The hotel concierge was going his round on the terrace, leisurely seeking out an occasional lounger in the still, perfume-laden sunset, and distributing a bundle of letters. They watched him coming towards them, from their seat by the balustrade, between two bowls of geranium.
“C’est tout,” he said, holding out one letter.
“It’s too bad of them not to write!” exclaimed Ursula, as everybody always does on the useless, idle Riviera.
Otto was looking at the envelope, holding it across his outstretched palm, between middle finger and thumb. It was addressed in his Aunt Louisa’s handwriting to “Otto, Baron van Helmont.”
“Well?” said Ursula, with the impatience of the non-recipient.
But Otto, Baron van Helmont, sat staring at the superscription. The first bell for the _table d’hôte_ broke loose, with a sudden continuous clang. Ursula rose. “I’m going up-stairs for a minute,” she began. “If it isn’t from home, I suppose it’s of no importance.”
The note was brief enough. “Dear Otto,--Your father died this morning at half-past five, from pneumonia. You know he was ailing when you left, but the lungs were attacked only two days ago. We are expecting you back. Your mother is very unhappy. Aunt Louisa.--P. S. Your mother asked me to telegraph, but I consider it better to write.”
Even by the road-side of our selfish daily wanderings we cannot hear the voice of death calling a stranger from his field-work without mentally crossing ourselves, suddenly shocked and sobered. What, then, if he enter the court-yard of our hearts? Although, perhaps, he pause before the inner door, every chamber, in the horror of his presence, becomes to us as the innermost.
Ursula and Otto looked at each other with solemn eyes, speaking little. The Riviera evening fell suddenly, with its wiping-out of warmth, like the transition of a Turkish bath. The whole gray seaboard lay bleak and chill in a shudder of autumnal decay.
“Aunt Louisa,” said Otto, presently, “has a prejudice against telegrams, chiefly, I fancy, on account of the expense.”
Ursula was angry with the Freule van Borck. “She might have prepared you a little,” said Ursula.
“Oh, that is her way. ‘Simple and strong,’ you know. But you are mistaken. She _did_ prepare me.” He held out the envelope to his wife.