CHAPTER VIII
THE SURPRISES OF THE MAAS
“Well, well!” ejaculated O’Neill irritably. “What an inveterate old gossip Enderby is, to be sure!
“Of course I got Terence back quite soon from Bonn, where he had nothing to do; and I gave him a splendid time sight-seeing in Haarlem and Amsterdam. I’ll tell you about that, another time.
But first about my run to Rotterdam, where I went one day for a little change I needed.
The landlady was a bit peevish and hysterical, and, of course, very bothersome. She never quite took to the Berlitz method, as I had improved it; and she became grandmotherly to me from the moment I made that slip about the
zee-held
.
The whole thing was getting on her nerves, so I gave her a rest. Took a day off, in fact; and went for a tour round the Rotterdam havens.
FAIRYLAND
I had some idea of recapitulating the old ground – the first thousand words, you know – whilst I should be steaming around the harbour. But as soon as we pushed off from the wharf and went skimming over the sun-lit Maas, the brilliant and animated scene wiped the new vocabulary clean out of my mind for the time-being; and I didn’t feel at all inclined to dig it out of my notes.
The marvellous colouring of everything held me spell-bound. It was like fairyland. Our boat was crowded, and a man on board pointed out the sights. That was the only Dutch study I got that day; for some one began to speak to me in English – an Amsterdammer, as it appeared, who told me that the grachten in Amsterdam surpassed every other spectacle the world had to show; and made me promise to go and see them as soon as I could.
I asked him what he thought of the harbour we were in; but he wasn’t so enthusiastic.
Meantime it had grown darker, and a steady, cold, sea-fog drifted round us. It got dismally wet, as well as gloomy; and the deck dripped with clammy moisture. We were hardly moving, presently; and our captain kept the steam whistle hard at work. The sight-seers were grievously disappointed; and one fellow-victim informed me it would be a good thing if we got near land anywhere, in time to catch the last train.
IK KRIJSCH, IK FLUIT EN IK GIL
Horns kept booming around us, every few seconds; perky little tugs and immense black hulls swept by us at arm’s length, piping or bellowing, according to their temperament and ability.
The Amsterdammer and I had gone to the prow, to try and peer a little further into the dense curling vapour, when a siren – I think that’s what you call the thing – gave such a sudden blood-curdling yell at our very elbow, it seemed as if we had trodden on the tail of the true and original Sea-serpent, and that the reptile was shrieking in agony.
From that time on, we had sea-serpents every other minute – whole swarms of them – infuriated, inquisitive or resigned – soprano, alto, tenor; – all whining, hooting and snorting; every one trying to howl all the others down.
Excuse my referring to it, but it was the best illustration I had yet got of Boyton’s verbs.
“Ik graauw, ik kef en ik kweel!” said one set of voices. “Ik krijsch, ik fluit en ik gil!” answered their rivals.
POLYPHEMUS AND THE SEA-SERPENT
But the deep boom of new-comers swept the earlier songsters out of the field: “Ik rammel, ik ratel en ik scheur”. It was a regular chorus.
“Ik gier en ik piep”, squeaked the little tugs, “ik fop en ik jok”.
But the first musicians – the sentimental ones – wouldn’t be outdone. They were evidently turning over their grammars very rapidly, to get a really melancholy selection, for in another moment their lugubrious snuffle pierced the fog like a knife: “Ik wee-ee-een; ik krijt; en ik hui-ui-ui-l-l!”
There was one long-drawn-out sob, that rose and fell and rose again with such appalling and expressive anguish that I could have imagined half the Netherlands had turned into a gigantic sea-serpent, and had bitten off its own tongue. So human, too, was its tortured wail, that I instinctively thought of Polyphemus having his eye gouged out by Ulysses. The hero, you remember, did it with a burning pine. One has a horrible sympathy for Polyphemus, even though he is a monster and mythical.
Happily our Polyphemus only gave two or three of his prize yells. Then he seemed to settle into sleep, away down the river somewhere.
CLOTHO
The Amsterdam-man explained to me that in his city the fog-horns were much more musical.
This thesis was warmly contested by a Rotterdammer who had overheard it, and who spoke of the Capital with a distinct want of reverence.
The argument soon deviated into Dutch, and I lost hold of it; but through a cloud of statistics and history I observed that local patriotism on both sides stood at fever heat.
By and by, the fog thinned a little; and we crept along to a landing-stage, where the Amsterdammer and I climbed on shore with alacrity. We lost our way at first, and wandered about within earshot of the siren-brood, whooping and calling and taunting one another on the river; but my new-made friend stumbled at last on some spot he was acquainted with; and hastily giving me some directions, went off to his train.
After the long Polyphemus-concert on the murky river I wasn’t in much humour for Dutch, but I had to speak it at every corner to ask my way.
In an open thoroughfare – there were some people about, but not many – near an archway, I came upon Clotho.
GLOOM AND MYSTERY
Perhaps the Greek Mythology was running in my head: but there she sat. Old beyond words, but hale; wrapped up marvellously with head and jaws swathed in dim flannel, she gazed, without moving, on a table in front of her, spread with dried eels and other occult delicacies. As I approached, to enquire for the ‘kortste weg naar de electrische tram’, she didn’t move a muscle. Something about her made me pause upon my step, and refrain from speech.
No movement.
But wait! One thickly muffled hand went out to some obscure eatable, slowly grasped it, dipped it in a sort of cup, then, still more slowly, brought it to her lips.
Yes. She was alive; for she munched, calmly and dispassionately.
The sight impressed me. It was like Fate; or an ancient priestess performing mysterious rites. Clotho would look like this, if Clotho would munch instead of spin.
Meantime the inevitable butcher’s boy had joined me. Two of them, indeed, stood at my side, curious to know what interested the vreemdeling.
The old lady never winced under the scrutiny, but put forth her hand again for another shell.
WHAT IS TREK?
There was a book-stall near, but nobody at it, as far as I could see. The whole street sounded hollow; and everything dripped. It made me shiver to look at the stone-pillars, oozy and moist, with condensed sea-fog trickling down. The glaring street-lamps hardly lit up the scene; but they showed the damp. Polyphemus gave a distant whoop, as if it were his last: and the Spectre munched. She hadn’t once looked up.
It all felt like a dream – except for the butchers’ boys.
“Wat doet ze – die oude mejuffrouw?” I enquired.
“Ze zit te eten,” was the prompt reply.
“Waarom zit ze te eten daar?” I asked.
“Om dat ze trek heeft!”
A snigger went round the company. Evidently that reply was of the nature of wit; and they expected something sparkling from me in return.
But
I couldn’t sparkle.
THE SOCRATIC DIALOGUE
“Trek” was unknown to me. Strange, how you can be bowled over by a simple word, if you’ve never heard it. Trekken – trok – getrokken, was familiar. That meant ‘to pull,’ ‘draw,’ or ‘wander’. “Trekschuit” – “trekpot” – “trekvogel”; I had them all labelled on my desk in the Hague. But “trek” itself, what was that exactly? Provided of course, the youth were grammatical, – which I very much doubted.
“Zij heeft getrokken,” however, when I tried it, only raised new difficulties.
What
then did she pull, and
why
?
‘Trekvogel’ was an alluring idea to follow up, in a town where Jan Olieslagers’ fame was universal: but common sense forbade my pursuing that line far.
The defects of my home-made Berlitz became painfully evident. It’s humiliating, when you have your 2000 new nouns at your fingers’ ends, and hundreds of old ones; and yet can’t understand the first thing a knecht says.
But the bystanders were growing impatient; so – to withdraw gracefully – I enquired, “wat is
trek?”
It was probably the best retort I could have made. “Ja, wat is het?” he soliloquised, evidently puzzled, “Ik weet het niet. Maar ik heb altijd trek.”
“Ik ook”, said a smaller boy; “in een boterham.”
Tongues were loosened on all sides. “Nee; in een lekker stuk worst,” I heard one say.
“Nee; niet waar”; interrupted a brawny fellow with a brick-red face; “Zuurkool en spek.”
A COSY TALK
I nipped the unprofitable discussion in the bud by demanding, as I moved away: “Maar wat
is
trek?”
“Dat weet je wel,” said the first fellow, the wit. “Als je te veel eet.”
“Nee, heelemaal niet,” jeered a late-comer. “Kan je begrijpen! Maar als je
niets
eet,
dan
heb je trek!”
The crowd cheered at this. He had evidently the majority with him. High words followed; and the controversy became general, as the protagonists in this psychological debate found backers, and swarmed away towards the centre of town.
I was left alone, and Clotho looked up.
She dipped a periwinkle in one of the weird cups, and held it towards me.
“Heeft Mijnheer trek?” Would I join in the repast!
“Ik? Duizendmaal verschooning!” I said, as I quickened my pace in rapid retreat.
My confusion increased as I reflected that I had probably been urging my late interlocutors to “define appetite” – a thing even Aristotle could hardly do. Naturally the populace broke into parties – Aristotelians and Platonists (let us say), or into Hoekschen en Kabeljauwschen.
THE CHAT
In any case my confidence was shaken in my improved, home-made Berlitz. It might be splendid for travelling; but in ordinary life it didn’t seem to cover the ground.
On arriving at my lodgings I was met at the door by the landlady’s son. He was beaming. Lately he had been working up his English, and truly had made giant strides.
“Koot eeffening, Sir,” he said; “Koot eeffening! Ai hef an little chat.” “
I wish to have a chat
”, he
seemed
to mean.
It was an odd request for a trifling practice in English; but I like to encourage merit, so I assured him of my willingness to have a friendly talk.
“Oh, yes. All right,” I said. “But won’t you come up stairs? We have a few minutes before supper.”
“But – Ai hef
here
an naiz little chat!”
“Ah, just so. Did you perhaps have a talk with some one in English when I was away?”
“No, sir; but ai
hef
een chat.”
This was bewildering; and as he seemed puzzled, too, and always stuck to the same noun I investigated more fully.
“You talk of a
chat!
– dat is een praatje, weet je wel?”
EVIDENCES OF HUNGER
“Nee, mijnheer, heus: het is waar. Geen praatje.”
We were half-way up the stairs now. “Come on”, I said.
“Vayt”, he replied, diving into some recess. “Ai vil let see you.”
In an instant he was back with something under his coat. This he produced with the delighted exclamation: “ze little chat!”
It was a bedraggled kitten that he had discovered wandering about in the fog and mewing piteously. “Vil you hef him? Anders, zegt moe, hij kan niet blijven.”
“I’ll talk to your mother about the kitten,” I answered. “Kitten, – that’s what we call it – not chat. Maar hoor eens, jongen, heeft het poesje trek?”
“O mijnheer, verbazend!” was the ecstatic reply; and in another three minutes he had a saucer of milk under the foundling’s nose, and was watching kitty’s lapping operations with a joy as keen as that of kitty herself.
I had got what I wanted without any philosophic argument. There was the proof.
Trek
is
appetite
.
CHAPTER IX
THE THUNDERSTORM
I must tell you about that great walk we took from Leyden to Haarlem. That was just after Terence came back from Germany, wearied with waiting till his learned Dad would cease pottering about the museums in Bonn.
He wrote to van Leeuwen in Arnhem; and urged that youth use his influence with the University Librarian to let Dr. MacNamara see the Irish manuscripts he was so keen upon. Then, if you please, my brave Terence thought his duties were over, as far as helping his father was concerned. Taking the next train for the Hague he turned up unexpectedly at my lodgings.
That was at six in the morning, and he banged at my bedroom door till I was awake.
THE NORTH SEA COAST
“I’m back,” he said: “And I’m going to carry you off on that famous bicycle tour of yours. Hurry up with all those papers and preparations and things, – and I’ll be round with my bike in no time!”
“Well!” I shouted through the closed door, “you may come as soon as ever you like; but there’ll be no bicycle tour to-day. I’m not nearly ready yet. I’ve all the nouns from T to Z to learn yet; and it’ll take me another week. Catch me leaving this neighbourhood without those nouns! No, my boy. But I’ll take a tramp with you to the seaside, if you like.”
He didn’t wait for my explanations but pranced off grumbling, and I didn’t see him till noon. He was then quite willing to fall in with my project of a long walk – first by the strand to Noordwijk, then inland through the dunes, and so on to Haarlem.
We only got as far as Noordwijk that evening. After a heavy miserable trudge by the shore, and mostly through loose sand, we were glad enough to put up at Huis-ter-Duin for the night. The sunset, magnificent though it was, could hardly banish the deep sleepiness that seized us. Terence, who was in better training than I, sat up smoking a while, but I heard him go off to his room before I fell over. All the music, laughter, and talk about the place, never in the slightest degree disturbed our slumber.
AN EXQUISITE DAWN
I slept like a log, and awoke early, with the sound of the sea in my ears. It was a softly modulated, gentle murmur that seemed to call me; and when I looked out, the view was superb. Deep blue, almost indigo in hue, and calm as oil, the waves stood high on the sands. Every now and then a long, knife-like billow would slowly rise up for half-a-mile or so, poise itself for an instant, and then fall with a mighty flap, like a wall of slate. Away out towards the horizon the ocean gleamed a fairy-like blue and opal; but close at hand it had a deep, menacing tint that took your breath away. And all the time those slatey ledges of water kept languidly lifting themselves and suddenly dropping, as if they were alive.
When I opened the window, a cool wind softly stole in – like some subtle elixir. I looked at my watch. It was half past four. Fired with the idea of having a tramp by that mysterious light, I went off and roused Terence – happily without terrifying the other inmates of the hotel. He was willing to make an early start if I could secure him enough breakfast.
A MORNING WALK
This required some diplomacy. Suddenly encountering a
knecht
prowling about and collecting boots, I tried to communicate our plans to him, and gain his sympathy. No idiom, however, that I was acquainted with was equal to this strain: so I had recourse to the language of gesture and the display of coin. This at last induced him to bring us part of his own modest breakfast – a chunk of black bread and a hard-boiled egg – and to let us out by the front door.
He kept our bags, however, and a bankbiljet, to settle the rekening provisionally, and as an evidence of good faith. It was a fussy business getting him to agree even to this, and in consequence I quite forgot about my dictionary and “walking-tour notes” – which were strapped up in the bag.
Indeed, I didn’t notice the neglect till we were far away from the hotel. But there was no Dutch needed for a long time.
It was an exhilarating experience to go careering along by that weird, threatening sea in the fresh morning air. The scent of herbs and wild-flowers on the dunes greeted us when we took a turn inland: and the colours of everything around us kept changing with incredible swiftness.
BY THE SUMMER SEA
At first we couldn’t keep our eyes off the mirror-like expanse of water. Its slate became steel-blue – the steel-blue deepened into purple shading off into amethyst, while the sky and the air all about us grew rosy, then saffron, then silver.
Over and across the rolling hills we trudged, our spirits rising every instant. Why shouldn’t we keep on till we got opposite Haarlem, then strike off east, do that city, and return by rail? Why not indeed? Huis-ter-Duin and its slippered knecht could settle the matter of the rekening and the change, by post; and we should make a day of it!
So we climbed up and down along the edge of the grassy slopes, till the tide retired from the sands a little. There we had a delightful hour, along the firm damp shore. It grew sultry after a while; yet it was only a quarter to eight. There would be more heat yet! Alternately we tried the dunes and the beach – the beach and the dunes – but there was no shelter from the sun; and the pleasant wind had died down. After an other couple of hours’ toil through the hot, loose sand we decided we had enough of the coast for the day, and followed a kind of winding path inland. This was a regular cart-track at first, and promised to lead us to some thriving village where we could have a rest. But it didn’t. It twined round a score of scattered potatoe plots, and then came to an abrupt and ignominious end against a wire fence, on the top of a hill. No doubt we ought to have gone back and kept along the shore. But we were too hungry to think of returning to the desolation we had left. What we wanted was to see houses as soon as possible – houses containing eatables and cool rooms and chairs. Besides, we were as yet pretty confident of our geographical whereabouts; accordingly we pushed on for Haarlem – as we thought.
LOST IN THE DUNES
Well, it was a great mistake! The map makes the dunes only a few miles broad at most, yet we climbed up and down for hours, and couldn’t get clear of them.
Once we saw a fisherman at a distance and we yelled to him. He answered “terug” very faintly, and waved both arms. We hurried to meet him, but not a trace of him was to be found. Though the heat was intense, after a while shimmery haze began to spread over the sky, and there came a sudden change. It got dark and cold; and the storm that had been threatening all day burst on us with fury. In two or three minutes we were drenched. There was a marvellous display of sheet lightning so curious and varied that for a while it diverted our attention from our miserable plight, as we stumbled on over soaked hillocks and sand. We had a good hour of this.
NO FOOD FOR SALE
In a dismal grove of non-descript-shrubs, we at last stumbled upon a trifling shelter, just as the rain was ceasing; and there we shivered like aspens, till the truth dawned upon us that there was a faint sound of human voices over the slope. “Hurrah!” we shouted. “Relief at last – and a chance of something to eat!”
Stiff and dripping though we were, we positively bounded over the sand hill.
Two or three small one-storied cottages came soon into view. Rushing into the first – it looked like a shop, and had the words
garen en band
over the window – we demanded pointedly if we could get food. The youngish woman who ambled slowly to and fro behind the counter, said she had no coffee or bread for us, but we could get these things in Haarlem. There was a good restaurant there.
“Geen ei?” I asked.
No; not even an egg for sale.
AN ORDINARY BAKER
Very disappointed we retired, still dripping, and gloomier than ever; but as we left the winkel I espied a group of schoolchildren, with capes round their heads, dancing along merrily hand in hand. They were evidently coming from school. Such bright blue eyes, such plump and rosy cheeks suggested that food was plentiful wherever they lived. There must be a butcher and a baker near, I concluded; and by a happy inspiration I turned back to the depressing
garen en band
shop, and enquired where the local baker was to be found.
“Is er een baker hier?” I enquired politely of the lethargic juffrouw.
She woke up immediately. “Ja, zeker!” was the prompt reply. “Net gisteren thuis gekomen!”
This was all right, of course. Why does he come home and go away, I wondered. But, after all, that was a small matter. He was at home now. A peripatetic baker, perhaps, might be some very special and clever artist in pies and tarts and rich cake – and it was the humble, ordinary baker that we were in search of. I stated this. “Geen banket baker is noodig, juffrouw!” I explained. “Een gewonen baker bedoel ik – een gewonen alledaagschen baker. Bestaat er een hier?”
THE BROKEN SIESTA
She had meantime summoned two young men from a sort of den behind the shop, and now communicated my wishes to them with an interest and an animation that I hadn’t expected. They led us rapidly half a mile across fields, and then up a little lane. The last few yards were done in good record time, I should say.
This sympathetic promptitude we highly appreciated, as we felt now more and more famished, the nearer we approached provisions. We reached the baker’s house breathless, and were ushered panting into a kind of waiting room. At least you couldn’t call it a shop exactly.
When the baker came into this apartment (by the way it was a woman, that turned up – a portly and middle-aged woman) we noticed that she was rather dishevelled, as if just awakened from a much needed siesta. I was sorry, but not surprised. Bakers are often that way, you know. They bake during the night, and sleep during the day. Thus they are rather drowsy and cross, if you wake them up. She looked both. There was a portentous frown upon her brow; and really, she seemed somewhat of the virago type. That made me doubly polite.
“Duizendmaal vergiffenis, banketbaker!” I apologised with my best bow. “Het spijt mij geweldig. – Maar zult gij zoo goed willen zijn – ?”
WOU JE ETEN?
“Ja ja!” she interrupted impatiently; “Waar? Heb je een rijtuig?”
“Een rijtuig?” I exclaimed in bewilderment. “Nee. Ik heb geen rijtuig. Maar mag ik u beleefd verzoeken of U zoo goed – .”
“Ja, ja! Is er haast bij?” She broke in again.
“Wel zeker!” I replied courte