Part 5

He did, literally, through the window, without opening the door, his little wet shoes first, then his sturdy legs in wool stockings, round body encased in a pea-jacket, and last, his head, covered by the same cloth cap I had seen on the platform. I caught him, feet first, and helped land him on the front seat, where he sat looking at me with staring eyes that shone all the brighter in the glare of the arc light. Next a collar-box and a small paper bundle were handed in. These the little fellow clutched eagerly, one in each hand, his eyes still looking into mine.

"Are you an orphan?" I asked--a wholly thoughtless question, of course.

"Yes, sir."

"Got no father nor mother?"

Another, equally idiotic; but my interest in the boy had been inspired by the idea of the saving of valuable minutes. As long as he stood outside in the snow, he was an obstruction. Once aboard, I could take my time in solving his difficulties.

"Got a father, sir, but my mother's dead."

We were now whirling up the street, the cab lighting up and growing pitch dark by turns, depending on the location of the street lamps.

"Where's your father?"

"Went away, sir." He spoke the words without the slightest change in his voice, neither abashed nor too bold, but with a simple straightforwardness which convinced me of their truth.

"Do you want to go to the asylum?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why?"

"Because I can learn everything there is to learn, and there isn't any other place for me to go."

This was said with equal simplicity. No whining; no "me mother's dead, sir, an' I ain't had nothin' to eat all day," etc. Not that air about him at all. It was merely the statement of a fact which he felt sure I knew all about.

"What's your name?"

"Ned."

"Ned what?"

"Ned Rankin, sir."

"How old are you?"

"I'm eight"--then, thoughtfully--"no, I'm nine years old."

"Where do you live?"

I was firing these questions one after the other without the slightest interest in either the boy or his welfare. My mind was on my lecture, and the impatient look on the faces of the audience, and the consulted watch of the chairman of the committee, followed by the inevitable: "You are not very prompt, sir," etc. "Our people have been in their seats," etc. If the boy had previously replied to my question as to where he lived, I had forgotten the name of the town.

"I live"---- Then he stopped. "I live in---- Do you mean now?" he added simply.

"Yes."

There was another pause. "I don't know, sir; maybe they won't let me stay."

Another foolish question. Of course, if he had left home for good, and was now on his way to the asylum for the first time, his present home was this hack.

But he had won my interest now. His words had come in tones of such directness, and were so calm, and gave so full a statement of the exact facts, that I leaned over quickly, and began studying him a little closer.

I saw that this scrap of a boy wore a gray woolen suit, and I noticed that the cap was made of the same cloth as the jacket, and that both were the work of some inexperienced hand, with uneven, unpressed seams--the seams of a flat-iron, not a tailor's goose. Instinctively my mind went back to what his earlier life had been.

"Have you got any brothers and sisters, my boy?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where are they?"

"I don't know, sir; I was too little to remember."

The pathos of this answer stirred me all the more.

"Who's been taking care of you ever since your father left you?" I had lowered my voice now to a more confidential tone.

"A German man."

"What did you leave him for?"

"He had no work, and he took me to the priest."

"When?"

"Last week, sir."

"What did the priest do?"

"He gave me these clothes. Don't you think they're nice? The priest's sister made them for me--all but the stockings; she bought those."

As he said this he lifted his arms so I could look under them, and thrust out toward me his two plump legs. I said the clothes were very nice, and that I thought they fitted him very well, and I felt his chubby knees and calves as I spoke, and ended by getting hold of his soft wee hand, which I held on to. His fingers closed tightly over mine, and a slight smile lighted up his face. It seemed good to him to have something to hold on to. I began again:--

"Did the priest send you here?"

"Yes, sir. Do you want to see the letter?" The little hand--the free one--fumbled under the jacket, loosened the two lower buttons, and disclosed a white envelope pinned to his shirt.

"I'm to give it to 'em at the asylum. But I can't unpin it. He told me not to."

"That's right, my boy. Leave it where it is."

"You poor little rat," I said to myself. "This is pretty rough on you. You ought to be tucked up in some warm bed, not out here alone in this storm."

The boy felt for the pin in the letter, reassured himself that it was safe, and carefully rebuttoned his jacket. I looked out of the window, and caught glimpses of houses flying by, with lights in their windows, and now and then the cheery blaze of a fire. Then I looked into his eyes again. I still had hold of his hand.

"Surely," I said to myself, "this boy must have some one soul who cares for him." I determined to go a little deeper.

"How did you get here, my boy?" I had leaned nearer to him.

"The priest put me on the train, and a lady told me where to get off."

"Oh, a lady!" Now I was getting at it! Then he was not so desolate; a lady had looked after him. "What's her name?" This with increased eagerness.

"She didn't tell me, sir."

I sank back on my seat. No! I was all wrong. It was a positive, undeniable, piteous fact. Seventy millions of people about him, and not one living soul to look to. Not a tie that connected him with anything. A leaf blown across a field; a bottle adrift in the sea, sailing from no port and bound for no haven. I got hold of his other hand, and looked down into his eyes, and an almost irresistible desire seized me to pick him up in my arms and hug him; he was too big to kiss, and too little to shake hands with; hugging was all there was left. But I didn't. There was something in his face that repelled any such familiarity,--a quiet dignity, pluck, and patience that inspired more respect than tenderness, that would make one want rather to touch his hat to him.

Here the cab stopped with so sudden a jerk that I had to catch him by the arms to steady him. Cabby opened the door.

"Morgan House, boss. Goin's awful, or I'd got ye here sooner."

The boy looked up into my face; not with any show of uneasiness, only a calm patience. If he was to walk now, he was ready.

"Cabby, how far is it to the asylum?" I asked.

"'Bout a mile and a half."

"Throw that trunk off and drive on. This boy can't walk."

"I'll take him, boss."

"No; I'll take him myself. Lively, now."

I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes of the hour had gone. I would still have time to jump into a dress suit, but the dinner must be brief. There came a seesaw rocking, then a rebound, and a heavy thud told where the trunk had fallen. The cab sped on round a sharp corner, through a narrow street, and across a wide square.

Suddenly a thought rushed over me that culminated in a creeping chill. Where was his trunk? In my anxiety over my own, I had forgotten the boy's.

I turned quickly to the window, and shouted:--

"Cabby! _Cabby_, you didn't leave the boy's trunk, too, did you?"

The little fellow slid down from the seat, and began fumbling around in the dark.

"No, sir; I've got 'em here;" and he held up the collar box and brown paper bundle!

"Is that all?" I gasped.

"Oh, no, sir! I got ten cents the lady give me. Do you want to see it?" and he began cramming his chubby hand into his side pocket.

"No, my son, I don't want to see it."

I didn't want to see anything in particular. His word was good enough. I couldn't, really. My eyelashes somehow had got tangled up in each other, and my pupils wouldn't work. It's queer how a man's eyes act sometimes.

We were now reaching the open country. The houses were few and farther apart. The street lamps gave out; so did the telegraph wires festooned with snow loops. Soon a big building, square, gray, sombre-looking, like a jail, loomed up on a hill. Then we entered a gate between flickering lamps, and tugged up a steep road, and stopped. Cabby sprang down and rang a bell, which sounded in the white stillness like a fire-gong. A door opened, and a flood of light streamed out, showing the kindly face and figure of an old priest in silhouette, the yellow glow forming a golden background.

"Come, sonny," said cabby, throwing open the cab door.

The little fellow slid down again from the seat, caught up the box and bundle, and, looking me full in the face, said:--

"It _was_ too far to walk."

There were no thanks, no outburst. He was merely a chip in the current. If he had just escaped some sunken rock, it was the way with chips like himself. All boys went to asylums, and had no visible fathers nor invisible mothers nor friends. This talk about boys going swimming, and catching bull-frogs, and robbing birds' nests, and playing ball, and "hooky," and marbles, was all moonshine. Boys never did such things, except in story-books. He was a boy himself, and knew. There couldn't anything better happen to a boy than being sent to an orphan asylum. Everybody knew that. There was nothing strange about it. That's what boys were made for.

All this was in his eyes.

* * * * *

When I reached the platform and faced my audience, I was dinnerless, half an hour late, and still in my traveling dress.

I began as follows:--

"Ladies and gentlemen, I ask your forgiveness. I am very sorry to have kept you waiting, but I could not help it. I was occupied in escorting to his suburban home one of your most distinguished citizens."

And I described the boy in the cloth cap, with his box and bundle, and his patient, steady eyes, and plump little legs in the yarn stockings.

I was forgiven.

BETWEEN SHOWERS IN DORT

There be inns in Holland--not hotels, not pensions, nor stopping-places--just inns. The Bellevue at Dort is one, and the Holland Arms is another, and the--no, there are no others. Dort only boasts these two, and Dort to me is Holland.

The rivalry between these two inns has been going on for years, and it still continues. The Bellevue, fighting for place, elbowed its way years ago to the water-line, and took its stand on the river-front, where the windows and porticos could overlook the Maas dotted with boats. The Arms, discouraged, shrank back into its corner, and made up in low windows, smoking-rooms, and private bathroom--one for the whole house--what was lacking in porticos and sea view. Then followed a slight skirmish in paint,--red for the Arms and yellow-white for the Bellevue; and a flank movement of shades and curtains,--linen for the Arms and lace for the Bellevue. Scouting parties were next ordered out of porters in caps, banded with silk ribbons, bearing the names of their respective hostelries. Yacob of the Arms was to attack weary travelers on alighting from the train, and acquaint them with the delights of the downstairs bath, and the dark-room for the kodakers, all free of charge. And Johan of the Bellevue was to give minute descriptions of the boats landing in front of the dining-room windows and of the superb view of the river.

* * * * *

It is always summer when I arrive in Dordrecht. I don't know what happens in winter, and I don't care. The groundhog knows enough to go into his hole when the snow begins to fly, and to stay there until the sun thaws him out again. Some tourists could profit by following his example.

[Illustration: THROUGH STREETS EMBOWERED IN TREES]

It is summer then, and the train has rolled into the station at Dordrecht, or beside it, and the traps have been thrown out, and Peter, my boatman--he of the "Red Tub," a craft with an outline like a Dutch vrou, quite as much beam as length (we go a-sketching in this boat)--Peter, I say, who has come to the train to meet me, has swung my belongings over his shoulder, and Johan, the porter of the Bellevue, with a triumphant glance at Yacob of the Arms, has stowed the trunk on the rear platform of the street tram,--no cabs or trucks, if you please, in this town,--and the one-horse car has jerked its way around short curves and up through streets embowered in trees and paved with cobblestones scrubbed as clean as china plates, and over quaint bridges with glimpses of sluggish canals and queer houses, and so on to my lodgings.

And mine host, Heer Boudier, waiting on the steps, takes me by the hand and says the same room is ready and has been for a week.

Inside these two inns, the only inns in Dort, the same rivalry exists. But my parallels must cease. Mine own inn is the Bellevue, and my old friend of fifteen years, Heer Boudier, is host, and so loyalty compels me to omit mention of any luxuries but those to which I am accustomed in his hostelry.

Its interior has peculiar charms for me. Scrupulously clean, simple in its appointments and equipment, it is comfort itself. Tyne is responsible for its cleanliness--or rather, that particular portion of Tyne which she bares above her elbows. Nobody ever saw such a pair of sledge-hammer arms as Tyne's on any girl outside of Holland. She is eighteen; short, square-built, solid as a Dutch cheese, fresh and rosy as an English milkmaid; moon-faced, mild-eyed as an Alderney heifer, and as strong as a three-year-old. Her back and sides are as straight as a plank; the front side is straight too. The main joint in her body is at the hips. This is so flexible that, wash-cloth in hand, she can lean over the floor without bending her knees and scrub every board in it till it shines like a Sunday dresser. She wears a snow-white cap as dainty as the finest lady's in the land; an apron that never seems to lose the crease of the iron, and a blue print dress bunched up behind to keep it from the slop. Her sturdy little legs are covered by gray yarn stockings which she knits herself, the feet thrust into wooden sabots. These clatter over the cobbles as she scurries about with a crab-like movement, sousing, dousing, and scrubbing as she goes; for Tyne attacks the sidewalk outside with as much gusto as she does the hall and floors.

Johan the porter moves the chairs out of Tyne's way when she begins work, and, lately, I have caught him lifting her bucket up the front steps--a wholly unnecessary proceeding when Tyne's muscular developments are considered. Johan and I had a confidential talk one night, when he brought the mail to my room,--the room on the second floor overlooking the Maas,--in which certain personal statements were made. When I spoke to Tyne about them the next day, she looked at me with her big blue eyes, and then broke into a laugh, opening her mouth so wide that every tooth in her head flashed white (they always reminded me somehow of peeled almonds). With a little bridling twist of her head she answered that--but, of course, this was a strictly confidential communication, and of so entirely private a nature that no gentleman under the circumstances would permit a single word of it to--

Johan is taller than Tyne, but not so thick through. When he meets you at the station, with his cap and band in his hand, his red hair trimmed behind as square as the end of a whisk-broom, his thin, parenthesis legs and Vienna guardsman waist,--each detail the very opposite, you will note, from Tyne's,--you recall immediately one of George Boughton's typical Dutchmen. The only thing lacking is his pipe; he is too busy for that.

When he dons his dress suit for dinner, and bending over your shoulder asks, in his best English: "Mynheer, don't it now de feesh you haf?" you lose sight of Boughton's Dutchman and see only the cosmopolitan. The transformation is due entirely to continental influences--Dort being one of the main highways between London and Paris--influences so strong that even in this water-logged town on the Maas, bonnets are beginning to replace caps, and French shoes sabots.

The guests that Johan serves at this inn of my good friend Boudier are as odd looking as its interior. They line both sides and the two ends of the long table. Stout Germans in horrible clothes, with stouter wives in worse; Dutchmen from up-country in brown coats and green waistcoats; clerks off on a vacation with kodaks and Cook's tickets; bicyclists in knickerbockers; painters, with large kits and small handbags, who talk all the time and to everybody; gray-whiskered, red-faced Englishmen, with absolutely no conversation at all, who prove to be distinguished persons attended by their own valets, and on their way to Aix or the Engadine, now that the salmon-fishing in Norway is over; school teachers from America, just arrived from Antwerp or Rotterdam, or from across the channel by way of Harwich, their first stopping-place really since they left home--one traveling-dress and a black silk in the bag; all the kinds and conditions and sorts of people who seek out precious little places like Dort, either because they are cheap or comfortable, or because they are known to be picturesque.

I sought out Dort years ago because it was untouched by the hurry that makes life miserable, and the shams that make it vulgar, and I go back to it now every year of my life, in spite of other foreign influences.

[Illustration: THE GOSSIPS LEAN IN THE DOORWAYS]

And there is no real change in fifteen years. Its old trees still nod over the sleepy canals in the same sleepy way they have done, no doubt, for a century. The rooks--the same rooks, they never die--still swoop in and out of the weather-stained arches high up in the great tower of the Groote Kerk, the old twelfth-century church, the tallest in all Holland; the big-waisted Dutch luggers with rudders painted arsenic green--what would painters do without this green?--doze under the trees, their mooring lines tied to the trunks; the girls and boys, with arms locked, a dozen together, clatter over the cobbles, singing as they walk; the steamboats land and hurry on--"Fop Smit's boats" the signs read--it is pretty close, but I am not part owner in the line; the gossips lean in the doorways or under the windows banked with geraniums and nasturtiums; the cumbersome state carriages with the big ungainly horses with untrimmed manes and tails--there are only five of these carriages in all Dordrecht--wait in front of the great houses eighty feet wide and four stories high, some dating as far back as 1512, and still occupied by descendants of the same families; the old women in ivory black, with dabs of Chinese white for sabots and caps, push the same carts loaded with Hooker's green vegetables from door to door; the town crier rings his bell; the watchman calls the hour.

Over all bends the ever-changing sky, one hour close-drawn, gray-lined with slanting slashes of blinding rain, the next piled high with great domes of silver-white clouds inlaid with turquoise blue or hemmed in by low-lying ranges of purple peaks capped with gold.

* * * * *

I confess that an acute sense of disappointment came over me when I first saw these gray canals, rain-varnished streets, and rows of green trees. I recognized at a glance that it was not my Holland; not the Holland of my dreams; not the Holland of Mesdag nor Poggenbeck nor Kever. It was a fresher, sweeter, more wholesome land, and with a more breathable air. These Dutch painters had taught me to look for dull, dirty skies, soggy wharves, and dismal perspectives of endless dikes. They had shown me countless windmills, scattered along stretches of wind-swept moors backed by lowering skies, cold gray streets, quaint, leanover houses, and smudgy, grimy interiors. They had enveloped all this in the stifling, murky atmosphere of a western city slowly strangling in clouds of coal smoke.

These Dutch artists were, perhaps, not alone in this falsification. It is one of the peculiarities of modern art that many of its masters cater to the taste of a public who want something that _is not_ in preference to something that _is_. Ziem, for instance, had, up to the time of my enlightenment, taught me to love an equally untrue and impossible Venice--a Venice all red and yellow and deep ultra-marine blue--a Venice of unbuildable palaces and blazing red walls.

I do not care to say so aloud, where I can be heard over the way, but if you will please come inside my quarters, and shut the door and putty up the keyhole, and draw down the blinds, I will whisper in your ear that my own private opinion is that even Turner himself would have been an infinitely greater artist had he built his pictures on Venice instead of building them on Turner. I will also be courageous enough to assert that the beauty and dignity of Venetian architecture--an architecture which has delighted many appreciative souls for centuries--finds no place in his canvases, either in detail or in mass. The details may be unimportant, for the soft vapor of the lagoons ofttimes conceals them, but the correct outline of the mass--that is, for instance, the true proportion of the dome of the Salute, that incomparable, incandescent pearl, or the vertical line of the Campanile compared to the roofs of the connecting palaces--should never be ignored, for they are as much a part of Venice, the part that makes for beauty, as the shimmering light of the morning or the glory of its sunsets. So it is that when most of us for the first time reach the water-gates of Venice, the most beautiful of all cities by the sea, we feel a certain shock and must begin to fall in love with a new sweetheart.

So with many painters of the Holland school--not the old Dutch school of landscape painters, but the more modern group of men who paint their native skies with zinc-white toned with London fog, or mummy dust and bitumen. It is all very artistic and full of "tone," but it is not Holland.