Dame Brinker earned a scant support for her family by raising vegetables, spinning, and knitting. Once she had worked on board the barges plying up and down the canal and had occasionally been harnessed with other women to the towing rope of a pakschuyt plying between Broek and Amsterdam. But when Hans had grown strong and large, he had insisted on doing all such drudgery in her place. Besides, her husband had become so very helpless of late that he required her constant care. Although not having as much intelligence as a little child, he was yet strong of arm and very hearty, and Dame Brinker had sometimes great trouble in controlling him.
“Ah! children, he was so good and steady,” she would sometimes say, “and as wise as a lawyer. Even the burgomaster would stop to ask him a question, and now, alack! he doesn’t know his wife and little ones. You remember the father, Hans, when he was himself—a great brave man—don’t you?”
“Yes, indeed, Mother, he knew everything and could do anything under the sun—and how he would sing! Why, you used to laugh and say it was enough to set the windmills dancing.”
“So I did. Bless me! how the boy remembers! Gretel, child, take that knitting needle from your father, quick; he’ll get it in his eyes maybe; and put the shoe on him. His poor feet are like ice half the time, but I can’t keep ‘em covered, all I can do—” And then, half wailing, half humming, Dame Brinker would sit down and fill the low cottage with the whirr of her spinning wheel.
Nearly all the outdoor work, as well as the household labor, was performed by Hans and Gretel. At certain seasons of the year the children went out day after day to gather peat, which they would stow away in square, bricklike pieces, for fuel. At other times, when homework permitted, Hans rode the towing-horses on the canals, earning a few stivers *{A stiver is worth about two cents of our money.} a day, and Gretel tended geese for the neighboring farmers.
Hans was clever at carving in wood, and both he and Gretel were good gardeners. Gretel could sing and sew and run on great, high homemade stilts better than any other girl for miles around. She could learn a ballad in five minutes and find, in its season, any weed or flower you could name; but she dreaded books, and often the very sight of the figuring board in the old schoolhouse would set her eyes swimming. Hans, on the contrary, was slow and steady. The harder the task, whether in study or daily labor, the better he liked it. Boys who sneered at him out of school, on account of his patched clothes and scant leather breeches, were forced to yield him the post of honor in nearly every class. It was not long before he was the only youngster in the school who had not stood at least ONCE in the corner of horrors, where hung a dreaded whip, and over it this motto: “Leer, leer! jou luigaart, of dit endje touw zal je leeren!” *{Learn! learn! you idler, or this rope’s end shall teach you.}
It was only in winter that Gretel and Hans could be spared to attend school, and for the past month they had been kept at home because their mother needed their services. Raff Brinker required constant attention, and there was black bread to be made, and the house to be kept clean, and stockings and other things to be knitted and sold in the marketplace.
While they were busily assisting their mother on this cold December morning, a merry troop of girls and boys came skimming down the canal. There were fine skaters among them, and as the bright medley of costumes flitted by, it looked from a distance as though the ice had suddenly thawed and some gay tulip bed were floating along on the current.
There was the rich burgomaster’s daughter Hilda van Gleck, with her costly furs and loose-fitting velvet sack; and, nearby, a pretty peasant girl, Annie Bouman, jauntily attired in a coarse scarlet jacket and a blue skirt just short enough to display the gray homespun hose to advantage. Then there was the proud Rychie Korbes, whose father, Mynheer van Korbes, was one of the leading men of Amsterdam; and, flocking closely around her, Carl Schummel, Peter and Ludwig van Holp, Jacob Poot, and a very small boy rejoicing in the tremendous name of Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck. There were nearly twenty other boys and girls in the party, and one and all seemed full of excitement and frolic.
Up and down the canal within the space of a half mile they skated, exerting their racing powers to the utmost. Often the swiftest among them was seen to dodge from under the very nose of some pompous lawgiver or doctor who, with folded arms, was skating leisurely toward the town; or a chain of girls would suddenly break at the approach of a fat old burgomaster who, with gold-headed cane poised in air, was puffing his way to Amsterdam. Equipped in skates wonderful to behold, with their superb strappings and dazzling runners curving over the instep and topped with gilt balls, he would open his fat eyes a little if one of the maidens chanced to drop him a curtsy but would not dare to bow in return for fear of losing his balance.
Not only pleasure seekers and stately men of note were upon the canal. There were workpeople, with weary eyes, hastening to their shops and factories; market women with loads upon their heads; peddlers bending with their packs; bargemen with shaggy hair and bleared faces, jostling roughly on their way; kind-eyed clergymen speeding perhaps to the bedsides of the dying; and, after a while, groups of children with satchels slung over their shoulders, whizzing past, toward the distant school. One and all wore skates except, indeed, a muffled-up farmer whose queer cart bumped along on the margin of the canal.
Before long our merry boys and girls were almost lost in the confusion of bright colors, the ceaseless motion, and the gleaming of skates flashing back the sunlight. We might have known no more of them had not the whole party suddenly come to a standstill and, grouping themselves out of the way of the passersby, all talked at once to a pretty little maiden, whom they had drawn from the tide of people flowing toward the town.
“Oh, Katrinka!” they cried in one breath, “have you heard of it? The race—we want you to join!”
“What race?” asked Katrinka, laughing. “Don’t all talk at once, please, I can’t understand.”
Everyone panted and looked at Rychie Korbes, who was their acknowledged spokeswoman.
“Why,” said Rychie, “we are to have a grand skating match on the twentieth, on Mevrouw van Gleck’s birthday. It’s all Hilda’s work. They are going to give a splendid prize to the best skater.”
“Yes,” chimed in half a dozen voices, “a beautiful pair of silver skates—perfectly magnificent—with, oh! such straps and silver bells and buckles!”
“WHO said they had bells?” put in a small voice of the boy with the big name.
“I say so, Master Voost,” replied Rychie.
“So they have”; “No, I’m sure they haven’t”; “OH, how can you say so?”; “It’s an arrow”; “And Mynheer van Korbes told MY mother they had bells”—came from the excited group, but Mynheer Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck essayed to settle the matter with a decisive “Well, you don’t any of you know a single thing about it; they haven’t a sign of a bell on them, they—”
“Oh! oh!” and the chorus of conflicting opinions broke forth again.
“The girls’ pair is to have bells,” interposed Hilda quietly, “but there is to be another pair for the boys with an arrow engraved upon the sides.”
“THERE! I told you so!” cried nearly all the youngsters in one breath.
Katrinka looked at them with bewildered eyes.
“Who is to try?” she asked.
“All of us,” answered Rychie. “It will be such fun! And you must, too, Katrinka. But it’s schooltime now, we will talk it all over at noon. Oh! you will join, of course.”
Katrinka, without replying, made a graceful pirouette and laughing out a coquettish, “Don’t you hear the last bell? Catch me!” darted off toward the schoolhouse standing half a mile away on the canal.
All started, pell-mell, at this challenge, but they tried in vain to catch the bright-eyed, laughing creature who, with golden hair streaming in the sunlight, cast back many a sparkling glance of triumph as she floated onward.
Beautiful Katrinka! Flushed with youth and health, all life and mirth and motion, what wonder thine image, ever floating in advance, sped through one boy’s dreams that night! What wonder that it seemed his darkest hour when, years afterward, thy presence floated away from him forever.
Hans and Gretel had a fine frolic early on that Saint Nicholas’s Eve. There was a bright moon, and their mother, though she believed herself to be without any hope of her husband’s improvement, had been made so happy at the prospect of the meester’s visit, that she yielded to the children’s entreaties for an hour’s skating before bedtime.
Hans was delighted with his new skates and, in his eagerness to show Gretel how perfectly they “worked,” did many things upon the ice that caused the little maid to clasp her hands in solemn admiration. They were not alone, though they seemed quite unheeded by the various groups assembled upon the canal.
The two Van Holps and Carl Schummel were there, testing their fleetness to the utmost. Out of four trials Peter van Holp had won three times. Consequently Carl, never very amiable, was in anything but a good humor. He had relieved himself by taunting young Schimmelpenninck, who, being smaller than the others, kept meekly near them without feeling exactly like one of the party, but now a new thought seized Carl, or rather he seized the new thought and made an onset upon his friends.
“I say, boys, let’s put a stop to those young ragpickers from the idiot’s cottage joining the race. Hilda must be crazy to think of it. Katrinka Flack and Rychie Korbes are furious at the very idea of racing with the girl; and for my part, I don’t blame them. As for the boy, if we’ve a spark of manhood in us, we will scorn the very idea of—”
“Certainly we will!” interposed Peter van Holp, purposely mistaking Carl’s meaning. “Who doubts it? No fellow with a spark of manhood in him would refuse to let in two good skaters just because they were poor!”
Carl wheeled about savagely. “Not so fast, master! And I’d thank you not to put words in other people’s mouths. You’d best not try it again.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck, delighted at the prospect of a fight, and sure that, if it should come to blows, his favorite Peter could beat a dozen excitable fellows like Carl.
Something in Peter’s eye made Carl glad to turn to a weaker offender. He wheeled furiously upon Voost.
“What are you shrieking about, you little weasel? You skinny herring you, you little monkey with a long name for a tail!”
Half a dozen bystanders and byskaters set up an applauding shout at this brave witticism; and Carl, feeling that he had fairly vanquished his foes, was restored to partial good humor. He, however, prudently resolved to defer plotting against Hans and Gretel until some time when Peter should not be present.
Just then, his friend, Jacob Poot, was seen approaching. They could not distinguish his features at first, but as he was the stoutest boy in the neighborhood, there could be no mistaking his form.
“Hello! Here comes Fatty!” exclaimed Carl. “And there’s someone with him, a slender fellow, a stranger.”
“Ha! ha! That’s like good bacon,” cried Ludwig. “A streak of lean and a streak of fat.”
“That’s Jacob’s English cousin,” put in Master Voost, delighted at being able to give the information. “That’s his English cousin, and, oh, he’s got such a funny little name—Ben Dobbs. He’s going to stay with him until after the grand race.”
All this time the boys had been spinning, turning, rolling, and doing other feats upon their skates, in a quiet way, as they talked, but now they stood still, bracing themselves against the frosty air as Jacob Poot and his friend drew near.
“This is my cousin, boys,” said Jacob, rather out of breath. “Benjamin Dobbs. He’s a John Bull and he’s going to be in the race.”
All crowded, boy-fashion, about the newcomers. Benjamin soon made up his mind that the Hollanders, notwithstanding their queer gibberish, were a fine set of fellows.
If the truth must be told, Jacob had announced his cousin as Penchamin Dopps, and called his a Shon Pull, but as I translate every word of the conversation of our young friends, it is no more than fair to mend their little attempts at English. Master Dobbs felt at first decidedly awkward among his cousin’s friends. Though most of them had studied English and French, they were shy about attempting to speak either, and he made very funny blunders when he tried to converse in Dutch. He had learned that vrouw meant wife; and ja, yes; and spoorweg, railway; kanaals, canals; stoomboot, steamboat; ophaalbruggen, drawbridges; buiten plasten, country seats; mynheer, mister; tweegevegt, duel or “two fights”; koper, copper; zadel, saddle; but he could not make a sentence out of these, nor use the long list of phrases he had learned in his “Dutch dialogues.” The topics of the latter were fine, but were never alluded to by the boys. Like the poor fellow who had learned in Ollendorf to ask in faultless German, “Have you seen my grandmother’s red cow?” and, when he reached Germany, discovered that he had no occasion to inquire after that interesting animal, Ben found that his book-Dutch did not avail him as much as he had hoped. He acquired a hearty contempt for Jan van Gorp, a Hollander who wrote a book in Latin to prove that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch, and he smiled a knowing smile when his uncle Poot assured him that Dutch “had great likeness mit Zinglish but it vash much petter languish, much petter.”
However, the fun of skating glides over all barriers of speech. Through this, Ben soon felt that he knew the boys well, and when Jacob (with a sprinkling of French and English for Ben’s benefit) told of a grand project they had planned, his cousin could now and then put in a ja, or a nod, in quite a familiar way.
The project WAS a grand one, and there was to be a fine opportunity for carrying it out; for, besides the allotted holiday of the Festival of Saint Nicholas, four extra days were to be allowed for a general cleaning of the schoolhouse.
Jacob and Ben had obtained permission to go on a long skating journey—no less a one than from Broek to The Hague, the capital of Holland, a distance of nearly fifty miles! *{Throughout this narrative distances are given according to our standard, the English statute mile of 5,280 feet. The Dutch mile is more than four times as long as ours.}
“And now, boys,” added Jacob, when he had told the plan, “who will go with us?”
“I will! I will!” cried the boys eagerly.
“And so will I,” ventured little Voostenwalbert.
“Ha! ha!” laughed Jacob, holding his fat sides and shaking his puffy cheeks. “YOU go? Such a little fellow as you? Why, youngster, you haven’t left off your pads yet!”
Now, in Holland very young children wear a thin, padded cushion around their heads, surmounted with a framework of whalebone and ribbon, to protect them in case of a fall; and it is the dividing line between babyhood and childhood when they leave it off. Voost had arrived at this dignity several years before; consequently Jacob’s insult was rather to great for endurance.
“Look out what you say!” he squeaked. “Lucky for you when you can leave off YOUR pads—you’re padded all over!”
“Ha! ha!” roared all the boys except Master Dobbs, who could not understand. “Ha! ha!”—and the good-natured Jacob laughed more than any.
“It ish my fat—yaw—he say I bees pad mit fat!” he explained to Ben.
So a vote was passed unanimously in favor of allowing the now popular Voost to join the party, if his parents would consent.
“Good night!” sang out the happy youngster, skating homeward with all his might.
“Good night!”
“We can stop at Haarlem, Jacob, and show your cousin the big organ,” said Peter van Holp eagerly, “and at Leyden, too, where there’s no end to the sights; and spend a day and night at the Hague, for my married sister, who lives there, will be delighted to see us; and the next morning we can start for home.”
“All right!” responded Jacob, who was not much of a talker.
Ludwig had been regarding his brother with enthusiastic admiration.
“Hurrah for you, Pete! It takes you to make plans! Mother’ll be as full of it as we are when we tell her we can take her love direct to sister Van Gend. My, but it’s cold,” he added. “Cold enough to take a fellow’s head off his shoulders. We’d better go home.”
“What if it is cold, old Tender-skin?” cried Carl, who was busily practicing a step he called the “double edge.” “Great skating we should have by this time, if it was as warm as it was last December. Don’t you know that if it wasn’t an extra cold winter, and an early one into the bargain, we couldn’t go?”
“I know it’s an extra cold night anyhow,” said Ludwig. “Whew! I’m going home!”
Peter van Holp took out a bulgy gold watch and, holding it toward the moonlight as well as his benumbed fingers would permit, called out, “Halloo! It’s nearly eight o’clock! Saint Nicholas is about by this time, and I, for one, want to see the little ones stare. Good night!”
“Good night!” cried one and all, and off they started, shouting, singing, and laughing as they flew along.
Where were Gretel and Hans?
Ah, how suddenly joy sometimes comes to an end!
They had skated about an hour, keeping aloof from the others, quite contented with each other, and Gretel had exclaimed, “Ah, Hans, how beautiful! How fine! To think that we both have skates! I tell you, the stork brought us good luck!”—when they heard something!
It was a scream—a very faint scream! No one else upon the canal observed it, but Hans knew its meaning too well. Gretel saw him turn white in the moonlight as he busily tore off his skates.
“The father!” he cried. “He has frightened our mother!” And Gretel ran after him toward the house as rapidly as she could.
While skating along at full speed, they heard the cars from Amsterdam coming close behind them.
“Halloo!” cried Ludwig, glancing toward the rail track, “who can’t beat a locomotive? Let’s give it a race!”
The whistle screamed at the very idea—so did the boys—and at it they went.
For an instant the boys were ahead, hurrahing with all their might—only for an instant, but even THAT was something.
This excitement over, they began to travel more leisurely and indulge in conversation and frolic. Sometimes they stopped to exchange a word with the guards who were stationed at certain distances along the canal. These men, in winter, attend to keeping the surface free from obstruction and garbage. After a snowstorm they are expected to sweep the feathery covering away before it hardens into a marble pretty to look at but very unwelcome to skaters. Now and then the boys so far forgot their dignity as to clamber among the icebound canal boats crowded together in a widened harbor off the canal, but the watchful guards would soon spy them out and order them down with a growl.
Nothing could be straighter than the canal upon which our party were skating, and nothing straighter than the long rows of willow trees that stood, bare and wispy, along the bank. On the opposite side, lifted high above the surrounding country, lay the carriage road on top of the great dike built to keep the Haarlem Lake within bounds; stretching out far in the distance, until it became lost in a point, was the glassy canal with its many skaters, its brown-winged iceboats, its push-chairs, and its queer little sleds, light as cork, flying over the ice by means of iron-pronged sticks in the hands of the riders. Ben was in ecstasy with the scene.
Ludwig van Holp had been thinking how strange it was that the English boy should know so much of Holland. According to Lambert’s account, he knew more about it than the Dutch did. This did not quite please our young Hollander. Suddenly he thought of something that he believed would make the “Shon Pull” open his eyes; he drew near Lambert with a triumphant “Tell him about the tulips!”
Ben caught the word tulpen.
“Oh, yes!” said he eagerly, in English, “the Tulip Mania—are you speaking of that? I have often heard it mentioned but know very little about it. It reached its height in Amsterdam, didn’t it?”
Ludwig moaned; the words were hard to understand, but there was no mistaking the enlightened expression on Ben’s face. Lambert, happily, was quite unconscious of his young countryman’s distress as he replied, “Yes, here and in Haarlem, principally; but the excitement ran high all over Holland, and in England too for that matter.”
“Hardly in England, I think,” said Ben, “but I am not sure, as I was not thereat the time.”
*{Although the Tulip Mania did not prevail in England as in
Holland, the flower soon became an object of speculation and
brought very large prices. In 1636, tulips were publicly
sold on the Exchange of London. Even as late as 1800 a
common price was fifteen guineas for one bulb. Ben did not
know that in his own day a single tulip plant, called the
“Fanny Kemble”, had been sold in London for more than
seventy guineas.
Mr Mackay, in his “Memoirs of Popular Delusions,” tells a
funny story of an English botanist who happened to see a
tulip bulb lying in the conservatory of a wealthy Dutchman.
Ignorant if its value, he took out his penknife and, cutting
the bulb in two, became very much interested in his
investigations. Suddenly the owner appeared and, pouncing
furiously upon him, asked if he knew what he was doing.
“Peeling a most extraordinary onion,” replied the
philosopher. “Hundert tousant tuyvel!” shouted the Dutchman,
“it’s an Admiral Van der Eyk!” “Thank you,” replied the
traveler, immediately writing the name in his notebook.
“Pray, are these very common in your country?” “Death and
the tuyvel!” screamed the Dutchman, “come before the Syndic
and you shall see!” In spite of his struggles the poor
investigator, followed by an indignant mob, was taken
through the streets to a magistrate. Soon he learned to his
dismay that he had destroyed a bulb worth 4,000 florins
($1,600). He was lodged in prison until securities could be
procured for the payment of the sum.}
“Ha! ha! that’s true, unless you are over two hundred years old. Well, I tell you, sir, there never was anything like it before nor since. Why, persons were so crazy after tulip bulbs in those days that they paid their weight in gold for them.”
“What, the weight of a man!” cried Ben, showing such astonishment in his eyes that Ludwig fairly capered.
“No, no, the weight of a BULB. The first tulip was sent here from Constantinople about the year 1560. It was so much admired that the rich people of Amsterdam sent to Turkey for more. From that time they grew to be the rage, and it lasted for years. Single roots brought from one to four thousand florins; and one bulb, the Semper Augustus, brought fifty-five hundred.”
“That’s more than four hundred guineas of our money,” interposed Ben.
“Yes, and I know I’m right, for I read it in a translation from Beckman, only day before yesterday. Well, sir, it was great. Everyone speculated in tulips, even bargemen and rag women and chimney sweeps. The richest merchants were not ashamed to share the excitement. People bought bulbs and sold them again at a tremendous profit without ever seeing them. It grew into a kind of gambling. Some became rich by it in a few days, and some lost everything they had. Land, houses, cattle, and even clothing went for tulips when people had no ready money. Ladies sold their jewels and finery to enable them to join in the fun. Nothing else was thought of. At last the States-General interfered. People began to see what dunces they were making of themselves, and down went the price of tulips. Old tulip debts couldn’t be collected. Creditors went to law, and the law turned its back upon them; debts made in gambling were not binding, it said. Then there was a time! Thousands of rich speculators were reduced to beggary in an hour. As old Beckman says, ‘The bubble was burst at last.’”
“Yes, and a big bubble it was,” said Ben, who had listened with great interest. “By the way, did you know that the name tulip came from a Turkish word, signifying turban?”
“I had forgotten that,” answered Lambert, “but it’s a capital idea. Just fancy a party of Turks in full headgear squatted upon a lawn—perfect tulip bed! Ha! ha! Capital idea!”
“There,” groaned Ludwig to himself, “he’s been telling Lambert something wonderful about tulips—I knew it!”
“The fact is,” continued Lambert, “you can conjure up quite a human picture of a tulip bed in bloom, especially when it is nodding and bobbing in the wind. Did you ever notice it?”
“Not I. It strikes me, Van Mounen, that you Hollanders are prodigiously fond of the flower to this day.”
“Certainly. You can’t have a garden without them; prettiest flower that grows, I think. My uncle has a magnificent bed of the finest varieties at his summer house on the other side of Amsterdam.”
“I thought your uncle lived in the city?”
“So he does; but his summer house, or pavilion, is a few miles off. He has another one built out over the river. We passed near it when we entered the city. Everybody in Amsterdam has a pavilion somewhere, if he can.”
“Do they ever live there?” asked Ben.
“Bless you, no! They are small affairs, suitable only to spend a few hours in on summer afternoons. There are some beautiful ones on the southern end of the Haarlem Lake—now that they’ve commenced to drain it into polders, it will spoil THAT fun. By the way, we’ve passed some red-roofed ones since we left home. You noticed them, I suppose, with their little bridges and ponds and gardens, and their mottoes over the doorway.”
Ben nodded.
“They make but little show, now,” continued Lambert, “but in warm weather they are delightful. After the willows sprout, uncle goes to his summer house every afternoon. He dozes and smokes; aunt knits, with her feet perched upon a foot stove, never mind how hot the day; my cousin Rika and the other girls fish in the lake from the windows or chat with their friends rowing by; and the youngsters tumble about or hang upon the little bridges over the ditch. Then they have coffee and cakes, beside a great bunch of water lilies on the table. It’s very fine, I can tell you; only (between ourselves), though I was born here, I shall never fancy the odor of stagnant water that hangs about most of the summer houses. Nearly every one you see is built over a ditch. Probably I feel it more, from having lived so long in England.”
“Perhaps I shall notice it too,” said Ben, “if a thaw comes. The early winter has covered up the fragrant waters for my benefit—much obliged to it. Holland without this glorious skating wouldn’t be the same thing at all.”
“How very different you are from the Poots!” exclaimed Lambert, who had been listening in a sort of brown study. “And yet you are cousins—I cannot understand it.”
“We ARE cousins, or rather we have always considered ourselves such, but the relationship is not very close. Our grandmothers were half-sisters. MY side of the family is entirely English, while he is entirely Dutch. Old Great-grandfather Poot married twice, you see, and I am a descendant of his English wife. I like Jacob, though, better than half of my English cousins put together. He is the truest-hearted, best-natured boy I ever knew. Strange as you may think it, my father became accidentally acquainted with Jacob’s father while on a business visit to Rotterdam. They soon talked over their relationship—in French, by the way—and they have corresponded in the language ever since. Queer things come about in this world. My sister Jenny would open her eyes at some of Aunt Poot’s ways. Aunt is a thorough lady, but so different from mother—and the house, too, and furniture, and way of living, everything is different.”
“Of course,” assented Lambert, complacently, as if to say You could scarcely expect such general perfection anywhere else than in Holland. “But you will have all the more to tell Jenny when you go back.”
“Yes, indeed. I can say one thing—if cleanliness is, as they claim, next to godliness, Broek is safe. It is the cleanest place I ever saw in my life. Why, my Aunt Poot, rich as she is, scrubs half the time, and her house looks as if it were varnished all over. I wrote to mother yesterday that I could see my double always with me, feet to feet, in the polished floor of the dining room.”
“Your DOUBLE! That word puzzles me; what do you mean?”
“Oh, my reflection, my apparition. Ben Dobbs number two.”
“Ah, I see,” exclaimed Van Mounen. “Have you ever been in your Aunt Poot’s grand parlor?”
Ben laughed. “Only once, and that was on the day of my arrival. Jacob says I shall have no chance of entering it again until the time of his sister Kanau’s wedding, the week after Christmas. Father has consented that I shall remain to witness the great event. Every Saturday Aunt Poot and her fat Kate go into that parlor and sweep and polish and scrub; then it is darkened and closed until Saturday comes again; not a soul enters it in the meantime; but the schoonmaken, as she calls it, must be done just the same.”
“That is nothing. Every parlor in Broek meets with the same treatment,” said Lambert. “What do you think of those moving figures in her neighbor’s garden?”
“Oh, they’re well enough; the swans must seem really alive gliding about the pond in summer; but that nodding mandarin in the corner, under the chestnut trees, is ridiculous, only fit for children to laugh at. And then the stiff garden patches, and the trees all trimmed and painted. Excuse me, Van Mounen, but I shall never learn to admire Dutch taste.”
“It will take time,” answered Lambert condescendingly, “but you are sure to agree with it at last. I saw much to admire in England, and I hope I shall be sent back with you to study at Oxford, but, take everything together, I like Holland best.”
“Of course you do,” said Ben in a tone of hearty approval. “You wouldn’t be a good Hollander if you didn’t. Nothing like loving one’s country. It is strange, though, to have such a warm feeling for such a cold place. If we were not exercising all the time, we should freeze outright.”
Lambert laughed.
“That’s your English blood, Benjamin. I’M not cold. And look at the skaters here on the canal—they’re red as roses and happy as lords. Halloo, good Captain van Holp,” called out Lambert in Dutch, “what say you to stopping at yonder farmhouse and warming our toes?”
“Who is cold?” asked Peter, turning around.
“Benjamin Dobbs.”
“Benjamin Dobbs shall be warmed,” and the party was brought to a halt.
Refreshed and rested, our boys came forth from the coffeehouse just as the big clock in the square, after the manner of certain Holland timekeepers, was striking two with its half-hour bell for half-past two.
The captain was absorbed in thought, at first, for Hans Brinker’s sad story still echoed in his ears. Not until Ludwig rebuked him with a laughing “Wake up, grandfather!” did he reassume his position as gallant boy-leader of his band.
“Ahem! this way, young gentlemen!”
They were walking through the city, not on a curbed sidewalk, for such a thing is rarely to be found in Holland, but on the brick pavement that lay on the borders of the cobblestone carriage-way without breaking its level expanse.
Haarlem, like Amsterdam, was gayer than usual, in honor of Saint Nicholas.
A strange figure was approaching them. It was a small man dressed in black, with a short cloak. He wore a wig and a cocked hat from which a long crepe streamer was flying.
“Who comes here?” cried Ben. “What a queer-looking object.”
“That’s the aanspreeker,” said Lambert. “Someone is dead.”
“Is that the way men dress in mourning in this country?”
“Oh, no! The aanspreeker attends funerals, and it is his business, when anyone dies, to notify all the friends and relatives.”
“What a strange custom.”
“Well,” said Lambert, “we needn’t feel very badly about this particular death, for I see another man has lately been born to the world to fill up the vacant place.”
Ben stared. “How do you know that?”
“Don’t you see that pretty red pincushion hanging on yonder door?” asked Lambert in return.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s a boy.”
“A boy! What do you mean?”
“I mean that here in Haarlem, whenever a boy is born, the parents have a red pincushion put out at the door. If our young friend had been a girl instead of a boy, the cushion would have been white. In some places they have much more fanciful affairs, all trimmed with lace, and even among the very poorest houses you will see a bit of ribbon or even a string tied on the door latch—”
“Look!” screamed Ben. “There IS a white cushion at the door of that double-joined house with the funny roof.”
“I don’t see any house with a funny roof.”
“Oh, of course not,” said Ben. “I forgot you’re a native, but all the roofs are queer to me, for that matter. I mean the house next to that green building.”
“True enough, there’s a girl! I tell you what, captain,” called out Lambert, slipping easily into Dutch, “we must get out of this street as soon as possible. It’s full of babies! They’ll set up a squall in a moment.”
The captain laughed. “I shall take you to hear better music than that,” he said. “We are just in time to hear the organ of Saint Bavon. The church is open today.”
“What, the great Haarlem organ?” asked Ben. “That will be a treat indeed. I have often read of it, with its tremendous pipes, and its vox humana *{An organ stop which produces an effect resembling the human voice.} that sounds like a giant singing.”
“The same,” answered Lambert van Mounen.
Peter was right. The church was open, though not for religious services. Someone was playing upon the organ. As the boys entered, a swell of sound rushed forth to meet them. It seemed to bear them, one by one, into the shadows of the building.
Louder and louder it grew until it became like the din and roar of some mighty tempest, or like the ocean surging upon the shore. In the midst of the tumult a tinkling bell was heard; another answered, then another, and the storm paused as if to listen. The bells grew bolder; they rang out loud and clear. Other deep-toned bells joined in; they were tolling in solemn concert—ding, dong! ding, dong! The storm broke forth with redoubled fury, gathering its distant thunder. The boys looked at each other but did not speak. It was growing serious. What was that? WHO screamed? WHAT screamed—that terrible, musical scream? Was it man or demon? Or was it some monster shut up behind that carved brass frame, behind those great silver columns—some despairing monster begging, screaming for freedom! it was the vox humana!
At last an answer came—soft, tender, loving, like a mother’s song. The storm grew silent; hidden birds sprang forth filling the air with glad, ecstatic music, rising higher and higher until the last faint note was lost in the distance.
The vox humana was stilled, but in the glorious hymn of thanksgiving that now arose, one could almost hear the throbbing of a human heart. What did it mean? That man’s imploring cry should in time be met with a deep content? That gratitude would give us freedom? To Peter and Ben it seemed that the angels were singing. Their eyes grew dim, and their souls dizzy with a strange joy. At last, as if borne upward by invisible hands, they were floating away on the music, all fatigue forgotten, and with no wish but to hear forever those beautiful sounds, when suddenly Van Holp’s sleeve was pulled impatiently and a gruff voice beside him asked, “How long are you going to stay here, captain, blinking at the ceiling like a sick rabbit? It’s high time we started.”
“Hush!” whispered Peter, only half aroused.
“Come, man! Let’s go,” said Carl, giving the sleeve a second pull.
Peter turned reluctantly. He would not detain the boys against their will. All but Ben were casting rather reproachful glances upon him.
“Well, boys,” he whispered, “we will go. Softly now.”
“That’s the greatest thing I’ve seen or heard since I’ve bee in Holland!” cried Ben enthusiastically, as soon as they reached the open air. “It’s glorious!”
Ludwig and Carl laughed slyly at the English boy’s wartaal, or gibberish. Jacob yawned, and Peter gave Ben a look that made him instantly feel that he and Peter were not so very different after all, though one hailed from Holland and the other from England. And Lambert, the interpreter, responded with a brisk “You may well say so. I believe there are one or two organs nowadays that are said to be as fine; but for years and years this organ of Saint Bavon was the grandest in the world.”
“Do you know how large it is?” asked Ben. “I noticed that the church itself was prodigiously high and that the organ filled the end of the great aisle almost from floor to roof.”
“That’s true,” said Lambert, “and how superb the pipes looked—just like grand columns of silver. They’re only for show, you know. The REAL pipes are behind them, some big enough for a man to crawl through, and some smaller than a baby’s whistle. Well, sir, for size, the church is higher than Westminster Abbey, to begin with, and, as you say, the organ makes a tremendous show even then. Father told me last night that it is one hundred and eight feet high, fifty feet wide, and has over five thousand pipes. It has sixty-four stops—if you know what they are, I don’t—and three keyboards.”
“Good for you!” said Ben. “You have a fine memory. MY head is a perfect colander for figures. They slip through as fast as they’re poured in. But other facts and historical events stay behind—that’s some consolation.”
“There we differ,” returned Van Mounen. “I’m great on names and figures, but history, take it altogether, seems to me to be the most hopeless kind of jumble.”
Meantime Carl and Ludwig were having a discussion concerning some square wooden monuments they had observed in the interior of the church. Ludwig declared that each bore the name of the person buried beneath, and Carl insisted that they had no names but only the heraldic arms of the deceased painted on a black ground, with the date of the death in gilt letters.
“I ought to know,” said Carl, “for I walked across to the east side, to look for the cannonball Mother told me was embedded there. It was fired into the church, in the year fifteen hundred and something, by those rascally Spaniards, while the services were going on. There it was in the wall, sure enough, and while I was walking back, I noticed the monuments. I tell you, they haven’t the sign of a name on them.”
“Ask Peter,” said Ludwig, only half convinced.
“Carl is right,” replied Peter, who, though conversing with Jacob, had overheard their dispute. “Well, Jacob, as I was saying, Handel, the great composer, chanced to visit Haarlem and, of course, he at once hunted up this famous organ. He gained admittance and was playing upon it with all his might when the regular organist chanced to enter the building. The man stood awestruck. He was a good player himself, but he had never heard such music before. ‘Who is there?’ he cried. ‘If it is not an angel or the devil, it must be Handel!’ When he discovered that it WAS the great musician, he was still more mystified! ‘But how is this?’ he said. ‘You have done impossible things—no ten fingers on earth can play the passages you have given. Human fingers couldn’t control all the keys and stops!’ ‘I know it,’ said Handel coolly, ‘and for that reason, I was forced to strike some notes with the end of my nose.’ Donder! just think how the old organist must have stared!”
“Hey! What?” exclaimed Jacob, startled when Peter’s animated voice suddenly became silent.
“Haven’t you heard me, you rascal?” was the indignant rejoinder.
“Oh, yes—no. The fact is, I heard you at first. I’m awake now, but I do believe I’ve been walking beside you half asleep,” stammered Jacob, with such a doleful, bewildered look on his face that Peter could not help laughing.
The last note died away in the distance. Our boys, who in their vain efforts to keep up with the boat had felt that they were skating backward, turned to look at one another.
“How beautiful that was!” exclaimed Van Mounen.
“Just like a dream!”
Jacob drew close to Ben, giving his usual approving nod, as he spoke. “Dat ish goot. Dat ish te pest vay. I shay petter to take to Leyden mit a poat!”
“Take a boat!” exclaimed Ben in dismay. “Why, man, our plan was to SKATE, not to be carried like little children.”
“Tuyfels!” retorted Jacob. “Dat ish no little—no papies—to go for poat!”
The boys laughed but exchanged uneasy glances. It would be great fun to jump on an iceboat, if they had a chance, but to abandon so shamefully their grand undertaking—who could think of such a thing?
An animated discussion arose at once.
Captain Peter brought his party to a halt.
“Boys,” said he, “it strikes me that we should consult Jacob’s wishes in this matter. He started the excursion, you know.”
“Pooh!” sneered Carl, throwing a contemptuous glance at Jacob. “Who’s tired? We can rest all night in Leyden.”
Ludwig and Lambert looked anxious and disappointed. It was no slight thing to lose the credit of having skated all the way from Broek to the Hague and back again, but both agreed that Jacob should decide the question.
Good-natured, tired Jacob! He read the popular sentiment at a glance.
“Oh, no,” he said in Dutch. “I was joking. We will skate, of course.”
The boys gave a delighted shout and started on again with renewed vigor.
All but Jacob. He tried his best not to seem fatigued and, by not saying a word, saved his breath and energy for the great business of skating. But in vain. Before long, the stout body grew heavier and heavier—the tottering limbs weaker and weaker. Worse than all, the blood, anxious to get as far as possible from the ice, mounted to the puffy, good-natured cheeks, and made the roots of his thin yellow hair glow into a fiery red.
This kind of work is apt to summon vertigo, of whom good Hans Anderson writes—the same who hurls daring young hunters from the mountains or spins them from the sharpest heights of the glaciers or catches them as they tread the stepping-stones of the mountain torrent.
Vertigo came, unseen, to Jacob. After tormenting him awhile, with one touch sending a chill from head to foot, with the next scorching every vein with fever, she made the canal rock and tremble beneath him, the white sails bow and spin as they passed, then cast him heavily upon the ice.
“Halloo!” cried Van Mounen. “There goes Poot!”
Ben sprang hastily forward.
“Jacob! Jacob, are you hurt?”
Peter and Carl were lifting him. The face was white enough now. It seemed like a dead face—even the good-natured look was gone.
A crowd collected. Peter unbuttoned the poor boy’s jacket, loosened his red tippet, and blew between the parted lips.
“Stand off, good people!” he cried. “Give him air!”
“Lay him down,” called out a woman from the crowd.
“Stand him upon his feet,” shouted another.
“Give him wine,” growled a stout fellow who was driving a loaded sled.
“Yes! yes, give him wine!” echoed everybody.
Ludwig and Lambert shouted in concert, “Wine! Wine! Who has wine?”
A sleepy-headed Dutchman began to fumble mysteriously under the heaviest of blue jackets, saying as he did so, “Not so much noise, young masters, not so much noise! The boy was a fool to faint like a girl.”
“Wine, quick!” cried Peter, who, with Ben’s help, was rubbing Jacob from head to foot.
Ludwig stretched forth his hand imploringly toward the Dutchman, who, with an air of great importance, was still fumbling beneath the jacket.
“DO hurry! He will die! Has anyone else any wine?”
“He IS dead!” said an awful voice from among the bystanders.
This startled the Dutchman.
“Have a care!” he said, reluctantly drawing forth a small blue flask. “This is schnapps. A little is enough.”
A little WAS enough. The paleness gave way to a faint flush. Jacob opened his eyes, and, half bewildered, half ashamed, feebly tried to free himself from those who were supporting him.
There was no alternative, now, for our party but to have their exhausted comrade carried, in some way, to Leyden. As for expecting him to skate anymore that day, the thing was impossible. In truth, by this time each boy began to entertain secret yearnings toward iceboats, and to avow a Spartan resolve not to desert Jacob. Fortunately a gentle, steady breeze was setting southward. If some accommodating schipper would but come along, matters would not be quite so bad after all.
Peter hailed the first sail that appeared. The men in the stern would not even look at him. Three drays on runners came along, but they were already loaded to the utmost. Then an iceboat, a beautiful, tempting little one, whizzed past like an arrow. The boys had just time to stare eagerly at it when it was gone. In despair, they resolved to prop up Jacob with their strong arms, as well as they could, and take him to the nearest village.
At that moment a very shabby iceboat came in sight. With but little hope of success Peter hailed at it, at the same time taking off his hat and flourishing it in the air.
The sail was lowered, then came the scraping sound of the brake, and a pleasant voice called from the deck, “What now?”
“Will you take us on?” cried Peter, hurrying with his companions as fast as he could, for the boat as “bringing to” some distance ahead. “Will you take us on?”
“We’ll pay for the ride!” shouted Carl.
The man on board scarcely noticed him except to mutter something about its not being a trekschuit. Still looking toward Peter, he asked, “How many?”
“Six.”
“Well, it’s Nicholas’s Day—up with you! Young gentleman sick?” He nodded toward Jacob.
“Yes—broken down. Skated all the way from Broek,” answered Peter. “Do you go to Leyden?”
“That’s as the wind says. It’s blowing that way now. Scramble up!”
Poor Jacob! If that willing Mrs. Poot had only appeared just then, her services would have been invaluable. It was as much as the boys could do to hoist him into the boat. All were in at last. The schipper, puffing away at his pipe, let out the sail, lifted the brake, and sat in the stern with folded arms.