A Stumbler in Wide Shoes

Chapter I

Amsterdam on a sunny spring evening! It was like a time of truce in a siege. The beleaguering waters of the northern sea had ceased to push their battering-rams against the ramparts of the resisting town, and her watchful defenders could breathe freely, knowing that the war was over for another year, that the time was coming when their staunch ally the sun would raise the siege for them, and when, in the contest between man and nature, man would triumph once more. But a truce is not peace, nor is absence of attack victory, and Amsterdam keeps all her sentinels at their posts. The Venice of the North does not float gondolas on her canals, and trust the placid waters which glide in her streets, but guards against their treach ery with sluice-gate and dyke, — names for shield and buckler in her war with the sea.

The very sky lacked the calm of southern climes. The sun was sinking behind the houses, and little scarlet clouds drifted lightly across a space which gained grandeur by its height above the low horizon, and which had not altogether lost a weird and wintry greyness. Faint scarlet reflections drifted less lightly across the wide waters of the Amstel, hidden here and there by the black bulk of a barge, or broken I by the ripples from some small craft that crossed them, as earthly reflections of things heavenly are somewhat apt to be hidden and broken. There was a brown swirl in shadowed corners, a smell of cordage, and fishery, and peaty smoke, a gusty coldness in the rising wind, a clatter and movement of many feet on rough stones, all the stir and struggle of a northern people beating its way to such end as it may be seeking, instead of the rest and languor of a southern land where one has but to wait for the good that nature is sure to send.

But even in Amsterdam summer comes at last, and just now it seemed so near that some adventu rous housewives had consigned their stoves to the mighty grasp of the house-crane, to be slowly raised to their garret store-room there to wait until autumn and ague called them down again. These same cranes flung grotesque shadows on roofs and gables, and the trees by the water threw long black bars of shade on the roadways, while the level rays from the sunset lighted up the bricks in the pavement until they glowed like rude mosaic. To a stranger it might seem like a city on the stage. A stranger too, were he so disposed, might find amusement in watching the stream of passers by, and noting how unphlegmatic the phlegmatic Dutchman can occasionally be. National tempera ments have become proverbial, but, alas for the fallibility of human aphorisms, there is no rule without exceptions.

Look at that rubicund French man, that obese Yankee, that fair-haired Spaniard, that lank and lantern-jawed Englishman, and pause before you tie a whole nation down to its general characteristic ! Even now, following with the crowd, was a man at whose nationality it would be hard to guess from his outward demeanour. Striding westward, with the sunlight on his face, and his hair, worn rather long, lifted by the breeze, came Rupert van Hals, a Dutchman born. He walked quickly, but not with the steady gait of the men who met and passed him. First one thing and then another attracted him ; he stopped to greet a friend, turned aside to look at a quaint carving or a rare engraving in the little dingy shop-windows which rather concealed than displayed their treasures, and more than once went half-way down a street only to come back again.

Suddenly his eye, quick to seize any impression of beauty, was drawn to the figure of a woman who walked behind him, and he waited to let her pass. She was a foreigner, probably an English woman, he thought, as he watched her from the door-way of a picture-dealer's shop. She wore a dress of soft tender green with a shade of sombre ness in it, as all tender things have ; round her shoulders a full white kerchief was crossed and knotted, and her fair hair was covered by a close bonnet. She looked about her with a little quiet wonder, but rather at things than at persons, and with the blinding light in her eyes, did not see Rupert as she passed. He followed her at once. She hesitated now and then, as if not sure of the way, and when she paused, so did he, though why he followed he could not tell.

At last she turned out of a narrow street towards one of the canals, and before her, gaunt and black against the sky, stood a draw-bridge with its machinery for lifting. The wind blew chill off the water, a breeze was springing up as the sun sank. The shadows were fading and merging in one great dimness, the light grew greyer and paler, a crowd of market-girls clattered along the stones, elbowing their way homeward and talking loudly in their rough hard speech. Once or twice, but for her white kerchief, Van Hals would have lost sight, of the woman in whose steps he walked. WHDE SHOES. 4 The wind blew fresher, and involuntarily people quickened their steps. As the little crowd neared the bridge, the chains shook and rattled, and the Dutch women, who knew what that meant, hurried on. The bridge was to be raised to let a boat go by, and already a big brown sail, rather below the level of the street, was gliding stealthily nearer and nearer.

If they waited, their way to the opposite side of the canal was barred for perhaps ten minutes, — boys and men sprang forward, the market-women ran and pushed, Rupert lost sight of the English girl in the crowd. He saw half a dozen boys on the bridge which rose as their feet touched it, and heard their laugh as they ran down the gradually increasing declivity and gained the other side. Then he noted the sudden dead stop which indicates that something has happened, and as he darted forward, gathered broken words which told him before he saw that the English girl was in the water. Hurried forward by the crowd, and not knowing, as they did, the danger, she could not stop herself when she found no bridge at her feet, but fell into the canal. Van Hals had his coat off in a moment, and jumped after her; fortunately the barge below was coming slowly, and the man on board saw her fall, so that Rupert caught her as she rose to the surface, and with the help of the rough bargeman laid her on the deck of the boat.

The barge glided out of the shadow of the lifted bridge, and Rupert, looking at the girl's face saw that it was white and still. "Throw me my coat," he shouted to a boy on the bank, and rolling it up he made a pillow for the girl's head. "I won't land here, she is too faint," he said to the man by his side, "go on as you were going." The crowd waited a little, but the bridge had been lowered again, it was getting cold and dark, and Dutch curiosity is quickly appeased. Soon Van Hals and his charge were alone under the shadow of the big brown sail. The owner of the barge, leaving a boy — the only other human being on board — to steer, had gone below for some hot drink, for merely sprinkling water on her face failed to revive the fainting girl. Van Hals peered closely into her white face. " She is like Holbein's Madonna, " he whispered.

She was like Holbein's Madonna; the Madonna with the fair, gracious face and the forehead rather higher than we think beautiful now. Her wet fair hair, not yellow, not very thick — it is Magdalens, and not Madonnas, to whom the old painters give thick masses of hair — strayed on her cheek and shoulder ; and, looking at her, Van Hals trembled lest she should awake and be angry with him. The Dutchman came up from the dark cabin, a red glow from a coke stove behind him, a brown cup of hot Schiedam in his hand. The two men contrived to make the rescued woman taste a little. She opened her eyes. "You are quite safe," Rupert said: "you are in a boat, I will take care of you." He spoke English fluently, better even than most educated Dutchmen, for his mother was English. " Please put me on shore, " the girl said, after a pause, during which she had seemed to understand where she was.

" What does she say? " asked the bargee in Dutch. "She says she is not well enough to land yet," interpreted Van Hals, with a gloss of his own. The English girl tried to move but was evidently injured, for she fainted again from the effort, and this time the two men tried in vain to restore her. " You must find a doctor, " said the squat captain of the barge, a little tired of the monotony of gazing at an insensible woman, whose beauty was at best not florid enough to suit his taste. Van Hals lifted his head and looked round him. Ele could see far now, for the bank of the canal was only a few inches above the water; they had left the lock-like walls behind them, and drifted into a less populous part of the city. The clatter of wooden shoes or the rattle of a hand cart now and then broke the stillness; in front of the boat no bridges were to be seen crossing the faint grey streak of water.

The boatman pointed with his thumb significantly to a wisp of white vapour which hovered over the canal in the dim distance. "There's the ague-snake," he said shortly; "if you are not frightened of it I am, and I am going down to my fire." At this moment Van Hals caught sight of a gleam of brightness almost like a spark, and saw that it came from a barber's brass bowl, quaintly built into the wall of a house by the canal side. He knew it well, and that it was two hundred years old, and had been in the family of the man on whose walls it shone all its two-century lifetime; once it hung outside a barber's shop and showed that men could be bled there, now it indicated to its owner's satis faction, if to that only, that the barber's shop had developed into a surgery. " Stop, when you can," said Rupert, " we shall pass a surgeon's in a moment, and I will take her out there."

"I can stop easy enough," laughed the boatman gruffly, " I thought you were the sort to be fright ened by the ague-snake." And he brought the barge to the edge of the canal, and grappled her by an iron ring to a stake driven into the bank. Van Hals put money into his hand, lifted the English girl in his arms, and carried her, not without difficulty, across the rude pavement to the doctor's door. A flight of four stone steps, deep-worn in the centre by the tread of feet for many years, led to the door, but iron hand-rails on each side prevented Rupert carrying the girl up, so he stood there panting, and shouted. The door opened instantly, and a little fair man, with the nearly white hair pecu liar to some Dutchmen and Germans was by his side at once. By a gesture he indicated how Van Hals was to help to carry the girl, and never opened his lips until they had her safe in his little surgery.

Then going to the door he called in a harsh guttural voice, very loudly, "Daatje!" A small woman, with a woollen comforter com pletely concealing her features came at the call, and received some brief directions in a low tone, then the surgery door was shut, and Dr. Isencraw approached his patient. " What have you done to her ? " he asked Van Hals, abruptly. " Saved her from drowning, and apparently broken her arm," answered Rupert, half smiling. No further questions were asked as the doctor very gently, and with a tenderness of touch that contrasted almost ludicrously with his speech, un knotted her wet white kerchief and cut her sleeve. The soft green stuff of her dress fell back from an arm so firmly moulded that but for the faint blue veins at the wrist it might have been carved in marble.

" She's strongly made, " said the doctor. She moaned faintly, and Van Hals started forward, indignant both at Isencraw's unpoetic comment and at his having apparently hurt the woman. " Lift her shoulders, Rupert ; I won't try and rouse her yet, the pain will wake her presently ; come, stir yourself! " For Rupert was simply kneeling on one knee, holding the girl's limp hand as if it were a saint's relic, and taking no heed of the words addressed to him. The surgeon laid his hand on his shoulder. " Why, you are wet too, sodden ! you'll be ill on my hands in another half hour. And you are no use here!" he muttered, going to the door and opening it, " Daatje ! " The call, with a prolonged stress on the first syllable of her name brought Daatje as before. " Take Mr. van Hals upstairs ; light the fire and give him some brandy hot, and make him have a bath as hot as he can bear it; then come down here."

Daatje took Van Hals by the arm, in spite of remonstrances on his part. "Let me help you, Isencraw," he pleaded. " Just what I was going to do until you hindered me, " growled the surgeon : " I'll call you when she's right again. Go and have your bath, if you don't want to be dead in a week." Van Hals yielded with the better grace because certain chill shiverings had warned him that even youth and strength cannot long resist, especially in Holland, exposure to evening airs in wet clothes. So he followed Daatje meekly, and standing by the fire in the doctor's dressing-room watched the homely form of the Dutch woman, bending over the bath, and listened with an amused inattention to her constant chatter, as she spoke out of the hot steam, and as if thawed by its influence. He was just wondering vaguely whether any of her remarks called for an answer, when Isencraw's voice in a prolonged shout, like a steam-boat captain calling into the engine-room, froze the thawing current of Daatje's words, and relieved Van Hals of her society.

Chapter II

Rupert van Hals was a philosopher; at least so he said, though I am not sure that a man is the best judge of his own philosophy. What he chiefly prided himself upon, was a capacity to take life easily, but, after all, this is more a matter of con stitution than of conscience. He assumed that it is philosophical to keep one's troubles in the background, forgetting that he is only half a man who dare not turn and face them, and that there is some difference between bearing a burden without complaint, and shifting it on to other men's shoulders. Not that Rupert's troubles were very serious at present, and in his own mind they might be summed up by the statement that he was the son of his father. His father was a German and a soldier. Rupert was a Dutchman, as he was a philosopher, by his own assertion, and hated Germans with a Dutchman's hatred.

Also he declined to be a soldier. Old Van Hals had been seriously wounded in his first engagement, had left the army a lieutenant, married an English wife, settled in Amsterdam, and made up his mind that his son should climb to the top of that military ladder from which his own foot had been unwillingly withdrawn. This the son po sitively refused to do. Indulged by his mother, WHDE SHOES. 10 neglected by his father, vaguely led to believe in great wealth in store for him, Rupert van Hals threw his whole soul into art, for which he had sufficient talent to enable him to avoid hard work, — and hard work would have saved him. As it was he painted a little, modelled a great deal, and spent much of his time in dreams of a future when he should be rich by his father's money, and famous by his own genius.

Unfortunately the amount of Lieutenant van Hals's money was an unknown problem to which his son in vain endeavoured to find a clue. The old man was absolutely silent on the subject, he neither boasted of his wealth nor deplored his poverty; but he kept his son on a niggardly allowance, and never stinted himself in anything, so that any seed of prudence which he sowed with one hand he roughly uprooted with the other. And Rupert's mind did not present a kindly soil for seeds of prudence; he fancied he saw a motive for his father's niggardliness, and believed he was kept short of money lest he should pay a substitute instead of personally going through his training for the army. This was to some extent correct, and bitter was the old man's disappointment, when an English uncle left Rupert a couple of hundred pounds, and the dreaded substitute was paid.

This widened the breach between the two beyond healing; the son had not only disobeyed his father, but had overreached him; he might have rebelled and been forgiven if he had failed, but there was no forgiveness for success. Rupert's English mother had died some years back, and there was no one to bring to gether the two men who had filled her little world ; they lived under the same roof because it was cheaper, they met occasionally without anger, indeed with indifference, but each was a thorn in the other's side. So Rupert van Hals asserted that he was a Dutch man chiefly because his father was a German, and proclaimed himself a philosopher to excuse his indolent endurance of a somewhat galling position. In Dr. Isencraw's dressing-room he proceeded to prove his philosophy by quietly carrying out all the doctor's orders, and his nationality by lighting a cigar.

At last he ventured to put on his half-dry clothes, which had been steaming before the fire, while he sat in his friend's dressing-gown, ruminating on his evening adventure, and to go down-stairs. Below, as he paused on the staircase, he saw a true Dutch interior. The surgery door stood open, an oil lamp, somewhat dim and old-fashioned, and two candles lighted it. The English girl, pale still and ex hausted, leaned back in a great arm-chair, Daatje's concerned brown face close to her white one, Dr. Isencraw's figure, black and haloed, was between the lamp and the door. As Rupert entered, the English girl raised herself a little, and with a grateful flush on her cheek, said softly : "I think you saved my life, sir." " That was nothing, " Rupert answered hurriedly, and flinging his cigar on the fire, " any man would have done the same."

"Perhaps so," said the girl, with a quiet smile, "but I should like to thank you." "Ah," said Dr. Isencraw, turning abruptly, "Miss Prosser has been trying to tell me at which bridge she fell, and I cannot quite understand, — which was it?" Daatje's face was a study at this moment, and Rupert watched it as a man watches the faces of the jury during a judge's charge, to see if it will be well with him. Her mouth was drawn down at the corners, and in her eyes was the look of the school-boy who has once been caught and punished himself, and who sees a companion in the same case. She was evidently full of fear, and of fear for Rupert. He glanced for explanation at the doctor, and met his eye, grave, inquiring, and with the gleam of a coming triumph in it, and knew himself detected. "Oh," he began, as he walked round to the fire, " it was one of the draw-bridges ; — you see the bridge lifted, there was a crush, and " "We know all that," said the doctor drily, the gleam in his eye becoming a twinkle ; " Miss Pros ser — my patient — has explained.

I only want to know which bridge it was at." "It was not far from the Amstel, I don't know the name of the bridge, — what does it matter?" " Simply that there were nearer doctors, in that case, my dear fellow, and you ran some risk from delay." " Well, the bargee was a surly fellow, and I could not get him to stop, and, and " "Just so," replied his friend, and added in a low voice and in Dutch as he came near to him, " I did not think so seriously of you at first, my boy, but self-condemnation is a very bad sign. Don't plunge deeper in the mud by struggling." Rupert muttered something about " beauty " and " artist " and " model ", but gave in without attempting further explanation ; he knew he had done a foolish thing and would only make himself ridiculous in the eyes of his prosaic friend if he confessed that he had spent nearly an hour on a barge, in wet clothes, merely for the pleasure of gazing on a beautiful stranger, whose face had enthralled him.

"Do you think I may go home now?" asked the English woman quietly, diverting Dr. Isencraw's at tention from Van Hals. " My aunt will be very anxious, I fear." "Let Daatje call a coupe or a conveyance of some kind," broke in Rupert, "and I will see Miss—?" " Prosser, " said Dr. Isencraw. " Miss Prosser home, " concluded Rupert, annoyed that he had to appeal to another for her name. " We will see Miss Prosser home," his friend said, with a most provoking emphasis on the first word, at which Van Hals was so angry that he would have left the two to go without him, but that he would have been unable in that case to find out the stranger's address. A carriage was called, and the doctor approached his patient. " You must not attempt to go down the steps alone," he said, and at the same time Van Hals, in silence, offered her his arm.

The girl looked from one man to the other. The surgeon, with his flaxen hair, his slight, almost boyish figure, his shining spectacles which obliterated any expression his eyes might hold, was to her a kind, though brusque, pro fessional man; Rupert, his chestnut locks flung back from his forehead, his handsome face turned eagerly towards her, while his bright clear grey eyes looked defiance at Isencraw, was a knight errant, a mystery, a champion. She thanked Isencraw quietly, but she took Van Hals's arm. The three drove slowly through deserted streets, for the most part in silence, because the noisy pave ment stopped conversation, the surgeon supporting his patient as well as he could lest the shaking should hurt her. As the carriage crossed the stone canal bridges, with their steep ups and downs, the pale face of the injured girl grew paler, and she was afraid she might faint again.

The strangeness of her position was in some way a strength to her. The long gleaming strips of water in the centre of the streets, the shadowy trees that darkened the way, ghostly sails of boats, the very smell of the town, that peculiar Dutch smell which is caused by the fuel burnt — a kind of peat — all reminded her that she was in a strange land, and must bear herself bravely as a Devonshire girl should. It was a relief to feel the carriage stop, and to recognise her aunt's house, with steps up to the seldom-used front door, and steps down to what in her ignorant English simplicity she had at first called a cellar, but which was a wonderful shop running the whole depth of the house, and full of cigars of all brands, and tobaccos from all countries. It was brilliantly lighted as usual in the evening; there stood her Dutch uncle talking to and smoking with his customers ; and as the carriage stopped, her aunt, a Devonshire farmer's daughter like herself once, but now to all appearance as Dutch as her adopted country, hurried out full of questions and alarm.

And so began the acquaintance of Rupert van Hals and Myrtle Prosser, a bud which was to ripen into that bitter-sweet fruit which life offers to some of us that we may take it, and gives to some whether we will or no.

Chapter III. The

long low room which Myrtle Prosser had thought a cellar, and which stretched from the street in front to the canal behind her uncle's house, had a celebrity of its own in this quarter of Amsterdam. It was in some sort the barber's shop of the district. For Amsterdam is not a desolate waste or a great hive (according as a man looks at it) like London ; its merchants have leisure and incli nation for gossip still, but instead of meeting at the barber's, as in old days, they assembled at Anton Seeker's cigar shop and talked over the news of the day. The shop lay close to the Kalver Straat and the Exchange, and about two o'clock what was more pleasant than to lounge in after luncheon and try one of Anton's cigars? They were noted even at Rotterdam and the Hague, and bland Anton Secker was as proud of them as if they had been his children, or his old blue china.

His ancestors had lived in the same old house for two or three centuries, and in the days of barter with England had acquired at small cost some wonderful china, and also some real Chippendale furniture. These were Anton Seeker's relics, to be shown and sold only to the faithful. Of late the shop had gained an additional attrac tion for the younger men, who did not think an evening stroll complete without a visit to Seeker's. It had transpired that Anton's wife had a pretty niece staydng there. For Myrtle, ignorant of the etiquette of the town, had innocently walked past the Exchange and down the Kalver Straat at two o'clock, an hour when, as all Amsterdam knows, no lady under five-and-forty ventures into the merchants' quarter. She noticed that the steps of the Exchange were black with the crowd of eager merchants, talking, smoking, laughing, and, as she soon discovered, turning to look at her.

It was not until she was halfway down the Kalver Straat, whose splendid shop windows almost dazzled her, that her solitude oppressed her — she was the only young woman to be seen! That evening Anton Seeker's shop was besieged. The stout and placid Dutchman stood rubbing his white hands in the doorway, and greeted each man who came rather as a guest than as a customer. He spread his boxes of cigars on the counters which flanked the shop, and took the sums, small as well as large, that were paid, with his own hands, and then the men began to talk. " Well, Anton, how is trade ? " began one ; but another, more impatient and knowing by experience that the fluctuations of trade were an exhaustless topic, inquired: " Wait a minute, good Anton, how is Frau Secker ? " This was much more easily answered; the wife was very well.

" By the by, " said the first speaker, cleverly following his friend's lead, " she is an Englishwoman I am told, Anton ; who would have thought it ! " " She was English when I married her twenty years ago, she would have been very stupid if she had not become Dutch by this time," remarked Secker, to whom the subject was not interesting. Ah but, Anton, look here, — let us see your English niece before you turn her into a Dutchwoman, it will be charming to watch the process, you know." "She will not be here long enough," gravely replied the cigar-merchant ; " she is only with us for a few weeks." " May we make her acquaintance, before she goes? " pleaded both young men. " You may make her acquaintance to-night for that matter," answered Anton stolidly, "but if you hope to please her you are mistaken, she is like the rest of her countrywomen, and looks at Dutchmen as if they were cabbages."

"I'll be a cabbage from this moment," cried the more impulsive of Seeker's two questioners, " if she will only look at me." But Anton was already leading the way down the shop, and paid no attention. He opened a glass-door, on which a red silk curtain concealed the room beyond, and disclosed, seated at work, his wife and her English niece. He shut the young men in without a word and returned to the shop. Two Englishmen in a similar position would probably have been shy and awkward, but the Dutchmen, asking that their cigars might be excused, as one would say " good evening " without waiting for an answer, seated themselves and began to talk. It was Myrtle's first real experience of Dutch life, and it was as delightful as it was unexpected. Class distinctions are but faintly marked in Holland, and her aunt chatted as familiarly with these two young men, one of whom she knew to be the son of a wealthy banker, as if her husband were buying instead of selling cigars on the other side of the glass door.