If I must commit a crime, my artistic sense bids me do it well; and then, of course, when one has started in a certain direction, one is often carried along a little farther than one intended to go at first.
That was what happened to me, in the affair of Robert van Buren and his fiancee.
I was pledged to Phyllis and myself to free the Viking somehow--anyhow.
It was rash of me to give this pledge, also it was quixotic; and many hours did not pa.s.s after making it, before I was seized with regret, and convictions that I had been an a.s.s.
Exactly how I was going to do the deed did not occur to me at the time, but I had an idea which fitted in with my other villainies so well, that it seemed really a pity not to add it to the richly colored pattern.
It was for this reason that I dreaded returning to the Hotel du Pays Bas from a walk about Utrecht, knowing as I did that the van Buren party would have arrived.
I stayed out, sketching, as long as there was any light, and got a few good bits of the old town; a shadowed glimpse of one of Utrecht"s strange ca.n.a.ls, unique in Holland, with its double streets, one above the other; an impression of the Cathedral spire, seen beyond a series of arched bridges; a couple of fishermen bringing up a primitive net, fastened on four branches, and sparkling as it came out of the water, like a spider-web spun of crystal.
I was careful not to appear till dinner-time; but one is obliged in self-defense to dine early in Holland, because what seems early to a foreigner seems late to a Dutchman. At seven o"clock I went to the L.C.P."s sitting-room (it has become a regular thing for her to have a sitting-room), and behold, they were all a.s.sembled.
Nell was plainly dressed in the simplest kind of a white frock, but Phyllis had made quite a toilet. Poor child! I could guess why. She need not, however, have given herself the pains. The fiancee, compared with her, was like a withered lemon beside a delicately ripening peach.
The van Buren twins are delicious creatures; but they did not count in the little drama. Besides, they are, in any case, too young for drama.
They are just beginning to rehea.r.s.e for the first act of life; and I think for them it will be a pretty pastoral, never drama or tragedy, or even lively comedy.
I knew from Phyllis"s description what sort of girl the fiancee would turn out to be, except that I didn"t expect to find her quite so smart.
Her dress, and the hat she had put on for the hotel dinner, might have come from the Rue de la Paix; which was all the more credit to her, as I have heard a dozen times if I have heard it once, that she is very poor--as poor as she is proud.
Now was my time to set the ball rolling; and valiantly I gave it the first kick. I feigned to be much taken at first sight with the young lady from The Hague. At once I flung myself into conversation with her, in which we were both so deeply absorbed, that when the L.C.P. suggested going down to dinner, n.o.body can have been surprised when I said, "Please, all whom it may concern, I want to sit next to Freule Menela van der Windt at the dinner table." Indeed, most of the party have long pa.s.sed the stage of being surprised at anything I do; a state of mind to which I have carefully trained them. The Viking, however, has not often seen me at my best, so he stared at this audacity, but on second thoughts decided not to be displeased.
Neither was the fiancee displeased. I did not attribute her pleasure to the power of my manly charms; but the young lady is the sort of young lady to be complimented by almost any marked attention from any man, especially when other girls, prettier than herself, are present.
I continued to absorb myself in Freule Menela.
She has, I soon discovered, a veneering of intelligence, and a smattering of information on a number of subjects useful in a drawing-room. We talked about Dutch art, and French art, and so many facts was the maiden able to launch at my head, that the lovely pink-and-white twins gazed at their future sister-in-law with ingenuous admiration.
Evidently she had gleaned from Robert all he had to tell about me, as well as about the other members of the party, for she is not the sort of girl to lay herself out for strangers unless she considers them worth while.
Apparently she did consider me worth while; and during dinner she had hardly a word for the Viking, who sat on her other side; but that was all the better for him, because it gave him a chance to talk across the table to Phyllis, and to look at her when he was sitting dumb.
"There"s going to be an illumination this evening," said Brederode. "You know the parks and gardens you admired so much last night, as we came through the ca.n.a.l into Utrecht? Well, there will be colored lights there; and a walk along the towing-path would be rather nice, if any one feels inclined for it."
"Oh, do let"s go!" exclaimed Phyllis; and the twins echoed her enthusiastically.
That was enough for Brederode, though neither Nell nor the L.C.P.
replied; and I asked myself by whose side he was planning to walk. Had he proposed the excursion with an eye to monopolizing the English or the American Angel?
I stifled the pang which I could not help feeling at the thought that he should have either, and in a low voice asked Freule Menela van der Windt if I might be her cavalier, in order to continue our very interesting argument? I had already forgotten what the last one was about; but that was a detail.
Had she been a little less well-bred, I think she would have bridled. As it was, she really did smirk a little, in a ladylike way.
We took cabs, and drove out past all that was commercial, to the place where the towing-path began to be prettiest, and the illuminations the most fantastic.
I was in a cab with the fiancee and her prospective sisters-in-law; but when we got out to walk, I self-sacrificingly flung the twins to the Chaperon, and, alone with the young lady from The Hague (she never lets you forget for five minutes together that she is from The Hague) I slackened my pace and regulated hers to it, that we might drop behind the others.
The towing-path and the ca.n.a.l were beautiful and fantastic as some night picture of Venice. A faint mist had risen out of the water at sunset, and the red, green, and gold lamps suspended from trees and barges seemed to hang in it like jewels caught in a veil of gauze. The trees arched over us tenderly, bending as if to listen to words of love. The soft rose-radiance that hovered in the air made lovely faces irresistible, and plain ones tolerable. Any normal man would have been impelled to propose to the nearest pretty girl, whether he had been previously in love with her or not, and the nearest pretty girl would have said "yes--yes," without stopping to think about her feelings to-morrow.
Freule Menela van der Windt is not pretty; but without her _pince-nez_, she looked almost piquant in the pink lights and blue shadows which laced our features as we pa.s.sed, for which I was devoutly thankful, as it made my task comparatively easy. I found her softer, more feminine, more sympathetic, than she had been in the hotel. She would, she said, like to see America; and that gave me my chance. It was a pity, I told her, that such an intelligent and broad-minded young lady should not travel about the world before settling down in such a small, though charming, country as Holland.
Instantly she caught me up, with a little laugh. "Why should you take it for granted that I am going to "settle down" anywhere?"
"Oh," said I, rather embarra.s.sed at this direct attack, "I--er--was told that Mr. van Buren had been lucky enough to persuade you to live in Rotterdam."
"Never!" exclaimed Freule Menela, deeply interested in this conversation about herself. "I will never live in Rotterdam!"
"But," I ventured, with an air of eagerness, "if you should marry a man whose interests are in Rotterdam----"
"It isn"t at all decided that I shall marry such a man," she answered sharply.
"Not decided?" I repeated anxiously. "Look here, you know, I don"t think it"s fair to other men that it should be taken for granted you"re engaged, if you"re not really."
"Why should it matter to other men?" asked the lady.
"Oh, well, it might, you see. There might--er--be some man who met you for the first time after he"d heard of your engagement, and who for his own peace of mind didn"t dare let himself admire your brilliant talents as much as he would like to."
Now, I had got as far as I intended to go. Some dim idea of rescuing the Viking from the girl he doesn"t love, to give him to the girl he does (and I do), had been floating in my mind ever since that stormy night at Enkhuisen. I had thought that Freule Menela was the sort of girl who might drop the meat for the sake of the shadow; but having indicated the presence of a floating, ghostly shadow--which might belong to any one or no one--I had no idea of advancing further, even to bestow happiness on Phyllis.
I had argued with my conscience, "If she"s a woman who"s ready to throw over the man she"s engaged to, just because he isn"t very rich or particularly eligible in her eyes, and because some other vague person looming on the horizon has more money than Number One, why, it"s a sure sign that she accepted Number One because she couldn"t get any one else, therefore she doesn"t deserve to keep him, and she does deserve not only to see him slip away, but to see the shadow go with him."
However, I had not taken Freule Menela"s talents into due account--or my own failings.
"Is there such a man?" she asked.
"There might be," I cautiously repeated. "The question is, are you engaged to Mr. van Buren, or are you not?"
"There has been an understanding between his family and mine, for many years, that some day we should marry," she answered. "And, of course, he"s very fond of me, though you might not think it from his manner. He often appears to feel more interest in women for whom he cares nothing, than in me, to whom he is devoted. That is a characteristic of men who have his reserved nature."
"I"m afraid I don"t understand reserved natures," said I. "If I care for any one, I can"t help showing it."
"I have often thought," went on Freule Menela, "of telling Robert van Buren that he and I are not suited to each other. My ideal man is very different. And besides, as I said, _nothing_ could induce me to settle down in Rotterdam."
"You might make that the determining point," I suggested, "if you were looking for an excuse to save his feelings."
"Do you really think so?" she asked.
"I certainly do. Then you could leave him the choice. Rotterdam, without you; the more lively place, with you. Oh! don"t you think, for your sake and his, you ought to do this at once?"
"And a little for the sake of--the other man?" she asked, archly.
I dared not inquire, stonily, "What other man?" lest the work I had accomplished should be destroyed in a single stroke. So I said----
"Yes, and for the sake of the other man."
"You believe it would really matter to him?"