AN IRISHMAN'S DIFFICULTIES WITH THE DUTCH LANGUAGE, FOLLOWED BY JACK O'NEILL'S FURTHER ADVENTURES IN HOLLAND

BY CUEY NA GAEL (REV. JOHN IRWIN BROWN)



Electronic edition on behalf of the research project "Research on Search Engines" of the IRT Working Group.
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AN IRISHMAN'S DIFFICULTIES WITH THE DUTCH LANGUAGE

CONTENTS
CHAPTER TITLE
Introduction
I O'Neill's Great Plans
II Grammar and Phrase Book
III The Recitations in the Wood
IV The Purchase of the Pens
V Local Colour
VI A Wash-List in Dutch
VII Some Misunderstandings
VIII Out for a Walk
IX The Quest of Mijnheer Hiernaast
X The Parcel Post
XI A Succesful Interview
XII Dutch Correspondence


THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF O'NEILL IN HOLLAND


CONTENTS
CHAPTER TITLE
XIII Where did O'Neill's Dutch come from?
XIV Some Characteristics of the Compendious Guide to Dutch
XV How O'Neill learnt to pronounce
XVI An Interlude and an Application
XVII The Wegwijzer on Dutch Syntax
XVIII The Grammatical Caress
XIX A Gossipy Letter
XX The Surprises of the Maas
XXI The Thunderstorm
XXII The Devoted Nurse
XXIII Gossip and Diplomafy
XXIV A Study in Character
XXV Belet!
XXVI The Day-Train
XXVII Supper at a Boerderij
Epilogue
feather

INTRODUCTION


Haarlem, March 1908

Dear Cuey-na-Gael,

Thank you ever so much for the pleasure you gave me by sending me the account of your friend O'Neill's experiences in our country.
It is excellent fun and the whole thing is full of quiet humour.
It cannot but be highly appreciated by all Dutch people who are trying to master the difficulties of English, and often despair of finding the right word for the right place. To all such it will be quite a treat to see how their vernacular puzzles your fellow-countryman.
The booklet fully deserves a place in the libraries of our H. B. Schools and Gymnasiums, and is sure to find one there.
Wishing you all possible success with your publication,
I remain
Yours very truly,

C. HEYMAN.



CHAPTER I


O'NEILL'S GREAT PLANS

We were seated one November evening in O'Neill's rooms in Trinity College, Dublin, when the conversation turned on modern languages.
Each had his own story to tell, but we waited in vain for our host to unbosom himself on the subject of Dutch. Yet he was understood to have had thrilling experiences in the Hague in August.
By a few gentle hints we endeavoured to elicit from him some talk about his linguistic adventures, and, not succeeding very well, I at last asked him point-blank if he didn't find Dutch hard.
"Yes", said O'Neill promptly, in answer to my question. "Yes: it certainly is hard!" he repeated, as he balanced the poker, preparatory to smashing the biggest piece of coal on the fire. "Why the whole thing's next to impossible!"
There was something in his tone that sounded promising. He had a grievance evidently against the language; and there was a sufficient amount of suppressed irritation in his voice to indicate that there might be entertaining disclosures at hand.
Jack O'Neill had worked too closely at his mathematics the winter before, and had taken a long holiday in summer. A month of this he had spent in Holland to master the Dutch language, he said, and get a good general acquaintance with Dutch literature. These had been great plans, and we were naturally eager to learn how they had succeeded. We had seen, however, very little of Jack since his return, as he had been most of the time at his aunt's place in Connemara. Now that he was back to Trinity safe and sound, we naturally expected to get the news sooner or later. The conditions were so favourable that evening for a talker to spin his yarn, that we were all impatience for Jack to begin. We settled ourselves comfortably to listen; but he did not seem in a hurry to unfold this particular tale.
We had already heard from him a great deal about William the Silent, and more than a great deal about Dutch art, but not a word about the Dutch language.
Our next-door neighbours, the "Professor" and the "Philosopher" -- two students from the Cape who were working for their degree -- were as interested as I was in O'Neill's Dutch; and they used to drop in to hear what was going on.
It was the third evening they had called; and as it was clear that Jack was somewhat reticent about his "linguistics", we had to guide him gently to the subject.
"Nonsense!" I said again. "You had no difficulty. You made yourself understood from the first. You wrote me that."
"Well," said Jack, sitting bolt upright, "I know better now: and I stopped talking Dutch when I began to understand myself. You have to hunt in the dark," he explained, "to catch the exact word or the proper idiom -- and a man likes to know what he is talking about, himself. The language isn't child's play, that's the truth. But it's a fine country. You should see the light when --"
"Oh," said the Philosopher, "we don't want to hear any more about the country. Please not. We know all about those azure heavens and the infinite horizons and the scrumbled distances and the Rembrandt cattle, and all that. Why, man, I'll undertake to draw from your own rhapsodies about those pictures an absolutely correct copy of (say) Paul Potter's 'Night Watch', or van der Helst's 'Anatomy Lesson', or Mesdag's 'Lost-Chord', and the canals and the clouds and the chiaro-oscuro. You needn't go over them again".
"But I thought", piped the First Year's Man, who always came in with the Professor and never quite comprehended what was going on, "I thought that the 'Night Watch' was not by Paul Potter. Surely the 'Night Watch' and the 'Anatomy Lesson' are two well-known pictures by Remb--" "Never mind what you thought!" interrupted the Professor. "Don't think, it's bad for your constitution. And above all things don't try to be accurate, or you'll get yourself into trouble."
"The Philosopher's right," I urged. "Our minds are a chaos after O'Neill's descriptions. We'll only pardon you, Jack, all that golden haze and the Rembrandts, if you condescend to plain facts. Tell us now about your Dutch. Do! We're absolutely thirsting for an account of your adventures, Or were you too timid to embark on the open sea of the taal, sticking cravenly to English all the time? Why I thought you had more go."
"Mr. O'Neill promised to master the language in the first fortnight", chimed in the First Year's man in his high boyish voice, "and to finish the principal Dutch classics in the second fortnight. Those were his very words."



CHAPTER II


GRAMMAR AND PHRASE BOOK

"Well", said O'Neill with a kind of sickly smile, "I didn't get so very much time, you see, either for the Literature or for the Language. Of course there was much sight-seeing, and -- I spent a good deal of time over the pictures, which ----"
The Philosopher shut his eyes, heaved an audible sigh, but said nothing.
"And", continued Jack hastily, without seeming to notice the interruption, "my efforts to speak Dutch were not always appreciated".
"Really?" said the First Year's Man, with sudden interest.
"Go on", said the Professor, "now you're started".
"You soon left your hotel for lodgings?" I added enquiringly.
"Well, you see," he resumed, "I was afraid I'd never pick up the language. There is no chance of practice unless you get away from everybody that speaks English. That was not too easy, I tell you. But Enderby helped me, and we searched about the Hague for two whole days. At last we found perfectly charming rooms opposite a canal; the landlady didn't know a word of English. She knew Dutch, though, all right. Fluent, did you say? I should think she was. A perfect marvel. No need of the dictionary, you know. --Verbs all in their proper places--and plenty of them!
Enderby told her all I required, and then went away. It was like being thrown into the sea, as you may guess; but I imagined I should soon learn to swim. There's nothing like being cast completely on your own resources, they say. Still it was a bit awkward at coffee-time, when the landlady came up and talked. She poured forth a rapid and resistless stream of friendly Dutch upon me, while I nodded in the intervals and tried to think. It was a very one-sided business. I was very hungry, too, and wanted luncheon. Now there was abundance of this unequal kind of conversation, but no lunch in sight, so I -- (remember I knew only ja and neen, and was not very sure of them, either) -- I just pointed gracefully to my lips to indicate that I needed food. That produced an immediate effect-- a torrent of eloquence forcibly delivered and ending with some enquiry about biting!
I shook my head and said "Neen, neen! You put it too crudely -- luncheon -- eat -- eat."
"O ja," she replied, "best. Eten -- eten om vijf uur -- vijf." And she held out one hand with the fingers spread. It seemed to me she was swearing there was enough food in the house to satisfy a hungry Irishman.
"Good -- so far," I returned. "Ja, ja!"
"En mijnheer wil niet ontbijten?" she rejoined. This was the biting again, so I said decidedly, "Neen; niet bijten". She seemed surprised and a little hurt; but she said nothing and went away. And of course I had to fast until five o'clock.
This would never do, I felt; and that evening I bought the first grammar and dictionary I could lay my hands on at a second-hand bookstall in the Binnenhof.
They were antique looking volumes, most of them there; and my books had a remarkably ancient aspect. But I was glad to find that I had completed the purchase of them without using one word of English. How? Oh, the method's very simple. You pick out some big book you don't want, and hold it up interrogatively.
You can hold up a book interrogatively, you know,. with a little practice. Well, you lift some rubbishy,. bulky volume that you wouldn't be paid to put in your library, and you give it a sort of enquiring wave in front of the vendor of these second-hand goods, and the vendor immediately understands your picturesque query to be "How much?" He answers promptly, and you as promptly drop the rubbishy fat volume, as if it was a scorpion: you sigh resignedly, raise your eyebrows and walk away disgusted.
That is the first step. That is to give him respect for your intelligence and to indicate your willingness to negociate on reasonable terms.
The next step is different. You linger with an air of disdain at the tail-end of the bookstall; and,. as an after-thought -- just as you are moving off -- you halt a moment and flick the particular work you do happen to want, with a careless forefinger or the point of your walking-stick. At once the man talks, .and you say "Neen."
He talks more. You say, "Neen, neen" and shake your head sadly. He talks still more, and gesticulates excitedly with the book in his hand, You wait till he stops for breath, then suddenly interject, Ja; best," taking care to put down a large silver coin, -- and the article is yours! The negotiation is over; and all you have to do is to gather up your purchase and a quantity of small silver and copper coins that you get as change, Then with a little patience at home and some arithmetic you can count out -- approximately -- how much the things have cost you. That's the way you buy second-hand books."
"I had no idea, Jack, you had such a genius for diplomacy," I murmured, as O'Neill evidently expected us to say something.
"Or for finance," added the First Year's Man.
"Did your medieval purchases do all for you that you expected?" enquired the Philosopher.
"Well, hardly," said Jack.
"After my first success I somewhat underestimated the difficulties of the idiom. But I worked hard at the grammar."
"Ah! a Grammar? " interrupted the Professor. Did you say you acquired a Grammar? I am interested. Could you manage to describe those volumes now, if it's not too great a strain?"
"Oh, the books!" resumed O'Neill. "Well there was a little fat Dictionary, closely printed, with Dutch into English and English into Dutch; and there was a handsome new Phrase-book in brilliant colours, containing conversations on the most unlikely topics. But I admit the Grammar Excercise-book was the gem of the collection. It was printed on a kind of dusky paper, something like blot-sheet, and it bore the date 1807. It had six hundred and thirty-one exercises, double ones, Dutch into English and English into Dutch -- and contained many idioms, hints, exceptions, and explanations. In warnings, foot-notes, and asterisks it was particularly rich. Not a few pages were ornamented with Nota Bene's of various brands, with hands, large and small, drawing attention to them. The English of this manual was very odd, and by and by I got the impression that the Dutch was rather shaky too. Not that I guessed this at first, you may be sure; but it gradually dawned upon me.
I took a certain pride in my treasures, and set about studying them with zeal. No doubt it was disappointing just at the beginning to read: Nota Bene -- No one but a Dutchman can emit this sound; or this: N. B. *.*.*. This sound must be heard. It is something like U but cannot be otherwise described. It cannot be represented by any known letters. Foreigners need not try it."
But I skipped over these obstacles, mastered the verbs 'to be' and 'to have' in their elements, got an idea of the way to construct plurals and diminutives, and went to sleep content.
Next morning after breakfast -- which by the bye came up all right, without any special effort on my part --, remembering that I needed pens and ink, I determined to go out and buy them myself.
Have you pens?
Give me pens, please.
Thank you.
That is all I seemed to require.
Have you? Well; that is not so simple as it looks. I consulted the Grammar, and was appalled to see the amazing variety of choice afforded to any one in Holland who contemplated asking this innocent question.

hebt gij
hebt ge
heb je
heb jij

hebt U
heeft U
heeft UEdele
heeft Ue
heeft Ués

hebt gij(lieden)

I looked carefully at this curious form. Yes, wherever it occurred, there were marks of parenthesis tied round the (lieden). How was I to pronounce those brackets? The vowels and the usual consonants I had learnt already were very trying. But what about those marks? Did they denote a cough, or a sneeze, or gentlemanly tap of your foot on the ground? On the whole I thought I should best represent them by two graceful waves of the hand--one for each bracket.
hebt gij(lieden) with brackets carefully fenced round the (lieden)
hebt jullie
hebt jelui
I counted them over. There are twelve ways of saying Have you in Dutch. That was distinctly suggestive, it seemed to me at the first brush, of the twelve months of the year. You could begin in January with Hebt gij, in February you would have Hebt ge, and so you could work on through the months, keeping your grammar and your chronology going, side by side, through the seasons till you would emerge safely near Christmas with Hebt jelui. This theory was not without its attractions. But what would happen in passing, say, from June to July, if you forgot what day of the month it was? If it was July the first and you imagined it was June the thirtieth, you would be talking bad grammar! No: that would never do. My brilliant conjecture had soon to be abandoned as fanciful, and I was very sorry.
But the facts of the case were dead against the obvious chronological arrangement, though they were by no means easily grasped. There were asterisks and foot-notes to all these zodiacal forms; and a great deal of solid reading had to be gone through before you got at the relative of any particular term. The erudition was distracting, and the warnings were positively alarming; but after much painstaking investigation I seemed to perceive three grand principles emerging."
"Yes?" we all said together, as O'Neill paused for breath. "And these were? --"
"In the first place," resumed Jack deliberately, checking off the principles upon his fingers.
I. "Never say je or jij to a man unless you mean to insult him."
II. In the second place, je and jij may be freely used on all occasions, if you only know how.
"But", said the First Year's Man, "you just said that..."
"And," continued O'Neill firmly, not heeding the interruption, "and you may use the Third Person of the verb for the Second and the Second for the third; and you may use a Plural for a Singular and a Singular for a Plural; and you may use U for UE, and UE for UEdele; you use jij for je, and je for ge, and ge for gij, and you use jullie for gij(lieden) with brackets round the lieden; but no one now ever does say gij (lieden) with brackets round the lieden, except in poetry; and nobody in any circumstances ever uses UEdele except when dining with members of the Royal Family. Then you are allowed to utter this vocable once, and must maintain a discreet silence during the rest of the repast."
"Where do you get all that rubbish?" I asked in disgust.
"Boyton and Brandnetel", he answered glibly, "page 52."
"At least", he added, "it was something like that. That gives you a good general idea of the thing."
"When you are quite done with Boyton," said the Professor slowly, "when your education's finished, you know, I'll make you a reasonably high offer for that book. Boyton would relieve the tedium of my philological studies, I can see."
"Perhaps," interposed the First Year Incorrigible, "perhaps Mr. O'Neill's accuracy was all used up in his Artistic Studies. That would leave none for the grammar."
"That's a nice way to put it", said the Philosopher. "Please curb your imagination, O'Neill; stick as near to probability as you can -- without too great pain to yourself -- and we'll not be hard upon you. Wasn't there a third clear principle that emerged in the course of your investigations?"
"Oh, yes", said O'Neill with some show of caution, - "As nearly as I can remember, it was this:
III. Never say jou; and avoid UE except in correspondence. You are warned against any approach to familiarity in the use of pronouns. The courteous form is UEdele. Gij more respectful than jij. Je is a term of endearment."
"But," objected the First Year's Man, "it doesn't seem to hang together, for you said just now --"
"No debating allowed," growled the Philosopher.
"Hurry up, O'Neill, with those general principles."
"Oh, that's all of them," said Jack, "all at present." "Well, to resume my story, I picked out the most harmless of the have yous, and was proceeding to work out the formula for 'Have you pens,' when to my consternation my eye fell on a dreadful warning, a kind of threat.
N.B. Important! -- The foreigner is distinctly given to understand that he must commit to memory some polite phrases before engaging in conversation (see page 201) and study the chief sentences of a good phrase book. All pronouns savouring of familiarity are to be carefully avoided.



CHAPTER III


THE RECITATIONS IN THE WOOD

You may be sure that made me rather diffident till I had mastered some of these 'polite phrases'. Polite they were, and no mistake -- why French was nothing to it! -- and I got the very nicest of them well into my head. I went round to Enderby's, and he put me on the way of pronouncing the words. Then I took a whole morning in Het Bosch and recited them to myself aloud. When no one was in sight I allowed myself some freedom of utterance; and once I thought I must have startled with my ore rotundo an artist who was plying his harmless calling unseen behind a clump of trees. At least some one retired very hastily after I had delivered, "Doe zooveel moeite niet", three times with a vigorous rising inflection and four times with the falling inflection, followed in each case by the rhetorical pause. From the deserted easel I judged it must it have been an artist. He withdrew at a good pace, and never once looked back.
These and similar polite idioms I repeated over some hundreds of times, till I knew them backwards and forwards and every way, and could have rattled them off in my sleep. Then there was some difficulty in avoiding the policemen in the wood. They kept prowling about after I had incautiously experimented on the first one with, "Mijnheer! ik wensch U goeden morgen; ik hoop dat ik U niet stoor. Vaarwel." He had looked amazed at this; so, as a parting shot -- a sort of courteous Good Bye -- I added gaily, "Ik bid U maak geen complimenten." It was this that made the trouble, as he looked distinctly displeased, not to say suspicious. When he heard the words first, he had stood speechless, transfixed. Then he followed me home and hung about the street -- I could see him from my window -- for over half an hour. I feared my pronouns had been too familiar, though I couldn't see how to change them, for they were there in the book. On the whole I concluded I had been a trifle abrupt, and with renewed vigour I set to and committed a host of apologetic phrases such as: "Ik bid U verschoon mij. Duizendmaal vergiffenis. Het heeft niets te beduiden." A pretty little triplet caught my ear and I took rather a fancy to it: "Het geeft niets -- het hindert niet -- het komt er niet op aan."
It was a little puzzling to disentangle some of the courteous introductions from the sentences in which they stood; and occasionally I committed to memory somewhat more than I needed. This was the case with a sentence that greatly took my fancy. It was an apology to an imaginary gentleman in a tram-car for having trodden on his foot. It seemed odd to provide yourself so soon for such contingency; but of course the book knew best. Well, from constantly seeing the two parts of this sentence together I got into the way mechanically of associating the one phrase with the other. Thus when repeating that engaging expression "Duizendmaal vergiffenis", I was accustomed to follow it up by, "dat ik op Uw teen heb getrapt," either in my own mind or audibly, for the sake of practice. From the first this polite sentence was a great favourite of mine, and I was soon able to repeat it with the utmost fluency and ease. So well did I know it, indeed, after two day's practice that I was tempted to seek occasion for its use; and in getting into the tram-car I was half disposed to brush, accidentally as it were, against any object in the way for the sake of working off my courteous apology. But that sort of thing has unexpected consequences; and I came to the conclusion that it is more philosophic to learn too little than to learn too much. Ne quid nimis, you know."
"Oh, leave metaphysics to me," said the Philosopher, "and go on with your story. You wanted to buy pens? Did you get them?"
"Not at first," answered O'Neill shamefacedly, "but I'll tell you about it".



CHAPTER IV -

The Purchase of the Pens -- penwqw




THE PURCHASE OF THE PENS

"And what", said I, "might be the particular difficulty of saying pens in Dutch? You had a dictionary?"
"Dictionary indeed!" retorted O'Neill with some heat. "Commend me to a dictionary for leading you astray."
"There was a penholder in the room, so what I needed was only nibs. Having already with much pain made my selection among the have yous, I now looked up nib in the dictionary. Nib was represented by five words, three of which seemed likely enough to be right, i. e. neb, punt, and snavel. Accordingly I wrote these down and worked out their plurals and diminutives. The doubtful ones I kept in reserve. Why did I fancy diminutives? Oh, the grammar put me on the way of finding them, and I got quite partial to their use. It is such a comfort. you know, they are all neuter. You can put het in front of one, and then it's safe for nominative or accusative, wherever it drops in the sentence.
Thus armed for the fray, and confiding in my grammar and dictionary, I sallied forth to buy those nibs.
There was no use in going to a large shop, for experience had taught me I should at once be accosted there in English; so I wandered about till I discovered a kind of small general warehouse in an obscure street. Making sure, by a careful inspection from without, that pens were among the commodities sold in this place, I muttered a polite phrase or two below my breath, cleared my throat, and entered boldly. There was a big good-natured man reading behind the counter. No one else was in the shop . . . The circumstances simply couldn't be more propitious for beginning the difficult art of Dutch conversation.
"Mijnheer!" said the big man, putting down the newspaper and looking at me amiably over his spectacles.
"Mijnheer!" I replied, "Ik wensch U goeden morgen."
In the momentary pause that I was obliged to make, to get my polite phrase properly by the end, he rose up and said in an encouraging, friendly manner, "Wat wou Mijnheer?"
"Mijnheer", I returned, confident in the correctness of phrase number two, "mag ik U beleefd verzoeken mij mede te deelen, verkoopt jullie nebben -- of nebs?"
He eyed me steadily for half a minute and then exclaimed:
"Blief?"
I said "Blief" too.
But I had to go over it again. He shook his head: "Nebs -- Nebs? Wat bedoelt Mijnheer?"
"Heeft UE nebs, -- of nebben?" I said -- "of nebbetjes?"
The last variations were of my own invention, thrown out as suggestions merely in order to make sure of catching the correct plural. The Grammar -- Boyton, you know -- had been strong on diminutives; hence I thought "nebbetjes" might make things clear. Apparently it did, for a deep voice at my elbow said, "Voor paling", and I turned round to see a red-faced sailor with rings in his ears, nodding and smiling. "Ja, ja, ik weet het wel," he said to the shopman; "mijnheer gaat visschen," adding confidentially for my benefit, "Engelsman always feesh."
Before I had made out what this friendly mariner wanted to be at, the shopman had produced a tiny fishing-rod and tackle, which he planted down before me with an air of triumph, "Als 't U blieft, Mijnheer!"
"Neen -- ik bid U" -- I explained, grasping for my manuscript. A glance at the document told me that the next word for nib was punt, plural probably "punten", pronunciation doubtful.
"Mijnheer", I said, "zou U zoo goed willen wezen my te zeggen .... verkoopt UE poenten?"
"Wat zegt U, Mijnheer?"
I explained "Zou U zoo goed willen zijn mij beleefd te zeggen en te verwittigen, verkoopt UEdele poenten of poentekens?"
I put in the "UEdele" once, you see, to propitiate the shopman, who was growing flurried, as the shop was now beginning to fill with customers. He didn't seem, however, more than half pleased at being called "UEdele; so I determined to give him another pronoun next time -- there was plenty of choice without touching on the despised "jij."
"Ik bid U, verschoon mij!.... Mag ik beleefd verzoeken, verkoopt gij(lieden) spitsen?" When I came to the brackets of the (lieden) I expressed them vaguely by a graceful sweep of both hands.
No; he shrugged his shoulders in good-natured perplexity; he didn't understand; and indeed my rendering of the (lieden) may have confused him.
Then in dumb show I wrote with an imaginary pen on an imaginary piece of paper, saying very distinctly, "poent!" "spits!" "poent!" A light seemed suddenly to dawn upon him; he went to a drawer and brought out crayons and pencils, and reached me a stumper, -- one of those soft pointed things for rubbing in mountains and clouds on a pencil sketch. It was such a surprise after the fishing rod that I involuntarily exclaimed, "Hallo! a stumper!" Well, as that harmless English term seemed to ruffle him somewhat, I hurried to my next word. This word, by the way, I had written twice, having misspelled it the first time. Now as I stooped down to make it out, my nautical friend, whose interest in me had never flagged, read it before me: "Zwavel! mijnheer wou zwavel."
"Hoeveel?" said the shopman impatiently.
"Voor dit," I replied, putting down a five-penny piece.
He mumbled something about zwavel to a message-boy, who forthwith left the shop; and I sat down to wait. It was a vast relief to cease speaking Dutch for a few minutes; and yet I felt uneasily conscious that there was a mistake somewhere. The shop was filled with pens, so that if I was really buying pens now--as I hoped I was -- there was no need for the message-boy to go elsewhere.
On calmly examining my notes I detected the error. The sailor had read the word in the first rough draft instead of the corrected copy. I started up hurriedly and went to the counter through the crowd.
"Duizendmaal vergiffenis!" I said. "Verschoon my. Ik veroorzaak U veel moeite."
"Ja mijnheer," he replied patiently.
"Niet zwavel hier," I said, pointing to my paper. 'I have drawn my pencil through it,' I wanted to say, but of course couldn't. Then a happy thought struck me. Say I have a line through it -- streepje is the grammar word for a little line.
"Mijnheer," I explained, "niet zwavel hier; zwavel niet. Ik heb een streepje door het." Well, would you believe me, that was the most successful remark I had made as yet? I expected that he would be irritated by my mistake and apology. No such thing. He received my statement with unbounded delight. "Ja, ja," he said, "dat geloof ik ook; dat geloof ik ook"
"Wel zeker," I continued pleasantly, glad to see him take it in such good part. "Een streepje door."
With that they all turned to one another and smiled and nodded to me quite merrily, as if I had said something clever. It shows what a literary people the Dutch are, that they are pleased beyond measure when a foreigner in conversation refers to any small technicality out of the grammar. Indeed so encouraged was I by all this enthusiasm that I boldly made use of my remaining words.
"Mijnheer! wilt u mij toestaan U te vragen ... verkoopt gij snavels?"
"Snavels," I repeated, as he stared, -- "of snaveltjes".
He gasped a moment, as if taken utterly by surprise; then ran behind the counter into a little dark room, where I could hear him make a succession of curious muffled sounds. The noise subsided and he seemed to tell the story to somebody. A white face peered out from behind the lace curtains -- and the chuckling was renewed. Now this was all very puzzling -- but it was quite clear that 'snavel' was not the usual term for 'pen'.
Here the little errand-boy entered with a package which he thrust into my hand.
Sulphur!
"Heelemaal neen," I said.
I was vainly endeavouring to get him to take it back, when the shopman reappeared from his dark den as grave as a judge, and I turned to him.
There was one word left. It might be right, - though I had doubted it from the first; but I would try. It was a long word, too, and from the root of the first part, it promised to have something to do with fowls. Thus I conjectured that its meaning might be 'quill pen'; but my confidence in the dictionary was by this time much shaken.
"Wilt gij mij toestaan", I said, "U te vragen?" "'Ja mijnheer!" he replied expectantly.
Then I got a little confused, and no wonder. ''Durf ik zoo beleefd te kunnen zijn! .... om mij mede te deelen en.... mij te verwittigen?" I lost myself again. It's easy to begin a Dutch conversation but hard to get out of it with honour. Like a drowning man clutching at a straw I grasped at something: "Verkoopt jullie hoenderhokken ... of hoenderhokjes?"
He said nothing -- did not even look at me -- but moved his hands helplessly, as if subduing some strong emotion. I did not press this word on him, as I scarcely ever use quill pens; and it was as likely as not that the dictionary had failed me again.
I set him at his ease by a courteous phrase or two. "Het geeft niets -- het hindert niet -- het komt er niet op aan." Then refraining from further speech, I pointed out some nibs with my umbrella, and, having secured a box of excellent J pens, made good my retreat under cover of a friendly phrase or two: "Mijnheer! het spijt mij zeer; maar ik moet afscheid nemen. Vaarwel."
It had been rather a strain, and I was glad to get out again into the open air. On the way home I could think it all over calmly, and at leisure I deduced that most useful principle never to use more than one word out of the dictionary for one word of English.



CHAPTER V


LOCAL COLOUR


After these efforts I judged it wise to take a day or two's rest from the actual practice of Dutch conversation till my nerves had recovered their tone, and until I had mastered more of the grammar and the idiom. I was the more concerned to do so as Enderby, to whom I had related my purchase of the pens, told me that my language on that occasion had been much too stiff and formal. For the purpose then of acquiring an everyday vocabulary I listened attentively to the talk in the streets and tram-cars. Most of it was unintelligible to me, but I caught up some vigorous and happy phrases here and there. These I soon learned to pronounce in a kind of way, but it was difficult to get at their exact meaning, for many popular idioms did not appear in my dictionary at all.
There was a vocable that occasioned me some perplexity -- indeed a haze envelopes it still. It sounded like Eris, but had nothing to do with the Goddess of Strife. It doesn't seem to have any particular signification. and you can introduce it anywhere to give a finish to your style. Some people were fond of evetjes, a word of the same class, on which none of my books shed the least light. Though my authorities were likewise silent about Toe! toe dan, I perceived that this was the proper expression for courteous appeal, and as such I have always used it, with confidence and success.
Two curious imperative moods, which were popular at the street corners, I did find in my grammar. They belong to that provoking category of words that, as you touch them carelessly, break up into smaller verbs and prepositions. I used to compare them mentally to those lizards that drop their tails when you handle them roughly. Only instead of tails these werkwoorden drop their voorzetsels, which turn up again unexpectedly in distant parts or the sentence. One of these "lizards" was schei uit, which means indifferently, 'stop talking now', 'analyse it' and 'go away'. It was pleasant to hear so scientific a term as schei er uit or schiet nouw op (shoot up now, aim high) used so often. I soon became quite dexterous in employing them myself. On the whole I got little help from my dictionary in tracing out the idioms of everyday life. Two interrogative particles, for example, without which the lower classes, when excited, could hardly ask a question, were quite ignored both by Boyton and the Woordenboek. They were Zaliku and Woujeme. I was left to conjecture the force of these particles -- that they were forcible I could see -- might remotely resemble that of the familiar num or nonne of Latin.
Occasionally animated interlocutors became suddenly oracular: their flow of language stopped and they uttered some one solitary syllable such as Gunst! or heus! or mis! or raak! These single shots were often most effective, but I never could imitate them successfully. Ach! was safe mostly for "I'm sorry"; Och! for "I don't care"; and I discovered a treasure in Hé! That is a contraction for "Do you really mean it?" On the other hand Hè! I found was "Shocking!" "How very dreadful!" When I used these little words I seemed never quite to hit the bull's eye, however. Invariably I said either more or less than I intended. But I made very good play with pretty triplets like 't zal wel, and schei er uit, and with expressions of approval: da's leuk, aardig hoor, och kom. It gives a vivid local colour to your conversation if you drop in now and again a homely fresh idiom caught from the lips of the people. That prevents one's vocabulary becoming too bookish. You can give quite a realistic flavour to your remarks by interjecting occasionally waarempeltjes or Wel van mijn leven! Among the encouraging ejaculations of every day I soon concluded . that none was more likely to prove useful than "Zanik nou niet", a popular favourite which one may render roughly by "Pray, don't mention it", "Don't trouble about it". This idiom has been simply invaluable.
Anomalies of pronunciation were not numerous, but they existed. Nouw, a common word, must be spelt nu; and the advice duwen, which was printed up on the inner door of the Post-Office, was pronounced douwe. Most enigmatical perhaps was the contrast between the barber's notice on the window of his establishment and what he said to you when you entered. Outside it was haarsnijden and never anything else. That is the printed form; inside, however, you must pronounce it haarknippen.
Still these are trifles compared with the real puzzles. I witnessed a street dispute one evening. It was about herring, I think, but I really couldn't follow the one thousandth part of the vigorous debate. Picturesque idioms were bandied to and fro; happily no harm was done. One could not help noticing that the Grammar-book was right. Jij and jou were freely employed, and the disputants did not once address each other as U or UEdele. On that occasion there was another epithet or pronoun or interjection, which none of my previous studies had not at all prepared me for. Turning it up in the dictionary as well as I could, I learnt that it might be translated by 'lightning', and that it was an ordinary noun. Next day I enquired of Enderby if the word for lightning could ever be employed as an interrogative particle or a pronoun. He was horrified and said "Please don't be vulgar".
"All right," I replied, "I don't intend to be, but what about that personal pronoun?"
"Hush!" he said. "Stop; it's not a pronoun."
"Well, whatever it is," I told him, "noun or pronoun, if you had heard it used as I did, you would admit that it was very personal."
"Don't be frivolous," he retorted solemnly, "and let me give you a piece of advice. As long as you are in Holland never let anyone hear you utter that word. Say onweer or weerlicht. The other word is not decent, it is almost wicked."
"There now; don't be surly", I reasoned, "the thing is in the dictionary."
"Never mind. That's for science or for poetry. Then it's all right. But you had better have nothing to do with it. Try and forget it."
I did try. But didn't succeed.
For the more trouble you take to forget a thing, the better you remember it. At least that's my experience, and if I strain every nerve to get a word out of my head, it simply never goes! So if there be a Dutch noun that I recall accurately and without effort, it is just the scientific and poetical term for 'lightning'.



CHAPTER VI


A WASH-LIST IN DUTCH

It was a day or two after the purchase of the pens and I was beginning to feel my zeal for Dutch returning, when the landlady entered the sitting-room and fired my enthusiasm. She had a collar and a pocket-handkerchief in her hand; she waved them in the air and said "Voor de waschvrouw."
I caught the idea at once, banished the landlady, and sat down to make out a wash-list with the help of the dictionary and by the light of nature.
In bold characters I headed my document 'Lijst voor de Waschvrouw'; and turned up the word 'collar'. The usual thing, of course, met my gaze -- a bewildering supply of equivalents -- boordje, rollade, kraag, halsband, halssieraad. Now for the crucial question -- on what principle am I to make my selection? For I was quite determined to stick to the principle I had learnt in the pen-shop, and use only one Dutch word for one English. But which one? The dictionary had a second part to it, Dutch into English. So I felt sure in my innocence that I could hunt down anything and get its exact signification.
I tried 'boordje'.
It was a bad omen that 'boordje' didn't figure in the Dutch-English part at all. Naturally a man reasons that if boordje really means a common thing like collar -- an article of attire in daily use -- it would surely be given a place in a Dutch-English lexicon. It wasn't there; and to confirm me in my determination to reject 'boordje', my eye caught 'boord'. 'Boord' was of fairly catholic application; for it included things as dissimilar as border, rim, shelf, seam, bank and hem. To make a diminutive of this, --'little border', 'little rim', 'little bank', -- wouldn't bring one measurably nearer 'collar'. Boordje therefore was rejected absolutely. So far so good.
Rollade was more promising. It suggested somehow a turn-down collar, and sounded courtly. But there was against it the strong objection that it didn't appear in the Dutch-English lexicon. Rollade therefore was set aside provisionally.
Kraag again offered well, but on inspection proved far too vague, for it included the ideas of cape, neck, nape and hood. That wouldn't do. It was far too uncertain. Therefore 'Kraag' was marked as 'doubtful. '
Diligence however is its own reward, and I found a prize in the next word. Halsband answered every reasonable expectation. It stood every test I could apply to it.
The Dutch-English lexicon said it was 'collar', and nothing more.
Etymology confirmed the dictionary: hals, the neck; band, a band -- a band for the neck -- what could be clearer? If that wasn't collar, nothing was.
So I wrote down with much confidence, as my first item, 6 halsbanden. I felt that this was an excellent beginning and that Dutch was not such a difficult language after all. Gunst! I said to myself, for I felt so elated at my success, that in a way I was almost thinking in Dutch. Gunst! now for the next article.
That was cuff. Cuff, said the dictionary, was slag, manchet, oorveeg and handboei. Which would I take? I examined slag, and learnt it was the proper term for battle, fight, or opportunity.
This gave me much food for thought. I turned the matter over in every possible way, yet to no purpose. It was impossible to detect any necessary connection between a 'battle' or an 'opportunity', and 'a pair of cuffs'; so I dropped 'slag' without regret.
'Oorveeg' at first looked more attractive.
Its derivation, however, showed that it was something that 'skimmed along' the ear, or 'touched it lightly'!
Now it was conceivable that the sleeves or cuffs of ancient times had proved inconvenient; but that they had ever been so large as to flap about one's ears, I positively refused to believe.
It was quite a comfort to discover, as I did somewhat by accident, that 'oorveeg' meant a 'box on the ear.' Thus I could reject it without scruple -- which I did.
Manchet was so obviously French that I never looked at it twice. My grammar was most stringent in banishing all foreign words. Especially avoid French terms, it insisted. That was an easy rule. Geen Fransch woordje bij! So I avoided manchet.
I had now only one word left, which of course must be right. Handboei, moreover, defined its own functions with welcome precision. It obviously meant something to fit closely round the hand; and with a sense of having achieved an intellectual victory, I set down on my list below the 'halsbanden', '4 handboeien'.
After this discipline in the art of 'rejections and exclusions' it seemed child's play to fix on the proper rendering for sock.
Sok -- blijspel -- vilten binnenzool -- ploegschaar, -- that was what the front part of the dictionary gave me to work upon. 'Blijspel' and 'ploegschaar' I dropped overboard without a qualm, for I found they meant 'comedy' and 'ploughshare'; and when it came to choosing between sok and vilten binnenzool, I gave the first the preference, as my book shed no light whatever on vilten binnenzool.
I regretted this rather, as there was a fine air of dignity about the latter.
But I put down '4 paar sokken.' with a note of interrogation, and added 'vilten binnenzolen' in brackets -- to make all clear.
There were seven 'handkerchiefs' to be translated into Dutch; and for 'handkerchief' the little fat Dictionary became more than usually oracular.
Opposite the English word it had two Dutch words without a comma between, so that I felt morally certain it was a case of vilten binnenzool again -- a sort of euphonious compound which you must take in its entirety or not at all.
This compound word was 'Zie beneden'.
I soon detected that the primitive meaning of this curious name was 'look below'. At first indeed it struck me that it might refer to a footnote; but there was no footnote in the Dictionary, good or bad, from cover to cover, except B* on page 91, so I soon abandoned this idea as fanciful.
It was certainly hard to trace any connection between the advice (imperative mood, if you please) 'see below!' and what we usually understand by a 'handkerchief'.
The mystery seemed to clear little when I remembered that a 'handkerchief' was a 'kerchief' for the hand; and that in the Tudor age 'kerchiefs' used to be worn round the neck. In fine old historical portraits that I had seen of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, their Majesties were always represented with elaborate cambric things about their shoulders. It was quite a feature of the period. Thus 'zie beneden' was no doubt the original word corresponding to 'kerchief'; and it would take its name from the fact that when the wearer in ancient times glanced down, he could easily see it on his chest. He would call it a 'look below' quite naturally. Then the name would remain unaltered, while the article would become first a kerchief for the hand, then finally a pocket handkerchief.
As there were plenty of analogies in English for that sort of word formation, I became quite sure of my ground, and at the and of my list wrote with the pride of a philologist,.'7 zie-benedens'.
A few other words I got with comparative ease, and jotted down in their places.
The more I looked at my finished document, the better I liked it.
This is how it ran:--

Lijst voor de Waschvrouw:
6 halsbanden.
4 paar handboeien.
3 nachtgewaden.
4 paar sokken? (Vilten binnenzolen).
7 Zie benedens.
Totaal = 32 Voorwerpen.
Ik bid de waschvrouw gauw de voorwerpen terug te zenden.
Aug. 5. J. O'Neill.

I was quite unprepared for the effect which my manuscript had on the landlady. When she came up presently for the wash-list, I said to her carelessly, as if I was in the habit of writing Dutch every day, "Voor de waschvrouw, -- klaar".
She took the document in her hand and glanced at it; then suddenly sat down in my best arm-chair!
Now you must know that she is very respectful always stands deferentially in my presence, and never dreams of taking liberties. Her conduct now was unaccountable. There she sat in the chair, rocking to and fro, her face hidden with both hands. Her agitation increased till finally she gave a kind of snort, for which she immediately apologized: "Neem me niet kwalijk, mijnheer! neem me niet kwalijk!"
Having regained a momentary composure, she dried her eyes with the corner of her apron and allowed her gaze to wander round the room. It fell upon my paper, and off she went again in a sort of suppressed shriek.
"O mijnheer! mijnheer!" she stammered convulsively. "Het is voor -- voor een hond!"
She ended with a hysterical sob as if she feared her emotions would choke her utterance.
All this naturally raised my suspicions as to the purity of my Dutch, though it seemed incredible that there could be much amiss with it. "Voor een hond" sounded like an expression of contempt, just as we dub ill-composed Latin, 'Dog-Latin', or pronounce poor food to be 'not fit for a dog'.
She surely couldn't imply that my Dutch would make a dog laugh?
It was clear now that she was highly amused at something I had written. At this I was just a little indignant, having spent all the morning hunting up equivalents in the dictionary and debating with myself about them.
To discourage her levity I answered quite coldly: "Wat is voor een hond? Ik zie geen hond. Waar is hij?"
"O mijnheer", was the spasmodic reply, delivered in jerks, "halsband, -- hals -- band -- is altijd voor -- voor een hond! Ik lach me dood!"
I could not argue the point with her or convince her by reasoning that my choice must be correct.
So I just said " Hé! " and waited for her to recover. Presently she dried her eyes again, rose from the arm-chair, and tried to get away; but once more her eye fell on the fatal manuscript -- this time on Handboeien -- and again she dropped back with a smothered yell.
Then she apologized, then cried, then laughed, then finally gathered breath to say, "Voor een gevangene! Moet mijnheer naar de gevangenis?"
"Ik weet het niet," I protested in perplexity; "ik weet er niets van. Wat is gevangenis?"
She rose, and silently picking up my little dictionary, with an unsteady hand turned over to 'gevangenis.' She pointed to the English and I read 'prison'. Thus the 'handboeien' were 'handcuffs'!
I couldn't say she was mistaken. So I merely drew my pen through this item and said "Hè!'' letting the matter rest.
Now she laughed at everything, at nachtgewaden, at voorwerpen, at my message to the washer-woman, even at sokken, though since I have never been able to discover why, except that it was the only proper word on the list.
But nothing could make her understand what I meant by Zie-benedens.
I couldn't explain to her all about Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary and the parallel historical development of cognate languages; I hadn't Dutch enough for it.
Pulling a handkerchief out of my pocket, and showing it to her, I said, "Dit -- dit is een zie beneden!"
But at that she only laughed the more.
Then she chuckled and tittered and coughed and said "Oh! Oh!" and held her sides and stumbled all the way down those steep stairs to the imminent danger of her life. Half way down she had stopped for breath; distinctly I could hear her panting and muttering: "Oh mens! mens! Ik kan nie meer. Ik stik!" For the rest of the day bursts of jovial laughter kept rising from the kitchen, and an air of hilarity hung about the lower storey for a whole week.
Sir, said O'Neill, that is the deplorable result of bringing reason to bear on the material the dictionary gives. For here is another general principle I have discovered about languages: The more arguments you find in favour of any given word the more certain it is that that word is totally wrong.



CHAPTER VII


SOME MISUNDERSTANDINGS

Next evening Jack O'Neill resumed his narrative to myself alone, on the understanding that our friends would drop in if they could.
"Where was I?" he said. "Ah, yes, I had just told you about the wash-list."
"Well; I learnt many things in the next few days, said he, -- especially grammar. Rules and exceptions I committed to memory and could rattle you off werkwoorden and voorzetsels, bijvoeglijke naamwoorden, verleden deelwoorden and onbepaalde wijzen with vigour and promptitude.
In walking about the town and neighbourhood, too, I caught up more and more of those native idioms that give colour and fragrance to one's speech. Of course I was at a loss now and again to explain what I heard and saw. The notice boards, for example, of some inn such as "De Nieuwe Aanleg" remained somewhat mysterious: and on enquiry a satisfactory translation was never forthcoming. "The New Genius" was very wide of the mark, evidently. "The New Tendency" was equally obscure.
Two common English verbs I found very difficult to render exactly. These were 'drive' and 'put'.
'Put' you have to use so often that it is certainly provoking to hunt for a new verb almost every time you have a fresh order to give. 'Put it down', 'put it in the cupboard,' 'put it in the hall' -- well, I managed these somehow. But when it came to having letters posted, I was a long time at sea.
I wrote a good deal; and 'put that letter in the box' was a common order I had to give. Now 'box' was easy enough, for the receptacle in the street was duly labelled 'Brievenbus'. But when I said, 'Plaats dien brief in de brievenbus,' the maidservant stared at me as if I was hardly human.
'Zet' and 'werp' were not much clearer, apparently. 'Gooi', I must admit, always made her perform the task with alacrity, but with an air that plainly said the matter was not very serious.
By a happy accident I became aware that all you need say for 'put' is 'doe'; but alas! it will only help you for a few of the simplest 'puts'.
Two functionaries called about orphans one day, and I said "Put me down for five guilders". "Doe mij beneden voor vijf gulden". It wasn't idiomatic, but they caught the idea when they saw the coins.
Of course the long and the short a are notorious, and they perplexed me nearly every time I worked with them. You can't be always sure that you have hit upon the right one.
An important letter had to go off one evening, and I impressed on the domestic that she must be careful.
'Voorzichtig hoor! -- voorzichtig!' I repeated, 'want dit is een gewichtige zak'.
I might have spared myself the trouble, for she tossed it in one hand and said. "Een zak, mijnheer, ha!" and departed with a gaiety of manner that augured ill for the safety of my missive. All the while I imagined I had said zaak, -- but my a was too short.
One night when the landlady's son -- a promising youth of thirteen -- brought up the supper, he appeared playful and excited. He urged me, as I understood it, to come downstairs and admire a man that was in the street. Surely it must be a fine specimen of manly grace that could elicit this interest! Yes, the man there was 'erg mooi', he assured me.
'U moet es eve kome kijke, mijnheer.'
The request was odd, and I refused at first. As he persisted, however, I accompanied him downstairs, wondering whether there was an acrobat performing in the market-place or if a statue had been erected whilst I was at dinner.
When we came outside, there was nothing remarkable to be seen in the street. My guide, however, didn't mind that, but pointing triumphantly to the sky where the full moon was shining, exclaimed with delight: "Daar, mijnheer, kijk nou is, nietwaar?"
It looked like boyish chaff, getting the foreigner to leave his room to gaze at the 'man in the moon', and I was dumb with indignation at his audacity. Gradually, however, the facts of the case emerged. The youth was only considerately anxious that I should not miss seeing the big Dutch moon itself, which was indeed that evening particularly fine. It was a mooi 'maan' not 'man'.
Yes; the long and the short a are not to be trifled with, and you'll get into no end of trouble if you ever mix them.



CHAPTER VIII


OUT FOR A WALK

Starting one morning for a long ramble in the country I took the first stage by tram. It was very early, and as there were no other passengers, the conductor was disposed to be communicative. He was absolutely eager to talk, and he came up to me at once.
Now I have noticed that at one time it is much easier to express oneself in a foreign language than at another.
Sometimes the grammar you have mastered becomes positively oppressive, and your tongue refuses to lend itself to the task.
I cannot tell whether it may be due to barometric pressure or to some electrical condition, but on certain days I cannot -- to put it mildly -- come up to my normal standard, either of perspicuity or ease.
This was one of my bad days, and I was little inclined to respond to the conductor's advances. Fate was against me, however, for I didn't know the name of the place I was bound for. Enderby had several times taken me to a pretty village some few miles from the Hague. It was the terminus of the tram-line, and I purposed to tram there first and then to start out on my country walk.
I had never troubled much about the geography of the district, and consequently was quite in the dark now as to what the village was called. This was awkward, for the talkative conductor was already at hand trying to open conversation.
He made a first essay by producing his bunch of tickets and asking me, "Hoe ver, mijnheer?"
I waved my hand and said, "Den geheelen weg." Seeing he was not satisfied with this, I amplified the remark by adding "Naar het einde."
As he was still slightly bewildered, I glanced up to the tram-car itself to ascertain, if possible, its destination. Thc designation of the village would surely be printed somewhere on the vehicle.
Happily I could just make out the end of a long series of hard words the name 'Simplex'. Pointing to this with a careless flourish of my stick I said 'Ja; ik ga even naar Simplex".
"Net, mijnheer," he laughed, "ha! ha!, overal reclame!"
Before he had recovered from my unconscious wit, I perceived the error into which I had fallen. Simplex was merely a cycle-advertisement.
Then I laughed as heartily as he, saying "Gunst ja; overal" -- which emboldened him to be still more familiar.
He fancied that I was a perfect master of Dutch, and could even joke in it. He talked most volubly; and, -- my reputation as a linguist being now at stake, -- whenever he made a slight pause I was obliged to say something to show I understood.
I didn't understand. But I started him off always when he was inclined to stop, and I kept him going by a careful use of 'ja' and 'neen'. If he appeared to expect agreement, I threw in a hearty 'natuurlijk', 'ja zeker', or 'wel van mijn leven.' At other points, and for variety's sake, I interjected indignant negatives: 'Wel nee!' 'schei er uit! 'Hoe heb ik het met je? ' -- and now and then even 'och kom!' with the peculiar shake of the head that accompanies this phrase.
The plan was brilliantly successful. True, he stopped sometimes and took a long queer look at me; but he was one of those garrulous people that require little encouragement, and the flood of his reminiscences always poured forth again as freely as ever.
We got along famously together -- though I didn't know one word he said -- till we came opposite a tall church. Nodding patronisingly towards this building he said, "Pracht van een Kerk", adding something about a 'hooge toren'.
Here I felt on solid ground, -- I understood him thoroughly. My natural wish to take an intelligent part in the conversation would be gratified if only I could say something about that edifice; and, one of the fresh idioms that I had recently acquired occurring to me, I promptly gave it to him by way of reply: "Ja, prachtig; het is kolossaal mooi."
This choice idiom I had got just the day before from a policeman. We had been standing in front of a florist's window -- the policeman and I -- admiring the tiny vases of lilies-of-the-valley that were displayed there, when I heard him murmur half to himself and half to me "kolossaal mooi!" The combination so captivated my fancy that I added it without delay to my working stock.
The tram-conductor emphatically agreed with my criticism. "Kolossaal!" he repeated.
Thus encouraged I attempted to contribute something further to the conversation, and catching sight of a lofty lightning-conductor on the church-steeple, I tried to draw his attention to it by an easy grammatical remark.
The word 'lightning-conductor' did not seem to present difficulties.
'Lightning' of course I remembered, though I ought to have forgotten it long ago. No doubt it was to be approached with caution; but as this was a matter of pure science I felt tolerably safe. As for 'conductor', there could be little doubt as as to the way to render that, for 'conducteur' was stamped on the tram-man's buttons, and had been staring me in the face for the last half-hour. Those buttons were as good as a dictionary.
Putting together then the component parts of 'lightning-conductor' I hazarded a bold guess, and waving my hand towards the steeple I said cordially. "Ja, de toren is mooi -- kolossaal mooi. Gunst; ja. --Zoo is ook die bliksem-conducteur! Vind U niet?"
Well, he stopped as if I had struck him; his face got fiery red, and he walked away without a word!
What had I done? There was no denying something had gone wrong. Evidently the man was choking with rage, and he didn't as much as glance at me for the rest of the journey.
That same afternoon I reported the affair to Enderby, who grew quite gruff and crusty before I had finished the narration.
"Didn't I warn you", he grumbled, "against those horrid expressions that you seem so fond of? You must really take care, O'Neill, -- or I won't speak to you as long as you stay in Holland."
It was useless to assure him that I had referred to the 'lightning-conductor' merely in its permissible and scientific sense. He would listen to no explanations. "You simply can't imagine how shocking all that talk of yours sounds, or you wouldn't attempt to justify your vulgarity."
"Begging your lordship's pardon", I retorted ironically, "for all my unseemly conduct, may I enquire humbly what the dignified term is? Onweersconducteur, perhaps? Or weerlichtsconducteur?
"Nonsense!" he almost shouted. "The thing's quite easy--"bliksemafleider."
"Aha," I could not help retorting, "you see after all you are in the wrong. You warned me against lightning-- quite needlessly, you now admit -- but you never said a syllable about that really dangerous word conductor."
But to return to my trip that lovely morning. The tram duly reached 'Simplex'. and the conductor was unfeignedly relieved to see me alight.
It was perfect weather, and my annoyances were soon forgotten. There was such a shimmer and haze and play of light over the wide landscape as I have seen only in Holland.
I was delighted. Such a scene is an inspiration. It makes one wish to be a painter or a poet or something. Subtle and delicate shades varied the long stretches of green meadow; clumps of trees, church towers, tiny red-roofed villages dotted the landscape; while here and there as far as the eye could reach, wide canals -- the very pictures of tranquillity--reflected the great white clouds sailing overhead.
"Splendid, splendid!" I exclaimed to myself. And charming indeed did my ramble prove to be.
But the day was hot, and I was glad at last about eleven o'clock to come to a good-sized tea-garden over the entrance to which stood in conspicuous letters, " Uitspanning. " Here was cool shade under broad trees; and here were innumerable little tables at which a number of people were seated, laughing and chattering and lunching pleasantly, while little children, some of them not more than three years old, kept running about and playing games. And all these tiny tots, too, were talking Dutch, happily and unconcerned, tossing about in childish glee and with incredible ease, onbepaalde wijzen, verleden deelwoorden and voorzetsels, not to speak of het and hen and hun and je.
On entering this popular resort and looking round I was addressed by a breathless waiter laden with plates. "Waar wou mijnheer zitten?"
The shade was deepest under a noble elm, where at this instant I spied an unoccupied seat close to the wooden paling that skirted the enclosure. I didn't know what 'paling' was, but I chanced it, as there was no time for the dictionary. "Naast de paling," I said, "als 't U blieft."
The impatient waiter nearly dropped his tray; but recovering himself, he vanished, and I took the seat myself. Another kellner appeared, --a slow grave man in whose district was situated the attractive nook that I had been fortunate enough to secure. The day was broiling hot, as I told you, and I thought I couldn't do better than begin with a little lemon-squash.
I could have wished to study up my part a little; but as the slow dignitary was already waiting, I asked for a "limoen en een glas water." Having greeted my remark twice with "blief?" he drew himself up and enquired if I wanted 'limonade."
"Geen kwestie van," I said, hauling out of my pocket the little fat dictionary, that faithful companion of my wanderings. "Wacht even!" I hurriedly turned up "squash"; for on the analogy of 'meloen, I assumed that 'lemoen' was all right for lemon. The verb squash was moezen; the noun moes. This latter I chose, preferring the beverage ready-made, if possible.
"Ja, kellner" -- I said, "nu weet ik het al. Breng mij limoenmoes,"
He raised his eyebrows and said: "Bedoelt mijnheer soms appelmoes?"
Apple squash? That seemed rather a good idea. It sounded like cider or apple-lemonade.
"Ja, best," I said: "breng mij een glas appelmoes,. maar niet te sterk."
When he was gone to draw some of this mysterious beverage, who should turn up but Enderby? He had been motoring; and was coming back from Amsterdam when some pinion had given way, and he had to stop at the Uitspanning for repairs. He came up to me and sat down saying: "Well, O'Neill, you're a long way from home; how did you get here? What are you taking this hot weather?"
"Indeed," said I, "I don't exactly know. It's apple-squash, or rather a sort of apple lemonade, -- cider, I believe."
"Ah," said he with surprise, "you talked English, I suppose?"
"Not at all, -- not a word. I never speak English now. It was all Dutch."
"Then I tell you, you have made progress with the language! For here have I been Holland for fifteen years, and I never even heard of apple lemonade yet. To tell you the truth, I should not know how to ask for it. My boy, I congratulate you on your linguistic enterprise!"
The waiter reappeared just then, and Enderby interposed, "Mijnheer heeft iets besteld, nietwaar? Wat is dat voor een drankje? Geen limonade?"
"Nee, menheer," said the waiter in a complaining tone, "volstrekt niet, mijnheer is wat vreemd, ziet u; want," and here his voice sank to a horrified whisper, "mijnheer eet meloen met appelmoes!"
Enderby looked at me in speechless astonishment;. while the waiter murmured, perhaps as a further suggestion of guilt on my part: "We hebbe geen paling!"
Matters had got so involved that I could not explain anything to him; except to say that I had started with the intention of cooling my thirst with lemon squash.
He was inclined to be huffy once more. "There you are at it again! Look here now; do take some care about what you say. I'll get that drink for you this time; and, for any sake if you want 'kwast' again, don 't say appelmoes. Indeed I strongly advise you to stick to English, or you will get into worse trouble yet."
Enderby went off in high dudgeon, and I took a long ramble under the trees. It was not long till I shook off the effects of my grammatical skirmishes and began to enjoy the day to the full.
In point of fact I made several sketches, and returning in a couple of hours had luncheon successfully. That was comparatively easy. I had merely to say, "Koffie! -- Kaas!" -- and the meal was. ready.
Being by this time a trifle tired, I conceived the idea of driving back to the Hague, for it seemed too far to walk. In this design I was encouraged by the presence of a considerable number of vehicles with horses, standing about.
On examining my dictionary to get the Dutch idiom for 'drive home' I discovered three curious translations for drive: 'rijden', 'drijven' (used, I was informed, of ice) and 'jagen.'
Now seeing that 'rijden', meant to ride', and 'jagen' to 'hunt', and the other word was restricted to icebergs, there really appeared to be a lack of the precise term I needed.
Obliged thus to circumscribe my meaning, I rapped on my green table and enquired, "Kellner, kan ik een paard hebben?"
The waiter mumbled inarticulately, coughed apologetically, and vanished like a shadow.
Presently he came back with a red-faced man who seemed to be the proprietor of the Uitspanning. What I wanted to say was, "Have you a horse disengaged to drive me to Hague!" but owing to the defective character of the Dutch vocabulary this could not be said directly, and I was obliged to go round the point.
I went round it thus: "Mag ik beleefd vragen, Mijnheer, heeft U paarden beschikbaar om mij te dragen?"
This sounded diplomatic and neat, and was certainly clear; but the apoplectic proprietor looked askance.
He paused and endeavoured to transfix me with his beady eyes and read my inmost consciousness. This being impossible, he condescended to the gruff question: "Wou meneer een peerd koope?"
"Koopen?" I replied in astonishment, "oh niet koopenl Gunst! asjeblieft niet."
"Raie dan?" was his brusque reply.
"Rijden, graag" I agreed; "gaarne rijden; maar -- ik ben niet in staat het paard terug te zenden. En . . . en ik heb geen ruimte in mijn kamers voor een paard."
"Wat dan?" said he rudely, with a kind of a dull glare in his black eyes.
I was getting into deep water -- there was no use blinking the fact -- and here was this dreadful man growing more enraged and suspicious every moment. Perhaps after all I could make something of those three doubtful dictionary words. "Kan u niet," I asked with some asperity, "kan oe niet, mijnheer, mij laten jagen naar den Haag?"
"O, hé!" exchaimed my interlocutor with a sudden access of interest and a kind of wrinkle distantly resembling a smile. "Gaat mijnheer op de jacht?"
Dear me, this is too bad, I thought, for I saw people watching me with a curious air of disapproval, and a good many more approaching. Really I regretted I had not walked to the Hague.
But I was in for it now, and with all the sternness I could command I explained sententiously, "Ik wensch een paard!--Om mij te trekken -- in een rijtuig -- naar Den Haag, Ferdinand Bolstraat 66a."
My horsey friend took a step nearer, his face ominously darkening and the fierce eyes flashing fine. "Wat wou menheer eigenlijk? rijtuig huren? of pérd koope! -- of raie naar de stad? -- of op de jacht gaan? -- of onzin praote?"
I was at my wit's end and deemed it wise to retire as soon as possible from the conversation, This I tried to do by means of that agreeable little triplet that had hitherto proved so useful to me.
"Och kom!" I said with a pleasant smile, "'t Geeft niets; het hindert niet; het komt er niet op aan."
He was unappeased, however. So by way of friendly deprecation I added: "Laa maar! Schei er uit."--
This did not appreciably mend matters, I assure you. -- At every sentence I uttered his face grew more purple -- and I was intensely relieved when at that moment one of the interested by-standers ran up hurriedly, whip in hand, and touching his cap exclaimed: "Drive you the Hague, Sir?" --
It was a cabdriver who spoke English!
Oh! I could have embraced that man!
"Yes," said I with effusion, "Yes, at once, please! -- as quick as ever you can!"
I jumped up on his vehicle and, as the vendor of peerden was still hovering unpleasantly near, I ventured on one of those despised French verbs -- it was the only thing I could think of -- to construct an effective phrase for my exit.
"Mijnheer Uitspanning!" I said waving him adieu, "ik zal U niet verder derangeeren! -- Vaarwel!"
Good-bye at last! There was a faint cheer from the score or two of spectators, but no response from my late tormentor.
What a relief to get away from the intricacies of that dreadful cross-examination!
I was flurried and worn, and did not quite recover my equanimity or feel properly cooled down till I was safely ensconced in my rooms in Ferdinand Bolstraat 66a.



CHAPTER IX


THE QUEST OF MIJNHEER HIERNAAST

On settling down in my rooms, I was reminded of my social duties by seeing a card from young Van der Leeuwen whom I had known at Trinity, where he had studied a year.
Van der Leeuwen had called upon me more than once and had invited me to his home. Up to this time I had not seen him since I came to the Hague.
To-day he had scribbled on a visiting card 'Leaving town soon for Arnhem.' This showed me that his friendly visit should be returned as soon as possible; so early next afternoon I journeyed across the city to see him.
I found however that the house was shut up. The blinds were down and the whole place hermetically sealed, so to speak.
On the door there was a singular notice, freshly pasted, which at once arrested my attention, and which I copied into my notebook.

"Afwezig.
Brieven en boodschappen
te bezorgen bij
Mijnheer Hiernaast."

Unhappily I had left my faithful companion, the dictionary, at home. I was thus obliged to fall back upon my stock of Dutch learning, and guess what I did not know.
'Boodschappen' and 'bezorgen' were new words to me, but I seemed to gather the general sense of the placard. If anybody wanted to see my friend van der Leeuwen, or communicate with him, he appeared to be invited to do so through the medium of a gentleman called "Hiernaast". The curious thing was -- no address was given to indicate whereabouts Mr. Hiernaast lived.
Now this was very puzzling; for just that morning I had been shown how particular you must be in Holland about addresses. As I had not given word to the authorities when I moved from the hotel to my lodgings, I had been summoned to the "Bevolkingsregisterbureau," and had to display my "Geboorteacte".
Innumerable details had been asked of me about my name and initials and about my parents' names and initials, -- some of which I could not satisfactorily write out.
The functionaries at the office, too, had appeared unnecessarily amused when I told them that I lodged in Ferdinand Bolstraat above a tinsmith's. On thinking it over afterwards I admit that that perhaps I mixed the word tinsmith with lightning conductor. I was naturally anxious to avoid the latter scientific term as much as possible; and my over anxiety probably defeated itself.
At all events I was told at the Bureau that it was quite a serious offence -- a sort of mild treason -- to move from my hotel to lodgings without giving full information about the whole matter to the civic dignitaries.
Now, as everybody was so particular about addresses, I knew that van der Leeuwen had more respect for the laws of his country than to be guilty of intentional carelessness; and I was sure he would not try to defy the state by pasting upon his door anything of the nature of mockery. The notice did look like this: "Out of town. If you want to see me, go to Jericho;" but my friend would hardly have meant that.
I concluded therefore that Mr. Hiernaast's address was known to everybody that read the notice, and that Mr. Hiernaast was some prominent person like the Burgomaster or the Town-clerk.
Perhaps he would be an official who kindly looked after people's letters when they were out of town. If so, a policeman would know all about him. There was one passing at the moment, so I determined to accost him and get what information I could.
Now Enderby and others had instructed me about policemen. You must never say "Mijnheer" to a policeman; he doesn't like it, for he thinks you are making game of him. That's where I had made the mistake before, in the Hague wood. I learnt that his proper title is 'politieagent' or 'agent'; the newspapers call him 'openbare macht'. If he comes from Amsterdam he will answer readily to klabak or smeeris, though he may prefer a more dignified title. He is known to the mob as a 'diender', but this is rather vulgar.
Naturally I wished to avoid the vulgar word and use a respectful term; so stopping him I said, "Openbare Macht, verschoon mij, -- zult gij mij toestaan om U beleefd te verzoeken, -- waar woont Mijnheer Hiernaast?"
I guessed what he would do, and he did it. He stared at me for about half a minute and then said, "Wah blief!"
"Oh." I responded, "duizendmaal vergiffenis, dat ik op..." And then I stopped just in time, for it was on my tongue to finish the polite sentence as I had repeated it so often from the conversation-book -- "dat ik op Uwen teen getrapt heb."
It was well I didn't, for it didn't fit in at all accurately with the situation. So I said, "Kijk nou is!"
"Mag ik zoo vrij zijn, Klabak? " I murmured couteously, showing him my copy of the placard, "Mijnheer Hiernaast -- ziet u -- waar woont hij?"
Well, he couldn't have been more astonished if I had reached him a lighted bombshell.
Instead of meeting me with that ready sympathy I had been reckoning upon, he was quite stiff. I however persisted courteously with my question, "Ja Openbare! wat zegt U, Smeeris! Woont mijnheer Hiernaast in deze straat?"
Well, he wasn't a bit polite; or if he was, he must have been singularly deficient in charm of manner, for he stared quite insolently at me and grumbled, "Woujeme voor de gek houe?"
Woujeme, gekhoue? Didn't I know some of those words?
On considering this utterance of his I seemed to recognise "woujeme" as an old friend. Wasn't that the introductory particle that was not in the dictionary and which resembled the Latin 'nonne'? Then 'gek' was remarkably like 'hek', which I knew to be 'gate'.
The Landlady had always been talking about the 'hek' being open, -- a state of affairs which she strongly objected to, because dogs were in the habit of strolling in and looking rudely at her through the kitchen window.
Now I knew that it would be the easiest thing in life for 'gek' to be mistaken for 'hek'.
London policemen often drop h's in one place and put them in at another. Why shouldn't a Hague policeman do something similar? You could hardly expect a policeman to speak the language with absolute accuracy.
So 'gek houwe' would probably be a common provincialism for 'hek houden'. And I could easily guess, on the analogy of 'stalhouwer', what 'hekhouwer' would mean. It would be, no doubt, a 'man that made and sold gates'. Vóór den gekhouwe(r) would then be, as nearly as possible, the idiom for 'in front of the gate factory.'
There was no gate factory in sight, so I continued pleasantly making further enquiries of the policeman: "Voor den gekhouwer? ja zeker! asjeblieft! Maar -- zoudt gij zoo goed willen zijn -- mij mede te deelen, waar woont die gekhouder? Woont -- hij in deze straat? De gekkefabriek -- waar is dat?"
I really pitied him, he looked so overwhelmed. Then he did something wonderful that stayed all further parley. He turned his head away, spread out both white-gloved hands, raised his shoulders slowly till they were well up over his ears, then slowly let them down again to their normal and natural position, -- and all this without glancing at me.
It was an awe-inspiring spectacle, -- apparently some kind of military drill to repel idle questions. I could only utter "'t Geeft niets -- 't hindert niet -- het komt er niet op aan! Doe geen moeite, Smeeris!" But he turned upon his heel and walked away without even saying 'Vaarwel'!
Alas, I had failed again! I had displeased the Openbare Macht and had not got any hint as to the .address of the official receiver of letters.
All this was more than usually mysterious, so I tried to extract some information from the landlady that evening.
"Waar woont Mijnheer Hiernaast?" I said to her casually after dinner.
"Hiernáást, mijnheer," she replied with strong emphasis on the naast.
"Oh I don't mind putting the accent on the final," I murmured to myself. "Goed. Best. --Dan waar woont Mijnheer Hiernáást?"
"Hiernáást," she repeated, pointing through the wall!
Had the good woman lost her senses? Or was she trying to make fun of me? In either case I did not quite care to prolong the conversation. "Lamaar", I interjected, "het heeft niets te beduiden -- zanik nou niet". And I must say that effectually stopped her.
The mystery was solved that same evening by Enderby, who dropped in about half past ten.
We talked over a number of things and as Enderby was quite himself again after our little tiff at the 'Uitspanning', I just said, "Do you happen to know of the Hiernaasts in the Hague?"
"People called Hiernaast", I explained, as he seemed not to catch my meaning. "They appear to be rather well-known. The father I think is a Government Official -- a member of the Tweede-Kamer, I imagine, or something of that sort. I'm told he lives opposite a large gate-factory. The queer thing about the family is that, if you ask about them, everybody gives you a silly answer.
"Is he not in society, or what? Is his name like the word for lightning? May I not refer to him?"
"O'Neill", exclaimed Enderby, rising suddenly off his seat, "you are surely not quite well!"
"What is it?" he said, "were you out long in the sun? The appelmoes must have gone to your head! Tell me all that happened to you."
I told him the whole day's adventures; and then I learnt that Mijnheer Hiernaast is -- not necessarily an Official of the Government or a member of the Tweede Kamer; indeed that he is no particular person at all; but -- just the gentleman who lives next door to you, wherever you happen to be. . .
Well; that's easy enough, when you know it. But when you don't, what are you to do?



CHAPTER X


THE PARCEL POST

You will remember that the day I was at Simplex I took some sketches. Well, I bundled these up along with some really exquisite water-colours that I purchased at an art-shop, and I sent them to Ireland.
Yes, I bought these pictures without pain. The vendor of these objects of art spoke perfect English; it was a delight to hear him. So pleased was I with my purchases, that I hastened home, there and then, and adding my own artistic treasures, made a little square package of it all for my aunt Rebecca in Connemara, Killery Bay, -- a place renowned for its beautiful sunsets and splendid salmon.
My aunt is artistic - she herself used to draw when she was young -- and I knew that nothing would please her better, as a present from Holland, than a number of carefully chosen water-colours.
Glowing with affectionate enthusiasm at the prospect of giving my aunt so agreeable a surprise, I made my way to the post-office and tried to send off my package.
An obliging official addressed me in English.
"O, then", he said glancing at the address and weighing my bundle in his hand, "this will cost you about six guilders it if goes as a letter, but, if it is a book it will cost you two guilders and a half. But as it appears to be neither a book nor a letter, I should advise you to send it by 'pakketpost'; the cost will be under a guilder. Please fill in these papers." And he reached me a dark red paper and a flimsy white one, both of which were dotted all over with Dutch and French hard words with spaces after them to be filled in.
I retired to a little desk and did my best, -- stating that I, Jack O' Neill, aged so and so, sent one brown package of expensive water-colour pictures, some pencil-sketches and one pen-and-ink drawing, value unknown, to Miss Rebecca Fitzgerald O'Neill, (zonder beroep) Warlin Castle Killery Bay, Ireland, on the 21st of Aug., 19--. I added some other things here and there in the columns and gave this report to the official. "Not in order," he said politely, "you must put stamps on the package, with wax."
"Stamps," he added, touching it all round, "sealed with sealing wax."
"Oh, indeed!" I said. "Sorry to give you so much trouble. Many thanks!" And I carried my bundle to a neighbouring stationer's.
The stationer was not at home, and his temporary assistant was a youth that did not know English; but I borrowed an Engelsch-Hollandsch Woordenboek from him and instituted a search for wax. After some little trouble occasioned by the words 'was' and 'honingraat', I settled down comfortably on the word 'lak'; and then the stationer's boy and I got on quite nicely together, He helped me most willingly, and made all sorts of suggestions. We secured a candle and constructed two great seals of red wax, as if it was for the Lord Chancellor; and I returned to the Post-Office triumphant.
There was a new 'ambtenaar' on duty, the English-speaking one having apparently gone to luncheon.
"Mag ik beleefd verzoeken?" I said; "Zeker in orde?"
"Nee mijnheer", he replied, "volstrekt niet in orde! Er moeten vijf zegels op zijn -- vijf."
The bundle seemed safe enough to go half round the world! But he knew the rules; and I submitted accordingly, went back to the stationer and put five more seals on the packet, thus making the number seven in all.
On presenting my carefully prepared 'pakje' in the post-office I felt confident enough that it was right. "Nu, mijnheer, het is zeker klaar?"
The functionary was also disposed to think that all was as it ought to be, and seemed at first to be satisfied.
He nodded approval; and gave me a friendly official smile; but suddenly -- as he was laying the curious object aside--his eye caught the seal I had used, and his face fell. The seal was a very simple affair, having been impressed from the back of a guilder -- a beautiful new specimen that I was reserving for show when I should return to Trinity.
"Nee, mijnheer", he said sharply. "Heelemaal niet goed! Het moet een werkelijk zegel zijn -- met letters--Uw naam!" And he drew imaginary initials on the blotting-paper with his thumb.
"Neen maar! -- Mijnheer!" I exclaimed.
Words failed to come to my relief. I could think of nothing to say but "Gunst!" and in the circumstances this sounded too like a curse to venture upon. Presently however I recalled something under cover of which I could retire: "Het spijt mij erg -- ik ben verbaasd -- dank u vriendelijk."
I went away sincerely regretting that I had begun this business at all. Fortunately when I hunted up the stationer once more, the man himself was at home; and after infinite rummaging in remote drawers he got me a seal with the letters N. J., -- which was a trifle like Jack O'Neill, if you read it backwards.
As that was the nearest approach I could get to my initials, and as no time was to be lost, we melted down another stick of red sealing-wax, and stamped the package over with seven gigantic seals, N. J.
I put on seven, though the official only demanded five, for I had an undefined fear that something would be wrong again. Meantime the 'get up' of the parcel was growing more impressive and unusual. The effect of the big letters of the seal was specially fine, the red bundle now looking as if it were bound for New Jersey.
Then in fear and trembling I made for the post-office again.
My tormentor appeared to be appeased. Ah yes, at last the letters were all right.
"Uitstekend, mijnheer," he said. And he quite beamed upon me.
"Nu de formulieren, asjeblieft."
Oh, the papers, of course! I had quite forgotten about them by this time. Fortunately I hadn't lost them; so I handed him both documents. He took them up, smiling benignly on the foreigner who had managed to surmount so many obstacles; but alas! his satisfaction -- and mine too -- were of short duration. He frowned impatiently at the brown paper. "Nee, mijnheer," he growled; "niet goed!" And he pushed papers and package and all to me, as if he was mortally offended.
"Hé, mijnheer!" I ejaculated--"Hoe is dat? Kom toch! Wat is niet goed?"
"Geen zegel! geen zegel!" he thundered magisterially, with a contemptuous toss of the brown formulier in my direction. Like a shot he turned to a schoolboy of fourteen at my elbow, (who had meantime been studying my writings and reading them audibly to his companions) -- "En U?" he enquired.
I felt dismissed, if not disgraced! And no investigation of my belongings could throw any light on my blunder. The brown manuscript was at fault I knew; so as the best thing possible I entered a solemn declaration, opposite the hiernevens, "een pakje met 7 zegels", and booked the same remark on a convenient spot on the white paper. This done, I returned to the charge promptly, but with much inward apprehension. The queue of people pushing forward to buy stamps and send things away and generally to transact business, had grown to a long line nearly to the door. Humbly I took my place at the end of the file, about twenty minutes off the ambtenaar. It wasn't quite twenty minutes, but it felt longer; for every now and then the ambtenaar glanced up, when he had served a customer, and his eye invariably fell on me. It was a long-drawnout agony, that approach to the loket, under official inspection, so to speak, and I had plenty of time to register a silent bet with myself that the authorities were not done with me. They'd be sure to give me another journey to the stationer's.
And so they did! Without deigning to look at my official guarantee about the 7 zegels the Postal Radamanthus began with vitriolic self-restraint "Ik -- heb -- U -- gezegd. Er -- moet -- een zegel -- op"
"Oh mijnheer!" I burst out in hot indignation, "Hoe kunt U dat zeggen? Kijk! Het is allemaal zegels!" And indeed the parcel was almost completely coated with wax.
A spasm passed over his face, and he controlled himself by a severe effort. "Ik--heb--U -- al meer maal -- gezegd" -- His voice rose higher and higher, and he bit off the words as if they were poison. "Hier moet de afdruk van het zegel komen .-- Hierr!" And he waved a white hand over the coloured formulier and finally dropped this thumb, like a pancake, over a lozenge-shaped diagram filled with Dutch and French words. "Hier!!"
Ah yes! Just so. Now I saw what was wanted, and I departed speechlessly to the sealing- wax-shop again .
By this time I was quite domesticated there: so I took a good rest and then put a formidable seal on the lozenge. In half an hour I was back again on the premises of Rhadamanthus, at the end of another queue, wondering if I could reach the loket before it would be closed for the day. You see all that marching to and fro, and arguing with officials, and cooking sealing-wax, and waiting your turn in a crowd, swallows up an immensity of time.
At last I was before the little window and handed in the documents. "Ja, ja. De zegel is in orde!"
"In orde, mijnheer!" he added with a cherubic smile" "Best." "Maar -- maar wat hebben we hier?" he muttered, as he perused my other remarks on the papers. He appeared somewhat nonplussed by my opmerkingen as to the contents of package, and ran his pen through all my art criticisms; then suddenly said roughly. "Heet U Rebecca O'Neill?"
This was so unexpected a query that it threw me off my guard, and I answered in English.
"Do I hate her? Oh no. On the contrary, I am sincerely attached to her. But why do you ask?"
He said "Exkuseer" and called another ambtenaar -- one who talked English. This new functionary opened fire at once, "Sir, is your name Rebecca O'Neill?"
"Bless my heart", I said; "Not at all. That's my aunt".
"In that case, sir, you have sent the package to yourself, and filled in the declarations all wrongly." "Is there no way," I said in despair. "to send this thing off? I have been all morning labouring at it, and I can't get rid of it. Would you mind accepting it as a gift -- just a little friendly gift, you know, as a token of my appreciation of the post-office arrangements? Or would there be any objection to my leaving it here lying on your desk? It's quite harmless; perhaps even elegant -- that depends on taste -- but I don't care for it any more! It's no further use to me. Will you have it?"
"Oh hé! you mean it is of no value?
"No value -- not the least", I said, glad to see a chance of disposing of it.
"Then you can send it off as, well -- what we call -- Monster zonder waarde -- monster -- monster -- I remember not your English word.
"Oh," said I, "it is all right as it is. You don't need it translated. 'Monster' is quite good English -- and very expressive."
"Then," said he; "that is it -- Worthless Monster. That must you write -- on the package. Then will it cost you a dubbeltje; and it will go off at once. No wax will be needed, and no papers. No trouble of any kind."
"I am delighted with your kindness," said I to him. "You have relieved my mind."
"Will you put the name on it now?" he enquired courteously, reaching me his own pen from behind his ear. "Please write legibly the English declaration. I shall do the Dutch for you. It must be plain."
"If you don't mind," I said, "as you are so kind, might I ask you just to write both English and Dutch?"
A glance had shown me that these curious words would have to come uncomfortably near my aunt's name; and as my aunt is rather a particular old lady with very definite notions about her own dignity, I judged it prudent that this title of distinction with which she was going to be invested should be drawn up in other handwriting than her nephew's. She had a hawk's eye, and could detect every scratch I made with the pen.
"If it's not too much trouble, please put the whole declaration on it yourself. You'll find a place here", I said, turning over the unsightly object. "There's a little room left here, I think -- just beside the address".
He looked it all over. It was quite true. The parcel was all a mass of red wax and "N. J.'s" except round about the address, w here he had kept the wax well off it for fear of infringing some other regulation.
"English first!" he said, making use of the vacant space.
And in Roman letters just after my aunt's name he boldly penned the mystic words, first in English, and then, in brackets, in Dutch. This is how it ran:


TO MISS REBECCA FITZGERALD O'NEILL,
Worthless Monster (zonder waarde),
WARLIN CASTLE,
KILLERY BAY,
IRELAND. CONNEMARA.


After that I wouldn't touch the parcel.
I declined all further responsibility in connection with it; and leaving it with him, retired, as from a good day's work.
As I knew my aunt, I felt sure she would appreciate the delicate compliment implied by the proximity of the postal notice to her name.
This indeed proved the case, when I visited her later in the autumn. I drew a veil over our interview; but happily my aunt is fond of a joke, and when I told her my adventures of that morning, she laughed as she had not done for years, until I flattered myself she had forgotten the queer declaration on her package.
At the end, however, she suddenly drew herself up and, raising a reproving finger, said, "Well, it wasn't your writing! or I shouldn't let you off so easily, Jack. But what kind of a functionary was that, now, who would dare, in your presence, to insult your aunt?"
"In my young days a lad of spirit would have called out a villain like that, -- yes, or a fellow that ventured on the twentieth part of such an atrocity!"
"Jack, Jack, where's your chivalry?"
"Calm yourself, my dear aunt," I retorted. "Its only that you don't catch the niceties of a translation. But you'll pick that up soon enough if you go over with me to the Hague next year."
"Never", said my aunt firmly.



CHAPTER XI


A SUCCESSFUL INTERVIEW

"You must not suppose," said O'Neill, after I had expressed my commiseration, "that I was always unsuccessful in my conversations and business transactions. On the contrary I have sometimes surprised myself and everybody else by the (shall I say?) aptness and readiness of my utterance -- not to speak of its delicacy and point.
You smile? But listen.
This was certainly the case one day when I had an interview with an elegant young man who came to me from the Bevolkings Register Bureau.
That is the place where the authorities give themselves so much needless trouble about your address and initials, and where I had broken the law of the land by mixing up the tinsmith with the lightning-conductor.
Well; a representative of this Department of State called upon me two days running, when I was out. The last time he came he left word that he would return next morning at 10.30 sharp; and would I please give him an interview?
I thought it wise to do so.
That unhappy blunder of mine might get me into trouble. Perhaps the officials of the Bevolkings office were going to prosecute me for conspiring to deceive the government. At all events I would be at home at 10.30; and, more than that, I would be ready for my visitor when he came.
I rose about six, and prepared for the proposed conversation as a barrister prepares his brief.
As the man who talks most has generally the situation in his own hand, I determined to keep the greater part of the conversation to myself. All the likely sentences that could possibly be of avail I copied out of the phrase-book on a sheet of foolscap. Some new expressions and idioms were added, and I committed them as thoroughly as possible to memory.
And, by the way, I made use of a fresh discovery-- a number of algemeene opmerkingen from the end of the grammar.
These were on the same lines as the material in the phrase-book, but much more learned. They were for advanced students (I was rather advanced now, so to speak) and they had a distinct literary and scientific flavour. I went over all these, aloud -- my old and favourite plan -- so as to gain fluency and facility in uttering them.
Furthermore, not being able to trust my memory absolutely -- there was a lot of new stuff to be mastered, you see, -- I hit upon a plan to lead the conversation and keep it upon topics of my own choosing.
My strategem was of uncommon simplicity, but admirably effective for all that.
On my table I erected a kind of informal reading-desk composed of books and magazines; then in a hollow of this edifice, out of sight, I placed my manuscript notes where they could easily catch my eye. Two chairs I set carefully in position -- one for myself beside my fortress, the other for my visitor in the middle of the room in a good clear light.
Then I awaited results
At half past ten o'clock sharp there came a ring at the hall-door; and, ushered by the obsequious landlady, in walked a young fellow, fashionably dressed, with languid manners and a general air of being bored with life. He carried a portfolio gracefully under his arm.
Without waiting for him to begin, I went up to him the moment he entered, and shook him cordially by the hand. I relieved him of his umbrella -- he had one though the weather was fine; and as his other hand was thus partially released, I shook it with no less heartiness.
"Blijdschap, mijnheer!" I began, "Blijdschap en vreugde! Het verblijdt mij zeer -- U te ontmoeten! Mag ik U verzoeken Uw jas af te zetten. Wat? Nee?"
As the day was burning hot and he wore no overcoat, I didn't insist upon this.
"Zij het zoo, mijn waarde! -- Neem een stoel," I continued. "Ga zitten, ik bid U. Het is aangenaam weer.-- Volstrekt niet koud -- neen -- niet koud."
This was well within the mark, for it was 89° in the shade.
My Dutch seemed to surprise him, for he said feebly "Dag -- Sir -- Yes -- I mean -- O ja." I saw he was just the kind of young man that I could have a pleasant talk with. But it was now time I got back to my notes. Before sitting down however, I asked to take charge of his hat.
"Handig mij Uw hoed over!" I said, reaching for it. When he hesitated, I put him at his ease with an "asjeblieft; toe dan! toe!"
Though there was an interval of a second or two whilst I was getting behind my barricade he was too astonished to utter a sound, either in Dutch or in English. I perceived my advantage and intended to keep it.
"Mag ik u iets aanbieden?" I said with a wave of the hand, throwing in some nonsense out of the grammar.
"Wat gebruikt U? -- ah -- hm -- -- Een -- voorzetsel, bijvoorbeeld? -- of -- de gebiedende wijs -- of -- een bijvoeglijk naamwoord? Wat -- niets?"
As he still said nothing, I pointed him to my cupboards, by happy inspiration remembering the refrain of the vendor of eatables at one of the stations, "Bierr, limonade, spuitwater? adding -- "Bitterkoekjes en ijskoud bier; of -- een amandelbroodje?"
It was well he didn't accept, for I had none of these dainties in the house; but it sounded friendly to offer them.
"Of," I put in, sinking my voice to a confidential whisper, "Spreekt U liever over de Nieuwe Electrische Tramweg? Wel, dan. -- Het publiek wordt gewaarschuwd het personeel niet in gesprek te houden."
Very faintly came the reply, as he moved restlessly on the edge of his chair, "Mijnheer, ik kwam niet om de Tramweg."
"Neen?" I said. "Goed. Best. Ik neem het ook niet kwalijk, mijnheer! ik bid U welkom! -- Het doet mij genoegen, na al het ongunstige weer van verleden week, U zoo goed en wel te zien."
The weather had been quite hot; but this was one of the good phrases of the book, and I stuck to it.
All this appeared to increase his panic, and he glanced at the door more than once as if he would like to make a bolt for safety.
Now I was quite in my element, and from my palissade of books I could hurl all sorts of irrelevant politenesses at him.
"Ik verwelkom U oprechtelijk, mijnheer. U bezoek is mij oorzaak van ongeveinsde blijdschap."
Holding the portfolio clenched in both hands he stared at me as if he was incapable of speech.
This seemed a favourable opportunity for putting in an algemeene opmerking, which I must say had all the effect of a round shot after infantry fire.
"Deugden en belooning gaan zelden te zamen," I murmured pleasantly, with a friendly gesture of deprecation. Then in a second or two afterwards I added, -- leaving him to find out the connection as best he might, -- "Water bevriest op twee-en-dertig graden."
The more outrageous the nonsense which I repeated from my notes, the paler he got.
He seemed to measure the distance between his seat and the door; but I rose, walked about the room, repeating softly to myself such phrases as I knew well, no matter what meaning they might have -- "Lamaar! pas op! niet pluis, hoor! -- 't komt er niet op aan!"
Some midges were buzzing about the room. I pointed to them saying "akelige beesten, nie waar?" And making a sudden spring towards one that was approaching his head I impaled it, or rather smashed it, in the approved fashion, between my hands. The fragments of the insect I displayed to him on my palm adding triumphantly; "Dood als een pier." He was ready to go.
Laying at last a fatherly hand upon his shoulder I genially enquired, "Vergun mij te vragen, jongeling, -- hoe is het -- met uwe -- achtenswaardige ouders?"
"O ja, mijnheer", he said in a breathless whisper. "Ja zeker, mijnheer. Dank U zeer -- Ik moet weg, sir. Ik heb belet -- thuis -- Ik moet weg -- Ik zal het U zenden."--
And he was gone! gone, too, without his hat!
I was left master of the field.
Ringing the bell, I rushed to the landing and called after him, "Duizendmaal vergiffenis, Bevolkings Mijnheer! -- Uw hoed!"
But that hurried him only the more swiftly down those steep stairs; and I was sincerely glad to observe that the landlady, like a good goal-keeper, had stopped him at the door, where they entered into earnest colloquy.
I had won this conversational contest; and half my ammunition was not yet expended!
Eight polite sentences and about a dozen 'algemeene opmerkingen' remained unused, besides two general topics -- 'boomkweekerij' and Rembrandt.
But what did he mean by 'Ik zal het U zenden?' What was it that he meant to send? I devoutly hoped there would be no further difficulty about my address, and was just trusting I had escaped, when the landlady entered with the words, "Hij moet zijn hoed hebbe." Then as she took it in her hand, she added "Mijnheer zegt, dat het niet veilig in huis is -- niet veilig, zegt mijnheer!"
"Hij vraagt ook wat de groote letter is voor O'Neill? Of het een J of een I of een T of een F of een Y is, niemand op het kantoor kan het uitmaken; Uw handschrift is zoo onduidelijk, zegt mijnheer."
Relieved to see there was nothing worse, I went to some old copies of the 'Nieuws van den Dag,' which were lying carefully folded up on the side-table, and with a pair of scissors cut out a J from the word Juli, pasted it hastily on a sheet of notepaper and wrote underneath it! 'Met veel complimenten -- en de groeten.'
Yes; the interview was decidedly successful.
Yet it pales before the fame I once got by a single sentence, just outside the Beurs-station, in Rotterdam.
I was pounced upon by an army of porters; they had seized me and my bag, and were quarrelling loudly. I said "Hush" to the worst of them, but one brawny rascal was inclined to be insolent, and I was put upon my mettle.
"Ik bid U -- houd Uwen bek," I said -- "anders," -- and here I glanced round for a policeman, "anders -- roep ik -- de Openbare Macht."
The man ran like a hare.
I pride myself there was dignity and firmness, courtesy and local colour all in that one sentence.
And I find that it is still much admired.



CHAPTER XII


DUTCH CORRESPONDENCE

The gentleman from the Bevolkings Register Bureau had left his umbrella behind him in his hurried departure that Thursday morning, so I sent it back to him with a polite note. It would have been easy to write the polite note in English, but that would never do. After my success in carrying on a long conversation in Dutch I felt that a lapse into English would be a confession of weakness.
My reputation as a linguist could only be maintained by a real Dutch letter. Now the phrase-book gave but little light on the vast subject of correspondence. Except a brief note acknowledging the arrival of a ton of coals, and a still briefer note accepting, in the third person, a formal invitation to dinner, there was nothing about letter-writing in the volume
It was not easy to find any phrases out of these epistles suitable for working into my note about the umbrella.
They were valuable as examples, merely for the general rhythm and style, as it were, and then only to a slight extent. As my missive was of a genre quite distinct from these models, I felt justified in composing it in my own way.
I wrote the letter first in English; then set about translating it, as elegantly as I could, into Dutch.
Here is the English -- quite friendly, you see.

Dear Sir,

As you left your umbrella behind on Thursday morning when you did me the honour to call, I beg to send it to you by bearer, in the hope that it may reach you safely without delay.
Trusting that its absence may have occasioned you no inconvenience, I remain, dear sir,

Very truly yours

Jack O'Neill.

As a beginning, the phrase-book gave Hooggeachte Heer and Hoogedelgestrenge Heer, and many mere very offical-looking titles. It gave 'mijnheer' for 'sir'; but for 'dear sir' nothing at all.
Seeing, however, that 'dear' was lief or dierbaar, I could easily make out a form of friendly address: -- 'Dierbare mijnheer' or briefly 'Dierbaar'.
It was a toss up, indeed whether to take the stiff title Hooggeachte Heer (for Hoogedelgestrenge Heer seemed to much of a good thing for a note about an umbrella) or this more affectionate but somewhat doubtful Dierbaar!
I finally decided on a combination, one at the beginning and one at the end.
I sailed along quite comfortably until I arrived at his 'doing me the honour to call'. This required hammering out; and when I had tortured myself a long time over it, here is what I got: 'wanneer gij mij vereerdet door het bij mij eene visite afleggen'. Dreadfully round-about, you perceive! So I just fell back upon brevity, and trusted to luck to carry me safely through. 'Op mij te roepen', sounded terse and likely; and I chose it to avoid worse pitfalls with door and the infinitive.
As 'I beg' had a brusque ring, I made it a trifle mellower and more courteous by the helpful and familiar 'verschoon mij'. 'Verschoon mij dat ik bedel,' I could not improve on that.
But the proper division of 'overhandigen' into its component parts was not easy.
To get the right 'hang' of this sentence, I forcibly detached the 'over', and dragged this harmless voorzetsel well forward so as not to impede the action of its own particular verb, when you got so far. This much improved the rhythm; and I gave myself some freedom in the phrasing to keep up the style.
Indeed, after all, two or three bits of phrases could be worked in. 'Goedige aanblikken' caught my eye somewhere. I was delighted to have a kind of equivalent for kind regards; and eschewing the temptation to deviate into 'zuiverlijk' for sincerely, or 'vertrouwelijk' for faithfully, I finished with simple directness using 'waarachtig' for truly. This I afterwards thought of changing to waarempeltjes as being less formal.
Finally, to give a neat turn to the whole, I dropped in a sentence from the conversation-manual, so as to refer with a light but artistic touch to the broiling weather.
Thus the finished product assumed the following form:

Hooggeachte Heer!

Aangezien dat gij in mijn zaal laatsten Donderdag morgen Uwen regenscherm vergegeten hebt, op den datum dat gij mij de eer deedt om op mij te roepen, en visite af te leggen, verschoon mij dat ik bedel het geabandoneerde voorwerp beleefd over aan UEdele te handigen door den drager dezes briefs.
Ik bemerkte niet eerstelijk dat de regenscherm de Uwe was; dus ik vertrouw dat gij wilt pardoneeren al heb verdriet dat zijne afwezigheid veroorzaakt hebben moge.
Hoe heerlijk dat gunstige weer van gisteren en onlangs gestadig blijft! Ik hoop van harte dat U ervan heerlijk geniet.
Koesterende den hoop dat de regenscherm zonder oponthoud U goed en wel zal bereiken.
Ik blijf,
Dierbaar,
met goedig aanblikken,
waarachtige de Uwe,

JACK O NEILL.



CHAPTER XIII


WHERE DID O'NEILL'S DUTCH COME FROM?

We had all heard something of Jack O'Neill's adventures in Holland; and the members of our informal little club in Trinity College, Dublin, were positively thirsting for fresh details. There must be much more to tell, we felt sure: and we had a multitude of questions to ask.
Now the odd thing about O'Neill was that he didn't like to be interrogated; he preferred to tell his story straight through in his own way. He had evidently studied hard at the Dutch language, but without the least regard for system: and it was clear that he had been by no means careful in the choice of text books. Indeed, he seemed to be rather sensitive on this point, no doubt regretting that, in the ardour of his early enthusiasm, he had just taken the first grammar and exercise-book he could lay his hands upon, without consulting anybody. It was that curious plan of doing everything by himself that doubtless led him into the initial mistake, that of trying to get any sense out of "Boyton and Brandnetel".
Apparently he had kept that "literary find" by him for reference, and for digging stray idioms and rules out of, while he added more modern volumes to his working stock. This would account for his glibness in rattling off out-of-the-way phrases, and for that rich bizarre flavour which his simplest Dutch utterance undoubtedly had.
But we didn't know the worst.
Intentionally vague though he was in talking about his authorities, we ran him to earth (so to speak ) at last in the matter of "Boyton and Brandnetel"; and had a happy evening.
That book was all O'Neill told us, all O'Neill told us, and more. Printed on paper that seemed a cross between canvass and blob-sheet, it bore the date 1805. It was very Frenchified, and the English puzzled us extremely. Here is the Preface -- or a part of it.

The following WORK was, originally, compiled by William Boyton. After passing five Editions, a Sixth appeared partly enlarged, and partly improved, by Jac. Brandnetel. This last Edition was published, at the Hague, in the Year, 1751.
The several particles, of Speech, are arranged by the usual Order; and Declare with precision; every rule being followed, with practical exercise. This mode, of teaching, being already appreciated; it will not be deemed Essential; nor do we, point out, the utility of it. As to Syntax; it is fully treated: whilst, last not least, cares have been exercised, to unite ease with simplicity, accuracy with idiom, and animate the Learner. It aims at the pupil of High-Life, and to acquire the Polish of the civilized Lady.
THE HAGUE, 1805.

This brilliant introduction raised our expectations to fever heat. We had never encountered such an army of commas before; and as for the English --!
Anything, evidently, might be met with inside the covers of William Boyton's 'Work'. The best of it, of course, was its extraordinary politeness. Every other question was prefixed with "Verschoon mij", and went on something like this: "Zoudt gij zoo goed willen zijn mij toe te staan..."Then there were some plain and unornamental phrases such as "Men weet nooit hoe een koe eenen haas vangt". -- This was labelled 'proverbial expression', and was translated, happily enough, by "The unexpected often occurs."
"Ik heb er het land aan je" was rendered mysteriously: "I have an objection", "I cannot agree."
That was puzzling enough, and delightfully vague! But for all that we found the phrase doubly underlined by O'Neill and marked by him as 'useful for general conversation'. --



CHAPTER XIV


SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COMPENDIOUS GUIDE TO THE DUTCH LANGUAGE

There was something good on every page, as might be expected from the very preface. And, withal, there was a steady process of boasting about its own merits that was most refreshing in the barren realm of grammar.
With mock modesty it dubbed itself on the title page, "The Compendious Guide," and followed this up with another title "Korte Wegwijzer tot de nederduitsche taal." The whole compilation was evidently the work of several generations of literary gentlemen, who aimed at the 'Polish of the Civilized Lady' in quite different ways, but whose united efforts certainly made 'The Work' remarkably incoherent.
We all quizzed O'Neill unmercifully about the Civilized Lady, and read some dialogues with immense satisfaction. So uproarious, indeed, did the fun become at last, that our neighbours on the stair came trooping in. Three of them were Cape-students, hard-working medicals, whom we never heard speaking Dutch, though we were well aware they must have known it. Like the others, they insisted on a full explanation of the tumult, and we showed them "Boyton". They didn't mind so much about the Civilized Lady; but when they turned to the Polite Dialogues at the end, a kind of shudder seemed to pass through them, as if they had got an electric shock -- till finally they dropped the book and screamed with delight.
"Why! that's nothing so very odd", said O'Neill, looking hurt. "I have often used lots of those phrases." Picking up the dishevelled leaves from the floor, he ran his eye down a page o two and said: "Yes, of course. These things are all right: A bit stiff and bookish, perhaps; but correct, quite correct . You fellows needn't be so excited over nothing."
"Read us some!" clamoured the men from the Cape. "Read us some of the dialogues you imitated. Go on! Read!"
"Oh! said O'Neill, "almost any one of these conversations about common things is good enough. Here, for instance. " And he took the book in his hand and walked about the room, giving us first the English -- then the Dutch.

"TOUCHING BUYING AND SELLING. WEGENS KOOPEN EN VERKOOPEN.
Have you any fine hats? Hebt gij mooije hoeden?
Yes, Sir; this is a dreadfully nice one. Ja, hoedemaker; deze tenminste is ijsselijk mooi.
Just come close to the fire, Sir; and examine that hat narrowly. Eilieve! kruip bij het vuur, mijnheer; en bezie dien hoed eens wel."

"That conversation," said the Professor, "must have been of immense help to you now in modern Holland?"
"Hm" -- replied Jack doubtfully.
"O'Neill, said" I; "Stop! You're making that out of your head. That stuff's never in any book."
"Well," was the hasty reply; "I see this isn't so good as some parts -- not so practical, perhaps; but that's all here. Wait a bit... Now listen. Here's something better. Hush!

"BETWEEN TWO ENGLISH GENTLEMEN TUSSCHEN TWEE ENGELSE HEEREN
My dear Friend, I am extremely happy to see you. Waarde Vriend! ik ben ten uiterste verheugd u te zien (bezigtigen, of a house)
It has been reported for a certainty that you were taken by the Turks and murdered halfway between Leghorn and Civita Vecchia. Men heeft voor de waarheid verteld (als eene zekerheid verhaald) dat gij van de Turken genomen waart en gemoord halfwege tusschen Livorno en Civita Vecchia.
But these atrocities did not befall me! Maar deze gruwelen zijn mij niet gebeurd!
You are convinced it is not true? Gij zijt overtuigd dat zulk onwaar is?
I am. Gewisselijk.
I rejoice that you are restored. Ik verheug mij dat gij heelemaal hersteld zijt geweest (of a building: geheel en al gerestaureerd geworden)."

There was a noise in the room at this, but O'Neill went on boldly to finish the Dialogue.

"That's enough -- quite enough -- for the present", said the Cape men. "We'll borrow the Wegwijzer from you, and bring it back safe."
"No, there's no fear we'll mislay it, or harm it. Much too valuable for that. But -- you'll excuse us; we can hardly believe you've got that actually in print. And we're curious to know what kind of rules those learned grammarians give. You'll lend us this mine of wisdom for a few days, won't you? Thank you, so much.
"And by the way, here are some of your own notes. What's this about engert?"
"Oh", said O'Neill; "that's a reminder about a neat phrase I picked up from my landlady. Did I never tell you?
"Well. When my cousin came over, you know, on his way to Germany, he stayed with me a couple of days. He's very athletic -- a fine wiry, muscular young fellow, lithe as a willow, as you are aware. So I wasn't astonished at overhearing the landlady and a crony of hers discussing him They used a rumble of unintelligible words about Terence, as he passed the two of them on the stairs with the slightest of nods, and mounted three steps at a time, whistling as he went. There was no mistake about their referring to him; and amid the chaos of sounds I caught the words eng and engert.
Curious to know how Terence's agility, or perhaps his swarthy complexion, had affected them, I turned up these terms of admiration in my dictionary; and found eng, 'thin', 'narrow'. The longer word wasn't there. But on the whole it seemed safe to conclude from eng (meaning 'narrow') that engert would work out something like "fine strapping fellow and in excellent training". If that was it, my landlady had hit the nail on the head. For Terence had just been carrying all before him at the last Trinity sports.
Her admiring criticism I duly entered in my notes and kept for use.
Some days after Terence had left, the landlady was praising her son's cleverness to me; and to please her I just said that he was a wonderful boy. 'Mirakel van een jongen' was the expression I employed; and I was quite proud of it. But she didn't seem appreciative of my effort, so I fell back on her own idiom. Fortunately the lad was quite slender, and I could dwell with satisfaction on the suitability of my new word.
"Hij is zoo eng", I said. "Ja juffrouw hij is een engert! -- een echte engert!" She received my encomium on her boy with speechless indignation, and rose and left the room. "You can't be too careful", added O'Neill thoughtfully. "Jack," said one of the students. "I prefer your own notes even to Boyton. Haven 't you some more? Ah, what's this?" he enquired, turning to some pencillings inside the back. "Dat zou je wel willen", he read aloud, 'signification doubtful!'
"And here's one marked 'commercial': 'We'll consider the transaction as settled': Dutch apparently something like' Dat zal ik u betaald zetten'. Here's another labelled, 'not deftig, but very popular' 'Ben je niet goed snik?' Translation seems to be: 'you're not quite able to follow my meaning.'
"Ah! No more? That's a pity."
"Oh I have plenty more," interposed O'Neill; "but not here. And you want to read this Boyton volume."
"Let me finish the 'Dialogue between English gentlemen', and you may have The Work.
The first Englishman says: "Ik bid U, mijnheer; laat mij geene onheusheid begaan."
Then the other, the man who had been so disappointed that his friend wasn't murdered, answers politely: "Ik weet zeer wel welke eerbied ik U schuldig ben."
Up to this moment the two acquaintances seemed to have got on fairly well together in spite of some difficulties. Why two Englishmen when they met in Paris about the year of grace 1805 should plunge into a complimentary dialogue in Dutch, is not very clear. But that there was a lurking feeling of antagonism in the gossip' s mind towards his compatriot, seems to be shown by the remark that he now makes to wind up the dialogue.
"Mejuffrouw(!) ik bid U duizendmaal om verschooning, indien ik heden eenige onheusheid omtrent U bega."
That was final. The returned traveller hasn't a word for himself, after he is called 'mejuffrouw.'
"Mind you, gentlemen," continued O'Neill, holding Boyton aloft like a trophy, "if I did try to stop too prolonged conversations in that, gracefully irrelevant fashion, I had caught the trick of it from Brandnetel himself. You have only to go on heaping civilities on your wearisome talker's head, but take care to call him, just once, Mejuffrouw, and he'll have to go. It's a neat way of saying Good-bye. I never found the method to fail.
Some day I'll tell you how supremely effective I found that unexpected little turn.
Why it's nearly as good as Zanik nouw niet.



CHAPTER XV


HOW O'NEILL LEARNED TO PRONOUNCE

"I never could quite understand," said Bart van Dam, the big Cape giant who had carried off Boyton the week before, "how O'Neill managed, out of such an extraordinary book, to pick up anything of the pronunciation. For, as a matter of fact, he does get quite close to some of the sounds; and I can nearly always guess what he is trying to say.
"When he is talking about that interesting Rotterdam street, the Boompjes, he doesn't make the first part rhyme with the English word loom, and then add cheese, a thing I have heard Britishers do who should have known better. And actually, I have noticed he can distinguish goed, groot, goot. That's promising.
"Some of my British friends at the Cape, even after I graduated on English Literature and History, used kindly to drop Dutch words into their conversation, either to make it easy for me, or to keep up my spirits, so to speak. Oh, never a talk of over five minutes, but little familiar terms like taal, zolder, maar, and so on, would begin to be showered in, here and there. One of these linguists had taken me into his own back garden, (he was very fond of animals of all kinds and we had gone out to inspect those he had) when he began to explain the new improvements on his premises.
We got into a deep discussion on the right way of draining a flat roof. "Come here," said he, at last. "Look up there, and you'll see a goat of mine running all round the open space!"
"Goat!" I exclaimed; "it'll fall!"
"Nonsense," he said, "not unless lightning strikes it. Firm as a rock! Now, isn't that the right sort of goat to carry the water off?"
He thought he had said goot in Dutch!
Well now, Jack's beyond that. Who had been coaching him?
Naturally I turned up Boyton on pronunciation the very first thing at home -- and the mystery was solved! I was amazed. Boyton excels in teaching the sounds. Here is the extract or two from his

REMARKS ON THE DUTCH PRONUNCIATION.

A has a broader sound than in English, bal.
A A has a broader sound, aal.
A A U sounds broad, as in graauwen, to snarl.
E U is described as resembling eu in Europe. For the falsity thereof, let the word be pronounced by a Native, and the Mistake will be felt.
G is a guttural letter difficult to an Englishman; it can only be acquired by hearing it from a Civilized Native, e.g. gierig and gijzelen.
U U No Englishman can emit this sound. It may be well heard in vuur (fire) and in guur. Consult a Dutch Instructor.
E U This sound is beyond the powers of the unassisted English Organs of Speech. It must first be heard from an educated Hollander.
U I It is improper to make this identical with oy as in boy; the native pronunciation must be followed.

There you have some of the Rules! They won't lead you far wrong, in any case. Then, to crown all, for fear the diligent reader wouldn't have caught the point yet, Boyton goes back to his favourite "Doctrine of the Native." Here it is:

The Editor places the learner on his guard against receiving wrong references", and directs him to an Instructor, or Native, whose Dialect it is, for the sound peculiar to each letter.

Bravo, Boyton!
Three kinds of Natives he recommends the beginner to consult. He has them arranged in a sort of ascending scale -- the civilized, the Intelligent and the Polite.
The two former classes will help you with the pronunciation, or with Het.
>From the latter you get idioms.



CHAPTER XVI


AN INTERLUDE AND AN APPLICATION

"So our friend Jack had to ask always for the sounds of the words. That would be right good for him," said Bart, "and should have made his talk intelligible."
"Well of course it did," said O'Neill. "They always understood the words I used. It was the applications I made that hampered them.
"I had great trouble with a chatty old gentleman in the tram one morning going down to Scheveningen. It was just seven -- I was hurrying to get an early dip, and he seemed bent on the same errand.

Attracted by my blazer and towel he opened conversation about sea-bathing, and then proceeded to discourse on the beauties of the landscape. He seemed chilled by the poverty of my adjectives, though I worked them vigorously.
"Deze weg vin je zeker wel mooi?" he said at last, looking up at the arched green overhead. "Of houd U niet van de natuur?"
"Ja zeker wel," I hastened to assure him. "Ik houd er erg van -- Het is prachtig! Net een tunnel van geboomte -- van loofgroen."
Then observing the pleasure my encomiums gave him, I ventured on something a little more lofty and poetic. My landlady had occasionally talked about a "canopy," which, so far as I had understood her, I took to mean the vast cupola of hangings over the old-fashioned bed in my lodging, She used to say that the canopy was new and beautiful, and needed constant dusting.
I had always agreed to this, but never dreamt of hunting up a word that to all intents and purposes seemed the same as in English.
"Indrukwekkend schoon," I added. "Wij zitten, als het ware, onder een canopey (that was my landlady's pronunciation) van bladeren."
"Een kanapé, mijnheer?"
"Ja," said I, "een verheven canopy, niet waar?
Wij zeilen onder een groene canopy - verbazend -- magnifique!"
"Hoe bedoelt U dat?" said the old gentleman more and more puzzled, and determined to find out my meaning.
"Wij zitten hier, niet waar?" I began slowly; then pointing to the roof of green over our heads, I explained: "dat alles vormt een prachtige canopy boven ons heen. Zeker wel?"
"Ik geloof het niet", said the chatty old gentleman. "De tram gelijkt ook niet op een kanapé; of meent U dat?"
"De tram niet," I exclaimed, "maar de boomen; kijk; het gebladerte, het geboomte en de hooge dak dat ze maken -- dat alles zoo schitterend groen, dat is, mijns bedunkens, niets dan een canopy, uitgehangen zoo te spreken, over ons heen, in uitgestrekte schoonheid."
The old gentleman surely was a little dull. He said, "Ik begrijp niet goed wat u zegt. Waar is de canapé? Of bedoelt U soms een badstoel -- op het strand?"
"Nee", I answered with a deprecating smile; "Ik sprak maar poëtisch. Verheven", I added with a wave of my towel towards the greenery overhead.
"Hé," said he with friendly interest, "bent U een dichter? Ik had U voor een schilder gehouden," he explained with a glance at my blazer.
"Ik -- een dichter!" I returned modestly. "Neen; niet erg. Op een kleine schaal, misschien." On a small scale, I meant to say; but I must have mangled the sch badly, for he didn't catch the point, and I heard him mutter: "Een sjaal! een sjaal, EN een kanapé!!"
"Ja zeker, mijnheer," I reasoned; "U ziet het zelf voor U -- daar onder de boomen -- dat IS hier een canopy --"
"Pardon," he interrupted, "dat is niet waar. Dat zijn gewone houten banken,"he persisted argumentatively. "En wat bedoelt U met een sjaal?"
How pertinacious the old gentleman was! He stuck to me like a leech. I couldn't shake him off; and we were still far off the Kurhaus.
It was clearly a case for Boyton's conversational method.
"Mejuffrouw!" I said firmly, leaning towards him, "Ik ken Uwe edelmoedigheid genoeg," "Maar" -- and here I added two nice little local idioms from the rich stores of my memory -- "maar -- U komt pas te kijken."
That told him he wasn't looking at the matter in true philosophic perspective.
But this I followed up, in a more authoritative way, with the assurance that I didn't at all agree with him. "Waarempeltjes," I whispered with elaborate distinctness, "ik heb het land aan je!"
The chatty old gentleman got off at the next halte.



CHAPTER XVII


THE COMPENDIOUS GUIDE ON DUTCH SYNTAX

Boyton's monograph on pronunciation is his finest piece of work. He never quite reaches that level elsewhere; and, if he is destined after a hundred and fifty years to achieve a name, it had better rest on his 'Doctrine of the Native' than on his Syntax.
So van Dam assured us, when our little party met in his room the week before Christmas.
We had all been busy; but busy or not, the Cape men found time to skim over Boyton's entertaining paragraphs, as, indeed, we guessed, from the frequent guffaws and readings that reached us from time to time through the closed doors. To night we had accepted an invitation to supper, before the holidays; and we were to hear his views on O'Neill's 'Guide, Philosopher and Friend', Boyton, -- in other words the 'Wegwijzer tot de nederduitsche taal'. Long since Jack had, indeed, got other and more modern manuals of Dutch, so that he was supposed to look now with a certain contempt on his former monitor: but the "compendious guide" had laid the basis of his erudition, and he had still a sneaking regard for its honest old pages.
What we wanted, indeed, was stories from Jack himself. but we had exhausted the more dramatic of these; and to get the fine aroma of the others -- there were still many others -- we thought some acquaintance with the compendium's syntax was essential.
Van Dam had undertaken to put us up to any niceties he had been struck with.
The first thing he told us was that Boyton had no clear ideas of any sort, and never laid down any definite rule. This lent him a certain diffidence in regard to most points, -- a diffidence which in the case of HET became positive fright. At the first mention of de, het, and an adjective, he gives as much encouragement as he can.
It is not much
An insurmountable Difficulty for the Englishman is the right use of the Particles, especially het. Sufficient rules cannot be given, E.g. het mooie kind: eene sterke vrouw, een zwart schip.
This is certain, that all Nouns, to which the Particles, het, dat, or dit, are added are of the Neuter Gender; on this account, the e final, in the Adjectives, when joined with such words, is, generally, rejected.
Even this rule admits of an exception. E.G. It is never said: een snel vogel: de groote paard. But it is correct to say, if the meaning admits, it, een groote man, (also groot). A native may be consulted with advantage.

When Boyton is labouring under strong emotion, the effect is always to increase the number of commas, colons, and other stops.
His agitation may also be traced in the way he harks back to any fundamental rule that he has already discussed ad nauseam.
It is quite pathetic to note how he urges on his readers to reserve their dezen and dien and den for the accusative.

It is good Dutch to say: ik zag dien braven man gisteren, I saw that honest man yesterday; but it is very bad Dutch, -- whatever custom may have introduced in some places; to say -- dien braven man heeft het gezegd.
Take some gems at random.
N.B. Prepositions are that part of speech, which are so called because they are, commonly, put before the words, which are subsequent to them, as onder and ondanks.

N.B. Most Adverbs may be distinguished from adjectives by this rule: If a substantive is added after them, they will make nonsense; whereas, being joined to an Adjective or a Verb, they will make good sense.

"What. I admire most," said van Dam handing back The Work to O'Neill, "is the elasticity of the rules. He says, for instance, that you can render I know by Ik weet, and on the whole he is inclined to recommend that way of it. But he never commits himself.
"It must be also admitted that there are other authors of good standing who employ the Subjunctive form where we might expect the Indicative and who say IK WETE, I know."
That's one of his rules!
As a matter of fact there is no finality about anything in these pages. O'Neill, you were in training for a poet when you took up this book. I confess I should have liked to hear you going over your fifteen classes of irregular verbs, on the model (say) of ik grauw, ik kef en ik kweel, or even of ik krijsch, ik piep en ik lieg.
There is a rich profusion of tenses too in Boyton. He needn't have apologized for being too simple when he furnishes you with four ordinary optatives and four future optatives.
"You may jest as you like about Boyton", interrupted Jack; "but I tell you it's a book that has points. Do you know it once helped me to save a lady's life?"
"Save a lady's life!" said the Professor and the Philosopher in one breath. "We'll withdraw all we've said, if you'll prove to us, now, that the 'Compendious Guide' was ever the least good to any human being."
"Tell your adventure in your own way, O'Neill," a boyish voice chimed in; "and shame the cynics."
We all glared at the First-year's man -- who was making himself very much at home for a lad of his tender years -- but as he had nothing more to say, we let him off with a look, and turned to the lethargic story-teller.



CHAPTER XVIII


THE GRAMMATICAL CARESS

"You saved life with that Boyton-Grammar of yours, if I catch the drift of your last remark?" interposed the Professor magniloquently, as if he were addressing a public meeting.
"May I hazard the guess that Boyton on that occasion was rather a weapon of offence than of defence?"
"Well, you're right," said O'Neill. "Offence is more in Boyton's line. And he certainly did press heavily, that day, on a butcher's boy. You remember those slagersjongens that saunter about, in white linen coats, with great protruding baskets on their shoulders. They jostle and push wherever they have a chance, and whirl round with their cargoes of meat, so as to make you start. You know the tribe. Well, Boyton proved an admirable corrective to the insolence of one of these imps.
It was a day there was a sort of festival in the Hague.
>From early in the afternoon there was a crush everywhere. The singels and the main roads through the Wood were filled with holiday-makers. Soldiers were parading here and there. Everyone was in the best of good humour; music in the distance rose and fell on the air; flags fluttered from the windows. Look where you might, there were bright dresses, prancing horses, snorting motors, and pedestrians of all descriptions.
I was one of the pedestrians.
I had been at my grammar in the morning; and after a long spell in the house had stepped over to Enderby's, and coaxed that lazy fellow out for a stroll. It was perfect weather, and the crowds were wonderfully well-behaved. We enjoyed ourselves finely 'under the green-wood tree,' till we were brought to a stand-still in a dense mass of humanity that was packed along the edge of a canal, scarcely moving. A procession or something had impeded the traffic some moments.
There was a knot of butchers' boys right in front of us. They were roughly shoving their neighbours about, and seeing what mischief they could do. Horse play, in fact. They didn't seem to fit into Boyton's categories, either of 'Natives intelligent' or 'polite'.
Presently one brawny scoundrel began to throw stones at the occupants of a carriage that was slowly passing by.
I couldn't believe my eyes!
There sat an old lady of eighty or ninety, with soft white hair -- the very picture of fragility; opposite her was a nurse in dark uniform, in charge of three dainty little children in pink and white -- mere babies of three or four -- with innocent blue eyes gazing all round them. And, actually, that ruffianly knecht was about to bombard the group with whatever he had in his hand!
Bang went a big mass of something -- presumably hard, from the rattle it made -- against the side of the carriage.
Happily he was a poor marksman, that rascally slager; for at that short range he ought to have been able to demolish so fragile an old lady at the first shot, or at the very least have put out one eye.
As it was, he only knocked off her bonnet.
Enraged, apparently, at his poor practice at a practically stationary target so close at hand, he picked up another half-brick and wheeled, to take more deliberate aim.
The delicate old lady grew pale, and spasmodically fumbled with her parasol to shield the children .
I thought her eye caught mine; and, seeing there was no escape for her unless I interposed -- no one till now seemed to have noticed the occurrence -- I shouted, "Stop, slager, stop!" and whisked Boyton's learned pages right into his face, taking care at the same moment to administer a vigorous push to the long arm .of the lever conveniently made by his basket.
This forced him to revolve suddenly on his own axis -- beefsteak and all; and, as he spun round, I accelerated his motion with a pat or two from the 'compendium'. It was all the work of an instant, and executed just in time. The grammatical caress foiled his aim completely, and he flung his missile blindly in the wrong direction.
As I slipped unostentatiously into the crowd out of the immediate neighbourhood of the discomfited marksman, I had the satisfaction of seeing the dear old lady recover colour and smile. The babies crowed with delight, and clapped their hands. They thought it was a game got up for their special benefit!
I raised my hat and retired, a warm glow of self-approval in my breast, and on my lips an involuntary quotation from Boyton: "De spraakkunst is voor iedereen onmisbaar."
Meantime the brickbat fell harmlessly on the back of a policeman who, with hands tightly clasped behind him, was studying a bed of scarlet geraniums.
He never even turned, but only said "Ja, ja," over his shoulder!
Two days after this adventure my eye caught the following paragraph among the advertisements in the Nieuwe Courant:


"Stop, Slager, stop!"
The Baroness X. and her three grandchildren herewith beg heartily to thank the young Englishman for his gallant conduct in the Wood, on the 31st Ultimo.


CHAPTER XIX


A GOSSIPY LETTER

"Don't talk any more about that grammar-book," I interposed. "It's all very well in its way, but it doesn't account for half Jack's adventures. Now I can let you into a secret. Please don't look so apprehensive, O'Neill! As it happens, I had a descriptive letter from Enderby just about the time that Jack was making the most brilliant progress with his Dutch vocabulary. It gave me a vivid picture of what was going on in the Hague when this linguist of ours got really started to work.
Here are two of these long epistles. In the first he tells me all about the MacNamaras --. Jack's cousins, you know -- who came across from Kilkenny, for a trip to Holland. They were at the Oude Doelen when he wrote, and our friend Jack was posing as a great Dutch scholar and showing them the sights.
(From Enderby to Cuey-na-Gael)
Doelen Hotel,
The Hague.

My dear Cuey-na-Gael,
You would be amazed to see the confidence with which O'Neill acts as guide to the MacNamaras.
MacNamara père is mostly buried in museums, or is on the hunt for archaeological papers, so Kathleen and Terence are left on Jack's hands.
He has been everywhere with them, and has evidently impressed them with his astounding Dutch. To them it seems both correct and fluent. They have only had three days of it as yet, and haven't had time to find him out. Kathleen is as haughty as ever; and I can see she chafes at being obliged to submit to the direction of a mere boy, as she regards Jack.
She was furious the day before yesterday, when in passing through one of the back streets he asked her if she had ever noticed what the Dutch Government printed in front of the surgeries.
She glanced up and, to her horror, read: "Hier mangelt men." It was only a momentary shock; she guessed soon enough what it meant; but it gave her a turn all the same. Perhaps it wasn't a very finished kind of joke, but she needn't have been quite so fierce about it.
"You're cruel," she said, "cruel and heartless! Why even your dogmatic and intolerable chum, Mr. van Leeuwen wouldn't have been so harsh as that."
Now it was that little speech of hers that suggested something to me. Was there ever anything between her and van Leeuwen? They were at the University about the same time; and it seems van Leeuwen was a great friend of the father, who had him down to his place in the country and showed him his manuscripts. But I believe Kathleen couldn't stand him. They used always to be arguing about the Suffragettes, and passed for official enemies, in a way, -- at least as uncompromising leaders on opposite sides. She was fond of saying that van Leeuwen was a standing proof that mere learning couldn't enlarge the mind. Once in a private debate she referred to him as a "learned barbarian and a retrograde mediaevalist."
She was called to order for it, of course; but her apology didn't amount to much. She said she wouldn't mind dropping the adjectives, but she would stick to the nouns.
I believe van Leeuwen was quite content however, and congratulated his witty antagonist on the fact that she would mellow with time.
We always thought in these days they were sworn foes, and always would be. But I have a dim idea there is now more friendly interest on both sides. And, by the way, van Leeuwen has been carrying on brisk correspondence with O'Neill especially since he heard the MacNamaras were expected. He has offered his services, and those of his motor, to all and sundry, especially if they hail from Dublin: so I don't think he can be keeping up very much of a grudge.
But I was going to tell you about Jack.
Lately I had noticed that his Dutch vocabulary was growing very rich. He seemed to have quite a hunger for nouns and he used to ask the names of everything. But I have no idea of what he was up to. To day I'll find out and write you.
Much haste. Yours as ever.

Enderby.



(From Enderby to Cuey-na-Gael)

Dear Cuey,

I've just been at the Doelen Hotel -- and the Macs are gone! Very sudden I must say. I suppose Kathleen has got tired of Holland; or is she trying to avoid van Leeuwen?
You see MacNamara mère had written me a friendly little note from Kilkenny, telling me that te Doctor -- as she always calls her husband - had got a trifle absent-minded since his deafness became troublesome, and would I look him up occasionally during his stay in the Hague and give him some advice about the Rhine.
Well, when I reached Vieux Doelen, the birds were flown. Gone at six o'clock, I was told -- the three of them -- to Cologne! Quick work, I thought; so I made a bee-line for O'Neill's. He surely would know about this sudden departure.
And in any case I wanted to get a glimpse of his new mysterious studies.
Just fancy! The landlady met me at the door with tears in her eyes.
"O Mijnheer, Mijnheer! " she exclaimed half sobbing. "Ik vrees voor mijnheer O'Neill. Hij studeert te veel, of ik weet het niet -- maar het is niet goed met hem. Ik geloof", and here her voice sank to a horrified whisper, "dat hij een beetje kindsch geworden is; want hij heeft speelgoed gekocht, en hij maak overal zoo een rommel."
"Ja, juffrouw," I strove to explain," Mijnheer studeert natuurlijk."
But she persisted, "Oh mijnheer! studeeren is het niet. Hij ziet het scherm voor een kachel aan, en verknoeit alles. Ik ben zoo bang, zoo benauwd! Ik durf het huis niet uit, van Maandag af al!"
Rather flustered by all this, I promised to call the doctor if it were necessary; then climbed up the stairs to O'Neill's door.
All was still. I knocked and entered. What a sight met my eyes! Indeed it was enough to astonish more experienced people than the landlady.
Neatly fastened on one side of the table was a model train, engine and all. Beside it was a toy house, with yard, garden, and stiff wooden trees. Then there was a bit of a doll's room with a kitchen stove. And verily to every one of these articles there was a label affixed.
There sat the student, pen in hand, with a dictionary and a gum-bottle at his elbow. Snippets of paper littered his writing-desk and the floor around. His unfinished lunch (labelled too) looked down reproachfully from a pile of books built on the table.
Over the gorgeous screen that hid the hearth a conspicuous card was hung, bearing the mystic inscription, "What ought to be bere -- Kachel."
No wonder the careful hospita was upset. It would have been hard to say whether the apartment was more like a museum or an auction room.
He glanced up with a sort of blush when I came near; but raised his hand to enjoin silence, as he found the word he was in search of, and wrote it down.
Half expecting to see prices marked, I examined some of the labels.
Nearly every thing had its Dutch name gummed on to it, such as 'spiegel lijst,' 'behangsel,' 'schotel of bakje', and even on his sleeve 'mouw van mijn jas.'
"It's all right!" he burst forth enthusiastically. "Doing Berlitz Dutch, you see! Self-taught, too! Splendid plan. Three hundred words a day. I'll have two thousand new nouns at my fingers' ends before the Macs are back from the Drachenfels. Precious few things in the ordinary way of life I won't know then! Eh, what?"
Then it dawned upon me he was getting up vocabulary.
"Nouns, of course," he said. "All nouns. That's the secret. True basis of any language.
"It's a discovery of my own. If you know the names of two or three thousand material things, you can never be at a loss. But I stick in a proverb, too, here and there, wherever it comes handy. See?"
He held up the sleeve of his dressing-gown on which the candid announcement was made in bold round-hand: "Ik heb het achter de mouw", and pointed to his bread-knife, which was tastefully adorned with the words: "Het mes op de keel zetten."
Yes, I saw.
Well; then he explained, and argued, and tried to proselytize me. He was making hay while the sun shone -- which meant that he was preparing, in the absence of Terence and Kathleen, for his famous cycling-tour; getting on his armour, in fact.
In such spirits I had never seen him.
And, I must say, he made out a good case for his method. It seems he had anticipated most of the queries he might be obliged to put during his travels. He had docketed every part of a railway carriage, and even mastered all sorts of regulations, from those of the Luxe-trein to Buurtverkeer, and from the yearly ticket to the humble perron-kaartje. It looked very thorough, and I understood that he had treated his cycle the same way. But I have grave doubts! I am the more confirmed in my scepticism from what the landlady told me at the door. After reassuring her on the score of O'Neill's health, I emphasised the fact that he was going on a trip, and must practise Dutch by way of preparation.
That was worse than all, she thought; as Mijnheer O'Neill would certainly come to harm. "Hij is zoo veranderd! Hè! Het is zoo eng."
Yesterday he had asked her about the print of a sea-fight that her little boy had put up in the hall. She said it was de Ruyter: and began to expatiate on that hero's achievements.
But he cut her short with: "Een beroemde man was hij zeker; misschien de grootste water-baas van zijn tijd."
I explained that he probably meant zee-held; but not remembering the right term in time, had taken one like it.
But the landlady could not be pacified.
"Het doet mij huiveren te denken dat hij op reis gaat!" she said.
I was not without my apprehensions either. For he means to start out next week with two thousand new words.
He'll probably find that such hastily acquired information is not without its drawbacks. But more again.
Vale, vale.
As ever yours,
Phil Enderby.

P. S. The Macs are gone to Bonn, where your uncle expects to find wonderful manuscripts Not much fun for Kathleen though! And Terence will be bored to death. Why doesn't O'Neill bring him back to Holland and show him Amsterdam and other towns?



CHAPTER XX


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.
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.
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 bloodcurdling yell at our very elbow, it seemed as if we had trodden on the tail of the true and original Seaserpent,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.
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 seaserpent, 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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 forbad 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."
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 niet s 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.
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?"
"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 XXI


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.
"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.
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.
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 o£ 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.
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 another 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.
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 a 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.
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.
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?"
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 apologized with my best bow. "Het spijt mij geweldig. -- Maar zult gij zoo goed willen zijn --?"
"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."
"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.
"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 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.
"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 XXII


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.
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.
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.
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 now Kathleen comforted the poor mother, without either grammar, Polite Dialogue, or the use of Het.
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.
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.
But no sooner had the good doctor softly closed the front door, than my landlady declared it was her intention to watch all right.
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 eagernesss 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 weerl Hij wou me in 't water gooien. Moeder vasthoue, hoor!"
It was most painful; for my landlady's impending hysterics were making the lad worse every moment.
"Is poesje ook weggeloopen?" he said presently. A happy thought struck Kathleen. She stole downstairs, and presently returned with the 'chat', which was purring vigorously and giving 'kopjes'.
As she placed the soft furry creature in Jan's hands, he stopped moaning and stroked it joyfully. "Dag Kitty!" he said with delight. "Ben je terug?"
Apparently he thought it was I who had restored the wanderer, for he explained: "Geen praatje, mijnheer: Zat is mine naiz litle chat."
Then, exhausted and satisfied, he dropped into a sound sleep.



CHAPTER XXIII


GOSSIP AND DIPLOMACY

The strain was over; and the little lad slumbered peacefully, -- until dawn, as it proved. We got the mother gradually quieted, and at last induced to go off to bed, leaving Kathleen in charge for the night. About half-past-one, Terence and I, growing hungry, extemporised a sort of picnic in the kitchen; but Kathleen wouldn't touch anything we brought her.
It was then I began to notice how grave she was, and silent.
But I must say, nobody could be more devoted than she was to the youthful invalid.
He awoke rather early after his timely sleep but much calmer. And -- a good sign -- he had a healthy 'trek', which we were gratified to see in operation upon 'beschuit' and 'melk', before his mother arrived to resume the reins of authority.
As we escorted Kathleen to her hotel in the cool of the morning, we found her singularly irresponsive, not to say depressed; and I somehow got wind of the fact that van Leeuwen, who had motored up to the Hague, on hearing of her father's accident, had been prowling about the Vieux Doelen ever since. He had visited Dr. MacNamara almost every day; but Kathleen had kept studiously aloof.
"I know he likes father," she said. "and I'm glad he came so often to see him. Not very interesting, otherwise! In any case he has suddenly vanished into space!"
The evening before, when she was on her way to my landlady's to watch by the sick boy, van Leeuwen had met her right in front of the Mauritshuis. But she had treated him with such stately indifference, and greeted his remarks with such frigid courtesy, that the good-natured fellow was really hurt. He had in fact returned the same evening to Arnhem.
Kathleen said she was very glad, except for her father's sake. But she didn't give one the impression of being enthusiastic about it, and I drew my own conclusions.
On reaching the Doelen, we found a hasty scrawl from the very man we had been talking of -- van Leeuwen - -inviting Terence and myself to a cycling tour in his neighbourhood.
"Well, then, I'll go next Friday," Terence broke out; "at least, if you're ready then, Jack. We'll have a grand time. Dad is all right now; and that funny little kid is on the mend. So we can go with a clear conscience. Say, yes."
"Ah, that's like you boys", said Kathleen banteringly, but without the ghost of a smile, "to go cycling about, enjoying yourselves, no matter what happens to others! I'm still anxious about that child. And I do wish I understood him better when he talks.
"As for that", I interrupted, "I'll give you the key to it, in an instant. Jan's reminiscences are all about my Dutch. Well, I'll lend you my diary, and the most entertaining Grammar in Holland. Besides, I've written a monograph on obvious blunders, English into Dutch. Read these, now, when you're tending this convalescent boy-hero of yours. He'll understand them, I'll be bound; and it'll shake him up, and do you a world of good yourself."
"What a silly cousin, to be sure!" she replied.
"You forget, sir, I need some one to explain all your double-Dutch. Get me a 'coach' now, a competent one, who knows everything, and I'll give your booklet a trial."
"Done!" I said, as we parted.
And I held her to it. My diary kept her amused for a couple of days, as she watched in the sick-room. It roused her out of her depression, and she got into the way of reading things to Jan as he recovered.
She couldn't remain quite smileless; but grew interested enough in Dutch to demand my monograph and -- above all -- the Grammar!
"You shall have them both," I assured her, -- "the booklet on the spot; and the Grammar, when I get as far as Arnhem and don't need to use it for a while."
"Couldn't I have it sooner? I'm dying with curiosity to see that awful book. Or, when you are there, and any of your friends are coming to the Hague, just send it with them."
"Yes. There's a 'coach' coming up in a day or two. I'll send it along."
I fancied her eyes gave a bit of a flicker. But she was meek and friendly: so I knew it was all right. She hadn't asked what kind of coach. But she's intelligent.
That very instant I went home and wrote van Leeuwen that we -- Terence and I -- were starting next day, by train, for Arnhem, whence we should have a run through Gelderland.
There was no note-paper in the house, but I couldn't wait. So I a penned what I had to say on a series of visiting cards, -- numbering them: 1, 2, 3 up to 10, and enclosing them in a portly yellow envelope. It was the only thing I had. I was pleased to notice its impressive aspect, as that would prevent its getting lost readily.
For I attached much importance to that communication.
In it I prepared van Leeuwen's mind, indirectly and circuitously, for apprehending the idea that Miss MacNamara was now deeply interested in Dutch; and was studying it to help her in nursing that sick boy. Also that, as she had grown much too sombre of late with the responsibilities she had assumed, we were trying to brighten her up. When the lad was quite well, we should all do the Friesland meres, before we returned to Kilkenny. But not for a while yet.
And so on. I hinted as distantly as I could that he had motored back to Arnhem a trifle too soon. We were all sorry he had left so suddenly. Even yet, if he would leave his camera at home -- the one with the loud click -- and if he wouldn't be too exclusively immersed in Celtic manuscripts, and avoided arguing about the Suffragettes, when he did meet with the MacNamara family, there was no reason to suppose that his offences were beyond pardon. All this in shadowy outline -- for fear he would motor up like a Fury, and either break his neck on the way, or spoil everything by premature action.
I made the haze quite thick, here and there, on the visiting cards their form lent itself to obscurity -- and I told him I should see him without fail within twenty-four hours.
"I might have to ask a favour at his hands about a grammar."
Terence was well, I added; the Doctor was well, went to Leyden daily to the Library. We expected to reach Velperweg toward midday. "Don't be out."
I posted the yellow missive with my own hands, and reckoned out by the 'buslichting' plate, that it would be collected that night.
"Tour or no tour, to-morrow," I said to myself, heaving a sigh of relief, after my race to the pillar-box; "We're on the brink of a romance, if the protagonists only knew it. A little bad Dutch now seems all that is required. And we can rely on Boyton."
Queer, when you think of it, that you sometimes hold people's destinies in the hollow of your hand!
However, I didn't philosophise much, but got to sleep as soon as ever I could, content as from a good day's work.



CHAPTER XXIV


A STUDY IN CHARACTER

Next morning we were up at dawn to be in time for the first express. We cycled to the station; but a row of market-boats, that had reached the one and only canal-bridge on our route, kept us waiting till they filed past; and we missed our train.
"Choost kon!" exclaimed a porter cheerfully, as he took our cycles. "Day-train choost away - von - two - meenit -- ako!"
"Never mind", I rejoined. "There are plenty of day-trains left. It's early yet."
As he looked doubtful, I added in the vernacular: "Wij zijn in goeje tijd voor den bommel; nie-waar? Zes vier en veertig."
"Net, mijnherr", he replied, grinning appreciation of my Dutch, as he led the way to the loket.
There were no difficulties there. You merely had to say. "Twee enkele reis, Arnhem. Tweede klasse. Gewone biljetten," and there you were. And these 'gewone biljetten' made the forwarding of the cycles simplicity itself.
Duly provided with the forthcoming fietspapiertjes we ensconced ourselves in a non-smoker, and -- to while away the time - -rehearsed our Traveller's Dialogue. That is the system I had made out long since, but now partly forgotten. Terence had benefited by my tuition, and could now keep the ball rolling, with more or less relevant remarks, whilst I enumerated the parts of a train, and talked about tickets and towns.
So smoothly did our conversation run that we were tempted to repeat it with variations; and we were just in the middle of as fine an elocutionary practice as ever you heard, when there was a scramble on the platform; and in there bounded into our compartment -- just as the train began to move off -- three tourists, hot and breathless!
They were Englishmen, -- London shopkeepers in a small way, I guessed, from their talk. Two of them, father and son, seemed a bit hectoring and dictatorial; the third was an admiring satellite. For very shame's sake Terence and I didn't like to drop our Dialogue as if we were culprits; so we lowered our voices, and went through it it to the bitter end.
Our new companions listened for a moment, and the truculent father said, "Neouw, there y'are, Tom! wot's hall that tork abeout? You kneouw the lingo."
Master Tom -- he was about nineteen -- posed, apparently, as a linguist. He knew the language all right, he said. "It was kind of debased German. He had picked it up from a boy at school. It was the sime to 'im as Hinglish."
"Wottaw thiy siyin, Tom? " said the father.
"Oh," muttered Tom, "abeout the kaind 'v dai it is, an' hall thet rot. But no use listenin' to them. Thiy tork such a bad patois, an' hungrimmentikil."
The satellite looked impressed. "D'ye tork 't 's wull 's French an' Juh'man?" he asked.
"Hall the sime to me," said Tom. "The sime 'z Hinglish."
The satellite's awe deepened. Presently, however, he spied the cattle in the fields as we sped along. He pointed them out to Tom. "Fine ceouws, miy wu'd!"
"Humph I better in Bu'kshire!" replied the linguist.
In a minute or two he broke out again: "Lot 'v ceouws in a field here, Tom!"
"Faugh!" said Tom; "faw mo' 'n Essex!"
But the man of humility had an eye for landscape, and couldn't be repressed.
"Ho, crikkie", he exclaimed, "look at that meadow an' canal. Ain't it stunnin'?"
But the father came to his son's rescue in defence of Old England. "Yeou jist go deouwn Nawf'k wiy! Faw better th'n this wretched 'ole!"
The satellite evidently felt reproved for his lack of patriotism, for he subsided immediately. But he couldn't help himself. You might see by the way he looked out of the window that he was in exstasies over the glowing panorama before him, in spite of Norfolk and Essex and the contempt of his fellow-travellers.
Meantime Terence, fuming and in disgust, had buried himself in the columns of Tit-Bits. The truculent one recognised the familiar weekly, and drawing his son's attention to both reader and paper he announced quite audibly; "E can read Hinglish. 'E looks hintelligent."
Advancing half way across the carriage, he cleared his throat, and addressed Terence at the top of his voice.
"Do you -- a hem! -- a hem! do you -- speak Hinglish?
One could have heard the last two words in the next compartment.
Terence looked up; and I saw by the twinkle in his eye what he was going to do.
"Hein?" he interrogated with a nasal whoop like a subdued trumpet. He had learnt this at school from his French teacher and was a profiscient at rendering it accurately. It gave an unconventional flavour to his manner -- which was just what he wished.
"Hein?" he trumpeted again, with an air of amiable curiosity.
"I hawskt -- do you -- hem! -- speak -- Hinglish?"
"Ze Engels langwitch? Yes: I shpeak him -- von leetle bit. You alzoo?"
"Hi'm 'n Englishman," said the truculent one proudly, a trifle taken aback.
"Zoo?" replied Terence. "Ach zoo. Ja. Jawohl. Zoo gaat't. Beautiful lang-witch! Beauti -- full" he enunciated with painful distinctness and many twitches of his face.
All this fell in with the tourists' preconceived ideas of foreign utterance. They exchanged glances.
"You kin mike yors'ff hunderstood, hall raight," interposed the linguist . "Were you ever in London?"
"Oh, yes" answered my cousin slowly, counting off upon his fingers. "Alzoo - von - two - tree - time -- Mooch peoples -- in Londe."
"Did you like London? " queried Truculence Senior.
"Londe? -- No! No boddy like Londe. -- Fery ugly! Mooch smoke -- alzoo fogk. -- Men see nozzing. Mooch poor peoples -- No boots."
"Not like London!! Why London's the gritest city in the wu'ld."
"I pity me mooch -- for London peoples."
"Let'm aleoun, gov'ner," said the linguist, furious. "It's the Heast End 'e's got in 'is 'ed."
"But the Heouses 'v Pawl'mint -- and the Tride?" reasoned the father, reluctant to abandon the controversy.
"Houses Parliament?--nozzing!" said Terence recklessly. "Trade? -- alzoo nozzing! American man hef all ze trade. Fery clever. Alzoo German man. Fery clever."
That was a clincher. Terence had amply avenged their contempt of the scenery they were passing through.
"Let the bloomin' ass aleoun", cried Truculence junior. "E deoun't kneouw wot 'e's torkin' abeout.'
But the shot had gone home. The papers had been full of "Wake up, John Bull!" of late, and he felt uncomfortable. Yet though we relapsed into silence, it wasn't for long. For soon the senior member of the trio got very exasperated with a local railway-guide that he had been consulting. "Bit of a muddle that!" he cried contemptuously, flinging the booklet on the seat. "Cawn't mike 'ed or tile of it!"
He turned to my cousin: "Can you tell me' ow far it is to Gooday -- or Goodee?"
Terence replied briskly in appalling English: "Goodee I know-not. Zat iss nozzing. Goodday, zat is Goejen-dag!"
"Look 'ere," said the tourist; "Ere you aw!" pointing to the name of the place on his Cook's ticket.
"Oh," said Terence, getting so foreign as to be scarcely intelligible. "Zat-iss -- Gouda. Beautti-ful city!" And he rolled his eyes in apparent awe at the magnificence of that unpretentious market-town. "Ex-qui-seet!"
"Ow far is it?" queried his interlocutor. "Ow long, in the trine -- to Gouda?"
"Alzoo," returned my cousin, purposely misunderstanding him. "Yes; ferry long. Long times. Ferry old ceety. Much years. Tree -- four -- century! Historique!"
"Yes, yes" said the impatient traveller. "Bu t-- wen -- d'we -- arrive? get there -- you kneouw --?"
"You vil arrivé," pronounced Terence in the same baby-English, "haff -- of-- ze klok."
"Hawf 'n eour; that wot 'e's drivin' et," grumbled the Linguist.
They kept on asking questions and criticising us to our faces, when they talked together. Our dress, our appearance, our complexions were all adjudged to be woefully foreign; and they got so patronising that I had to put in an odd word in real English, to Terence, now and again, just to prevent them going too far. Imperceptibly conversation became general; and as I forced Terence out of his assumed ignorance of English, the surprise of the tourists deepened into dismay, for they noticed we were talking more and more quickly, and idiomatically as well.
"Hi siy!" whispered the satellite "they're learnin' Hinglish from hus! I'm blest hif thiy weount soon be nearly 's good 's we are!"
"Never you fear," said young Conceit. "Furriners never git the 'ang of it."
"Never," corroborated Truculence.
But the open criticising of our appearance was at an end.
Our companions looked anything but conciliatory when a crowd of rustics poured into the carriage at one of the stations. It was some sort of market at Gouda; and the bommel was crammed now. Finally the guard scurried along, and half hoisted, half pushed a peasant woman with her three children into the compartment.
It was odd to see Truculence rise and help the little ones in; and odder still to see the children smile up into that formidable face, when they took their seats.
I noticed the twinkle in his eye, however, as he watched the bairnies trying to scramble to the window. He was evidently much interested in a bright little boy of seven with dreamy eyes, who was bent on amusing himself; and I could see that he wanted badly to shake hands with him and his tot of a sister, and ask them their names. He evidently regretted his inability to speak Dutch, but he made up for his silence by reaching the boy the window-strap, with a nod of comradeship. The little fellow took it eagerly and, after playing with it a moment or two, slid off his seat and actually climbed up beside Truculence (the scorner of everything non-British) and pushing Truculence to one side, looked out of Truculence's window.
So surprisingly passive was my severe compatriot at all this that I hazarded a guess, and said: "You have a boy of seven at home?"
He stopped short clearing the pane for his tiny companion, and sat stock-still. It might have been a statue that was beside me so little did he move. Not a sound in answer to my question!
Quickly I glanced at him.
Oh, I could have bitten off my tongue when I saw that man's face! It was drawn and white, and not at all like the scornful censor's of a few minutes before.
He continued staring out of the window a moment; then he turned and said quietly: "I 'ad -- a little fair haired fellow -- a year ago.... 'E was six.... An' the born image of thet kiddie there."
Here he stroked the kiddie's head, which was now glued to the glass in an eager endeavour to see a passing train.
"'E used to be that fond of machinery, too," he continued, opening a city bag and bringing out a diminutive flying-machine, a "twee-dekker" that he had evidently bought in the Hague. "I got it, 'cos it minded me of the things my boy used to pliy with. But I've nobody to give it to.
"May I as well give it to this kid. Tell 'is mother 'e's to keep it. Tell 'er that I'm 's hold uncle from Hingland."
I did my best. Klaas grasped the situation at once, as far as the twee-dekker was concerned. The mother was slower. Consternation and politeness took away her speech for an instant, but she soon recovered and put Claas through his drill.
"Oh mijnheer, hij is zoo bij de hand!" Then she overwhelmed us all with family reminiscences, which none of us understood a word of, but which could not be stopped. It was a relief to get to Gouda; and the tension of our feelings as pleasantly relaxed by observing the profound disgust that mantled the Londoner's brow, when after helping the children on to the platform, he was accosted by a vendor of local dainties, who loudly insisted on selling Goudsche Sprits to the company. "'Ere's a Johnny wants the kiddies an'all of us to liquor up -- on neat spirits--before hight o'clock in the mo'nin'! Shime, I call it.'
Claas had to say 'Good-bye' to his new uncle, and we watched proceedings from our window. The Linguist ignored the adieu completely; but the Satellite manfully backed up the father, and shook hands all round. A knot of porters gathered to seize the luggage of the big Englishman, who stood, masterful and bored, in the midst of the hubbub. His jaw and chin were those of Rhadamanthus; but his eyes were soft as they rested on the boyish figure descending the stairs with his baby-sister. Claas was waving a small hand to his new uncle who had given him the Twee-dekker; but his new uncle was not waving anything to him. So Claas stopped short, and cried at the top of his voice: "Wuif es oom! wui--uif es, nouw! Je moet wuife!"
"Wot's e up to, the young rescal?" he asked me.
"I believe he wants you to make a sign of goodbye. It's always done here," I replied.
Well, he produced, from some place or other, a brilliant jubilee handkerchief -- he was a dressy man and had plenty of coloured things -- and shook it with both hands to his tiny friend. And the last I saw of him, as the train steamed on towards Utrecht, was, his waving of this silk banner to the little boy on the steps; the stern lips were relaxed into a smile; the defiant face was quite wistful as he repeated: "The young rescal!"
Here the Goudsche sprits seller, in his tour up and down the platform, approached the burly Londoner again, and seeing him now in an unexpectedly melting mood, at once proffered his delicacies with noisy persistence.
"Goudsche sprits! Goudsche sprits! Sir" he bawled in the Englishman's face, holding out a packet. Truculence was quite glad of the interruption.
He blew his nose violently on his marvellous handkerchief, and turned upon the local merchant with a glare of indignation.
"Get along! How dare you? D'ye take me for a drunkard?"
"Formidable customer that!" whispered Terence at my elbow. "Still I think his bark is worse than his bite." "Not a doubt of it," I replied. "And there are more of his kind."



CHAPTER XXV


BELET!

We got on famously at Utrecht and at the Arnhem station. In less time than it takes to tell it we were mounted on our cycles with our bags in front of us, and ready for the road.
"This is fine!" exclaimed Terence. And indeed it was. Charmed by the ease with which we had got along so safely, I felt a trifle elated over our linguistic victories, and had already begun to dream of fresh fields to conquer, when we drew near van Leeuwen's villa on the Velperweg -- a lovely spot.
We dismounted to make sure we were right, and then walked briskly up the avenue.
The door was opened by a timid-looking servant, who said: "Er is belet." It was the first time I had met the expression; yet it sounded oddly familiar. Ah, of course. For the last ten days I had been studying biljetten out of the railway-guide. There was apparently a slight provincialism in her way of the rendering the liquid in the middle of the word, but this didn't matter. There was a ticket, then. Puzzling, very.
"Ja?" I said tentatively.
"Er is belet," she repeated. The intonation was decisive; but as her manner was expectant, I took it for a question, had we tickets? Queer, certainly. Yes; I assured her we had -- "gewone biljetten, retour, -- geldig voor een dag."
She shifted her ground and said. "Mijnheer heeft belet."
Now you know how hard it is to be sure what person servants are talking about when they say "Mijnheer". Did she mean me or her master? "Welke Mijnheer!" I asked. Ben ik mijnheer, of is Mijnheer mijnheer?
Raising her voice she announced deliberately but with increasing irritation: "Mijnheer van Leeuwen -- heeft -- belet."
"Aha", I whispered to Terence, "It 's my big letter she 's talking about . Well, I 'm glad it came in time"
"Uitstekend!" I hastened to say. "Dat biljet is van mij Dus mijnheer verwacht mij, niet waar?"
She nervously closed the door a bit. "Ik heb al gezaid -- vanmorgen heeft mijnheer expres belet gegeven."
"Mag ik het hebben, dan", I enquired politely; "Mijn brief -- dat geschreven biljet?"
"Hé?" she said, visibly relieved, opening the door widely as she spoke. "Neem mij niet kwalijk, Mijnheer. Ik wist niet dat u van de belasting was. Komt u om het beschrijvingsbiljet?"
She retreated a step, timidly, into the hall, and glanced at an elderly butler, who in silence had been standing at a discreet distance listening to our colloquy. The butler moved forward, and in an apologetic tone murmured, "Mijnheer, het beschrijvingsbiljet is nog niet klaar. Of komt u met een aanslagbiljet?"
As I had a newspaper in my hand full of talk about a 'moordaanslag' I repudiated the latter idea indignantly. "Geen denken aan!" I said.
The butler came out and stood on the steps, enquiring "Is U soms een schatter."
Schatter? (Schat, a treasure; schatter, a treasurer, I reasoned.) "Wel nee: geen schatter ben ik, alleen Eerlijk Secretaris van de Studenten-Club".
In the hall a loopmeisje and a seamstress stood transfixed with curiosity. How could I get this mad interview terminated?
The deferential butler began to grow suspicious.
"Komt U niet van de belasting?"
"Ik weet het niet." I replied.
That was enough.
"Mijnheer geeft belet altijd 's morgens," he said, adding, evidently with reference to my eerlijk secretaris. "Wij zijn allemaal eerlijk hier!"
We appeared to be dismissed!
"Terence," I said quickly; "Look if belet is in the dictionary. They always hark back to that."
In a minute he gave a mild shout: "It's here; it means hindrance. Ah, I see. Van Leeuwen is hindered seeing us. Hadn't we better go?"
"De belet is niet erg, hoop ik?" I said to the servant; "ik hoop dat Mijnheer spoedig beter zal worden, als het een ziekte is."
Now at last we had mastered the mysteries of belet? No such thing!
Turning to go, I thought I might as well enquire when van Leeuwen could be seen. "Wanneer kan ik soms Mijnheer zien? " Her reply confounded me: "Vandaag of morgen, maar U moet belet vragen."
Vragen! surely not ask for an obstacle. "U bedoeld weigeren, niet waar?" I suggested.
"Nee: belet vragen, anders zal mijnheer u niet ontvangen."
"Oh Terence!" I exclaimed. "This is too awful! He has this obstacle; he has given it to us; now we must ask it again. And I don't even know what it is!"
"Take care, Jack. Don't ask anything else, or you'll get us into a worse mess."
"One moment," I said, appealing to the stolid butler. "Moet ik verzoeken om weggestuurd te worden! Of wat?"
"Ja Mijnheer, ik verzoek jullie maar weg te gaan. Alstublieft!"
The solemn man looked like an archbishop. He cleared his throat and added courteously: "Maar, als U Mijnheer van Leeuwen wil spreken, moet U belet laten vragen. Anders krijgt U belet als U komt."
"Schei uit!" I cried in dismay. "Terence, let us fly! for my brain won't stand it."
"No, no!" he interposed hastily. "Don't be silly or hysterical, now. Look here. I've been working the thing out in my head and think I can see some sense in it. Perhaps it's all very simple. Van Leeuwen may be only occupied for the moment, and so can see us if we wait. Just ask if they mean that he's merely engaged. He mayn't be sick at all. There's the word for engaged."
And he reached me the dictionary with this thumb opposite: geengageerd, verpanden, verloofd.
Yes, I thought. There was wisdom in his calm suggestion, though really I was sick making these curious enquiries. But it seemed plain sailing now. So with an ingratiating smile I just asked in a matter of fact sort of way: "Mijnheer is soms geengageerd? Is het wel?"
"Verloofd?" I added taking the next word as there was no manner of response forthcoming to the first question.
"Verpanden?" whispered Terence with his eye on the dictionary.
The company -- there were some six of them now clustering round the butler for protection -- retreated hastily into the recesses of the big hall, and left that majestic man to shut the door. This he did without delay, saying, somewhat nervously, "Maak dat jullie weg gaat!"
There was nothing left for us to do but to beat a dignified retreat.
I made it as dignified as possible by, expressing our best wishes for van Leeuwen's speedy recovery.
"Komplimenten aan Mijnheer, hoor; een spoedige restauratie!"
We cycled off.



CHAPTER XXVI


THE DAY-TRAIN

We had a delightful spin along the Velperweg.
Dismounting three or four times to admire choice 'bits' of scenery, we were enticed on and on, and followed a side way that rose over a gentle slope. From the ridge of this acclivity we could watch the cloud shadows, violet and purple sweeping over wide moors, and by their subtle contrasts bringing out the soft shimmering of the distant sunlight. On the horizon we made out the river and some hill-tops marked on our maps. Terence was confident he saw Nijmegen, but pushing on to get a still finer view, we came to grief in crossing a heather "brae". At least I did The front wheel was wrenched to one side, and we had to foot it all the way to Velp. There having left both machines at a cycle-mender's, we started for a long tramp.
That was a grand mistake, for we went too far. There were other ranges of wooded hills to be climbed, and the air was exhilarating. The time passed quickly, so it was late in the afternoon before we knew. Feeling more or less famished, we ventured on a short cut through the "Onzalige Bosch"; but soon were hopelessly lost. It was a task to get on the main road.
Indeed we took several wrong turnings apparently, for they seemed -- it was hard to get our proper orientation -- to bring us back to the same neighbourhood always. But at last we came to a line of wooded hills, and discovered a cart track that led us to a real high-way. This highway was a magnificent affair with high overarching trees; and on it, to our great relief, there were tram-rails!
Help was near at hand. We put our best foot foremost, so to speak, and hurried forward looking in the dusk for a halte. Perhaps we may have passed some halten, but we didn't notice any; and as we were fagged out, I was glad to come
upon a group of workmen who, I imagined, could tell me about the tram. The question I wanted to get solved was simple. Did the tram stop merely at the official halten, or would the driver pull up anywhere he got a passenger? If the byelaws of this particular tramway allowed the tram to stop and pick up pedestrians anywhere all along the line, we were quite safe; we should just sit down on the roadside and rest. We shouldn't walk another step.
The men were shovelling away at fallen leaves so I accosted them in my friendliest Dutch and said: "Stop de tram overal?" As this was greeted with the customary "blief?" I tried to be more explicit. "Stop de tram op een wenk of een uitroepteeken? Of stopt hij alleen op de halten?"
This puzzled them all exceedingly; and one elderly man mopped his brow with his handkerchief and said, "Ik mot es eve prakiseere."
With that he stabbed his spade into the sod at his foot and leaned on the top of it with both arms, his eye fixed the while on me. I didn't care for the performance, as his stare was discomfitingly steady; but I allowed him for a while to prakiseere undisturbed.
Indeed I couldn't even guess what he was trying to do. It looked like an an exercise in philosophic meditation or an attempt to hypnotise me on the spot, and as he seemed in no hurry to give me the information I desired, there was nothing for it but ask one of the other road menders.
Selecting the most intelligent looking of them. I said "Kijk es, baas; houdt de tram op, op een wuiving van een zakdoek? Of als men teekent met een paraplu?"
This second functionary shook his head sadly, and leaned on his spade in turn, gazing as me as if I had horns. There was a third man -- close at hand -- quite a young fellow, halfway across the road where he was standing as if petrified by my previous conversation. However he wasn't "prakiseering," so I stepped across to him with the slowly enunciated query: "Vertel me nou es: wat voor signaal moet ik maken, als ik wensch op genomen te worden?"
He was the promptest of the group, for he replied glibly: "Ik weet het niet. Je mot eve by de Politie gaan vragen." But not a word about the tram.
I gave it up. No information could possibly be extracted from these roadmen. My Dutch had quite broken down, and in disgust, I surrendered the leading of the expedition wholly to Terence.
Terence has a theory that he can make his meaning clear by means of careful and scientific gesticulation. Now he took his innings, while I watched the proceedings from a comfortable seat by the roadside.
"They're quite clever at it" he shouted to me. The tram will be here in two somethings -- I believe two hours -- so we may as well move on: it 'll be no use to us, to wait."
"All right," I said ;"your way of it!" And off we started, tired as we were. We weren't ten minutes on the road till the tram was heard puffing behind us; and catching sight of a kind of double line in front of us we bounded towards this spot in hopes there might be a halte there. There was: and the tram waited half an hour at it, and then went back again the way it had come. We had to walk. Well, at all events we reached Velp at dark. My cycle was nicely mended, so after getting some refreshments in an excellent logement and taking a prolonged and well-earned rest, we mounted our bikes and rode straight to Arnhem.
So disgusted was I with my ill-success in Dutch that I tackled the porters in English. An obliging wit-jas asked me if I would have the day-train. "Rather not," I told him. "There will surely be another train to-night. It's only nine."
The first was a bommel, he said, and would do for the fietsen; but he recommended us to wait for the day-train.
"What! And stay here all right?" I asked.
"No," he explained. "Day-trein will be here soon."
"How is that?" said I. "How in the wide world can a Day-train go at night? or is it because it started from Germany by daylight? You surely don't reckon here by Amerikaansche tijd for the sake of the tourists?
"You not understand," he explained. "We call it day-trein becos' you pay more --."
"Well!" I interrupted; "that would be a Paytrain, then! Not Day."
"No, no," he said excitedly. "Zis trein go kwik! -- not stop -- anywheres!"
"But if it doesn't stop, how can we get in?" I asked. "Of moet ik belet vragen voor deze Dag-trein? Geeft de trein belet? You'll need a special kind of ticket, too -- perhaps an aanslagsbiljet?"
"No, no; only little bewijsje -- kwik trein -- bring Restoration -- becos' --".
"What? The Restoration! It turns day into night, and brings back Charles II! Go on, please, I can believe anything now!"
"Hallo! is this where you are?" sounded gratefully on our ears. It was van Leeuwen, who had been expecting us all day, after he had heard about our call, from the indignant butler. He had given up all hope of seeing us, but we passed him by in the dark, talking and laughing. He had followed hot-speed to the station -- in time to explain the mysteries of the D-trein. My spirits rose. The world was still ruled by reason. Of course we went back with our rescuer. That was the original plan, and I had a grammar to send with him to the Hague.
As he waited, talking to Terence, I recalled the cycles. The wit jas demurred: "De fietsen zijn al weg."
"Neen, niet waar," I told him. "Onmogelijk, hoor! Geen trein is weg. Daar zijn de papiertjes ervan. Pak ze: breng de fietsen mee. Ik weiger je verontschuldigingen. Doe wat ik zeg, ik bid U. En niet terug komen met hangende pootjes!"



CHAPTER XXVII


SUPPER AT A BOERDERIJ

That night after Terence had retired I had a confidential talk with van Leeuwen; and I begged of him, as a great favour, to take the Grammar to Kathleen, and -- if he had time -- give her a little coaching in Dutch. He said he would -- to oblige me; and I was pleased to notice that he started, taking Boyton with him, by the earliest possible train. This was the six twenty -- a notorious bommel which brought him into the Hague only seventeen minutes earlier than if he had waited for a decent breakfast.
Enderby got to Arnhem about noon, and took us 'in tow' for our cycling tour. We had a glorious week of it in Gelderland under his direction; but there were no adventures worth speaking of. In ten days we were back at the Residentie, as 'brown as berries and as gay as larks'. It is Terence's phrase, and I give it for what it's worth.
But at all events van Leeuwen was gay enough now. His pedagogic labours seemed to suit him, and Kathleen was quite herself again. To hear her laugh now was to imagine that you were back in Kilkenny in the days before the suffragette question was mooted.
We were all delighted. Except perhaps Enderby. That youth didn't appear more than half pleased at the turn things had taken; but he had the grace to keep out of the way and consoled himself with motoring. One day -- I had only sat down to luncheon -- he carried me off for a great run to the islands south of Rotterdam. But the machine broke down twice before we reached Dordrecht, and we had to content ourselves with housing its fragments in a shed, and walking to a boerderij where my friend was well known. Here, indeed, we were expected to supper; but we arrived hours before we were due, and minus an automobile . This necessitated explanations, which Enderby seemed gracefully enough to make to the family party in the garden. In a shady prieeltje there, they regaled us with "liemonade"; and I occasioned some consternation by rising twice to offer my seat to the mother and daughter respectively, who came in after I had sat down. They wouldn't take the chair I vacated for them, and appeared to resent my civility. Enderby. too, made me uncomfortable by touching my foot and saying, -- sotto voce, "Take care what you're about, O'Neill".
Baas Willemse was very sympathetic about the mishap to our motor, and strongly recommended the services of a gifted blacksmith of his acquaintance.
Indeed, before we knew, he had a pony harnessed in a sort of hooded tax-cart, in which he insisted in driving Enderby to this wonderful mechanic, to have the damaged car put to rights. And off they started.
It was only then that I realized the situation. Here was I -- without dictionary or phrase-book -- left to play the part of intelligent guest, unaided and unprepared. And that was the first time in my life I was 'spending the evening' in a non-English-speaking home. How would I get through it? I did hope that the local Vulcan would be quick.
At first it wasn't so bad. What with remarks about "het prachtige weer" and "het ongeluk", and what with playing with the children I got along quite smoothly for a while.
I even discoursed a little about the beauty of the afternoon-sunlight and "het schilderachtige van het zomerlandschap".
All this was taken in such good part that I went further afield; and noticing a large number of cattle with odd coverings on their backs, I ventured on a comparison which I fancied might interest the company. "In Groot-Brittanje hebben de koeien niet zoo dikwijls overjassen. Mag ik beleefd vragen: gebeurt dat hier vanwege de gezelligheid, of vanwege de gezondheid, of voor het mooi?"
They were all pleased at this, and gave me a lot of talk about cows -- which didn't make me much the wiser.
By violent efforts I recalled some of my old choice phrases, and passed myself somehow. But alas! supper came; and then my real troubles began.
We all adjourned to a binnen-kamer, where an ample spread awaited us. I was given the seat of honour. It was a great pity, all agreed, that Mijnheer Enderby wasn't back: but they thought I might be hungry. Well, I was -- and with reason. Nothing to eat since breakfast!
"Thee of chocolaat, Mijnheer?"
"Thee, alstublieft", I said -- and I got it.
"Krentebroodjes?"
"Dank U," I answered pleasantly, and reached for one in a leisurely manner. You don't like to parade your hunger, you know. Well, I hadn't been prompt enough . A plateful from which I was about to help myself, was removed. The action surprised me, and I looked for a moment at the mother, who had withdrawn the dainties so unexpectedly. She looked at me, slightly ruffled. But no krentebroodjes!
"Wil mijnheer een broodje met vleesch?"
"Oh dank U wel," I said endeavouring to be quicker. That time I nearly had a slice. But the agile youth, Jaap, who was in charge of the plate, whipped it away too.
No broodjes met vleesch for me! It was very queer.
"Soms een ei?" said the dignified grandmother, in a white cap with gold ornaments. She presided, and did a great deal of the talking; and I could make out that she was the widow of a fisherman or shipowner in a small way, and had once visited Hull. In virtue of having spent a week there, some forty years before, she was regarded evidently by all the rest as an authority on English manners and customs and language and literature.
"Soms een ei?" she pleaded. "Engelshman like egg."
Very much, indeed, I thought, if I could only get one -- call me English or Irish or whatever you like . Fain would I have had an egg off that plate, where she had just put down six or eight, freshly boiled.
Determined to get one, if politeness would assist me, I smiled and bowed and smiled again. "Oh, ik dank U duizendmaal. Ik bewijs volkomen dankbaarheid."
Stunned apparently by my reply, she hesitated. To encourage her to extend these edibles a trifle nearer, I said, "Alstublieft. Dank U." But she only sighed, and laid the plate out of reach, reproachfully.
No eggs!
"Truitje," she whispered to her granddaughter; "presenteer de schuimpjes."
Truitje didn't say a word, but pushed a schaaltje of these light refreshments towards me.
I did secure two; but in a moment they were finished. You see, a schuimpje doesn't last very long, when you are really hungry.
Then the mother complained courteously of my slender appetite: "Mijnheer wil niets gebruiken."
"O ja," I interrupted, "integendeel! Heel graag. Alstublieft." And to show I meant it, I asked for another cup of tea. "Mag ik beleefdelijk vragen om een andere kop?" Here I reached cup and saucer towards them.
That certainly created a diversion. They looked blankly at one another, till the grandmother -- she was very hearty -- called out with a cheerful laugh, "Hé, ja. Dat's waar ook. De Engelsche koppen zijn groot."
"Truitje," she whispered in an audible aside. "Breng even een Engelsche kom. Ze staan in de kast."
"Zie zoo, Mijnheer," she continued to me with a pleasant smile. "Nouw, Mijnheer wil zeker nog wat thee hebben? Nouw, niet bedanken, hoor."
"Oh ja," I replied joyfully. "Schiet op -- Als'tublieft -- dank U. Dank U -- heelemaal!"
Holding the tea-pot poised in her hand, she looked at me appealingly, but in doubt. "Wat? heus? " she said.
What was I to do?
I looked at her quite as appealingly, and replied. "Ja, heus! Wel zeker."
That was decisive. No tea!
The cup, however, was planted down in front of me, upside down. "Het is voor de pronk, zeker," said the grandmother. "Engelsche gewoonte - zeer net."
But conversation flagged. The silence was painful. You could have heard a pin drop. My discreet attempt to ask for something had failed, and I didn't see exactly how I was to improve upon it.
The mother meantime surveyed my empty plate and empty cup with distinct disapproval, and put out a feeler: "Mijnheer houdt niet van Hollandsche kost?"
'Hollandsch kost', what things cost in Holland -- Dutch prices, in other words? Well, they are rather high sometimes. The remark seemed somewhat irrelevant, but it was talk, and therefore welcome. Anything to break that oppressive silence. Eagerly embracing the opportunity of saying something, I responded with cordiality: "Hollandsche kost? Neen. Ik houd niet erg ervan. Dat kan U begrijpen. Ze zijn veels te hoog!"
This well-meant pleasantry was received with such evident disfavour that I hastened to explain. "Ik bedoel dat vele artikelen zijn kostbaar -- of kostelijk -- mijns bedunkens -- in Holland -- maar van onberispelijke smaak."
Hardly any response was made to this -- The merest murmur on the part of the grandmother that was all. But they all looked at me curiously, without saying a word.
Frantically I strove to make an observation in an easy friendly way, but all my Dutch seemed to have deserted me. -- At least all I judged suitable.
Fragments of conversation did float through my agonized brain, but none of them was quite what I needed.
"Ik graauw, ik kef en kweel" was out of the question.
Two proverbs suddenly flashed across my mind, and I gripped them firmly. One was: "Een vogel in de hand is meer waard dan tien in de lucht," and the tempting parallel offered itself: "Een broodje in de hand is meer waard dan tien op een boord." As this aphorism, however, didn't sound extra civil, I let it pass.
"Deugd en belooning gaan zelden tesamen" was the second proverb; and on that model I managed, after due cogitation, to construct a nice harmless phrase. As it expressed what we all knew and could see before our eyes, I felt safe against contradiction, and I knew it couldn't hurt anybody. This dictum ran: "Koek en boterham gaan dikwijls te samen."
Perhaps it was owing to the suddenness with which I proclaimed this truth, or to some severity in my manner; but the effect produced on the company was magical.
Jaap dropped his fork with a clatter and said, "Gunst!" The mother put her hand to her chest, whispering. "Zoo'n schrik!" All looked startled and stopped eating!
To divert the scrutiny of so many eyes, I manufactured talk on the first thing that occurred to me, and, reverting to the Dutch prices, said: "Sommige artikelen in Holland zijn duur. Van morgen heb ik een plaat bezichtigd -- een poes opgerold over een kannetje melk -- de zee in de verte. Prachtig. Maar peper-duur. Tien gulden en een half."
"Wat zegt mijnheer," asked the grandmother, "van de poes en de peper en de tien gulden?"
Assuring her it was merely a 'plaat', but one that was 'erg kostbaar', I grasped at the analogy of the hours of the day, to do full justice to the expensiveness of the picture. If ten o'clock and a half works out at "half-elf-uur," it is not hard to reckon what ten guilders-and-a-half ought to be; so I gave it with relish: "En, Juffrouw, wat denkt U? Het kost half-elf-gulden!"
Jaap looked at his watch and shook his head. Then he shook the watch, put it back in his pocket and fastened his eyes again on me.
"Nee, hoor!" exclaimed the mother, who had now begun to help a special dish; "Nee; zoo laat is het niet. Mijnheer O'Neill, neem een stukje pudding -- toe dan -- heel verteerbaar."
My plate was passed along, and was heaped up liberally. Though I waited With my thanks as long as I could, I was obliged to intervene when the plate was piled high enough for any two people. "Nouw, ik bedank!" I ejaculated, making my best bow.
But that caused the guillotine to fall once more. With a gesture of impatience Truitje put away my verteerbaar pudding on a remote side-table. Not the least chance of getting it!
I was starving in the midst of plenty!
As my hosts appeared to be as much impressed with the contrast as I was, I endeavoured to smooth things over a little, and set them more at their ease. Making the best of it, with all the careless grace I could muster I blandly assured them that it didn't matter. Het geeft niets -- het hindert niet -- het komt er niet opaan."
But they grew huffy and distant -- my phrases didn't do much to relieve the strain -- and I was feeling more depressed and famished every minute, when, to my unspeakable relief, up there came the sound of wheels on the gravel, and in a moment I heard Enderby's voice talking Dutch loudly and confidently in the hall.
The young folks all rushed out to meet him (he is a prime favourite with them) and there was much whispering and laughing and a long confabulation before they came back.
Enderby entered, and greeted the older people merrily: but there was a quizzical frown upon his brow as he sat down near me. "What's all this O'Neill? " he whispered. "Are you ill?"
"I'm as well as could expected in the circumstances!"
"Circumstances! Why you wouldn't touch the good food they gave you. Not content with despising their cookery you objected to their tea-cups, and pretend that religious scruples keep you from eating until after half-past ten. They think you are some kind of Mohammedan. These kind people are a little hurt, I fear; and I can see they are greatly astonished."
"So am I! I have been as polite as anything, all the time; but though they offer me plenty of everything, if I attempt to help myself, whew! -- they whisk the dish away. They may be hurt, as you say; but I can tell you, I'm starving. Is there no way to --?"
Our conversation was interrupted by the mother's voice, which broke in with the cheery question: "Mijnheer Enderby houdt wel van Hollandsche kost, niet waar?"
I watched what he would say.
He used two easy words: "Dat spreekt."
Busying herself with plates and spoons, the mother continued: "U neemt een beetje avondeten?"
"Nouw! Of ik!" said Enderby with enthusiasm -- and they brought him eatables all sorts.
These dainties caught my eye in spite of myself; and I wondered why none had been given to me. It was now going on to ten; and I had had nothing since early breakfast, except a glass of lemonade, a cup of tea and two small schuimpjes.
The old lady was observant, and must have detected famine in my eye, for with a glance at the clock she called softly to Truitje: "Probeer nouw es."
To me she said, "Wil Mijnheer nog thee?"
The secret was mine now, and I didn't hesitate.
"Of ik!" I replied.
There was a scream of delight from all quarters! My kom was turned right-side up and filled to the brim with fresh warm tea. I was the centre of interest at once. Cupboards flew open on all sides, like pistol-shots, and everybody was waiting to help me. It was who would give me most.
"Ham en een broodje?"
"Of ik!"
"Rookvleesch -- en een ei?"
"Dat spreekt!"
The seven lean years were past, now the time of plenty was come.
"Bitterkoekjes en leverworst?" -- "Muisjes en karnemelk? " -- "Appelbolletjes, wentelteefjes en molsla?" -- I refused nothing.
"Of ik" was the "Open Sesame" -- the key to unlock all cupboards and all hearts.
I took care to thank nobody for anything, for fear my plate would be removed. Happy laughter was heard on all sides. Smiles beamed on every face. In an instant I had become the most popular man on the island, -- at all events with the people in that farm-house. Their hospitality and my hunger had met at last, and come to terms -- to the unbounded enthusiasm of all.
Meantime Enderby had communicated to them the fact that I was an Irishman; and I overheard someone venture on the singular criticism: "De Ieren zijn zoo lief voor elkaar! Hij gebruikt niets als zijn vriend niet bij is."
"Hé, wat lief!" said Baas Willemse.
"Innig!" whispered the grandmother, smiling.
"Leuk", answered the mother.
"Aardig", sald some one else.
"Typisch", exclaimed Truitje.
A grumble fell on our ears: "Wat gek!"
It was Jaap.
Truitje talked on one side of Enderby; Jaap talked on the other. Enderby smiled, then sniggered, then laughed; and finally, laying down his knife and fork, he looked at me, and leaned back in his chair and positively roared.
"Well, what's the matter?" I asked austerely.
"She says it's touching to see your affection for me. You looked so melancholy when I was away, as if you were longing for something -- or crossed in love -- or disappointed! You've won their hearts, at last, my boy, not a doubt of it. Still, don't overdo that phrase, now that you've got it. Jaap here has a story about an Irish terrier in Drenthe that refused to eat anything for three days, when its master was away in Amsterdam. But he adds that the terrier made up for it, by eating everything it could, when its master came back. I can see that you are going to achieve a reputation that will outrival that of your canine compatriot, unless you have a care. Be a bit cautious, please."
Here Jaap, dimly apprehending that Enderby was speaking about him, performed a mystic rite that puzzled me extremely.
Pretending to sharpen an imaginary pencil on his forefinger he held it towards us and cried, "Sliepuit!"
"What on earth is that?" I asked Enderby -- who, however, could only tell me that it was intended as a roguish taunt -- Jaap was always a schelm -- but the phrase was otherwise meaningless.
As such it was jotted down at once in my notebook for future use.
>From these experiences in the boerderij I was able to deduce an important general principle of practical value.
If you want anything in Holland never say "thank you," until the object is firmly in your grasp. Then you may be as civil as you like. But before you get hold of it, you are only safe if you say, "If I".
In the Dutch language premature thanks are equivalent to a refusal; so you'd better keep your gratitude out of sight.
Well, I had won all hearts here in virtue of my discoveries. As we were going away the grandmother gave me a second Good-bye, shaking me warmly by both hands. "Heeft mijnheer zich goed geamuseerd?" she enquired.
"Kostelijk - Uitstekend -- Nouw!" was my prompt reply, for I had expected that query.
"Wat spreekt mijnheer nouw makkelijk Hollandsch!" she exclaimed.
"Gunst, ja", was my retort. "Ik heb zoo'n pret gehad! Onbetaalbaar!"
But I caught Jaap's eye; it was critical; so to pay back the youth for his terrier-story I took out my pencil, sharpened it in full view of them all and said, "Sliep uit, Jaap; je bent een schelm".
With that they all cheered, young and old, saying "Net, Mijnheer, net!"
"Tot weerziens!" laughed the grandmother shaking hands again. "Kom spoedig terug".
"Ja hoor; dat spreekt."
"Belooft u?" she repeated, before she let me go. I pulled myself together, and gave a parting salvo: "Ja, zeker - Stellig -- Och kom! -- Reken er op!--Of ik!!"
We drove away in a perfect tornado of applause.



EPILOGUE

On reaching my rooms at Ferdinand Bolstraat 66a, the landlady greeted me with respectful effusion and told me that Jan was as good as cured, though the wounded arm would remain stiff for a good while, she feared. She was loud in the praises of the Engelsche juffrouw and her proficiency in Dutch; and (sinking her voice confidentially) Mijnheer van Leeuwen had left a letter for me upstairs.
"Boyton", I thought, as I climbed those forty nine precipitous steps that led to my room, "I hope you have done your duty."
And he had.
Van Leeuwen wrote that he would prepare me for a great surprise! It was yet a profound secret; but, -- well, in fact -- that is to say -- he was engaged to my cousin Kathleen. They had discovered mutual sympathies and affinities over the study of Dutch -- to which language now my cousin was devoting her serious attention. By the bye they had been delighted with that monograph of mine. And the queer Grammar was useful. (I should think so!)
He said that he could well imagine my astonished looks when I got this news about his attachment! Now confess, he concluded, that you hadn't the ghost of a suspicion as to what was coming?
"Oh hadn't I just?" I soliloquized, "Well; there's only one thing, my dear fellow, to say to all that. And I really must say it in Dutch: Of ik?"