The Chauffeur and the Chaperon Part 43

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 n.o.ble 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 ca.n.a.l through which we had to pa.s.s 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 s.p.a.ces, 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 gla.s.s, the black sails of yellow sail-boats were purple in the sunlight, and the windmills on the distant sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 ca.n.a.ls, 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 ca.n.a.l 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 pa.s.sing peat-boats--men in scarlet jerseys which, repeated in the smooth water, looked like running fire under gla.s.s.

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 ca.n.a.l, and made us wear extraordinary expressions on our faces as it found its way to our nostrils. But n.o.body else seemed even to notice it; n.o.body 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 n.o.ble 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, d.i.c.k, 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, d.i.c.k, 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.

We walked out to the Kermess, which Lady MacNairne and Mr. Starr p.r.o.nounced very like a French country fair; but it seemed wonderful to me. There were streets and streets of booths, little and big, gorgeously decorated, where people in the costumes of their provinces sold every imaginable kind of thing. Nell was so well-behaved that she evidently disarmed Jonkheer Brederode's suspicions, if he had shared mine; and when she proposed buying a quant.i.ty of sweets and cheap toys for us to give away to families of children upon the lighters we pa.s.sed on ca.n.a.ls, he was ready to humor her. We chose all sorts of toys and sweets--enough to last us for days of playing Santa Claus--and bargained in Dutch with the people who sold, making them laugh sometimes. Then, Jonkheer Brederode took us to all the best side-shows: the giant steer, as big as sixteen every-day oxen; the smallest horse in the world, a fairy beast, thoughtfully doing sums in the sand with his miniature forepaw; the fat lady, very bored and warm; the fair Circa.s.sian, who lured audiences into a hot theater with tinsel decorations like a Christmas-tree and hundreds of colored lights. There were other sights; but Jonkheer Brederode said these were the only ones for ladies, and hurried us by some of the booths with painted pictures of three-headed people or girls cut off at the waist, which Nell wished particularly to see. He wouldn't let us go into the merry-go-rounds either, and by the time we got back to the hotel--our hands full of dolls, tops, spotted wooden horses, boxes of blocks, and packets of nougat surmounted with chenille monkeys--she was boiling with pent-up resentment.

Already we were late for dinner, and we still had to dress; but Nell--who shared a room with me, as the hotel was crowded--said that she must slip out again, to buy something which she wished to select when alone; she would not be gone many minutes.

I was all ready when she ran in again with two large bundles in her hands. She would not tell me what they were, as she was in a hurry to change (at least, that was her excuse), but promised that I should see something interesting if I would come up to the room with her after dining; and I was not to tell any one that she had been out for the second time.

We were long over our dinner, as there was such a crowd that the waiters grew quite confused; and, at the end, we three women sat with Jonkheer Brederode and Mr. Starr in the garden behind the hotel, while the men smoked. Nell was so patient that I almost thought she had forgotten the bundles up-stairs. But at last Lady MacNairne, hearing a clock chime ten, announced that she had some writing to do before going to bed.

"I suppose you will have a look at the Kermess again?" she said to our two knights.

"I've seen dozens of such fairs; and when you've seen one, you've seen pretty well all, nowadays. But if the Mariner would like to go, I shall be glad to go with him," Jonkheer Brederode answered.

"I'm not sure I didn't see enough this afternoon," said Mr. Starr.

"Anyhow, I mean to have another cigarette or two here; and I do think the ladies might stop with me, for I have a hundred things to say."

Lady MacNairne and Nell were on their feet, however, and would not be persuaded; so we bade each other good-night, and three minutes later Nell was opening her parcels in our room.

"Among the last letters that were forwarded from London, was a larger check than I expected from the _Fireside Friend_," said she; "so I've bought a present for you, and for me, from my affectionate self."