away, as far as eyes could follow, an earthern dyke, bordered on either
hand by a lily-fringed toy canal, just wide enough for a toy rowboat to
pass. Beyond the twin, toy canals--again on either hand--was set a row
of toy houses, each standing in a little square of radiant garden, which
was repeated upside down in the sky-blue water, not only of the twin
canals, but of the still more tiny, subsidiary canals which flowed round
the flowery squares, cutting each off from its fellow.
Tibe, delighted with Aalsmeer and a dog he saw in the distance, darted
along the straight, level stretch of dyke, which every now and then
heaved itself up into a camel-backed bridge, under which toy boats could
pass from the right-hand water-street to the left-hand water-street. We
followed, but on the first bridge Nell stopped impulsively.
"Do you know we've _all_ been in this place before? It's
_Willow-pattern-land_. _Don't_ you recognize it?"
"Of course," the Mariner assured her. "You and I used to play here
together when we were children. You remember that blue boat of ours? And
see, there's our house--the pink one, with the green-and-white-lozenge
shutters, and the thicket of hydrangeas reflected in the water. Isn't it
good to come back to our own?"
Thus he snatched her from me, just as my surprise was succeeding, and
made a place for himself with her, in my toy fairyland.
"It's true! One does feel like one of the little blue people that live
in a willow-pattern plate," said Phyllis, as Nell and Starr sauntered on
ahead. "It's perfectly Chinese here, but so cozy; I believe you had the
place made a few minutes ago, to please us, and as soon as we turn our
backs it will disappear. It _can't_ be real."
"Those men think it's real," said I. There were several, rowing along
the canals in brightly painted boats, with brass milk cans, and
knife-grinding apparatus, calmly unaware that they or their surroundings
were out of the common. Each house on its square island having its own
swing-bridge of planks, the men on the water had to push each bridge out
of the way as they reached it; but the trick was done with the nose of
the boat, and cost no trouble. Most of the toy bridges swung back into
place when the boats passed, but the one nearest us remained open, and
as we looked, walking on slowly, two tiny children returning from
school, clattered toward us in wooden sabots, along the narrow dyke.
Opposite the disarranged bridge they stopped, looking wistfully across
at a green-and-blue house, standing in a grove of pink-and-yellow roses,
shaded with ruddy copper beeches, and delicate white trees like young
girls trooping to their first communion.
Evidently this was the children's home, but they found themselves shut
off from it; and standing hand-in-hand, with their book-bags tossed over
their shoulders, they uttered a short, wailing cry. As if in answer to
an accustomed signal, a pink-cheeked girl who, of course, had been
cleaning something, came to the rescue, mop in hand. She touched the
bridge with her foot; the bridge swung into place; without a word the
dolls crossed, and were swallowed up in a narrow, sky-blue corridor.
We wandered on, turning our heads from one side to the other, I reveling
in the delight of the others. Though Aalsmeer is but a stone's throw
from Amsterdam, it seems as far out of the world as if, to get to it,
you had jumped off the earth into some obscurely twinkling star, where
people, things, and customs were completely different from those on our
planet.
If there had been only one of the queer island-houses to see, it would
have been worth a journey; but each one we came to, in its double street
of glass, seemed more quaint than that we left behind. Some were painted
green or blue, with white rosettes, like the sugar ornaments on
children's birthday cakes. Some were so curtained with roses, wistaria,
or purple clematis, that it was difficult to spy out the color
underneath. Some were half hidden behind tall hedges of double
hollyhocks, like crisp bunches of pink and golden crepe; others had
triumphal arches of crimson fuchsias; but best of all the island shows
were the dwarf box-trees, cut in every imaginable shape. There were
thrones, and chairs, and giant vases; harps and violins; and a menagerie
of animals which seemed to have come under a spell and been turned into
leafage in the act of jumping, flying, and hopping. There were lions,
swans, dragons, giraffes, parrots, eagles, cats, together in a happy
family of foliage; and when I told the Chaperon that the people of
Aalsmeer were garden-artists, as well as market-gardeners, she insisted
on stopping. Nothing would satisfy her but the Mariner must cross the
bridge, knock at the door of a little red house, and buy a box-tree baby
elephant, which she thought would be enchanting in a pot, as a kind of
figurehead on board "Waterspin."
Nor was I allowed to remain idle. When I had helped him bargain for the
leafy beast, I had to go down on my knees, roll up my sleeves, and claw
water-lilies out from the canal, which they fringed in luscious
clusters. This I did while men and maids in painted boats heaped with
rubies piled on emeralds (which were strawberries in beds of their own
leaves) laughed at me. Boat peddlers came and went, too, with stores of
shining tin, or blue, brown, and green pottery that glittered in the
afternoon sun. Some of them helped me, some jeered in Dutch at "these
foreigners with their childish ways."
In the end I was luckier than Starr, for he had to march under the
weight of his green elephant, half hidden behind it, as behind a screen,
while my lilies were so popular with the ladies that not even as a favor
would I have been allowed to carry one. All three, if left to
themselves, would have lingered for hours, choosing which house they
would live in, or watching families of ducks, or counting strewn flowers
floating down the blue water as stars float down the sky.
"I believe, Nephew, that I must ask you to buy me a house in Aalsmeer to
come and play dolls in," announced Aunt Fay. "Don't you suppose,
Jonkheer, that one could be got cheap?--not that _that_ need be a
consideration to dear Ronny!"
"I'll find out--later," I assured her, answering a despairing look of
Starr's from between the green tusks of his elephant.
"Oh, please, _now_," urged the gentle voice which every one but Tibe
obeys; "because, you know, I'm not strong, and when I set my heart on a
thing, and suffer disappointment, it makes me ill. If I were ill I
should have to go home, and those darling girls couldn't finish the
trip."
"You haven't had time to set your heart upon a house here," said Starr.
"You only thought of it a minute ago."
"We Scotch have so _much_ heart, dearest, that it goes out to
things--and people--in less than a minute. I'm a victim to mine. It
would be a pity----"
"Oh, do go to the head fairy at once, Alb, and demand a cheap house for
my aunt to play dolls in," groaned Starr. "If he hasn't got one, he must
build it."
"He could easily do that," said I. "Every now and then a new island is
formed in this water-world, and the nearest householder seizes it,
claiming it as his own, on much the same basis that Napoleon claimed
the Netherlands. Then he digs it into an extra garden or strawberry bed.
But he would sacrifice his vegetables if he saw a prospect of making
money. It might amuse Lady MacNairne to do a little amateur market
gardening, though they say slugs are unusually fat and juicy in
Aalsmeer."
"Oh! Maybe I'd better wait and see a few more places before I decide,
then," exclaimed the lady. "Not that I'm afraid of slugs myself, only
I'm sure they wouldn't agree with Tibe. And besides, it would be dull
for him in winter."
"Not at all," said I, having discovered that the one possible way of
detaching the lady from a pet scheme is by advising her to cling to it.
"Everybody skates then, instead of going about in boats, and no one has
really seen Aalsmeer who hasn't seen it on a winter evening. Then, in
front of each island, on a low square post, is set a lighted lantern.
Imagine the effect of a double line of such lights all the way down the
long, long canal, each calling up a ghost-light from under the blue
ice."
The tyrant shivered. "It sounds lovely," she said; "but I think I _will_
wait. Come, girls, we'd better be getting back to the boat."
"Sweet are the uses of an Albatross," I heard Starr murmur.
We turned our backs on the water fairies' domain, and went into the
world again. In the long commonplace street of shops through which we
had passed in coming, Aunt Fay stopped. She had torn a silk flounce on
her petticoat, and would thank me to act as interpreter in buying a box
of safety-pins. I made the demand, and could not see why the two girls
and their chaperon had to stifle laughter when an earnest, flaxen-haired
maiden began industriously to count the pins in the box.
"She says she has to do that, because they are sold by the piece," I
explained; but they laughed a great deal more.
It was a pity they could not see the meer which rings in their
fairyland--a meer dotted with high-standing, prim little islands,
which, though made by nature, not man, have much the same effect, on
a larger scale, as the clipped box-trees on show in the gardens. But
to have taken "Lorelei" that way would have made it too late for a visit
to Zaandam; and I thought Zaandam, despite its miles of windmills and
the boasted hut of Peter the Great, not worth a separate expedition.
So I turned back to Halfweg, and from there slid into a side canal which
bore us toward that immense waterway cut for great ships--the North Sea
Canal. There was a smell of salt in the air, and a heavy perfume from
slow-going peat-boats. Gulls wheeled over "Lorelei" so low that we could
have reached up and caught their dangling coral feet. A passing cloud
veiled the sun with gray tissue which streaked the water with purple
shadow, and freckled it with rain. Passengers on Amsterdam-bound ships
that loomed above us like leviathans, stared down at our little craft
and the bluff-browed barge we towed. Here we were in the full stream of
sea-going traffic and commerce; and afar off a mass of towers showed
where Amsterdam toiled and made merry.
But we were not yet bound for Amsterdam. Twisting northward as the
details of the city were sketched upon the sky, we turned into the canal
which leads to Zaandam of the self-satisfied, painted houses. There was
just time for a swift run down the river, and a call at one of that
famous battalion of windmills whose whirling sails fill the air with a
ceaseless whirr, like the flight of birds at sunset; then a walk to the
hovel where Peter the Great lived and learned to be a shipwright. But
when they had seen it, the ladies would not allow it to be called by so
mean a name.
"What a shame they found out who he was so soon!" said Nell. "And he had
to leave this dear little bandbox to go back to a mere every-day palace.
_I_ wouldn't have been driven away by a curious crowd. I should just
have marched through with my nose in the air."
"His nose wasn't of that kind," said I. "I suppose he's the earliest
martyr to notoriety on record. But perhaps he had learned all he wanted
to know; and I'm not sure he was sorry to go back to his palace, which,
judging by all accounts, wasn't a grand one in those days. You'll see
finer houses even in Amsterdam."
And an hour later she was seeing them.
XV
Amsterdam was in full glory that evening, in the strange radiance that
shines for her, as for Venice, when red wine of sunset and purple wine
of night mingle together in the gold cup of the west.
At such a time she is a second Venice, not because she is built upon
piles and stands upon many islands linked by intricate bridges, but
because of her glow and dazzle, her myriad lights breaking suddenly
through falling dusk, to splash the rose and violet of the clouds with
gilded flecks, and drop silver into glimmering canals, as if there were
some festive illumination; because of her huge, colorful buildings, and
her old, old houses bowing and bending backward and forward to whisper
into each other's windows across the darkness of narrow streets and
burning lines of water.
The fierce traffic of the day was over, but the dam roared and rumbled,
in vast confusion, with its enormous structures black against the
moldering ashes of sunset.
"A cathedral without a tower; a palace without a king; a bishop's house
without a bishop; a girl without a lover," is the saying that
Amsterdammers have about the dam; and I repeated it as we drove through,
while my friends searched the verification of the saw. All was plain
enough, except the "girl without a lover"; but when they learned that
she was a stone girl on a pedestal too constricted for two figures they
pronounced her part of the distich far-fetched.
Undaunted by all they had done that day, they would go out again after
dinner, when Amsterdam was blue and silver and shining steel in the
quiet streets, with a flare of yellow light in the lively ones, where
people crowded the roadways, listening to the crash of huge hand-organs,
or shopping until ten o'clock.
We supped at the biggest _cafe_ in Europe; and then for contrast, since
we were in a city of contrasts, I took them to the quaintest inn of
Amsterdam--a queer little pointed-roofed house hiding the painted
"Wilderman" over his low-roofed door, behind a big archway, in the midst
of all that is most modern, but with an interior of a rich gold-brown
gloom, lit by glints of brass and gleams of pewter which would have
delighted Rembrandt.
Next day it was to his house, in the strange, teeming Jewish quarter
that we went first of all; but Nell and Phyllis were heartsick to find
the rooms, once rich in treasures, piled untidily with "curiosities" of
no great beauty or value.
Then, by way of a change after the Old Town, and the harbor with its
queer houses, like drunken men trying to prop each other up, I chose the
Heerengracht, all the city has of the richest and most exclusive. But
the tall mansions, with their air of reserve and their selfishly hidden
gardens, struck the eye coldly; and not even my tales of tapestry, lace,
old silver, and, above all, Persian carpets, to be seen behind the
veiled windows, could arouse the ladies' curiosity. It was well enough
to have built Amsterdam in concentric crescents, with the Heerengracht
in the center, and to say arbitrarily that the further you went
outwards, the further you descended in the social scale. That
distinction might do for the townspeople; as for them, they would rather
live in a black and brown house in the Keizergracht, with a crane and
pulley in one of the gables, and white frames on the windows, than in
this dull street of wealth and fashion.
"Even half a house, with a whole door of my own, like most middle-class
Dutch houses, would be nicer," said Nell. "Yes, I could be happy in 'a
_boven huis_,' with my little stairway and hall quite to myself."
But when I had shown her my favorite bit of Amsterdam, she became
unfaithful to the Keizergracht, and its picturesque fellows.
To reach this bit, we turned from the roar of a noisy street, and were
at once in the calm of a monastic cloister.
It was like opening a door in the twentieth century, and falling down a
step into the seventeenth, to find Time lying enchanted in a spell of
magic sleep.
What we saw was a spacious quadrangle with an old-fashioned, flowery
garden in the midst, and ranged round it pretty little houses, each one
a gem of individuality. There was a church, too, a charming,
forgotten-looking church; and in the quadrangle nothing stirred but
gleams of light on polished windows and birds which hopped about on the
pavement as if it had been made for them.
"I believe they're the inhabitants of the place, who've hurriedly
changed into birds just while we are here, but will change back into
little, trim old ladies and old gentlemen," whispered Nell; for it
seemed sacrilege to break the silence.
With that, a house door opened, and just such an old lady as she
described came out.
"Oh, she didn't know we were here. She won't have time to get into her
birdhood now," chuckled Nell, "so she's making the best of it. But see,
she's turned to warn her husband."
"She hasn't any husband," said I.
"How can you tell?" asked the girl.
"If she had, she couldn't live here," I explained, "because this is the
Begynenhof, half almshouse, half nunnery, which has been kept up since
our great year, 1574. But oddly enough the chapel of the sisterhood who
established it, has been turned into an English church. Queer, in the
little Catholic village hidden away from the great city; but so it is.
And isn't it a serene spot?"
"Almost nicer than Aalsmeer," murmured the Chaperon. "I wonder if----"
But Starr was at the door of the exit before she could finish wondering.
The palace, more suitable for a magnificent town hall than a regal
dwelling, was the next violent contrast in my bag of colors; but, royal
though it was, there was nothing in it they cared for much except the
throne-room, which they had to admit was not to be surpassed. There were
a few mantel-pieces too, which the Chaperon thought she would accept
from the Queen as presents; but as for the carpets, they were no less
than tragic, and it would be better to go about opening bridges, or
laying dull cornerstones, then stay at home and look at them.
My way of showing Amsterdam was to work slowly up to a grand crescendo
effect; and the crescendo was the Ryks Museum. We had two days of
Amsterdam (the second was mostly spent at the diamond cutters') before I
suggested the museum.
Aunt Fay said, when I did, that she hated such places. They gave her a
headache, a heartache, and a bad cold. But she did not hate the Ryks
Museum, and delighted the Mariner by picking out the best Rembrandts.
After our first day at the museum (which we gave to the pictures) she
could have had anything she asked from her dearest Ronny.
Then there were the Dutch rooms, and the rooms where the wax people
live. I did not speak of the wax people until the ladies were tired,
therefore they were cold to the idea of wax figures, even when they
heard that the Queen had been five or six times to see them.
"Perhaps she never saw Madame Tussaud's," remarked Miss Rivers, in a
superior, British way; but the magic word was spoken when I said that
the wax people wore every variety of costume to be found in Holland, and
I was ordered to conduct the party to them at once.
Instantly they felt the alarming fascination of the wax faces, whose
hard eyes say, "At night we live, and walk about as you are doing now":
and at the closing hour Aunt Fay and the two girls had to be forcibly
torn away.
"Is it possible that some day we shall see live people dressed as those
wax people are?" she exclaimed.
"You will see them by the hundred," I answered.
She paused a moment. "Miss Van Buren wants to know if one can buy any
special costume to which one takes a fancy."
"Yes, if one doesn't mind what one pays," I answered; but I was nettled
that the girl could not have asked so simple a question herself. This is
not the first time she has employed a go-between, to find out something
which I alone know, and doubtless there will be more occasions, if I let
things go on as they are going now. But I don't mean to let them go on.
What I shall do, I haven't made up my mind; yet some step must be taken,
if I am to reap anything from this trip except a harvest of snubbings.
It was only a little thing that she should question me through her
chaperon, regarding the costumes; but it was one more straw in a rapidly
growing bundle. And on the way back to the hotel from the museum she
pretended not to hear when I spoke. She discussed with Starr, and not
with me, the splendors and the crudities of Amsterdam, and asked if he
didn't detect here and there a likeness to some old bit of New
York--"New Amsterdam." Of course he agreed; and they talked of the
"Dutchness" of Poughkeepsie and Albany, and Hudson, and many other
places which I never heard of. No wonder that there was triumph in the
glance he threw me. Alb (he was thinking, no doubt) was not getting much
fun for his money. And it was true. Nevertheless, Alb was not
discouraged. He was making up his mind that the time for quiet patience
was over, as the skipper of "Lorelei" had engaged for something better.
XVI
"By Jove, here's a lark!" exclaimed Starr, at the breakfast table,
looking up from the Paris _Herald_.
It was at the Amstel Hotel, on our fourth morning, and he and I were
taking coffee together, as an Ancient Mariner and his Albatross should.
The ladies had not yet appeared, for they were breakfasting in their
rooms.
"What's up?" I asked.
"It's under the latest news of your Queen's doings," said he, and began
to read aloud: "'Jonkheer Brederode, who is equally popular in English
and Dutch society and sporting circles, has taken for the season a large
motor-boat, in which he is touring the waterways of Holland, with a
party of invited friends, among whom is Lady MacNairne. It was her
portrait, as everybody knows, painted by the clever American artist, Mr.
R. L. Starr, which was so much admired at the Paris Salon this spring.'
Funny, how they strung that story together, isn't it? But it's a
bore--er--in the circumstances, their having got hold of my aunt's
name."
"People who weave tangled webs mustn't be surprised if they get caught
in them sometimes," said I.
"I wonder how Miss Van Buren will like this? She's sure to see it,"
Starr went on, reflectively.
How she liked it mattered more to me than to anybody else, because if
she disliked it, I was the person upon whom her vexation would be
visited. But there was a still more important point which apparently
hadn't come under the Mariner's consideration. How would Lady
MacNairne's husband like it?
Evidently Starr doesn't know that there has been an upset of some sort
between Sir Alec and the charming Fleda; and as Fleda is his aunt, but
has not confided in her nephew (while she has in me) no matter what
trouble the newspaper paragraph may cause for the entire party, it would
be a breach of confidence for me to enlighten him.
"By Jove," I said to myself, "what will MacNairne do if he sees in the
paper that his wife, who has run away from home without telling him
where she's staying, is the principal guest on board a boat of mine? I
ought to warn Starr that there may be a crash, but I can't."
The only thing I could do was to pump him, in the hope that he knew more
of his aunt's affairs than I supposed.
"My stock's pretty far down in the market with Miss Van Buren already,"
said I. "It can't go lower. I wonder how these asses think of such
nonsense? But I suppose it came of registering 'Lorelei' in my name,
which I had to do, to use the flag of the Sailing and Rowing Club of
Rotterdam. Somebody heard of the boat's being registered by Rudolph
Brederode, and _voila_ the consequences. But where is Lady MacNairne?"
"Heavens, don't yell at the top of your voice," groaned Starr, in a
dreadful whisper. "There may be some one at the next table who can speak
English. I've had an awful lesson, as nobody knows better than you, to
behave in a restaurant as if I were at church. The real Lady McN., who
is _not_ up-stairs at the present moment breakfasting with Tibe, may be
in Kamschatka for all I know, though I think it probable she's not. All
I _do_ know is that she's never answered two frantic telegrams of mine.
She's not at home. She may be anywhere else--except in Holland, where
she's wanted."
"It would be awkward if she should turn up now," I remarked.
"_Was_ wanted, I ought to have said. But she's such a good pal, I should
fix things up with her somehow."
"I doubt if you would with her husband," I thought, though aloud I said
nothing. I was sure now that he was in ignorance of the situation,
blissful ignorance, since he could not guess what developments it might
lead to for him, and for the Chaperon whom he had provided at such cost.
"If anything happens, I shall have to help him through it somehow," I
decided, "as it's more than half my fault, registering 'Lorelei' in my
name. Besides, I can't let the party be broken up, until I've had a fair
chance to raise Brederode stock in the market."