The Chauffeur and the Chaperon Part 23

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 b.u.t.terflies 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 ca.n.a.l 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 p.r.o.nounce 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _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 ca.n.a.ls 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 a.s.sured 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 n.o.body 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-gla.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 compa.s.sion 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 n.o.body 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 h.e.l.l, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 d.y.k.es 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 d.y.k.es 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 ca.n.a.ls 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.