handsome, as if made to match my cousin, and it was painted flame color.
"I am just learning to drive," said Robert, who wore a motoring-cap
which was particularly becoming. "I do not know much about automobiles
yet; soon I shall buy one. It is rowing I like best, and skating in
winter, though I have not time to amuse myself except at the end of
weeks, for I am manager of my poor father's factory. But my fiancee
likes the automobile, and to please her I am learning with my friend's
car."
"That is good of you," said Phyllis.
"Yes, it is," he replied gravely. "Would you that I drive or the
chauffeur? He has more experience."
I left the decision to Phil, as she is the timid one, but to my surprise
she answered----
"Oh, you, of course."
Cousin Robert looked pleased. "Are you not afraid?" he inquired,
beaming.
"Ye--es, I am afraid, for I've never been before. But I shall be less
afraid with you than with him." And she glanced at a weedy youth who was
pouring oil from a long-nosed tin into something obscure.
"Will you sit in front by my side?" he asked. And it was only after Phil
had accepted the invitation that he remembered to hope I wouldn't mind
the chauffeur being in the _tonneau_ with me. "It must have been one of
you," he added, "and you and I are cousins."
"Twice removed," I murmured; but he was helping Phil into the car,
and did not hear.
It was a wild moment when we started. But it would have looked odd to
cling to the chauffeur for protection, so I did nothing; and it calmed
me to see how Phyllis bore herself. She didn't even grasp the arm of the
seat; she merely gazed up into Cousin Robert's face with a sweetly
feminine look, which said, "My one hope is in you, but I trust you
utterly." It was enough to melt the heart of a stone giant, even when
seen through goggles. I had an idea that this giant was not made of
stone, and I wondered what the fiancee of my cousin twice removed was
made of.
After the first thrill of starting, when we seemed to be tearing like a
tailless comet through a very small portion of space not designed to
hold comets, I grew happy, though far from tranquil. I can't imagine
people ever feeling really tranquil in an automobile, and I don't
believe they do, though they may pretend. I'm sure I should not, even if
I became a professional chauffeur, which heaven forbid. But part of the
enjoyment came through not feeling tranquil. There was a savage joy in
thinking every instant that you were going to be dashed to pieces, or
else that you would dash somebody else to pieces, while all the time you
knew in your heart that nothing of the sort would happen.
The car went splendidly, and I believe I should have guessed it was a
Dutch one, even if Cousin Robert hadn't told me; it made so little
noise, yet moved so masterfully, and gave an impression of so much
reserve power. Indeed, I might have thought out several nice similes if
there hadn't been quantities of trams and heavy drays blundering about,
or if the inhabitants of Rotterdam had not had a habit of walking in
large family groups in the middle of the street. The big horn through
which Robert every now and again blew a mournful blast, was confusing
when it arrived in the midst of an idea; and a little curved thing
(like the hunting-horn of old pictures) into which the chauffeur
occasionally mewed, was as disconcerting to my nerves as to those of the
pedestrians who hopped out of the way.
The more we saw of Rotterdam, the more extraordinary did the city
appear, and the more did I wonder that people should refer to it merely
as a port.
"It is not a bad town," Robert said to Phyllis, in the half-fond,
half-deprecating way in which, when talking to strangers, we allude to
that spot of earth we happen to inhabit. "I would not change to live at
The Hague, though the diplomatic set give sneers at us and call us
commercial."
"Just as Edinburgh sneers at Glasgow," cut in Phil.
"Yes, like that. I have been much to Scotland on my business, and I
know," answered Robert. "But we have many good things to show strangers,
if they would look; pictures, and museums, and old streets; but it is
not fashionable to admire Rotterdam. You should see the Boompjes at
night, when the lights shine in the water. It is only a big dyke, but
once it was the part where the rich people lived, and those who know
about such things say the old houses are good. And I should like you to
see where I live with my mother and sisters. It is an old house, too, in
a big garden, with a pond and an island covered with flowers. But we do
not pass now, so you must see it a future day."
To say all this, Cousin Robert had to yell above the roar of traffic on
the stone pavements; but by-and-by, as town changed into country, we
left the stones behind and came into the strangest road I have ever
seen. It ran beside a little river--the Schie--which looked like a
canal, and it was made of neat, purplish-brown bricks, laid edge to
edge.
"Klinker, we call it," said Cousin Robert. "It's good for driving; never
much dust or mud; and when you motor it gives grip to the 'pneus.' It
wouldn't do for us of the Netherlands to leave our roads bare."
"Why, what would happen?" I bent toward him to ask. "Would the bottom of
Holland drop out?"
"I think yes," he replied, seriously. "The saying is that there has been
as much of sand laid on the road between Rotterdam and The Hague as
would reach the top of the cathedral spire at Amsterdam, which you will
see one day."
"Dear me, and yet it's so low and flat, now," soliloquized Phil. "Lower
than the canals."
"It is nothing here to some places. We work hard to save the country we
have made with our hands, we Netherlanders. All the streets and gardens
of Rotterdam, and other towns too, sink down and down; but we are used
to that. We do not stop to care, but go to work adding more steps up to
the houses, so we can get in at our doors."
"I think you are wonderful," said Phyllis.
"I have not done very much myself," modestly replied Cousin Robert.
"But you would if necessary. I'm sure you'd have been like the little
boy who saw the trickle of water coming out of the dyke, and put his
thumb----"
"Phil, if you bring up that story I'll ask Cousin Robert van Buren to
run into a windmill and kill you," I shrieked over her shoulder.
"But I would not do that," said he. Oh yes, he really was wonderful, my
cousin Robert.
"There is a spot to interest an American," he deigned to fling a sop to
me, nodding vaguely upward at some roofs on the River Maas. "Did you
ever hear of Oude Delftshaven, cousin? But I don't suppose you have."
"Indeed I have!" I shrieked at him. "I wouldn't be a true descendant of
Knickerbocker stock if I hadn't. On July 22, 1620, some Pilgrim Fathers
(I'm not sure whether they were fathers then or afterwards) set sail
from Oude Delftshaven for America."
(I didn't think it necessary to explain that, Knickerbocker as I was, I
had absorbed this fact only the other day in "reading up" Holland.)
I was still more inclined to be reticent as to the newness of my
knowledge when it appeared that Phil knew something of a poem on the
subject by Mrs. Hemans. I could not allow my English stepsister to be
better informed than I concerning a country which I already began to
regard as a sort of confiscated family estate that ought to have been
mine.
We were going fast now, so fast that the tears came to my eyes as the
sweet-scented breeze rushed against my lashes.
"There's Schiedam," said Robert, indicating a town that stood up darkly
out of the green plain. "You know, they make the famous 'Geneva' there."
We had never heard of Geneva in liquid form, but it appeared that
"Geneva" or "Hollands" and gin were all the same thing; and Cousin
Robert seemed almost offended when I said it was nice, with hot water
and sugar, for a cold in the head.
I don't know whether the little Schie is really an idyllic stream, or
whether the glamor of that azure day was upon it for me, but our first
"waterway" seemed exquisite, as we spun along through country of wide
horizons and magic atmosphere.
There were pretty houses, with balconies screened with roses--cataracts
of roses, yellow, and pink, and white. We flew by lawns like the lawns
of England, and thick, dark patches of forest, where the sun rained
gold. There were meadows where a red flame of poppies leaped among the
wheat, and quenched their fire in the silver river of waving grain.
There were other meadows, green and sunny, where cows were being milked
into blue pails lined with scarlet; and there were bowery tea-gardens
divided into snug little arbors for two, where each swain could woo his
nymph unseen by the next-door swain and nymph, though all couples were
in sight from the river.
"Now we're coming to Delft," said Robert, long before I thought that we
could be near that ancient town. "If Rudolph Brederode, who lends me
this car, were here, he could tell much about the history," my cousin
went on, mentioning his friend for the second time, as if with pride.
"He is the sort of fellow who knows all the things to know, though he is
a great sportsman, too. I never took interest in history, but William
the Silent is our hero, so even I know of him and Delft. It was at Oude
Delft he was murdered."
"He was one of my heroes when I was a little girl," said I. "I can
recall my father telling splendid stories about him--as good as fairy
tales. The best was about the way he earned the nickname of William the
Silent."
I gazed with interest at the place where one of the greatest figures in
the history of the world had lived and died.
A shady, lovable old town it seemed. We drove into a pleasant street,
which looked so clear and green, from the mirror of its canal to the
Gothic arch of its close arbor of fragrant lime-trees, that it was like
a tunnel of illuminated beryl. The extraordinary brilliance of the
windows added to the jewel-like effect. Each pane was a separate
glittering square of crystal, and the green light flickered and glanced
on the quaint little tilted spying-mirrors in which Dutch ladies see the
life of the streets, themselves unseen.
The houses were of brown or purplish brick, with curiously ornamented
doorways, the stucco decorations running in wavy lines up to the level
of the first story windows; the door-steps white as pearl in the green
glimmer; but there was nothing striking in the way of architecture until
we swept into sight of an old Gothic building, blazing with colored
coats-of-arms, ancient and resplendent.
"That's the Gemeenlandshuis van Delfsland," said Cousin Robert, with a
beautiful confidence in our comprehension; and then, slowing down the
car before a dark, high wall, with a secretive-looking door in the
midst, "Here's the Prinzenhof, where William the Silent lived, and where
Balthazar Gerard killed him."
"Oh," I exclaimed, as he was driving on, "can't we stop--can't we go
in?"
"We could, but--I should not like to make us late for dinner," Cousin
Robert demurred.
"Dinner? Why, it's ages before dinner, and----"
"We dine at half-past five," said he.
Phil and I gazed at each other with lifted eyebrows. Phil was pale, and
I felt a sudden constriction of the throat. The idea of eating dinner at
the hour when our souls cried for tea and toast, was little short of
ghastly. Noblesse obliged us to conceal our loathing, but I did venture
meekly to suggest that if we drove faster afterwards perhaps we might
spare a few minutes for the Prinzenhof.
"There are things in The Hague you will want to stop for, too," said
Robert. "But my sisters and I can bring you to see the pictures, and the
Royal Palace and the Huis ten Bosch to-morrow; besides, I remember my
mother meant to put off dinner for us until six, so we will, maybe, not
be too late."
One should be thankful for the smallest mercies; and I hoped that the
craving for tea might have subsided into callous resignation by six.
What Phil, as a born Englishwoman, must have been feeling, I could
easily conceive; and it was a pity this shock to her system had arrived
on our first day, for only just before the blow she had said that
Holland seemed too enchanting: she was glad, after all, that she had
come, and would like to learn the language.
Luckily, Cousin Robert had remembered the change in the domestic program
before it was too late, otherwise I am sure he would have denied us the
Prinzenhof, and we should have had to sneak back by ourselves to-morrow.
As it was we were allowed to have our own way, practically for the first
time since we came to Holland.
Robert rang a bell, and a man appeared, who let us into the courtyard,
more like the courtyard of a monastery than a palace; and among the
historical dust-motes which clung to Cousin Robert's memory was the fact
that the place actually had been a monastery, sacred to St. Agatha.
We crossed the courtyard, and just inside another door found ourselves
on the scene of the great tragedy.
I knew it by instinct, before anybody told me; for suddenly the whole
story came back just as I heard it from my father, not as I've read it
in books of history. So vividly did he paint each detail, that I used to
grow hysterical in my infantine way, and he was scolded by mother for
"filling the child's mind with horrors."
Yes, there was the stairway, with the pale light coming from the low
window; there was the white wall which had been spattered with the
hero's life blood; there was the open door of the dining-hall where he
had been carried back to die; there the white pillar behind which the
murderer crouched, and there the dark archway through which Gerard had
run, his heart beating thickly with the hope of escape, and the thought
of the horse waiting beyond the ramparts and the moat.
I fancied I could see the prince, handsome still, in the fashion of
dress he affected, since the days of the Water Beggars' fame. A stately
figure in his rough and wide-brimmed hat, with the silk cord of the
Beggars round the felt crown; and I could almost smell the smoke from
the murderer's pistol, bought with the money William's generosity had
given. There were the holes in the wall made by the poisoned bullets.
How real it all seemed, how the centuries between slipped away! Let me
see, what had the date been? I ought to remember. July----
"Phil, what day of the month is this?" I demanded with a start.
Phil turned at the open door of the dining-hall, which I could see had
been made into a museum.
"July tenth," she answered promptly; for you can never catch Phil
tripping as to a date, or a day of the week, even if you should shake
her out of her first sleep to ask.
"Then it's the anniversary of his death!" I exclaimed. "July 10, 1584,
it was. How strange we should have come on the very day! It makes it
seem a pilgrimage."
"I don't find it strange," said Cousin Robert. "Many people come every
day of the year."
Having thus poured the cold water of common sense on my sentiment, he
dragged us into the dining-hall museum to see relics of William, and I
should have been resentful, had not my eyes suddenly met other eyes
looking down from the wall. They were the eyes of William the Silent
himself when he was young--painted eyes, yet they spoke to me.
I don't know how fine that portrait may be as a work of art, but it is
marvelously real. I understood in a moment why little, half-deformed
Anna of Saxony had been so mad to marry him; I knew that, in her place,
I should have overcome just as many obstacles to make that dark,
haunting face the face of my husband.
Of course I've often read that William of Orange was a handsome man, as
well as a dashing and extravagant gallant in his young days, but never
till now had I realized how singularly attractive he must have been. The
face in the portrait was sad, and as thoughtful as if he had sat to the
artist on the day he heard the dreadful secret of the fate which Philip
of Spain and Francis of France were plotting for the Netherlands, the
day that decided his future, and gave him his name of "William the
Silent." Yet in spite of its melancholy, almost sternness, it won me as
no pictured face of a man ever did before.
"This is a great day for me," I said to Phil, who was close behind; "not
only am I seeing Holland for the first time, but I've fallen in love
with William the Silent."
I laughed as I made this announcement, though I was half in earnest; and
turning to see whether I had shocked Cousin Robert, I found him in
conversation with a tall, black-haired young man, near the door.
The man--he wore a gray suit, and carried a straw hat in his hand--had
his back to me, and I remembered having seen the same back in the museum
before we came in. Now he was going out, and evidently he and Cousin
Robert had recognized each other as acquaintances. As I looked, he
turned, and I saw his face. It was so like the face of the portrait that
I felt myself grow red. How I did hope he hadn't overheard that silly
speech!
For a moment his eyes and mine met as mine had met the eyes of the
portrait. Then he shook hands with Robert and was gone.
"Very odd," said my cousin the giant, strolling toward us again, "that
was Rudolph Brederode. And," he glanced at me, "his nickname among his
friends is William the Silent."
"Why?" I asked, pretending unconsciousness.
"Don't you think there is a likeness?"
"I'm bad at seeing likenesses," said I.
"Why, Nell, I don't think you are," Phil defended me against myself.
"You're always seeing the strangest resemblances between clouds and
animals, and plants and people, and there's no end to what you find on
wall papers. This very day you thought Mr. Starr like Robert Louis
Stevenson, though I----"
"That's when my imagination's running loose," I explained. "Cousin
Robert is talking about facts."
"Oh!" said Phil.
"It's rather an ugly portrait," I went on; "I don't suppose William of
Orange was like it one bit."
"But we have two reasons for calling Brederode the Taciturn," said
Robert. "He has a way to keep still about things which other people
discuss. Sometimes it makes men angry, but especially the ladies.
Brederode does not care what others think; he descends from the great
Brederode, but he is different."
"The Water Beggar was brave," I remarked.
"Rudolph is brave," retorted Cousin Robert, firing up. "You will think
so to-morrow."
"What is he going to do?" I asked. "Something to startle Holland?"
"Holland has seen him do it before, but you have not. You will see him
ride better than any one else in the jumping contests at the _Concours
Hippique_ at Scheveningen. It will be a fine show, but Brederode and his
horses will be the best. My mother has a box. She will take you."
"But I thought you were going to take us to The Hague and the Huis ten
Bosch?"
"That will be in the early morning. Perhaps my sisters will go; and
after we have finished the pictures at The Hague, we will meet my mother
and my fiancee, Freule Menela van der Windt, at the race grounds about
two, and the show will not be over till seven, so dinner will be late."
"You Dutch are a strong race," I murmured.
"Brederode says he always comes here when he's anywhere in the
neighborhood, for a look at the Prinzenhof on the tenth of July," Robert
went on. "Odd, is it not?"
"No more odd than that we should have been here," said I. But I said
this in a low voice; and it's only a man who is in love with a girl who
hears her when she mutters.
"He asked how the automobile was going, and I mentioned one or two
things that bothered me, so he has gone out to talk to the chauffeur,"
Cousin Robert continued, unable to turn his thoughts from his Admirable
Crichton. "Don't you think you've seen enough? It is late; and when I
told Brederode I was showing Delft to my American cousin and an English
friend, he said I must take you to the New Church, the tomb of William,
and of Hugo Grotius. He wanted you to go to the Old Church too, and see
the place where van Tromp lies, but we shall not have time. Besides, it
would not please Miss Rivers."
"Why not?" asked Phyllis, large-eyed.
"You are English, and the English do not like to remember that Holland,
through van Tromp, swept them off the seas--"
"Oh, I remember, he stuck up a broom on the mast," cut in Phil. "But it
was long ago."
"How is it that the tombs of William and Grotius can be in a _new_
church?" I reflected aloud.
"It is newer than the other, for it was founded in thirteen hundred and
something," said Cousin Robert; "I suppose you ought to see it, even if
dinner should be late. For, as Brederode says, 'Delft is the heart of
Holland, and the New Church is the core of that heart.' It is for us
what your Westminster Abbey is to you, Miss Rivers."
We went out from the old convent palace with its arched windows and
narrow doors into the gold and green light of the Delft afternoon. In
the street outside the courtyard stood the automobile, and the chauffeur
was polishing something on it (people in Holland seem always to be
polishing something, if they are obliged to stand still for a moment),
but Mr. Rudolph Brederode, alias William the Silent, had vanished, and I
was glad.
We got into the motor-car again, passing with every few yards some
beautiful old building. But one thing in Delft disappointed me; I saw no
storks, and I expected the air to be dark with storks.
"I don't think there are any now," said Robert, apologetically, "though
Brederode would know."
"Isn't it true that the stork's the patron saint of Delft?" I asked.
"Wasn't it here you had the fire which nearly ruined the city, hundreds
of years ago, and the parent storks wouldn't leave their babies, but
died covering them up with their wings? And didn't Holland take the
stork, after that, for a kind of--of motto for the whole country because
it was so brave and faithful?"
"Yes," Robert admitted, "Delft is not tired of storks, but storks are
tired of Delft. You can offer them nice nests on long poles, and all
kinds of inducements, to live in a certain place, but unless they
choose, you cannot make them do anything."
"Ah, _now_ I know why the Dutch have canonized storks!" I exclaimed.
And just then we arrived at the New Church, which looked inconceivably
old, and inside was like a vast prison. But the tomb of black and white
marble was fine, almost too fine, too much encrusted with ornament to
perpetuate the memory of William the Silent. Still, I felt a thrill as I
stood looking at the white, recumbent figure of the man who made
Holland, and altered the face of Europe, resting so quietly after the
storms of life, with his dog at his feet--the loyal little beast who
saved him at Malines, and starved to death in the end, rather than live
on in a dull world empty of its master.
I lingered for many minutes, remembering the eyes of the portrait, so
warm with life and power, and Phil had to come and lead me away to the
tomb of Hugo Grotius, the "miracle of Europe." Even Robert grew warm on
the subject of Grotius, and put him ahead of Pitt, as the youthful
prodigy of the world. What had he left unaccomplished when he was
eighteen? And what story had ever been written by Dumas, or any other,
to compare with his in melodramatic interest? I didn't know enough
details of the brilliant being's history to argue (although I have
always the most intense yearning to argue with Cousin Robert), but I
made a note to read them up, in case I should ever be called upon to
write a historical novel at short notice.
Robert discouraged Phil from buying the ware of Delft on its native
heath, and we spun along twice as fast in leaving the town as we had in
coming, either because a Dutchman's dinner-hour is sacred, or because
this particular Dutchman was anxious to exchange our society for that of
his fiancee. We flew over the smooth klinker road at such a rate that,
had it been England, a policeman would have sprung from every bush.
Nobody seemed to mind here, however; and the few horses we met had the
air of turning up their noses at us, despite the physical difficulty in
evoking that expression on an equine profile.