Part 18 (1/2)
”Did you hope so?”
”Yes!” she said artlessly.
This was so totally different from what other women I had known would have replied, that it made me feel confused. I had no conception or experience of woman's love that can dispense with playful dissembling, and so thought that I was mistaken after all. I began to consider that I was already quite an old man and she apparently about twenty years younger. Perhaps I resembled some one she had formerly known; perhaps she took me for her unknown father or sought in me a subst.i.tute for her unengaging supporter. I prepared myself for all this, firmly determined not to disappoint her.
”Will you do me the favor of being my guide about the city this afternoon? It looks like such a pretty and attractive little town to me.”
”I?” she asked with evident pleasure. ”I'll be very glad to. But first you must eat something.”
”Will your ... stepfather have no objections?
Elsje smiled surprised and a bit scornfully.
”Who? - Jan Baars? - Why no! that makes no difference to him. He has no authority over me either.”
How thankful these proud words made me. Hastily leaving the room she said:
”I'll see that you get something to eat quickly. Then while you're eating I'll get dressed and at three o'clock I'll go out with you.”
And I remained behind, blithe as an angel and full of expectancy as a child on his birthday.
When we went out she had dressed, and it was astonis.h.i.+ng to see with what simple means she achieved an appearance of tasteful distinction. A round straw hat, a white standing collar, a well-tailored light gray suit, a lavender silk tie - and she was a lady among the boorish and bourgeois women of her town. For on the point of dress the artistic Hollanders, as soon as they discard their quaint old national costume, are probably the most tasteless people in the world, and of these the women of a North Dutch provincial town are probably even the very worst dressed.
As we walked along the hot quiet streets we saw the residents peeping at us through their wire window screens with amazed, well-nigh angry glances.
”Do you see how we are being stared at?” said Elsje. ”That will give them something to talk about for a whole week again.”
”And don't you mind that, Juffrouw Elsje?”
”Why, no!” said Elsje, with a pretty expression of power and personal dignity: ”I have taught them that I do exactly what I myself think right. Now there isn't one left who dares accost me about it. It does them no good, anyway. And what they say to each other I do not hear, nor am I anxious to find out.”
We went to the museum. It was silent, cool and deserted there. The door-keeper sat nodding in his corner. Amid the relics of that old, stout, merry people that, a few centuries ago, strove to surround their earthly life with beauty and comfort here, amid the prints and paintings of the graceful, gorgeous, flag-bedecked vessels; the portraits of magistrates, charmingly elegant and autocratic, the muskets and cuira.s.ses and lances, the medals and placards, the rare bibelots and the fine porcelain from the East and West brought together in this little sailor's hamlet, we spent a few hours of profound intimate happiness.
Elsje knew very little, but she was quick to understand, and she listened to my explanations with such eager desire for learning, with such rapt attention, with such unlimited faith in my knowledge, that it made me feel confused and I begged her not to take me for an oracle - for though I had indeed read much and seen a good deal of the world, yet I was by no means a scholar such as is demanded in our days.
”Ah! I live in such a small narrow circle here. To me you are the great, vast world,” said Elsje with a charming deference.
When the daylight faded and it grew cooler, we wandered out through the old, dark gateway up across the thickly wooded dike into the open green fields, where we watched the sun setting in flame-colored majesty. We walked to what is now my nursery, and I drew her attention to the marvellous flight of the gulls soaring motionless against the wind, to the colors of the sea and of the heavens, to the brightly-sparkling Venus glittering greenish white against the rose-colored background of the sky, and I told her all I knew.
Then I came back to our conversation of the morning.
”Have you often such forebodings as when I was approaching in peril on the sea?”
”Yes, always when something important is going to happen to me, good or bad, I know it before. It never fails.”
”This time it was good, though, I hope?
”Yes, good,” she said, smiling sweetly, ”but alarming nevertheless. You must not sail so recklessly again. Boats like your little yacht should be in the harbor with such a wind blowing. Even all the fis.h.i.+ng smacks were in and they can stand quite a bit more rough weather.”
”I was calm and a.s.sured. I knew that I would see you. I had dreamt of you, of your face and of your name.”