Note 2 — INTRODUCTION.

The plot of the “Bride in Heaven” is briefly this:—Many years before the opening of the play, Major Huser had killed Baron Van Bergen in a duel. There was no personal enmity between the men,—indeed they were intimate friends; it was only public opinion and a barbarous etiquette that forced on this ending to a trifling dispute. Huser was broken-hearted at the way it ended: he accepted the charge of Van Bergen’s only son as a sacred trust; and when he died, shortly afterwards, made his own son, Gustaaf, promise to be a friend to young Van Bergen at any sacrifice. Van Bergen turned out wild and dissipated, and Gustaaf redeemed his promise by taking on himself a forgery committed by his friend when in desperate straits for lack of money at the university. No one knew the truth of this affair but himself, Van Bergen, and the latter’s worthless valet, Frans. The proofs of the whole were contained in certain letters in Van Bergen’s possession. Huser disappears from society, and is supposed to have fled the country. As a matter of fact, he is getting his living as a music-master, under the name of Holm, and as such he is introduced to us in the play. His principal pupil is Caroline, daughter of a high government official named Van Wachler,—a shrewd, honourable, and upright man, of simple tastes, meeting with little sympathy from his fashionable and affected wife, with her would-be French manners, and the aristocratic connections she will not allow him to forget. Mevrouw Van Wachler is young Van Bergen’s aunt, and exceedingly anxious to marry her daughter to the scapegrace, who, for his part, is not unwilling to accept such a way of escape from his embarrassments. Her husband is less dazzled by the match, and declares his intention of letting his daughter choose for herself. He questions her, and finds that her affections are set on Holm. Holm, who has meanwhile awakened to the fact that he is in love with Caroline, has made up his mind that he must leave without a sign; but Van Wachler’s genial kindness wins his secret from him, and, finding that the statesman respects him for himself, and is willing to take his position and his past for granted, and that all he has to do is, to consent to the engagement, he can only shut his eyes for the moment, and accept the offered happiness. In the second act, which, with a few unimportant abridgments, is given entire in the text, General Van Weller, brother to Mevrouw Van Wachler, and the elder Huser’s old friend and comrade, returns from the Indies, determined to clear up the mystery of Gustaaf Huser’s disappearance, and is unwittingly helped on to the right track by Frans. In the third act, Holm and Van Bergen meet—the best side of the latter comes uppermost, and he has a passing mood of repentance and reconciliation. But Frans’ influence is too strong; he is persuaded to take a base advantage of his rival, and tells the Van Wachler family, in Holm’s presence, that the latter is not only passing under a false name, but is an outlaw and a convicted felon. Holm (who had previously made up his mind, for the sake of their old friendship and his promise to his father, to renounce Caroline, in the hope that her love—could he succeed in winning it—might save Van Bergen) is stunned and driven to despair by this treacherous attack, goes home to his lodgings, and is about to commit suicide, when he is interrupted by a visit from a man whose children he saved from a fire a year ago, and who has now brought them to see him. This man (Wolf) discovers his purpose, and does not leave till he has persuaded him to forego it. Scarcely has he gone, when Caroline comes in. She tells Holm that she has come to bid him farewell, but that nothing that has happened can make any possible difference to their love. If she may not belong to him on earth, she will be his bride in the other life, and wait for him there. So they part.

Van Wachler is full of indignation at the way in which he considers himself to have been deceived by Holm, but Van Weller arrives in time to explain everything,—tells the whole story, sends for Holm, or Huser, and sees his old friend’s son triumphantly righted, while Van Bergen retires in disgrace. (See A Rascally Valet, p. 65.)