The Further Adventures of O'Neill in Holland

“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 courteously, “Veel haast. Wij zijn verbazend hongerig.”

But she was gone, and hadn’t heard the last remark. In a moment or two she reappeared, fully dressed, tying the strings of her bonnet.

As I waited a second before repeating my request, she grew most unreasonably irritable, and actually stamped her foot, exclaiming disrespectfully: “Gaauw nouw! gaauw een beetje.”

“Ja baker!” I answered. “Wilt gij zoo goed zijn, twee boterhammetjes en twee glaasjes melk te brengen?”

She stopped titivating herself at the mirror, and turning round groaned in a voice of horror: “Wou je eten?”

“Ja,” I contrived to put in, as politely as I could; “als U zoo goed wilt zijn.”

BETAALD ZETTEN

“Maar schaam jullie niet? bent jullie kinderen dat je nouw om een boterham moet vragen?”

It was plain she was a good deal ruffled. Accordingly to appease and conciliate her I smiled again, and said deferentially: “Het heeft niets te beduiden. Wij moeten een heel klein boterhammetje gebruiken. Een sneedje brood zonder iets – dat is ook goed.”

She seemed stunned by this harmless announcement; and I deemed it prudent to offer her a bribe of some kind. The simplest plan was to promise to pay her well for any trifle we took.

“Het is een kleinigheid,” I told her – “niets dan een kleinigheid. Maar ik zal het je betaald zetten.”

That loosened her tongue. Her natural fluency asserted itself and appeared to fine advantage. But she was so needlessly excited that I knew there must be a misunderstanding somewhere. Accordingly to remove all haziness I just indicated that she had failed to grasp my meaning. The idiom for this I fortunately recollected. You don’t quite follow was one of those choice specimens of local colour that, by frequent repetition, I had thoroughly imprinted on my memory.

YOU DON’T QUITE FOLLOW

“Duizendmaal verschooning,” I said heartily, “bent U soms niet goed snik?”

The effect of this well meant apology was electrical. The woman really became very rude. She got pale and grabbed at a chair. As we withdrew unostentatiously, we noticed her springing in our direction and talking. It was the most fluent talk I had yet heard in Dutch. She did not hesitate one instant for gender, number, or case. It rained, hailed and stormed terrible words – werkwoorden, voorzetsels, and especially tusschenwerpsels.

Terence and I ran.

On reaching safety outside Terence asked me: “What was she angry about?”

“Oh,” I answered, “as likely as not it’s something out of the grammar. I believe I didn’t use the right idiom. You have to be very particular about these things, you see.

I said vragen voor een boterham, I think; and it should be vragen om. Still she made far too big a fuss over it: and I’d tell her so, if I could.”

When we got outside of her garden plot and had latched the gate behind us, I turned to wave our grammarian a graceful adieu.

REPARTEE UNDER DIFFICULTIES

“Baker!” I said. “Banket baker! Wees niet zoo kleinzeerig. Niet zoo kwaalijknemend hoor! Wij zijn niet tegen je opgewassen. Maar”, – and here I sank my voice to a confidential whisper, to make the irrelevancy sound as like wit as possible, – “maar, U weet nooit hoe een koe een haas vangt!”

I still flatter myself that the exit was worthy of the occasion.

CHAPTER X

THE DEVOTED NURSE

“Wel,” continued Jack; “it was these experiences that made me begin to doubt the value of my Berlitz soliloquy-method. But Terence helped me to give the system a really good trial; and he worked as hard as I did.

It was quite different with Kathleen. When she came back from Germany, she was keen on art, but apparently had been moping about something. And she refused to study any more Dutch.

That was before the accident, you see. After that, she was quite angelic and nursed her father assiduously, and the landlady’s little son, too.

AN ACCIDENT

You know, of course, that uncle got a severe shock from a motor-bike along the canal. Jan who had been prowling around, to give his “chat” an airing, ran across just in time to push the absent-minded old gentleman out of the way. But the lad was thrown on the ground and badly hurt. Uncle pulled round soon enough – his indignation at the motor cyclist helped him, as he had some vague idea, if he were up and about, he could get the culprit arrested. But Jan grew steadily worse for the first week. The violent fall and the bruise were both very bad for the plucky youngster.

Kathleen kept going back and forward, looking after the sufferers. She said she never could repay Jan enough for saving her father’s life. It appears to have been a ‘close shave’, at the edge of that deep canal; and Uncle nearly had them all in.

THE SUITOR’S MISTAKE

As a matter of fact, he had spent the morning with me, telling me about his grand ‘find’ of original Celtic manuscripts in Germany, and about van Leeuwen’s kindness. I never saw him so taken with anybody! In Bonn he had got wind of these precious Celtic relics; and, as everything was closed at the University at that time of the year, he worried and fumed, till he met some of the authorities that knew van Leeuwen. Immediately he had banged off a telegram to Arnhem, requesting van Leeuwen’s private influence; and, to his delight, that young man came joyfully in person. Of course he would! It was too good a chance to be missed. Indeed it was just the opportunity he wanted. And yet he and Kathleen quarrelled fiercely over trifles all the time.

But I was telling you about my uncle’s escape. It seems he was ambling along in his usual oblivious style, on the sunny side of the street, when he stopped (no doubt painfully near the edge of the canal) to note down something that occurred to him for his book. Just then a motor-cycle turned the corner at a fiendish speed, and was nearly over him. Uncle is the most helpless of mortals at such times – and he was stepping hurriedly into the canal, when Jan bounded across the road and pulled him right.

The bike-tourist must have been a heartless fellow; for he never swerved, but bore down at full tilt on both rescuer and rescued, while they were still on the edge of the water.

The youthful Jan, however, is both original and daring; for he turned the motor man aside as cleverly as if he had Boyton in his hand.

NO DUTCH NEEDED

He either flung himself or his cap against the advancing horror. Terence says it was the kitten he threw. In any case the little fellow did, as a last resource, try to protect both his dear kitty and the Engelschen Mijnheer, at some risk to himself. The “chat” was unharmed, but fled up an adjacent elm, whence it had to be coaxed down at dusk with endless saucerfuls of milk.

This task Kathleen took on herself, after we discovered that Dr. MacNamara, though shaken, was not injured. Nothing would have pleased you better than to have seen her beaming face as she brought the trembling little kitty to Jan’s bedside. She didn’t know a word of Dutch; but managed to communicate quite easily, by signs, with Jan’s mother, whom she promised to come often and see.

We all assumed, at first, that the little fellow had escaped scot-free; but, in a day or two, he was in high fever, and unconscious. He had got a contusion, the doctor said, and would be confined to his cot for weeks.

It was marvellous to see how Kathleen comforted the poor mother, without either grammar, Polite Dialogue, or the use of Het.

JAN’S INCOHERENCES

I grew quite jealous and envious. Here was I who had been slaving at syntax and accidence for weeks, and I couldn’t carry on an intelligent conversation for two minutes without deviating into metaphysics, or getting into a quarrel; while my cousin (who said she hated Dutch) could get through the niceties of sick-room nursing, and the subtleties of heartening up the poor hysterical mother, with the utmost ease and success.

And I knew for certain that she couldn’t go through the Present Optative of ‘ik graauw, ik kef en ik kweel’, or give one of the rules for gij (lieden) – no, not to save her life. But she was never at a loss, for all that. A more devoted nurse, indeed, I cannot imagine.

At the crisis, when the little sufferer was really in danger, she used to watch by him hours at a stretch, to relieve the helpless mother.

The serious turn came all at once; and no aid was at hand. Jan was in pain, and wandered in his talk, crying out that the motor-fiets was hunting him into the canal, for having rescued a vreemdeling; and pouring forth such a torrent of elementary English and Boyton-Dutch as surprised us all.

I fancy it was, in part, my early translations he had treasured up; for some of my mistakes about handcuffs and dogcollars figured amid the incoherences; and it was pitiable to hear him plead for a zie beneden to wrap round his injured arm – already bandaged as tightly as he could bear it.

EEN STUK OF EEN

Then he kept ringing the changes on an expression I must have used in argument with his mother the day I persuaded her to keep his bedraggled foundling.

“Het is geen menigte poesjes, zegt Mijnheer; het is maar een stuk of een. Heus, moe, laat hem blijven. Niet bang, hoor, schattie, je bent maar een stuk of een! Pas op, Mijnheer, daar komt de fiets!” And so on da capo.

So wild and restless was he, the second evening of the fever, that we had to summon the doctor unexpectedly, quite late.

Yes; his condition was disquieting, and we must get him to sleep. It was largely a matter of nursing, at the moment; new medicine was sent for; his head was to be kept cool; and only one watcher was to remain in the room. Above all, no noise. If the English juffrouw, who seemed to understand the lad’s state, would consent to sit up to two or three o’clock, so much the better. The excited mother could have a rest meantime. Otherwise she would be fit for nothing next day.

KITTY GIVES KOPJES

But no sooner had the good doctor softly closed the front door, than my landlady declared it was her intention to watch all night.

Kathleen was at her wits’ end. In vain did she make signs and talk emphatic English in her high voice, or try coaxing with a bit of the brogue. All her feminine free-masonry failed to communicate the faintest idea to the mother.

Uncle MacNamara, who had been waiting to take his daughter back to the Doelen, tried moral suasion in his own particular brand of German, and even in other tongues. – Terence says his father recited a well-known passage from the Iliad in his eagerness to be persuasive! – But all without avail. She wouldn’t heed anybody; and she wouldn’t go; she sat close to the cot, rocking violently to and fro, and moaning “Mijn eigen kind! mijn eigen kind!”

The little fevered face was puckered with a new perplexity at the sound of all this grief and the familiar voice.

“Moeder,” he cried, “moederr! Daar komt ie weer! Hij wou me in ’t water gooien. Moeder, vasthoue, hoor!”