IN THE OUDE WEG.
“Le sage entend à demi mot.”
The porter of the hotel on the Toornoifeld was enjoying his early
cigarette in the doorway, when he was impelled by a natural politeness
to stand aside for one of the visitors in the hotel.
“Ah!” he said. “You promenade yourself thus early?”
“Yes,” answered Cornish, cheerily, “I promenade myself thus early.”
“You have had your coffee?” asked the porter. “It is not good to go
near the canals when one is empty.”
Cornish lingered a few minutes, and made the man's mind easy on this
point. There are many who obtain a vast deal of information without
ever asking a question, just as there are some--and they are mostly
women--who ask many questions and are told many lies. Tony Cornish had
a cheery way with him which made other men talk. He was also as quick
as a woman. He went about the world picking up information.
The city clocks were striking seven as he walked across the
Toornoifeld, where the morning mist still lingered among the trees. The
great square was almost deserted. Holland, unlike France, is a lie-abed
country, and at an hour when a French town would be astir and its
streets already thronged with people hurrying to buy or sell at the
greatest possible advantage, a Dutch city is still asleep. Park Straat
was almost deserted as Cornish walked briskly down it towards the
Willem's Park and Scheveningen. A few street cleaners were leisurely
working, a few milkmen were hurrying from door to door, but the houses
were barred and silent.
Cornish walked on the right-hand side of the road, which made it all
the easier for Mrs. Vansittart to perceive him from her bedroom window
as he passed Oranje Straat.
“Ah!” said that lady, and rang the bell for her maid, to whom she
explained that she had a sudden desire to take a promenade this fine
morning.
So Tony Cornish walked down the Oude Weg under the trees of that great
thoroughfare, with Mrs. Vansittart following him leisurely by one of
the side paths, which, being elevated above the road enabled her to
look down upon the Englishman and keep him in sight. When he came
within view of the broad road that cuts the Scheveningen wood in two
and leads from the East Dunes to the West--from the Malgamite Works, in
a word, to the cemetery--he sat down on a bench hidden by the trees.
And Mrs. Vansittart, a hundred yards behind him, took possession of a
seat as effectually concealed.
They remained thus for some time, the object of a passing curiosity to
the fish-merchants journeying from Scheveningen to The Hague. Then Tony
Cornish seemed to perceive something on the road towards the sea which
interested him, and Mrs. Vansittart, rising from her seat, walked down
to the main pathway, which commanded an uninterrupted view. That which
had attracted Cornish's attention was a funeral, cheap, sordid, and
obscure, which moved slowly across the Oude Weg by the road, crossing
it at right angles. It was a peculiar funeral, inasmuch as it consisted
of three hearses and one mourning carriage. The dead were, therefore,
almost as numerous as the living, an unusual feature in civil burials.
From the window of the rusty mourning coach there looked a couple of
debased countenances, flushed with drink and that special form of
excitement which is especially associated with a mourning coach hired
on credit and a funeral beyond one's means. Behind these two faces
loomed others. There seemed to be six men within the carriage.
The procession was not inspiriting, and Cornish's face was momentarily
grave as he watched it. When it had passed, he rose and walked slowly
back towards The Hague. Before he had gone far, he met Mrs. Vansittart
face to face, who rose from a seat as he approached.
“Well, _mon ami_,” she asked, with a short laugh, “have you had a
pleasant walk?”
“It has had a pleasant end, at all events,” he replied, meeting her
glance with an imperturbable smile.
She jerked her head upwards with a little foreign gesture of
indifference.
“It is to be presumed,” she said, as they walked on side by side, “that
you have been exploring and investigating our--byways. Remember, my
good Tony, that I live in The Hague, and may therefore be possessed of
information that might be useful to you. It will probably be at your
disposal when you need it.”
She looked at him with daring black eyes, and laughed. A strong man
usually takes a sort of pride in his power. This woman enjoyed the same
sort of exultation in her own cleverness. She was not wise enough to
hide it, which is indeed a grim, negative pleasure usually enjoyed by
elderly gentlemen only. Social progress has, moreover, made it almost a
crime to hide one's light under a bushel. Are we not told, in so many
words, by the interviewer and the personal paragraphist, that it is
every man's duty to set his light upon a candlestick, so that his
neighbour may at least try to blow it out?
Cornish had learnt to know Mrs. Vansittart at a period in her life
when, as a young married woman, she regarded all her juniors with a
matronly goodwill, none the less active that it was so exceedingly new.
She had in those days given much good advice, which Cornish had
respectfully heard. Fate had brought them together at the rare moment
and in almost the sole circumstances that allow of a friendship being
formed between a man and a woman.
They walked slowly side by side now under the trees of the Oude Weg,
inhaling the fresh morning air, which was scented by a hundred breaths
of spring, and felt clean to face and lips. Mrs. Vansittart had no
intention of resigning her position of mentor and friend. It was,
moreover, one of those positions which will not bear being defined in
so many words. Between men and women it often happens that to point out
the existence of certain feelings is to destroy them. To say, “Be my
friend,” as often as not makes friendship impossible. Mrs. Vansittart
was too clever a woman to run such a risk in dealing with a man in whom
she had detected a reserve of which the rest of the world had taken no
account. It is unwise to enter into war or friendship without seeing to
the reserves.
“Do you remember,” asked Mrs. Vansittart, suddenly, “how wise we were
when we were young? What knowledge of the world, what experience of
life one has when all life is before one!”
“Yes,” admitted Cornish, guardedly.
“But if I preached a great deal, I at all events did you no harm,” said
Mrs. Vansittart, with a laugh.
“No.”
“And as to experience, well, one buys that later.”
“Yes; and the wise re-sell--at a profit,” laughed Cornish. “It is not a
commodity that any one cares to keep. If we cannot sell it, we offer it
for nothing, to the young.”
“Who accept it, at an even lower valuation; and you and I, Mr. Tony
Cornish, are cynics who talk cheap epigrams to hide our thoughts.”
They walked on for a few yards in silence. Then Tony turned in his
quick way and looked at her. He had thin, mobile lips, which expressed
friendship and curiosity at this moment.
“What are _you_ thinking?” he asked.
She turned and looked at him with grave, searching eyes, and when these
met his it became apparent that their friendship had re-established
itself.
“Of your affairs,” she answered, “and funerals.”
“Both lugubrious,” suggested Cornish. “But I am obliged to you for so
far honouring me.”
He broke off, and again walked on in silence. She glanced at him half
angrily, and gave a quick shrug of the shoulders.
“Then you will not speak,” she said, opening her parasol with a snap.
“So be it. The time has perhaps not come yet. But if I am in the humour
when that time does come, you will find that you have no ally so strong
as I. Ah, you may stick your chin out and look as innocent as you like!
You are not easy in your mind, my good friend, about this precious
Malgamite scheme. But I ask no confidences, and, _bon Dieu_! I give
none.”
She broke off with a little laugh, and looked at him beneath the shade
of her parasol. She had a hundred foreign ways of putting a whole
wealth of meaning into a single gesture, into a movement of a parasol
or a fan, such as women acquire, and use upon poor defenceless men, who
must needs face the world with stolid faces and slow, dumb hands.
Cornish answered the laugh readily enough. “Ah!” he said, “then I am
accused of uneasiness of mind of preoccupation, in fact. I plead
guilty. I made a mistake. I got up too early. It was a fine morning,
and I was tempted to take a walk before breakfast, which we have at
half-past nine, in a fine old British way. We have toast and a fried
sole. Great is the English milord!”
They were in Park Straat now, in sight of Mrs. Vansittart's house. And
that lady knew that her companion was talking in order to say nothing.
“We leave this morning,” continued Cornish, in the same vein. “And we
rather flatter ourselves that we have upheld the dignity of our nation
in these benighted foreign parts.”
“Ah, that poor Lord Ferriby! It is so easy to laugh at him. You think
him a fool, although--or because--he is your uncle. So do I, perhaps.
But I always have a little distrust for the foolishness of a person
who has once been a knave. You know your uncle's reputation--the past
one, I mean, not the whitewash. Do not forget it.” They had reached the
corner of Oranje Straat, and Mrs. Vansittart paused on her own
doorstep. “So you leave this morning,” she said. “Remember that I am in
The Hague, and--well, we were once friends. If I can help you, make use
of me. You have been wonderfully discreet, my friend. And I have not.
But discretion is not required of a woman. If there is anything to tell
you, you shall hear from me.”
She held out her hand, and bade him good-bye with a semi-malicious
laugh. Then she stood in the porch, and watched him walk quickly away.
“So it is Dorothy Roden,” she said to herself, with a wise nod. “A
queer case. One of those at first sight, one may suppose.”
The Rodens, of whom she thought at the moment, were not only thinking,
but speaking of her. They had finished breakfast, and Dorothy was
standing at the window looking out over the Dunes towards the sea.
Her brother was still seated at the table, and had lighted a cigarette.
Like many another who offers an exaggerated respect to women as a
whole, he was rather inclined to Bohemianism at home, and denied to
his immediate feminine relations the privileges accorded to their sex
in general. He was older than Dorothy, who had always been dependent
upon him to a certain extent. She had a little money of her own, and
quite recognized the fact that, should her brother marry, she would
have to work for her living. In the mean time, however, it suited them
both to live together, and Dorothy had for her brother that affection
of which only women are capable. It amounts to an affectionate
tolerance more than to a tolerant affection. For it perceives its
object's little failings with a calm and judicial eye. It weighs the
man in the balance, and finds him wanting. This, moreover, is the lot
of a large proportion of women. This takes the place of that higher
feeling which is probably the finest emotion of which the human heart
is capable. And yet there are men who grudge these sufferers their
petty triumphs, their poor little emancipation, their paltry
wrangler-ships, their very bicycles.
“You don't like this place--I know that,” Percy Roden was saying, in
continuation of a desultory conversation. He looked up from the letters
before him with a smile which was kind enough and a little patronizing.
Patronage is perhaps the armour of the outwitted.
“Not very much,” answered Dorothy, with a laugh. “But I dare say it
will be better in the summer.”
“I mean this villa,” pursued Roden, flicking the ash from his cigarette
and leaning back in his chair. He had grand, rather tired gestures,
which possibly impressed some people. Grandeur, however, like
sentiment, is not indigenous to the hearth. Our domestic admirers are
not always watching us.
Dorothy was looking out of the window. “It is not a bad little place,”
she said practically, “when one has grown accustomed to its sandiness.”
“It will not be for long,” said Percy Roden.
And his sister turned and looked at him with a sudden gravity.
“Ah!” she said.
“No; I have been thinking that it will be better for us to move into
The Hague--Park Straat or Oranje Straat.”
Dorothy turned and faced him now. There was a faint, far-off
resemblance between these two, but Dorothy had the better
face--shrewder, more thoughtful, cleverer. Her eyes, instead of being
large and dark and rather dreamy, were grey and speculative. Her
features were clear-cut and well-cut--a face suggestive of feeling and
of self-suppression, which, when they go together, go to the making of
a satisfactory human being. This was a woman who, to put it quite
plainly, would scarcely have been held in honour by our grandmothers,
but who promised well enough for her possible granddaughters; who, when
the fads are lived down and the emancipation is over and the shrieking
is done, will make a very excellent grandmother to a race of women who
shall be equal to men and respected of men, and, best of all, beloved
of men. Wise mothers say that their daughters must sooner or later pass
through an awkward age. Woman is passing through an awkward age now,
and Dorothy Roden might be classed among those who are doing it
gracefully.
She looked at her brother with those wise grey eyes, and did not speak
at once.
“Oranje Straat and Park Straat,” she said lightly, “cost money.”
“Oh, that is all right!” answered her brother, carelessly, as one who
in his time has handled great sums.
“Then we are prosperous?” inquired Dorothy, mindful of other great
schemes which had not always done their duty by their originator.
“Oh yes! We shall make a good thing out of this Malgamite. The labourer
is worthy of his hire, you know. There is no reason why we should not
take a better house than this. Mrs. Vansittart knows of one in Park
Straat which would suit us. Do you like her--Mrs. Vansittart, I mean?”
His tone was slightly patronizing again. The Malgamite was a success,
it appeared, and assuredly success is the most difficult emergency that
a man has to face in life.
“Very much,” answered Dorothy, quietly. She looked hard at her brother;
for Dorothy had long ago gauged him, and had recently gauged Mrs.
Vansittart with a facility which is quite incomprehensible to men and
easy enough to women. She knew that her brother was not the sort of man
to arouse the faintest spark of love in the heart of such a woman as
her of whom they spoke. And yet Percy's tone implied as clearly as if
the words had been spoken that he had merely to offer to Mrs.
Vansittart his hand and heart in order to make her the happiest of
women. Either Dorothy or her brother was mistaken in Mrs. Vansittart.
Between a man and a woman it is usually the man who is mistaken in an
estimate of another woman. Dorothy was wondering, not whether Mrs.
Vansittart admired her brother, but why that lady was taking the
trouble to convey to him that such was the case.