My room at Heer Boudier's commands a full view of the Maas, with all
its varied shipping. Its interior fittings are so scrupulously clean
that one feels almost uncomfortable lest some of the dainty
appointments might be soiled in the using. The bed is the most
remarkable of all its comforts. It is more of a box than a bed, and so
high at head and foot, and so solid at its sides, that it only needs a
lid to make the comparison complete. There is always at its foot an
inflated eider-down quilt puffed up like a French souffle potato; and
there are always at its head two little oval pillows solid as bags of
ballast, surmounting a bolster that slopes off to an edge. I have
never yet found out what this bolster is stuffed with. The bed itself
would be bottomless but for the slats. When you first fall overboard
into this slough you begin to sink through its layers of feathers, and
instinctively throw out your hands, catching at the side boards as a
drowning man would clutch at the gunwales of a suddenly capsized boat.
The second night after my arrival, I, in accordance with my annual
custom, deposited the contents of this bed in a huge pile outside my
door, making a bottom layer of the feathers, then the bolster, and
last the souffle with the hard-boiled eggs on top.
Then I rang for Tyne.
She had forgotten all about the way I liked my sleeping arrangements
until she saw the pile of bedding. Then she held her sides with
laughter, while the tears streamed down her red cheeks. Of course, the
Heer should have a mattress and big English pillows, and no
bouncy-bounce, speaking the words not with her lips, but with a
gesture of her hand. Then she called Johan to help. I never can see
why Tyne always calls Johan to help when there is anything to be done
about my room out of the usual order of things,--the sweeping,
dusting, etc.,--but she does. I know full well that if she so pleased
she could tuck the whole pile of bedding under her chin, pick up the
bureau in one hand and the bed in the other, and walk downstairs
without even mussing her cap-strings.
When Johan returned with a hair mattress and English pillows,--you can
get anything you want at Boudier's,--he asked me if I had heard the
news about Peter. Johan, by the way, speaks very good English--for
Johan. The Burgomaster, he said, had that day served Peter with a
writ. If I had looked out of the window an hour ago, I could have seen
the Lieutenant-Commander of the Red Tub, under charge of an officer of
the law, on his way to the Town Hall. Peter, he added, had just
returned and was at the present moment engaged in scrubbing out the R.
T. for active service in the morning.