J. Irwin Brown

“ WILL KATHLEEN STUDY DUTCH?
On reaching the Doelen, we found a hasty scrawl from the very man we had been talking of—van Leeuwen—inviting Terence and myself to a cycling tour in his neighbourhood.
“Well, then, I’ll go next Friday,” Terence broke out; “at least, if you’re ready then, Jack. We’ll have a grand time. Dad is all right now; and that funny little kid is on the mend. So we can go with a clear conscience. Say, yes.”
“Ah, that’s like you boys”, said Kathleen banteringly, but without the ghost of a smile, “to go cycling about, enjoying yourselves, no matter what happens to others! ”

“ Just then a motor-cycle turned the corner at a fiendish speed, and was nearly over him. Uncle is the most helpless of mortals at such times—and he was stepping hurriedly into the canal, when Jan bounded across the road and pulled him right.
The bike-tourist must have been a heartless fellow; for he never swerved, but bore down at full tilt on both rescuer and rescued, while they were still on the edge of the water.
The youthful Jan, however, is both original and daring; for he turned the motor man aside as cleverly as if he had Boyton in his hand. ”

“ It was a fussy business getting him to agree even to this, and in consequence I quite forgot about my dictionary and “walking-tour notes”—which were strapped up in the bag.
Indeed, I didn’t notice the neglect till we were far away from the hotel. But there was no Dutch needed for a long time.
It was an exhilarating experience to go careering along by that weird, threatening sea in the fresh morning air. The scent of herbs and wild-flowers on the dunes greeted us when we took a turn inland: and the colours of everything around us kept changing with incredible swiftness. ”

“ There was a book-stall near, but nobody at it, [50] as far as I could see. The whole street sounded hollow; and everything dripped. It made me shiver to look at the stone-pillars, oozy and moist, with condensed sea-fog trickling down. The glaring street-lamps hardly lit up the scene; but they showed the damp. Polyphemus gave a distant whoop, as if it were his last: and the Spectre munched. She hadn’t once looked up.
It all felt like a dream—except for the butchers’ boys.
“Wat doet ze—die oude mejuffrouw?” I enquired.
“Ze zit te eten,” was the prompt reply. ”

“ At the crisis, when the little sufferer was really in danger, she used to watch by him hours at a stretch, to relieve the helpless mother.
The serious turn came all at once; and no aid was at hand. Jan was in pain, and wandered in his talk, crying out that the motor-fiets was hunting him into the canal, for having rescued a vreemdeling; and pouring forth such a torrent of elementary English and Boyton-Dutch as surprised us all. ”

“ It was van Leeuwen, who had been expecting us all day, after he had heard about our call, from the indignant butler. He had given up all hope of seeing us, but we passed him by in the dark, talking and laughing. He had followed hot-speed to the station—in time to explain the mysteries of the D-trein. My spirits rose. The world was still ruled by reason. Of course we went back with our rescuer. That was the original plan, and I had a grammar to send with him to the Hague. ”

“ You would be amazed to see the confidence with which O’Neill acts as guide to the MacNamaras.
MacNamara père is mostly buried in museums, or is on the hunt for archaeological papers, so Kathleen and Terence are left on Jack’s hands.
He has been everywhere with them, and has evidently impressed them with his astounding Dutch. To them it seems both correct and fluent. They have only had three days of it as yet, and haven’t had time to find him out. Kathleen is as haughty as ever; and I can see she chafes at being obliged to submit to the direction of a mere boy, as she regards Jack. ”

“ WELL EARNED REPOSE.
“Tour or no tour, to-morrow,” I said to myself, heaving a sigh of relief, after my race to the pillar-box; “We’re on the brink of a romance, if the protagonists only knew it. A little bad Dutch now seems all that is required. And we can rely on Boyton.”
Queer, when you think of it, that you sometimes hold people’s destinies in the hollow of your hand! ”

“ Boyton’s monograph on pronunciation is his finest piece of work. He never quite reaches that level elsewhere; and, if he is destined after a hundred and fifty years to achieve a name, it had better rest on his ‘Doctrine of the Native’ than on his Syntax.
So van Dam assured us, when our little party met in his room the week before Christmas.
We had all been busy; but busy or not, the Cape men found time to skim over Boyton’s entertaining paragraphs, as, indeed, we guessed, from the frequent guffaws and readings that reached us from time to time through the closed doors. ”

“ Nearly every thing had its Dutch name gummed on to it, such as ‘spiegel lijst,’ ‘behangsel,’ ‘schotel of bakje,’ and even on his sleeve ‘mouw van mijn jas.’
“It’s all right!” he burst forth enthusiastically. “Doing Berlitz Dutch, you see! Self-taught, too! Splendid plan. Three hundred words a day. I’ll have two thousand new nouns at my fingers’ ends before the Macs are back from the Drachenfels. ”

“ It was marvellous to see how Kathleen comforted the poor mother, without either grammar, Polite Dialogue, or the use of Het.
JAN’S INCOHERENCES.
I grew quite jealous and envious. Here was I who had been slaving at syntax and accidence [72] for weeks, and I couldn’t carry on an intelligent conversation for two minutes without deviating into metaphysics, or getting into a quarrel; while my cousin (who said she hated Dutch) could get through the niceties of sick-room nursing, and the subtleties of heartening up the poor hysterical mother, with the utmost ease and success. ”

“ HOW O’NEILL LEARNED TO PRONOUNCE.
“I never could quite understand,” said Bart van Dam, the big Cape giant, who had carried off Boyton the week before, “how O’Neill managed, out of such an extraordinary book, to pick up anything of the pronunciation. For, as a matter of fact, he does get quite close to some of the sounds; and I can nearly always guess what he is trying to say. ”

“ MacNamara almost every day; but Kathleen had kept studiously aloof.
“I know he likes father,” she said, “and I’m glad he came so often to see him. Not very interesting, otherwise! In any case he has suddenly vanished into space!”
The evening before, when she was on her way to my landlady’s to watch by the sick boy, van Leeuwen had met her right in front of the Mauritshuis. But she had treated him with such stately indifference, and greeted his remarks with such frigid courtesy, that the good-natured fellow was really hurt. He had in fact returned the same evening to Arnhem. ”

“ Its slate became steel-blue—the steel-blue deepened into purple shading off into amethyst, while the sky and the air all about us grew rosy, then saffron, then silver.
Over and across the rolling hills we trudged, our spirits rising every instant. Why shouldn’t we keep on till we got opposite Haarlem, then strike off east, do that city, and return by rail? ”

“ Was there ever anything between her and van Leeuwen? They were at the University about the same time, and it seems van Leeuwen was a great friend of the father, who had him down to his place in the country and showed him his manuscripts. But I believe Kathleen couldn’t stand him. They used always to be arguing about the Suffragettes, and passed for official enemies, in a way,—at least as uncompromising leaders on opposite sides. She was fond of saying that van Leeuwen was a standing proof that mere learning couldn’t enlarge the mind. ”

“ I shouted through the closed door, “you may come as soon as ever you like; but there’ll be no bicycle tour to-day. I’m not nearly ready yet. I’ve all the nouns from T to Z to learn yet; and it’ll take me another week. Catch me leaving this neighbourhood without those nouns! No, my boy. But I’ll take a tramp with you to the seaside, if you like.”
He didn’t wait for my explanations but pranced off grumbling, and I didn’t see him till noon. He was then quite willing to fall in with my project of a long walk—first by the strand to Noordwijk, then inland through the dunes, and so on to Haarlem. ”

“ I cried in dismay. “Terence, let us fly! for my brain won’t stand it.” [102]
IS MIJNHEER GEENGAGEERD?
“No, no!” he interposed hastily. “Don’t be silly or hysterical, now. Look here. I’ve been working the thing out in my head and think I can see some sense in it. Perhaps it’s all very simple. Van Leeuwen may be only occupied for the moment, and so can see us if we wait. Just ask if they mean that he’s merely engaged. He mayn’t be sick at all. There’s the word for engaged.”
And he reached me the dictionary with this thumb opposite: geengageerd, verpanden, verloofd. ”

“ What’s this about engert?”
“Oh”, said O’Neill; “that’s a reminder about a neat phrase I picked up from my landlady. Did I never tell you?
“Well. When my cousin came over, you know, on his way to Germany, he stayed with me a couple of days. He’s very athletic—a fine wiry, muscular young fellow, lithe as a willow, as you are aware. So I wasn’t astonished at overhearing the landlady and a crony of hers discussing him. ”

“ She couldn’t remain quite smileless; but grew interested enough in Dutch to demand my monograph and—above all—the Grammar!
“You shall have them both,” I assured her,—“the booklet on the spot; and the Grammar, when I get as far as Arnhem and don’t need to use it for a while.”
“Couldn’t I have it sooner? I’m dying with curiosity to see that awful book. Or, when you are there, and any of your friends are coming to the Hague, just send it with them.”
“Yes. There’s a ‘coach’ coming up in a day or two. I’ll send it along.” ”

“ A GOSSIPY LETTER.
“Don’t talk any more about that grammar-book,” I interposed. “It’s all very well in its way, but it doesn’t account for half Jack’s adventures. Now I can let you into a secret. Please don’t look so apprehensive, O’Neill! As it happens, I had a descriptive letter from Enderby just about the time that Jack was making the most brilliant progress with his Dutch vocabulary. It gave me a vivid picture of what was going on in the Hague when this linguist of ours got really started to work. ”

“ N.B. Most Adverbs may be distinguished from adjectives by this rule: If a substantive is added after them, they will make nonsense; whereas, being joined to an Adjective or a Verb, they will make good sense.
“What I admire most,” said van Dam handing back The Work to O’Neill, “is the elasticity of the rules. He says, for instance, that you can render I know by ik weet, and on the whole he is inclined to recommend that way of it. But he never commits himself. ”

“ If ten o’clock and a half works out at “half-elf-uur,” it is not hard to reckon what ten guilders-and-a-half ought to be; so I gave it with relish: “En, Juffrouw, wat denkt U? Het kost half-elf-gulden!”
Jaap looked at his watch and shook his head. Then he shook the watch, put it back in his pocket and fastened his eyes again on me.
“Nee, hoor!” exclaimed the mother, who had now begun to help a special dish; “Nee; zoo laat is [122] het niet. Mijnheer O’Neill, neem een stukje pudding—toe dan—heel verteerbaar.” ”

“ The sunset, magnificent though it was, could hardly banish the deep sleepiness that seized us. Terence, who was in better training than I, sat up smoking a while, but I heard him go off to his room before I fell [57] over. All the music, laughter, and talk about the place, never in the slightest degree disturbed our slumber. ”

“ We all quizzed O’Neill unmercifully about the Civilized Lady, and read some dialogues with immense satisfaction. So uproarious, indeed, did the fun become at last, that our neighbours on the stair came trooping in. Three of them were Cape-students, hard-working medicals, whom we never heard speaking Dutch, though we were well aware they must have known it. Like the others, they insisted on a full explanation of the tumult, and we showed them “Boyton”. They didn’t mind so much about the Civilized Lady ”

“ He evidently regretted his inability to speak Dutch; but he made up for his silence by reaching the boy the window-strap, with a nod of comradeship. The little fellow took it eagerly and, after playing with it a moment or two, slid off his seat and actually climbed up beside Truculence (the scorner of everything non-British) and pushing Truculence to one side, looked out of Truculence’s window.
So surprisingly passive was my severe compatriot at all this that I hazarded a guess, and said: “You have a boy of five at home?” ”

“ Jan’s reminiscences are all about my Dutch. Well, I’ll lend you my diary, and the most entertaining Grammar in Holland. Besides, I’ve written a monograph on obvious blunders, English into Dutch. Read these, now, when you’re tending this convalescent boy-hero of yours. He’ll understand them, I’ll be [79] bound; and it’ll shake him up, and do you a world of good yourself. ”