The Good Comrade Part 5

"She has been marketing, I see; she seems a good housewife."

"She walks in the road," Denah observed critically; "It is so conspicuous, I could not do it; besides, one might be run over."

"The English always walk in the road," her sister answered; "they think everything will get out of their way, and they do not at all mind being conspicuous."

"The English miss should mind," Denah said, "for she is not pretty; no one looks at her to admire; besides she is poor and has to work hard."

"Yes, yes," her mother agreed placidly; "she is a fine worker. Vrouw Van Heigen is full of her praises; such a cook--she has twenty new dishes, and everything is done quickly, one cannot tell how; it is like having a magician in the house, so she says. Ah, there is Herr Van de Greutz's Marthe going into the apothecary's. I wonder now--"

But her daughters were not interested in Marthe; the English girl at the Van Heigens' interested them a great deal more. They continued to talk about her a great deal afterwards, Denah going back with her sister to the kitchen and the vegetables, so as to be able to do so undisturbed.

"I will help you with these," she said; "then we can go out."

She sat down and took up a knife. "It is strange how much Vrouw Van Heigen thinks of that girl," she said. "She has been there but one month and already there is no one like her. She does not keep her in her place very well; were she a daughter more could not be said. I wonder how Mijnheer likes it."

"It was Mijnheer who engaged her," Anna said. "It is not likely that he regrets. I hear that she has written some English letters for him since one of the clerks has been ill. My father says she can cook like a Frenchwoman, and that is something. As for Joost, it is surely of little importance to him, he is too quiet to say anything to her; she talks little; she must be shy."

Denah had nothing to say to this, although, seeing in which person her own interest in the Van Heigens lay, she possibly found some comfort in the a.s.surance. After a little she remarked, "That girl has no accomplishments; she is as old-fashioned as our Aunt Barje, a _huisvrouw_, no more. It is strange, for the English women make fun of us for this, and pretend that they are educated and advanced above us; she is not, she can do nothing but speak a few languages; she cannot sing nor play, she has read no science, she cannot draw, nor model in wax, nor make paper flowers, nor do bead work; she could not even crochet till I showed her how. I wonder if she has made any progress with the pattern I gave her. Shall we go and see by and by? I might set her right if she is in a difficulty, and we could at the same time inquire after Mevrouw's throat; she had a weakness, I noticed, on Tuesday."

Anna agreed; she was a most obliging sister, and a while later they set out together for the Van Heigens' house. They did not walk in the wide, clean road, but were careful to keep to the path, pausing a moment to consult before starting for the other side when it was necessary to cross over.

The Van Heigens' house stood on the outskirts of the town, a long way back from the road. The bulb garden lay all round it, though immediately in front was a lawn so soft and green that no one ever walked on it. The house was of wood, painted white, and had a high-pitched roof of strange, dark-coloured tiles; a ca.n.a.l lay on two sides, which ought to have made it damp, but did not.

Vrouw Van Heigen was pleased to see the girls, and received them with an effusiveness which might have suggested that a longer time than four days had elapsed since they last met. She kissed them on both cheeks, and led them in by the hand; she asked particularly how they were, and how their mother was, and how their father was, and if they were not very tired with their walk, and would they not have lemonade--yes, they must have lemonade. "Julia, Julia," she called, "bring lemonade, bring gla.s.ses and the lemonade."

Julia came from a little room which led off the sitting-room, carrying the things required on a papier-mache tray. She wore a large, blue-print ap.r.o.n, for she had been sh.e.l.ling shrimps when she was called, and though she stayed to wash her hands, she did not think it necessary to remove her ap.r.o.n. She had observed it to be the custom hereabouts to wear an ap.r.o.n of some sort all day long, and she did not differentiate between the grades of ap.r.o.ns as Denah and Anna did. She set down the tray and shook hands ceremoniously with the sisters and made all the proper inquiries in the properest way; she had also observed that to be the custom of the place. Then she poured out the lemonade and handed it round, and was afterwards sent to fetch a gla.s.s for herself and a little round tray to set it on--every one had a little tray for fear of spoiling the crimson plush table-cover. Julia cannot be said to have been anxious for lemonade; Vrouw Van Heigen's growing affection for her often found expression in drinks at odd times, a good deal more often than she appreciated. On this occasion, since she was doing the pouring out herself, she was able to get off with half a gla.s.s.

They all sat round the table and talked; Julia talked a great deal the least, but that did not matter, the others had so much to say. She listened, admiring the way in which one little incident--a dog running on the tram line and being called off just in time by its owner--served them for a quarter of an hour. What economy of ideas it was, and how little strain to make conversation! Then came Mevrouw's throat, the little hoa.r.s.eness Denah had noticed on Tuesday. It was nothing, the good lady declared, she had not felt it. Oh, if they insisted on noticing it, she would own to a weakness but no more than was usual to her when the dust was about, and truly the dust was terrible now, she could not remember when it had been so bad so early in June. And so on, and so on, until they somehow came round to crochet lace, when Julia was obliged to confess that she had not made much progress with the pattern. She exhibited a very small piece with several mistakes in it.

"Why," cried Denah, "I have done already almost half a metre of the piece I began at the same time. Is it difficult for you?"

Julia said it was, and Vrouw Van Heigen added by way of apology for her, that she had been busy making a cool morning dress.

"For yourself?" Anna asked. "Do you make your dresses?"

"This is for Mevrouw," Julia answered; "but I can make my own."

The Polkingtons had had to, and also to put an immense amount of thought and work into it, because they were bound to get a fine effect for a small expense, and that is not possible without a large outlay of time and consideration. Julia did not explain this to the present company, it would have been rather incomprehensible to them.

Anna was at once fired with a desire to make herself a cool morning dress, and asked a dozen questions as to how, while Denah's busy fingers undid the faulty crochet work, and her tongue explained the mistakes. Mevrouw did not listen much to either, but noticing the gla.s.ses were empty, pressed the visitors in vain to have more lemonade. They refused, and finding them quite obdurate she toddled into the little room where Julia had been doing the shrimps, to come back again, bearing a large bladder-covered bottle of peach-brandy.

The girls declined this very firmly, but Julia was sent for more gla.s.ses, and soon they were all sipping the rich flavoured liqueur without protestation.

It was over this that they planned an expedition to the wood. No one knew quite who suggested it; when people all talk at once it is not easy to say who originates an idea; anyhow, it was agreed that the weather was so dry and the trees so lovely and Mevrouw so seldom went out. She really felt--did she not?--that she would enjoy making a small excursion, she was so wonderfully well--for her. What did Anna think her mother would say? Perhaps they might join together for a drive?

Anna thought her mother would be delighted; indeed, she often spoke of the charms of a country excursion; Denah was called upon to corroborate, and did so volubly. Where should they go? Half-a-dozen different places were suggested; why not go here, or there, or to the wood? Yes, the wood, that would be lovely. They could take their tea out; if they were well wrapped up, of course, protected from the damp and the wind, might it not be possible?

So by degrees the plan was brought to the first stage. Denah and Anna were to talk it over with their mother, and if she thought favourably of it, then "we must see." By that time Denah had set the crochet work quite straight, and with kisses and hand-shakings the visitors departed. Julia went back to the little room where first she washed the gla.s.ses that had been used, afterwards she finished the shrimps and washed them and put them ready for supper in a china dish like a large soap dish on three feet. When that was done, it was necessary to lay the table for dinner and superintend the getting of that meal.

The Van Heigens dined at four. It had taken Julia all the month she had been with them to in any way get used to that time. Mijnheer and the only son, Joost, came in from the office for two hours then. The office joined the house and the great dim orderly bulb barns joined the office, so the father and son had not far to come in whichever place they might be. Julia and Mevrouw fetched the food from the kitchen and cleared the table, as well as getting their own meal; but that was nothing when you were used to it, any more than was the curious b.u.t.ter and nutmeg sauce that always seemed to play a part at dinner.

Mijnheer had a good deal to say to Julia, princ.i.p.ally about his business. The letters she had written for him during the illness of the clerk who usually did his English correspondence, had given her some little insight into it. This she had profited by, being in the first instance really interested, and, in the second, not slow to see that the old man, far from resenting it, had been pleased. He talked a good deal about his affairs now, giving her little bits of information and explaining rather proudly his method of doing business, and his father's and his grandfather's before him. Joost, as usual, said little or nothing; he must have been five or six and twenty, but he had hardly ever left the parental roof, and was usually so hard at work that he had little time or inclination for frivolity. He had earnest child-like blue eyes that Julia did not care to look at, any more than she did the round yellow face of Mr. Gillat's watch. This was rather a pity as she could not always avoid it, and certainly he looked at her a good deal, in fact whenever he thought he was not observed. Of course he always was observed, by her at least; that was a foregone conclusion; the observation gave her some uneasiness.

After dinner the father and son went to sit on the veranda, and Mevrouw helped Julia take the dishes into the white marble kitchen and the gla.s.ses into the little off-room. Later, Julia came to sit on the veranda, too--it was somewhat stuffy being all closed in with gla.s.s windows. There they drank pale tea, the pot kept simmering on a spirit-stove, and read the foreign papers which had just come. Mevrouw did not read, she made tea and did crochet work, a strip like Vrouw Snieder's, only yellow instead of red. Julia, it is to be feared, did not try to master the pattern so kindly set right by Denah; she could not resist the breath from the outside world which the papers brought.

At six o'clock Mijnheer and his son went back to the office, and Julia, having washed the tea-cups, joined Mevrouw in the sitting-room.

It was never very light in that room, for the walls were covered with a crimson flock paper and the woodwork was black; while the windows, which looked on the ca.n.a.l, were always shaded till dark. They sat here at work on the morning gown, till supper time. Mijnheer sometimes came in an hour before supper, as early as half-past eight; Joost had usually too much to do to come in before half-past nine. After supper, when the things were cleared away, they had prayers; Mijnheer read a chapter from the Bible, and they sat round the table and listened, and afterwards he said, "Now we will pray," and they sat a while in silence. Julia sat, too, her keen, observing eyes cast down and a curious stillness about her. After that every one went to bed; Julia and the maidservant had two little rooms right up in the eaves of the house; the family slept on the floor below. Julia was glad of this, though it was possible to imagine her room would be very hot in summer and very cold in winter. But she was glad to be well above the sleeping house, and to be able to look from her window across the wide country, over the dark bulb gardens--laid out like a Chinese puzzle with their eight-foot hedges--to the lights of the town on the one hand, and, better still, to the dim curve of the Dunes on the other.

It is to be feared she sometimes spent a longer time at her window than was wise, seeing the early hour at which she had to rise; but no one was troubled by it, for she was careful to take off her shoes first thing; the rooms were unceiled, and it was necessary to tread lightly if one would not disturb people below.

On the day after that of Anna and Denah's visit, Herr Van Heigen offered to show Julia the bulb barns. It was a Sat.u.r.day, and so after dinner, the workmen having all gone home, there was no one about and she could ascend the steep barn ladders without any suffering in her modesty. At least that was what Mijnheer thought; Julia, her modesty being of a very serviceable order, may have given the matter less consideration, but she accepted the offer.

The barns were very large and high, many of them three storeys and each storey lofty. The light inside was dim, a sort of dun colour, and the air very dry and full of a strange, not unpleasant smell.

Everything was as clean as clean could be; no litter, no dirt, the floor nicely swept, the shelves that ran all round and rose, tier upon tier, in an enormous stand that occupied the whole centre of the place, all perfectly orderly. On the shelves the bulbs lay, every one smooth and clean and dry, sorted according to kind and quality; Mijnheer knew them all; he could, like a book-lover with his books, put his hand upon any that he wished in the dark. It seemed to Julia that there were hundreds upon hundreds of different sorts. Not only hyacinths and tulips and such well-known ones in endless sizes and varieties, but little roots with six and seven syllable names she had never heard before, and big roots, too, and strange cornery roots, a never-ending quant.i.ty.

Mijnheer told her they were not yet all in; many were in the ground and had still to be lifted. This she knew, for she had seen the dead tops of some in the little enclosed squares where they grew; from her bedroom window, too, she saw others still in bloom--a patch, the size of a tennis-lawn squared, of scarlet ranunculous, little blood-red rosettes, sheltered by a high close-clipped hedge. And another patch of iris hispanica, fairy flowers of palest gold and lavender, quivering at the top of their grey-green stalks like tropical dragon-flies hovering over a field of growing oats. These it seemed, and many others, would be brought in by and by, then the great barns would be really full. Mijnheer took up a root here and there, telling her something of the history of each; explaining how the narcissus increased and the tulips grew; showing her hyacinth bulbs cut in half-breadthways with all the separate severed layers distended by reason of the growing and swelling of the seeds between.

"Each little seed will be a bulb by and by," he said, "but not yet.

When we cut the root first, we set it in the ground and these begin to grow and become in time as you see them now. Afterwards they grow bigger and bigger till their parent can no longer contain them."

"Does it take long for them to grow full size?" Julia asked.

"It takes five years to grow the finest hyacinth bulbs," Mijnheer answered, "but inferior ones are more quick. And when the bulb is grown, there is one bloom--fine, magnificent, a truss of flowers--after that it deteriorates, it is, one may say, over. Ah, but it is magnificent while it is there! There is no flower like the hyacinth; had I my way, I would grow nothing else, but people will not have them now. They must have novelties. 'Give us narcissus,' they say; 'they are so graceful'--I do not see the grace--'Or iris'--well, some are fine, I allow, but they do not last in bloom as do hyacinths.

The mourn iris of Persia is very beautiful; we have not one flowering yet, but we shall have by and by. I will show you then; you will think it very handsome. When it blooms I go to it in the morning and dust the sand from the petals. I feel that I can reverence that flower; it is most beautiful."

"Is it very scarce?" Julia asked.

"Somewhat," Mijnheer answered; "but we have things that are more so, we have many novelties so called. Ah, but we have one novelty that is a true one, it is a wonder, it has no price, it is priceless!" He drew a deep breath of almost awed pride. "It is the greatest rarity that has ever been reared in Holland, a miracle, in fact--a blue daffodil!"

Julia refrained from mentioning that she had heard of the rarity before; she leaned against the centre stand and listened while the old man grew eloquent, with the eloquence of the connoisseur, not the tradesman, over his treasure. There was no need for her to say much, only to put a question here and there, or make a sympathetic comment; with little or no effort she learned a good deal about the wonderful bulb. It seemed that it really had been grown in the Van Heigens'

gardens, and not imported from Asia, as Mr. Cross thought. There were six roots by this time; not so many as had been hoped and expected, it did not increase well, and was evidently going to be difficult to grow.

"Would you like to know the name which it will immortalise?" the old man asked at last. "It is called Narcissus Triandrus Azurem Vrouw Van Heigen."

"You named it in honour of Mevrouw, I suppose?" Julia said.

"I did not; Joost did."

"Mijnheer Joost?" she repeated.

"Yes," the father answered. "It is his, not mine; to him belongs the honour. It is he who has produced this marvel. How? That is a secret; perhaps even I could not tell you if I would; Nature is wonderful in her ways; we can only help her, we cannot create. Yes, yes, it is Joost who has done this. He seemed to you a retiring youth? Yet he is the most envied and most honoured man of our profession. I would sooner--there are many men in Holland who would sooner--have produced this flower than have a thousand pounds. And he is my son--you may well believe that I am proud."

And Mijnheer beamed with satisfaction in his son and his blue daffodil. But Julia leaned against the stand in the dry twilight, saying nothing. Money, it appeared, was not then the measure of all things; neither intrinsically, as with Mr. Alexander Cross, nor for what it represented in comfort and position, as with her own family, did it rank with these bulb growers. They, these people whom her mother would have called market gardeners, tradespeople, it seemed, loved and reverenced their work; they thought about it and for it, were proud of it and valued distinction in it, and nothing else. The blue daffodil was no valuable commercial a.s.set, it was an honour and glory, an unparalleled floral distinction--no wonder Cross could not buy or exploit it. In a jump Julia comprehended the situation more fully than that astute business man ever could; but at the same time she felt a little bitter amus.e.m.e.nt--it was this, this treasured wonder, that she thought to obtain.

The next day, Sunday, Julia went to church with Mijnheer and Joost; Mevrouw did not find herself well enough for church, but she insisted that Julia should not stay at home on her account. Accordingly the girl accompanied father and son to the Groote Kerk and listened to the rather dull service there. For the most part she sat with her eyes demurely cast down, though once or twice she looked round the old barn-like place, and wondered if there were any frescoes under the whitewash of the walls and whence came the faint, all pervading smell, like a phantom of incense long forgotten. When service was over and they came out into the sunny street, Mijnheer announced that he was going to see a friend. Julia, of course, must hurry home to set the table for the mid-day coffee drinking, and afterwards prepare for dinner. Joost was going back, likewise, and to her it was so natural a thing they should go together that she never thought about it. It did not, however, seem so to him, and after walking a few paces in embarra.s.sment, he said--

"You would perhaps prefer I did not walk with you?"

"Oh, no," she answered, in some surprise; "I shall be pleased, if you are going the same way, that is."