Rivers.
"Not unless they deserve it," came back the answer. And I knew what
Dutchman in particular Miss Van Buren had in mind.
It was about two hours from Gouda when a blaze of color leaped from the
distant level to our eyes, and everybody cried out in admiration for
little Boskoop, which in summer is always _en fete_ among garlands and
bowers of bloom. The rhododendrons--that last longer with us than in
England, like all other flowers--were beautiful with a middle-aged
clinging to the glory of their youth; and the tall, straight flame of
azaleas shot up from every grass-plot against a background of
roses--roses white, and red, and amber; roses pale pink, and the crimson
that is purple in shadow.
Miss Rivers thought she would like to live there, and cultivate flowers;
but I told her that she had better not negotiate for the purchase of a
house, until she had seen the miles of blossom at Haarlem.
We had not kept up our average of speed to nine miles an hour; for,
though we made ten when the way was clear, and no yards of regulation
red-tape to get tangled in our steering-gear, the custom of these
waterways is to slow down near villages and in farming country. Besides,
we met barges loaded to the water's edge, and had we been going fast our
wash would have swamped them. As it was, we flung a wave over the low
dykes, and sent boats moored at the foot of garden steps knocking
against their landing-stages, in fear at our approach. But after Alphen
we turned into a green stream, so evidently not a canal that Aunt Fay
was moved to ask questions.
Her face fell when she heard it was the Rhine.
"What, _this_ the Rhine!" she echoed. "It's no wider than--than the
Thames at Marlow. I was there last summer----"
"You stayed with Lady Marchant," broke in Starr, hastily. It was not the
first time he had cut her short, and the little masquerader bristled
under the treatment.
"Oh yes; that was when you were painting my portrait, wasn't it?"
Starr flushed, and I guessed why, remembering his Salon success, and
recalling that it was his portrait of Lady MacNairne which had been
exhibited this year. Of course, I had been stupid not to put the two
facts together, and realize that his success and her portrait, must have
been one and the same.
The girls had probably heard of it, and must be asking themselves at
this moment how a portrait of this little spectacled thing could have
been possible. Cruel Aunt Fay! Somehow, she must have known that the
face of her _alter ego_ had been painted and exhibited by Starr, and she
was enjoying his misery, as bad boys enjoy the wrigglings of butterflies
on pins.
In pity I stepped in to the rescue, and began again, before a question
about the portrait could fall from the lips of Miss Rivers, on which I
saw it trembling.
"It's the Rhine for no particular reason," I said. "It's quite
arbitrary. Farther on it's the Oude Rhine, farther still the Krommer, or
Crooked Rhine. But if you think little of it here, you'll despise it at
Katwyk, where its end is so ignominious that it has to be pumped into
the sea."
"I don't think that ignominious," said the Chaperon. "I suppose it
doesn't choose to go into the sea. It would rather rest after its labors
and lie down in a pleasant pool, to dream about where it rose on the
Splugen, or about the way it poured out of Lake Constance, and went
roaring over the rocks at Schaffhausen to wind on among hilly vineyards
and ruined castles, past the Drachenfels and Cologne. If they choose to
pump it against its will, that's _their_ affair; at least that's how _I_
should feel if I were the Rhine."
"How Scotch of you, Aunt Fay!" exclaimed Starr, fervently; but he looked
worried; and I wondered if he had told the girls that Lady MacNairne had
never been much abroad. Evidently her double has traveled, and
remembered what she saw. I am not curious concerning other people's
affairs, but I confess I should like to know something of Aunt Fay's
past, for she seems so ignorant of some things, so well-informed upon
others.
Suddenly Miss Van Buren looked up from a red book which had engaged her
attention ever since, at Alphen, we turned out of the narrow
water-street of the canal into the broader thoroughfare of the river.
"This book explains everything except what you want to know!" she
complained. "Why can't it tell what Saint Joris is in England? He must
be some saint there, and I saw his name over that nice little inn with
the garden at Alphen."
"St. George," I said; though she had not asked me.
"I might have known," she sighed, "and no doubt the Dutch have put the
dragon into their language too, stuck full of those "i's" and "j's",
that make me feel whenever I see them in print as if my hair were done
up too tight, or my teeth were sizes too large for my mouth. 'Rijn
wijn,' for instance. Who would think that meant something sleek and
pleasant, like Rhine wine?"
"Why not?" I asked. "We pronounce it almost the same."
"That's because you haven't got the courage of your convictions. You
fling the 'i's' and 'j's' about, and then pretend they're not there."
"Why, don't you see that they're only 'y's'?" I protested, and really
it does appear strange that to foreign eyes they can look, when side by
side, like separate letters.
But the Chaperon stopped us. She said that we could find enough to do
minding our p's and q's in life, without quarreling over "i's" and
"j's"; so the argument ended, and the girls turned their attention to
making tea.
They did it charmingly, juggling with the contents of a tea-basket which
Starr brought on deck and placed on a little folding-table. Whether Miss
Van Buren forgot me or not, in dealing out cups when tea was made, at
all events she pretended to, and reminded by her stepsister, gave me tea
without sugar. Then, begged for one lump, she absentmindedly dropped in
three, while talking with Starr. Robert would certainly have been
tempted to shake her if he had been present at that tea-party.
[Illustration: _She absentmindedly dropped in three, while talking to
Starr_]
XII
My mother sent me to Oxford, because she thought that she could take no
intelligent interest in any young man if he had not had his four years
at Oxford or Cambridge. But afterwards, through loyalty to my
fatherland, I gave myself two at the University of Leiden; and as the
rooms I lived in there hold memories of Oliver Goldsmith, I've kept them
on ever since. I was twenty-four when I said good-by to Leiden, and for
the five after-years the rooms have been lent to a cousin, studying for
his degree as a learned doctor of law. Now, I knew it was close upon the
time for him to take his degree, and I hoped that I might be able to
show my friends (and one Enemy) a few things in my old University town
which ordinary tourists might not see.
The tea-things had been washed up, and a discussion of plans (from which
Miss Van Buren managed to exclude me) had ended in no definite
conclusion, when I brought "Lorelei" into one of the innumerable green
canals in Leiden.
"None of you seem to know what you want to do first, last, or in the
middle," I ventured to remark; "so, to save time, perhaps you'll let me
offer a few suggestions. I've told Hendrik to fetch a cab, and he's
gone. When your carriage comes, engage rooms at the Levedag Hotel, drive
through the town, have a glance at the churches, and go to the Stadhuis.
You'll like the spire and the facade. They're both of the sixteenth
century, when we were prosperous and artistic; and over the north-side
entrance there's a chronogram inscription concerning the siege. I can't
go, because I want to arrange your evening, which I hope will be a
success. But I'll meet you in the Archive Room at the Stadhuis, where
you can admire the paneling till I come. I won't keep you waiting long;
and then I'll take you over the University Buildings. I was there, you
know, as a student."
By the time this plan was arranged to the satisfaction of everybody
except that of the person I wished to please, Hendrik had arrived with a
cab, and five minutes later I was free to carry out my scheme for the
evening.
From Gouda I'd sent a wire to my cousin Jan van Hol, asking him to be at
home and expecting me between four and five, so I felt sure of him. I
took all the short cuts (which I know as well as I know my hat), and was
soon climbing the ladder-like stairs of the old house, the top floor of
which was home to me for two years.
From those windows Goldsmith looked down on the sleepy canal, when he
visited a crony who was tenant of the rooms; and the door which
Goldsmith's hand often touched was thrown open by the present tenant,
who must have been listening for my step.
To my surprise, he was in wild _deshabille_, and far out of his usual
phlegmatic self with excitement.
"It's my Promotie Day," he explained. "I'm just back and have got out of
my swallow-tail after the final exam. I'm due at the Club for the first
part of my dinner in a few minutes. Had you forgotten, or didn't you get
your card?"
I told him that no doubt it was at Liliendaal, or wandering in search of
me; and when I had slapped him on the back, and congratulated him as
"Learned Doctor," I began to wonder what I should do, as it was clear he
would have no time to help me carry out my plans. His Promotie dinner,
the grandest affair of student life, and the rounding off of it, would
be in three parts, with various ceremonies in between, and would last
from now until two or three in the morning. However, I told him what I
had wanted; to give a surprise dinner at his diggings for the party from
"Lorelei," with him to arrange details while I played guide, and to take
the part of host for us at eight o'clock. Could he suggest any one who
would look after the thing in his place? Van Rhonda or Douw, for
instance? But van Rhonda and Douw, it seemed, were the Paranymphs, or
supporters of the newly-made Doctor, and their time would be fully taken
up in seeing him through. All my old friends who were left would be at
the Promotie dinner, but Jan was sure that my business might be safely
entrusted to the landlady. She would get flowers, go to the hotel to
order whatever I wished, and even superintend the waiters.
With this I had to be satisfied, for in the midst of the discussion
appeared the two Paranymphs, wanting to know what kept Jan, and the hero
of the day was ruthlessly carried off between them. I had to do the best
I could; my old landlady had not forgotten me, and I was assured that I
might depend upon her. When I had scribbled a menu, consisting of some
rather odd dishes, sketched an idea for the table decoration, and given
a few other hasty instructions, I dashed off to keep my appointment at
the Stadhuis. On the way I consoled myself with the reflection that it's
an ill wind which blows nobody good. I had been bereaved of Jan as a
prop, but I might make use of him and his friends by-and-by as one of
the sights of Leiden, and I would take advantage of my knowledge of the
usual program on such festive nights as this for the benefit of my
friends.
I arrived at the Stadhuis as the others took their first look at the oak
in the Archive Room. There was just one other room in this most
excellent and historic building that I wanted Miss Van Buren to see. It
was a Tapestry Room, among other Tapestry Rooms, of no importance; but I
remembered her fantastic desire to "live in the stained-glass country,"
and I recalled a certain tapestry garden in which I felt sure she would
long to wander. There was a meal of some wonderful sort going on in it,
and I had been conscious in other days of a desire to be a tapestry man
and sit with the merry tapestry lady smiling there. All tapestry people
look incredibly happy, for in tapestry etiquette it's bad form to be
tragic. Even their battles are comedy battles, as you can see by the
faces of the war-horses that they have a strong sense of humor; but
these particular tapestry friends of mine were the gayest I ever met,
and I wanted Miss Van Buren to make their acquaintance.
To reach the room, through another also representing a tapestry world,
we had to perform a dreadful surgical operation on the abdomen of a
Roman emperor by opening a door in the middle of it, and, as the Mariner
said, the size of the next room gave the same sort of shock that Jonah
must have had when he arrived in the whale.
If I had shown her that tapestry garden, Miss Van Buren would have
feigned indifference; but I left her to Starr, and from a distance had
the chastened pleasure of hearing her say to him the things I should
have liked her to say to me.
Afterwards I swept the party away to the University, preparing their
minds to expect no architectural splendors.
"Leiden is our most famous university," I said. "But we have no streets
of beautiful old colleges, no lovely gardens. You see, Oxford and
Cambridge are universities round which towns have gathered, whereas
Leiden was a city long before William the Silent gave its people choice,
as a reward for their heroic defense, of freedom from taxes or a
university. When they said they'd have the university, the thing was to
get it. Money wasn't plentiful, and here was an old monastery, empty and
ready for use--a building whose simplicity would have appealed to
William in his later days."
It was not until they had this apology well in their heads that I
ushered them into the bare, red-brick courtyard so full of memories for
me, and here I buckled on my armor of defense.
"Our universities have produced great men, though they've given them no
Gothic buildings or fairy gardens. Where will you find more illustrious
names than Scaliger, Grotius, and Oliver Goldsmith?--lots of others,
too. Why, Niebuhr said of our old hall that no place is so memorable in
the history of science."
Trying to appear impressed, the three ladies, followed by Starr, trailed
into the building, deserted at this hour; and it was the artist's quick
eye that first caught the eccentric merit of the famous caricatures
lining the staircase.
Then came the chamber of torture, the "Sweating Room," that bare,
whitewashed cell remembered by all Leideners with anguish. There I (and
thousands before and thousands after) had sat to wait my dreaded turn
with the professors behind the green-baize table in the room next door.
There I--among those other nerve-shattered ones--had scribbled my name
and scrawled a sketch or two. "Here sweated Rudolph Brederode," read out
Miss Rivers, with a sweet look, as if she pitied me now for what I
suffered then. But Miss Van Buren showed sublime indifference. She
wished, she said, to pick out names that were really interesting.
Even she, however, was roused to compassion for the tortured ones, when
in the adjoining room she heard that the examinations were conducted
publicly, and that there was no reason why any stranger should not walk
in from the street to hear the victims put to the question.
"It's good for us," I said. "Helps us to pluck and self-control." But
nobody agreed with me, and it was Miss Van Buren's opinion that none
save Dutchmen would stand it.
The Senate Room, which Niebuhr wrote of, found favor in her eyes; but
after that there was nothing more to do in the University, and it was
only six o'clock. There were two hours before the surprise dinner; so,
without giving my secret away, I said that, if we put off dining until
eight, we could see the Laeckenhalle, and go up to the Burg at sunset.
The Laeckenhalle and the Burg were mere names to them, as few scraps are
thrown to either place by the guide-books; but so delighted were they
with the carvings on the house of the Cloth Spinner's Guild and the
marbles in the courtyard that I could hardly get them inside. Once
within, Starr made Miss Van Buren laugh at the things she ought to have
respected and linger before the things I hadn't intended to point out.
But I was not shocked at her flippant delight in a quaint representation
of tortures in hell, nor was I stirred by her scorn of the stiff
siege-pictures, with van der Werf offering his arm as food for the
starving people, rather than surrender to the Spaniards. In spite of her
distaste for the painting, however, she would not hear me decry van der
Werf in favor of an obscure engineer, lately discovered as the true hero
of the siege. Van der Werf should not be snatched from her by a man she
chose to detest, so she argued and abused my treachery during the whole
time spent among the relics of the siege. She glared at the saucepan
retrieved from the Spanish camp as if she would have thrown it at my
head. She thought me capable of denying authenticity to the blocks of
taret-gnawed wood torn from the dykes when a worm made Holland tremble
as Philip of Spain could never do; nor would she forgive me van der
Werf, though I did my best with the tale of that time of fear when men,
women, and children worked their fingers to the bone in restoring what
the worm had destroyed, and keeping the sea from their doors.
I never yielded her a point, all the way up to the Burg, for at least I
was cheating Starr of her. But in the fortress, on the ancient mound
heaped up by Hengist, I and my opinions were forgotten. She wanted to be
let alone, and pretend she was a woman of Leiden, looking out across the
red roofs of the city, through the pitiless red of the sunset, for the
fleet of rescuing barges.
Nevertheless, she did deign to ask how, if the way had been opened for
the sea to flood the land, the people coaxed it to go back again. And
she looked at me as she had looked at Starr, while I told how the thing
had been done; how the water that floated William's fleet for the relief
of the town was but two feet in depth; how only a gale from the south at
the right time sent the waters flowing from the broken dykes above
Schiedam north as far as Leiden; and how no sooner was the city saved
than the wind changed, calling back the waters.
From the walls of the fortress we saw the sun go down; and then, with
Starr in the ascendant again, we strolled through quiet streets,
crossing bridges over canals spread with soft green carpets of moss. But
we were not going to the hotel; and without a word about dinner, I asked
if they would care to see a student's "diggings." I had only to add as a
bribe that Oliver Goldsmith had visited there and carved his initials in
a heart on the wainscotting, to make them eager to climb the steep
stairs which led to my Surprise.
It began by my opening the door at the top with a key--instead of
knocking. This set them to wondering; but I laughed, evading questions,
and lured them into an oak-walled room, dim with twilight.
According to instructions, no lamp or candle had been lighted, but a
glance showed me a large screen wrapped round something in a corner, and
I knew that I hadn't trusted good old Mevrow Hoogeboom in vain.
Now I struck a match from my own match-box, and as the flame flared up,
success number one was scored. It was the old-fashioned Dutch
lamp-lighter of brass, to which I touched the match, that called out the
first note of admiration from the strangers; and as I woke up candle
after candle, in its quaint brass stick, the first notes rose to a
chorus. What a lovely room! What walls, what dear old blue-and-white
china beasts, what a wonderful fireplace, with handles to hold on by as
you stood and warmed yourself! What chairs, what chests of drawers, what
pewter tankards! If this were a typical room of a Leiden undergraduate,
the Leiden undergraduates were lucky men.
I had to explain that it was hardly fair to call it typical; that only a
man with money and a love for picking up old things would have quarters
like these; still, the lodgings were typical of Leiden.
When the ladies had exhausted their adjectives, they grew curious
concerning their host. I told them that the man was absent, because this
happened to be the night of his Promotie dinner, but that I was free to
do the honors.
"Well, I'm sick with envy of the fellow," said Starr, "and I for one
daren't trust myself any longer, especially on an empty stomach, among
his pewters and blue beasts and brasses. We'd better go away and have
dinner."
"You needn't go away," said I, jerking an old-fashioned bell-rope, and
drawing the screen aside. Behind it, was what I had hoped would be
there--a table laid for five, with plenty of nice glass and silver, and
banked with pink and white roses. As everybody exclaimed at the sight,
an inner door opened and two waiters from the Levedag, who had been
biding their time for my signal, appeared in answer to the bell.
"It's black magic," said Aunt Fay. "I believe these men are genii, and
you've got the lamp in your pocket. How I _wish_ I hadn't left Tibe at
the hotel. He would have loved this, poor darling."
[Illustration: _"It's black magic," said Aunt Fay_]
"Dinner is served, sir," announced one of the genii; and laughing, I
offered the Chaperon my arm.
"But it _can't_ be for us," objected Miss Rivers.
"It's for no one else," said I.
"How can we eat the man's things, when he's never seen us, and we've
never seen him?" Miss Van Buren appealed to Starr. But it was I who
answered.
"You see him now," I confessed. "These are my rooms. I lend them to my
cousin, but I've kept the right to use them. As for the dinner, it's my
dinner, and it will be a humiliation to me if you refuse to eat it."
These words were meant for her, and I looked straight at her as I spoke,
so there could be no mistake. Red sprang to her cheeks. She bit her lip,
and what she would have answered or done if left to herself I shall
never know, for Miss Rivers slipped one arm coaxingly within the arm of
her stepsister, and said, with a laugh, to make it seem that all three
were jesting----
"Why, of course she won't refuse. None of us would forgive her for
spoiling our pleasure. Come along, Nell."
So Nell did "come along," like the sweet and sensible girl she really
is, when she has not been driven to defiance by blundering young men;
and we sat down to eat the best dinner that Leiden could provide at
short notice. Nothing that was truly Dutch had been forgotten, but the
most brilliant success was not the _plat_ on which the _chef_ would have
staked his reputation. It was nothing more nor less than the dish with
which all Leiden invariably occupies itself on the 3rd of October,
anniversary of blessed memory. On that day it was, three hundred and
thirty odd years ago, that a little boy ran joyously home from a flying
visit to the deserted Spanish camp, with a pot of carrots and potatoes
mixed together in a hotch-potch; therefore, with hotch-potch does Leiden
to this hour celebrate the Great Relief, eating with thanksgiving.
And my guests ate with compliments, enjoying the idea if not the food,
as if they had been Leideners. Last of all, we had grilled herrings with
mustard, on toasted bread, a quaint conceit which I had to explain by
telling how, on the 3rd of October, bread and herrings are still
distributed to the poor, because it was with herrings and bread that the
Dutch boats, coming to the relief of Leiden, were loaded.
I managed to keep the party long at the table, and when the Chaperon
proposed going, I looked at my watch, counseling patience for half an
hour.
"If you'll wait," I said, "I'll show you something rather special on the
way home--something that can't be seen by every one."