A. M. Williamson

“ You remember that blue boat of ours? And see, there's our house—the pink one, with the green-and-white-lozenge shutters, and the thicket of hydrangeas reflected in the water. Isn't it good to come back to our own?"
Thus he snatched her from me, just as my surprise was succeeding, and made a place for himself with her, in my toy fairyland.
"It's true! One does feel like one of the little blue people that live in a willow-pattern plate," said Phyllis, as Nell and Starr sauntered on ahead. ”

“ I said to myself as I went away from the galleries, that Dutch painting would stand for me henceforth as an epitome of the Dutch people. No one but the Dutch could have painted pictures like theirs—so quaint, so painstaking, and at the same time so splendid. Their love of rich brown shadow and amber light was learned in the dim little rooms of their own homes, and of inns where the brass and pewter gleamed in the mellow dusk of raftered kitchens, and piles of fruit and vegetables fell like jewels, from paniers such as Gerard Douw took three days to paint on a scale of three inches. ”

“ How you grow on one! Can this be why—because you are You—that in my heart of hearts I don't care a rap if Nell and Phyllis are engaged to others? I wonder if my instinct saw under the gray hair and blue glasses? Look here, are you Miss or Mrs. Mary Milton? and if you're Mrs., are you a widow, grass, or otherwise?"
She laughed. "Why, how old do you take me to be? As an aunt, my official age was over forty. But Miss Mary Milton isn't much more than half Lady MacNairne's age. It's as good to throw off the years as the wig and the spectacles. I'm only twenty-three. ”

“ Still we had had no glimpse of the sea; but Robert turned the car, and driving between two gigantic hotels, ran down to a beach with sands of gleaming gold, and a background of wind-blown dunes billowing away as far as the eye could reach. The very wildness of this background gave a bizarre sort of charm to the fantastic buildings which made up the fashionable center of Scheveningen.
In the center, the Kurhaus dominated all; hotel, restaurant, concert-room, theater, in one. Terrace below terrace it descended and sent out into the green water of the North Sea a great pier blossoming with flags. ”

“ Once in a while it dimly comes back to me that, in a past existence unbrightened by Nell Van Buren and Phyllis Rivers, I came to Holland with the object of painting pictures. Never, since my arrival in the bright little country of wide spaces, have I had a keener incentive to improve the shining hours; but how can a man remember that he's an artist when the girl he loves has engaged herself to another man, and one of the few girls he never could love is rapidly engaging herself to him? ”

“ Inside we found her equally desirable, with four little boxes of sleeping-rooms, yellow painted floors, and bunks curtained with hand-embroidered dimity, stiff as a frozen crust of snow; a studio, with a few charming bits of old painted Dutch furniture to redeem it from bareness, and a kitchen which roused all Phil's domestic instincts.
"Oh, the darling blue and white china, and brass things, and those adorable pewter pots!" she cried. "I love this boat. I could be quite happy living on her all the rest of my life." ”

“ But we were not yet bound for Amsterdam. Twisting northward as the details of the city were sketched upon the sky, we turned into the canal which leads to Zaandam of the self-satisfied, painted houses. There was just time for a swift run down the river, and a call at one of that famous battalion of windmills whose whirling sails fill the air with a ceaseless whirr, like the flight of birds at sunset; then a walk to the hovel where Peter the Great lived and learned to be a shipwright. ”

“ It was fun dining out-of-doors on a big, covered balcony looking over the Zuider Zee, and seeing the horizon populous with fishing-boats. In the falling dusk they looked like the flitting figures of tall, graceful ladies moving together hand in hand, with flowing skirts; some in gossiping knots, others hovering proudly apart in pairs like princesses.
It is wonderful how our chaperon makes friends with people, and gets them to do as she likes. If she were young and pretty it wouldn't be strange—at least, where men are concerned ”

“ In these days, no matter how hard your heart may be, you have to sacrifice your inclinations more or less to decency. I dare say the Car of Juggernaut was a motor. Oh, what a huge town! Shall we ever get out of Pandemonium into the country?"
We did get out at last, and suddenly, for in Hollow Land the line between town and country is abrupt, with no fading of city into suburb and meadow. One moment we were in the bustle of Amsterdam; the next, we were running along a klinker road, straight as a ruler, beside a quiet canal. ”

“ Never was man in better mood for the rush and thrill of the motor than I, after the conquering of Miss Van Buren. It was but a shadow victory, a tempest in a tea-pot, yet it was so good an augury of a further triumph for which I hoped in future, that the joy of it went fizzily to my head, and I could have shouted, if I had been alone in some desert place with nobody by to know that it was a Dutchman who made a fool of himself. ”

“ Still, it is hard to control one's thoughts; and I wondered more and more as Jonkheer Brederode hurried Nell and me back to the hotel, not by the short way we had taken before, but dodging about through a dozen intricate streets as if he were anxious to give trouble to any one who might be following. Our skipper seemed preoccupied, too, which was a good thing for us, as it took his mind off our crimes. As it was, he actually made no allusion to our strange costume, our escapade, or even the hateful adventure from which he had rescued us—for that he had rescued us there was no question. ”

“ Along the dyke squatted a double row of men, old and young—mostly old; but all as brown as if they had been carved out of oak. Every one had a tight-fitting jersey and enormously baggy trousers, like those other men round the corner of the Zuider Zee at Marken. But at Marken the jerseys were dark and here of the most wonderful crimson; the new ones the shade of a Jacqueminot rose, the faded ones like the lovely roses which Nell calls "American beauties." ”

“ That distinction might do for the townspeople; as for them, they would rather live in a black and brown house in the Keizergracht, with a crane and pulley in one of the gables, and white frames on the windows, than in this dull street of wealth and fashion.
"Even half a house, with a whole door of my own, like most middle-class Dutch houses, would be nicer," said Nell. "Yes, I could be happy in 'a boven huis,' with my little stairway and hall quite to myself." ”

“ But now I've such a peaceful feeling, I have to make myself remember that any instant may be my last."
"I wouldn't try," said Miss Van Buren. "I suppose, when one thinks of it, worse things could happen to one on a motor-boat than in a motor-car, because there's water all round; but it seems so heavenly restful, rather like motoring in heaven might be, and no frightened horses, or barking dogs, or street children to worry you."
"I pity people on steamboats, just as the other day, when we motored, I pitied people in stuffy black trains," said Miss Rivers. ”

“ If the people of Friesland have great individuality, so have their meers. There was a canal through which we had to pass 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 spaces, 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. ”

“ 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 Circassian, who lured audiences into a hot theater with tinsel decorations like a Christmas-tree and hundreds of colored lights. ”

“ I had chosen market-day in Amersfoort for our drive, and as we sailed into the spacious square of the town, my passengers saw in one moment more Dutch costumes than in all their previous days in Hollow Land.
It was too late for the best of the picture; still, the market-place glittered with gold and silver helmets, and delicate spiral head-ornaments. Ear-rings flashed in the sun, and massive gold brooches and buckles. There was a moving rainbow of color and a clatter of sabots, as the market women packed up their wares ”

“ I knew this when Rob van Buren spoke of the two girls who were with him at the Prinzenhof on July tenth as his "American cousin and an English friend."
I can never fall in love with a Dutch girl now, for I have done the thing I did not mean to do, and it can't be undone in this world. Once and for all, that is settled, however it may go with me where the girl is concerned. But it will go hard if I do not have her in the end, and I shall if she is to be got; for the men of my blood soon make up their minds when they want a thing, and they do not rest much until it's theirs. ”

“ Mr. van Buren has been with us the last two days, and I can see that he watches his friend and me, if we chance to be together. I should like to know if he, too, has the idea that Jonkheer Brederode cares about me, and, if so, whether he wonders how it's possible for any man to admire me more than Nell, who is so beautiful and brilliant and amusing? I can't help being flattered that such an interesting person as the Jonkheer should like my society better than Nell's, though I can hardly believe it's true. ”

“ 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 canal, in the place where I had, or dreamed that I had, left her an hour ago. And having assembled 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. ”

“ She knew that Volendam had first been made famous twenty or thirty years ago by an artist named Clausen, who came by accident and went away to tell all his friends. She knew how the Hotel Spaander had been started to please the artists, and how it had grown year by year; and all the things that people told her she had written in a note-book which she wears dangling from a chatelaine. It does seem odd for a Scotswoman, and one of her rank, to be so keen about every detail of travel, that she must scribble it down in a book, in a frantic hurry. But then, many things about Lady MacNairne are odd. ”

“ Escape seemed hopeless, when Nell and Phyllis had an inspiration. They rushed in at the door of a miniature shop, with a few picture postcards and sweets in glass jars displayed in a dark window. Three minutes later they fought their way out through the crowd of strange dolls "come alive," and, like a farmer sowing seed, strewed pink and white lozenges over the heads of girls and boys. ”

“ I said, "if we took this for exploring Dordrecht and arrived at Middelburg to-morrow. Why are we in a hurry?"
Brederode laughed. "Ask Robert," he said.
But Robert's face and Phyllis's both answered before the question could be put. I guessed that Robert would have liked to stop the tour at Rotterdam (for what to him are the joys of traveling with a party compared to the bliss of the honeymoon?) , but that Phyllis would not cheat Nell of Zeeland, which has always been talked of as the climax of the trip; Zeeland the mysterious, Zeeland the strange, proud daughter of the sea. ”

“ Are you sure your chauffeur's a good man?"
"Not at all," said Starr, airily. "I merely know that he's a very young youth, who makes you feel like a grandfather at twenty-seven; who wriggles and turns pink if you speak to him suddenly, and when he wants his handkerchief to mop his perpetually moist forehead, pulls yards of cotton waste out of his pocket, by mistake. I've only his word for it—which I couldn't understand, as it was in Dutch—that he has the slightest knowledge of any motor. ”

“ He and Phyllis were the only ones among us who had the same air of cheerful, light-hearted anticipation at setting off for new scenes, which all used to have when the trip was but a few days old. For them there is no thought of any end, since the tour of life together is just beginning, full petrol ahead.
Even when she was "Lorelei," and had no concealments from the world, "Mascotte" never sped more bravely. Through the wide Noord Canal she took us as unconcernedly as if our hopes and fears for the future were nothing to her. ”

“ As my eyes searched the waste of green water and the low coasts of Beveland, all unexpectedly to me we rounded a point, and there was a half-hidden town, one graceful spire seeming to beckon where safety lay.
"It's Veere," said Alb. "You're sure to have heard of it: all artists have. But the thing of importance to us now is the canal which begins here, crosses the island of Walcheren and goes to Middelburg and Vlissingen. If only we can get in, and shut 'Wilhelmina' out!" ”

“ How are you to find it?" sighed Phyllis.
"Ask Alb to rapidly mention all islands in Holland, and perhaps it will come back to you," suggested the Mariner. "Begin with A, Alb."
"Not worth while wasting the letters of the alphabet," said I. "Lady MacNairne (the name invariably sticks in my throat) means Marken."
"That's it!" exclaimed the Chaperon. "How could you guess?"
"There's only one island that people talk about like that," I replied. "It's the great show place; and it's like going to the theater. The curtain rings up when the audience arrives, and rings down when it departs. ”

“ When a man sacrifices himself for a woman, he naturally likes to have the satisfaction of knowing that he has made a success; and I felt that a melancholy pleasure would be mine should I learn that Phyllis had profited by my kindness. It would have been flattering to my self-esteem, also, though perhaps disastrous to my ribs, if Robert van Buren had thrown himself upon my bosom, thanking me for his deliverance from bondage. ”

“ Elegance and beauty of form we mustn't look for: but I found myself surrounded by it in The Hague. There were streets of tall, brown palaces, far finer than the royal dwelling which Robert pointed out; the shops made me long to spring from the car and spend every penny set apart for the tour; the Binnenhof—that sinister theater of Dutch history—with its strangely grouped towers and palaces, and its huge squares, made me feel an insignificant insect with no right to opinions of any kind ”