Part 13

“Ah, now I am sure of them! You were thinking of those noblehearted women, but for whom Prussia might have fallen. I know it by that proud light in your eye.”

“The proud light in my eye plays me false, then,” she answered. “I had no such grand matter in my mind. To confess the simple truth, I was only thinking how lovely this necklace would be with my blue brocade.”

“So, so!” exclaimed the rather crestfallen spouse.

“But I CAN think of the other, Jasper, and it will add a deeper value to your gift. You remember the incident, do you not, Peter? How when the French were invading Prussia and for lack of means the country was unable to defend itself against the enemy, the women turned the scale by pouring their plate and jewels into the public treasury--”

Aha! thought mynheer as he met his vrouw’s kindling glance. The proud light is there now, in earnest.

Peter remarked maliciously that the women had still proved true to their vanity on that occasion, for jewelry they would have. If gold or silver were wanted by the kingdom, they would relinquish it and use iron, but they could not do without their ornaments.

“What of that?” said the vrouw, kindling again. “It is no sin to love beautiful things if you adapt your material to circumstances. All I have to say is, the women saved their country and, indirectly, introduced a very important branch of manufacture. Is not that so, Jasper?”

“Of course it is, sweetheart,” said mynheer, “but Peter needs no word of mine to convince him that all the world over women have never been found wanting in their country’s hour of trial, though”--(bowing to mevrouw)--“his own country women stand foremost in the records of female patriotism and devotion.”

Then, turning to Ben, the host talked with him in English of the fine old Belgian city. Among other things he told the origin of its name. Ben had been taught that Antwerp was derived from ae’nt werf (on the wharf), but Mynheer van Gend gave him a far more interesting derivation.

It appears that about three thousand years ago, a great giant, named Antigonus, lived on the river Scheld, on the site of the present city of Antwerp. This giant claimed half the merchandise of all navigators who passed his castle. Of course, some were inclined to oppose this simple regulation. In such cases, Antigonus, by way of teaching them to practice better manners next time, cut off and threw into the river the rights hands of the merchants. Thus handwerpen (or hand-throwing), changed to Antwerp, came to be the name of the place. The escutcheon or arms of the city has two hands upon it; what better proof than this could one have of the truth of the story, especially when one wishes to believe it!

When Mynheer van Gend had related in two languages this story of Antwerp, he was tempted to tell other legends--some in English, some in Dutch; and so the moments, borne upon the swift shoulders of gnomes and giants, glided rapidly away toward bedtime.

It was hard to break up so pleasant a party, but the Van Gend household moved with the regularity of clockwork. There was no lingering at the threshold when the cordial “Good night!” was spoken. Even while our boys were mounting the stairs, the invisible household fairies again clustered around them, whispering that system and regularity had been chief builders of the master’s prosperity.

Beautiful chambers with three beds in them were not to be found in this mansion. Some of the rooms contained two, but each visitor slept alone. Before morning, the motto of the party evidently was, “Every boy his own chrysalis,” and Peter, at least, was not sorry to have it so.

Tired as he was, Ben, after noting a curious bell rope in the corner, began to examine his bedclothes. Each article filled him with astonishment--the exquisitely fine pillow spread trimmed with costly lace and embroidered with a gorgeous crest and initial, the dekbed cover (a great silk bag, large as the bed, stuffed with swan’s down), and the pink satin quilts, embroidered with garlands of flowers. He could scarcely sleep for thinking what a queer little bed it was, so comfortable and pretty, too, with all its queerness. In the morning he examined the top coverlet with care, for he wished to send home a description of it in his next letter. It was a beautiful Japanese spread, marvelous in texture as well as in its variety of brilliant coloring, and worth, as Ben afterward learned, not less than three hundred dollars.

The floor was of polished wooden mosaic, nearly covered with a rich carpet bordered with thick black fringe. Another room displayed a margin of satinwood around the carpet. Hung with tapestry, its walls of crimson silk were topped with a gilded cornice which shot down gleams of light far into the polished floor.

Over the doorway of the room in which Jacob and Ben slept was a bronze stork that, with outstretched neck, held a lamp to light the guests into the apartment. Between the two narrow beds of carved whitewood and ebony, stood the household treasure of the Van Gends, a massive oaken chair upon which the Prince of Orange had once sat during a council meeting. Opposite stood a quaintly carved clothespress, waxed and polished to the utmost and filled with precious stores of linen; beside it a table holding a large Bible, whose great golden clasps looked poor compared with its solid, ribbed binding made to outlast six generations.

There was a ship model on the mantleshelf, and over it hung an old portrait of Peter the Great, who, you know, once gave the dockyard cats of Holland a fine chance to look at a king, which is one of the special prerogatives of cats. Peter, though czar of Russia, was not too proud to work as a common shipwright in the dockyards of Saardam and Amsterdam, that he might be able to introduce among his countrymen Dutch improvements in ship building. It was this willingness to be thorough even in the smallest beginnings that earned for him the title of Peter the Great.

Peter the little (comparatively speaking) was up first, the next morning; knowing the punctual habits of his brother-in-law, he took good care that none of the boys should oversleep themselves. A hard task he found it to wake Jacob Poot, but after pulling that young gentleman out of bed, and, with Ben’s help, dragging him about the room for a while, he succeeded in arousing him.

While Jacob was dressing and moaning within him because the felt slippers, provided him as a guest, were too tight for his swollen feet, Peter wrote to inform their friends at Broek of the safe arrival of his party at The Hague. He also begged his mother to send word to Hans Brinker that Dr. Boekman had not yet reached Leyden but that a letter containing Hans’s message had been left at the hotel where the doctor always lodged during his visits to the city. “Tell him, also,” wrote Peter, “that I shall call there again, as I pass through Leyden. The poor boy seemed to feel sure that ‘the meester’ would hasten to save his father, but we, who know the gruff old gentleman better, may be confident he will do no such thing. It would be a kindness to send a visiting physician from Amsterdam to the cottage at once, if Jufvrouw *{In Holland, women of the lower grades of society do not take the title of Mrs. (or Mevrouw) when they marry, as with us. They assume their husbands’ names but are still called Miss (Jufvrouw, pronounced Yuffrow).} Brinker will consent to receive any but the great king of the meesters, as Dr. Boekman certainly is.

“You know, Mother,” added Peter, “that I have always considered Sister van Gend’s house as rather quiet and lonely, but I assure you, it is not so now. He says we make him wish that he had a houseful of boys of his own. He has promised to let us ride on his noble black horses. They are gentle as kittens, he says, if one have but a firm touch at the rein. Ben, according to Jacob’s account, is a glorious rider, and your son Peter is not a very bad hand at the business; so we two are to go out together this morning mounted like knights of old. After we return, Brother van Gend says he will lend Jacob his English pony and obtain three extra horses; and all of the party are to trot about the city in a grand cavalcade, led on by him. He will ride the black horse which Father sent him from Friesland. My sister’s pretty roan with the long white tail is lame, and she will ride none other; else she would accompany us. I could scarcely close my eyes last night after Sister told me of the plan. Only the thought of poor Hans Brinker and his sick father checked me, but for that I could have sung for joy. Ludwig has given us a name already--the Broek Cavalry. We flatter ourselves that we shall make an imposing appearance, especially in single file....”

The Broek Cavalry were not disappointed. Mynheer van Gend readily procured good horses; and all the boys could ride, though none was as perfect horsemen (or horseboys) as Peter and Ben. They saw The Hague to their hearts’ content, and The Hague saw them--expressing its approbation loudly, through the mouths of small boys and cart dogs; silently, through bright eyes that, not looking very deeply into things, shone as they looked at the handsome Carl and twinkled with fun as a certainly portly youth with shaking cheeks rode past bumpetty, bumpetty, bump!

On their return, the boys pronounced the great porcelain stove in the family sitting room a decidedly useful piece of furniture, for they could gather around it and get warm without burning their noses or bringing on chilblains. It was so very large that, though hot elsewhere, it seemed to send out warmth by the houseful. Its pure white sides and polished brass rings made it a pretty object to look upon, notwithstanding the fact that our ungrateful Ben, while growing thoroughly warm and comfortable beside it, concocted a satirical sentence for his next letter, to the effect that a stove in Holland must, of course, resemble a great tower of snow or it wouldn’t be in keeping with the oddity of the country.

To describe all the boys saw and did on that day and the next would render this little book a formidable volume indeed. They visited the brass cannon foundry, saw the liquid fire poured into molds, and watched the smiths, who, half naked, stood in the shadow, like demons playing with flame. They admired the grand public buildings and massive private houses, the elegant streets, and noble Bosch--pride of all beauty-loving Hollanders. The palace with its brilliant mosaic floors, its frescoed ceilings, and gorgeous ornaments, filled Ben with delight; he was surprised that some of the churches were so very plain--elaborate sometimes in external architecture but bare and bleak within with their blank, whitewashed walls.

If there were no printed record, the churches of Holland would almost tell her story. I will not enter into the subject here, except to say that Ben--who had read of her struggles and wrongs and of the terrible retribution she had from time to time dealt forth--could scarcely tread a Holland town without mentally leaping horror-stricken over the bloody stepping-stones of its history. He could not forget Philip of Spain nor the Duke of Alva even while rejoicing in the prosperity that followed the Liberation. He looked into the meekest of Dutch eyes for something of the fire that once lit the haggard faces of those desperate, lawless men who, wearing with pride the title of “Beggars,” which their oppressors had mockingly cast upon them, became the terror of land and sea. In Haarlem he had wondered that the air did not still resound with the cries of Alva’s three thousand victims. In Leyden his heart had swelled in sympathy as he thought of the long procession of scarred and famished creatures who after the siege, with Adrian van der Werf at their head, tottered to the great church to sing a glorious anthem because Leyden was free! He remembered that this was even before they had tasted the bread brought by the Dutch ships. They would praise God first, then eat. Thousands of trembling voices were raised in glad thanksgiving. For a moment it swelled higher and higher, then suddenly changed to sobbing--not one of all the multitude could sing another note. But who shall say that anthem, even to its very end, was not heard in heaven!

Here, in The Hague, other thoughts came to Ben--of how Holland in later years unwillingly put her head under the French yoke, and how, galled and lashed past endurance, she had resolutely jerked it out again. He liked her for that. What nation of any spirit, thought he, could be expected to stand such work, paying all her wealth into a foreign treasury and yielding up the flower of her youth under foreign conscription. It was not so very long ago, either, since English guns had been heard booming close by in the German Ocean; well--all the fighting was over at last. Holland was a snug little monarchy now in her own right, and Ben, for one, was glad of it. Arrived at this charitable conclusion, he was prepared to enjoy to the utmost all the wonders of her capital; he quite delighted Mynheer van Gend with his hearty and intelligent interest--so, in fact, did all the boys, for a merrier, more observant party never went sight-seeing.

Through the Hague

The picture gallery in the Maurits Huis, *{A building erected by Prince Maurice of Nassau.} one of the finest in the world, seemed to have only flashed by the boys during a two-hour visit, so much was there to admire and examine. As for the royal cabinet of curiosities in the same building, they felt that they had but glanced at it, though they were there nearly half a day. It seemed to them that Japan had poured all her treasures within its walls. For a long period Holland, always foremost in commerce, was the only nation allowed to have any intercourse with Japan. One can well forego a journey to that country if he can but visit the museum at The Hague.

Room after room is filled with collections from the Hermit Empire--costumes peculiar to various ranks and pursuits, articles of ornament, household utensils, weapons, armor, and surgical instruments. There is also an ingenious Japanese model of the Island of Desina, the Dutch factory in Japan. It appears almost as the island itself would if seen through a reversed opera glass and makes one feel like a Gulliver coming unexpectedly upon a Japanese Lilliput. There you see hundreds of people in native costumes, standing, kneeling, stooping, reaching--all at work, or pretending to be--and their dwellings, even their very furniture, spread out before you, plain as day. In another room a huge tortoiseshell dollhouse, fitted up in Dutch style and inhabited by dignified Dutch dolls, stands ready to tell you at a glance how people live in Holland.

Gretel, Hilda, Katrinka, even the proud Rychie Korbes would have been delighted with this, but Peter and his gallant band passed it by without a glance. The war implements had the honor of detaining them for an hour; such clubs, such murderous krits, or daggers, such firearms, and, above all, such wonderful Japanese swords, quite capable of performing the accredited Japanese feat of cutting a man in two at a single stroke!

There were Chinese and other Oriental curiosities in the collection. Native historical relics, too, upon which our young Dutchmen gazed very soberly, though they were secretly proud to show them to Ben.

There was a model of the cabin at Saardam in which Peter the Great lived during his short career as ship-builder. Also, wallets and bowls--once carried by the “Beggar” Confederates, who, uniting under the Prince of Orange, had freed Holland from the tyranny of Spain; the sword of Admiral van Speyk, who about ten years before had perished in voluntarily blowing up his own ship; and Van Tromp’s armor with the marks of bullets upon it. Jacob looked around, hoping to see the broom which the plucky admiral fastened to his masthead, but it was not there. The waistcoat which William Third *{William, Prince of Orange, who became king of England, was a great-grandson of William the Silent, Prince of Orange, who was murdered by Geraerts (or Gerard) July 10, 1584.} of England wore during the last days of his life, possessed great interest for Ben, and one and all gazed with a mixture of reverence and horror-worship at the identical clothing worn by William the Silent *{see above} when he was murdered at Delft by Balthazar Geraerts. A tawny leather doublet and plain surcoat of gray cloth, a soft felt hat, and a high neck-ruff from which hung one of the “Beggars’” medals--these were not in themselves very princely objects, though the doublet had a tragic interest from its dark stains and bullet holes. Ben could readily believe, as he looked upon the garments, that the Silent Prince, true to his greatness of character, had been exceedingly simple in his attire. His aristocratic prejudices were, however, decidedly shocked when Lambert told him of the way in which William’s bride first entered The Hague.

“The beautiful Louisa de Coligny, whose father and former husband both had fallen at the massacre of St. Bartholomew, was coming to be fourth wife to the Prince, and of course,” said Lambert, “we Hollanders were too gallant to allow the lady to enter the town on foot. No, sir, we sent--or rather my ancestors did--a clean, open post-wagon to meet her, with a plank across it for her to sit upon!”

“Very gallant indeed!” exclaimed Ben, with almost a sneer in his polite laugh. “And she the daughter of an admiral of France.”

“Was she? Upon my word, I had nearly forgotten that. But, you see, Holland had very plain ways in the good old time; in fact, we are a very simple, frugal people to this day. The Van Gend establishment is a decided exception, you know.”

“A very agreeable exception, I think,” said Ben.

“Certainly, certainly. But, between you and me, Mynheer van Gend, though he has wrought his own fortunes, can afford to be magnificent and yet be frugal.”

“Exactly so,” said Ben profoundly, at the same time stroking his upper lip and chin, which latterly he believed had been showing delightful and unmistakable signs of coming dignities.

While tramping on foot through the city, Ben often longed for a good English sidewalk. Here, as in the other towns, there was no curb, no raised pavement for foot travelers, but the streets were clean and even, and all vehicles were kept scrupulously within a certain tract. Strange to say, there were nearly as many sleds as wagons to be seen, though there was not a particle of snow. The sleds went scraping over the bricks or cobblestones, some provided with an apparatus in front for sprinkling water, to diminish the friction, and some rendered less musical by means of a dripping oil rag, which the driver occasionally applied to the runners.

Ben was surprised at the noiseless way in which Dutch laborers do their work. Even around the warehouses and docks there was no bustle, no shouting from one to another. A certain twitch of the pipe, or turn of the head, or, at most, a raising of the hand, seemed to be all the signal necessary. Entire loads of cheeses or herrings are pitched from cart or canalboat into the warehouses without a word; but the passerby must take his chance of being pelted, for a Dutchman seldom looks before or behind him while engaged at work.

Poor Jacob Poot, who seemed destined to bear all the mishaps of the journey, was knocked nearly breathless by a great cheese, which a fat Dutchman was throwing to a fellow laborer, but he recovered himself, and passed on without evincing the least indignation. Ben professed great sympathy upon the occasion, but Jacob insisted that it was “notting.”

“Then why did you screw your face so when it hit you?”

“What for screw mine face?” repeated Jacob soberly. “Vy, it vash de--de--”

“That what?” insisted Ben maliciously.

“Vy, de-de-vat you call dis, vat you taste mit de nose?”

Ben laughed. “Oh, you mean the smell.”

“Yesh. Dat ish it,” said Jacob eagerly. “It wash de shmell. I draw mine face for dat!”

“Ha! ha!” roared Ben. “That’s a good one. A Dutch boy smell a cheese! You can never make me believe THAT!”

“Vell, it ish no matter,” replied Jacob, trudging on beside Ben in perfect good humor. “Vait till you hit mit cheese--dat ish all.”

Soon he added pathetically, “Penchamin, I no likes to be call Tuch--dat ish no goot. I bees a Hollander.”

Just as Ben was apologizing, Lambert hailed him.

“Hold up! Ben, here is the fish market. There is not much to be seen at this season. But we can take a look at the storks if you wish.”

Ben knew that storks were held in peculiar reverence in Holland and that the bird figured upon the arms of the capital. He had noticed cart wheels placed upon the roofs of Dutch cottages to entice storks to settle upon them; he had seen their huge nests, too, on many a thatched gable roof from Broek to The Hague. But it was winter now. The nests were empty. No greedy birdlings opened their mouths--or rather their heads--at the approach of a great white-winged thing, with outstretched neck and legs, bearing a dangling something for their breakfast. The long-bills were far away, picking up food on African shores, and before they would return in the spring, Ben’s visit to the land of dikes would be over.

Therefore he pressed eagerly forward, as Van Mounen led the way through the fish market, anxious to see if storks in Holland were anything like the melancholy specimens he had seen in the Zoological Gardens of London.

It was the same old story. A tamed bird is a sad bird, say what you will. These storks lived in a sort of kennel, chained by the feet like felons, though supposed to be honored by being kept at the public expense. In summer they were allowed to walk about the market, where the fish stalls were like so many free dining saloons to them. Untasted delicacies in the form of raw fish and butcher’s offal lay about their kennels now, but the city guests preferred to stand upon one leg, curving back their long necks and leaning their heads sidewise, in a blinking reverie. How gladly they would have changed their petted state for the busy life of some hardworking stork mother or father, bringing up a troublesome family on the roof of a rickety old building where flapping wind-mills frightened them half to death every time they ventured forth on a frolic!