The Chauffeur and the Chaperon Part 22

"Is that you, Mr. Starr?" she asked; but sure that no stranger would approach so near, and believing me at a safe distance, she took the answer for granted. "What a fairyland in gla.s.s there is in this church!"

she went on, joyously. "What skies, and backgrounds of medieval castles and towers, and what luminous colors. I'd love to be one of those little red and yellow men looking out of the tower at the battle going on below, among the queer ships wallowing in the crisp waves, and live always in that fantastic gla.s.s country. I want to know what's inside the tower, don't you? Which man will you choose to be?"

"The one on your right side," said I, quietly.

Then she whisked round, and blushed with vexation.

"That you could _never_ be," she flung at me, and walked away; but I followed.

"Won't you tell me why?" I asked. "What have I done to offend you?"

"If you don't know, I couldn't make you understand."

"Perhaps it's you who don't understand. But you will, some day."

"Oh, I've no curiosity."

"Am I spoiling your trip?"

"I'm not going to let you."

"Thanks. Then you'd better let me help to make it pleasanter. I can, in many ways."

"I don't need help in enjoying Holland. I intend to enjoy it every instant, in--in----"

"Won't you finish?"

"In spite of you."

"I vow it shall be partly because of me."

"You're very fond of vowing."

Then, at last, I knew where I stood. I knew that Robert _had_ said something.

Into the midst of this crisis dropped Miss Rivers. No doubt she had seen the expression on our faces, and intervened in pure good-heartedness to s.n.a.t.c.h me as a brand from the burning; for she threw herself into talk about the church, crying out against the hideous havoc we Protestants had wrought with whitewash and crude woodwork.

"I'm not Catholic, not a bit Catholic, though I may be a little high church; but I _couldn't_ have spoiled everything just for the sake of getting a place to worship in, cheap, without having to put up a new building. Why, it's like _murder_!"

Then my lady flashed out at her unexpectedly, and saved me an answer.

"Where's your imagination, Phil? It must have gone wool-gathering, or you could put yourself into the place of these people and see why they tore away the pictures and statues, and hid every bit of color with whitewash. I love beauty, but I would have done as they did. Color in churches was to them the life-blood of their nearest and dearest, splashed upon the walls. Those statues, those pictured saints they pulled down or covered up, had smiled on persecution. They had to have a kind of frenzied house-cleaning to get out the smell of incense. Oh, I know how they felt when they did it, as if I'd been here myself with a broom full of whitewash."

"Perhaps some ancestress of yours was here, and did some sweeping," said I. But it was a mistake for me to speak. She froze in an instant, and suggested that if everybody had seen enough, we should go out and give "poor Mr. Starr a chance."

"I'll stop and show him the Haarlem window," said she. And I hated Starr. Perhaps that was the state of mind she wished to create; at all events her eyes retained the exaltation of the whitewashing. Nor should I wonder if those two enjoyed the thought that I was kept waiting outside, as much as they enjoyed roaming together in "gla.s.s country."

In any case, they stayed so long that we were able to visit a shop near by, and come back, before they reappeared. It was a nice shop, where sweets and cakes were sold, especially the rich treacle "cookies," for which Gouda is celebrated. There was much gold-bright bra.s.s; there were jars and boxes painted curiously; and we were served by an apple-cheeked old lady in a white cap, whom Miss Rivers and the Chaperon thought adorable. We bought _hopjes_ as well as cookies, because they wanted to make acquaintance with the national sweets of Holland; and afterwards, when Miss Van Buren was given some, she p.r.o.nounced them nothing but "the caramellest caramels" she had ever tasted.

She and Starr had developed a pleasant private understanding, which comprised jokes too subtle to be understood by outsiders; and as the Mariner and I were shoulder to shoulder for a moment on our way back to the boat, he gave me a look charged with meaning.

"Who laughs last, laughs best," he quoted; and inwardly I could not but agree, though I shrugged my shoulders.

Tibe attracted enormous attention in Gouda. As we walked along shady streets, lit by the clear shining of ca.n.a.ls, children ran after us as at Hamlin they ran after the Pied Piper. If for one instant the strangers paused to study a beautiful, carved door, or to peer into the window of an antiquary's at blue and white jars, or to gaze up at the ferocious head of a Turk over a chemist's shop, or to laugh at a house with window-blinds painted in red and white diamonds, a crowd of flaxen heads collected round us, little hands fluttered over the dog's wrinkled head as b.u.t.terflies flit about a clover blossom, baby laughter tinkled, and tiny shrieks cut the stillness of the sleepy, summer afternoon.

It was all so dream-like to Miss Van Buren that she declared incredulity in Holland's real existence. "There is no such country," she said, "and worse than all, I have no motor-boat."

Nevertheless, a shape which closely resembled "Lorelei" was floating like a white water-lily on a green calyx of ca.n.a.l, in the place where I had, or dreamed that I had, left her an hour ago. And having a.s.sembled on board that white apparition, we started, or dreamed that we started for Leiden--a place where I hoped to score a point or two with my lady.

The boisterous wind of the early morning had dropped at noon, leaving the day hot and unrefreshed, with no breath of air stirring. But on the water, traveling at eight or nine miles an hour, we forgot the heavy July heat which on sh.o.r.e had burned our faces. They were fanned by a constant breeze of our own making which tossed us a bouquet of perfume from flowery fields as we slipped by, the only sound in our ears the cry of sea-going gulls overhead, and the delicate fluting of the water as our bows shattered its crystals among pale, shimmery sedges and tall reeds.

Tiny ca.n.a.ls of irrigation wandered like azure veins through a maze of blossoming pink and gold in the sun-bright meadows, and as far as the most sweeping glance could reach, the horizon seemed pinned down to earth with windmills.

Suddenly the land lay far below the level of the ca.n.a.l, and people walking in the main streets of villages, behind the d.y.k.es, were visible for us only as far as their knees. Quaint little houses had sat themselves down close to the water's edge, as if determined to miss no detail of ca.n.a.l gossip; and from their bright windows, like brilliant eyes, they watched the water with a curious expression of self-satisfaction and contentment on their painted, wooden faces. On verandas, half as big as the houses themselves, the life of the family went on. Children played, young girls wrote letters to their lovers; mothers busily worked sewing-machines, but saw everything that pa.s.sed on the water; fathers read newspapers, and white-haired old grandpapas nodded over long-stemmed pipes. Every garden blazed with color; and close-planted rows of trees, with their branches cut and trained (as Miss Van Buren said) "flat as trees for paper dolls," shaded the upper windows of the toy mansions.

Little things which were matters of every day for me in this country so characteristic of the Netherlands, tickled the fancy of the strangers, and kept them constantly exclaiming. The extravagantly polished wood of the house doors; the lifting cranes protruding from the gables; the dairymen in boats, with their shining pails; the bridges that pivoted round to let us pa.s.s through; the drawbridges that opened in the middle and swung up with leisured dignity; the bridgeman in sorrel-colored coats, collecting tolls in battered wooden shoes suspended from long lines; the dogs (which they call "Spitz" and are really Kees) who barked ferociously at our motor, from every barge and lighter; the yellow carts with black, bonnet-like hoods, from which peasant heads peered curiously out at us, from sh.o.r.e; and, above all, the old women or young children with ropes across their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, straining to tow enormous barges like great dark, following whales.

"What can Dutchmen be like to let them do it, while they loaf on board?"

Miss Van Buren flashed at me, as if I were responsible for the faults of all my male countrymen.

"It isn't exactly loafing to steer those big barges," said I. "And the whole family take turns, anywhere between the ages of ten and a hundred.

They don't know what hard work it is, because n.o.body has told them, and our river people are among the most contented."

Starr was interested in seeing me salute the men of pa.s.sing craft, and in their grave return of the courtesy. Soon, he could imitate my motion, though he exaggerated it slightly, letting his arm float gracefully out to full length before it came back to his cap, somewhat, as he remarked, "like a lily-stem blown by the wind." When he had got the knack he was enchanted, and every yacht, sail-boat, lighter, and barge had a theatrical greeting from him as it slipped silently past, perhaps never to be seen again by our eyes.

"But are they happy?" he asked. "You never hear bursts of laughter, or chattering of voices, as you would in other countries. The youngest children's faces are grave, while as for the men, they look as if they were paid so much a day not to shed a smile, and were mighty conscientious about earning their money. Yet you say they're contented."

"We Dutch are a reserved people," I explained, under Miss Van Buren's critical gaze. "We don't make much noise when we're glad, or sad; and it takes something funny to make us laugh. We don't do it to hear the sound of our own voices, but prefer to rest our features and our minds."

"Some of these bargemen look as if they'd rested their minds so much that vegetables had grown on them," mused Starr, which made Miss Van Buren giggle; and somehow I was angry with her for finding wit in his small sallies.

"You'll discover on this trip that as you treat the Dutch, so will they treat you," I went on. "If you're impatient, they'll be rude; if you show contempt, they'll pay you back in the same coin; but if you're polite and considerate there's nothing they won't do for you in their quiet way."

"We shall never be rude to any of them, shall we, Nell?" said Miss 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 gra.s.s-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 d.y.k.es, 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 ca.n.a.l 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?"