"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 astonishing 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 fishing 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."
"Really?" said Elsje, looking straight at me with her frank, innocent eyes.
Before this look my heart melted with tenderness. I felt a desire to kneel down before her and cover her hands with tears and kisses. But I controlled myself, for I reflected that I was an Italian and that it was a Dutch girl I had to deal with, and I did not want to risk my fragile happiness by foolish extravagances. And there was a subtle relish in this sobriety and this respectful self-control. But I wanted to be honest too - my happiness must rest on a firm foundation of uprightness - I wanted to make my position clear.
"Yes, really, Elsje; and yet I had never heard of you, and no one had spoken of you to me. And now, tell me, had you never heard of me either? Do you know anything about me? Do you know my name?"
"I saw your name in the hotel register. Otherwise I knew nothing of you until I saw you."
"Really not? Also not ?"
"What?"
"That I am married and have a good wife and four children?" I burst out, almost roughly in my brave effort to spare myself nothing and to risk the worst.
Elsje without starting gazed at me long, attentively and thoughtfully.
What I distinctly discerned in her glance was a questioning doubt and a tender compa.s.sion.
"A good wife and four children," she repeated softly, pensively. "I thought that you were probably married. But you are not happy after all, I know it."
"No, I am not happy, Elsje, that is true. Or rather - was not until to-day."
She asked nothing more after that, as though she thought that I would probably myself tell her what I deemed necessary for her to know. But I knew enough, and I also saw that she knew enough and we spoke no more about ourselves that day. We felt as one does in dreams - one understands and communicates without words.
I slept very little that night. With me also, well balanced in mind as I am, sleep grows more elusive with the advancing years. But it is not care, but happiness, that drives it away. I lay all night silent and happy in a bright cloud of joy, thinking of her who now lay peacefully breathing under the same roof. Then toward morning I had a short dream, which by its dark terror gave me a measure for the brightness of my joy. I dreamt that I was back in my office at The Hague and, coming home, I found a letter containing my transference to j.a.pan. My sailing excursions, my little city, Elsje - it had all been a dream and I was again deep in my old, gloomy life, worldly and yet estranged from the world. My anguish was terrible, I cried and sobbed desperately and woke up in that way, my face and my pillow now really wet with tears. And then - the relief, the transition, the glorious realization of the reality of my newly-found happiness, my dawning memory of yesterday"s beautiful day, of Elsje"s winsome ways and the frank, fervent look in her eyes, her ready sympathy and tender compa.s.sion. Only then I really comprehended what had been given me. I was no longer a stranger in the world - life, the sacred human life had won me back. I would not die after all without having been entirely human.
At my solitary breakfast in the upper room, into which the sun was shining, Elsje, amid the pressure of her domestic duties, stopped a moment to greet me. I said that I had no time to sail back, but would go home by train, leaving the yacht anch.o.r.ed in the harbor, to call for it the following Sunday.
"That is well considered," said Elsje, with a roguish little laugh of comprehension.
And at my departure I saw my peaceful, friendly little city, with its venerable old church steeple, stretched out calm and sunny in matinal activity. In front of the ugly, bare little station I turned, and stretching out my hands I blessed the little city with all my heart, murmuring in my glowing, pa.s.sionate mother tongue:
"Benedetto sia "l giorno e "l mese e "l anno
E la stagione e "l tempo e "l ora e "l punto
E "l bel paese e "l loco ov" io fu giunto
Da duo begli occhi, che legato m" hanno."
XXIII
"Dear Lucia, will you hear me a moment? I have something to tell you and would like to have it off my mind before we go to bed."
We had just come home from a court banquet and in our gala dress stood looking over the letters which had arrived that night. Lucia looked up interestedly.
"Come to my room with me then," she said, and then regarding me: "It is surely something good, isn"t it? I haven"t seen you in such good spirits for a long time."