Willem

“ I, Peter Grimm. The uncle who loved you and whom you tricked. Anne Marie is at the door,—the little girl who is ashamed to come home. Willem is at the door—your own flesh and blood—nameless! Katje, sobbing her heart out,—James—all of us. All! We are all at the door, Frederik! ”

“ Willem, he knew, was not the man for him. The honest Dutchman must be discharged at once on some pretext or other.
Carew sat on deck, pipe in mouth, meditating on these matters. He was alone on the yacht, for Willem had gone off on leave for a few hours to visit some of his relatives.
The sun was setting into a bank of rosy vapour that promised a continuance of fine weather. The hot day was closing with a [Pg 54] sultry eve. On that quiet canal, and on the narrow quay beneath the lofty houses, there was no sound or sign of life. ”

“ That's the glory of a circus. It's almost the one place where people can go and forget they were ever meant to be wise. And that's why I am going. That and because I wouldn't disappoint Willem. Miss a circus? Miss Billy Miller's Big Show? Not I. You may be too old for such follies, Fritz. But I'll never be."
"But, sir," said Frederik, "in case you should be taken ill——"
"I won't be."
"With no companion but that half-witted——"
"Willem is not half-witted. He has as much sense as any boy of his age. And more, in many ways. Why do you dislike him so, Fritz?" ”

“ He has stolen himself away, if nothing else.”
“I’ll bet my life,” exclaimed Willem, in a more positive tone than the others had ever yet heard him use, “that that man is an honest fellow, and that all he has told us is true, though I can’t account for his absence. He is a chief, and has the air of one.”
“Yes, he is a chief, no doubt,” said Hendrik, sneeringly. “Every African in this part of the world is a chief, if he only has a family. ”

“ The rage of Hendrik, on awaking from a brief period of stupor and finding himself fast bound, would be difficult to describe. There can be no greater agony to a brave and sensitive man than to find himself helpless for revenge after having undergone a deep humiliation.
Groot Willem, no less brave but of a different temperament, was more resigned to the indignity they were enduring. His anger had been aroused by the attempt to take from him a thing he greatly prized,—his gun. ”

“ Laying the picture on the desk, he turned guiltily, in time to see Willem speeding across the room toward the bay window.
"What are you doing down here?" demanded Frederik. "If you're so sick, you ought not to get out of bed. That's the place for sick boys."
"The circus!" mumbled Willem in the queer, strained voice of a sleep walker. "The circus music waked me up. So I had to come and hear it."
"Circus music?" repeated Frederik amazedly, as he watched the boy tugging at the rain-tightened window sash to force it upward.
"Yes, it woke me. I can see the parade if I can get this window open. ”

“ What more likely, in his own fevered unhappiness, than that he should think Peter Grimm said "I am very unhappy"? Would a man of Peter Grimm's strength and shrewdness come back to earth and tell the child nothing of greater importance than Willem says he told? And, if he could make Willem understand such phrases as "I am very unhappy" and "Kathrien must not marry Frederik," could he not have made the boy understand anything else? ”

“ No one will hurt you."
"Oh, yes," denied Willem, in terror, "he will. I don't want to say his name! Because—because——"
"Why won't you tell his name?" insisted McPherson.
"Hurry, Willem! Hurry!" begged the Dead Man.
"Oh," wailed Willem, with another terrified glance at the door, "I'm afraid! I'm afraid! [Pg 261] He'll make Anne Marie cry again. And me! And me!"
"Why are you afraid of him?" asked Kathrien. "Was Frederik the man that came to see Anne Marie——?"
"Kathrien!" primly reproved Mrs. Batholommey. ”

“ The seeing of his mother's photograph brought before Willem the recollection of scenes in which she had played a part; scenes that had been crowded from his mind by later events.
Frederik had just spoken harshly to him. And that recalled harsh words Frederik had spoken to the woman in the picture. And thus, quite simply, his memory supplied the one needful link. What is remarkable in all the foregoing? In fact, Shakespeare's Horatio says:
"There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave, to tell us this!" ”

“ He glanced about the room, his eyes resting at last on Willem's door in the gallery above. The door swung open, and Dr. McPherson appeared on the threshold. In one hand he held a candle-stick. In the hollow of his right arm lay Willem, a Dutch patchwork bedquilt wrapped around him.
"All right, laddie," McPherson was saying in a voice whose softness would have amazed the Batholommeys. "Since you want so badly to sleep downstairs, you shall. The sofa by the fire is just as snug as your own bed. What Mistress Batholommey will say to my giving in to a sick little boy's whim, I don't know. ”

“ Under the excitement of extreme fortune, whether it be good or bad, people do not act with much wisdom.
So thought Hendrik as he called the attention of Willem to the fact that they had started out for the purpose of finding the spoor but not following it; that they would require the help of Congo and Spoor’em; that they must provide themselves with food and other articles necessary for a two or three days’ journey. ”

“ Frederik winced as though he had been lashed across the face.
"I sometimes wonder," continued McPherson, urged to fresh vehemence by sight of the effect he was scoring, "if hell holds a worse criminal or a more mercilessly punished one than the man or woman who lets a little child suffer needlessly—who makes it suffer. And of all the suffering that can be heaped upon a child, everything else is like a feather's weight compared to sending it out in life with a name such as Willem would have borne. Oh, but God's merciful when He finds little children crying in the dark and leads them Home! ”

“ Kathrien, the bed being re-made, hurried downstairs to get Willem.
"His mind is wandering," said Mrs. Batholommey. "He imagines all sorts of ridiculous, impossible things."
Kathrien dropped into a chair by the fire and gathered the fragile little body into her lap. ”

“ Hans now volunteered a bit of advice, which was listened to by Willem, as being the most sensible yet given.
“Our late captives,” said that philosopher, “have made the most of a good opportunity for escaping. ”

“ Willem."
"Willem Grimm?"
"No, ma'am. Anne Marie's Willem. I—Oh, Mr. Hartmann!" he broke off, catching sight of the big young man who drew near, "Mynheer Peter said you'd be on this train. Now I can have some one to walk back with."
Slipping his hand into Hartmann's, Willem turned his back on the platformful of perspiring beneficiaries and, together, the two struck off down the yellow, dusty road toward the double row of [Pg 16] giant elms that marked the beginning of the village street.
Willem shuffled in high contentment alongside his big companion. ”

“ The commodore, Willem de Vlaming, who was going out to India with the Geelvink, Nyptang, and Wezel, was, therefore, ordered to make a search for them. The account of this voyage, which was printed at Amsterdam in 1701, 4to, is exceedingly scarce; and after many years enquiry, the editor deemed himself fortunate in procuring it through the medium of Mr. Müller, of Amsterdam, and a translation of it is here given. ”

“ His explanation of the reason why they were not killed immediately showed him to be so well acquainted with the manners and customs of the people into whose hands they had fallen, that, after its relation, Willem and Hendrik could no longer doubt the truth of his assertions.
He said that white men were never put to death within sight of the kraal, lest the affair might be talked of by the women and children in the presence of other white men who might pass through the country. ”

“ Rhys had grown wiser. [Pg 278]
''Deed, mother, Willem do be having his "thinks." Best be leaving him alone.'
'But he do not even be knitting, look you!'
'Never mind, mother fach; he do be "studdying," as he do call it. We work with our hands ”

“ After a few minutes, finding that Carew was obdurate and would insist on engaging the most loathed man in all Rotterdam as mate, Willem rolled up his scanty luggage into a bundle, demanded and received the few guilders that were owing to him, and hurried on shore, grumbling uncouth Dutch oaths to himself as he went.
Then the Frenchman, who had been observing the scene with a cynical smile, laughed bitterly.
"Had I been the fiend himself that fat idiot could not have been much more terrified at [Pg 68] the sight of me. Ah, how they love me—these worthy people of Rotterdam!" ”

“ Ah, sure, and the fox might be glad to catch the young goose near his hole. No, no, Willem, you must not run into danger. There be no need to break your mother's heart as well as mine. If God speed my errand I shall not be alone. Better God's arm than man's army.'
As her cloak went back to the peg, William slipped out through the farmyard, and was off down hill as fast as his legs would carry him. Davy and Jonet, returning from the potato-field where they had been industriously at work, undisturbed and unaware of the overwhelming trouble nearer home, called out to know where he was going ”

“ Willemstad was not to be Willemstad—city, town, burg—it was to be an inhabited flask of curaçao, a kind of West Indian bubble blown from the lips of the Northeast Trades, sweet with the breath of wild orange. The man with the bottles was to be a more subtle tempter than the hamper-woman, and—but it didn’t happen that way at all. ”

“ On his return he had found Willem installed at the Grimm home, a living, ever-present menace [Pg 219] and reminder to him. And, despite a soft heart and a normally decent nature, Frederik had, little by little, been forced by his own past and his own hopes into a course that at times was hateful to him. Ten thousand men, far worse than he, walk the streets of every big city and sleep snug o' nights with no grinning Conscience-Skull to break their rest. A thousand well-meaning, harmless sons of dominating and domineering parents are forced, as was he, into by-roads as hateful to them. ”

“ Dead, of course. Dead."
"Are—are you sure? Because just now——"
"Oh, go to bed! At once, do you hear! Go, or I'll have you punished!"
Under this dire threat and the scowl that went with it, not even the Dead Man's power could stem Willem's defeat. Up the stairs he scuttled. At the door of his room, the fever thirst in his hot, parched throat for the moment overcame fear.
"Could—could I have a drink of water?" he whimpered, gazing longingly down at the full ice-water pitcher on the sideboard. [Pg 231]
An angry glance from Frederik sent him into his own room like a rabbit into its warren. ”

“ This intention was opposed by the chief and others of the tribe, when an affray ensued, in which Groot Willem measured his strength against half a score of the natives. In their attempt to take his gun from him, several were hurled to the earth, and amongst them the chief himself. He did not desire to discharge the piece. A shot could only have killed one, while his enemies were legion. ”

“ Or did the ghost of a circus parade meander through our Main street at night, accompanied by a Spook brass band? Each idea is quite as probable as the other.
And, from the boy's own statement, Peter Grimm said to him nothing original or even betokening a mind more developed than a child's. Willem knew Kathrien was going to marry Frederik. He knew she did not want to and that he himself disliked and feared Frederik. ”

“ A breath of wind that came through the trees, but in Willems' fancy seemed to be driven by her moving figure, rippled in a hot wave round his body and scorched his face in a burning touch. He drew it in with a long breath, the last long breath of a soldier before the rush of battle, of a lover before he takes in his arms the adored woman; the breath that gives courage to confront the menace of death or the storm of passion. ”

“ Willems, however, was soon recognized as the unquestioned leader of the Flemish popular movement, the chief plank in whose platform he made the complete equality of the languages in the government and the law courts. He died at Ghent in 1846.
Among his writings, which were very numerous, the most important were: Les Sciences et les arts (1816) , Aux Belges (1818) ; Étude sur les origines et l'histoire des temps primitifs de la ville d'Anvers (1828) ; Mélanges de littérature et d'histoire (1829) ; besides several learned critical editions of old Flemish texts. ”

“ On entering its enclosure the first person they encountered was the boer Mynheer Van Ormon.
“I see pat luck mit you, mine poys,” said the Dutchman, as they rode up to him. “I knowed it would pe so. The cameels have goed too far for you.”
“Yes, too far to the south,” answered Willem. “We have heard of them, and must be off immediately. Where are our companions?”
“They goed away yester morgen to live where the oxen get grass. They now waiting for you at the south.”
“That’s all right,” said Hendrik. “We must hasten to join them; but I think we’d be better of something to eat first. I’m starving. ”

“ The Malay boat crew lay back together, and the gig sprang away from the quay heading towards the brig’s riding light.
Such was the beginning of Willems’ career.
Lingard learned in half an hour all that there was of Willems’ commonplace story. Father outdoor clerk of some ship-broker in Rotterdam; mother dead. The boy quick in learning, but idle in school. ”

“ In that branch of landscape-painting in which form and lines were sought after not so much for the sake of mood or emotion as for their own sake, in that search for purity which the increasing admiration for it had aroused, I must first mention Maurits Willem van der Valk, born in Amsterdam in 1857, the amiable theorist who, at an early date, cherished the desire to make of a water-colour a pure water-colour, of an etching an etching, light and transparent, and nothing more. ”