about with these, like a blind chicken, before I curved off the ends.
No, you must have a pair to fit exactly, and you must practice every
chance you can get, until the Twentieth comes. My little Gretel shall
win the silver skates."
Gretel could not help laughing with delight at the very idea.
"Hans! Gretel!" called out a familiar voice.
"Coming, mother!" and they hastened toward the cottage, Hans still
shaking the pieces of silver in his hand.
* * * * *
On the following day, there was not a prouder nor a happier boy in all
Holland than Hans Brinker, as he watched his sister, with many a
dexterous sweep, flying in and out among the skaters who at sundown
thronged the canal. A warm jacket had been given her by the kind-hearted
Hilda, and the burst-out shoes had been cobbled into decency by Dame
Brinker. As the little creature darted backward and forward, flushed
with enjoyment, and quite unconscious of the many wondering glances bent
upon her, she felt that the shining runners beneath her feet had
suddenly turned earth into Fairy-land, while "Hans, dear, good Hans!"
echoed itself over and over again in her grateful heart.
"By den donder!" exclaimed Peter van Holp to Carl Schummel, "but that
little one in the red jacket and patched petticoat skates well. Gunst!
she has toes on her heels, and eyes in the back of her head! See her. It
will be a joke if she gets in the race and beats Katrinka Flack, after
all."
"Hush! not so loud!" returned Carl, rather sneeringly. "That little lady
in rags is the special pet of Hilda van Gleck. Those shining skates are
her gift, if I make no mistake."
"So! so!" exclaimed Peter, with a radiant smile, for Hilda was his best
friend. "She has been at her good work there, too!" And Mynheer van
Holp, after cutting a double 8 on the ice, to say nothing of a huge P,
then a jump, and an H, glided onward until he found himself beside
Hilda.
Hand in hand, they skated together, laughingly at first, then staidly
talking in a low tone.
Strange to say, Peter van Holp soon arrived at a sudden conviction that
his little sister needed a wooden chain just like Hilda's.
Two days afterward, on St. Nicholas' Eve, Hans, having burned three
candle-ends, and cut his thumb into the bargain, stood in the
market-place at Amsterdam, buying another pair of skates.
V
SHADOWS IN THE HOME
Good Dame Brinker! As soon as the scanty dinner had been cleared away
that noon, she had arrayed herself in her holiday attire, in honor of
Saint Nicholas. "It will brighten the children," she thought to herself,
and she was not mistaken. This festival dress had been worn very seldom
during the past ten years; before that time it had done good service,
and had flourished at many a dance and Kermis, when she was known, far
and wide, as the pretty Meitje Klenck. The children had sometimes been
granted rare glimpses of it as it lay in state in the old oaken chest.
Faded and threadbare as it was, it was gorgeous in their eyes, with its
white linen tucker, now gathered to her plump throat, and vanishing
beneath the trim bodice of blue homespun, and its reddish brown skirt
bordered with black. The knitted woolen mitts, and the dainty cap
showing her hair, which generally was hidden, made her seem almost like
a princess to Gretel, while master Hans grew staid and well-behaved as
he gazed.
Soon the little maid, while braiding her own golden tresses, fairly
danced around her mother in an ecstasy of admiration.
"Oh, mother, mother, mother, how pretty you are! Look, Hans! isn't it
just like a picture?"
"Just like a picture," assented Hans, cheerfully, "_just_ like a
picture--only I don't like those stocking things on the hands."
"Not like the mitts, brother Hans! why, they're very
important--see--they cover up all the red. Oh, mother, how white your
arm is where the mitt leaves off, whiter than mine, oh, ever so much
whiter. I declare, mother, the bodice is tight for you. You're growing!
You're surely growing!"
Dame Brinker laughed.
"This was made long ago, lovey, when I wasn't much thicker about the
waist than a churn-dasher. And how do you like the cap?" turning her
head from side to side.
"Oh, _ever_ so much, mother. It's b-e-a-u-tiful! see! The father is
looking!"
Was the father looking? Alas, only with a dull stare. His vrouw turned
toward him with a start, something like a blush rising to her cheeks, a
questioning sparkle in her eye.--The bright look died away in an
instant.
"No, no," she sighed, "he sees nothing. Come, Hans" (and the smile crept
faintly back again), "don't stand gaping at me all day, and the new
skates waiting for you at Amsterdam."
"Ah, mother," he answered, "you need many things. Why should I buy
skates?"
"Nonsense, child. The money was given to you on purpose, or the work
was--it's all the same thing--Go while the sun is high."
"Yes, and hurry back, Hans!" laughed Gretel; "we'll race on the canal
to-night, if the mother lets us."
At the very threshold he turned to say--"Your spinning wheel wants a new
treadle, mother."
"You can make it, Hans."
"So I can. That will take no money. But you need feathers, and wool and
meal, and----"
"There, there! That will do. Your silver cannot buy everything. Ah!
Hans, if our stolen money would but come back on this bright Saint
Nicholas' Eve, how glad we would be! Only last night I prayed to the
good Saint----"
"Mother!" interrupted Hans in dismay.
"Why not, Hans! Shame on you to reproach me for that! I'm as true a
protestant, in sooth, as any fine lady that walks into church, but it's
no wrong to turn sometimes to the good Saint Nicholas. Tut! It's a
likely story if one can't do that, without one's children flaring up at
it--and he the boys' and girls' own saint--Hoot! mayhap the colt is a
steadier horse than the mare?"
Hans knew his mother too well to offer a word in opposition, when her
voice quickened and sharpened as it did now (it was often sharp and
quick when she spoke of the missing money) so he said, gently:
"And what did you ask of good Saint Nicholas, mother?"
"Why, to never give the thieves a wink of sleep till they brought it
back, to be sure, if he's power to do such things, or else to brighten
our wits that we might find it ourselves. Not a sight have I had of it
since the day before the dear father was hurt--as you well know, Hans."
"That I do, mother," he answered sadly, "though you have almost pulled
down the cottage in searching."
"Aye; but it was of no use," moaned the dame, "_'hiders_ make best
finders.'"
Hans started. "Do you think the father could tell aught?" he asked
mysteriously.
"Aye, indeed," said Dame Brinker, nodding her head, "I think so, but
that is no sign. I never hold the same belief in the matter two days.
Mayhap the father paid it off for the great silver watch we have been
guarding since that day. But, no--I'll never believe it."
"The watch was not worth a quarter of the money, mother."
"No, indeed; and your father was a shrewd man up to the last moment. He
was too steady and thrifty for silly doings."
"Where _did_ the watch come from, I wonder," muttered Hans, half to
himself.
Dame Brinker shook her head, and looked sadly toward her husband, who
sat staring blankly at the floor. Gretel stood near him, knitting.
"That we shall never know, Hans. I have shown it to the father many a
time, but he does not know it from a potato. When he came in that
dreadful night to supper he handed the watch to me and told me to take
good care of it until he asked for it again. Just as he opened his lips
to say more, Broom Klatterboost came flying in with word that the dyke
was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinxter-week! My
man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever
saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight,
nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed
off in time but never the dullness--_that_ grew worse every day. We
shall never know."
Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother,
in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding-place,
half-resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation.
"No, Hans," she would say, "we must be nearer starving than this before
we turn faithless to the father!"
A memory of some such scene crossed her son's mind now; for, after
giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the
table, he said:
"Aye, mother, you have done bravely to keep it--many a one would have
tossed it off for gold long ago."
"And more shame for them!" exclaimed the dame, indignantly. "_I_ would
not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they
saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect
the father of----"
Hans flushed angrily.
"They would not _dare_ to say such a thing, mother! If they
did--I'd----"
He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence
was too terrible to utter in her presence.
Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption.
"Ah, Hans, thou'rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with
the watch. In his dying hour the dear father might wake and ask for it."
"Might _wake_, mother!" echoed Hans, "wake--and know us?"
"Aye, child," almost whispered his mother, "such things have been."
By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam.
His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now
to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser.
"You are right, mother. We must never give up the watch. For the
father's sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to
light when we least expect it."
"Never!" cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with
a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. "There
is no chance! One thousand guilders! and all gone in a day! One thousand
guilders--Oh! what ever _did_ become of them? If they went in an evil
way, the thief would have confessed by this on his dying bed--he would
not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!"
"He may not be dead yet," said Hans, soothingly; "any day we may hear of
him."
"Ah, child," she said in a changed tone, "what thief would ever have
come _here_? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine; for
the father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by.
'Little and often soon fills the pouch.' We found it so, in truth;
besides, the father had a goodly sum, already, for service done to the
Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had
a guilder left over, sometimes more; for the father worked extra hours,
and could get high pay for his labor. Every Saturday night we put
something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when
Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old
stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the
money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in
those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on
filling with copper and silver--aye, and gold. You may well open your
eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell the father it was not for poverty
I wore my old gown;--and the stocking went on filling--so full that
sometimes when I woke at night, I'd get up, soft and quiet, and go feel
it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my
little ones could in time get good learning, and that the father might
rest from labor in his old age. Sometimes, at supper, the father and I
would talk about a new chimney and a good winter-room for the cow; but
my man forsooth had finer plans even than that. 'A big sail,' says he,
'catches the wind--we can do what we will soon,' and then we would sing
together as I washed my dishes. Ah, 'a smooth sea makes an easy
rudder,'--not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week the
father would take out the stocking, and drop in the money and laugh and
kiss me as we tied it up together.--Up with you, Hans! there you sit
gaping, and the day a-wasting!" added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to
find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy; "it's high time
you were on your way."
Hans had seated himself and was looking earnestly into her face. He
arose, and, in almost a whisper, asked:
"Have you ever _tried_, mother?"
She understood him.
"Yes, child, often. But the father only laughs, or he stares at me so
strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last
Winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing, for
fear you would die while my face was turned, oh! I tried then! I
smoothed his hair, and whispered to him soft as a kitten, about the
money--where it was--who had it? Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and
whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay
whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I SCREAMED to him--it
seemed as if he _must_ hear me--'Raff, where is our money? Do you know
aught of the money, Raff?--the money in the pouch and the stocking, in
the big chest?'--but I might as well have talked to a stone--I might
as----"
The mother's voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that
Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder.
"Come, mother," he said, "let us try to forget this money. I am big and
strong--Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be
prosperous with us again. Why, mother, Gretel and I would rather see
thee bright and happy, than to have all the silver in the
world--wouldn't we, Gretel?"
"The mother knows it," said Gretel, sobbing.
VI
SUNBEAMS
Dame Brinker was startled at her children's emotion, glad, too, for it
proved how loving and true they were.
Beautiful ladies, in princely homes, often smile suddenly and sweetly,
gladdening the very air around them; but I doubt if their smile be more
welcome in God's sight than that which sprang forth to cheer the roughly
clad boy and girl in the humble cottage. Dame Brinker felt that she had
been selfish. Blushing and brightening, she hastily wiped her eyes, and
looked upon them as only a mother can.
"Hoity! Toity! pretty talk we're having, and Saint Nicholas' Eve almost
here! What wonder the yarn pricks my fingers! Come, Gretel, take this
cent,[11] and while Hans is trading for the skates you can buy a waffle
in the market-place."
[Footnote 11: The Dutch cent is worth less than half of an American
cent.]
"Let me stay home with you, mother," said Gretel, looking up with eyes
that sparkled through their tears. "Hans will buy me the cake."
"As you will, child, and Hans--wait a moment. Three turns of the needle
will finish this toe, and then you may have as good a pair of hose as
ever were knitted (owning the yarn is a grain too sharp,) to sell to the
hosier on the Heireen Gracht.[12] That will give us three
quarter-guilders if you make good trade; and as it's right hungry
weather, you may buy four waffles. We'll keep the Feast of Saint
Nicholas after all."
[Footnote 12: A street in Amsterdam.]
Gretel clapped her hands. "That will be fine! Annie Bouman told me what
grand times they will have in the big houses to-night. But we will be
merry too. Hans will have beautiful new skates,--and then there'll be
the waffles! Oh-h! Don't break them, brother Hans. Wrap them well, and
button them under your jacket very carefully."
"Certainly," replied Hans quite gruff with pleasure and importance.
"Oh! mother!" cried Gretel in high glee, "soon you will be busied with
the father, and now you are only knitting. Do tell us all about Saint
Nicholas!"
Dame Brinker laughed to see Hans hang up his hat and prepare to listen.
"Nonsense, children," she said, "I have told it to you often."
"Tell us again! oh, _do_ tell us again!" cried Gretel, throwing herself
upon the wonderful wooden bench that her brother had made on the
mother's last birthday. Hans, not wishing to appear childish, and yet
quite willing to hear the story, stood carelessly swinging his skates
against the fireplace.
"Well, children, you shall hear it, but we must never waste the daylight
again in this way. Pick up your ball, Gretel, and let your sock grow as
I talk. Opening your ears needn't shut your fingers. Saint Nicholas, you
must know, is a wonderful saint. He keeps his eye open for the good of
sailors, but he cares most of all for boys and girls. Well, once upon a
time, when he was living on the earth, a merchant of Asia sent his three
sons to a great city, called Athens, to get learning."
"Is Athens in Holland, mother?" asked Gretel.
"I don't know, child. Probably it is."
"Oh, no, mother," said Hans, respectfully. "I had that in my geography
lessons long ago. Athens is in Greece."
"Well," resumed the mother, "what matter? Greece may belong to the King,
for aught we know. Anyhow, this rich merchant sent his sons to Athens.
While they were on their way, they stopped one night at a shabby inn,
meaning to take up their journey in the morning. Well, they had very
fine clothes,--velvet and silk, it may be, such as rich folks' children,
all over the world, think nothing of wearing--and their belts, likewise,
were full of money. What did the wicked landlord do, but contrive a plan
to kill the children, and take their money and all their beautiful
clothes himself. So that night, when all the world was asleep he got up
and killed the three young gentlemen."
Gretel clasped her hands and shuddered, but Hans tried to look as if
killing and murder were every-day matters to him.
"That was not the worst of it," continued Dame Brinker, knitting slowly,
and trying to keep count of her stitches as she talked, "that was not
near the worst of it. The dreadful landlord went and cut up the young
gentlemen's bodies into little pieces, and threw them into a great tub
of brine, intending to sell them for pickled pork!"
"Oh!" cried Gretel, horror-stricken, though she had often heard the
story before. Hans still continued unmoved, and seemed to think that
pickling was the best that could be done under the circumstances.
"Yes, he pickled them, and one might think that would have been the last
of the young gentlemen. But no. That night Saint Nicholas had a
wonderful vision, and in it he saw the landlord cutting up the
merchant's children. There was no need of his hurrying, you know, for
he was a saint; but in the morning he went to the inn and charged the
landlord with the murder. Then the wicked landlord confessed it from
beginning to end, and fell down on his knees, begging forgiveness. He
felt so sorry for what he had done that he asked the saint to bring the
young masters to life."
"And did the saint do it?" asked Gretel, delighted, well knowing what
the answer would be.
"Of course he did. The pickled pieces flew together in an instant, and
out jumped the young gentlemen from the brine-tub. They cast themselves
at the feet of Saint Nicholas and he gave them his blessing, and--oh!
mercy on us, Hans, it will be dark before you get back if you don't
start this minute!"
By this time Dame Brinker was almost out of breath and quite out of
commas. She could not remember when she had seen the children idle away
an hour of daylight in this manner, and the thought of such luxury quite
appalled her. By way of compensation she now flew about the room in
extreme haste. Tossing a block of peat upon the fire, blowing invisible
dust from the table, and handing the finished hose to Hans, all in an
instant--
"Come, Hans," she said, as her boy lingered by the door, "what keeps
thee?"
Hans kissed his mother's plump cheek, rosy and fresh yet, in spite of
all her troubles.
"My mother is the best in the world, and I would be right glad to have a
pair of skates, but"--and, as he buttoned his jacket, he looked, in a
troubled way, toward a strange figure crouching by the hearth-stone--"If
my money would bring a meester[13] from Amsterdam to see the father,
something might yet be done."
[Footnote 13: Doctor (dokter in Dutch) called meester by the lower
class.]
"A meester would not come, Hans, for twice that money, and it would do
no good if he did. Ah! how many guilders I once spent for that; but the
dear, good father would not waken. It is God's will. Go, Hans, and buy
the skates."
Hans started with a heavy heart, but since the heart was young, and in a
boy's bosom, it set him whistling in less than five minutes. His mother
had said "thee" to him, and that was quite enough to make even a dark
day sunny. Hollanders do not address each other, in affectionate
intercourse, as the French and Germans do. But Dame Brinker had
embroidered for a Heidelberg family in her girlhood, and she had carried
its "thee" and "thou" into her rude home, to be used in moments of
extreme love and tenderness.
Therefore, "what keeps thee, Hans?" sang an echo song beneath the boy's
whistling, and made him feel that his errand was blest.
VII
HANS HAS HIS WAY
Broek, with its quiet, spotless streets, its frozen rivulets, its yellow
brick pavements, and bright wooden houses, was near by. It was a village
where neatness and show were in full blossom; but the inhabitants seemed
to be either asleep or dead.
Not a footprint marred the sanded paths, where pebbles and sea-shells
lay in fanciful designs. Every window-shutter was closed as tightly as
though air and sunshine were poison; and the massive front doors were
never opened except on the occasion of a wedding, christening, or a
funeral.
Serene clouds of tobacco-smoke were floating through hidden apartments,
and children, who otherwise might have awakened the place, were studying
in out-of-the-way corners, or skating upon the neighboring canal. A few
peacocks and wolves stood in the gardens, but they had never enjoyed the
luxury of flesh and blood. They were cut out in growing box, and seemed
guarding the grounds with a sort of green ferocity. Certain lively
automata, ducks, women and sportsmen, were stowed away in summer-houses,
waiting for the spring-time, when they could be wound up, and rival
their owners in animation; and the shining, tiled roofs, mosaic
courtyards and polished house-trimmings flashed up a silent homage to
the sky, where never a speck of dust could dwell.
Hans glanced toward the village, as he shook his silver kwartjes, and
wondered whether it were really true, as he had often heard, that some
of the people of Broek were so rich that they used kitchen utensils of
solid gold.
He had seen Mevrouw van Stoop's sweet-cheeses in market, and he knew
that the lofty dame earned many a bright, silver guilder in selling
them. But did she set the cream to rise in golden pans? Did she use a
golden skimmer? When her cows were in winter quarters, were their tails
really tied up with ribbons?
These thoughts ran through his mind as he turned his face toward
Amsterdam, not five miles away, on the other side of the frozen Y.[14]
The ice upon the canal was perfect; but his wooden runners, so soon to
be cast aside, squeaked a dismal farewell, as he scraped and skimmed
along.
[Footnote 14: Pronounced Eye, an arm of the Zuider Zee.]
When crossing the Y, whom should he see skating toward him but the great
Dr. Boekman, the most famous physician and surgeon in Holland. Hans had
never met him before, but he had seen his engraved likeness in many of
the shop-windows of Amsterdam. It was a face that one could never
forget. Thin and lank, though a born Dutchman, with stern, blue eyes,
and queer, compressed lips, that seemed to say "no smiling permitted,"
he certainly was not a very jolly or sociable looking personage, nor one
that a well-trained boy would care to accost unbidden.
But Hans _was_ bidden, and that, too, by a voice he seldom
disregarded--his own conscience.
"Here comes the greatest doctor in the world," whispered the voice. "God
has sent him; you have no right to buy skates when you might, with the
same money, purchase such aid for your father!"
The wooden runners gave an exultant squeak. Hundreds of beautiful skates
were gleaming and vanishing in the air above him. He felt the money
tingle in his fingers. The old doctor looked fearfully grim and
forbidding. Hans' heart was in his throat, but he found voice enough to
cry out, just as he was passing:
"Mynheer Boekman!"
The great man halted, and sticking out his thin under lip, looked
scowlingly about him.
Hans was in for it now.
"Mynheer," he panted, drawing close to the fierce-looking doctor, "I
knew you could be none other than the famous Boekman. I have to ask a
great favor----"
"Humph!" muttered the doctor, preparing to skate past the
intruder,--"Get out of the way--I've no money--never give to beggars."