(who said he must stay to superintend the repairs) and his natural wish
to see his cousin through any undertaking, no matter how imprudent. He
went on trying to dissuade Nell from going to Urk, but the more he
talked the more determined she grew. She was surprised at our
indifference to a wonderful pinhead of earth, which had contrived to
stick up out of the water and become an island after the great
inundation that formed the Zuider Zee. Judging from guide-books, the
population was quite unspoiled, as Urk was too remote to be a show
place, although the costumes were said to be beautiful. Such a spot was
romance itself, and it would be almost a crime not to visit it. The
steamer would leave Enkhuisen after luncheon, returning next day, so we
must stop on the island for about eighteen hours; but as the guides
mentioned an inn, it would be as simple as interesting to spend a night
at the idyllic little place.
Jonkheer Brederode made no more objections after the first, and finally
it was settled that all of us should go, except our skipper and Mr. van
Buren.
We packed small bags, and took cameras. And we had to scramble through
luncheon to catch the steamer, which was rather a horrid one, apparently
being intended more for the convenience of enormous bales, sacks, and
fruit-baskets than that of its passengers, who were stuffed in anyhow
among the cargo. Lady MacNairne was furious, because it was too cold for
Tibe on deck, and he wasn't allowed below in the tiny, poky cabin. She
argued with the captain, or somebody in authority and velvet slippers;
but he being particularly Dutch, and very old, even her fascination had
no power. (It is strange, but when Lady MacNairne gets excited she talks
more like an American than a Scotswoman; however, I believe she has been
to the States.) At last we all three formed a kind of hollow square
round Tibe with our skirts over his back, and when he wasn't asleep he
amused himself by pretending that our shoes were bones.
Even Mr. Starr could not keep us gay and laughing for the whole two
hours of the trip, for we were squeezed in between bags of potatoes (he
sat on one), and our feet kept going to sleep. But Nell said, think of
Urk, and how seeing Urk would make up for everything.
Eventually we did see it, and it really did look pretty from a distance,
with its little close-clustered red roofs like a buttonhole bouquet
floating on the sea. As the steamer brought us nearer the island
something of the glamor faded; but there were about a dozen girls
assembled to watch the arrival of the boat, wearing rather nice, winged
white caps and low-necked black dresses.
Quickly we made our cameras ready, expecting them to smile shyly and
seem pleased, as at Volendam; but with one accord they sneered and
turned their backs, as if on a word of command. We "snapped" nothing but
a row of sunburnt necks under the caps. The girls laughed scornfully,
and when we landed they repaid our first interest in them by staring at
us with impudent contempt. There was no one to carry our bags, so we had
to do it ourselves, Mr. Starr taking all he could manage; and as we
trailed off to find the hotel, about forty or fifty ugly and
disagreeable-looking people followed after us, jeering and evidently
making the most personal remarks.
Nobody could, or would, tell us where to find the inn; but it was close
by really, as we presently found out for ourselves, after we had gone
the wrong way once or twice. Perhaps it wasn't strange, though, that we
missed it, for it was a shabby little house with no resemblance to a
hotel; and when we went in, the landlord, who was cleaning lamps and
curtain-rods in a scene of great disorder in the principal room, showed
signs of bewildered surprise at sight of us. But he was a great deal
more surprised when he heard that we wished to stay the night. He had
not many rooms, he said, and people seldom asked for them; indeed, no
tourist had ever done so before within his experience. Still, he would
do his best for us, and--yes, we could see the rooms.
He dropped his cleaning-rags and curtain-rods on the floor, and, opening
a door, started to go up a ladder which led to a square hole in the
floor above. We followed, all but Lady MacNairne, who would not go
because Tibe could not, and at the top of the hole were two little boxes
of rooms with beds in the wall--stuffy, unmade beds, which perhaps the
landlord and some members of the family had slept in.
"This is going to be an adventure," said Nell; but her voice did not
sound very cheerful, and I felt I could have cried when I heard that she
and I would have to bunk together in the wall, in a two-foot wide bed
smelling like wet moss.
We were dying for tea, or even coffee, but it seemed useless to ask for
it, as apparently there were no servants, and the landlord went back to
his cleaning the instant we had scrambled down the ladder.
"Perhaps," said I, "we can find a _cafe_, if we go out and explore."
So we went, followed by beggars for the first time in Holland, and it
was a hideous island, with no sign of a _cafe_ or anything else nice, or
even clean. All was as unlike as possible to the ideas we had formed of
the dear little Hollow Land. There were dead cats, and bad eggs, and old
bones lying about the oozy gutters, and people shouted disagreeable
things at us from their doorways.
Mr. Starr tried to be merry, but it was as difficult, even for him, as
making jokes in the tumbril on the way to have your head cut off, and
Lady MacNairne said at last that she would much rather have hers cut off
than stay seventeen more hours in such a ghastly hole.
"I simply can't and won't, and you shan't, either!" she exclaimed.
"We've been here an hour, and it seems a month. Somehow we must get
away."
Poor Nell was sadly crushed. She admitted that she had made a horrible
mistake, which she regretted more for our sakes than her own, though she
herself was so bored that she felt a decrepit wreck, a hundred years
old.
"But the steamer doesn't come back till eight or nine to-morrow morning.
I'm afraid we'll have to grin and bear it till then," said Mr. Starr.
"I can't grin, and I won't bear it," replied Lady MacNairne. "Dearest
Ronny, you are a man, and we look to you to get us away from here."
Poor Mr. Starr stared wildly out to sea, as if he would call a bark of
some sort from the vasty deep; but there was nothing to be seen except
an endless expanse of gray water. Nell had torn her dress on a
barbed-wire fence which shut us away from the only spot of green on the
hideous island; Tibe had unfortunately eaten part of what Mr. Starr said
was an Early Christian egg; I had wrenched my ankle badly on a bit of
banana peel; Lady MacNairne's smart coat was spoilt by some mud which a
small Urkian boy had thrown at her, and Mr. Starr must have felt that,
if he didn't instantly perform a miracle, he would be blamed by us all
for everything.
"We might get a sailing-boat," he said, when he had thought passionately
for a few minutes.
We snapped at the idea, and a moment later we were on our way to the
harbor to find out.
Now was the time that I became a person of importance. Owing to my
studies, in which Mr. van Buren has encouraged me so kindly, I know
enough Dutch to ask for most things I want, and to understand whether
people mean to let me have them or not, which seems odd, considering
that I deliberately made up my mind not to learn a word when Nell almost
dragged me to Holland. Under Mr. Starr's guidance, and at his dictation,
I interviewed every sailor we met lounging about the harbor.
It was very discouraging at first. The men were all sure that no
sailing-boat could get to Enkhuisen, as the wind was exactly in the
wrong quarter; but just as our hearts were on their way down to the
boots Tibe had gnawed so much, a brown young man, with crisp black curls
and ear-rings, said we could go to Kampen if we liked. It would take
four or five hours, and we should have to sleep there, taking the
steamer when it started back in the morning. Kampen was beautiful, he
told us, with old buildings and water-gates; but even if it hadn't been,
we were convinced that it must be better than Urk; so we joyously
engaged a large fishing-boat owned by the brown man and his still
browner father.
We made poor Mr. Starr go back alone to the inn and break it to the
landlord that we were not going to stay, after all; but he paid for the
rooms, so the old man was delighted that he could go on with his
cleaning in peace.
Now we began to be quite happy and excited. Mr. Starr brought us bread
and cheese from the inn to eat on board, and presently we were all
packed away in the fishing-boat, which smelt interestingly of ropes and
tar.
Nell and I sat on the floor, where we could feel as well as hear the
knocking of the little waves against the planks which alone separated us
from the water.
There was not much breeze to begin with, for the winds seemed to be
resting after their orgy of yesterday, and just as the old bronze statue
and the young bronze statue were ready to start, the little there was
died as if of exhaustion.
There we sat and waited, our muscles involuntarily straining, as if to
help the boat along; but the sail flapped idly: we might as well have
tried to sail on the waxed floor of a ballroom with the windows shut.
"Can't they do _something_?" asked Lady MacNairne, in growing despair.
I passed the question on; but the men shook their heads. Without some
faint breeze to help them along they could not move.
When half an hour had dragged itself away, and still the air was dead,
or fast asleep (Mr. Starr said that Urk had stifled it), we began to
realize the fate to which we were doomed. We would either have to spend
the night curled up among coils of rope, with no shelter except a
windowless, furnitureless cupboard of four feet by three, which maybe
called itself a cabin, or we would have to crawl humbly back to the inn
and sue for a night's lodging.
We were hungry and cross, a little tired, and very, very hot. It would
have been a great relief to burst into tears, or be disagreeable to some
one. I don't know why, but I had the most homesick longing to see Mr.
van Buren. It seemed as if, had he come with us, everything would have
been right, or at least bearable.
Suddenly, as we were dismally trying to make up our minds what to do,
and Mr. Starr had proposed to toss a coin, Lady MacNairne pointed wildly
out to sea, crying----
"Look there--look there!"
A dot of a thing was tearing over the water--a dot of a thing, like our
own darling, blessed motor-boat, and the nearer it came the more like it
was. At last there was no room for doubt. "Lorelei-Mascotte" was
speeding to our rescue, across the Zuider Zee, all alone, without fat,
waddling "Waterspin."
I don't believe, if I'd heard that some one had made me a present of the
Tower of London, with everything in it, I should have been as distracted
with joy as I was now, for the Tower couldn't have got us away from Urk,
and "Lorelei-Mascotte" could. Besides, Mr. van Buren would probably not
have been in the Tower, whereas intuition told me that he was coming to
me--that is to us--as fast as "Mascotte's" motor could bring him.
We stood up, and waved, and shouted. I hardly know what other absurd
things we may not have done, in our delirium of joy. As I said to Mr.
van Buren a few minutes later, it was exactly like being rescued from a
desert island when your food had just given out, and you thought savages
were going to kill you in the night.
Jonkheer Brederode was almost superhumanly nice, considering what he had
endured at Nell's hands, and that it was really through her obstinacy
that we'd suffered so much, and made ourselves and everybody else
concerned so much trouble. Mr. van Buren said, for his part, he would
have tried to persuade his friend to punish Nell by leaving her to her
fate, if he hadn't been sorry to have it involve me--and, of course, the
others.
When Jonkheer Brederode found that by ferociously hard work on his part
and Hendrik's, the damage could be repaired sooner than he had expected,
he at once proposed following us to Urk. He knew what it was like, and
how, within a few minutes after landing, we would hate it. He was
certain that we would be in despair at being tied to the wretched island
for the night, and he had proposed to go teuf-teufing to our succor. The
lack of wind which had meant ruin to our hopes, was a boon to the
motor-boat, which had flown along the smooth water at her best speed.
And when "Mascotte" was received by us with acclamations, our noble
skipper did not even smile a superior smile.
He only said that, when he found he could, he thought he might as well
follow, and spin us back, if we liked to go, and he hoped Miss Van Buren
would pardon the liberty he had taken with her boat.
If she had been horrid to him then, I do believe I should have slapped
her; but she had the grace to laugh and say that "Mascotte" really was a
mascot. There is something, I suppose, in having a sense of humor, in
which I'm alleged to be deficient.
XXV
That was the way it happened that we had two nights at Enkhuisen; but
the second we spent on "Lorelei-Mascotte" and "Waterspin," sleeping on
the boats for the first time, and it was great fun. The next morning
early, we had a picnic breakfast on board, making coffee with the grand
apparatus in Mr. Starr's wonderful tea-basket, which he had bought at
the most expensive shop in London, like the extravagant young man he is.
We didn't wait to finish before we were off; and then came the trip to
Stavoren, which Jonkheer Brederode would not have let us make on the
boat, if the weather had not been calm, for once more we had to steer
straight across the Zuider Zee for several hours.
When we had arrived it was hard to realize that Stavoren had once been a
place of vast importance, and that a powerful king had lived there in
old, old days, for the bastion seemed the only thing of importance in
the poor little town now. But no doubt the great sand-bank, with its
famous legend of the Proud Lady, is enough to account for the decline.
Nell smiled in a naughty, mischievous way, when her cousin remarked that
his mother's family came originally from Friesland, I suppose because
Jonkheer Brederode had just told us that the Frisian people are the most
obstinate and persistent in the Netherlands: that all the obstinacy in
any other whole province would not be as much as is contained in one
Frisian man--or woman. But I think they have reason to be proud of
themselves, especially as their obstinacy has kept their ancient customs
and language almost intact, and the Spaniards never could make the
least impression upon them by the most original and terrific kinds of
tortures, invented especially to subdue Frisians. If they were buried
alive, they just went on smiling, and saying, "I will," or "I won't,"
until their mouths were covered up.
I almost wished that Jonkheer Brederode hadn't said, before Mr. van
Buren, that a "Frisian head" is an expression used by the Dutch when
they mean incredible hardness or obstinacy; but he didn't mind at all,
and immediately told us a thing that happened to his mother and some
Frisian cousins of hers when they were girls. A musical genius, a young
man, was visiting at their house, and when he had played a great deal
for them at their request, he made a bet that they would tire of hearing
his music before he tired of making it. They took the bet, and he began
to play again; but he was not Frisian, and had never been in Friesland
before, therefore he was not prepared for what would happen. Still, he
was Dutch, so he did not like giving up, and he went on playing for
twenty-four hours, without stopping for more than five minutes at a
time. The ladies always exclaimed: "Please go on if you can; we're not
tired at all," though they looked very pale and ill; so he didn't stop
until he tumbled off his music-stool, and had to be carried away to bed,
where he lay for two days. But the Frisian girls suffered no bad
consequences, and said, if he had not given up, they would have sat
listening for at least a week.
Once Jonkheer Brederode had a big yacht which he lent to the Belgian
king for a trip, and there was a Frisian skipper. Every morning the
decks were washed at five o'clock, and the king sent word that he would
be glad to have it done later in the day, as it waked him up, and he
could not go to sleep again. Then the Frisian answered, "Very sorry,
King, but we always do wash the decks at five, and it must be done";
which amused his majesty so much that he made no more objections.
If the people of Friesland have great individuality, so have their
meers. There was a canal through which we had to pass after Stavoren,
like a long, green-walled corridor leading into a huge room. The green
wall was made of tall reeds, and we had glimpses of level golden spaces,
and sails which seemed to be skimming through meadows. There was a
crying of gulls, a smell of salt and of peat, which once formed the
great forests swallowed up by the meer. Then, through a kind of
water-gateway, we slipped into our first Frisian meer, where the water
was like glass, the black sails of yellow sail-boats were purple in the
sunlight, and the windmills on the distant shore looked like restless,
gesticulating ghosts.
Our wash raised a golden, pearl-fringed wave, but the water was so clear
that now and then we fancied we could faintly see the old road under the
meer, which they say Frisian farmers use to this day, knowing just where
and how to guide their horses along it, through the water.
Because of this road, and others like it, Jonkheer Brederode had taken
on a pilot at Stavoren, a man able to keep us off all hidden perils. He
seemed to know every person on every heavily-laden peat-boat, or
brightly painted eel-boat, and Nell insisted that even the families of
wild ducks we met nodded to him as we went by.
We passed from the meer called Morra into the biggest in all Friesland,
Fluessen Meer; and it was all rather like the Norfolk Broads, where my
father once took me when I was a child. Always going from one meer into
another, there were charming canals, decorated with pretty little houses
in gardens of roses and hollyhocks, and emphasized, somehow, by strange
windmills exactly like large, wise gray owls, or, in the distance,
resembling monks bearing aloft tall crosses.
It was exquisite to glide on and on between two worlds; the world of
realities, the world of reflections. Villages were far separated one
from another, on canal and meer, though there were many farmhouses,
walled round by great trees to keep cool the store-lofts in their
steeply-sloping roofs. Gulls sat about like domestic fowls, and perched
on the backs of cows, that grazed in meadows fringed with pink and
purple flowers.
Men and girls rowed home from milking, and hung their green and scarlet
milk-pails in rows on the outer walls of their farmhouse homes.
Fishing-nets were looped from pole to pole by the water-side, in such
curious fashion as to look like vineyards of trailing brown vines; and
as we drew near to Sneek, where we planned to stay the night, we began
to meet quaint lighters, with much picturesque family life going on, on
board; children playing with queer, homemade toys; ancient, white-capped
dames knitting; girls flirting with young men on passing peat-boats--men
in scarlet jerseys which, repeated in the smooth water, looked like
running fire under glass.
The old seventeenth-century water-gate at Sneek was so beautiful, that
we expected to like the place with the ugly name; but after all we hated
it, and decided to spend another night in our own floating houses.
All sorts of funny, water-noises waked me early; but then, I hadn't
slept very soundly, because I couldn't help thinking a good deal about
Mr. van Buren, who found a telegram waiting for him at Sneek, and went
away from us by the first train he could catch. I don't know what was in
the telegram, but he looked rather miserable as he read it, and I
wondered a good deal in the night if his mother had called him back
because Freule Menela van der Windt was not pleased at having him stay
so long with us.
Nell thought our next day's run, going through the River Boorn to the
Sneeker Meer, past Grouw and on to Leeuwarden, even more delightful than
the day before; but it didn't seem as interesting to me, somehow.
Perhaps it was having a person who was partly Frisian standing by me all
the time, and telling me things, which made the difference; anyway, I
had a homesick feeling, as if something were lacking. Mr. Starr said it
would be nice to spend a honeymoon on board one of the nice little
wherries we saw in the big meer; but I thought of Mr. van Buren and
Freule Menela having theirs on one, and it gave me quite a sinking of
the heart. I tried not to show that I was sad, but I'm afraid Mr. Starr
guessed, for in the afternoon he gave me a water-color sketch he had
made in the morning, on deck. He called it a "rough, impressionist
thing," but it is really exquisite; the water pale lilac, with silver
frills of foam, just as it looked in the light when he sat painting;
fields of cloth-of-gold, starred with wild flowers in the foreground;
far-off trees in soft gray and violet, with a gleam of rose here and
there, which means a house-roof half hidden, in the middle distance.
Lady MacNairne admired the sketch particularly; and I got the idea--I
hardly know why--that she was not quite pleased to have it given to me
instead of to her.
XXVI
It was late afternoon when we came to Leeuwarden, and the first thing we
found out was, that it was not at all a place where we should enjoy
stopping on the boats, because of a very "ancient" and very, very
"fish-like smell" which pervaded the canal, and made us wear
extraordinary expressions on our faces as it found its way to our
nostrils. But nobody else seemed even to notice it; nobody else wore
agonized expressions; indeed, the girls we met as we drove to the hotel
had dove-like, smiling faces. They were tall and radiantly fair, with
peace in their eyes; and those who still kept to the fashion of wearing
gold and silver helmet-head-dresses were like noble young Minervas. I
could have scolded the ones who were silly enough to wear modern hats;
but all the old ladies were most satisfactory. We didn't meet one who
had not been loyal to the helmet of her youth; and they were such
beautiful old creatures that I could well believe the legend Jonkheer
Brederode told us: how the sirens of the North Sea had wedded Frisian
men, and all the girl-children had been as magically lovely as their
mothers.
The old-fashioned, rather dull streets were crowded with people, who
seemed in more of a hurry to get somewhere than they need have been, in
such a sleepy town; and when we arrived at the hotel all was excitement
and bustle. It happened that we had come in the midst of Kermess week,
the greatest event of the year at Leeuwarden; and if a party of
Americans had not gone away unexpectedly that morning they could not
have given us rooms, though Jonkheer Brederode had telegraphed from
Sneek.
As soon as we were settled, though it was nearly dinner-time, he
proposed that we should dart out and have a look round the fair,
because, he said, ladies must not go at night.
"Why not?" asked Nell, quick, as usual, to take him up if he seems
inclined to be masterful. "I should think it would be more amusing at
night."
"So it is," he admitted calmly.
"Then why aren't we to see it?"
"Because the play is too rough. Tom, Dick, and Harry, as you say in
England, come out after dark, when the fair's lighted up and at its
gayest, and it is no place for ladies to be hustled about in."
"I've always found 'Tom, Dick, and Harry,' very inoffensive fellows,"
Nell persisted.
"You've never been to a Dutch Kermess."
"That's why I want to go."
"So you shall, before dark."
"And after dark, too," she added, as obstinately as if she had been a
Frisian.
"That is impossible," said Jonkheer Brederode, his mouth and chin
looking hard and firm.
Nell didn't say any more, though she shrugged her shoulders; but the
expression of her eyes was ominous, and I felt that she was planning
mischief.