Her name was Koosje van Kampen, and she lived in Utrecht, that most
quaint of quaint cities, the Venice of the North.
All her life had been passed under the shadow of the grand old Dom Kerk;
she had played bo-peep behind the columns and arcades of the ruined,
moss-grown cloisters; had slipped up and fallen down the steps leading
to the _grachts_; had once or twice, in this very early life, been
fished out of those same slimy, stagnant waters; had wandered under the
great lindens in the Baan, and gazed curiously up at the stork’s nest
in the tree by the Veterinary School; had pattered about the
hollow-sounding streets in her noisy wooden _klompen_; had danced and
laughed, had quarrelled and wept, and fought and made friends again,
to the tune of the silver chimes high up in the Dom--chimes that were
sometimes old _Nederlandsche_ hymns, sometimes Mendelssohn’s melodies
and tender “Lieder ohne Worte.”
But that was ever so long ago, and now she had left her romping
childhood behind her, and had become a maid-servant--a very dignified
and aristocratic maid-servant indeed--with no less a sum than eight
pounds ten a year in wages.
She lived in the house of a professor, who dwelt on the Munster
Kerkhoff, one of the most aristocratic parts of that wonderfully
aristocratic city; and once or twice every week you might have seen her,
if you had been there to see, busily engaged in washing the red tile
and blue slate pathway in front of the professor’s house. You would have
seen that she was very pleasant to look at, this Koosje, very comely
and clean, whether she happened to be very busy, or whether it had been
Sunday, and, with her very best gown on, she was out for a promenade in
the Baan, after duly going to service as regularly as the Sabbath dawned
in the grand old Gothic choir of the cathedral.
During the week she wore always the same costume as does every other
servant in the country: a skirt of black stuff, short enough to show a
pair of very neat-set and well-turned ankles, clad in cloth shoes and
knitted stockings that showed no wrinkles; over the skirt a bodice and
a kirtle of lilac, made with a neatly gathered frilling about her round
brown throat; above the frilling five or six rows of unpolished garnet
beads fastened by a massive clasp of gold filigree, and on her head a
spotless white cap tied with a neat bow under her chin--as neat, let me
tell you, as an Englishman’s tie at a party.
But it was on Sunday that Koosje shone forth in all the glory of a black
gown and her jewellery--with great ear-rings to match the clasp of her
necklace, and a heavy chain and cross to match that again, and one or
two rings; while on her head she wore an immense cap, much too big to
put a bonnet over, though for walking she was most particular to have
gloves.
Then, indeed, she was a young person to be treated with respect, and
with respect she was undoubtedly treated. As she passed along the
quaint, resounding streets, many a head was turned to look after her;
but Koosje went on her way like the staid maiden she was, duly impressed
with the fact that she was principal servant of Professor van Dijck, the
most celebrated authority on the study of osteology in Europe. So Koosje
never heeded the looks, turned her head neither to the right nor to
the left, but went sedately on her business or pleasure, whichever it
happened to be.
It was not likely that such a treasure could remain long unnoticed and
unsought after. Servants in the Netherlands, I hear, are not so good
but that they might be better; and most people knew what a treasure
Professor van Dijck had in his Koosje. However, as the professor
conscientiously raised her wages from time to time, Koosje never thought
of leaving him.
But there is one bribe no woman can resist--the bribe that is offered
by love. As Professor van Dijck had expected and feared, that bribe ere
long was held out to Koosje, and Koosje was too weak to resist it. Not
that he wished her to do so. If the girl had a chance of settling well
and happily for life, he would be the last to dream of throwing any
obstacle in her way. He had come to be an old man himself; he lived all
alone, save for his servants, in a great, rambling house, whose huge
apartments were all set out with horrible anatomical preparations and
grisly skeletons; and, though the stately passages were paved with white
marble, and led into rooms which would easily have accommodated crowds
of guests, he went into no society save that of savants as old and
fossil-like as himself; in other words, he was an old bachelor who lived
entirely for his profession and the study of the great masters by the
interpretation of a genuine old Stradivari. Yet the old professor had a
memory; he recalled the time when he had been young who now was old--the
time when his heart was a good deal more tender, his blood a great deal
warmer, and his fancy very much more easily stirred than nowadays. There
was a dead-and-gone romance which had broken his heart, sentimentally
speaking--a romance long since crumbled into dust, which had sent him
for comfort into the study of osteology and the music of the Stradivari;
yet the memory thereof made him considerably more lenient to Koosje’s
weakness than Koosje herself had ever expected to find him.
Not that she had intended to tell him at first; she was only three and
twenty, and, though Jan van der Welde was as fine a fellow as could be
seen in Utrecht, and had good wages and something put by, Koosje was by
no means inclined to rush headlong into matrimony with undue hurry.
It was more pleasant to live in the professor’s good house, to have
delightful walks arm in arm with Jan under the trees in the Baan or
round the Singels, parting under the stars with many a lingering word
and promise to meet again. It was during one of those very partings that
the professor suddenly became aware, as he walked placidly home, of the
change that had come into Koosje’s life.
However, Koosje told him blushingly that she did not wish to leave him
just at present; so he did not trouble himself about the matter. He
was a wise man, this old authority on osteology, and quoted oftentimes,
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
So the courtship sped smoothly on, seeming for once to contradict the
truth of the old saying, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”
The course of their love did, of a truth, run marvellously smooth
indeed. Koosje, if a trifle coy, was pleasant and sweet; Jan as fine a
fellow as ever waited round a corner on a cold winter night. So brightly
the happy days slipped by, when suddenly a change was effected in the
professor’s household which made, as a matter of course, somewhat of a
change in Koosje’s life. It came about in this wise.
Koosje had been on an errand for the professor,--one that had kept her
out of doors some time,--and it happened that the night was bitterly
cold; the cold, indeed, was fearful. The air had that damp rawness
so noticeable in Dutch climate, a thick mist overhung the city, and
a drizzling rain came down with a steady persistence such as quickly
soaked through the stoutest and thickest garments. The streets were
well-nigh empty. The great thoroughfare, the Oude Gracht, was almost
deserted, and as Koosje hurried along the Meinerbroederstraat--for she
had a second commission there--she drew her great shawl more tightly
round her, muttering crossly, “What weather! yesterday so warm, to-day
so cold. ‘Tis enough to give one the fever.”
She delivered her message, and ran on through Oude Kerkhoff as fast as
her feet could carry her, when, just as she turned the corner into the
Domplein, a fierce gust of wind, accompanied by a blinding shower of
rain, assailed her; her foot caught against something soft and heavy,
and she fell.
“Bless us!” she ejaculated, blankly. “What fool has left a bundle out on
the path on such a night? Pitch dark, with half the lamps out, and rain
and mist enough to blind one.”
She gathered herself up, rubbing elbows and knees vigorously, casting
the while dark glances at the obnoxious bundle which had caused the
disaster. Just then the wind was lulled, the lamp close at hand gave out
a steady light, which shed its rays through the fog upon Koosje and the
bundle, from which, to the girl’s horror and dismay, came a faint moan.
Quickly she drew nearer, when she perceived that what she had believed
to be a bundle was indeed a woman, apparently in the last stage of
exhaustion.
Koosje tried to lift her; but the dead-weight was beyond her, young and
strong as she was. Then the rain and the wind came on again in fiercer
gusts than before; the woman’s moans grew louder and louder, and what to
do Koosje knew not.
She struggled on for the few steps that lay between her and the
professor’s house, and then she rang a peal which resounded through the
echoing passages, bringing Dortje, the other maid, running out; after
the manner of her class, imagining all sorts of terrible catastrophes
had happened. She uttered a cry of relief when she perceived it was only
Koosje, who, without vouchsafing any explanation, dashed past her and
ran straight into the professor’s room.
“O professor!” she gasped out; but, between her efforts to remove the
woman, her struggle with the elements, and her race down the passage,
her breath was utterly gone.
The professor looked up from his book and his tea-tray in surprise. For
a moment he thought that Koosje, his domestic treasure, had altogether
taken leave of her senses; for she was streaming with water, covered
with mud, and head and cap were in a state of disorder, such as neither
he nor any one else had ever seen them in since the last time she had
been fished out of the Nieuwe Gracht.
“What is the matter, Koosje?” he asked, regarding her gravely over his
spectacles.
“There’s a woman outside--dying,” she panted, “I fell over her.”
“You had better try to get her in then,” the old gentleman said, in
quite a relieved tone. “You and Dortje must bring her in. Dear, dear,
poor soul! but it is a dreadful night.”
The old gentleman shivered as he spoke, and drew a little nearer to the
tall white porcelain stove.
It was, as he had said a minute before, a terrible night. He could hear
the wind beating about the house and rattling about the casements and
moaning down the chimneys; and to think any poor soul should be out on
such a night, _dying_! Heaven preserve others who might be belated or
houseless in any part of the world!
He fell into a fit of abstraction,--a habit not uncommon with learned
men,--wondering why life should be so different with different people;
why he should be in that warm, handsome room, with its soft rich
hangings and carpet, with its beautiful furniture of carved wood, its
pictures, and the rare china scattered here and there among the grim
array of skeletons which were his delight. He wondered why he should
take his tea out of costly and valuable Oriental china, sugar and cream
out of antique silver, while other poor souls had no tea at all, and
nothing to take it out of even if they had. He wondered why he
should have a lamp under his teapot that was a very marvel of art
transparencies; why he should have every luxury, and this poor creature
should be dying in the street amid the wind and the rain. It was all
very unequal.
It was very odd, the professor argued, leaning his back against the
tall, warm stove; it was very odd indeed. He began to feel that, grand
as the study of osteology undoubtedly is, he ought not to permit it
to become so engrossing as to blind him to the study of the greater
philosophies of life. His reverie was, however, broken by the abrupt
reentrance of Koosje, who this time was a trifle less breathless than
she had been before.
“We have got her into the kitchen, professor,” she announced. “She is a
child--a mere baby, and so pretty! She has opened her eyes and spoken.”
“Give her some soup and wine--hot,” said the professor, without
stirring.
“But won’t you come?” she asked.
The professor hesitated; he hated attending in cases of illness, though
he was a properly qualified doctor and in an emergency would lay his
prejudice aside.
“Or shall I run across for the good Dr. Smit?” Koosje asked. “He would
come in a minute, only it is _such_ a night!”
At that moment a fiercer gust than before rattled at the casements, and
the professor laid aside his scruples.
He followed his housekeeper down the chilly, marble-flagged passage into
the kitchen, where he never went for months together--a cosey enough,
pleasant place, with a deep valance hanging from the mantel-shelf, with
many great copper pans, bright and shining as new gold, and furniture
all scrubbed to the whiteness of snow.
In an arm-chair before the opened stove sat the rescued girl--a slight,
golden-haired thing, with wistful blue eyes and a frightened air. Every
moment she caught her breath in a half-hysterical sob, while violent
shivers shook her from head to foot.
The professor went and looked at her over his spectacles, as if she had
been some curious specimen of his favourite study; but at the same time
he kept at a respectful distance from her.
“Give her some soup and wine,” he said, at length, putting his hands
under the tails of his long dressing-gown of flowered cashmere. “Some
soup and wine--hot; and put her to bed.”
“Is she then to remain for the night?” Koosje asked, a little surprised.
“Oh, don’t send me away!” the golden-haired girl broke out, in a voice
that was positively a wail, and clasping a pair of pretty, slender hands
in piteous supplication.
“Where do you come from?” the old gentleman asked, much as if he
expected she might suddenly jump up and bite him.
“From Beijerland, mynheer,” she answered, with a sob.
“So! Koosje, she is remarkably well dressed, is she not?” the professor
said, glancing at the costly lace head-gear, the heavy gold head-piece,
which lay on the table together with the great gold spiral ornaments and
filigree pendants--a dazzling head of richness. He looked, too, at the
girl’s white hands, at the rich, crape-laden gown, at their delicate
beauty, and shower of waving golden hair, which, released from the
confinement of the cap and head-piece, floated in a rich mass of
glittering beauty over the pillows which his servant had placed beneath
her head.
The professor was old; the professor was wholly given up to his
profession, which he jokingly called his sweetheart; and, though he
cut half of his acquaintances in the street through inattention and
the shortness of his sight, he had eyes in his head, and upon occasions
could use them. He therefore repeated the question.
“Very well dressed indeed, professor,” returned Koosje, promptly.
“And what are you doing in Utrecht--in such a plight as this, too?” he
asked, still keeping at a safe distance.
“O mynheer, I am all alone in the world,” she answered, her blue misty
eyes filled with tears. “I had a month ago a dear, good, kind father,
but he has died, and I am indeed desolate. I always believed him rich,
and to these things,” with a gesture that included her dress and the
ornaments on the table, “I have ever been accustomed. Thus I ordered
without consideration such clothes as I thought needful. And then I
found there was nothing for me--not a hundred guilders to call my own
when all was paid.”
“But what brought you to Utrecht?”
“He sent me here, mynheer. In his last illness, only of three days’
duration, he bade me gather all together and come to this city, where I
was to ask for a Mevrouw Baake, his cousin.”
“Mevrouw Baake, of the Sigaren Fabrijk,” said Dortje, in an aside, to
the others. “I lived servant with her before I came here.”
“I had heard very little about her, only my father had sometimes
mentioned his cousin to me; they had once been betrothed,” the stranger
continued. “But when I reached Utrecht I found she was dead--two years
dead; but we had never heard of it.”
“Dear, dear, dear!” exclaimed the professor, pityingly. “Well, you had
better let Koosje put you to bed, and we will see what can be done for
you in the morning.”
“Am I to make up a bed?” Koosje asked, following him along the passage.
The professor wheeled round and faced her.
“She had better sleep in the guest room,” he said, thoughtfully,
regardless of the cold which struck to his slippered feet from the
marble floor. “That is the only room which does not contain specimens
that would probably frighten the poor child. I am very much afraid,
Koosje,” he concluded, doubtfully, “that she is a lady; and what we are
to do with a lady I can’t think.”
With that the old gentleman shuffled off to his cosey room, and Koosje
turned back to her kitchen.
“He’ll never think of marrying her,” mused Koosje, rather blankly. If
she had spoken the thoughts to the professor himself, she would have
received a very emphatic assurance that, much as the study of osteology
and the Stradivari had blinded him to the affairs of this workaday
world, he was not yet so thoroughly foolish as to join his fossilised
wisdom to the ignorance of a child of sixteen or seventeen.
However, on the morrow matters assumed a somewhat different aspect.
Gertrude van Floote proved to be not exactly a gentlewoman. It is true
that her father had been a well-to-do man for his station in life, and
had very much spoiled and indulged his one motherless child. Yet her
education was so slight that she could do little more than read and
write, besides speaking a little English, which she had picked up from
the yachtsmen frequenting her native town. The professor found she had
been but a distant relative of the Mevrouw Baake, to seek whom she
had come to Utrecht, and that she had no kinsfolk upon whom she could
depend--a fact which accounted for the profusion of her jewellery, all
her golden trinkets having descended to her as heirlooms.
“I can be your servant, mynheer,” she suggested. “Indeed, I am a very
useful girl, as you will find if you will but try me.”
Now, as a rule, the professor vigorously set his face against admitting
young servants into his house. They broke his china, they disarranged
his bones, they meddled with his papers, and made general havoc. So,
in truth, he was not very willing to have Gertrude van Floote as a
permanent member of his household, and he said so.
But Koosje had taken a fancy to the girl; and having an eye to her own
departure at no very distant date,--for she had been betrothed more than
two years,--she pleaded so hard to keep her, promising to train her
in all the professor’s ways, to teach her the value of old china and
osteologic specimens, that eventually, with a good deal of grumbling,
the old gentleman gave way, and, being a wise as well as an old
gentleman, went back to his studies, dismissing Koosje and the girl
alike from his thoughts.
Just at first Truide, poor child, was charmed.
She put away her splendid ornaments, and some lilac frocks and black
skirts were purchased for her. Her box, which she had left at the
station, supplied all that was necessary for Sunday.
It was great fun! For a whole week this young person danced about the
rambling old house, playing at being a servant. Then she began to grow
a little weary of it all. She had been accustomed, of course, to
performing such offices as all Dutch ladies fulfil--the care of china,
of linen, the dusting of rooms, and the like; but she had done them as
a mistress, not as an underling. And that was not the worst; it was when
it came to her pretty feet having to be thrust into klompen, and her
having to take a pail and syringe and mop and clean the windows and the
pathway and the front of the house, that the game of maid-servant began
to assume a very different aspect. When, after having been as free
as air to come and go as she chose, she was only permitted to attend
service on Sundays, and to take an hour’s promenade with Dortje, who was
dull and heavy and stupid, she began to feel positively desperate; and
the result of it all was that when Jan van der Welde came, as he was
accustomed to do nearly every evening, to see Koosje, Miss Truide, from
sheer longing for excitement and change, began to make eyes at him, with
what effect I will endeavour to show.
Just at first Koosje noticed nothing. She herself was of so faithful a
nature that an idea, a suspicion, of Jan’s faithlessness never entered
her mind. When the girl laughed and blushed and dimpled and smiled,
when she cast her great blue eyes at the big young fellow, Koosje only
thought how pretty she was, and it was just a thousand pities she had
not been born a great lady.
And thus weeks slipped over. Never very demonstrative herself, Koosje
saw nothing, Dortje, for her part, saw a great deal; but Dortje was a
woman of few words, one who quite believed in the saying, “If speech is
silver, silence is gold;” so she held her peace.
Now Truide, rendered fairly frantic by her enforced confinement to
the house, grew to look upon Jan as her only chance of excitement and
distraction; and Jan, poor, thick-headed noodle of six feet high, was
thoroughly wretched. What to do he knew not. A strange, mad, fierce
passion for Truide had taken possession of him, and an utter distaste,
almost dislike, had come in place of the old love for Koosje. Truide
was unlike anything he had ever come in contact with before; she was so
fairy-like, so light, so delicate, so dainty. Against Koosje’s plumper,
maturer charms, she appeared to the infatuated young man like--if he had
ever heard of it he would probably have said like a Dresden china image;
but since he had not, he compared her in his own foolish heart to an
angel. Her feet were so tiny, her hands so soft, her eyes so expressive,
her waist so slim, her manner so bewitching! Somehow Koosje was
altogether different; he could not endure the touch of her heavy hand,
the tones of her less refined voice; he grew impatient at the denser
perceptions of her mind. It was very foolish, very short-sighted; for
the hands, though heavy, were clever and willing; the voice, though a
trifle coarser in accent than Truide’s childish tones, would never tell
him a lie; the perceptions, though not brilliant, were the perceptions
of good, every-day common sense. It really was very foolish, for what
charmed him most in Truide was the merest outside polish, a certain ease
of manner which doubtless she had caught from the English aristocrats
whom she had known in her native place. She had not half the sterling
good qualities and steadfastness of Koosje; but Jan was in love, and
did not stop to argue the matter as you or I are able to do. Men in
love--very wise and great men, too--are often like Jan van der Welde.
They lay aside pro tem. the whole amount, be it great or small, of
wisdom they possess. And it must be remembered that Jan van der Welde
was neither a wise nor a great man.
Well, in the end there came what the French call _un denouement_,--what
we in forcible modern English would call a _smash_,--and it happened
thus. It was one evening toward the summer that Koosje’s eyes were
suddenly opened, and she became aware of the free-and-easy familiarity
of Truide’s manner toward her betrothed lover, Jan. It was some very
slight and trivial thing that led her to notice it, but in an instant
the whole truth flashed across her mind.
“Leave the kitchen!” she said, in a tone of authority.
But it happened that, at the very instant she spoke, Jan was furtively
holding Truide’s fingers under the cover of the table-cloth; and when,
on hearing the sharp words, the girl would have snatched them away, he,
with true masculine instinct of opposition, held them fast.
“What do you mean by speaking to her like that?” he demanded, an angry
flush overspreading his dark face.
“What is the maid to you?” Koosje asked, indignantly.
“Maybe more than you are,” he retorted; in answer to which Koosje
deliberately marched out of the kitchen, leaving them alone.
To say she was indignant would be but very mildly to express the state
of her feelings; she was _furious_. She knew that the end of her romance
had come. No thoughts of making friends with Jan entered her mind; only
a great storm filled her heart till it was ready to burst with pain and
anguish.
As she went along the passage the professor’s bell sounded, and Koosje,
being close to the door, went abruptly in. The professor looked up in
mild astonishment, quickly enough changed to dismay as he caught sight
of his valued Koosje’s face, from out of which anger seemed in a moment
to have thrust all the bright, comely beauty.
“How now, my good Koosje?” said the old gentleman. “Is aught amiss?”
“Yes, professor, there is,” returned Koosje, all in a blaze of anger,
and moving, as she spoke, the tea-tray, which she set down upon the
oaken buffet with a bang, which made its fair and delicate freight
fairly jingle again.
“But you needn’t break my china, Koosje,” suggested the old gentleman,
mildly, rising from his chair and getting into his favourite attitude
before the stove.
“You are quite right, professor,” returned Koosje, curtly; she was
sensible even in her trouble.
“And what is the trouble?” he asked, gently.
“It’s just this, professor,” cried Koosje, setting her arms akimbo and
speaking in a high-pitched, shrill voice; “you and I have been warming
a viper in our bosoms, and, viper-like, she has turned round and bitten
me.”
“Is it Truide?”
“Truide,” she affirmed, disdainfully. “Yes, it is Truide, who but for
me would be dead now of hunger and cold--or _worse_. And she has been
making love to that great fool, Jan van der Welde,--great oaf that he
is,--after all I have done for her; after my dragging her in out of the
cold and rain; after all I have taught her. Ah, professor, but it is a
vile, venomous viper that we have been warming in our bosoms!”
“I must beg, Koosje,” said the old gentleman, sedately, “that you will
exonerate me from any such proceeding. If you remember rightly, I was
altogether against your plan for keeping her in the house.” He could not
resist giving her that little dig, kind of heart as he was.
“Serves me right for being so soft-hearted!” thundered Koosje. “I’ll be
wiser next time I fall over a bundle, and leave it where I find it.”
“No, no, Koosje; don’t say that,” the old gentleman remonstrated,
gently. “After all, it may be but a blessing in disguise. God sends all
our trials for some good and wise purpose. Our heaviest afflictions are
often, nay, most times, Koosje, means to some great end which, while the
cloud of adversity hangs over us, we are unable to discern.”
“Ah!” sniffed Koosje, scornfully.
“This oaf--as I must say you justly term him, for you are a good clever
woman, Koosje, as I can testify after the experience of years--has
proved that he can be false; he has shown that he can throw away
substance for shadow (for, of a truth, that poor, pretty child would
make a sad wife for a poor man); yet it is better you should know it now
than at some future date, when--when there might be other ties to make
the knowledge more bitter to you.”
“Yes, that is true,” said Koosje, passing the back of her hand across
her trembling lips. She could not shed tears over her trouble; her eyes
were dry and burning, as if anger had scorched the blessed drops up ere
they should fall. She went on washing up the cups and saucers, or at
least _the_ cup and saucer, and other articles the professor had used
for his tea; and after a few minutes’ silence he spoke again.
“What are you going to do? Punish her, or turn her out, or what?”
“I shall let him--_marry_ her,” replied Koosje, with a portentous nod.
The old gentleman couldn’t help laughing. “You think he will pay off
your old scores?”
“Before long,” answered Koosje, grimly, “she will find him out--as I
have done.”
Then, having finished washing the tea-things, which the professor had
shuddered to behold in her angry hands, she whirled herself out of the
room and left him alone.
“Oh, these women--these women!” he cried, in confidence, to the pictures
and skeletons. “What a worry they are! An old bachelor has the best of
it in the main, I do believe. But oh, Jan van der Welde, what a donkey
you must be to get yourself mixed up in such a broil! and yet--ah!”
The fossilised old gentleman broke off with a sigh as he recalled the
memory of a certain dead-and-gone romance which had happened--goodness
only knows how many years before--when he, like Jan van der Welde, would
have thrown the world away for a glance of a certain pair of blue eyes,
at the bidding of a certain English tongue, whose broken _Nederlandsche
taal_ was to him the sweetest music ever heard on earth--sweeter even
than the strains of the Stradivari when from under his skilful fingers
rose the perfect melodies of old masters. Ay, but the sweet eyes had
been closed in death many a long, long, year, the sweet voice hushed
in silence. He had watched the dear life ebb away, the fire in the
blue eyes fade out. He had felt each day that the clasp of the little
greeting fingers was less close; each day he had seen the outline of the
face grow sharper; and at last there had come one when the poor little
English-woman met him with the gaze of one who knew him not, and
babbled, not of green fields, but of horses and dogs, and of a brother
Jack, who, five years before, had gone down with her Majesty’s ship
_Alligator_ in mid-Atlantic.
Ay, but that was many and many a year agone. His young, blue-eyed love
stood out alone in life’s history, a thing apart. Of the gentler sex, in
a general way, the old professor had not seen that which had raised it
in his estimation to the level of the one woman over whose memory hung a
bright halo of romance.
Fifteen years had passed away; the old professor of osteology had passed
away with them; and in the large house on the Domplein lived a baron,
with half a dozen noisy, happy, healthy children,--young _fraulas_ and
_jonkheers_,--who scampered up and down the marble passages, and fell
headlong down the steep, narrow, unlighted stairways, to the imminent
danger of dislocating their aristocratic little necks. There was a new
race of neat maids, clad in the same neat livery of lilac and black,
who scoured and cleaned, just as Koosje and Dortje had done in the
old professor’s day. You might, indeed, have heard the selfsame names
resounding through the echoing rooms: “Koos-je! Dort-je!”
But the Koosje and Dortje were not the same. What had become of Dortje I
cannot say; but on the left-hand side of the busy, bustling, picturesque
Oude Gracht there was a handsome shop filled with all manner of cakes,
sweeties, confections, and liquors--from absinthe to Benedictine,
or arrack to chartreuse. In that shop was a handsome, prosperous,
middle-aged woman, well dressed and well mannered, no longer Professor
van Dijck’s Koosje, but the Jevrouw van Kampen.
Yes; Koosje had come to be a prosperous tradeswoman of good position,
respected by all. But she was Koosje van Kampen still; the romance which
had come to so disastrous and abrupt an end had sufficed for her life.
Many an offer had been made to her, it is true; but she had always
declared that she had had enough of lovers--she had found out their real
value.
I must tell you that at the time of Jan’s infidelity, after the first
flush of rage was over, Koosje disdained to show any sign of grief or
regret. She was very proud, this Netherland servant-maid, far too proud
to let those by whom she was surrounded imagine she was wearing the
willow for the faithless Jan; and when Dortje, on the day of the
wedding, remarked that for her part she had always considered Koosje
remarkably cool on the subject of matrimony, Koosje with a careless
out-turning of her hands, palms uppermost, answered that she was right.
Very soon after their marriage Jan and his young wife left Utrecht for
Arnheim, where Jan had promise of higher wages; and thus they passed, as
Koosje thought, completely out of her life.
“I don’t wish to hear anything more about them, if--you--please,” she
said, severely and emphatically, to Dortje.
But not so. In time the professor died, leaving Koosje the large legacy
with which she set up the handsome shop in the Oude Gracht; and several
years passed on.
It happened one day that Koosje was sitting in her shop sewing. In the
large inner room a party of ladies and officers were eating cakes and
drinking chocolates and liquors with a good deal of fun and laughter,
when the door opened timidly, thereby letting in a gust of bitter wind,
and a woman crept fearfully in, followed by two small, crying children.
Could the lady give her something to eat? she asked; they had had
nothing during the day, and the little ones were almost famished.
Koosje, who was very charitable, lifted a tray of large, plain buns, and
was about to give her some, when her eyes fell upon the poor beggar’s
faded face, and she exclaimed:
“Truide!”
Truide, for it was she, looked up in startled surprise.
“I did not know, or I would not have come in, Koosje,” she said, humbly;
“for I treated you very badly.”
“Ve-ry bad-ly,” returned Koosje, emphatically. “Then where is Jan?”
“Dead!” murmured Truide, sadly.
“Dead! so--ah, well! I suppose I must do something for you. Here Yanke!”
opening the door and calling, “Yanke!”
“_Je, jevrouw_,” a voice cried, in reply.
The next moment a maid came running into the shop.
“Take these people into the kitchen and give them something to eat.
Put them by the stove while you prepare it. There is some soup and that
smoked ham we had for _koffy_. Then come here and take my place for a
while.”
“_Je, jevrouw_,” said Yanke, disappearing again, followed by Truide and
her children.
Then Koosje sat down again, and began to think.
“I said,” she mused, presently, “_that_ night that the next time I
fell over a bundle I’d leave it where I found it. Ah, well! I’m not
a barbarian; I couldn’t do that. I never thought, though, it would be
Truide.”
“_Hi, jevrouw_,” was called from the inner room.
“_Je, mynheer_,” jumping up and going to her customers.
She attended to their wants, and presently bowed them out.
“I never thought it would be Truide,” she repeated to herself, as
she closed the door behind the last of the gay uniforms and jingling
scabbards. “And Jan is dead--ah, well!”
Then she went into the kitchen, where the miserable children--girls both
of them, and pretty had they been clean and less forlornly clad--were
playing about the stove.
“So Jan is dead,” began Koosje, seating herself.
“Yes, Jan is dead,” Truide answered.
“And he left you nothing?” Koosje asked.
“We had had nothing for a long time,” Truide replied, in her sad,
crushed voice. “We didn’t get on very well; he soon got tired of me.”
“That was a weakness of his,” remarked Koosje, drily.
“We lost five little ones, one after another,” Truide continued. “And
Jan was fond of them, and somehow it seemed to sour him. As for me, I
was sorry enough at the time, Heaven knows, but it was as well. But Jan
said it seemed as if a curse had fallen upon us; he began to wish you
back again, and to blame me for having come between you. And then he
took to _genever_, and then to wish for something stronger; so at last
every stiver went for absinthe, and once or twice he beat me, and then
he died.”
“Just as well,” muttered Koosje, under her breath.
“It is very good of you to have fed and warmed us,” Truide went on, in
her faint, complaining tones. “Many a one would have let me starve, and
I should have deserved it. It is very good of you and we are grateful;
but ‘tis time we were going, Koosje and Mina;” then added, with a shake
of her head, “but I don’t know where.”
“Oh, you’d better stay,” said Koosje, hurriedly. “I live in this big
house by myself, and I dare say you’ll be more useful in the shop than
Yanke--if your tongue is as glib as it used to be, that is. You know
some English, too, don’t you?”
“A little,” Truide answered, eagerly.
“And after all,” Koosje said, philosophically, shrugging her shoulders,
“you saved me from the beatings and the starvings and the rest. I owe
you something for that. Why, if it hadn’t been for you I should have
been silly enough to have married him.”
And then she went back to her shop, saying to herself:
“The professor said it was a blessing in disguise; God sends all our
trials to work some great purpose. Yes; that was what he said, and he
knew most things. Just think if I were trailing about now with those
two little ones, with nothing to look back to but a schnapps-drinking
husband who beat me! Ah, well, well! things are best as they are. I
don’t know that I ought not to be very much obliged to her--and she’ll
be very useful in the shop.”