Part 14 (1/2)

Mijnheer stopped to look at the merry-go-round; he admired the cheerful tune that it played. He was not a connoisseur of music; a barrel-organ was as good to him as the organ in the Groote Kerk. The others stopped too; Anna exclaimed on the life-like and clever appearance of the bobbing horses, whereupon her father suggested that perhaps the girls would like to try a ride on the machine, and then befel the crowning mischief of the evening. Julia and Anna accepted the proposal readily. Denah declined; she felt in no humour for it; also she thought a refusal showed a superior mind--one likely to appeal to a serious young man, who had no taste for the gaudy, gay, or fast, and who also had a tendency towards seasickness.

But, alas, for the fickleness of man! While Denah stood with her father and Mijnheer, Julia rode round the centre of lighted mirrors on a prancing wooden horse, and Joost--the serious, the sometimes seasick--rode beside her on a dappled grey, to the familiar old English tune, ”Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-a.”

CHAPTER IX

THE HOLIDAY

The Dunes lay some little distance from the town, a low, but suddenly-rising hill boundary, that shut in the basin of flat land.

They were all of pure sand, though in many places so matted with vegetation that it was hardly recognisable as such. Trees grew in places, especially on the side that fronted towards the town; the way up lay through a dense young wood of beech and larch, and a short, broad-leafed variety of poplar. There was no undergrowth, but between the dead leaves one could see that a dark green, short-piled moss had managed to find a hold here and there, though so smooth was it that it looked more like old enamel than a natural growth. The trees had the appearance of high summer, deeply, intensely green, so that they seemed almost blackish in ma.s.s. There was no breeze among them; even the dapples of sunlight which found their way through the roof of leaves hardly stirred, but lay in light patches, like scattered gold upon the ground. Flies and gnats moved and s.h.i.+mmered, a busy life, whose small voices were the only sound to be heard; all else was very still, with the glorious reposeful stillness of full summer; not oppressive, without weariness or exhaustion, rather as if the whole creation paused at this zenith to look round on its works, and beheld and saw that they were all very good.

There were no clear paths, apparently few people went that way; certainly there was no one about when Julia and Rawson-Clew came. It is true they saw a kind of little beer-garden at the foot of the slope, but there was no one idling about it.

”We shall have to come back here for lunch,” Julia said.

And when he suggested that it was rather a pity to have to retrace their steps, she answered, ”It doesn't matter, we are not going anywhere particular; we may just as well wander one way as another.

When we get to the top this time we will explore to the right, and when we get there again after lunch, we will go to the left; don't you think that is the best way? This is to be a holiday, you know.”

”Is a real holiday like a dog's wanderings?” Rawson-Clew inquired; ”bounded by no purpose except dinner when hungry?”

Julia thought it must be something of the kind. ”Though,” she said, ”dogs always seem to have some end in view, or perhaps a dozen ends, for though they tear off after an imaginary interest as if there was nothing else in the world, they get tired of it, or else start another, and forget all about the first.”

”That must also be part of the essence of a holiday,” Rawson-Clew said; ”at least, one would judge it to be so; boys and dogs, the only things in nature who really understand the art of holiday-making, chase wild geese, and otherwise do nothing of any account, with an inexhaustible energy, and a purposeful determination wonderful to behold. Also, they forget that there is such a thing as to-morrow, so that must be important too.”

”I can't do that,” Julia said.

”You might try when you get to the top,” he suggested. ”I will try then; I don't think I could do anything requiring an effort just now.”

Julia agreed that she could not either, and they went on up straight before them. It is as easy to climb a sand-hill in one place as in another, provided you stick your feet in the right way, and do not mind getting a good deal of sand in your boots. So they went straight, and at last got clear of the taller trees, and were struggling in thickets of young poplars, and other sinewy things. The sand was firmer, but honeycombed with rabbit holes, and tangled with brambles, and the direction was still upwards, though the growth was so thick, and the ground so bad, that it was often necessary to go a long way round. But in time they were through this too, and really out on the top. Here there was nothing but the Dunes, wide, curving land, that stretched away and away, a tableland of little hollows and hills, like some sea whose waves have been consolidated; near at hand its colours were warm, if not vivid, but in the far distance it grew paler as the vegetation became less and less, till, far away, almost beyond sight, it failed to grey helm gra.s.s, and then altogether ceased, leaving the sand bare. Behind lay the trees through which they had come, sloping downwards in banks of cool shadows to the map-like land and the distant town below; away on right and left were other groups of trees, on sides of hills and in rounded hollows, looking small enough from here, but in reality woods of some size. Here there was nothing; but, above, a great blue sky, which seemed very close; and, underfoot, low-growing Dune roses and wild thyme which filled the warm, still air with its matchless scent; nothing but these, and s.p.a.ce, and suns.h.i.+ne, and silence.

Julia stopped and looked round, drawing in her breath; she had found what she had come to see--what, perhaps, she had been vaguely wanting to find for a long time.

”Isn't it good?” she said at last. ”Did you know there was so much room--so much room anywhere?”

Rawson-Clew looked in the direction she did; he had seen so much of the world, and she had seen so little of it--that is, of the part which is solitary and beautiful. Yet he felt something of her enthusiasm for this sunny, empty place--than which he had seen many finer things every year of his life.

Perhaps this thought occurred to her, for she turned to him rather wistfully: ”I expect it does not seem very much to you,” she said; ”you have seen such a great deal.”

”I do not remember to have seen anything quite like this,” he answered; ”and if I had, what then? One does not get tired of things.”

Julia looked at him thoughtfully. ”I wonder,” she said, ”if one would?

If one would get weary of it, and want to go back to the other kind of life?”

She was not thinking of Dune country, rather of the simple life it represented to her just then. Rawson-Clew caught the note of seriousness in her tone and reminded her that thought for the past or future was no part of a holiday. ”Remember,” he said, ”you are to-day to emulate dogs and boys.”

She laughed. ”How am I to begin?” she asked. ”How will you?”

”I shall sit down,” he said; ”I feel I could be inconsequent much better if I sat down to it; that is no doubt because I am past my first youth.”