Part 64

"I shall show him that I am his friend," I answered decidedly. "I like and admire him, and I hope I shall keep his friendship always."

"That's a pretty beginning to what may be a pretty romance, isn't it, Tibe, darling?" asked Lady MacNairne.

I tried not to blush, but usually the more you try not to blush the more you do. It was so with me then, just as it was when we were coming into harbor at Volendam, and everybody said to Nell, "There is your cousin Robert!" or "Why is your cousin Robert here?"

I was glad to stoop down and pat Tibe, who is the nicest dog I ever knew. It's true, as Nell says, he is "geared ridiculously low"; and having such a short nose and stick out lower jaw, when he wants to eat or smell things, he has practically to stand on his head; also he can never see anything that goes on under his chin. She says, too, that when he's troubled, and a lot of lines meet together at one point in the middle of his forehead, his face looks exactly like Clapham Junction; and so it does. Nevertheless, he's beautiful, and has the sort of features Old Masters gave dogs in pictures, features more like those of people than animals, and a human expression in the eyes.

It is odd, Nell and I used to tell each other every thought we had, and we talked over all the people we knew; but now, though I think a good deal about Jonkheer Brederode, and wonder how he really does feel toward us both, I never speak about him to Nell when I can avoid it, and she never mentions his name to me.

I don't know what happened to make her suddenly nice to him at Amsterdam, but something did, and she is nice still, only her manner is different somehow. I can hardly tell what the difference is, but it is there. At first, when we went to Spaakenberg and the other places, before Lady MacNairne said that thing, she was agreeable to the Jonkheer in a brilliant, bewitching, coquettish sort of way, as though she wished after all to attract him. But since that evening at the Hotel Spaander, in Volendam, she has been quite subdued. Jonkheer Brederode is quiet and rather distant, too, and sometimes I think he speaks to Nell coldly, as if he distrusted such shy signs of friendliness as she still shows.

Now, it seems to me that he and Mr. van Buren and Mr. Starr are three friends worth having, not just the accidental sort of friends ("friendines" Nell calls that kind) who happen to be your friends because you were thrown with them somewhere, and you would not miss them dreadfully if by-and-by you drifted apart. They seem ones you were destined to meet, just as much as you are destined to be born, and to die; friends intended to be in your life and never go out of it. I scarcely knew in the beginning of our acquaintance which of the three I liked best; and now that I do know, I'm equally nice to them all, because one should do as one would be done by, and I love to have people nice to me.

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. But somehow it would be nice to have Mr. van Buren believe it, as then he would be obliged to think me quite a fascinating girl, even though it probably wouldn't have occurred to him before--being engaged and so on--to regard me in that light of his own accord.

I should love to talk to Nell about all this in the sweet old way we used to have, and I do miss a confidante. Lady MacNairne is a most wonderful little woman, who manages every one of us, and we would do anything to please her; yet I should never dream of confiding in her. I don't know why, unless it's because she's all blue spectacles and gray hair. And if you never can see what people are thinking about behind their glasses, whether they're sighing over your troubles or laughing, how can you tell them sacred things about yourself?

Sometimes I think it a pity that Mr. Starr is a man. If only he were a girl he would be the most delightful person to have for a confidant. In spite of his impish moods, which make him seem often like an "elfin boy," as Jonkheer Brederode says, he's extraordinarily sympathetic. I feel that he understands Nell and me thoroughly, and as he is good to look at, and clever and fascinating in his manner when he chooses, I wonder why neither of us has fallen in love with him. But very likely Nell has. If she hasn't she has been flirting with him horribly.

XXII

It was like finding an old friend to see Mr. van Buren waiting to meet us at quaint little Volendam. He explained that Freule Menela had gone to Brussels to pay a visit; so, hearing from me when we would arrive, he ran out to inquire how his cousin was getting on. When his fiancee came back, he said, he would bring her and his sisters to see us.

Our first sight of Volendam was at sunset. Everything seemed so beautiful, and I felt so happy walking up to the hotel where we were to spend the night, that I should have liked to sing. Great clouds had boiled up out of the west; but underneath, a wonderful, almost supernatural light streamed over the sea. The sky was indigo, and the water a sullen lead color; but along the horizon blazed a belt of gold, and the sails on a fleet of fishing-boats were scarlet, like a bed of red geraniums blooming in the sea.

It was in this strange light that we walked from the harbor up the main street of the village, which is a long dyke of black Norwegian granite, protecting little pointed-roofed houses, the lower stories of a sober color, the upper ones with the peaked gables pea-green or blue, and the sabots of the family lying on the door-steps. Here and there in a window were a few bits of gaudy china for sale, or a sabot over a door as the sign of a shoe-shop; but we hardly looked at the houses, so interesting were their inmates, who seemed to be all in the street.

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."

There they sat, tailor-fashion, with their legs crossed and their cloth or fur caps tilted over their eyes as they smoked (very handsome, bold eyes, some of them!) and, passing up and down, up and down in front of the row as if in review, with a musical clatter of sabots, bands of women, lovely girls, and charming little buttons of children.

Nell and I admired the costumes more than at Marken, though they're not as striking, only innocently pretty. But I can't imagine anything more becoming than the transparent white caps that fold back and flare out over the ears like a soaring bird's wings. Perhaps it was partly the effect of the light, but the young girls in their straight dark bodices, with flowered handkerchief-chemisettes, full blue skirts--pieced with pale-tinted stuff from waist to hips--and those flying, winged caps, looked angelic.

They walked with their arms round each other's waists, or else they knitted with gleaming needles. Quite toddling creatures had blue yokes over their shoulders, and carried splashing pails of water as big as themselves, or they had round tots of babies tucked under their arms. But whatever they were doing--men, women, girls, boys, and babies--all stopped doing it instantly when they spied Tibe. I don't believe they knew he was a dog; and though he has invariably had a succes fou wherever we have been, I never saw people so mad about him as at Volendam.

The Jonkheer says there are nearly three thousand inhabitants, and half of them were after Tibe on the dyke as we walked toward the hotel. The news of him seemed to fly, as they say tidings travel through the Indian bazaars. Faces appeared in windows; then quaint figures popped out of doors, and Tibe was actually mobbed. A procession trailed after him, shouting, laughing, calling.

Tibe was flattered at first, and preened himself for admiration; but presently he became worried, then disgusted, and ran before the storm of voices and wooden shoes. We were all glad to get him into the hotel.

Such a quaint hotel, with incredibly neat, box-like rooms, whose varnished, green wooden walls you could use for mirrors. I didn't know that it was famous, but it seems that it is; also the landlord and his many daughters. Every artist who has ever come to Volendam has painted a picture for the big room which you enter as you walk in from the street, and I saw half a dozen which I should love to own.

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; but though her complexion (what one can see of it) looks fresh, if pale, and she has no hollows or wrinkles, her hair is gray, and she wears blue spectacles, with only a bit of face really visible. One hardly knows what she does look like. Nevertheless, the men of our party are her slaves; and it is the same at hotels. If at first landlords say Tibe can't live in the house, the next minute, when she has wheedled a little, they are patting his head, calling him "good dog," and telling his mistress that they will make an exception in his case.

The morning after we arrived in Volendam I got up early, because Mr. van Buren offered to show me the place if I cared to take a walk. It was only half-past eight when we strolled out of the hotel, and the first person I met was Lady MacNairne. She had been walking, and was on her way back, looking like the Old Woman in the Shoe, surrounded by children of all sizes. She had made friends with them, and taken their photographs, and their grown-up sisters had told her lots of things about Volendam.

She had found out that as soon as the fisherfolk's sons begin to dress like boys, they are given their buckles and neck-buttons: the gold or silver knobs which are different for each fishing-village of Holland; so that, if a man is found drowned, you can tell where he comes from by his buttons.

She had learned that the trousers are baggy, because in storms the men don't get as wet as in tight ones. That the women wear eight petticoats, not only because it's "the mode," but because it's considered beautiful for a girl to look stout; and besides, it's not thought modest to show how you are shaped.

Another thing she learned was that, just as the boys must have their buckles and buttons (and ear-rings, if they can get them), each Volendam girl, if she wishes to be anybody, must have a coral necklace with a gold cross; several silver rings; a silver buckle for her purse; and a scent-bottle with a silver top and foot. No girl could hope to marry well, Lady MacNairne said, without these things; and as the ones who told her had no rings or scent-bottles in their collections, she would get her nephew to buy them. It wouldn't do for him to make the presents himself, as the girls were proud, though their fathers earned only five gulden a week; but she would give them, and then it would be all right. One of the girls was unhappy, as she was in love with a young fisherman, and they were too poor to marry, so she expected to go to Rotterdam as a nursemaid.

"It seems," said Lady MacNairne, "that Volendam girls are in demand all over Holland, as nurses; they're so good to children and animals. But this one won't have to go, for dear Ronny must supply her dot."