Chapter 19

"Neither do I, or I shouldn't care to risk your boat. But there's a chance."

"I shouldn't dream of venturing," said Lady MacNairne, "and I'm sure Phyllis wouldn't go without her chaperon, would you, dear?"

"No," I answered; and that mercifully settled it for Nell, as she couldn't take a trip alone with the men.

"In any case, it's pleasanter to drive from here to Hoorn and Enkhuisen," went on the Jonkheer, "and the only real reason for sticking to the boat even in fine weather would have been that you came to 'do' Holland in a motor-boat, and wanted to be true to your principles. The coast is flat and low, and you'd have seen nothing except a line of land which would have looked uninteresting across the water, whereas in my car----"

"But your car isn't here," objected Nell.

"It may be, any minute now. I've been expecting it for the last hour. I wasn't trusting entirely to luck, when we came; and my chauffeur had orders to hold himself in readiness for a telegram. Last night, as soon as I saw the wind getting up, I wired him in Amsterdam, where he was waiting, to start as soon as it was light."

"You're a wonderful fellow," said Mr. van Buren, and I complimented him too; but Nell didn't speak.

A few minutes later we heard the whirr of a motor, and the buzz of excited voices. We had just finished breakfast, so we rushed from the balcony at the back of the house, through the big room of the pictures, to the front door; and there was Jonkheer Brederode's car (on the dyke, which is the only road), with the smart little chauffeur smiling and touching his cap to his master, amid a swarm of girls and boys.

By-and-by it was decided that only Jonkheer Brederode and Hendrik (with Toon on the barge) should test the motor-boat's seaworthy qualities, while Mr. van Buren and Mr. Starr stopped with us. This was the Jonkheer's idea. He would prefer it, he said, as the fewer there were on "Lorelei"--alias "Mascotte"--the better. And Mr. van Buren ought to be with us, to tell us about places.

I think all the men would have liked the adventure, but they couldn't say that they didn't want to be of our party, and Lady MacNairne actually begged her nephew to come in the motor. She didn't confess that she was afraid for him. The reason she gave was that she couldn't take care of Tibe in the car without his help. I was sure she was anxious. Though I couldn't help being glad for his family's sake that Mr. van Buren was safe (as safe as any one can be in a motor-car) it did seem sad that Jonkheer Brederode was left to brave the danger without his friends.

All Lady MacNairne's thought was for her nephew, and so I felt it would be only kind to show the Jonkheer that some one cared about _him_. I begged him to let Hendrik manage the boat alone, for I said we should all be so worried, that it would spoil our drive. I supposed Nell would join with me, as Lady MacNairne did, if only enough for civility, but she wouldn't say a word. However, though she pretended to be more interested in examining the car than listening to our conversation, she was pale, with the air of having a headache.

Jonkheer Brederode was pleased, I think, to feel that some one took an interest in him; but he made light of the danger, and saw us off so merrily that I forgot to worry.

Mr. van Buren didn't want to drive; Mr. Starr doesn't know how; and as Nell said she would like to sit in front with the chauffeur, Lady MacNairne and I had the two men in the _tonneau_ with us.

We were gay; but Nell didn't turn round once to join in our talk. She sat there beside the chauffeur, as glum as if she had lost her last friend. Perhaps she was alarmed for her boat, as she doesn't care about the Jonkheer.

Now we began to see what a Dutch dyke really is, and I could imagine men riding furiously along the high, narrow road, carrying the news to village after village that the water was rising.

There was just room on top for anything we might meet to pass; but the chauffeur drove slowly, and Mr. van Buren said there was no danger, so I wasn't afraid. There was a sense of protection in sitting next to him, he is so big and dependable. I felt he would not _let_ anything hurt me; and once in a while he looked at me with a very nice look. I suppose he has even nicer ones for Freule Menela, though, when they are alone together. It is a pity her manner is so much against her.

Although I wasn't terrified, it was an exciting drive, running along on the high dyke (I could hardly believe it when Mr. van Buren said there were bigger ones in Zeeland), with the Zuider Zee on one side and the wide green reaches of Jonkheer Brederode's Hollow Land on the other.

I shivered to think what would happen if the hungry sea, forever gnawing at the granite pile, were to break it down and pour over the low-lying land. Many times in the past such awful things happened; what if to-day were the day for it to happen again?

I asked Mr. van Buren if he didn't wake up sometimes in the night with an attack of the horrors; but he seemed anxious to soothe me, as if he didn't want his country spoiled for me by fears.

"The corps of engineers who look after the coast defenses is the best in the world," he said.

Edam was our first town; and it was odd to see it, after nibbling its cheeses more or less all one's life, and never thinking of the place they came from. The funniest thing was that it smelled of cheese--a delicious smell that seemed a part of the town's tranquillity, just as the perfume seems part of a flower. In most of the pretty old houses with their glittering ornamental tiles, there was some sign of cheese-making; and all the people of Edam must have been busy making it, as we saw only two or three.

We stopped in a large public square, with a pattern in the colored pavement, like carpet, and the place was so quiet that the sound of the silence droned in our ears.

"And this," said Mr. van Buren, "was once one of the proudest cities of the Zuider Zee!"

"My goodness!" exclaimed Lady MacNairne, "is this little old thing another of the Dead Cities? Well, I'm sure it couldn't have been half as nice when it was alive." And down something went in her note-book.

We drove by a park, a noble church, and the loveliest cemetery I ever saw, not at all sad. I could not think of the dead there, but only of children playing and lovers strolling under the trees.

As soon as we were outside Edam we began to pass windmills quite different from any we had seen before. They were just like stout Dutch ladies, smartly dressed in green, with coats and bonnets of gray thatch and greenish veils over their faces, half hiding the big eyes which gazed alway toward the dyke that imprisons the Zuider Zee.

We had been off the dyke and skimming along an ordinary Dutch road for a while; but presently we swerved toward the right and were again on a dyke sloping toward the sea. Sailing along its level top we could see far off the embowered roofs and spires of a town which Mr. van Buren said was the once powerful city of Hoorn.

"Isn't there a Cape somewhere named after it?" asked Lady MacNairne gaily; and Mr. van Buren (answering that William Schouten, the sailor who discovered the Cape, named it after his native town) looked surprised at her ignorance.

She doesn't seem to know much about history, but she will know a great deal about Holland before we finish this trip if she goes on as she is going now.

In ten minutes we were in the suburbs; in five more we were in the Dead City itself; but it had the air of having been resurrected and being delighted to find itself alive again. We passed row upon row of wonderful carts, shaped like the cars of classical goddesses, though no self-respecting goddess would have her car painted green outside and blue or scarlet within.

"By Jove, now I know why Brederode was so keen on our getting off early and not waiting at Volendam till to-morrow for the wind to die!" exclaimed Mr. van Buren. "What a fellow he is to think of everything! This is the one and only time to find Hoorn at its best--market-day. And now you will see some nice things."

He had the chauffeur slow down the car in a fascinating street, with quaint houses leaning back or sidewise, and bearing themselves as they pleased.

"Which way for the cheese market?" Mr. van Buren asked an old man with a wreath of white fur under his chin.

He asked in Dutch, but so many Dutch words sound like caricatures of English ones that I begin to understand now. Besides, I have bought a grammar and study it in the evenings. This pleased Mr. van Buren when I told him, and he says I have made splendid progress. I've got as far as "I love, you love, he loves," and so on. I think Dutch an extremely interesting language.

The old man told us which way to go, and turning up a street we should never have thought of, we came out in a huge market-place presided over by a statue of Coen, a man who founded the Dutch dominion in the West Indies, or something which Mr. van Buren thought important.

We have often wondered where the people of the towns hide themselves; but there was no such puzzle in Hoorn. The market-place looked as if half the population of North Holland might be there. The whole of the square was covered with cheeses, large shiny cheeses, yellow as monstrous oranges. They glittered so radiantly in the sunlight that you felt they might at any instant burst out into a flame. Between the great glowing mounds little paths had been left, and along these paths walked lines of solemn men inspecting the burning globes and bargaining with their possessors; while outside the huge, cheese-paved space there was a moving crowd, gay and shifting as the figures made by bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope.

We expected to create a sensation with the motor, but the cheeses were more interesting, and nobody had time for more than a glance at us. Suddenly, as we sat gazing at the scene, affairs in the market-place came to some kind of crisis. A stream of men appeared, dressed in spotless white from head to foot, and wearing varnished, hard straw hats of different colors. Soon, we saw it was the hats which determined everything. The blue-hatted men walked together; the red hats formed another party; the yellow hats a third; and so on. Each corps carried large yet shallow trays suspended from their shoulders--two men to a tray--and falling upon the piles of cheeses they gathered them up with incredible quickness. Then, when the trays were loaded with a pyramid of cheeses, off rushed the men to a wonderful Weigh House which Mr. van Buren says is famous throughout all North Holland. Inside were many men, busy as bees, weighing cheeses with enormous scales. Down dropped the trays; the weight was taken, and away darted the men bearing the yellow treasures to some neighboring warehouse.

We watched the weighing for a long time, until we were so hungry that we could feel no enthusiasm for anything except lunch. But as we drove through crowded streets to a hotel, it was interesting to pass warehouses where cheeses were being stored. The porters with the bright hats (worn to denote their ancient guilds) were standing on the pavement tossing up cheeses, like conjurors keeping a lot of oranges in the air. Men above, standing in open lofts, caught the golden balls as they flew up, and stored them among crowds of others that seemed to illuminate the dim background like half-extinguished lanterns glowing in the dark.

We lunched at an old-fashioned hotel with enormous rooms; and then, as we had time, we wound through the chief streets of the Dead City, stopping now and then to study _bas-reliefs_ on ancient houses, telling of stirring events when the name of Hoorn sounded loud in the world.

There was one stone picture of many old ships in commotion among impossible waves, and the description was all in one word--"Bossuzeeslag." It seemed very impressive to sit staring up at it while Mr. van Buren told how "we" whipped the Spanish ship "Inquisition" after thirty hours' fighting on the sand-bank, and all the people of Hoorn assembled to look on.

After seeing the house where Graaf Bossu was kept prisoner our interest in the Hoorn of long ago was kindled to a blaze. Mr. van Buren proposed taking us to the Museum, so we all went, except poor Mr. Starr, who sat in front of the handsome building in the motor-car, on "dog duty," as he calls it.

I liked the reproduction of an old Dutch inn, and the plans of the Dead Cities as they used to be; but the paintings of determined-looking burgomasters in black with ruffles and conical hats, were pathetic. The men in their short frilled trousers and high boots, thought themselves so important, poor dears, with their piteous forefingers proudly pointing to maps and specifications, that it was sad to see them still doing it when all their plans had come to nothing long ago. We admired Hoorn as it is, but it would break their hearts if they could see it, given up to cheese, and only of importance in the cheese world.

We were not in the Museum long, but Mr. Starr had suffered tortures meanwhile, and looked ten years older when we came out. Tibe had been asleep on the floor of the _tonneau_ while we were in the market-place before lunch, so nobody had seen him. But, deserted by his mistress, he sat up in the car to look for her, and the passers-by caught sight of him. Word went round that there was a strange monster, a cross between a monkey and a goblin, sitting in an automobile, and all the people of Hoorn poured into the street to see the show, just as they had poured to the harbor more than three hundred years ago when the "zeeslag" was going on.

We came out to find the car almost lost to sight in the crush; but Mr. van Buren, who is like a great, handsome Viking, pushed the people aside, and said things to them in Dutch which made some laugh and others grumble.

To escape, we drove out of the town into toy-like suburbs, with little streets, and tiny houses on dykes, each one with its drawbridge across the stream running on either side a dyke-road. And now we seemed to be in the heart of toyland. It was like a place built by Santa Claus, to come to at Christmas time, and choose presents to fill his pack.

Aalsmeer and Broek-in-Waterland, which we had thought toy-like, were grown-up villages for grown-up people compared to this toy-world.

On we went, penetrating further into the doll-country, instead of running out of it. The brown, yellow, green, and red carts, ornamented with festoons of flowers in carved wood, which were returning from market, were the only grown-up things we saw--except the trees, and they seemed abnormally tall by way of contrast.

Mile after mile, the road to Enkhuisen led on between two lines of dolls' houses and gardens. Some must have been meant for very large dolls, but that made no difference in the toy effect, as the great farmhouses, apportioned off half for toy animals, half for farmer-dolls, were just as fantastic in design and decoration as the tiny ones.

Backgrounds of meadows, canals, and windmills, I suppose there must have been, as every picture has to have its background; but backgrounds are seldom obtrusive in Holland, as Mr. Starr says; and here the two lines of toy dwellings were so astonishing that we noted nothing else.

For the whole ten miles of the drive we were playing dolls. The long, straight string of houses was knotted now and then into the semblance of a village, but never was the string broken between Hoorn and Enkhuisen, and though we saw so many, each new doll-house made us laugh as if it were the first.

I tried not to laugh at the beginning, lest it might hurt Mr. van Buren's feelings; but he didn't mind, and pointed out the funniest front doors, crusted with colored flowers, like the icing on a child's birthday cake sprinkled with "hundreds of thousands." After that, I laughed as much as I liked at everything, though I was sure the people who had built the houses took them quite seriously, and admired them beyond words. You felt that each man had put his whole soul into the scheme of his house, trying to outdo his neighbors in color or originality.

There would be a house with a red-brick front for the lower story, and the upper one, including gables, done in wood painted pea-green. Then the sides of the house would be in green and white stripes, the window-frames sky-blue, the tiny sparkling panes twinkling out like diamonds set in turquoises. But these would not be the only colors to dazzle your eyes as you flashed through the tall Gothic archway of trees darkening the road. There would be a three-foot deep band of ultramarine distemper running all round a house, the trunks of the trees and the fence would be brilliantly blue, and despite a dash of scarlet here and there, as you approached you had the impression of coming to a lake of azure water.

Further on would be another house, yellow and scarlet and white, having a door like a mosaic with raised patterns of flowers in pink, blue, and purple on a background of gold or black; and the high, pointed roof, half thatched, half covered with glittering black tiles.

These roofs made the houses look as if they had bald, shiny foreheads, with thick hair on top, and gave the windows a curiously wise expression.

But if the homesteads (with their additions for families of horses and cows) were extraordinary, they were commonplace compared with the chicken or pigeon-houses, shaped like chateaux, or Chinese pagodas, wreathed with flowers.

When at last we drove under a gateway across the road, and the color was suddenly extinguished as if a show of fireworks were over, we all felt as though we had come back to the everyday world after an excursion into elfland.

It was the entrance to Enkhuisen, the last of the Dead Cities which we were to visit--a strange, sad old town, with a charming park, churches three times too big for it, and beautiful seventeenth-century houses, small but perfect as cameos. We drove to the harbor, not only to see the wonderful humpbacked Dromedary Tower, but to find out whether there were any news of our boat, before going to the hotel.

A stiff wind was blowing; the sea was gray, and waves tossed angrily against the breakwater.

Nothing had been heard of "Lorelei-Mascotte," and though we left the car and walked to the outer harbor, straining our eyes in the direction whence she should come, no craft resembling her was in sight.

The beauty of the day had died; sky and water were dull as lead, and Nell's face, as she stood gazing out to sea, looked pallid in the bleak light.

Suddenly we felt depressed, though Mr. van Buren said it was hardly time to expect news. As we lingered, the most exquisite music began to fall over our heads, apparently from the sky, like a shower of jewels.

"The chimes of the Dromedary," said Mr. van Buren, looking up at the strong, dark tower looming above us. Our eyes followed his, and the music sprayed over us in a lovely fountain. Had the bells been all of silver, rung by fairies, the notes could not have been sweeter. In itself the air was not sad, yet it pierced to the heart; and as the chimes played I found that I was a great deal more anxious about Jonkheer Brederode than I had thought. The tears came to my eyes, and when Lady MacNairne asked what was the matter, I said impulsively that I couldn't help being frightened for our friend, doing his self-imposed duty so bravely by Nell's boat.

Going back to the hotel, we were all miserable. Even Mr. van Buren seemed wretched, though I can't think why, as he said he was not anxious about the Jonkheer. And Lady MacNairne forgot to put it down in her note-book when some one told her that Enkhuisen was the birthplace of Paul Potter.

XXIII

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."