IN THE MUIDERSTRAAT.
High houses, broad, jolly, and red-faced, standing now on the edges of
quays or at the feet of bridges, now in quaint trim little gardens,
whose close-shaven turf is gaudy with brilliant bulbs, or overshadowed
by box and yew, but always fringing the long, shallow, black canals,
whose sluggish waters scarcely ripple under the passing barge. Water,
water, everywhere, and requiring everybody's first consideration,
dammed out by vast dykes and let in through numerous sluices, spanned
by nearly three hundred bridges, employing a perfect army of men to
watch it and tend it, to avail themselves of its presence and yet to
keep it in subjection; for if not properly looked after and skilfully
managed, it might at any moment submerge the city; avenues of green
trees running along the canal banks and blooming freshly in the
thickest portions of the commerce-crowded quays; innumerable windmills
on the horizon; picture-galleries rich in treasures of Rubens,
Rembrandt, Vandyke, and Teniers; dock-yards, where square and sturdy
ships are built by square and sturdy men, in solemn silence and with
much pipe-smoking; asylums, homes, alms-houses, through which a broad
stream of well-administered charity is always flowing. A population of
grave burghers, and chattering vrows, and the fattest, shiniest, and
most old-fashioned children; of outlandish sailors and Jews of the
grand old type, who might have sat, and whose ancestors probably did
sit, as models to Rembrandt; of stalwart bargemen and canal-tenders,
of strangers, some pleasure-seeking, but the great majority intent on
business; for whatever may be the solemn delights of its inhabitants,
to a stranger accustomed to other capitals there are few gaieties to
be met with in the city to which George Dallas had wended his
way--Amsterdam.
To George Dallas this mattered very little. Of the grosser kinds of
pleasure he had had enough and more than enough; the better feelings
of his nature had been awakened, and nothing could have induced him to
allow himself to drift back into the slough from which he had emerged.
Wandering through the long picture-galleries and museums, and gloating
over their contents with thorough artistic appreciation, dreamily
gazing out of his hotel window over a prospect of barge-dotted and
tree-bordered canals which would gradually dissolve before his eyes,
the beech avenue of the Sycamores arising in its place, recalling
Clare Carruthers's soft voice and ringing laugh and innocent trusting
manner, George Dallas could scarcely believe that for months and
months of his past life he had been the companion of sharpers and
gamblers, and had been cat off from all communication with everything
and everybody that in his youth he had been taught to look up to and
respect. He shuddered as he recollected the orgies which he had taken
part in, the company he had kept, the life he had led. He groaned
aloud and stamped with rage as he thought of time lost, character
blighted, opportunities missed. And his rage this time was vented on
himself: he did not, as usual, curse his stepfather for having
pronounced his edict of banishment; he did not lay the blame on luck
or fate, which generally bore the burden; he was man enough to look
his past life fairly in the face, and to own to himself that all its
past privations, and what might have been its future miseries, were of
his own creation. What might have been, but what should not be now. A
new career lay before him, a career of honour and fame, inducements to
pursue which such as he had never dreamed of were not wanting, and by
Heaven's help he would succeed.
It was on the first morning after his arrival in Amsterdam that George
Dallas, after much desultory thought, thus determined. Actuated by
surroundings in an extraordinary degree, he had, while in London, been
completely fascinated by the combined influence of Routh and Harriet;
and had he remained with them he would, probably, never have shaken
off that influence, or been anything but their ready instrument. But
so soon as he had left them the fascination was gone, and his eyes
were open to the degradation of his position, and the impossibility,
so long as he continued with his recent associates, of retrieving
himself in the eyes of the world--of being anything to Clare
Carruthers. This last thought decided him--he would break with Stewart
Routh, yes, and with Harriet, at once! He would sell the bracelet and
send the proceeds to Routh with a letter, in which he would delicately
but firmly express his determination and take farewell of him and
Harriet. Then he would return to London, and throw himself into
business at once. There was plenty for him to do at the _Mercury_, the
chief had said, and--No! he must not go back to London, he must not
expose himself to temptation; at all events until he was more capable
of resisting it. Now, there would be Routh, with his jovial
blandishments, and Deane, and all the set, and Harriet, most dangerous
of all! In London he would fall back into George Dallas, the outcast,
the reprobate, the black sheep, not rise into Paul Ward, the genius;
and it was under the latter name that he had made acquaintance with
Clare, and that he hoped to rise into fame and repute.
But though the young man had, as he imagined, fully made up his mind
as to his future course, he lounged through a whole day in Amsterdam
before he took the first step necessary for its pursuance--the
negotiation of the bracelet and the transmission of the money to
Routh--and it is probable that any movement in the matter would have
been yet further delayed had he not come to the end of the slender
stock of money which he had brought with him from England. The
reaction from a life of fevered excitement to one of perfect calm, the
atmosphere of comfortable, quiet, staid tranquillity by which he was
surrounded, the opportunity for indulging his artistic sympathies
without the slightest trouble, all these influences were readily
adopted by a man of George Dallas's desultory habits and easy
temperament; but, at last, it was absolutely necessary that some
action should be taken, and George consulted the polyglot waiter of
the hotel as to the best means of disposing of some valuable diamonds
which he had with him.
The question was evidently one to which the polyglot waiter was well
accustomed, for he answered at once, "Dimants to puy is best by Mr.
Dieverbrug, in Muiderstraat."
Not thoroughly comprehending the instance of the polyglottiness of the
polyglot, George Dallas again advanced to the charge, and by varying
his methods of attack, and diligently patching together such
intelligible scraps as he rescued from the polyglot, he at length
arrived at the fact that Mr. Dieverbrug, a Jew, who lived in the
Muiderstraat, was a diamond merchant in a large way of business,
speaking English, frequently visiting England, and likely to give as
good, if not a better price than any one else in the trade. The
polyglot added that he himself was not a bad judge of what he
persisted in calling "dimants;" and as this speech was evidently a
polite hint, George showed him the stones. The polyglot admired them
very much, and pronounced them, in his opinion, worth between two and
three hundred pounds--a valuable hint to George, who expected Mr.
Dieverbrug would call upon him to name his price, and if any absurd
sum was asked, the intending vendor might be looked upon with
suspicion. The polyglot then owned that he himself frequently did a
little business in the way of jewel-purchasing from visitors to the
hotel, but frankly confessed that the "lot" under consideration was
beyond him; so George thanked him and set out to visit Mr. Dieverbrug.
The Muiderstraat is the Jews' quarter of Amsterdam, which said, it is
scarcely necessary to add that it is the dirtiest, the foulest, the
most evil-smelling. There all the well-known characteristics of such
places flourish more abundantly even than in the Frankfort Judengasse
or our own Houndsditch. There each house is the repository of
countless suits of fusty clothes, heaped up in reckless profusion on
the floors, bulging out from cupboards and presses, horribly
suggestive of vermin, hanging from poles protruding from the windows.
There every cellar bristles with an array of boots of all kinds and
shades, amongst which the little Hebrew children squall and fight, and
play at their little games of defrauding each other. There are the
_bric-à-brac_ shops, crammed with cheap odds and ends from every
quarter of the globe, all equally undistinguishable under an impartial
covering of dust and dirt; there are the booksellers, with their
worm-eaten folios and their copies of the Scriptures, and their
written announcements in the Hebrew character; there are the cheap
printsellers, with smeary copies from popular pictures and highly
coloured daubs of French battle-fields and English hunting-scenes. The
day was fine, and nearly all the population was either standing
outside its doors or lolling at its windows, chaffering, higgling,
joking, scolding. George Dallas, to whom such a scene was an entire
novelty, walked slowly along with difficulty, threading his way
through the various groups, amused with all he saw, and speculating
within himself as to the probable personal appearance of Mr.
Dieverbrug. The diamond merchant, George imagined, would probably be
an old man, with gray hair and spectacles, and a large hooked nose,
like one of Rembrandt's "Misers," seated in a small shop, surrounded
by the rarest treasures exquisitely set. But when he arrived at the
number which the polyglot had given him as Mr. Dieverbrug's residence,
he found a small shop indeed, but it was a bookseller's, and it was
not until after some little time that he spied a painted inscription
on the door-post directing Mr. Dieverbrug's visitors to the first
floor, whither George at once proceeded.
At a small wooden table, on which stood a set of brass balance
weights, sat a man of middle height and gentlemanly appearance dressed
in black. The Hebraic character was not strongly marked in any of his
features, though it was perceptible to an acute observer in the
aquiline nose and the full red lips. He raised his eyes from a small
red-leather memorandum-book or diary which he had been studying, as
Dallas entered the room, and gave his visitor a grave salutation.
"Am I addressing Mr. Dieverbrug?" said Dallas, in English.
"I am Mr. Dieverbrug," he replied, in the same language, speaking with
perfect ease and with very little foreign accentuation, "at your
service."
"I have been recommended to come to you. I am, as you have probably
already recognized, an Englishman, and I have some jewels for sale,
which it may, perhaps, suit you to buy."
"You have them with you?"
"Yes, they are here;" and George took out his cherished case and
placed it in Mr. Dieverbrug's hand.
Mr. Dieverbrug opened the case quietly, and walked with it towards the
window. He then took out the stones and held them to the light, then
taking from his waistcoat pocket a small pair of steel nippers, he
picked up each stone separately, breathed upon it, examined it
attentively, and then replaced it in the case. When he had gone
through this operation with all the stones, he said to George:
"You are not a diamond merchant?"
"No, indeed!" said Dallas, with a half-laugh; "not I."
"You have never," said Mr. Dieverbrug, looking at him steadfastly from
under his bushy eyebrows,--"you have never been in a jewel-house?"
"In a jewel-house?" echoed George.
"What you call a jeweller's shop?"
"Never have been in a jeweller's shop? O yes, often."
"Still you fail my meaning. You have never been in a jeweller's shop
as employé, as assistant?"
"Assistant at a jeweller's--ah! thank you! now I see what you're
aiming at. I've never been an assistant in a jeweller's shop, you ask,
which is a polite way of inquiring if I robbed my master of these
stones! Thank you very much; if you've that opinion of me, perhaps I
had better seek my bargain elsewhere." And George Dallas, shaking all
over, and very much flushed in the face, extended his hand for the
case.
Mr. Dieverbrug smiled softly as he said, "If I thought that, I would
have bid you go about your business at once. There are plenty of
merchants at Amsterdam who would buy from you, no matter whence you
came; but it is my business to ask such questions as to satisfy
myself. Will you have back your diamonds, or shall I ask my
questions?"
He spoke in so soft a tone, and he looked so placid and so thoroughly
uncaring which way the discussion ended, that George Dallas could
scarcely forbear laughing as he replied, "Ask away!"
"Ask away," repeated Mr. Dieverbrug, still with his soft smile. "Well,
then, you are not a jeweller's employé; I can tell that by your
manner, which also shows me that you are not what you call
swell-mob-man--rascal---escroc. So you come to me with valuable
diamonds to sell; my questions are, How do you get these diamonds? Who
are you?"
For an instant George Dallas paused in his reply, while he felt the
blood rise in his cheeks. He next looked Mr. Dieverbrug straight in
the face, as he said, "These were family diamonds. I inherited them
from my mother--who is dead--and I was advised to come over here to
sell them, this being the best market. As to myself, I am a literary
man, a contributor to newspapers, and an author."
"Ah, ha! you write in newspapers and books? You are a feuilletonist,
author?" As Mr. Dieverbrug said these words he took up a stick which
stood by the side of the fireplace and thumped heavily on the floor.
His thumping seemed to awaken a kind of smothered response from the
regions below them, and before George Dallas had recovered from his
surprise, the door was opened, and an old gentleman of fantastic
appearance entered the room--a very little man, with an enormous head,
which was covered with a tight-fitting little skull-cap, large eyes
glaring out of silver-rimmed spectacles, a sallow puckered face
fringed with a short stubbly white beard, a large aquiline nose, and
thin tight lips. Buttoning immediately under his chin and reaching to
his feet--no very long distance--the little man wore a greasy red
flannel gaberdine dressing-gown, with flat horn buttons in a row down
the front, underneath which appeared a dubiously dirty pair of flannel
stockings and bright red-leather slippers. With one hand the little
man leaned on an ivory-handled crutch-stick; in the other he carried a
yellow-paper covered book--Tauchnitz edition of some English author.
As he entered the room he gave a sharp, rapid, comprehensive glance at
George through his spectacles, made him a deferential bow, and then
took up his position in the closest proximity to Mr. Dieverbrug, who
at once addressed him in Dutch with such volubility that George, who
had managed to pick up a few words during his stay, from the polyglot
and others, failed to comprehend one syllable of what passed between
them.
When they had finished their parley, during which both of them looked
at the diamonds and then at George, and then waved their fingers in
each other's faces, and beat the palms of their hands, and shrugged
their shoulders as though they never intended their heads to be
again seen, Mr. Dieverbrug turned to George, and said, "This is my
brother-in-law, Mr. Schaub, who keeps the bookseller's shop beneath
us. He is agent for some English booksellers and newspapers, and knows
more about authors than you would think. I should be glad if you would
have some talk with him."
"Glad I should have some talk with him?" George Dallas commenced in
wonderment; but Mr. Schaub cut in at once:
"Ye-es! Vos glad should have tokes mit eem! Should mit eem
converse--sprechen, dis English author!"
"English author?"
"M-ja! m-ja! Wass him, der Schaub"--tapping himself in the middle of
his greasy breast with his ivory-handled crutch--"agent von
Tauchnitz, Galignani, die London _Times_, die _Mercury_, and von all.
Wass der Schaub knows all, and der Mynheer is English author, der
Schaub must know von the Mynheer!"
George Dallas looked at him for a few moments in great bewilderment,
then turned to Mr. Dieverbrug. "Upon my honour," he said, "I should be
delighted to carry out your wish and have some talk with this old
gentleman, but I don't see my way to preventing the conversation being
all on his side. The fact is, I don't understand one word he says!"
With the old sly smile, Mr. Dieverbrug said, "My brother-in-law's talk
is perhaps somewhat idiomatic, and one is required to be used to it.
What he would convey is, that he, acquainted as he is with English
literature and journalism, would like to know what position you hold
in it, what you have written, where you have been engaged, and
such-like. It is no object of us to disguise to you that he brings his
experience to aid me in deciding whether or not I consider myself
justified in making a dealing with you for these stones."
"Thanks! I comprehend perfectly, and, of course, cannot object;
though," added George, with a smile, "I am afraid I have not as yet
made sufficient mark in English literature to render me a classic, or
even to have gained a continental reputation for my name. Stay,
though. Mr. Schaub, if I understood him rightly, represented himself
as agent for one London paper to which I have contributed under my
signature--the _Mercury_. You know the _Mercury_, Mr. Schaub? I
thought so, and perhaps you have seen some articles there signed Paul
Ward?"
"M-ja! m-ja! Wass von die 'Strangers in London,' von Paul Ward,
am Nordjten, Hollandischen, Deutschen sea-people, von zailors would
call zum visitiren?"
"That's it, sir! Descriptions," continued George, turning to Mr.
Dieverbrug, "of the foreign sea-going populations of London."
"M-ja, of Highway, of Shadcliffe, Ratcliffe, Shadwell, vot you call!
M-ja, of Paul Ward writings I am acquaint."
"And you are Paul Ward?" asked Mr. Dieverbrug.
"I am that apparently distinguished person," said George. Then Mr.
Dieverbrug and Mr. Schaub plunged pell-mell into another conversation,
in which though the tongues rattled volubly enough, the shoulders and
the eyebrows and the fingers played almost as important parts, the
result being that Mr. Dieverbrug turned to George and said, "I am
quite satisfied to undertake this affair, Mr. Ward, from what my
brother-in-law has said of your position. Another question is, what
shall I give you for the stones?"
"From what your brother-in-law has said of my position, Mr.
Dieverbrug," said George, "it will, I presume, be apparent to you that
I am not likely to be much versed in such matters, and that I must, to
a great extent, be dependent on you."
"But have you some notion of price?"
"I have a notion--nothing more."
"And that notion is--?"
"Well, I imagine the worth of these stones is about two hundred and
fifty pounds!"
At these words Mr. Schaub gave a short sharp scream of horror,
plunging his hands up to the elbows in the pockets of the red flannel
gaberdine, and glaring at George through the silver-rimmed glasses.
Mr. Dieverbrug was not so wildly affected; he only smiled the soft
smile a little more emphatically than before, and said: "There is now
no doubt, my dear sir, even if we had doubted it before, of your
living in the region of romance! These must be Monte Christo diamonds,
of Mr. Dumas's own setting, to judge by the value you place on
them--eh?"
"Wass won hondert fifty is vat worths," said Mr. Schaub. But,
fortified in his own mind by the opinion of the polyglot waiter, who
evidently had not spoken without some knowledge, George at once and
peremptorily declined his bid, and so to work they went. The stones
were had out again, re-examined, weighed in the brass balances,
breathed upon, held up to the light between the steel pincers, and, at
length, after a sharp discussion, carried on with most vivid pantomime
between the brothers-in-law, Mr. Dieverbrug consented to buy them for
one hundred and eighty pounds, and George Dallas accepted his offer.
Then from the recesses of a drawer in the little wooden table Mr.
Dieverbrug produced a cash-box and counted out the sum in Dutch coin
and gulden notes, and handing it to George, and shaking hands with
him, the transaction was completed. Completed, so far as Mr.
Dieverbrug was concerned; but Mr. Schaub had yet an interest in it.
That worthy followed George Dallas down the stairs, and, as he would
have made his exit, drew him into the bookseller's shop--a dark dirty
den of a place, with old mildewed folios littering the floor, with new
works smelling of print and paper ranged along the counter, with
countless volumes pile on pile, heaped against the walls. With his
skinny yellow hand resting on George's sleeve, the old man stood
confronting George in the midst of the heterogeneous assemblage, and
peering up into his face through the silver-rimmed glasses, said:
"And so he wos Paul Vart--eh? Dis young man wos Paul Vart, von London
aus? And Paul Vart will back to London, and Hollandisch money no good
there--eh? Best change for English, and der old Schaub shall change
for eem--eh?"
"I'm not going back to London, Mr. Schaub," said George, after a few
moments' puzzling over the old man's meaning, "I'm not going back to
London; but I shall want to change this money, as I must send some of
it, the larger portion, to England by tonight's post, and? am going to
the bank to change it."
"Wass! der bank! der nonsense! It is the old Schaub vot vill change!
Give de good rates and all! Ach, der old Schaub vot has der English
bank-note to send mit dem posttrager! Der old Schaub vot den miser dey
call! Der Schaub vill change die gulden for den bank-notes, m-ja?"
"It does not matter to me much who changes it, so long as I get the
proper value!" said George with a laugh; "and if the old Schaub,
as you call yourself, can give me bank-notes for a hundred and
forty-pounds, I'll say done with you at once!"
"Wass vat wos 'done' mit me for a hundert forty pounds! See--first
vill make the door to. Let das folk call miser old Schaub, but not let
das folk see vot old Schaub misers. Ha, ha!"
So saying the old gentleman closed the door of the shop, and locked it
carefully. Then he retired to the back of the counter, removed several
heavy old books from one of the shelves, and unlocked a secret closet
in the wall. When he turned again to George, whom he had left on the
other side of the counter, he had a little roll of English bank-notes
in his hand. From this he selected four notes--two of the value of
fifty, and two of twenty pounds. These he handed to Dallas, receiving
the equivalent in Dutch money.
"I am very much obliged to you indeed, Mr. Schaub," said George. "By
doing this for me, you've saved my going to the bank, and a good deal
of trouble."
"Obliged to him is not at all, mein goot freund, Vart--Paul Vart,"
said the old gentleman. "Miser das folk calls old Schaub, but it is
not that; he has his leetle commissions, vy not be as vell as banks?
Goot deal of money pass through old Schaub's hands, and of vot pass
none go clean through, always von little shticks to him fingers!"
That night George Dallas wrote to Stewart Routh, enclosing him the
money, and telling him that literary engagements had sprung up which
might perhaps keep him some little time from London. The letter
despatched, he felt a different man. The tie was loosed, the
coupling-chain was broken! No longer enthralled by a debt of gratitude
to vice, he could try what he could do to make a name--a name which his
mother should not blush to hear--a name which should be murmured with
delight by Clare Carruthers!