Chapter 26

The moment had come for an understanding. With my two hands, unaided I had saved Phyllis, and now I must save--or lose--myself. Of course there was no choice which to do. I had played my fish and caught it, and as it was not the kind of fish I liked for dinner, I must tear it off the hook and throw it back into the sea, wriggling. I told myself that it was a bad, as well as an unattractive fish, that if I hadn't hooked it, most surely it would have bolted the beautiful little golden minnow I had been protecting. Still--still, there it was, smiling on the hook, that bad fish, trusting the hand which had caught and would betray it. It deserved nothing of that hand or any other hand; but suddenly, I found mine powerless.

"Phyllis, Phyllis," I groaned in spirit, "you will be my death, for to save you I caught this fish; now I may have to eat it, and it will surely choke me."

Before my eyes stretched a horrible vista of years, lived through with Freule Menela--mean little, vain, disloyal Freule Menela--by my side, contentedly spending my money and bearing my name, while I faded like a lovely lily on the altar of self-sacrifice.

In another instant I should have said yes, she had pleased me; she would have answered; and just because she is a woman I should have had to say something which she might have taken as she chose; so that it would have been all over for Ronald Lester Starr; but at this moment the two boats began to slow down. I suppose that Toon, at the steering-wheel of "Waterspin," must have received a message, which I was too preoccupied to hear; and as speed slackened, came the voice which others know as that of my Aunt Fay.

Never had it been so welcome, sounded so sweet, as now, when it brought my reprieve.

"Ronald dear," cooed the mock-Scottish accents, "you'd better get ready at once to lunch on shore, for Jonkheer Brederode has another surprise for us--and I know that by this time your hands, if not your face, are covered with paint."

Wonderful woman! It was as if inspiration had sent her to my rescue. Not that I am at all sure she would have laid herself out to rescue me from any snare, had she known of its existence; for though, before the watery world I am "Ronny dear" to her, she is not as considerate with me in private as she used to be when we first started.

We have been frank with each other at times, the L.C.P. and I, and the pot has said in plain words what it thinks of the kettle's true character. When the time comes for us to part it may be that her little ladyship will be still more frank, and let me know, in polite language, that seeing the last of her borrowed nephew is "good riddance of bad rubbish." Nevertheless, her extraordinary, though indescribable, cleverness has woven a kind of web about us all; and whether I am able to respect the L.C.P. or not, I was conscious of passionate gratitude to her as she arrested me with the bad fish half-way to my mouth.

The boats stopped at a private landing, small, but so remarkable that I thought for an instant the whole thing must be an optical illusion.

We had come to rest in the deep shadow of enormous trees. Leaning over the rail of a snug little harbor two dummy men in rakish hats and dark coats stared at the new arrivals with lack-luster eyes. And the dummies, and the wooden wall on which they were propped, with a strange painted motto consisting of snakes, and dogs, and sticks, and a yard measure, were all repeated with crystal-clear precision in the green mirror of quiet water.

"How annoying, just as we were going to have another delicious talk!" exclaimed Menela.

"Yes," said I. "But it can't be helped. Where are we? Is this fairyland?"

"It must be the place of Heer Dudok de Wit," answered the young lady, snappily. "He is a wonderful man, and many people say that no visit to Holland can be complete without a visit to his house. He's a great character--has walked all over the world, and brought back curiosities for his museum, to which he gives free admission. And from what I hear, there is nothing else he won't give, if asked for it--he's so generous--from a night's lodging or all his best peaches, up to a present of a thousand gulden to a distressed stranger. This can be no other house than his; and I believe Rudolph Brederode is a far-off cousin of Heer de Wit, just as Rudolph is of mine, on the other side. I don't see our host, though. Perhaps he is away on one of his walking tours."

"Or in bed," said I. "Taking a noon-day nap, to forget the heat."

"No, for one of his peculiarities is, never to go to bed. He hasn't been in bed for twenty-five years. I don't know how he sleeps--but, look! there he is now. I recognize him from photographs in newspapers."

My eyes followed her nod, which appeared to be aimed at the river. I looked for a boat, but spied a head floating among water-lilies.

It was not a loose head of some early Dutch martyr miraculously preserved--as seemed possible in a place of such surprises--for it smiled and bowed, and addressed Brederode as its dear Rudolph.

Its wet hair, glittering like silver in the water, was rather long, its eyes were like brown jewels, it had faultless features, not at all of a modern cast, but like those one sees in a seventeenth-century portrait; and its smile, even when visible only as far down as the lower lip, was charming.

The famous Mr. Dudok de Wit, bobbing nearer, explained that he had unduly prolonged his daily swimming bath, owing to the sultriness of the day. As it was, he had been in the water no more than an hour or two, but he was delighted to see us, would come out at once, and expect us to lunch with him at Breukelen, which is the name of his place.

He did come out, in a neat bathing-suit, desiring us to follow him into the house, where we might amuse ourselves until he was dressed, wandering among his treasures in the drawing-room.

The luncheon in the quaint old house, the stroll through the grounds and the hour in the museum, were among Alb's successes; but I was past grudging it to him; besides, he flaunted no triumphant airs. Why should he, when Phyllis had eyes only for her Viking, and Nell, in a newly developed appreciation of her twin cousins, had no time to remember his existence?

I did think that she might have stretched out a hand to save me from Menela, but if she had any conception of what was going on, she thought me able to take care of myself, and I should have been left to the tender mercies of the creature I had freed had it not been for the L.C.P.

During the afternoon, when we had left Breukelen and were gliding on, along the lily-burdened river toward Amsterdam, she unobtrusively made it her business to protect me from the sallies of the enemy, even engaging that enemy herself, as if she were my squire at arms. Now, if never before, she was worth her weight in gold, and as I saw her politely entangle the unwilling Menela in conversation, I vowed to buy her a present worth having when we arrived in Amsterdam.

XXXI

When a man sacrifices himself for a woman, he naturally likes to have the satisfaction of knowing that he has made a success; and I felt that a melancholy pleasure would be mine should I learn that Phyllis had profited by my kindness. It would have been flattering to my self-esteem, also, though perhaps disastrous to my ribs, if Robert van Buren had thrown himself upon my bosom, thanking me for his deliverance from bondage. I had to remind myself that he could not possibly know what he owed me, or I should have been unjust enough to accuse him of ingratitude.

A heavy shower came on while we were driving in open cabs through Amsterdam, therefore the moment we arrived at the well-remembered hotel of our last visit, the various members of the band had to skurry off to their rooms and change their drenched garments. As no plan of campaign had been arranged for the rest of the day--it was then past five--we did not meet again, as a party, until dinner-time, when we all came together with the exception of Brederode, who absented himself to dine with a friend.

It was the first time that he had been away, and to my surprise I discovered that, when a Mariner has carried an Albatross about with him week after week, he actually misses the creature if he mislays it. Somehow, we seemed to be at loose ends without Brederode. Lacking an organizer, nobody knew what to do; and if he had wished to enhance his value, he couldn't have chosen a better way. As if at a loss for any other subject of common interest, we fell to talking of the absent one--all save Nell, who listened in silence, not once joining in until Freule Menela capped an anecdote of Robert's in praise of his hero, by remarking----

"Of course Rudolph's brave enough; but that's no particular credit to him. All Brederodes have been brave, since the days of the Water Beggar. But I'm afraid he's quite aware of that, and all his other perfections. He _is_ rather conceited, and as for obstinacy----"

Then at last Nell had something to say for herself. "Doesn't it strike you," she asked with elaborate sweetness, "that a person may have self-respect and firmness without being either obstinate or conceited?"

"Well!" exclaimed Robert, in the pause which followed, "that's the first time I've ever heard you defend Rudolph, Cousin Helen."

"He has proved himself such a faithful skipper that it's my duty, as the owner of the boat, to defend the good qualities which have served us best," replied Nell, looking so brilliantly pretty, with her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, that I felt there might still be consolations in life for me, if only I could attain them.

The situation was now becoming strained on all sides. Not that it was made so by the conversation I have just set down, but by the peculiar relations of several persons in the party.

The original plan of the Robert-Menela-Twins visit was that, having arrived at Utrecht, they should be taken on by us to Rotterdam, before "Mascotte" and "Waterspin" bore us northward again to Zeeland. This roundabout way of journeying was the penalty of our beautiful day on the Vecht; because, to see the Vecht after Utrecht, we were obliged to land at Amsterdam; and as there was no nearer way of reaching Zeeland than by passing Rotterdam, we were not going out of our way in landing the van Buren party so near home. But to go by canal from Amsterdam to Rotterdam would take us one long day; and as we had a pair of severed lovers among us, that long day's association, on a small boat, would be awkward.

The obvious thing was for Robert to invent a pretext and vanish. But Robert, no doubt, had his own reasons for wishing to stay, and besides, he had the excuse that he could not go without taking his sisters. If his sisters went, they could not well leave the friend they had brought with them; neither did it seem practicable for her to depart in their company as she had just jilted their brother, who would have to act as escort for all three. This difficulty must have presented itself to Freule Menela, for she gave no indication of a desire to leave us. Perhaps she thought it better to endure the ills she knew than fly to others she knew not; and by way of accustoming herself to those ills, she kept unremittingly near me, when, after dinner, we assembled in "Aunt Fay's" inevitable sitting-room.

If I were a woman I should have been on the verge of hysterics, but being handicapped by manhood, I merely yearned to bash some one on the head as a relief to my feelings; and lest that some one should be Freule Menela, at last I got to my feet and announced my intention of taking a walk in the rain.

"What wouldn't I give to go with you!" exclaimed the young lady. "It's so close here, and I've had no exercise to-day. I am fond of walking in the rain."

"I will chaperon you," said the L.C.P.

"Oh, we need not trouble you, Lady MacNairne," protested Menela. "It might give you rheumatism; and girls in Holland are allowed to be very independent."

My heart sank. How could even the ever resourceful L.C.P. get round that sharp corner?

She was equal to it. "You are very considerate," she replied, "but I am old-fashioned and used to _Scotch_ ways; and in Scotland even _elderly_ persons like myself are used also to walking in the rain, otherwise we should seldom walk at all. Indeed, we rather like rain, in pleasant company."

With this, she got up briskly, and it was as a trio that we had our wet walk through the streets of Amsterdam.

The shops were still bright, however, and I stopped my two companions under their dripping umbrellas, in front of a window blazing with a display of jewelry.

"Now, what should you say was the most beautiful thing of the lot?" I asked.

"That ring," promptly answered Menela, pointing to a pigeon-blood cabuchon ruby, of heart shape, set with clear white diamonds.

It was a ring for a lover to offer to his lady.

"You are right," agreed the L.C.P. "There's nothing else in the window to touch that."

"Let's go in and buy it, then," I said. "I have a friend to whom I should like to make a little present."

"Little present!" echoed Menela. "It will cost you three thousand gulden at the least."

"That is not too costly, considering everything," said I, mysteriously. And I was bubbling with malicious joy, as, by right of purchase, the ring became mine. "Each one of them considers it as good as hers," I said to myself. "To-morrow evening, at Rotterdam, if I am safely spared from Freule Menela, and she is gone out of my life forever, that ring may change hands; but it won't go to The Hague."

I dreamed all night that I was pursued by Robert's escaped fiancee, and dodging her, ran into the arms of Sir Alec MacNairne, who denounced me fiercely as a murderer. Nor was there much relief in awaking; for I knew that in her room, divided from me only by a friendly wall or two, Freule Menela lay planning how to trap me.

"If I am to be saved," I said to myself, "I'm afraid it won't be by my own courage or resource. I must look to my aunt. She fought for me nobly all day; but there are still twelve hours of danger. With her and Menela it's a case of Greek meeting Greek. Will she be clever enough to pull me through?"

XXXII

I knew I looked haggard, and hoped I looked interesting, when I appeared in the big hall of the hotel after breakfast in the morning, ten minutes before the time at which we were to start for Rotterdam.

There were the twins, talking to Nell. There was Brederode, studying a map of the waterways; there was the L.C.P. teaching Tibe a trick which for days he had been mildly declining to learn; there were Phyllis and the Viking wrapt in each other in the seclusion of a corner. But where was Freule Menela?

I asked the question aloud, and self-consciously.

"She's gone," announced the lady who is not my aunt.

"Gone?" I echoed.

"Yes, home to The Hague. She had a telegram, and was obliged to leave at once, by the first train, instead of waiting to travel slowly with us."

"Oh!" said I; adding, hypocritically, "What a pity!"

The small and rather pretty mouth of the L.C.P. arched upward, so I suppose she smiled.

"Yes, isn't it?" said she.

Nobody else spoke, but I felt that the silence of Robert and the twins was more eloquent than words.

When I had overcome the first giddy rapture of returning life, and was sure that I was steady on my feet, I dared to dally with the subject. I asked if bad news had come for Freule Menela, expressed devout relief that it had not, and piped regret at being deprived of a farewell.

"She left a message," explained the L.C.P. "I saw her off--as was my duty, since she did not care to disturb dear Nell, so early in the morning. You see, I alone was in her confidence. I knew, last night, after you had all gone to bed, that the telegram _might_ come, and I promised if it did, to go with her to the station. Remind me to give you the message--when we've started."

As she said this, I felt instinctively that I should have seen deep meaning in her eyes, were they not hidden by their blue glasses; and curiosity to know the worst battled with reluctance to hear it. Perhaps it was well that at this moment Alb gathered us for a start, and that there was no chance for private conversation in the carriage, which took Nell, one of the twins, and the Chaperon with me to the Rowing and Yachting Club, where "Mascotte" and "Waterspin" awaited us. This respite gave me time to get on my armor, and fasten up several, if not all the buckles--some of which I realized were lamentably weak.

On board, there was the usual business of putting our belongings to rights after an absence on shore; and when I came on to "Mascotte" from "Waterspin," already Amsterdam--with its smoke cloud and widespreading mass of buildings, like gray bubbles against the clear sky--was sinking out of sight. We were teuf-teufing comfortably along a modest canal, leading us southward, and Alb was explaining to the L.C.P. and the van Buren girls that, to reach Rotterdam by the shortest way, he meant to avoid the places we had seen: Aalsmeer, with its menagerie of little tree-animals, and the great Haarlemmer-meer Polder. Suddenly, as the motor's speed increased, after taking me on, Phyllis left Robert and Nell, to come to my side. A look from her beautiful eyes warned me that something interesting was due, and by one accord, we moved as far as possible from our friends.

"Best of brothers," she whispered; "I've been dying to thank you. At last my chance has come. You are wonderful! You _said_ you would, you know, and that I was to trust you; but I never thought you _could_. How did you do it?"

"With my little hatchet," I answered dreamily.

Her eyes opened wide. "Your--what?"

"It needed a sharp instrument," said I. "But how did you know it was mine?"

"You were with her so much, and had so many private talks. I felt you had a plan. But I could only _hope_, not expect. Do tell me everything."

"Suppose you tell _me_ everything," I bargained. "We may be playing at cross purposes. What has happened to you?"

"I'm engaged," said Phyllis. "Isn't it glorious?"

"I don't know that I should go so far as to say that," I replied, wondering why my heart was not aching harder.

"Perhaps, then, you've never been in love?" she suggested.

"Oh, haven't I? I've been in nothing else lately--except hot water."

"You do say such odd things. But I bless you, if I can't understand you. You've made me _so_ happy."

"You didn't tell me you were in love with Robert."

"Of course not--_then_. It would have been too bold, even to tell myself, when--he was engaged to some one else. But pity's akin to love, isn't it? And there was no harm in pitying him because he was bound to a--a _creature_, who could never deserve his love."

"Even if he hadn't given it to you."

"That was _fate_, wasn't it? But if it hadn't been for my clever brother, we could never have belonged to each other."

"Some men are born brothers, some achieve brotherhood, others have it thrust upon them," I muttered. "You and he had better take advantage of the lull to be married," I said aloud.

"The lull?"

"In Freule Menela. She'll be hailing and thundering and lightning soon."

"Oh, do you think she'll try to get Robert back again?" gasped Phyllis.

"Unless another and riper fruit drops into her mouth."

"As if it would! You frighten me. Robert did beg last night that I'd marry him almost at once, and not go back to England--unless--on our honeymoon. I told him I wouldn't think of such a thing. But--perhaps--oh, we _couldn't_ lose each other now. I do believe we were made for one another."

"I begin to believe so, too," said I.

And as that belief increased, so decreased the pain of my loss. Phyllis still is, and ever will be, a Burne-Jones Angel; and when, with her sleeves rolled up, she makes cake in the six-foot-by-six kitchen of "Waterspin," among the blue china and brasses, she is enough to melt the heart of Diogenes. Nevertheless, I cannot break mine at losing a girl who was born for a Robert van Buren. After all, Nell is more bewilderingly beautiful, and has twice Phyllis's magnetism. She has too fine a sense of humor to fall in love with a man's inches and muscles. That one speech of Phyllis's taught me resignation, and showed me in a flash that, despite her charms, she is somewhat early Victorian.

I glanced toward Nell, on whose brilliant face indifference to her good-looking cousin was expressed, as she stood talking to him--probably about himself--and wondered how, for a little while, my worship could have strayed from her to Phyllis. A girl born for Robert van Buren!--A sense of calm, beatific brotherliness stole through my veins. Nell had never been so lovely or so lovable, and I resolved to find out from my sister if she still thought there might be hope for me in that direction.

"I shouldn't keep Robert waiting," I went on, without a pang. "There's no telling what Freule Menela mightn't do. She's clever--as well as spiteful."

"And poor Robert is so honorable," sighed Phyllis. "If he'd known that you were working to--to free him, he might have felt it was a plot, and have refused to accept his release. You don't think I ought to tell him, do you?"

"Certainly not," said I. "That's our secret."

"How good you are! Well, I'll take your advice. Yet it does seem so strange--to be married, and live in Holland, when I never thought that anything could be really nice out of England. But Robert seems to me exactly like an Englishman: that's why I love him so dreadfully."

"And I suppose you seem to him exactly like a Dutch girl: and that's why he loves you so dreadfully," was the answer in my mind; but I kept it there. It might have dashed Phyllis's happiness to realize this truth.

"If I let Robert make arrangements for our marriage almost at once, Freule Menela couldn't get him back, could she, for he would be more bound to me than he ever was to her," said my sister.

"In that line alone lies safety," I replied. "Have you told Miss Van Buren--your stepsister, I mean?"

"Oh yes, as soon as it happened, of course. Nell and I never have secrets from each other--at least, we haven't till lately. I thought she would have guessed, but do you know, she _didn't_? She fancied, from things I'd said, that I was making up my mind to--that is, to try and learn to care for _another person_. She disapproved of my doing that, it seems, which is the reason she's been so odd. Not that she didn't consider us suited to each other--the other one and I--but she thought, with all his faults, he was so much of a man that it wasn't fair for a girl to accept his love if she had to try and learn to care for him simply because he happened to be _there_. I see now, in the light of this new happiness, that she was quite right. But I didn't dream then, that the one man I could _really_ care for, could ever be more to me than a dear friend. And a girl feels so humiliated to be thinking of a man who's engaged to some one else. She gets the idea that the best thing would be to occupy her mind with another man, if there's anybody who likes her very much. And Lady MacNairne has always been hinting this last fortnight--but, oh no, I'm not thinking what I'm saying! Even though you are my brother, I've no right to tell you that."

"Sister, I insist that you shall tell me," I said, with all my native fierceness. And Phyllis is not a girl to rebel, if a male person commands.

"Well, then--but she is perhaps mistaken. I hope now that she _is_."

"In thinking what?"

"That--that Jonkheer Brederode cares more for me than for Nell."

"I wonder," said I.