I shall never forget that night at Enkhuisen, or the hotel.
Mr. Starr said it was no wonder Cities of the Zuider Zee died, if they were brought up on hotels like that.
Ours, apparently, had no one to attend to it, except one frightened rabbit of a boy, who appeared to be manager, hall porter, waiter, boots, and chambermaid in one; but when we had scrambled up a ladder-like stairway—it was almost as difficult as climbing a greased pole—we found decent rooms, and after that, things we wanted came by some mysterious means, we knew not how.
It was an adventure sliding down to dinner. Tibe fell from top to bottom, into a kind of black well, and upset Lady MacNairne completely. She said she hated Enkhuisen, and she thought it a dispensation of Providence that the sand had come and silted it up.
We had quite good things for dinner, but we ate in a dining-room with no fresh air, because the commercial travelers who sat at the same table, with napkins tucked under their chins, refused to have the windows open. Mr. van Buren wanted to defy them, but his chin looked so square, and the commercial travelers' eyes got so prominent, that I begged to have the windows left as they were.
There are churches to see in Enkhuisen, and a beautiful choir screen, but we hadn't the heart to visit them. We said perhaps we would go to-morrow, and added in our minds, "if the boat is safely in."
The Rabbit hardly knew what we meant when we asked for a private sitting-room, and evidently thought it far from a proper request.
To add to our melancholy, a thunder-storm came up after dinner, and lightning looped like coils of silver ribbon across the sky and back again, while thunder deadened the chimes of the Dromedary. Still there was no news, and at last Mr. van Buren went out in torrents of rain to the harbor.
We could not bear to sit in the dining-room where the commercial travelers—in carpet slippers—were smoking and discussing Dutch politics, so we clambered up the greased pole to Lady MacNairne's room, and talked about Philip the Second, and tortures, while Tibe growled at the thunder, and looked for it under furniture and in corners.
Nell was in such a black mood that she would have liked Philip to be tortured through all eternity, because of the horrible suffering he inflicted on the people of Holland; but I said the worst punishment would be for his soul to have been purified at death, that he might suddenly realize the fiendishness of his own crimes, see himself as he really was, and go on repenting throughout endless years.
It was not an enlivening conversation, and in the midst Mr. van Buren came to say that there were no tidings of Jonkheer Brederode and the boat.
Then Nell jumped up, very white, with shining eyes. "Can't we do something?" she asked.
Her cousin shook his head. "What is there we can do? Nothing! We must wait and hope that all is well."
"Are you anxious now?" asked Lady MacNairne.
"A little," he admitted.
"I don't know how to bear it," exclaimed Nell, with a choke in her voice.
I longed to comfort her; but her wretchedness seemed only to harden her cousin's heart.
He looked at her angrily. "It is late for you to worry," he reproached her. "If you had shown concern for Rudolph's safety this morning it would have been gracious; but——"
"Don't!" she said.
Just the one word, and not crossly, but in such a voice of appeal that he didn't finish his sentence.
We sat about awkwardly, and tried to speak of other things, but the talk would drift to our fears for the boat. Nell did not join in. She sat by the window, looking out and listening to the rain and wind, which made a sound like the purring of a great cat.
Ten o'clock came, and Lady MacNairne proposed that, as we could do nothing, we women should go to bed.
Then Nell spoke. "No," she said. "You and Phil can do as you like, and Cousin Robert and Mr. Starr; but I shall sit up."
Of course I told her I would sit up, too; and as Mr. van Buren said the commercial travelers had left the dining-room, he and Mr. Starr and Nell and I bade Lady MacNairne good-night, and went down.
The unfortunate Rabbit was in the act of putting out the light, but he was obliged to leave it for us, a necessity which distressed him.
By-and-by it was eleven, and the hotel was as silent as a hotel in a Dead City ought to be. We talked spasmodically. Sometimes we were still for many minutes, listening for sounds outside; and we could hear the scampering of mice behind the walls.
"I can't stand this," said Nell. "I'm going to the harbor."
"I will take you," replied Mr. van Buren.
"No, thank you," said Nell. "I'd rather you stopped with Phil. She has a cold, and mustn't get wet."
"May I go?" asked Mr. Starr.
"Yes," she said.
So they stole away through the sleeping house, and presently we heard the front door close. Mr. van Buren and I were alone together.
He was good about cheering me up, saying he had too much faith in his friend's courage and skill as a yachtsman to be very anxious, though the delay was odd.
Then, suddenly he broke out with a strange question.
"Would it hurt you if anything should happen to Rudolph Brederode?"
I was so surprised that I could hardly answer at first. Then I said that of course it would hurt me, for I liked and admired the Jonkheer, and considered him my friend.
"I have no right to ask," he went on, "but I do beg you to say if it is only as a friend you like Rudolph."
That startled me, for I was afraid things I had done might have been misunderstood, owing to the difference of ways in Holland.
"Why," I stammered, "are you going to warn me not to care for him, because he doesn't care for me? Howdreadful!"
Nell's cousin Robert looked so pale, I was afraid he must be ill. He put up his hand and pushed his hair back from his forehead, and then began pacing about the room.
"Rudolphmustcare—heshallcare, if you wish it," he said.
"Oh," I exclaimed, "I didn't mean it was dreadful if he didn't care; but if you thoughtIdid."
He stopped walking and took one big step that brought him to me.
"You do not?"
"Of course not," said I; "not inthatway."
Mr. van Buren caught both my hands, and pressed them so tightly, that I couldn't help giving a tiny squeak.
"Ah, I have hurt you!" he cried, and a strange expression came into his eyes. At least, it was strange that it should be for me, instead of Freule Menela, for it was almost—but no, I must have been mistaken, of course, in thinking it was like that. Anyway, it was a thrilling expression, and made my heart beat as fast as if I were frightened, though I think that wasn't exactly the feeling. I couldn't take my eyes away from his for a minute. We looked straight at each other; then, as if he couldn't resist, he kissed my hands one after the other—not with polite little Dutch kisses, but eager and desperate. As he did it, he gave a kind of groan, and before I could speak he muttered, "Forgive me!" as he rushed out of the room.
He must have almost run against Mr. Starr, for the next instant the "Mariner" (as Jonkheer Brederode calls him) came in, dripping wet.
There was I, all pink and trembling, and my voice did sound odd as I quavered out, "Where's Nell?"
"Gone to her room," said Mr. Starr, looking hard at me with his brilliant, whimsical eyes. "I was to tell you——"
With that, I burst into tears.
"Good gracious, poor angel! What is the matter?" he exclaimed, coming closer.
"I don't know," I sobbed. "But I'm not an angel. I do believe I'm a very—wickedgirl."
"You, wicked? Why?"
"Because—I've got feelings I oughtn't to have."
"And that's why you're crying?"
"I'm not sure. But I just—can't help it."
"I wish I could do something," said he, quite miserably; and I could smell the wet serge of his sopping coat, though I couldn't see him, for my hands were over my eyes. I was ashamed of myself, but not as much ashamed as I would have been with any one else, because of the feeling I have that Mr. Starr would be so wonderfully nice and sympathetic to confide in. Not that I have anything to confide.
"Thank you, but you couldn't. Nobody could," I moaned.
"Not even Miss Van Buren?"
"Not now. It's too sad. Something seems to have come between us; I don't know what."
"Maybe that's making you cry?"
"No, I don't think so. Oh, I'msounhappy!"
"You poor little dove! You don't mind my calling you that, do you?"
I shook my head. "No, it comforts me. It's so soothing after—after——"
"After what? Has anybody been beast enough——"
"Nobody's been a beast," I hurried to break in, "except, perhaps,me."
"Do tell me what's troubling you," he begged, and pulled my hands down from my face, not in the way Mr. van Buren had caught them, but very gently. I let him lead me to a sofa and dry my eyes with his handkerchief, because it seemed exactly like having a brother. It was just as nice to be sympathized with by him as I had often imagined it would be, and I liked it so much that I selfishly forgot he was soaked with rain, and ought to get out of his wet clothes.
"If I knew I would tell you," I said.
"You're worried about Alb—I mean Brederode?"
"Oh, now IknowI'm a beast! I'd forgotten to ask about him, or the boats."
"You'd forgotten—by Jove! No, nothing heard or seen yet. I made Miss Van Buren come back at last. Had to say I was afraid of catching cold or she'd be there now. But see here, as it isn't Alb's fate that's bothering you, may I make a guess?"
"Yes, because you never could guess," said I.
"Is it—anything about van Buren?"
My face felt as if it was on fire. "Why, whatshouldit be?" I asked.
"It might be, for instance, that you're sorry for him because he's engaged to a brute of a girl who's sure to make him miserable. You've got such a tender heart."
"You're partly right," I confessed. "Not that he's been complaining. He wouldn't do such a thing."
"No, of course not," said Mr. Starr.
"It's wonderful how that should have come into your mind," I said. "Please don't think me stupid to cry, but suddenly it came over me—such agonizing pity for him. I can't think he loves her."
"I'm sure he doesn't. I always wondered how he could, but to-night I saw that his engagement was making him wretched."
"Yousawthat?"
"Yes."
"You're so sympathetic," I couldn't help saying.
"Am I?"
"Yes. Do you know, I feel almost as if you were my brother?"
"Oh, that settles it! It's all up with me."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Whichever way I look I find nothing but sisters. I've had to promise myself to be a brother to Miss Van Buren, too, to-night."
"Don't you mean you promised her?"
"No, for I haven't done that yet. But it will probably come later."
"Would you rather not be our brother?" I hope I didn't speak reproachfully.
"We—ell, my first idea was that an aunt was the only relative I should have with me on this trip. Still, I'd have been delighted to be a brother to one of you, if I could only have kept the other up my sleeve, as you might say, to be useful in a different capacity."
"You love to puzzle me," I said.
"There are lots of things I love about you—as a brother," he answered with a funny sigh. And I wasn't sure whether he was poking fun at me or not. "But, as for Miss Van Buren, why couldn't she look upon van Buren as a brother?"
"He's her cousin, and she doesn't love him much," I explained.
"Alb, then."
"She doesn't love him at all."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Oh, certain," I assured him quite earnestly.
"She's sick with anxiety about him anyhow. I had to comfort her."
"That's because she feels guilty for being so disagreeable," I said; "and she would of course suffer dreadful remorse, poor girl, if he were drowned looking after her boat, as I pray he won't be."
I began to understand now. Poor Mr. Starr was jealous of his friend, the Jonkheer.
"Well, I wish she'd love me a little, then, as there's nobody else."
"Do you know, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if shedoes," I almost whispered. "Perhaps that's what's making her so queer."
"I wish I could think so," sighed Mr. Starr. But he didn't look as radiant as one might have expected. He seemed more startled than delighted. "Anyhow," he went on, "you're a dove-hearted angel, and it's all fixed up that I'm to be a brother to you, whatever other relationships I may be engaged in. I must try and get to work, and earn my salt by making you happy."
"I don't feel to-night as if I could ever be happy again," I told him. "The world seems such a sad place to be in."
"I'll see what I can do, anyhow," said he. "Would it make you happier if van Buren were happier?"
"Oh yes," I exclaimed. "He's been so kind to Nell and me. But I'm afraid nothing can be done. An unfortunate marriage for a young man of—of an affectionate nature is such a tragedy, isn't it?"
"Awful. But it may never come off."
"I don't see what's to prevent it," I said. And the memory of that last look on Mr. van Buren's face came up so vividly that tears stood in my eyes.
"I've thought of something that might," said he; and I was burning to know what when the door opened, and Nell came in without her coat and hat.
She eyed Mr. Starr reproachfully. "Oh, you promised to ask Robert to go back with you to the pier," she said. "Has he gone by himself?"
"I don't—" Mr. Starr had begun guiltily, still sitting beside me on the sofa, when her cousin appeared on the threshold. He was very pale, and looked so grave that I thought some bad news must have come. Nell thought so, too, for she took a step toward him as he paused in the open doorway——
"You've—heard nothing?" she stammered.
"Poor Rudolph," he began; but at the sound of such a beginning she put out her hands as if to ward off a ghost, and her face was so death-like I was frightened lest she was going to faint. Then, suddenly, it changed, and lit up. I never saw her so beautiful as she was at that moment. She gave a cry of joy, and the next instant our handsome brown skipper had pushed pass Mr. van Buren at the door, and had both her hands in his.
He was dripping with water. Even his hair was so wet that I saw for the first time it was curly.
"Oh, I'm so glad, so glad!" faltered Nell. "Robert said 'poor Rudolph!' and I thought——"
"I was only going to say poor Rudolph had had a bad night of it," broke in Mr. van Buren; but I don't think either of them heard.
"Were you anxious about me? Did you care?" asked Jonkheer Brederode.
That seemed to call Nell back to herself. "I was anxious about 'Lorelei,'" she said. "You've brought her back all right?"
"Yes, and 'Waterspin,'" he answered, with the joy gone out of his voice. "We had rough weather to fight against, but we've come to no harm." He turned to me wistfully. "Had you a thought to spare for the skipper once or twice to-day, Miss Rivers?"
I was so grieved for him that, before I knew what I was saying, I exclaimed——
"Why, I've thought of nothing else!"
I put out my hand to him, and he shook it as if he never meant to let it go.
"How good you are," he said warmly.
And I didn't dare look at Mr. van Buren, for the idea came to me that maybe he would not now believe what I had told him a little while ago.
* * * * * *
This morning I scolded Nell before our chaperon for her coldness to Jonkheer Brederode, when he had done so much for her.
"How could you," I asked, "when the poor fellow seemed so pleased to think you cared? It was cruel."
"I didn'twanthim to think I cared," Nell answered.
"Dear girl, you were quite right," said Lady MacNairne. Then she laughed. "He hoped to make our Phil jealous, I suppose, for hisrealthought seems to have been forher, doesn't it?"
Neither of us answered. I quite fancied last night that she had been wrong about those surmises of hers; but now, when she put it in this way, I wasn't so sure, after all.
Nell has been very strange for the last few days, but singularly lovable to everybody except Jonkheer Brederode; and to him she has never been the same for ten consecutive minutes. Perhaps it is a mercy if Lady MacNairne is right, and he was never in love with her, though it would be sad if he thought of me in that way. I should be sorry to have any one as unhappy as I now am. It's a good thing for me that we were traveling, for if we were at home I should hardly be able to go through it without letting Nell or others suspect the change. As it is, there is always something new to keep my thoughts away from myself and other people, of whom it may be still more unwise to think.
Nell avoided Jonkheer Brederode as much as she could the morning after the storm. She said that, as he took no interest in her, it could not matter what she did so far as he was concerned. She was quite meek and subdued when she answered any question of his, until they differed about something. It was about Urk, a little island she had discovered on the map, exactly in the middle of the Zuider Zee.
When she heard that "Lorelei-Mascotte's" motor had been injured slightly, and we could not go on, she suggested that while we were waiting we might take steamer to the island, stop all night, and come back to Enkhuisen next day. By that time Hendrik, our chauffeur, would have repaired the damage.
"Urk isn't worth seeing," said our skipper.
Nell asked if he had ever been there.
"No," he replied; but he had heard that it was a dull little hole, and it would be far better to stop at Enkhuisen till next morning, when we could get away, if the weather changed, to Stavoren.
"There's nothing to do in Enkhuisen," said Nell.
"No," said he; "but there'll be less in Urk. I strongly advise you not to go."
"That decides it," said Mr. van Buren, who was stopping on for a day or two.
At once Nell fired up. "Not at all," said she. "No one who doesn't want to, need go; but those who do, will. All favorably inclined hold up their hands."
Up went Mr. Starr's, and Lady MacNairne slowly followed his example. Whether it is that she wishes to be with her nephew because she's fond of him, or whether she thinks highly of her duties as our chaperon; anyway, she generally comes with us if he does. I hated displeasing Mr. van Buren; but when Nell said, "Phil, you'll stick by me, won't you?" I couldn't desert her, especially as I feel that, for some reason or other, she's as restless and unhappy as I am. It may be the poor dear's conscience that troubles her; but I sympathize with her just the same, formineis far from clear. I have such hard, uncharitable thoughts toward one of my own sex—one perhaps not as much older than I am, as shelooks.
I think Mr. van Buren was torn between his desire to stand by his friend (who said he must stay to superintend the repairs) and his natural wish to see his cousin through any undertaking, no matter how imprudent. He went on trying to dissuade Nell from going to Urk, but the more he talked the more determined she grew. She was surprised at our indifference to a wonderful pinhead of earth, which had contrived to stick up out of the water and become an island after the great inundation that formed the Zuider Zee. Judging from guide-books, the population was quite unspoiled, as Urk was too remote to be a show place, although the costumes were said to be beautiful. Such a spot was romance itself, and it would be almost a crime not to visit it. The steamer would leave Enkhuisen after luncheon, returning next day, so we must stop on the island for about eighteen hours; but as the guides mentioned an inn, it would be as simple as interesting to spend a night at the idyllic little place.
Jonkheer Brederode made no more objections after the first, and finally it was settled that all of us should go, except our skipper and Mr. van Buren.
We packed small bags, and took cameras. And we had to scramble through luncheon to catch the steamer, which was rather a horrid one, apparently being intended more for the convenience of enormous bales, sacks, and fruit-baskets than that of its passengers, who were stuffed in anyhow among the cargo. Lady MacNairne was furious, because it was too cold for Tibe on deck, and he wasn't allowed below in the tiny, poky cabin. She argued with the captain, or somebody in authority and velvet slippers; but he being particularly Dutch, and very old, even her fascination had no power. (It is strange, but when Lady MacNairne gets excited she talks more like an American than a Scotswoman; however, I believe she has been to the States.) At last we all three formed a kind of hollow square round Tibe with our skirts over his back, and when he wasn't asleep he amused himself by pretending that our shoes were bones.
Even Mr. Starr could not keep us gay and laughing for the whole two hours of the trip, for we were squeezed in between bags of potatoes (he sat on one), and our feet kept going to sleep. But Nell said, think of Urk, and how seeing Urk would make up for everything.
Eventually we did see it, and it really did look pretty from a distance, with its little close-clustered red roofs like a buttonhole bouquet floating on the sea. As the steamer brought us nearer the island something of the glamor faded; but there were about a dozen girls assembled to watch the arrival of the boat, wearing rather nice, winged white caps and low-necked black dresses.
Quickly we made our cameras ready, expecting them to smile shyly and seem pleased, as at Volendam; but with one accord they sneered and turned their backs, as if on a word of command. We "snapped" nothing but a row of sunburnt necks under the caps. The girls laughed scornfully, and when we landed they repaid our first interest in them by staring at us with impudent contempt. There was no one to carry our bags, so we had to do it ourselves, Mr. Starr taking all he could manage; and as we trailed off to find the hotel, about forty or fifty ugly and disagreeable-looking people followed after us, jeering and evidently making the most personal remarks.
Nobody could, or would, tell us where to find the inn; but it was close by really, as we presently found out for ourselves, after we had gone the wrong way once or twice. Perhaps it wasn't strange, though, that we missed it, for it was a shabby little house with no resemblance to a hotel; and when we went in, the landlord, who was cleaning lamps and curtain-rods in a scene of great disorder in the principal room, showed signs of bewildered surprise at sight of us. But he was a great deal more surprised when he heard that we wished to stay the night. He had not many rooms, he said, and people seldom asked for them; indeed, no tourist had ever done so before within his experience. Still, he would do his best for us, and—yes, we could see the rooms.
He dropped his cleaning-rags and curtain-rods on the floor, and, opening a door, started to go up a ladder which led to a square hole in the floor above. We followed, all but Lady MacNairne, who would not go because Tibe could not, and at the top of the hole were two little boxes of rooms with beds in the wall—stuffy, unmade beds, which perhaps the landlord and some members of the family had slept in.
"This is going to be an adventure," said Nell; but her voice did not sound very cheerful, and I felt I could have cried when I heard that she and I would have to bunk together in the wall, in a two-foot wide bed smelling like wet moss.
We were dying for tea, or even coffee, but it seemed useless to ask for it, as apparently there were no servants, and the landlord went back to his cleaning the instant we had scrambled down the ladder.
"Perhaps," said I, "we can find acafé, if we go out and explore."
So we went, followed by beggars for the first time in Holland, and it was a hideous island, with no sign of acaféor anything else nice, or even clean. All was as unlike as possible to the ideas we had formed of the dear little Hollow Land. There were dead cats, and bad eggs, and old bones lying about the oozy gutters, and people shouted disagreeable things at us from their doorways.
Mr. Starr tried to be merry, but it was as difficult, even for him, as making jokes in the tumbril on the way to have your head cut off, and Lady MacNairne said at last that she would much rather have hers cut off than stay seventeen more hours in such a ghastly hole.
"I simply can't and won't, and you shan't, either!" she exclaimed. "We've been here an hour, and it seems a month. Somehow we must get away."
Poor Nell was sadly crushed. She admitted that she had made a horrible mistake, which she regretted more for our sakes than her own, though she herself was so bored that she felt a decrepit wreck, a hundred years old.
"But the steamer doesn't come back till eight or nine to-morrow morning. I'm afraid we'll have to grin and bear it till then," said Mr. Starr.
"I can't grin, and I won't bear it," replied Lady MacNairne. "Dearest Ronny, you are a man, and we look to you to get us away from here."
Poor Mr. Starr stared wildly out to sea, as if he would call a bark of some sort from the vasty deep; but there was nothing to be seen except an endless expanse of gray water. Nell had torn her dress on a barbed-wire fence which shut us away from the only spot of green on the hideous island; Tibe had unfortunately eaten part of what Mr. Starr said was an Early Christian egg; I had wrenched my ankle badly on a bit of banana peel; Lady MacNairne's smart coat was spoilt by some mud which a small Urkian boy had thrown at her, and Mr. Starr must have felt that, if he didn't instantly perform a miracle, he would be blamed by us all for everything.
"We might get a sailing-boat," he said, when he had thought passionately for a few minutes.
We snapped at the idea, and a moment later we were on our way to the harbor to find out.
Now was the time that I became a person of importance. Owing to my studies, in which Mr. van Buren has encouraged me so kindly, I know enough Dutch to ask for most things I want, and to understand whether people mean to let me have them or not, which seems odd, considering that I deliberately made up my mind not to learn a word when Nell almost dragged me to Holland. Under Mr. Starr's guidance, and at his dictation, I interviewed every sailor we met lounging about the harbor.
It was very discouraging at first. The men were all sure that no sailing-boat could get to Enkhuisen, as the wind was exactly in the wrong quarter; but just as our hearts were on their way down to the boots Tibe had gnawed so much, a brown young man, with crisp black curls and ear-rings, said we could go to Kampen if we liked. It would take four or five hours, and we should have to sleep there, taking the steamer when it started back in the morning. Kampen was beautiful, he told us, with old buildings and water-gates; but even if it hadn't been, we were convinced that it must be better than Urk; so we joyously engaged a large fishing-boat owned by the brown man and his still browner father.
We made poor Mr. Starr go back alone to the inn and break it to the landlord that we were not going to stay, after all; but he paid for the rooms, so the old man was delighted that he could go on with his cleaning in peace.
Now we began to be quite happy and excited. Mr. Starr brought us bread and cheese from the inn to eat on board, and presently we were all packed away in the fishing-boat, which smelt interestingly of ropes and tar.
Nell and I sat on the floor, where we could feel as well as hear the knocking of the little waves against the planks which alone separated us from the water.
There was not much breeze to begin with, for the winds seemed to be resting after their orgy of yesterday, and just as the old bronze statue and the young bronze statue were ready to start, the little there was died as if of exhaustion.
There we sat and waited, our muscles involuntarily straining, as if to help the boat along; but the sail flapped idly: we might as well have tried to sail on the waxed floor of a ballroom with the windows shut.
"Can't they dosomething?" asked Lady MacNairne, in growing despair.
I passed the question on; but the men shook their heads. Without some faint breeze to help them along they could not move.
When half an hour had dragged itself away, and still the air was dead, or fast asleep (Mr. Starr said that Urk had stifled it), we began to realize the fate to which we were doomed. We would either have to spend the night curled up among coils of rope, with no shelter except a windowless, furnitureless cupboard of four feet by three, which maybe called itself a cabin, or we would have to crawl humbly back to the inn and sue for a night's lodging.
We were hungry and cross, a little tired, and very, very hot. It would have been a great relief to burst into tears, or be disagreeable to some one. I don't know why, but I had the most homesick longing to see Mr. van Buren. It seemed as if, had he come with us, everything would have been right, or at least bearable.
Suddenly, as we were dismally trying to make up our minds what to do, and Mr. Starr had proposed to toss a coin, Lady MacNairne pointed wildly out to sea, crying——
"Look there—look there!"
A dot of a thing was tearing over the water—a dot of a thing, like our own darling, blessed motor-boat, and the nearer it came the more like it was. At last there was no room for doubt. "Lorelei-Mascotte" was speeding to our rescue, across the Zuider Zee, all alone, without fat, waddling "Waterspin."
I don't believe, if I'd heard that some one had made me a present of the Tower of London, with everything in it, I should have been as distracted with joy as I was now, for the Tower couldn't have got us away from Urk, and "Lorelei-Mascotte" could. Besides, Mr. van Buren would probably not have been in the Tower, whereas intuition told me that he was coming to me—that is to us—as fast as "Mascotte's" motor could bring him.
We stood up, and waved, and shouted. I hardly know what other absurd things we may not have done, in our delirium of joy. As I said to Mr. van Buren a few minutes later, it was exactly like being rescued from a desert island when your food had just given out, and you thought savages were going to kill you in the night.
Jonkheer Brederode was almost superhumanly nice, considering what he had endured at Nell's hands, and that it was really through her obstinacy that we'd suffered so much, and made ourselves and everybody else concerned so much trouble. Mr. van Buren said, for his part, he would have tried to persuade his friend to punish Nell by leaving her to her fate, if he hadn't been sorry to have it involve me—and, of course, the others.
When Jonkheer Brederode found that by ferociously hard work on his part and Hendrik's, the damage could be repaired sooner than he had expected, he at once proposed following us to Urk. He knew what it was like, and how, within a few minutes after landing, we would hate it. He was certain that we would be in despair at being tied to the wretched island for the night, and he had proposed to go teuf-teufing to our succor. The lack of wind which had meant ruin to our hopes, was a boon to the motor-boat, which had flown along the smooth water at her best speed. And when "Mascotte" was received by us with acclamations, our noble skipper did not even smile a superior smile.
He only said that, when he found he could, he thought he might as well follow, and spin us back, if we liked to go, and he hoped Miss Van Buren would pardon the liberty he had taken with her boat.
If she had been horrid to him then, I do believe I should have slapped her; but she had the grace to laugh and say that "Mascotte" really was a mascot. There is something, I suppose, in having a sense of humor, in which I'm alleged to be deficient.
That was the way it happened that we had two nights at Enkhuisen; but the second we spent on "Lorelei-Mascotte" and "Waterspin," sleeping on the boats for the first time, and it was great fun. The next morning early, we had a picnic breakfast on board, making coffee with the grand apparatus in Mr. Starr's wonderful tea-basket, which he had bought at the most expensive shop in London, like the extravagant young man he is. We didn't wait to finish before we were off; and then came the trip to Stavoren, which Jonkheer Brederode would not have let us make on the boat, if the weather had not been calm, for once more we had to steer straight across the Zuider Zee for several hours.
When we had arrived it was hard to realize that Stavoren had once been a place of vast importance, and that a powerful king had lived there in old, old days, for the bastion seemed the only thing of importance in the poor little town now. But no doubt the great sand-bank, with its famous legend of the Proud Lady, is enough to account for the decline.
Nell smiled in a naughty, mischievous way, when her cousin remarked that his mother's family came originally from Friesland, I suppose because Jonkheer Brederode had just told us that the Frisian people are the most obstinate and persistent in the Netherlands: that all the obstinacy in any other whole province would not be as much as is contained in one Frisian man—or woman. But I think they have reason to be proud of themselves, especially as their obstinacy has kept their ancient customs and language almost intact, and the Spaniards never could make the least impression upon them by the most original and terrific kinds of tortures, invented especially to subdue Frisians. If they were buried alive, they just went on smiling, and saying, "I will," or "I won't," until their mouths were covered up.
I almost wished that Jonkheer Brederode hadn't said, before Mr. van Buren, that a "Frisian head" is an expression used by the Dutch when they mean incredible hardness or obstinacy; but he didn't mind at all, and immediately told us a thing that happened to his mother and some Frisian cousins of hers when they were girls. A musical genius, a young man, was visiting at their house, and when he had played a great deal for them at their request, he made a bet that they would tire of hearing his music before he tired of making it. They took the bet, and he began to play again; but he was not Frisian, and had never been in Friesland before, therefore he was not prepared for what would happen. Still, he was Dutch, so he did not like giving up, and he went on playing for twenty-four hours, without stopping for more than five minutes at a time. The ladies always exclaimed: "Please go on if you can; we're not tired at all," though they looked very pale and ill; so he didn't stop until he tumbled off his music-stool, and had to be carried away to bed, where he lay for two days. But the Frisian girls suffered no bad consequences, and said, if he had not given up, they would have sat listening for at least a week.
Once Jonkheer Brederode had a big yacht which he lent to the Belgian king for a trip, and there was a Frisian skipper. Every morning the decks were washed at five o'clock, and the king sent word that he would be glad to have it done later in the day, as it waked him up, and he could not go to sleep again. Then the Frisian answered, "Very sorry, King, but we always do wash the decks at five, and it must be done"; which amused his majesty so much that he made no more objections.
If the people of Friesland have great individuality, so have their meers. There was a canal through which we had to pass after Stavoren, like a long, green-walled corridor leading into a huge room. The green wall was made of tall reeds, and we had glimpses of level golden spaces, and sails which seemed to be skimming through meadows. There was a crying of gulls, a smell of salt and of peat, which once formed the great forests swallowed up by the meer. Then, through a kind of water-gateway, we slipped into our first Frisian meer, where the water was like glass, the black sails of yellow sail-boats were purple in the sunlight, and the windmills on the distant shore looked like restless, gesticulating ghosts.
Our wash raised a golden, pearl-fringed wave, but the water was so clear that now and then we fancied we could faintly see the old road under the meer, which they say Frisian farmers use to this day, knowing just where and how to guide their horses along it, through the water.
Because of this road, and others like it, Jonkheer Brederode had taken on a pilot at Stavoren, a man able to keep us off all hidden perils. He seemed to know every person on every heavily-laden peat-boat, or brightly painted eel-boat, and Nell insisted that even the families of wild ducks we met nodded to him as we went by.
We passed from the meer called Morra into the biggest in all Friesland, Fluessen Meer; and it was all rather like the Norfolk Broads, where my father once took me when I was a child. Always going from one meer into another, there were charming canals, decorated with pretty little houses in gardens of roses and hollyhocks, and emphasized, somehow, by strange windmills exactly like large, wise gray owls, or, in the distance, resembling monks bearing aloft tall crosses.
It was exquisite to glide on and on between two worlds; the world of realities, the world of reflections. Villages were far separated one from another, on canal and meer, though there were many farmhouses, walled round by great trees to keep cool the store-lofts in their steeply-sloping roofs. Gulls sat about like domestic fowls, and perched on the backs of cows, that grazed in meadows fringed with pink and purple flowers.
Men and girls rowed home from milking, and hung their green and scarlet milk-pails in rows on the outer walls of their farmhouse homes. Fishing-nets were looped from pole to pole by the water-side, in such curious fashion as to look like vineyards of trailing brown vines; and as we drew near to Sneek, where we planned to stay the night, we began to meet quaint lighters, with much picturesque family life going on, on board; children playing with queer, homemade toys; ancient, white-capped dames knitting; girls flirting with young men on passing peat-boats—men in scarlet jerseys which, repeated in the smooth water, looked like running fire under glass.
The old seventeenth-century water-gate at Sneek was so beautiful, that we expected to like the place with the ugly name; but after all we hated it, and decided to spend another night in our own floating houses.
All sorts of funny, water-noises waked me early; but then, I hadn't slept very soundly, because I couldn't help thinking a good deal about Mr. van Buren, who found a telegram waiting for him at Sneek, and went away from us by the first train he could catch. I don't know what was in the telegram, but he looked rather miserable as he read it, and I wondered a good deal in the night if his mother had called him back because Freule Menela van der Windt was not pleased at having him stay so long with us.
Nell thought our next day's run, going through the River Boorn to the Sneeker Meer, past Grouw and on to Leeuwarden, even more delightful than the day before; but it didn't seem as interesting to me, somehow. Perhaps it was having a person who was partly Frisian standing by me all the time, and telling me things, which made the difference; anyway, I had a homesick feeling, as if something were lacking. Mr. Starr said it would be nice to spend a honeymoon on board one of the nice little wherries we saw in the big meer; but I thought of Mr. van Buren and Freule Menela having theirs on one, and it gave me quite a sinking of the heart. I tried not to show that I was sad, but I'm afraid Mr. Starr guessed, for in the afternoon he gave me a water-color sketch he had made in the morning, on deck. He called it a "rough, impressionist thing," but it is really exquisite; the water pale lilac, with silver frills of foam, just as it looked in the light when he sat painting; fields of cloth-of-gold, starred with wild flowers in the foreground; far-off trees in soft gray and violet, with a gleam of rose here and there, which means a house-roof half hidden, in the middle distance. Lady MacNairne admired the sketch particularly; and I got the idea—I hardly know why—that she was not quite pleased to have it given to me instead of to her.
It was late afternoon when we came to Leeuwarden, and the first thing we found out was, that it was not at all a place where we should enjoy stopping on the boats, because of a very "ancient" and very, very "fish-like smell" which pervaded the canal, and made us wear extraordinary expressions on our faces as it found its way to our nostrils. But nobody else seemed even to notice it; nobody else wore agonized expressions; indeed, the girls we met as we drove to the hotel had dove-like, smiling faces. They were tall and radiantly fair, with peace in their eyes; and those who still kept to the fashion of wearing gold and silver helmet-head-dresses were like noble young Minervas. I could have scolded the ones who were silly enough to wear modern hats; but all the old ladies were most satisfactory. We didn't meet one who had not been loyal to the helmet of her youth; and they were such beautiful old creatures that I could well believe the legend Jonkheer Brederode told us: how the sirens of the North Sea had wedded Frisian men, and all the girl-children had been as magically lovely as their mothers.
The old-fashioned, rather dull streets were crowded with people, who seemed in more of a hurry to get somewhere than they need have been, in such a sleepy town; and when we arrived at the hotel all was excitement and bustle. It happened that we had come in the midst of Kermess week, the greatest event of the year at Leeuwarden; and if a party of Americans had not gone away unexpectedly that morning they could not have given us rooms, though Jonkheer Brederode had telegraphed from Sneek.
As soon as we were settled, though it was nearly dinner-time, he proposed that we should dart out and have a look round the fair, because, he said, ladies must not go at night.
"Why not?" asked Nell, quick, as usual, to take him up if he seems inclined to be masterful. "I should think it would be more amusing at night."
"So it is," he admitted calmly.
"Then why aren't we to see it?"
"Because the play is too rough. Tom, Dick, and Harry, as you say in England, come out after dark, when the fair's lighted up and at its gayest, and it is no place for ladies to be hustled about in."
"I've always found 'Tom, Dick, and Harry,' very inoffensive fellows," Nell persisted.
"You've never been to a Dutch Kermess."
"That's why I want to go."
"So you shall, before dark."
"And after dark, too," she added, as obstinately as if she had been a Frisian.
"That is impossible," said Jonkheer Brederode, his mouth and chin looking hard and firm.
Nell didn't say any more, though she shrugged her shoulders; but the expression of her eyes was ominous, and I felt that she was planning mischief.
We walked out to the Kermess, which Lady MacNairne and Mr. Starr pronounced very like a French country fair; but it seemed wonderful to me. There were streets and streets of booths, little and big, gorgeously decorated, where people in the costumes of their provinces sold every imaginable kind of thing. Nell was so well-behaved that she evidently disarmed Jonkheer Brederode's suspicions, if he had shared mine; and when she proposed buying a quantity of sweets and cheap toys for us to give away to families of children upon the lighters we passed on canals, he was ready to humor her. We chose all sorts of toys and sweets—enough to last us for days of playing Santa Claus—and bargained in Dutch with the people who sold, making them laugh sometimes. Then, Jonkheer Brederode took us to all the best side-shows: the giant steer, as big as sixteen every-day oxen; the smallest horse in the world, a fairy beast, thoughtfully doing sums in the sand with his miniature forepaw; the fat lady, very bored and warm; the fair Circassian, who lured audiences into a hot theater with tinsel decorations like a Christmas-tree and hundreds of colored lights. There were other sights; but Jonkheer Brederode said these were the only ones for ladies, and hurried us by some of the booths with painted pictures of three-headed people or girls cut off at the waist, which Nell wished particularly to see. He wouldn't let us go into the merry-go-rounds either, and by the time we got back to the hotel—our hands full of dolls, tops, spotted wooden horses, boxes of blocks, and packets of nougat surmounted with chenille monkeys—she was boiling with pent-up resentment.
Already we were late for dinner, and we still had to dress; but Nell—who shared a room with me, as the hotel was crowded—said that she must slip out again, to buy something which she wished to select when alone; she would not be gone many minutes.
I was all ready when she ran in again with two large bundles in her hands. She would not tell me what they were, as she was in a hurry to change (at least, that was her excuse), but promised that I should see something interesting if I would come up to the room with her after dining; and I was not to tell any one that she had been out for the second time.
We were long over our dinner, as there was such a crowd that the waiters grew quite confused; and, at the end, we three women sat with Jonkheer Brederode and Mr. Starr in the garden behind the hotel, while the men smoked. Nell was so patient that I almost thought she had forgotten the bundles up-stairs. But at last Lady MacNairne, hearing a clock chime ten, announced that she had some writing to do before going to bed.
"I suppose you will have a look at the Kermess again?" she said to our two knights.
"I've seen dozens of such fairs; and when you've seen one, you've seen pretty well all, nowadays. But if the Mariner would like to go, I shall be glad to go with him," Jonkheer Brederode answered.
"I'm not sure I didn't see enough this afternoon," said Mr. Starr. "Anyhow, I mean to have another cigarette or two here; and I do think the ladies might stop with me, for I have a hundred things to say."
Lady MacNairne and Nell were on their feet, however, and would not be persuaded; so we bade each other good-night, and three minutes later Nell was opening her parcels in our room.
"Among the last letters that were forwarded from London, was a larger check than I expected from theFireside Friend," said she; "so I've bought a present for you, and for me, from my affectionate self."
With that, she had the paper wrappings off two glittering Frisian head-dresses, like beautiful gold skull-caps. And in the other bundle were two black shawls, like those I had seen several girls of Leeuwarden wearing.
"Oh, how sweet!" I exclaimed. "Thank you so much. I've been wanting some kind of costume ever since Amsterdam, where they were so expensive. These are to take home and keep as souvenirs, when we are at work in our poor little flat, just as if nothing had ever happened to us."
Nell gave a shudder, but she didn't say that we never would go home and to work again, as she used to say if I spoke of it when we were beginning our trip. Instead she said——
"I don't know about the future; but I'm going to wear mine to-night."
"What, sleep in that helmet?" I asked.
She laughed. "I'm not thinking about sleep yet. It's just the edge of the evening—in Kermess week. Watch me."
She undid her hair, which is very long and thick, and seems even thicker than it is, if possible, because it is so wavy. Then she plaited it tightly into two braids, and straining, and pulling, and pushing the little ripples and rings back from her face, as well as she could, she managed to put on the helmet. Then she tied the shawl over her shoulders; and as she had on a short dark skirt which was unnoticeable, she looked, for all the world, like a beautiful Frisian girl.