She absentmindedly dropped in three, while talking to Starr
My mother sent me to Oxford, because she thought that she could take no intelligent interest in any young man if he had not had his four years at Oxford or Cambridge. But afterwards, through loyalty to my fatherland, I gave myself two at the University of Leiden; and as the rooms I lived in there hold memories of Oliver Goldsmith, I've kept them on ever since. I was twenty-four when I said good-by to Leiden, and for the five after-years the rooms have been lent to a cousin, studying for his degree as a learned doctor of law. Now, I knew it was close upon the time for him to take his degree, and I hoped that I might be able to show my friends (and one Enemy) a few things in my old University town which ordinary tourists might not see.
The tea-things had been washed up, and a discussion of plans (from which Miss Van Buren managed to exclude me) had ended in no definite conclusion, when I brought "Lorelei" into one of the innumerable green canals in Leiden.
"None of you seem to know what you want to do first, last, or in the middle," I ventured to remark; "so, to save time, perhaps you'll let me offer a few suggestions. I've told Hendrik to fetch a cab, and he's gone. When your carriage comes, engage rooms at the Levedag Hotel, drive through the town, have a glance at the churches, and go to the Stadhuis. You'll like the spire and the façade. They're both of the sixteenth century, when we were prosperous and artistic; and over the north-side entrance there's a chronogram inscription concerning the siege. I can't go, because I want to arrange your evening, which I hope will be a success. But I'll meet you in the Archive Room at the Stadhuis, where you can admire the paneling till I come. I won't keep you waiting long; and then I'll take you over the University Buildings. I was there, you know, as a student."
By the time this plan was arranged to the satisfaction of everybody except that of the person I wished to please, Hendrik had arrived with a cab, and five minutes later I was free to carry out my scheme for the evening.
From Gouda I'd sent a wire to my cousin Jan van Hol, asking him to be at home and expecting me between four and five, so I felt sure of him. I took all the short cuts (which I know as well as I know my hat), and was soon climbing the ladder-like stairs of the old house, the top floor of which was home to me for two years.
From those windows Goldsmith looked down on the sleepy canal, when he visited a crony who was tenant of the rooms; and the door which Goldsmith's hand often touched was thrown open by the present tenant, who must have been listening for my step.
To my surprise, he was in wilddeshabille, and far out of his usual phlegmatic self with excitement.
"It's my Promotie Day," he explained. "I'm just back and have got out of my swallow-tail after the final exam. I'm due at the Club for the first part of my dinner in a few minutes. Had you forgotten, or didn't you get your card?"
I told him that no doubt it was at Liliendaal, or wandering in search of me; and when I had slapped him on the back, and congratulated him as "Learned Doctor," I began to wonder what I should do, as it was clear he would have no time to help me carry out my plans. His Promotie dinner, the grandest affair of student life, and the rounding off of it, would be in three parts, with various ceremonies in between, and would last from now until two or three in the morning. However, I told him what I had wanted; to give a surprise dinner at his diggings for the party from "Lorelei," with him to arrange details while I played guide, and to take the part of host for us at eight o'clock. Could he suggest any one who would look after the thing in his place? Van Rhonda or Douw, for instance? But van Rhonda and Douw, it seemed, were the Paranymphs, or supporters of the newly-made Doctor, and their time would be fully taken up in seeing him through. All my old friends who were left would be at the Promotie dinner, but Jan was sure that my business might be safely entrusted to the landlady. She would get flowers, go to the hotel to order whatever I wished, and even superintend the waiters.
With this I had to be satisfied, for in the midst of the discussion appeared the two Paranymphs, wanting to know what kept Jan, and the hero of the day was ruthlessly carried off between them. I had to do the best I could; my old landlady had not forgotten me, and I was assured that I might depend upon her. When I had scribbled a menu, consisting of some rather odd dishes, sketched an idea for the table decoration, and given a few other hasty instructions, I dashed off to keep my appointment at the Stadhuis. On the way I consoled myself with the reflection that it's an ill wind which blows nobody good. I had been bereaved of Jan as a prop, but I might make use of him and his friends by-and-by as one of the sights of Leiden, and I would take advantage of my knowledge of the usual program on such festive nights as this for the benefit of my friends.
I arrived at the Stadhuis as the others took their first look at the oak in the Archive Room. There was just one other room in this most excellent and historic building that I wanted Miss Van Buren to see. It was a Tapestry Room, among other Tapestry Rooms, of no importance; but I remembered her fantastic desire to "live in the stained-glass country," and I recalled a certain tapestry garden in which I felt sure she would long to wander. There was a meal of some wonderful sort going on in it, and I had been conscious in other days of a desire to be a tapestry man and sit with the merry tapestry lady smiling there. All tapestry people look incredibly happy, for in tapestry etiquette it's bad form to be tragic. Even their battles are comedy battles, as you can see by the faces of the war-horses that they have a strong sense of humor; but these particular tapestry friends of mine were the gayest I ever met, and I wanted Miss Van Buren to make their acquaintance.
To reach the room, through another also representing a tapestry world, we had to perform a dreadful surgical operation on the abdomen of a Roman emperor by opening a door in the middle of it, and, as the Mariner said, the size of the next room gave the same sort of shock that Jonah must have had when he arrived in the whale.
If I had shown her that tapestry garden, Miss Van Buren would have feigned indifference; but I left her to Starr, and from a distance had the chastened pleasure of hearing her say to him the things I should have liked her to say to me.
Afterwards I swept the party away to the University, preparing their minds to expect no architectural splendors.
"Leiden is our most famous university," I said. "But we have no streets of beautiful old colleges, no lovely gardens. You see, Oxford and Cambridge are universities round which towns have gathered, whereas Leiden was a city long before William the Silent gave its people choice, as a reward for their heroic defense, of freedom from taxes or a university. When they said they'd have the university, the thing was to get it. Money wasn't plentiful, and here was an old monastery, empty and ready for use—a building whose simplicity would have appealed to William in his later days."
It was not until they had this apology well in their heads that I ushered them into the bare, red-brick courtyard so full of memories for me, and here I buckled on my armor of defense.
"Our universities have produced great men, though they've given them no Gothic buildings or fairy gardens. Where will you find more illustrious names than Scaliger, Grotius, and Oliver Goldsmith?—lots of others, too. Why, Niebuhr said of our old hall that no place is so memorable in the history of science."
Trying to appear impressed, the three ladies, followed by Starr, trailed into the building, deserted at this hour; and it was the artist's quick eye that first caught the eccentric merit of the famous caricatures lining the staircase.
Then came the chamber of torture, the "Sweating Room," that bare, whitewashed cell remembered by all Leideners with anguish. There I (and thousands before and thousands after) had sat to wait my dreaded turn with the professors behind the green-baize table in the room next door. There I—among those other nerve-shattered ones—had scribbled my name and scrawled a sketch or two. "Here sweated Rudolph Brederode," read out Miss Rivers, with a sweet look, as if she pitied me now for what I suffered then. But Miss Van Buren showed sublime indifference. She wished, she said, to pick out names that were really interesting.
Even she, however, was roused to compassion for the tortured ones, when in the adjoining room she heard that the examinations were conducted publicly, and that there was no reason why any stranger should not walk in from the street to hear the victims put to the question.
"It's good for us," I said. "Helps us to pluck and self-control." But nobody agreed with me, and it was Miss Van Buren's opinion that none save Dutchmen would stand it.
The Senate Room, which Niebuhr wrote of, found favor in her eyes; but after that there was nothing more to do in the University, and it was only six o'clock. There were two hours before the surprise dinner; so, without giving my secret away, I said that, if we put off dining until eight, we could see the Laeckenhalle, and go up to the Burg at sunset.
The Laeckenhalle and the Burg were mere names to them, as few scraps are thrown to either place by the guide-books; but so delighted were they with the carvings on the house of the Cloth Spinner's Guild and the marbles in the courtyard that I could hardly get them inside. Once within, Starr made Miss Van Buren laugh at the things she ought to have respected and linger before the things I hadn't intended to point out.
But I was not shocked at her flippant delight in a quaint representation of tortures in hell, nor was I stirred by her scorn of the stiff siege-pictures, with van der Werf offering his arm as food for the starving people, rather than surrender to the Spaniards. In spite of her distaste for the painting, however, she would not hear me decry van der Werf in favor of an obscure engineer, lately discovered as the true hero of the siege. Van der Werf should not be snatched from her by a man she chose to detest, so she argued and abused my treachery during the whole time spent among the relics of the siege. She glared at the saucepan retrieved from the Spanish camp as if she would have thrown it at my head. She thought me capable of denying authenticity to the blocks of taret-gnawed wood torn from the dykes when a worm made Holland tremble as Philip of Spain could never do; nor would she forgive me van der Werf, though I did my best with the tale of that time of fear when men, women, and children worked their fingers to the bone in restoring what the worm had destroyed, and keeping the sea from their doors.
I never yielded her a point, all the way up to the Burg, for at least I was cheating Starr of her. But in the fortress, on the ancient mound heaped up by Hengist, I and my opinions were forgotten. She wanted to be let alone, and pretend she was a woman of Leiden, looking out across the red roofs of the city, through the pitiless red of the sunset, for the fleet of rescuing barges.
Nevertheless, she did deign to ask how, if the way had been opened for the sea to flood the land, the people coaxed it to go back again. And she looked at me as she had looked at Starr, while I told how the thing had been done; how the water that floated William's fleet for the relief of the town was but two feet in depth; how only a gale from the south at the right time sent the waters flowing from the broken dykes above Schiedam north as far as Leiden; and how no sooner was the city saved than the wind changed, calling back the waters.
From the walls of the fortress we saw the sun go down; and then, with Starr in the ascendant again, we strolled through quiet streets, crossing bridges over canals spread with soft green carpets of moss. But we were not going to the hotel; and without a word about dinner, I asked if they would care to see a student's "diggings." I had only to add as a bribe that Oliver Goldsmith had visited there and carved his initials in a heart on the wainscotting, to make them eager to climb the steep stairs which led to my Surprise.
It began by my opening the door at the top with a key—instead of knocking. This set them to wondering; but I laughed, evading questions, and lured them into an oak-walled room, dim with twilight.
According to instructions, no lamp or candle had been lighted, but a glance showed me a large screen wrapped round something in a corner, and I knew that I hadn't trusted good old Mevrow Hoogeboom in vain.
Now I struck a match from my own match-box, and as the flame flared up, success number one was scored. It was the old-fashioned Dutch lamp-lighter of brass, to which I touched the match, that called out the first note of admiration from the strangers; and as I woke up candle after candle, in its quaint brass stick, the first notes rose to a chorus. What a lovely room! What walls, what dear old blue-and-white china beasts, what a wonderful fireplace, with handles to hold on by as you stood and warmed yourself! What chairs, what chests of drawers, what pewter tankards! If this were a typical room of a Leiden undergraduate, the Leiden undergraduates were lucky men.
I had to explain that it was hardly fair to call it typical; that only a man with money and a love for picking up old things would have quarters like these; still, the lodgings were typical of Leiden.
When the ladies had exhausted their adjectives, they grew curious concerning their host. I told them that the man was absent, because this happened to be the night of his Promotie dinner, but that I was free to do the honors.
"Well, I'm sick with envy of the fellow," said Starr, "and I for one daren't trust myself any longer, especially on an empty stomach, among his pewters and blue beasts and brasses. We'd better go away and have dinner."
"You needn't go away," said I, jerking an old-fashioned bell-rope, and drawing the screen aside. Behind it, was what I had hoped would be there—a table laid for five, with plenty of nice glass and silver, and banked with pink and white roses. As everybody exclaimed at the sight, an inner door opened and two waiters from the Levedag, who had been biding their time for my signal, appeared in answer to the bell.
"It's black magic," said Aunt Fay. "I believe these men are genii, and you've got the lamp in your pocket. How IwishI hadn't left Tibe at the hotel. He would have loved this, poor darling."
"It's black magic," said Aunt Fay
"Dinner is served, sir," announced one of the genii; and laughing, I offered the Chaperon my arm.
"But itcan'tbe for us," objected Miss Rivers.
"It's for no one else," said I.
"How can we eat the man's things, when he's never seen us, and we've never seen him?" Miss Van Buren appealed to Starr. But it was I who answered.
"You see him now," I confessed. "These are my rooms. I lend them to my cousin, but I've kept the right to use them. As for the dinner, it's my dinner, and it will be a humiliation to me if you refuse to eat it."
These words were meant for her, and I looked straight at her as I spoke, so there could be no mistake. Red sprang to her cheeks. She bit her lip, and what she would have answered or done if left to herself I shall never know, for Miss Rivers slipped one arm coaxingly within the arm of her stepsister, and said, with a laugh, to make it seem that all three were jesting——
"Why, of course she won't refuse. None of us would forgive her for spoiling our pleasure. Come along, Nell."
So Nell did "come along," like the sweet and sensible girl she really is, when she has not been driven to defiance by blundering young men; and we sat down to eat the best dinner that Leiden could provide at short notice. Nothing that was truly Dutch had been forgotten, but the most brilliant success was not theplaton which thechefwould have staked his reputation. It was nothing more nor less than the dish with which all Leiden invariably occupies itself on the 3rd of October, anniversary of blessed memory. On that day it was, three hundred and thirty odd years ago, that a little boy ran joyously home from a flying visit to the deserted Spanish camp, with a pot of carrots and potatoes mixed together in a hotch-potch; therefore, with hotch-potch does Leiden to this hour celebrate the Great Relief, eating with thanksgiving.
And my guests ate with compliments, enjoying the idea if not the food, as if they had been Leideners. Last of all, we had grilled herrings with mustard, on toasted bread, a quaint conceit which I had to explain by telling how, on the 3rd of October, bread and herrings are still distributed to the poor, because it was with herrings and bread that the Dutch boats, coming to the relief of Leiden, were loaded.
I managed to keep the party long at the table, and when the Chaperon proposed going, I looked at my watch, counseling patience for half an hour.
"If you'll wait," I said, "I'll show you something rather special on the way home—something that can't be seen by every one."
Then I told about my cousin; how this was his great day, and how, without being invited, we could share the fun. I told how, early this morning, Jan's Paranymphs had donned evening dress, according to old custom, and driven in smart carriages (the horses' heads nodding with plumes) to the railway station to meet their principal's father, mother, sisters, and pretty cousins; how the party had then come to these rooms, where Jan had received them, half shamefaced in his "swallow-tail"; how, not long before we arrived at the University, Jan had gone through his torture in the "sweating-room," and before the examiners with his relatives present; how the ladies, after seeing the town, had been ungallantly packed off home, before the best fun began. How Jan had returned, to cast away his evening things at the time when most people think of putting them on, and rush to the Students' Club in morning dress. How his Paranymphs and friends had met him, and at a big round table—soon to be covered with glasses—the Professors' servant (called "Pedel" of the University) had handed the new Doctor his official appointment, in return for a fee of ten gulden. How the dinner had begun in speech-making and music, with an adjournment after the first part, to the garden for coffee, liqueurs, and cigars; how, when the table had been cleared and rearranged, everybody had marched back to risk their lives by eating lobster and quantities of indigestible things. How Jan would then have had to make his "palaver," thanking his friends for their speeches in his honor; and how, while he was speaking, the waiters would be placing a large napkin at the plate of each man—a mere napkin, but destined for an outlandish purpose. "By this time," I went on mysteriously, "those napkins are fulfilling their destiny, and if you would like to see what it is, you've only to follow me."
They were on their feet in an instant. We scrambled down the narrow stairs, and out into the starlit night. Leiden was a city of the dead. Not even a dog played sentinel for the sleeping townsfolk; not a cat sprang out of the shadows as I led my band through a labyrinth of canal-streets, floored as if with jet nailed down with stars. But suddenly the spell of silence was broken by an explosion of sound which crashed into it like breaking glass. A brassy blare of music that could not drown young men's laughter, burst on us so unexpectedly that the three ladies gave starts, and stifled cries. I stopped them at a corner, and we huddled into the shadow, flattened against a wall.
"The Napkins are coming!" I said, and I had not got the words out before the blue darkness was aflame with the red light of streaming torches, a wild light which matched the band music. There was a trampling of feet, and in the midst of smoke and ruddy flare sequined with flying sparks, came torch-bearers and musicians, led by one man of solemn countenance, holding in both hands a noble Nougat Tart—the historic, the indispensable Nougat Tart. Then, with a measured trot that swung and balanced with the music, followed the Napkins, wound turban-fashion round the heads of their wearers, and floating like white banners with the breeze of motion. First came a Paranymph thus adorned, then the learned Doctor holding fast to the leader's coat-tails; behind him the second Paranymph, and clinging to his coat the hero's father, with the whole procession of turbaned friends tailing after.
They swept by us as a comet sweeps down the sky, and concerned themselves with our group against the wall no more than a comet does with such humble stars, dusting the outskirts of the Milky Way, as shrink from his fiery path.
"A vision of goblins," said the Mariner, when he had got his breath.
"What fun! But why do they do it?" asked Miss Rivers.
"Why? I'm sure I don't know," I laughed, "except because they always have, and I suppose always will, while there's a university at Leiden. That's all we'll see, but it isn't all there is to see. By-and-by the procession will go prancing back to the Club, where the next thing will be to get over the big reading-table, then over the buffet of the bar, without once breaking the chain of coat-tails, through passages and kitchens to the club-room once more, where the chain will be split up, but where the chairs in which the men will sit to drink champagne and eat the Nougat Tart, must beonthe tables and not round them."
"And will that be the end?" inquired the Chaperon, who ever thirsts with ardor for information.
"Not nearly," said I. "The third part of dinner will be due, and every one's bound to eat it, even those whose chairs have fallen off from the pyramids of small tables, and whose heads or bones have suffered. They'll have dessert; and at dawn the best men will be taking a country drive."
"I begin to understand," said Starr, "how your people exhausted the Spaniards. Good heavens, you could wear out the Rock of Gibraltar! And I see why, though you can eat all day and all night too, you don't put on fat like your German cousins."
"When we begin a thing, we Dutchmen see it through," I replied modestly.
"So do we Americans," remarked Miss Van Buren.
"I wonder which would win if the two interests were opposed?" I hazarded, à propos of nothing—or of much.
"I should bet on America," said she.
"Idon'tbet," I returned, with all the emphasis I dared give; though perhaps it was not enough to tear up a deep-rooted impression; albeit the seed had been sown for but four-and-twenty hours.
So ended the lesson for the first day.
It was not an easy lesson for me. But I regret nothing.
"Look here," said the Mariner next morning, rapping on my door at the hotel, "how soon could we start for Katwyk?"
"I thought the expedition was given up," I answered, "as nobody spoke of it last night."
"Not in your presence, but my worthy aunt rejoices in a sitting-room, and we met there—some of us—to discuss the expedition. The girlsthinkthey're keen to go, but it's a case of hypnotism.Shewants a thing, and in some curious way, known only to herself, she gives others the impression that they are wanting it frantically."
"I've noticed that," said I.
"Oh, you have? Well, she's a wonderful woman. I daren't dwell upon the things she's got out of me already, or ask myself what she'll get before the play's finished. That sitting-room, for instance, I suppose it will end in her always having one. Did you observe Tibe's collar? It cost twenty-five dollars, and the queer part is that Iofferedit to her. I thought at the time I wanted him to have it. Now, I ask you, as man to man, is itcanny? And she has a traveling-bag with gold fittings. I presented it under the delusion that I owed it to her as my—temporary relative. Heavens, where is this to end? Not at Katwyk, with the Rhine. But we've got to go there. Anything to please her."
Strange to say, the hypnotic influence must have stolen up from her ladyship's room on the floor below, and along the corridor to mine, for I found myself thinking: "She rather likes me, and can be useful, if she dominates the two girls in this way. I must do my best to keep her on my side."
No doubt this was the form the influence took, but I made no struggle against it. On the contrary, I assured Starr that the expedition to Katwyk would be a good expedition; that I would be dressed in ten minutes; that I didn't mind about breakfast, but would have a cup of coffee with Hendrik; that if the party came on board "Lorelei" in half an hour, they would find her ready.
"All right, I'll tell them," said he. "I did want to stop and see a few pictures, for it seems a burning shame to leave the town where Gerard Douw, and Steen, and lots of other splendid chaps were born, without worshiping at their shrines, but——"
"They're rather bare shrines at Leiden," I consoled him. "You've seen much better specimens of their work elsewhere. You'd be disappointed."
"Just as well to think so. I'll give your message; but as there are three ladies and one dog, you'd better expect us when you see us."
In spite of this fact I had little time to spare, though it appeared thaten routeto the boat a delay was caused by Tibe jumping into a cab with two elderly ladies from Boston, who, so far from reciprocating his overtures, nearly swooned with terror, and had to be soothed and sustained by the entire party.
The canal that leads from Leiden to Katwyk-aan-Zee passes the houses of Descartes and Spinoza; and altogether the short journey by water did not lack interest, for Katwyk has become a colony of artists. Once there, we walked to the sluice where the Rhine seeks its grave in the North Sea; and as it happened that the tide was high, with a strong shore wind, I could show the Cyclopean defenses of our coast at their best. With the secret pleasure which I believe all men take in pointing out things to women, I explained the great series of gates through which the river passes to its death. All were closed against the raging waves, which leaped and bellowed, demanding entrance, rearing their fierce heads twelve feet or more above the level where the Rhine lay dying. When the tide should turn, and the wild water retreat, the sluice-gates would be opened, and the river would pour sea-ward, sweeping away the masses of sand piled up in fury by the cheated waves.
We lunched on board the "Lorelei," I munching abjectly on deck, on duty at the wheel, while from the cabin below came to my ears the tinkling of girls' laughter, and the merry popping of corks. In theory I was better off than Tantalus, for Tantalus had no beer or sandwiches; but, on the other hand Tantalus was not in love with a girl whose voice he could hear mingling with his rival's; so practically there was not much to choose.
Luckily I had not to bear the strain for long. I did my best yesterday, in talking of Haarlem, to awaken interest in the huge Haarlemmer-meer Polder, and its importance in the modern scheme of the Netherlands. Now my eloquence was rewarded, for they hurried through their luncheon, not that they might cheer the skipper's loneliness, but that they might miss no feature in the landscape.
We were skirting one side of the green plain which has been reclaimed from the water, converting the meer into a "polder." Our canal flowed many feet above the level of the surrounding land, so that we looked down upon men tilling, upon white-sailed boats cutting through miniature waterways as if they navigated meadows, and upon cows grazing knee-deep in mist, which rose like blowing silver spray, over the pale-green waves of grass.
These black-and-white cattle, according to Miss Van Buren, form the upper circles of the cow-world in Holland. Not only do they live up to their traditions by being cleaner and sleeker than the cows of other countries, but they know themselves to be better connected than the mere red-and-white creatures with whom they are occasionally forced to share a meadow. To show that they understand what is due to their dignity, they refuse to talk with the common herd, and stand with their backs to any red-and-white nonentity that may presume to graze near, conversing among themselves in refined monotones with the air of saying, "Whowasshe?"
There's little in the history of the Netherlands which Miss Van Buren does not know, for she is proud of her Dutch blood, though she won't say so before me. The others are frankly ignorant; but the Chaperon has read a book of Rider Haggard's called "Lysbeth," and was deeply interested in the Haarlemmer-meer, where the "treasure" of that story lay hid; but it was news to her that the great inland sea had once sent a destructive flood to the gates of Amsterdam, and that as punishment it had been drained away. Miss Van Buren—whom I think of as "Nell"—knew all this, including the very day in 1840 when the work was begun, and how many months the pumps had taken to drink the monstrous cup dry; but the mysterious little lady who rules us all, and is ruled by Tibe, expected to find the Haarlemmer-meer still a lake, and was disappointed to learn the meaning of "polder." She thought thirty-nine months too long for draining it, and was sure that in America (where she quickly added that she had "once been") they would have done the work in half the time.
Every one fell in love with the outskirts of Haarlem, as "Lorelei" swam into the River Spaarne. Though the glory of the tulips was extinguished (like fairy-lamps at dawn) three months ago, the flowers of summer blazed in their stead, a brilliant mosaic of jewels.
"The Dutch don't seem a nation to have gone mad over a tulip; but perhaps they were different in the seventeenth century," said Miss Rivers, looking at me, as if I stood to represent my people.
"And the English don't seem the kind to have lost their heads over a South Sea Bubble, but they did," retorted Nell, as if she were defending us.
They liked the houses along the river-side, houses big and little, which look as if the front and back walls of their lower stories had been knocked out, and the space filled in with glass. They were amused by the rounded awnings over the balconies, which Nell likened to the covers of giant babies' perambulators; and they laughed at the black-painted doors picked out with lines of pale green, which contrasted with a whitewashed façade.
At Haarlem I had another surprise for them, which I arranged before leaving Rotterdam. It was one which would cost nothing in trouble, little enough in money, and would give pleasure to everybody—except to my chauffeur, who is in love with my mother's French maid, and no doubt was reveling in the thought of a long holiday at Liliendaal.
When I'd brought "Lorelei" through the bridge, and hove her to by the broad quay, there stood close at hand a handsome, dark-blue motor-car.
"What a beauty!" exclaimed Nell. "That's much grander than Robert's." Then she glanced at me. "I beg your pardon," said she, demurely. "I'm afraid the car my cousin has is yours."
"So is this," said I.
"Dear me, what is It doing here?" she demanded, sorry to have praised a possession of the enemy's.
"It's waiting to take you round Haarlem," I replied. "I thought it would be a nice way for you to see the place, as the suburbs are its speciality, so to speak, and motoring saves time."
"You're a queer chap, Alb," remarked the Mariner. "You have such a way of keeping things up your sleeve, and springing them on one. You ought to be called 'William the Silent.'"
"Why, that's what he is called, didn't you know? Mr. van Buren told us," exclaimed Phyllis, and ended up her sentence with a stifled shriek which could have meant nothing but a surreptitious pinch.
I would not have glanced at either of the girls for anything; but I would have given something to know how Nell was looking.
"Have you any more belongings here?" asked the Chaperon, gaily. "Such as an ancestral castle, where you could give us another surprise feast?"
I laughed. "As a matter of fact, I have an ancestral castle in the neighborhood. It isn't mine, but it was my ancestors', and if I can't exactly entertain you in it, I can give you tea close by at a country inn. Perhaps you've read about the Château of Brederode, within a drive of Haarlem?"
I saw by Nell's face that she had, but she was the only one who did not answer, and the others hadn't informed themselves of its existence.
Hendrik, helped by my chauffeur, got out the small luggage which is kept ready for shore duty—the Chaperon's splendidly-fitted dressing-bag making everything else look shabby—and the five of us (six with Tibe) got into the car, I taking the driver's seat.
The streets of Haarlem being too good to slight, I drove leisurely toward the heart of the old town, meaning to engage rooms and leave all belongings at the quaint Hotel Funckler, which I thought they would like better than any other; but passing the cathedral, Miss Phyllis begged to stop, and I slowed down the car. After Gouda's wonderful glass, they would have found the Haarlem church disappointing, had it not been for the two or three redeeming features left in the cold, bare structure; the beautiful screen of open brass-work, with its base of dark wood, on which brightly-painted, mystic beasts disport themselves among the coats-of-arms of divers ancient towns; and the carved choir-stalls.
Nell and the Mariner were so fascinated by a wooden gentleman wearing his head upside down, and a curiously mixed animal carrying its offspring in a cloak, that I found time to send secretly for the organist; and before my friends knew what was happening, the cold white cathedral was warmed and lighted too, by such thrilling music as few organs and few organists can make.
When it was over, and only fleeting echoes left, Miss Rivers came and thanked me.
"That was your thought, of course," said she. "None of us will ever forget."
My chauffeur had kept Tibe, and when we reappeared, was surprised in the act of fitting a pair of spare goggles on to the dog. Aunt Fay was delighted with the effect, and a photograph was taken before we were allowed to start, though time was beginning to be an object. But, as the Chaperon cheerfully remarked, "Tibe and tide wait for no man."
"What does 'groote oppruiming' mean, written up everywhere in the shops?" she inquired eagerly, as the car flashed through street after street.
I told her that in a Dutch town it was equivalent to the "summer sales" in London, and she seemed satisfied, though I doubt if she knows more of London than of Rotterdam. But she and the girls wanted everything that they saw in the show windows, and I found that, before we left Haarlem, the Mariner's purse would again be opened wide by the hypnotic spell of Aunt Fay.
In a thirty horse-power car we were not long on the way out to Brederode, though I took her slowly through the charming Bloemendaal district, giving the strangers plenty of time to admire the quaintly built, flower-draped country houses half drowned in the splendid forest where Druids worshiped once, and to find out for themselves that the dark yellow billows in the background were dunes hiding the sea.
We left the car in front of the shady inn, and ordered coffee to be ready when we should come back—coffee, with plenty of cream, and a kind of sugared cake, which has been loved by Haarlemers since the days when the poor, deluded ladies of the town baked their best dainties for the Spaniards who planned their murder.
It was natural to play guide on the way to the dear old copper and purple and green-gold ruin, ivy-curtained from the tower roofs to the mossy moat.
This was my first visit to the place for a year or two, and I longed to take the One Girl apart, to tell her of my fantastic ancestor, the Water Beggar, of whom I am proud despite his faults and eccentricities; to recall stories of the past; the origin of our name "Brede Rode," broad rood; how it, and the lands, were given as a reward, and many other things. But instead, I made myself agreeable to the Chaperon, and saved Tibe on three separate occasions from joining the bright reflections and the water-lilies in the pond.
I sat by Nell at a table afterwards, however, and she had to pour coffee for me, because she was doing that kind office for the rest; and as the sugar tongs had been forgotten, she popped me in a lump of sugar with her own fingers before she stopped to think. Then, she looked as if she would have liked to fish it out again, but, being softer than her heart, it had melted, and I got it in spite of her.
We drove back through the forest in a green, translucent glimmer, like light under the sea, and there was little time to dress for dinner when I brought them to anchor for the night. The nice old hotel, with its Delft plates half covering the walls, its alcoves and unexpected stairways with green balusters, and its old dining-room looking on a prim garden, pleased the eyes which find all things in Hollow Land interesting.
It was a long dinner, with many courses, such as Dutchmen love; still, when we finished, daylight lingered. In the fantastic square with its crowding varieties of capricious Dutch architecture, the cathedral was cut black and sharp out of a sky of beaten gold, and Coster's statue wore a glittering halo. Under their archways of green, the canals were on fire with sunset, their flames quenched in the thick moss which clothed their walls; the red-brown color of paved streets, and the houses with their pointed façades in many steps, burned also, as if they were made of rose-and-purple porphyry instead of common bricks, while each pane of each window blazed like a separate gem.
It was a good ending to a good day, and though I had accomplished nothing definite, I was happy.
Next morning I had the car ready early, and took every one for a spin through the Hout, which reminded them of the Bois, or what the Bois would be if pretty houses were scattered over it like fallen leaves.
We stopped in Haarlem after that last spin only long enough to do reverence to Franz Hals, and the collection of his work which is the immediate jewel of the city's soul.
We stopped at Haarlem only long enough to do reverence to Franz Hals
It was pretty to watch Nell scraping acquaintance with the bold, good-humored officers and archers, and bland municipal magnates whom Hals has made to live on canvas. She looked the big, stalwart fellows in the eye, but half shyly, as a girl regards a man to whom she thinks, yet is not quite sure, she ought to bow.
"Why, their faces are familiar. I seem to have known them," I heard her murmur, and ventured an explanation of the mystery, over her shoulder.
"You do know them," I said. "Their eyes are using the eyes of their descendants for windows, every day in the streets. Holland isn't making new types."
She turned to look me up and down, with a flicker of long lashes. Then she sighed——
"What a pity!"
Perhaps I deserved it, for I had brought it on myself. Nevertheless, sweet Phyllis pitied me.
"What surprise have you got for us next, Sir Skipper?" she asked brightly. "Mr. Starr says that no day will be complete without a surprise from you; and we depend upon you for our route as part of the surprise."
"I thought Mr. Starr was making out our route," remarked Nell to a tall archer of Franz Hals.
"If I've contrived to create that impression, I've been clever," said the Mariner. "In fact, I would have preferred you to think me responsible, as long as the route proved satisfactory. Of course, whenever anything went wrong, I should have casually let drop that it was Alb's idea. But, as you mention the subject in his presence, I must admit that he has made several suggestions, and I've humored him by adopting them, subject to your approval."
"Does the name of Aalsmeer convey anything to your minds?" I asked. But all shook their heads except Nell, who appeared absorbed in making a spy-glass of her hand, through which to gaze at her jolly archer.
"Then it shall be this day's surprise," I said. "I won't tell you anything; but you needn't be ashamed of ignorance, for all the world is in the same boat, and you won't find Aalsmeer in guide-books. Yet there isn't a place in the Netherlands prettier or more Dutch."
"Good-by, Franz Hals, perhaps forever. We leave you to seek pastures new," said Starr. "Come along, Miss Van Buren."
So she came, and I drove them in the car to the quay, where I directed my chauffeur to go on to Amsterdam, and be ready to report for order at the harbor of the Sailing and Rowing Club.
There is nothing remarkable in the broad canal that connects Haarlem with Amsterdam, and when we had started, Miss Van Buren read aloud to the assembled party. Her book was Motley, and the subject that siege which, though it ended in tragic failure, makes as fine music in history as the siege of Leiden. Meanwhile, as she read, we skimmed through the bright water, which tinkled like shattered crystals as we broke its clear mirror with our prow.
There were few houses along shore, but far in the distance, seen across wide, flat expanses, shadow villages and tapering spires were painted in violet on the horizon—such a shimmering horizon as we of the lowlands love, and yearn for when we sojourn in mountain lands. At Halfweg, a little cluster of humble dwellings, I turned out of the main canal, skirting the side of the Haarlemmer-meer Polder, opposite to that which we had followed yesterday.
"When is the surprise coming?" asked Phyllis at last, her curiosity piqued by the slowness of progress in this small canal.
"Now," said I, smiling, as I stopped at an insignificant landing-place; "this is where we go on shore to find it."
"Methinks, Alb, you are playing us false," said the Mariner. "You're about to lead us into a trap of dulness."
"I've a mind to stop on board and finish the chapter," said Nell.
"You'll repent it if you do," I ventured. Yet I think she would have stayed if her stepsister had not urged.
We walked along an ordinary village street for some distance; it was dusty and unbeautiful. Even Miss Rivers had begun to look doubtful, when suddenly we came in sight of a toy fairyland—a Dutch fairyland, yet a place to excite the wonder even of a Dutchman used to living half in, half out of water.
From where the party stopped, arrested by the curious vision, stretched away, as far as eyes could follow, an earthern dyke, bordered on either hand by a lily-fringed toy canal, just wide enough for a toy rowboat to pass. Beyond the twin, toy canals—again on either hand—was set a row of toy houses, each standing in a little square of radiant garden, which was repeated upside down in the sky-blue water, not only of the twin canals, but of the still more tiny, subsidiary canals which flowed round the flowery squares, cutting each off from its fellow.
Tibe, delighted with Aalsmeer and a dog he saw in the distance, darted along the straight, level stretch of dyke, which every now and then heaved itself up into a camel-backed bridge, under which toy boats could pass from the right-hand water-street to the left-hand water-street. We followed, but on the first bridge Nell stopped impulsively.
"Do you know we'veallbeen in this place before? It'sWillow-pattern-land.Don'tyou recognize it?"
"Of course," the Mariner assured her. "You and I used to play here together when we were children. You remember that blue boat of ours? And see, there's our house—the pink one, with the green-and-white-lozenge shutters, and the thicket of hydrangeas reflected in the water. Isn't it good to come back to our own?"
Thus he snatched her from me, just as my surprise was succeeding, and made a place for himself with her, in my toy fairyland.
"It's true! One does feel like one of the little blue people that live in a willow-pattern plate," said Phyllis, as Nell and Starr sauntered on ahead. "It's perfectly Chinese here, but so cozy; I believe you had the place made a few minutes ago, to please us, and as soon as we turn our backs it will disappear. Itcan'tbe real."
"Those men think it's real," said I. There were several, rowing along the canals in brightly painted boats, with brass milk cans, and knife-grinding apparatus, calmly unaware that they or their surroundings were out of the common. Each house on its square island having its own swing-bridge of planks, the men on the water had to push each bridge out of the way as they reached it; but the trick was done with the nose of the boat, and cost no trouble. Most of the toy bridges swung back into place when the boats passed, but the one nearest us remained open, and as we looked, walking on slowly, two tiny children returning from school, clattered toward us in wooden sabots, along the narrow dyke. Opposite the disarranged bridge they stopped, looking wistfully across at a green-and-blue house, standing in a grove of pink-and-yellow roses, shaded with ruddy copper beeches, and delicate white trees like young girls trooping to their first communion.
Evidently this was the children's home, but they found themselves shut off from it; and standing hand-in-hand, with their book-bags tossed over their shoulders, they uttered a short, wailing cry. As if in answer to an accustomed signal, a pink-cheeked girl who, of course, had been cleaning something, came to the rescue, mop in hand. She touched the bridge with her foot; the bridge swung into place; without a word the dolls crossed, and were swallowed up in a narrow, sky-blue corridor.
We wandered on, turning our heads from one side to the other, I reveling in the delight of the others. Though Aalsmeer is but a stone's throw from Amsterdam, it seems as far out of the world as if, to get to it, you had jumped off the earth into some obscurely twinkling star, where people, things, and customs were completely different from those on our planet.
If there had been only one of the queer island-houses to see, it would have been worth a journey; but each one we came to, in its double street of glass, seemed more quaint than that we left behind. Some were painted green or blue, with white rosettes, like the sugar ornaments on children's birthday cakes. Some were so curtained with roses, wistaria, or purple clematis, that it was difficult to spy out the color underneath. Some were half hidden behind tall hedges of double hollyhocks, like crisp bunches of pink and golden crêpe; others had triumphal arches of crimson fuchsias; but best of all the island shows were the dwarf box-trees, cut in every imaginable shape. There were thrones, and chairs, and giant vases; harps and violins; and a menagerie of animals which seemed to have come under a spell and been turned into leafage in the act of jumping, flying, and hopping. There were lions, swans, dragons, giraffes, parrots, eagles, cats, together in a happy family of foliage; and when I told the Chaperon that the people of Aalsmeer were garden-artists, as well as market-gardeners, she insisted on stopping. Nothing would satisfy her but the Mariner must cross the bridge, knock at the door of a little red house, and buy a box-tree baby elephant, which she thought would be enchanting in a pot, as a kind of figurehead on board "Waterspin."
Nor was I allowed to remain idle. When I had helped him bargain for the leafy beast, I had to go down on my knees, roll up my sleeves, and claw water-lilies out from the canal, which they fringed in luscious clusters. This I did while men and maids in painted boats heaped with rubies piled on emeralds (which were strawberries in beds of their own leaves) laughed at me. Boat peddlers came and went, too, with stores of shining tin, or blue, brown, and green pottery that glittered in the afternoon sun. Some of them helped me, some jeered in Dutch at "these foreigners with their childish ways."
In the end I was luckier than Starr, for he had to march under the weight of his green elephant, half hidden behind it, as behind a screen, while my lilies were so popular with the ladies that not even as a favor would I have been allowed to carry one. All three, if left to themselves, would have lingered for hours, choosing which house they would live in, or watching families of ducks, or counting strewn flowers floating down the blue water as stars float down the sky.
"I believe, Nephew, that I must ask you to buy me a house in Aalsmeer to come and play dolls in," announced Aunt Fay. "Don't you suppose, Jonkheer, that one could be got cheap?—not thatthatneed be a consideration to dear Ronny!"
"I'll find out—later," I assured her, answering a despairing look of Starr's from between the green tusks of his elephant.
"Oh, please,now," urged the gentle voice which every one but Tibe obeys; "because, you know, I'm not strong, and when I set my heart on a thing, and suffer disappointment, it makes me ill. If I were ill I should have to go home, and those darling girls couldn't finish the trip."
"You haven't had time to set your heart upon a house here," said Starr. "You only thought of it a minute ago."
"We Scotch have somuchheart, dearest, that it goes out to things—and people—in less than a minute. I'm a victim to mine. It would be a pity——"
"Oh, do go to the head fairy at once, Alb, and demand a cheap house for my aunt to play dolls in," groaned Starr. "If he hasn't got one, he must build it."
"He could easily do that," said I. "Every now and then a new island is formed in this water-world, and the nearest householder seizes it, claiming it as his own, on much the same basis that Napoleon claimed the Netherlands. Then he digs it into an extra garden or strawberry bed. But he would sacrifice his vegetables if he saw a prospect of making money. It might amuse Lady MacNairne to do a little amateur market gardening, though they say slugs are unusually fat and juicy in Aalsmeer."
"Oh! Maybe I'd better wait and see a few more places before I decide, then," exclaimed the lady. "Not that I'm afraid of slugs myself, only I'm sure they wouldn't agree with Tibe. And besides, it would be dull for him in winter."
"Not at all," said I, having discovered that the one possible way of detaching the lady from a pet scheme is by advising her to cling to it. "Everybody skates then, instead of going about in boats, and no one has really seen Aalsmeer who hasn't seen it on a winter evening. Then, in front of each island, on a low square post, is set a lighted lantern. Imagine the effect of a double line of such lights all the way down the long, long canal, each calling up a ghost-light from under the blue ice."
The tyrant shivered. "It sounds lovely," she said; "but I think Iwillwait. Come, girls, we'd better be getting back to the boat."
"Sweet are the uses of an Albatross," I heard Starr murmur.
We turned our backs on the water fairies' domain, and went into the world again. In the long commonplace street of shops through which we had passed in coming, Aunt Fay stopped. She had torn a silk flounce on her petticoat, and would thank me to act as interpreter in buying a box of safety-pins. I made the demand, and could not see why the two girls and their chaperon had to stifle laughter when an earnest, flaxen-haired maiden began industriously to count the pins in the box.
"She says she has to do that, because they are sold by the piece," I explained; but they laughed a great deal more.
It was a pity they could not see the meer which rings in their fairyland—a meer dotted with high-standing, prim little islands, which, though made by nature, not man, have much the same effect, on a larger scale, as the clipped box-trees on show in the gardens. But to have taken "Lorelei" that way would have made it too late for a visit to Zaandam; and I thought Zaandam, despite its miles of windmills and the boasted hut of Peter the Great, not worth a separate expedition. So I turned back to Halfweg, and from there slid into a side canal which bore us toward that immense waterway cut for great ships—the North Sea Canal. There was a smell of salt in the air, and a heavy perfume from slow-going peat-boats. Gulls wheeled over "Lorelei" so low that we could have reached up and caught their dangling coral feet. A passing cloud veiled the sun with gray tissue which streaked the water with purple shadow, and freckled it with rain. Passengers on Amsterdam-bound ships that loomed above us like leviathans, stared down at our little craft and the bluff-browed barge we towed. Here we were in the full stream of sea-going traffic and commerce; and afar off a mass of towers showed where Amsterdam toiled and made merry.
But we were not yet bound for Amsterdam. Twisting northward as the details of the city were sketched upon the sky, we turned into the canal which leads to Zaandam of the self-satisfied, painted houses. There was just time for a swift run down the river, and a call at one of that famous battalion of windmills whose whirling sails fill the air with a ceaseless whirr, like the flight of birds at sunset; then a walk to the hovel where Peter the Great lived and learned to be a shipwright. But when they had seen it, the ladies would not allow it to be called by so mean a name.
"What a shame they found out who he was so soon!" said Nell. "And he had to leave this dear little bandbox to go back to a mere every-day palace.Iwouldn't have been driven away by a curious crowd. I should just have marched through with my nose in the air."
"His nose wasn't of that kind," said I. "I suppose he's the earliest martyr to notoriety on record. But perhaps he had learned all he wanted to know; and I'm not sure he was sorry to go back to his palace, which, judging by all accounts, wasn't a grand one in those days. You'll see finer houses even in Amsterdam."
And an hour later she was seeing them.