Chapter 11

"Where's your imagination, Phil? It must have gone wool-gathering, or you could put yourself into the place of these people and see why they tore away the pictures and statues, and hid every bit of color with whitewash. I love beauty, but I would have done as they did. Color in churches was to them the life-blood of their nearest and dearest, splashed upon the walls. Those statues, those pictured saints they pulled down or covered up, had smiled on persecution. They had to have a kind of frenzied house-cleaning to get out the smell of incense. Oh, I know how they felt when they did it, as if I'd been here myself with a broom full of whitewash."

"Perhaps some ancestress of yours was here, and did some sweeping," said I. But it was a mistake for me to speak. She froze in an instant, and suggested that if everybody had seen enough, we should go out and give "poor Mr. Starr a chance."

"I'll stop and show him the Haarlem window," said she. And I hated Starr. Perhaps that was the state of mind she wished to create; at all events her eyes retained the exaltation of the whitewashing. Nor should I wonder if those two enjoyed the thought that I was kept waiting outside, as much as they enjoyed roaming together in "glass country."

In any case, they stayed so long that we were able to visit a shop near by, and come back, before they reappeared. It was a nice shop, where sweets and cakes were sold, especially the rich treacle "cookies," for which Gouda is celebrated. There was much gold-bright brass; there were jars and boxes painted curiously; and we were served by an apple-cheeked old lady in a white cap, whom Miss Rivers and the Chaperon thought adorable. We bought _hopjes_ as well as cookies, because they wanted to make acquaintance with the national sweets of Holland; and afterwards, when Miss Van Buren was given some, she pronounced them nothing but "the caramellest caramels" she had ever tasted.

She and Starr had developed a pleasant private understanding, which comprised jokes too subtle to be understood by outsiders; and as the Mariner and I were shoulder to shoulder for a moment on our way back to the boat, he gave me a look charged with meaning.

"Who laughs last, laughs best," he quoted; and inwardly I could not but agree, though I shrugged my shoulders.

Tibe attracted enormous attention in Gouda. As we walked along shady streets, lit by the clear shining of canals, children ran after us as at Hamlin they ran after the Pied Piper. If for one instant the strangers paused to study a beautiful, carved door, or to peer into the window of an antiquary's at blue and white jars, or to gaze up at the ferocious head of a Turk over a chemist's shop, or to laugh at a house with window-blinds painted in red and white diamonds, a crowd of flaxen heads collected round us, little hands fluttered over the dog's wrinkled head as butterflies flit about a clover blossom, baby laughter tinkled, and tiny shrieks cut the stillness of the sleepy, summer afternoon.

It was all so dream-like to Miss Van Buren that she declared incredulity in Holland's real existence. "There is no such country," she said, "and worse than all, I have no motor-boat."

Nevertheless, a shape which closely resembled "Lorelei" was floating like a white water-lily on a green calyx of canal, in the place where I had, or dreamed that I had, left her an hour ago. And having assembled on board that white apparition, we started, or dreamed that we started for Leiden--a place where I hoped to score a point or two with my lady.

The boisterous wind of the early morning had dropped at noon, leaving the day hot and unrefreshed, with no breath of air stirring. But on the water, traveling at eight or nine miles an hour, we forgot the heavy July heat which on shore had burned our faces. They were fanned by a constant breeze of our own making which tossed us a bouquet of perfume from flowery fields as we slipped by, the only sound in our ears the cry of sea-going gulls overhead, and the delicate fluting of the water as our bows shattered its crystals among pale, shimmery sedges and tall reeds.

Tiny canals of irrigation wandered like azure veins through a maze of blossoming pink and gold in the sun-bright meadows, and as far as the most sweeping glance could reach, the horizon seemed pinned down to earth with windmills.

Suddenly the land lay far below the level of the canal, and people walking in the main streets of villages, behind the dykes, were visible for us only as far as their knees. Quaint little houses had sat themselves down close to the water's edge, as if determined to miss no detail of canal gossip; and from their bright windows, like brilliant eyes, they watched the water with a curious expression of self-satisfaction and contentment on their painted, wooden faces. On verandas, half as big as the houses themselves, the life of the family went on. Children played, young girls wrote letters to their lovers; mothers busily worked sewing-machines, but saw everything that passed on the water; fathers read newspapers, and white-haired old grandpapas nodded over long-stemmed pipes. Every garden blazed with color; and close-planted rows of trees, with their branches cut and trained (as Miss Van Buren said) "flat as trees for paper dolls," shaded the upper windows of the toy mansions.

Little things which were matters of every day for me in this country so characteristic of the Netherlands, tickled the fancy of the strangers, and kept them constantly exclaiming. The extravagantly polished wood of the house doors; the lifting cranes protruding from the gables; the dairymen in boats, with their shining pails; the bridges that pivoted round to let us pass through; the drawbridges that opened in the middle and swung up with leisured dignity; the bridgeman in sorrel-colored coats, collecting tolls in battered wooden shoes suspended from long lines; the dogs (which they call "Spitz" and are really Kees) who barked ferociously at our motor, from every barge and lighter; the yellow carts with black, bonnet-like hoods, from which peasant heads peered curiously out at us, from shore; and, above all, the old women or young children with ropes across their breasts, straining to tow enormous barges like great dark, following whales.

"What can Dutchmen be like to let them do it, while they loaf on board?" Miss Van Buren flashed at me, as if I were responsible for the faults of all my male countrymen.

"It isn't exactly loafing to steer those big barges," said I. "And the whole family take turns, anywhere between the ages of ten and a hundred. They don't know what hard work it is, because nobody has told them, and our river people are among the most contented."

Starr was interested in seeing me salute the men of passing craft, and in their grave return of the courtesy. Soon, he could imitate my motion, though he exaggerated it slightly, letting his arm float gracefully out to full length before it came back to his cap, somewhat, as he remarked, "like a lily-stem blown by the wind." When he had got the knack he was enchanted, and every yacht, sail-boat, lighter, and barge had a theatrical greeting from him as it slipped silently past, perhaps never to be seen again by our eyes.

"But are they happy?" he asked. "You never hear bursts of laughter, or chattering of voices, as you would in other countries. The youngest children's faces are grave, while as for the men, they look as if they were paid so much a day not to shed a smile, and were mighty conscientious about earning their money. Yet you say they're contented."

"We Dutch are a reserved people," I explained, under Miss Van Buren's critical gaze. "We don't make much noise when we're glad, or sad; and it takes something funny to make us laugh. We don't do it to hear the sound of our own voices, but prefer to rest our features and our minds."

"Some of these bargemen look as if they'd rested their minds so much that vegetables had grown on them," mused Starr, which made Miss Van Buren giggle; and somehow I was angry with her for finding wit in his small sallies.

"You'll discover on this trip that as you treat the Dutch, so will they treat you," I went on. "If you're impatient, they'll be rude; if you show contempt, they'll pay you back in the same coin; but if you're polite and considerate there's nothing they won't do for you in their quiet way."

"We shall never be rude to any of them, shall we, Nell?" said Miss Rivers.

"Not unless they deserve it," came back the answer. And I knew what Dutchman in particular Miss Van Buren had in mind.

It was about two hours from Gouda when a blaze of color leaped from the distant level to our eyes, and everybody cried out in admiration for little Boskoop, which in summer is always _en fete_ among garlands and bowers of bloom. The rhododendrons--that last longer with us than in England, like all other flowers--were beautiful with a middle-aged clinging to the glory of their youth; and the tall, straight flame of azaleas shot up from every grass-plot against a background of roses--roses white, and red, and amber; roses pale pink, and the crimson that is purple in shadow.

Miss Rivers thought she would like to live there, and cultivate flowers; but I told her that she had better not negotiate for the purchase of a house, until she had seen the miles of blossom at Haarlem.

We had not kept up our average of speed to nine miles an hour; for, though we made ten when the way was clear, and no yards of regulation red-tape to get tangled in our steering-gear, the custom of these waterways is to slow down near villages and in farming country. Besides, we met barges loaded to the water's edge, and had we been going fast our wash would have swamped them. As it was, we flung a wave over the low dykes, and sent boats moored at the foot of garden steps knocking against their landing-stages, in fear at our approach. But after Alphen we turned into a green stream, so evidently not a canal that Aunt Fay was moved to ask questions.

Her face fell when she heard it was the Rhine.

"What, _this_ the Rhine!" she echoed. "It's no wider than--than the Thames at Marlow. I was there last summer----"

"You stayed with Lady Marchant," broke in Starr, hastily. It was not the first time he had cut her short, and the little masquerader bristled under the treatment.

"Oh yes; that was when you were painting my portrait, wasn't it?"

Starr flushed, and I guessed why, remembering his Salon success, and recalling that it was his portrait of Lady MacNairne which had been exhibited this year. Of course, I had been stupid not to put the two facts together, and realize that his success and her portrait, must have been one and the same.

The girls had probably heard of it, and must be asking themselves at this moment how a portrait of this little spectacled thing could have been possible. Cruel Aunt Fay! Somehow, she must have known that the face of her _alter ego_ had been painted and exhibited by Starr, and she was enjoying his misery, as bad boys enjoy the wrigglings of butterflies on pins.

In pity I stepped in to the rescue, and began again, before a question about the portrait could fall from the lips of Miss Rivers, on which I saw it trembling.

"It's the Rhine for no particular reason," I said. "It's quite arbitrary. Farther on it's the Oude Rhine, farther still the Krommer, or Crooked Rhine. But if you think little of it here, you'll despise it at Katwyk, where its end is so ignominious that it has to be pumped into the sea."

"I don't think that ignominious," said the Chaperon. "I suppose it doesn't choose to go into the sea. It would rather rest after its labors and lie down in a pleasant pool, to dream about where it rose on the Splugen, or about the way it poured out of Lake Constance, and went roaring over the rocks at Schaffhausen to wind on among hilly vineyards and ruined castles, past the Drachenfels and Cologne. If they choose to pump it against its will, that's _their_ affair; at least that's how _I_ should feel if I were the Rhine."

"How Scotch of you, Aunt Fay!" exclaimed Starr, fervently; but he looked worried; and I wondered if he had told the girls that Lady MacNairne had never been much abroad. Evidently her double has traveled, and remembered what she saw. I am not curious concerning other people's affairs, but I confess I should like to know something of Aunt Fay's past, for she seems so ignorant of some things, so well-informed upon others.

Suddenly Miss Van Buren looked up from a red book which had engaged her attention ever since, at Alphen, we turned out of the narrow water-street of the canal into the broader thoroughfare of the river.

"This book explains everything except what you want to know!" she complained. "Why can't it tell what Saint Joris is in England? He must be some saint there, and I saw his name over that nice little inn with the garden at Alphen."

"St. George," I said; though she had not asked me.

"I might have known," she sighed, "and no doubt the Dutch have put the dragon into their language too, stuck full of those "i's" and "j's", that make me feel whenever I see them in print as if my hair were done up too tight, or my teeth were sizes too large for my mouth. 'Rijn wijn,' for instance. Who would think that meant something sleek and pleasant, like Rhine wine?"

"Why not?" I asked. "We pronounce it almost the same."

"That's because you haven't got the courage of your convictions. You fling the 'i's' and 'j's' about, and then pretend they're not there."

"Why, don't you see that they're only 'y's'?" I protested, and really it does appear strange that to foreign eyes they can look, when side by side, like separate letters.

But the Chaperon stopped us. She said that we could find enough to do minding our p's and q's in life, without quarreling over "i's" and "j's"; so the argument ended, and the girls turned their attention to making tea.

They did it charmingly, juggling with the contents of a tea-basket which Starr brought on deck and placed on a little folding-table. Whether Miss Van Buren forgot me or not, in dealing out cups when tea was made, at all events she pretended to, and reminded by her stepsister, gave me tea without sugar. Then, begged for one lump, she absentmindedly dropped in three, while talking with Starr. Robert would certainly have been tempted to shake her if he had been present at that tea-party.

XII

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 facade. 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 wild _deshabille_, 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.