The Good Comrade Part 14

Mijnheer stopped to look at the merry-go-round; he admired the cheerful tune that it played. He was not a connoisseur of music; a barrel-organ was as good to him as the organ in the Groote Kerk. The others stopped too; Anna exclaimed on the life-like and clever appearance of the bobbing horses, whereupon her father suggested that perhaps the girls would like to try a ride on the machine, and then befel the crowning mischief of the evening. Julia and Anna accepted the proposal readily. Denah declined; she felt in no humour for it; also she thought a refusal showed a superior mind--one likely to appeal to a serious young man, who had no taste for the gaudy, gay, or fast, and who also had a tendency towards seasickness.

But, alas, for the fickleness of man! While Denah stood with her father and Mijnheer, Julia rode round the centre of lighted mirrors on a prancing wooden horse, and Joost--the serious, the sometimes seasick--rode beside her on a dappled grey, to the familiar old English tune, "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-a."

CHAPTER IX

THE HOLIDAY

The Dunes lay some little distance from the town, a low, but suddenly-rising hill boundary, that shut in the basin of flat land.

They were all of pure sand, though in many places so matted with vegetation that it was hardly recognisable as such. Trees grew in places, especially on the side that fronted towards the town; the way up lay through a dense young wood of beech and larch, and a short, broad-leafed variety of poplar. There was no undergrowth, but between the dead leaves one could see that a dark green, short-piled moss had managed to find a hold here and there, though so smooth was it that it looked more like old enamel than a natural growth. The trees had the appearance of high summer, deeply, intensely green, so that they seemed almost blackish in ma.s.s. There was no breeze among them; even the dapples of sunlight which found their way through the roof of leaves hardly stirred, but lay in light patches, like scattered gold upon the ground. Flies and gnats moved and shimmered, a busy life, whose small voices were the only sound to be heard; all else was very still, with the glorious reposeful stillness of full summer; not oppressive, without weariness or exhaustion, rather as if the whole creation paused at this zenith to look round on its works, and beheld and saw that they were all very good.

There were no clear paths, apparently few people went that way; certainly there was no one about when Julia and Rawson-Clew came. It is true they saw a kind of little beer-garden at the foot of the slope, but there was no one idling about it.

"We shall have to come back here for lunch," Julia said.

And when he suggested that it was rather a pity to have to retrace their steps, she answered, "It doesn't matter, we are not going anywhere particular; we may just as well wander one way as another.

When we get to the top this time we will explore to the right, and when we get there again after lunch, we will go to the left; don't you think that is the best way? This is to be a holiday, you know."

"Is a real holiday like a dog's wanderings?" Rawson-Clew inquired; "bounded by no purpose except dinner when hungry?"

Julia thought it must be something of the kind. "Though," she said, "dogs always seem to have some end in view, or perhaps a dozen ends, for though they tear off after an imaginary interest as if there was nothing else in the world, they get tired of it, or else start another, and forget all about the first."

"That must also be part of the essence of a holiday," Rawson-Clew said; "at least, one would judge it to be so; boys and dogs, the only things in nature who really understand the art of holiday-making, chase wild geese, and otherwise do nothing of any account, with an inexhaustible energy, and a purposeful determination wonderful to behold. Also, they forget that there is such a thing as to-morrow, so that must be important too."

"I can't do that," Julia said.

"You might try when you get to the top," he suggested. "I will try then; I don't think I could do anything requiring an effort just now."

Julia agreed that she could not either, and they went on up straight before them. It is as easy to climb a sand-hill in one place as in another, provided you stick your feet in the right way, and do not mind getting a good deal of sand in your boots. So they went straight, and at last got clear of the taller trees, and were struggling in thickets of young poplars, and other sinewy things. The sand was firmer, but honeycombed with rabbit holes, and tangled with brambles, and the direction was still upwards, though the growth was so thick, and the ground so bad, that it was often necessary to go a long way round. But in time they were through this too, and really out on the top. Here there was nothing but the Dunes, wide, curving land, that stretched away and away, a tableland of little hollows and hills, like some sea whose waves have been consolidated; near at hand its colours were warm, if not vivid, but in the far distance it grew paler as the vegetation became less and less, till, far away, almost beyond sight, it failed to grey helm gra.s.s, and then altogether ceased, leaving the sand bare. Behind lay the trees through which they had come, sloping downwards in banks of cool shadows to the map-like land and the distant town below; away on right and left were other groups of trees, on sides of hills and in rounded hollows, looking small enough from here, but in reality woods of some size. Here there was nothing; but, above, a great blue sky, which seemed very close; and, underfoot, low-growing Dune roses and wild thyme which filled the warm, still air with its matchless scent; nothing but these, and s.p.a.ce, and sunshine, and silence.

Julia stopped and looked round, drawing in her breath; she had found what she had come to see--what, perhaps, she had been vaguely wanting to find for a long time.

"Isn't it good?" she said at last. "Did you know there was so much room--so much room anywhere?"

Rawson-Clew looked in the direction she did; he had seen so much of the world, and she had seen so little of it--that is, of the part which is solitary and beautiful. Yet he felt something of her enthusiasm for this sunny, empty place--than which he had seen many finer things every year of his life.

Perhaps this thought occurred to her, for she turned to him rather wistfully: "I expect it does not seem very much to you," she said; "you have seen such a great deal."

"I do not remember to have seen anything quite like this," he answered; "and if I had, what then? One does not get tired of things."

Julia looked at him thoughtfully. "I wonder," she said, "if one would?

If one would get weary of it, and want to go back to the other kind of life?"

She was not thinking of Dune country, rather of the simple life it represented to her just then. Rawson-Clew caught the note of seriousness in her tone and reminded her that thought for the past or future was no part of a holiday. "Remember," he said, "you are to-day to emulate dogs and boys."

She laughed. "How am I to begin?" she asked. "How will you?"

"I shall sit down," he said; "I feel I could be inconsequent much better if I sat down to it; that is no doubt because I am past my first youth."

"No," she said, sitting down and putting her hat beside her; "it is because your folly-muscles are stiff from want of use; you have played lots of things, I expect--it is part of your necessary equipment to be able to do so, but I doubt if you have ever played the fool systematically. I don't believe you have ever done, and certainly never enjoyed anything inconsequent or foolish in your life."

"If you were to ask me," he returned, "I should hardly say you excelled in that direction either. How many inconsequent and foolish things have you done in your life?"

"Some, and I should like to do some more. If I were alone now, do you know what I should do? You see that deep hollow of sparkling white sand? I should take off my clothes and lie there in the sun."

Rawson-Clew turned so that his back was that way. "Do not let me prevent you," he said.

Julia made use of the opportunity to empty the sand out of her boots.

He looked round as she was finishing fastening them. "But why put them on again?" he asked.

"Because I haven't retired from the world, yet," she answered, "and so I can't do quite all I like."

"When you do retire, will this ideal summer costume also be included in the programme? Your taste in dress grows simpler; quite ancient British, in fact."

"The ancient Britons wore paint, and probably had fashions in it; I don't think of imitating them. Tell me," she said, turning now to gather the sweet-scented wild thyme, "did you ever really do anything foolish in your life? I should like to know."

He answered her that he had, but without convincing her. Afterwards, he came to the conclusion that, whatever might have been the case before, he that day qualified to take rank with any one in the matter.

All the same, it was a very pleasant day, and they both enjoyed it much; it is doubtful if any one in the town or its environs enjoyed that holiday more than these two, who, from different reasons, had probably never had so real a holiday before. They wandered over the great open tract of land, meeting no one; once they came near enough to the seaward edge to see the distant shimmer of water; once they found themselves in the part where there has been some little attempt at cultivation, and small patches of potatoes struggle for life, and a little railway crosses the sandhills. Twice they came upon the road along which, on working days, the peasant women bring their fish to market in the town. But chiefly they kept to the small, dense woods, where the sunlight only splashed the ground; or to the open solitary s.p.a.ces where the bees hummed in the wild thyme, and the b.u.t.terflies chased each other over the low rose bushes.

A good deal after mid-day, at a time dictated entirely by choice, and not custom, they made their way back to the beer garden. It was a very little place, scarcely worthy of the name; the smallest possible house, more like a barn than anything else, right in the shadow of the wood. The fare to be obtained was bad beer, excellent coffee, new bread, and old cheese; but it was enough, supplemented by the cakes bought yesterday in the town; Julia knew enough of the ways of the place to know one can bring one's own food to such places without giving offence. As in the morning, when they first pa.s.sed it, there was no one about, every one had gone to the fair, except one taciturn old woman who brought the required things and then shut herself in the house. The meal was spread under the trees on a little green-painted table, with legs buried deep in sand; there were two high, straight chairs set up to the table, and a wooden footstool put by one for Julia, who, seeing it, said this was certainly a picnic, and it was really necessary to eat the _broodje_ in the correct picnic way.

Rawson-Clew tried, with much gravity, but she laughed till the taciturn old woman looked out of window, and wondered who they were, and how they came to be here.

When the meal was done, they went back again up the steep slope, and then away on the left. The country on this side was less open, and more hilly, deeper hollows and larger woods, still there was not much difficulty in finding the way. The latter part of the day was not so fine as the earlier, the sky clouded over, and, though there was still no wind, the air grew more chilly. They hardly noticed the change, being in a dense young wood where there was little light, but Julia lost something of the holiday spirit, and Rawson-Clew became grave, talking more seriously of serious things than had ever before happened in their curious acquaintanceship. They sat down to rest in a green hollow, and Julia began to arrange neatly the bunch of short-stemmed thyme flowers that she carried. They had been quiet for some little time, she thinking about their curious acquaintance, and wondering when it would end. Of course it would end--she knew that; it was a thing of mind only; there was very little feeling about it--a certain mutual interest and a liking that had grown of late, kindness on his part, grat.i.tude on hers, nothing more. But of its sort it had grown to be intimate; she had told him things of her thoughts, and of herself, and her people too, that she had told to no one else; and he, which was perhaps more remarkable, had sometimes returned the compliment.

And yet by and by--soon, perhaps--he would go away, and it would be as if they had never met; it was like people on a steamer together, she thought, for the s.p.a.ce of the voyage they saw each other daily, saw more intimately into each other than many blood relations did, and then, when port was reached, they separated, the whole thing finished. She wondered when this would finish, and just then Rawson-Clew spoke, and unconsciously answered her thought.

"I am going back to England soon," he said.

She looked up. "Is your work here finished?" she asked.

"It is at an end," he answered; "that is the same thing."

Then she, her intuition enlightened by a like experience suddenly knew that he, too, had failed. "You mean it cannot be done," she said.

He opened his cigarette case, and selected a cigarette carefully. "May I smoke?" he asked; "there are a good many gnats and mosquitoes about here." He felt for a match, and, when he had struck it, asked impersonally, "Do you believe things cannot be done?"

"Yes," she answered; "I know that sometimes they cannot; I have proved it to myself."

"You have not, then, much opinion of the people who do not know when they are beaten?"

"I don't think I have," she answered; "you cannot help knowing when you are beaten if you really are--that is, unless you are a fool. Of course, if you are only beaten in one round, or one effort, that is another thing; you can get up and try again. But if you are really and truly beaten, by yourself, or circ.u.mstances, or something--well, there's an end; there is nothing but to get up and go on."

"Just so; in that case, as you say, there is not much going to be done, except going home."

Julia nodded. "But I can't even do that," she said. "I am beaten, but I have got to stay here all the same, having nowhere exactly to go."