 thousand florins each. Of these shares live 
 only had been allotted to Hendrik Lossell, 
 while the remaining ninety-five had remained 
 the property of Elias Yolderdoes. the head 
 of the firm. 
 
 These ninety-five shares the old gentleman 
 now left to his grandchild and godson Elias, 
 with the express stipulation that they were 
 forthwith to be registered in his name. And 
 furthermore it was expressly directed that, if 
 the boy's mother were to die while he was 
 under age, all profits resulting from these 
 shares were yearly to be invested to the said 
 boy's advantage, after deduction of fifteen 
 per cent, by the father. The money was to 
 remain thus tied up, the testator went on to 
 say, as long as the child was under guardian- 
 ship or curatorship of any kind, and altera-
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM 229 
 
 tions could only be made, when he was able 
 to make them of his own free will. 
 
 Such, in brief, were the contents of this 
 singular document, when divested of all 
 technicalities and superfluities. The testator 
 had known, when he made these restrictions, 
 that his daughter, already ailing and near 
 death, would have no other offspring than 
 Elias. He had centred all his hope on this 
 his only male descendant. For his son-in- 
 law, the penniless robber of his daughter's 
 heart, he had never felt any very great affec- 
 tion, but other near relations he had none, 
 and, if Elias died, well, then there would be 
 nothing left worth caring for, and Elias's 
 father might as well have the money as any- 
 one else. 
 
 But the old man did not believe that 
 Elias would die. He had his little private 
 superstitions, and he believed in the future 
 of Yolderdoes Zonen with Elias at their head. 
 
 The result, then, of old Volderdoes s will,
 
 230 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 in connection with the previous marriage- 
 contract, was this, that every penny of the 
 vast Volderdoes property was settled on 
 Elias Lossell, and that Elias's father had 
 only enjoyed the interest on his wife's legal 
 portion and the fifteen per cent, on Elias's 
 dividends during the years between Mar- 
 garetha's death and Elias's twentieth birth- 
 day. After that birthday even this source of 
 revenue had failed, as all moneys derived 
 from the minor's property must thenceforth 
 be allowed to accumulate, according to the 
 requirements of Dutch law. 
 
 This, however, was not the worst. The 
 worst was undoubtedly that the capital of 
 the firm had been so securely tied down for 
 Elias that there was no getting it loose, 
 unless he himself consented to unfasten it. 
 Any attempt to fictitiously increase that 
 capital — an expedient of very doubtful 
 efficacy — was rendered impossible by the 
 terms of the original agreement.
 
 THE HEAD OF THE FIRM 
 
 I do not know whether I have given the 
 exact stipulations, as they ought to have 
 been stated, for, of course, I have never 
 seen the original documents, which are at 
 the notary's, nor the authenticated copies, 
 which are in the hands of the Lossell family, 
 but I believe that all I have repeated here is 
 substantially accurate, and no doubt it will be 
 found sufficient for the requirements of this 
 story of Elias's fortunes. 
 
 Young Hendrik sat reading the transcript 
 of Elias's grandfather's will with increasing 
 rapidity and heightening colour. When he 
 came to the term ' guardianship or curator- 
 ship,' a subdued exclamation broke from him, 
 which need not here be repeated. He threw 
 the paper across to his mother. 
 
 1 Every penny is Elias's !■ he burst out 
 wildly. ' Great Heaven, that blind idiot is 
 the head of the firm !'
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE, AND THE WAV OUT. 
 
 ' Poor Elias!' said Hubert. 
 
 Perhaps he had never realized so much 
 as at that moment what an immense injury 
 he had unwittingly done his stepbrother. 
 
 And yet he often remembered. It would 
 not be correct to say that he always did so, 
 nor that the recollection saddened his entire 
 life. But it sobered it, casting a shadow at 
 times over its most brilliant sunshine. It 
 was, if you can pardon the simile, like a 
 hollow tooth in his heart, and when he 
 bit on it, he pulled a face. He hardly 
 liked to be thrown much in company with
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE, ETC. 233 
 
 Elias. For Elias reminded him of the 
 tooth. 
 
 4 Poor you !' retorted Hendrik. ' Pity 
 yourself and me, if you want to waste pity 
 on anyone. Or shall we still speak of "dear 
 Grandpapa, " when we remember the old 
 gentleman up there?' He jerked his head 
 in the direction of the great portrait of Elias 
 Volderdoes, which smiled down from the 
 wall with its air of sly pomposity. 
 
 There came a knock at the dining-room 
 door. 
 
 ' Who's there ?' cried Hendrik impatiently, 
 sweeping his arm over the scattered papers. 
 1 Go and be hanged ! You can't come 
 in.' 
 
 Hubert went to the door. It was the 
 man-servant, come to clear away. 
 
 Hendrik passed out to him. ' The notary 
 
 must be sent for at once,' he said. 'And 
 
 Mynheer Alers, also. You know, my friend, 
 
 he lawyer. He had better come after the
 
 234 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 notary is gone. Ask him to step round in 
 half an hour, Mulder.' 
 
 He went back to the others. 
 
 ' And yet, I suppose it is only fair,' said 
 Hubert. 'The firm was originally Yolder- 
 does, and Elias is the only one of us who 
 has any Yolderdoes blood in his veins.' 
 
 ' You are a child, Hubert,' cried his 
 brother, 'and a stupid one. It is not fair. 
 Everyone had a right to expect that, after 
 a quarter of a century of such unceasing 
 work, my father would have bought out 
 any share his first wife had in the business. 
 And so he would have, over and over again, 
 but for this blackguardly clause. He has 
 been working all the time, like a horse, 
 merely to heap up hundreds of thousands 
 of florins for an idiot to whom they are 
 not of the slightest use. I can't imagine 
 what made him keep at it so hard, under 
 the circumstances, unless it was because he 
 couldn't do things otherwise than well. He
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE, ETC. 235 
 
 was a splendid man of business, was my 
 father. I wish you and I may be like 
 him.' 
 
 It was his tribute of esteem to his dead 
 father's memory. And, coming from a 
 young gentleman of his wisdom and self- 
 respect, it was not a little thing. 
 
 ' After all,' he added presently, ' Papa must 
 have left a lot of money behind him. I 
 dare say there will be no difficulty there. 
 But what is to become of Yolderdoes Zonen 
 Providence alone can tell.' 
 
 His voice faltered with sincere emotion 
 over the final words. 
 
 Vet another disappointment awaited Judith 
 Lossell and her sons. It could not be long 
 before they made the discovery that the 
 Town Councillor had not left a large fortune 
 behind him. And, truly, young Hendrik 
 was deserving of pity, as he fell from one 
 disclosure to another. Soon the whole truth
 
 236 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 lay bare before him, and he must face it as 
 best he could. 
 
 The very fact of his having been bound 
 down to what he must consider perpetual 
 poverty had driven the merchant into re- 
 peated speculation as the one means of 
 achieving a fortune. During the short 
 period of his marriage his income had been 
 very large, and even after his wife's death, 
 up to Elias's twentieth year, it had remained 
 considerable, although his share of the great 
 profits of the firm had then become restricted 
 to the dividends on his own five shares and 
 the fifteen per cent, allotted him on his son's 
 large revenue. With the money he had 
 been enabled to lay on one side he had 
 speculated on the Stock Exchange — 'for my 
 children's sake,' he told himself, but not with 
 the success so worthy an object merited. Of 
 late, especially, when his income had so much 
 decreased, his attempts to make good the 
 deficit had proved singularly unfortunate,
 
 XO THOROUGHFARE, ETC. 237 
 
 and when he died, stricken down suddenly, 
 and still in the prime of life, he left liabilities 
 which far exceeded the value of his personal 
 estate. The great firm of Yolderdoes Zonen 
 was as wealthy and prosperous as ever, but 
 its head was practically insolvent. 
 
 The merchant, it must be said to his 
 honour, had been scrupulously upright in the 
 administration of his son's fortune. How 
 easy it would have been for him to slur over 
 accounts, nay, actually to ignore them. But, 
 once having bound himself down to this con- 
 tract by which he accepted the position of 
 acting partner on five shares and fifteen per 
 cent, of all remaining net profits, with his son 
 as sleeping partner and owner of the whole 
 business, he had drawn up his annual 
 accounts as if a board of directors were wait- 
 ing to audit them. While practically poor 
 himself, he had heaped up his son's great 
 fortune with consistent accuracy. It lay 
 there, gradually swelling to a total such as is
 
 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 rarely met with in Holland ; it lay useless, 
 and, as loner as Elias lived, there it must 
 lie. Hendrik Lossell's commercial integrity 
 accepted the terrible fact as inevitable. It 
 might cause him to wish at times for the 
 death of the hopeless owner, but he had 
 never taken any steps by which his father-in- 
 law's wishes might be set aside. 
 
 And yet. when his son came of age, he 
 could easily have attempted some adjustment 
 of his difficulties. He had shrunk from 
 doing so. Perhaps he had remained for 
 some time hesitating and uncertain, and on 
 that very account had delayed the appoint- 
 ment of a curator. Perhaps he had preferred 
 to leave the whole matter to his heirs, pre- 
 suming that they would be less scrupulous 
 than he. 
 
 However this might be, he had lived up 
 to his standard of honour ; and, when he 
 was suddenly struck down, the enormous 
 fortune of Elias was found intact in the
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE, ETC 239 
 
 hands of the family notary, in so far as it 
 was not already secured in Dutch consols 
 or in the shares of the firm. He had 
 brought it to the above-mentioned func- 
 tionary a few days before his death. It was 
 as if he no longer trusted himself, after all 
 these faithful years, to have it lying ready 
 for immediate use. For, indeed, he might 
 easily have used it, if only as security. 
 
 \\ hen young Hendrik, with white face 
 and smarting eyes, walked into his fathers 
 deserted room, and drew forth the second 
 key, and opened the inner division of the 
 safe, he found it empty. 
 
 He went up to his mothers bedroom and 
 knocked at the door. 
 
 ' You can't come in, Hendrik.' 
 
 ' But I must, mother.' 
 
 ' You can't. I have the dressmaker with 
 me.' 
 
 ■ Send her away, somewhere, anywhere.
 
 24 o GOD'S FOOL 
 
 I must come in ' — this in French, which the 
 dressmaker understood perfectly. ' Tell her 
 to go downstairs and make dresses for the 
 servants. All the servants must go into 
 mourning. I should think so. II y a de quoi.' 
 
 'Je ne travaille pas pour la domesticite, 
 Madame,' said the dressmaker inside, in- 
 dignantly, wishing to show that she also 
 could speak the language of fashion and 
 fashions, as well as young gentlemen who 
 dealt in tea. 
 
 ' I know, I know, my good creature,' 
 replied Judith wearily. 4 It's only that he 
 wants to come in. You might as well take 
 that bodice into the next room and alter 
 the tucker. He will only be a minute, I 
 dare say.' 
 
 % I could do it better at home,' said the 
 dressmaker peevishly. 
 
 ' I can't help it,' replied the mistress of the 
 house. k You see he says he wants to come 
 in. And I suppose he must.' All her
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE, ETC. 241 
 
 strength seemed to have gone out of her. 
 She was rapidly learning to ' knuckle under ' 
 to her son. 
 
 At this juncture Hendrik rattled the door 
 lock. He was getting tired of waiting. 
 1 Renvoyez-la,' he cried. 
 The dressmaker came out, casting annihi- 
 lating glances at the young tyrant. They 
 did not annihilate him, however, because he 
 did not see them. He rushed past her, at 
 a bound, and into his mother's presence. 
 
 1 Mother !' he cried. ' This is no time for 
 fooling. Borlett will be here in ten minutes, 
 and I must know what to say to him. My 
 father's left nothing but debts. And who's 
 to pay them ? The only thing we can do is 
 to repudiate the inheritance at once.' 
 
 Judith Lossell turned very pale. All the 
 pride of this wife and daughter of merchants 
 rose up in terrified protest. Such disgrace 
 was impossible. Who could lift up his head 
 again after it ? 
 
 vol. 1. 16
 
 242 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 1 Refuse to pay the debts !' she stammered. 
 ' Hendrik, what can you be thinking of? 
 Whatever happens, we could never sink as 
 low as that.' 
 
 1 We shall have to,' said Hendrik sullenly. 
 
 The poor woman turned from one falling 
 pillar and clutched feebly at another. 
 
 4 Hubert would never allow it,' she said. 
 
 'Hubert! Hubert!' cried Hendrik in a 
 towering rage. k And who is Hubert, and 
 what is Hubert, pray, to allow or disallow ? 
 Will he make money for us out of pebbles, 
 with his sentimental airs and superior refine- 
 ment ? I can cry enough, if you like, and if 
 you think crying will do any good. Hubert, 
 indeed ! As if Hubert had an inkling of an 
 idea, what this ignominy means to me.' He 
 checked himself. His voice sank. He 
 looked quite old and skinny and careworn, 
 this boy of nineteen. 
 
 ' I only meant that it cannot be,' protested 
 Judith faintly. ' It is too terrible.'
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE, ETC. 243 
 
 ' Look here, mother,' said Hendrik fiercely, 
 ' it is terrible, and it is absurd at the same 
 time. But for us it is not funny, only 
 hideous. Yet it is ludicrous, none the less, 
 with the business one of the finest in 
 Holland. It means giving over our family 
 secrets to be the laughing-stock of every 
 club or exchange in the country. But it 
 can't be helped. At least, I see no way to 
 avoid it, and I've been thinking over the 
 matter till I believe my hair is turning gray. 
 There's some twenty thousand florins still 
 in various securities, and there's the fifty 
 thousand of the firm, that's seventy. And 
 there's a hundred thousand owing to the 
 brokers after this fresh fall in North 
 American Railways, which ought to be paid 
 in forty-eight hours. The best thing is for 
 me just simply to go and tell them that there 
 will be an inventory, and that they must 
 get what they can out of the property. 
 The house, it appears, is Elias's. I
 
 244 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 dare say they'll be civil to me when I 
 explain.' 
 
 He choked over the words, but set his 
 face hard. 
 
 4 You see, you must,' he went on. ' We're 
 minors. You're guardian. They'll come 
 and ask you to pay. And you ' — another 
 gulp — ' can't. What'll you say, then, 
 mother ?' 
 
 He looked at her for a moment, sitting 
 there in her half - finished widow's dress. 
 Then he fixed his eyes on the floor. And 
 then he lifted them again to her face. She 
 did not speak. What should she say ? 
 
 And then suddenly he threw his arms 
 round her neck and burst into tears. He 
 was only nineteen. This was very different 
 from being lord of 4 Volderdoes Zonen,' or 
 even only a merchant - princelet and heir 
 apparent. He was utterly broken down 
 and ashamed. 
 
 'And Elias's millions!' he said fiercely,
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE, ETC. 245 
 
 after a moment, between his sobs. His 
 voice grew hideous with hate. 
 
 'Yes, he could save us,' answered his 
 mother eagerly, 'and why not, Henk? I 
 cannot understand it. He is of age. He is 
 not under anyone's control now. Can't he 
 do as he likes with his money ?' 
 
 ' I suppose so, r faltered Hendrik. 
 
 1 Then why can he not spend it as we 
 advise him to ?' 
 
 Hendrik hesitated. A gleam of hope, and 
 more than hope, played about his cunning 
 little face. 
 
 'It all depends,' he said slowly, 'whether 
 Elias is crazy or not.' 
 
 And then a long silence fell upon them.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 HEXDRIKS TEMPTATION. 
 
 1 There is one way out, of course,' said 
 Alers. ' As you probably know, even better 
 than I.' 
 
 ' And which is that ?' asked Hendrik, with- 
 out looking at his friend. 
 
 1 Your step-brother. 1 
 
 Alers was a young Koopstader, a few years 
 older than Lossell. All the Koopstaders 
 being connected by some bond of marriage, 
 whether in this century or the last, there was 
 a kind of relationship between these two 
 young men also, but neither of them had 
 as yet reached a sufficiently eminent position
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 247 
 
 in the world for the other to remember that 
 they were cousins. The world is full ol 
 these one-sided kinships, which never attain 
 to mutual recognition, because they are 
 always either forgotten by both equals or 
 ignored by one superior, and in Koopstad 
 especially there was not much honour to be 
 obtained by the casual mention of ' my cousin 
 the Burgomaster,' because the Burgomaster 
 was everybody else's cousin also, at least 
 from the point of view of the everybody 
 else. 
 
 Thomas Alers had enjoyed the advantages 
 of a university education and had recently 
 settled down in his native city as an advocate, 
 practising in the courts of law. He was a 
 sharp young man. By a sharp young man 
 is very often meant a young man whose 
 moral side is blunt, so blunt that the money- 
 making, pushing side comes out cute per 
 contrast. It would be premature to say that 
 Alers was that kind of sharp young man.
 
 i48 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 As yet he had little to do, but great pros- 
 pects. The prospects were visible to his 
 mind's far-seeing eye ; the smallness of his 
 present occupations to the most near-sighted 
 busybody in Koopstad. 
 
 Busybodies, however — this by the way- 
 are never near-sighted, although they almost 
 invariably squint. 
 
 1 Elias Croesus or the Croesus Elias,' the 
 young lawyer continued, playing carelessly 
 with his stick. 4 Of this Croesus it may also 
 be said that you can call no man happy until 
 he is dead, that is to say, the Croesus. You 
 understand ? No ? Well, it's hardly worth 
 thinking out. All the same, it's a great 
 nuisance for you, Lossell, that Hubert didn't 
 give that pot a harder push." 
 
 'Once for all, none of that,' burst out 
 Hendrik with an indignation which seemed 
 almost disproportionate. ' It's useless. And 
 it's disgusting. I won't hear it. I've got
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 249 
 
 enough to do with my own thoughts, worse 
 luck.' 
 
 'Tut, tut,' said the other coolly. ' It's no 
 affair of mine. And even you can't be more 
 willing than I to do homage to the new head 
 of the house, Elias the Second — or is it 
 Third ? I was thinking of going out to him 
 this afternoon and asking him to let me have 
 some of your law-business. I'd do it cheaper 
 than your father's man.' 
 
 1 Nonsense,' cried Hendrik, more indig- 
 nantly still. ' You know perfectly well that 
 Elias isn't head of the firm, and never could 
 be. It's bad enough, as it is, that he should 
 be sleeping partner at all. You needn't make 
 it worse !' 
 
 ' Sleeping owner, you mean,' retorted 
 Thomas lazily. ' I don't know, I'm sure, 
 who's the firm, if he is not.' 
 
 1 The firm !' stuttered Hendrik. ■ There is 
 none. I mean I shall — I ought to — what are 
 you insinuating, Alers ? What do you want ?
 
 250 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 Do you advise me to kill Elias as the shortest 
 means of inheriting his wealth ?' 
 
 The lawyer started to his feet. His whole 
 manner changed in a moment. ' Don't father 
 your thoughts on me,' he said very angrily. 
 4 I never said, or hinted, or dreamed of, any- 
 thing as atrocious. And if you choose to sit 
 hatching monstrosities, remember the original 
 bad egg was your own, if you please. How 
 dare you suggest to me, Hendrik, that I 
 am to blame for the abominations of your 
 thoughts ? 
 
 ' I fancied it was all in your days work to 
 suspect everyone of thinking abominations,' 
 answered Hendrik, somewhat alarmed. 
 1 You've often said so. And, besides, you 
 declared just now that my brother supplied 
 me with the only means out of the difficulty. 
 \\ nat else did you allude to ?' 
 
 ' You are too agitated to discuss any sub- 
 ject sensibly,' said Thomas Alers. ' If you 
 will sit down, and listen calmly, well and
 
 HEXDRIKS TEMPT A TIOX 
 
 good. If not, I would rather take leave of 
 you for the present. There's a client coming 
 to _see me to-morrow morning.' he added 
 proudly, ' and I have a number of papers to 
 look over for him still.' 
 
 Hendrik threw himself violently into a 
 corner of the sofa, and sat there the picture 
 of sullen impatience. 
 
 1 The last thing any reasonable being 
 would suggest,' the young advocate went 
 on, ' would be that you or anyone else should 
 in any way injure your unfortunate step- 
 brother. On the contrary, your only wax- 
 out of the difficulties in which you find your- 
 self is to treat him with all due affection and 
 regard. He is a very important personage 
 now. The most important in all Koopstad, 
 I should almost venture to say. Except, 
 perhaps, my cousin, the Burgomaster.' Alers 
 was poor. His mother had married beneath 
 her. He liked to allude to his mother's rela- 
 tions.
 
 25 2 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ' He is an idiot,' said Hendrik, 'and ought 
 to be under proper guardianship.' 
 
 1 He is blind, poor fellow,' replied Alers. 
 'And he is deaf. His memory, I have often 
 heard from you, is weak, and he thinks 
 slowly. Does that constitute idiocy ?' 
 
 1 You know nothing about him,' said Hen- 
 drik irritably. ' You have never even seen 
 him, I believe.' 
 
 1 I know this,' retorted Alers imperturb- 
 ably, ' that your father was never so incensed 
 as when anyone dared to suggest that his 
 eldest son was not in full possession of his 
 senses, such as they were.' 
 
 4 He is an idiot, all the same,' repeated 
 Hendrik. 
 
 ' If that is true, I am very sorry for you, 
 for then there seems to me to be no way out 
 of your difficulty at all.' 
 
 Hendrik sat up and stared at him. ■ What 
 do you mean ?' he said. 
 
 1 Surely it is very simple, Lossell. You
 
 HENDRIKS TEMPTATION 253 
 
 are not nearly as clear-headed a man of busi- 
 ness as I thought you. By the terms of the 
 old gentleman's testament the situation is to 
 remain unaltered until Elias can alter it of 
 his own free will. Now, if his mind is de- 
 ranged, he has got no free will of his own, 
 and he must accordingly be placed under a 
 " curator." ' 
 
 ' I have thought of that,' said Hendrik. 
 4 The will expressly says " guardians or 
 curators." I should in any case be the one 
 trustee, and Hubert would probably be the 
 other.' 
 
 ' Probably, but it is by no means certain. 
 In fact, from a few words that Borlett, your 
 father's notary, dropped yesterday, I fancy 
 he would stir up the two other members of 
 the family council to propose a different 
 trustee to the juge de paix. Don't forget 
 that you two step-brothers are his heirs, and 
 that Elias has distant cousins enough on the 
 Volderdoes side. The judges don't, as a
 
 54 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 rule, look after the interests of such unfor- 
 tunates over-zealously, but this property is 
 large enough to attract the attention of all 
 Koopstad, and, even if you should be the 
 sole trustees, you will find public opinion 
 watches your doings pretty sharply." 
 
 ' I don't want to do anything wrong,' inter- 
 posed Hendrik. 
 
 ' Of course not, but you will find it difficult 
 to do anything at all, once you get a " cura- 
 tela " instituted. We needn't go into law 
 talk just now. But you will soon perceive, 
 I can tell you, that your crazy brother's 
 money would be immovably fixed in the 
 business and on the " Great Book of the 
 National Debt," and there it could go on use- 
 lessly accumulating as it has done hitherto.' 
 
 4 Then it must accumulate. / can't help 
 it.' 
 
 1 On the other hand, the law recognises no 
 gradations between absolute incapacity and 
 entire responsibility. It can't do so. A
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 255 
 
 man is either incapable of spending one 
 farthing on lollipops, or fit to look after a 
 business involving a couple of millions. 
 There is no alternative. And if a man isn't 
 mad, he is sane.' 
 
 ' You want me to say that Elias isn't an 
 idiot,' spake Hendrik. ' Very well ; he isn't. 
 He is a man of remarkable intelligence. 
 He is a Sophocles — what d'ye call 'im ?— 
 Socrates, I mean.' 
 
 4 No, he is not, you fool,' hissed his friend 
 in swift sharp accents, angry for the first 
 time, ' and he needn't be, as I tell you. He 
 needn't even be as clever a creature as you 
 are. It's quite sufficient for him to be 
 hovering on the border, as long as he's 
 hovering on the proper side.' 
 
 ' And why ?' asked Hendrik. He was 
 not offended. I think it was one of the 
 worst traits in a character not otherwise evil 
 that insult did not annoy him. ' For him, I 
 grant it you. But not for us. If the busi-
 
 256 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ness be liquidated, as I suppose it must be, 
 and all this money be put into Elias's foolish 
 hands, he will make ducks and drakes of it 
 in a month.' 
 
 The lawyer turned full upon his friend. 
 ' Is it that you really can't understand me, or 
 is it that you won't ?' he asked. 
 
 The other shifted uneasily on his seat. 
 
 ' Hum,' said Alers, and again, for a few 
 moments, he became engrossed in the points 
 of his boots and the tip of his cane. 
 
 ' You might, at any rate, speak plainly, 
 when you do speak,' remarked Hendrik 
 presently. 
 
 ' I don't speak. I have no wish to speak 
 unless I'm asked,' was the quick reply. 
 
 1 Well, I ask you,' said Lossell humbly. 
 
 ' Then this is all I have to say. I make 
 no doubt you are saying it to yourself. 
 Avoid by all means in your power the ap- 
 pointment of guardians for Elias, even it 
 those guardians be your brother and your-
 
 HEXDRIK'S TEMPTATION 257 
 
 self. Prove to the outer world that, although 
 afflicted in the loss of his physical senses, he 
 has retained the clear use of his brain and is 
 quite able to look after his own interests.' 
 
 1 And then ?' asked Hendrik, his eyes fixed 
 on the ceiling. 
 
 ' You press me unduly. The interests of 
 brothers surely should have much in common.' 
 And when they clash ? 
 
 1 It seems to me the stronger brain should 
 conquer/ 
 
 Another pause. A longer one this time. 
 Then said Hendrik : ' Alers, what makes 
 you say these things ? What makes you 
 care to say them ? 
 
 ' I ? replied the other lightly, as he rose 
 to go. 4 Philanthropy ! My affection for 
 you, and my love of well-doing ! What 
 else ?' 
 
 ' Oh, nothing else,' said Hendrik. 
 
 But the lawyer did not quite want to leave 
 
 vol. 1. 17
 
 258 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 him under that impression — if he really had 
 it. 
 
 4 And, of course, it is an advantage to me 
 to have you as a friend. You will be a rich 
 man some day, Lossell, a rich man soon, I 
 fancy, for you are going to be head of the 
 great firm. After all, Elias hasn't been 
 brought up to business-habits, and in his 
 own advantage, as well as in yours, he will 
 have to make over to you what is yours by 
 right. And when you are a rich man, you 
 will want a professional adviser. I think 
 you want one already. It's a pleasant thing 
 to be a rich man. The next best thing is to 
 be a rich man's friend. Ta, ta.' 
 
 4 I haven't got any money to buy it up,' 
 burst out Lossell. 
 
 The other paused in the doorway. 
 
 4 What price does Elias ask ?' he said. 
 4 You don't know yet ? Ah, I thought so. 
 Well, a good deal will depend upon that. 
 Tell me, when you know. Or don't ; just
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 259 
 
 as you prefer. It's no business of anybody's, 
 as far as I can see. Quite a family arrange- 
 ment. Good-night.' 
 
 Left alone, Hendrik remained for a long 
 time without moving, huddled up in his 
 corner of the sofa, his eyes fixed intently on 
 some spot they did not see. He had under- 
 stood his friend perfectly. 
 
 Vague conceptions which had been floating 
 in his own brain had received definite form 
 and substance. And mistaken impressions 
 had been corrected. He had had a confused 
 idea that Elias might be made harmless by 
 being declared insane, and that then the 
 man who administrated his fortune for him, 
 would be allowed to use it, as far as was 
 necessary, for the welfare of the whole 
 family. It had not occurred to him, at least 
 not in that concise form, that it would be far 
 simpler and more efficacious to let his step- 
 brother give his money, instead of taking it
 
 2 6o GOD'S FOOL 
 
 away from him. But at the first hint in that 
 direction, he had seen the whole path clear 
 before him at once. Nothing would be 
 easier, if Elias were left master of himself, 
 than to prove to him that expediency or 
 honesty or any other motive which came 
 handy required him to cede the business to 
 his brothers. He would make a present of 
 it to them ; nay, still better, he would sell it 
 to them for an old glove. A new deed must 
 be drawn up, by which Elias, of his own 
 free will, liberated the acting partners from 
 the yoke which old Yolderdoes had fastened 
 on their necks. The shares must be redis- 
 tributed, Elias selling the larger part of 
 them to his step-brothers at a nominal price, 
 and the profits, also, must be restored to the 
 people who worked for them. 
 
 What could be fairer, if you came to think 
 of it ? Elias would be quite rich enough, 
 even if he lost this great income from the 
 business to which he had practically no right.
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 261 
 
 Vested interests ? Capital ? Ah, vested 
 interests always look unjust when it's another 
 man that they're vested in. And it appeared 
 to Hendrik that Elias had already drawn far 
 more than he deserved from these vested 
 interests of his. ' Whose the labour is, his 
 should the profits be,' he said to himself. He 
 did not say it to his employes. What would 
 Hubert think ? There might be a slight 
 difficulty there, but hardly a very serious 
 one. Nothing could be done till Hendrik 
 had obtained the dispensation he hoped for, 
 and then it was he who would have to do 
 everything. Hubert would be altogether a 
 secondary person. And it would be easy to 
 find a notary who was more obliging than 
 Borlett. 
 
 Ouf ! It seemed very simple. And really 
 very fair. Were those not the words which 
 constantly returned to his thoughts ? Why 
 did they return so constantly, and why did he 
 not simply accept them, and repose in them,
 
 262 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 so to say ? Why need he repeat thus over 
 and over again : And really very fair ? Of 
 course it was fair. Quite fair. Was it not 
 fair ? 
 
 Must a dead man, then, dead a quarter of 
 a century ago, rule the world by the eternal 
 law of his injustice ? And had not this man 
 himself indicated the way of escape ? Elias 
 should decide when he came of age. Elias 
 was of age. Let him decide. 
 
 He put on his hat, and went out. 
 
 Where to, he did not know. He thought 
 the air would do him good. It had been his 
 nightly pleasure, when the day's work was 
 over, to loiter down the gaslit streets of 
 Koopstad, with some equally exquisite friend, 
 the delight of all beholders, on his way to 
 the theatre or the music-hall. To-night he 
 shrank from the far din of the populous 
 streets. It seemed to him as if everybody in
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 263 
 
 Koopstad knew of his dilemma, and could 
 read his thoughts. He crept away, and 
 slunk down back streets, towards the quays, 
 and, almost before he heeded whither he was 
 going, he found that his accustomed steps 
 had brought him to the warehouse-door. 
 
 He rang the door-keeper's bell, again 
 scarcely knowing why. As he was there, he 
 might as well go in for a moment, and see 
 that all was right. 
 
 He passed by the old concierge, with a 
 hurried recognition, and walked swiftly down 
 the corridor towards his father's private room. 
 He had never yet been in it by evening. 
 The father would sometimes return to his 
 office after dinner. He had not required this 
 of his son. 
 
 Was it this feeling of singularity, or some 
 strange awe of night that made him hesitate 
 on the threshold ? What is it that causes the 
 dead to be nearest to us at night-time, calling 
 them up out of the darkness into which they
 
 264 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 sank from our sight ? Do they really revisit 
 their earthly haunts in those still hours only, 
 when they need not fear the sunlight which 
 to them is an eternal terror and regret ? 
 When we come suddenly into the dark room, 
 which was theirs before they left us, we feel 
 their breath fall cold upon our faces, and, as 
 we turn rapidly to look behind us from the 
 newly-lighted candle, we catch a glimpse of 
 the shadow of their shadow flitting away into 
 the widening light. 
 
 Young Hendrik Lossell had never felt his 
 dead father so near to him as now when he 
 stood a moment irresolute in the dark passage 
 outside that closed door. 
 
 He felt for his matches, and struck a light. 
 And then he threw open the door and 
 stumbled forward into the room. 
 
 It was already lighted — dimly — by a 
 movable gas-lamp which stood on the mantel- 
 piece. 
 
 Hendrik threw away his match with an
 
 HEXDRIK'S TEMPTATION 265 
 
 exclamation of surprise. His brother Hubert 
 was sitting motionless in a corner of the 
 room. 
 
 ' You here !' he cried. ' What in the name 
 of goodness ' 
 
 ' Hush/ said Hubert — almost solemnly. 
 
 Hendrik laughed — a nervous laugh. He 
 went round to his brother. ' I can't imagine 
 what you are after, Huib,' he said. 
 
 Hubert looked up at him, and Hendrik 
 saw that his face was white. ' W nat are you 
 after?' said Hubert. 
 
 ' I ?' stammered Hendrik, at a loss. ' I 
 
 came to see ' Again Hubert stopped 
 
 him. 
 
 'You came because you were called,' he 
 said. 4 I knew you were coming. I knew it 
 just when you opened the door. Father had 
 told me.' 
 
 'Father!' cried Hendrik, almost with a 
 
 scream. ■ Hubert, you are ' The other 
 
 started up and flung his hand on his brother's
 
 266 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 mouth. ' Still, ' he cried. ' He will hear 
 you. For God's sake, be still.' 
 
 ' Don't be vexed with me,' Hubert went on 
 hurriedly. l I came here, I don't quite know 
 why. I couldn't stop indoors, so I ran out, 
 and my footsteps brought me here. I thought 
 I should like to be quite alone in this place 
 once in a way and think of my father's work- 
 ing and — and dying here. And I got Peter 
 to let me in. Of course the place reminds 
 one of father more than any other. And— 
 and, Henk,' — his voice dropped to a whisper; 
 he pointed with one hand — ' that's, that's his 
 chair.' 
 
 ' I know that, surely,' said Hendrik im- 
 patiently, but trembling from head to foot as 
 he cast a frightened glance towards the round 
 leather-cushioned armchair before the im- 
 mense ' bureau ministre ' in the middle of the 
 room. On the table the blotter lay, neatly 
 closed ; a number of petty, well-known 
 objects, penholders, a large seal, a pair of
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 267 
 
 scissors, were arranged in tidy rows, waiting 
 for the hand that had used them so often. 
 Its shadow still seemed to hover over them. 
 The gas-lamp now burning on the mantelpiece 
 had been invariably used by the merchant on 
 his desk when he required light. 
 
 ' I've seen him sitting in it clay after day,' 
 said Hendrik. Something in his brother's 
 nervous voice and awe-struck manner irritated 
 and agitated him both in one. 
 
 1 Ah, but I saw T him sitting there to-night,' 
 whispered Hubert. ' Don't stare at me like 
 that, Hendrik. He was sitting very quietly, 
 gazing at the table in front of him, sitting- 
 just as he used to sit. And after a few 
 moments, he turned round and looked at me- 
 and his face was dreadfully, unfathomably 
 sad. And then I knew that you would 
 come.' 
 
 ' Come away,' cried Hendrik, pulling at 
 his brother's arm, and trying to make his 
 voice as loud as he could without raising it
 
 268 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ■ Come away immediately. It's horrible, 
 Hubert, and I won't stay to hear any more 
 of it." 
 
 'There is no more,' said Hubert. 'Why 
 is it horrible? No, Hendrik, you must stay. 
 For that is why you are come. Hendrik, we 
 must save the old house. Do you hear me ? 
 And we must save our father's memory. 
 There must not be a whisper against it in 
 Koopstad, not a whisper. We must all take 
 our share of the burden, and therefore Elias 
 must take his. Elias must pay the debts, 
 and he must support mother so that no one 
 may know she has less money than for- 
 merly. He owes that to his father's 
 memory, and we must tell him to do it. 
 Is it not so ?' 
 
 4 Yes, yes,' said Hendrik, gasping for 
 breath. ' What more ?' 
 
 ' And we owe it to our father's memory to 
 reverence our step-brother's misfortune, and' 
 to protect him from all injury and all insult.
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 269 
 
 Not I only who — not I only, you also. He, 
 on his side, will do his duty, as we bid him, 
 and we will do ours. It will be a bond, dear 
 Hendrik, between us and him. And the 
 thought that he has been enabled thus to 
 help us will make his welfare sacred in our 
 sight ; will it not ?' 
 
 4 Yes,' said Hendrik in a toneless voice. 
 
 • He hears us, 1 continued Hubert, speaking 
 slightly louder. He drew his brother to- 
 wards him, and advanced a little nearer to 
 the empty chair. ' He hears us, I am sure 
 of it, he, who always, through the long years 
 of his untiring labour, held the cruel rights of 
 his hapless son as a thing too holy to be 
 touched. We will do like him. And we 
 will ask nothing of Elias but what we know 
 it is his duty to accord. We declare it, 
 father, even as in thy presence. And if thou 
 understand us, let that sadness die away for 
 ever from thy sight.' 
 
 ' Let us swear it, Henk,' he added softly,
 
 27 o GOD'S FOOL 
 
 after a moment's solemn pause. ' Swear to 
 save his memory by Elias's help, to main- 
 tain the house in its greatness by all 
 powers at our command, and to further the 
 welfare of Elias as if it were our own. 
 Swear/ 
 
 Hendrik clasped his brother's hand, and 
 bent his head without speaking. 
 
 ' We swear,' said Hubert for them both. 
 ' So be it,' he added. ' So help us God 
 Almighty. We have sworn. And now let 
 us go and speak to Elias.' 
 
 'It is too late to-night,' began Hendrik 
 feebly. 
 
 1 No, no ; it is not yet near nine. Let us 
 get it over to-night, and then we can rest in 
 peace. Better have it done to-night. There 
 is yet time.' 
 
 And without casting another look back- 
 wards into the dim, dreary office-room under 
 its strange air of disturbed daylight, without 
 a thought for the lamp left burning on the
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPT AT I OS 271 
 
 mantelpiece, Hubert lied down the passage, 
 followed by Hendrik. 
 
 The old Chinaman, left alone with the 
 shaded light and the memory of the dead, 
 winked hideously from the elevated shrine 
 whence he had presided for so many years 
 over the fortunes of the great house of 
 Volderdoes. Probably he was well con- 
 tent. For even he could not, with that 
 power which is the common privilege only 
 of dead saints and living devils, look 
 far into the awful future, and foretell 
 the bloody sequel of that night's solemn 
 vow. 
 
 Old Peter was not sentimental. He came 
 in a few minutes later and turned off the gas, 
 with many grumblings at the recklessness of 
 the young and laudations of his own vigi- 
 lance. And before he turned the screw, his 
 eye fell on Hendrik's half -smoked cigar, 
 which had been flung into the grate. And 
 he extracted it carefully, and dusted it, and
 
 272 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 took it away with him into his lodge. And 
 there he smoked it. 
 
 The two brothers found Johanna in the 
 act of helping Elias to bed. In fact, she had 
 just completed his toilet ; and he was saying 
 his prayers. They came in upon this, the 
 maid having admitted them, and stood wait- 
 ing till he had done. The words fell 
 solemnly on the stillness, issuing from that 
 cavern of darkness. They were few words 
 and simple, such as any child may speak, 
 strangely in contrast with the massive frame 
 and powerful head of this man in the full 
 bloom of a manly adolescence. He thanked 
 God, as usual, for having given him Voider- 
 does Zonen to provide him with all that he 
 needed. Hubert looked at Hendrik. Hen- 
 drik winced and closed his eyes. 
 
 And then he prayed for his father, forget- 
 ting that he was dead. 
 
 When he had done, Hubert went up and
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 273 
 
 tried to speak to him, but his hand trembled, 
 and Elias shrank back, as if in pain, from 
 the agitated movement of his fingers. ' You 
 interpret for us, Johanna,' said Hubert. ' Tell 
 him we are here. Remind him that papa is 
 dead. Tell him that he is now very rich. 
 That he has got a great deal of money. 
 Does he understand ?' 
 
 'Yes, I understand,' said Elias, with his 
 bell-like voice. ' Then, if I have got a lot 
 of money, may the old man have his beef- 
 tea ?' 
 
 ' He means an old man who comes here 
 every morning,' said Johanna. ' There was 
 none to-day.' 
 
 ' Say yes, yes,' burst in Hendrik, as a man 
 speaks when he breaks suddenly through 
 restraint. 
 
 'Say yes,' repeated Hubert, 'but tell him 
 we shall want some of his money, not much 
 considering, for the maintenance of Voider- 
 does Zonen. Does he understand ?' 
 
 vol. 1. 18
 
 274 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 ' I understand,' said Elias again. ' If there 
 were no Yolderdoes Zonen, I should be very 
 unhappy indeed.' 
 
 ' Then he wants it to continue to exist ?' 
 
 'Yes, yes,' interrupted Hendrik. 
 
 'Ask him, Johanna, if he wishes to do 
 all he can that it should continue to do 
 so?' 
 
 ' But I can't do anything,' said Elias, as 
 soon as this was made plain to him. ' I can't 
 do anything.' He sat up in bed. ' What 
 can I do ?' he repeated excitedly. 
 
 Johanna soothed him. It was told him 
 that he must give money to pay his father's 
 debts, and a yearly sum to support his step- 
 mother. 
 
 It might be questioned how much he 
 understood of all this, but there could not 
 be the slightest doubt of his eagerness to 
 give to whoever wanted or ever asked his 
 support. Had they asked him to divide a 
 million florins between his brothers, he would
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 275 
 
 unhesitatingly have trusted them and done 
 as they required. 
 
 4 No, no, no,' said Hubert. 4 That is quite 
 enough. Tell him that we will bring him 
 the necessary papers to sign (he must make 
 a cross) when they can be ready. I am sure 
 Borlett will help us, Hendrik, in all this. 
 And now tell him also, Johanna, that we 
 thank him. Tell him that we have sworn 
 to do all in our power to help and to protect 
 him. Never mind if he understands it all. 
 Tell him that we love him ; he will under- 
 stand that. And that we will be good 
 brothers to him, by the help of God.' 
 
 4 I understand,' said Elias after a pause. 
 4 Kiss me, Hubert. Kiss me, Hendrik. I 
 am very sleepy. I think I should like to go 
 to sleep.' 
 
 1 Thank you, gentlemen,' said Johanna 
 with the tears in her honest eyes. 
 
 ' Nothing more ridiculous,' Alers was re-
 
 276 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 peating at the Club, 4 than the thesis that 
 a man must be insane because he is blind, 
 or deaf or even both. It is outrageous. 
 The law knows no guardianship of those who 
 have lost the use of their organs of sense. 
 The brain — ah, that is a different thing. 
 Homer was blind. Galileo was blind — 
 wasn't he? And so was Milton. And I'm 
 sure that a great number of eminent men 
 were deaf and dumb, only one doesn't 
 remember their names. Now there's Elias 
 Lossell, you were speaking of — or was I 
 speaking of him ? Well, it doesn't matter — 
 I know the Lossells well. I can assure you 
 Elias is no more idiotic than you or I. I 
 don't say he is as intelligent — but there's 
 a great difference. Now I don't pretend 
 to be nearly as intelligent as you are, but 
 I must object to being called more idiotic. I 
 repeat, such a nature has naturally great dis- 
 advantages, but the law fortunately does not 
 add to their number. And it would be outra-
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 277 
 
 geous not to allow a man to do what he liked 
 with his own, simply because such a man 
 was blind, and deaf and dumb. And 
 Lossell's not even dumb.' 
 
 1 I certainly agree with you," said a quiet 
 gentleman by the fireplace. ' But is Lossell 
 really only deaf and blind ? I had always 
 understood he was half-witted.' 
 
 1 Did you ever hear his father say anything 
 of the kind ?' asked Alers, turning on the 
 speaker. 
 
 1 No ; I hardly think so. But his brother 
 certainly. Young Hendrik Lossell never 
 speaks otherwise of him than as of a hopeless 
 idiot.' 
 
 'Young Hendrik is a capital fellow,' re- 
 joined Alers sententiously, 'He is a great 
 friend of mine. But he is young. And we 
 young fellows are quick with our generalisa- 
 tions. Unless we are lawyers and weigh 
 our words. A man is always an "utter 
 idiot" or ''awfully clever." A woman is
 
 278 GOD'S FOOL 
 
 always either " the most beautiful creature 
 in the world" or "altogether unfit to look 
 at." And besides, young Lossell is naturally 
 a little jealous of his unfortunate stepbrother, 
 despite the latter's misfortune.' 
 
 1 I wonder how much money there is,' 
 said another man, a large, loose fellow, who 
 had come lounging up with his hands in 
 his pockets. ' A lot of money anyway, I 
 fancy.' 
 
 1 There is more money, I can tell you,' 
 replied the young lawyer with a great air of 
 mysterious importance, ' than often passes 
 in this country from a father to his children. 
 They are all rich, naturally, with such a 
 business, but by far the richest of them, 
 nevertheless, is the eldest, the deaf man 
 Elias. I fancy Elias Lossell must be the 
 richest man in Koopstad.' 
 
 There was not one man in that whole 
 smoking-room who did not consider money 
 the supreme thing worth living and working
 
 HENDRIK'S TEMPTATION 279 
 
 and lying for. And yet there was not one 
 who dared pronounce the words which rose 
 to all lips mechanically, and say : ' Lucky 
 fellow !' of the richest man in Koopstad. 
 For God's finger held them back. 
 
 END of vol. 1. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GULDFORD. 
 
 G., C &> Co.
 
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