The Other Fellow Part 9

"It no tam goot day. Blow all dime; we go ba'd-hoose," and he turns the boat toward a low-lying building anch.o.r.ed out from the main sh.o.r.e by huge chains secured to floating buoys.

In some harbors sea-faring men are warned not to "anchor over the water-pipes." In others particular directions are given to avoid "submarine cables planted here." In Dort, where none of these modern conveniences exist, you are notified as follows: "No boats must land at this Bath."

If Peter knew of this rule he said not one word to me as I sat back out of the wet, hived under the poke bonnet, squeezing color-tubes and a.s.sorting my brushes. He rowed our craft toward the bath-house with the skill of a man-o'-war's-man, twisted the painter around a short post, and unloaded my paraphernalia on a narrow ledge or plank walk some three feet wide, and which ran around the edge of the floating bath-house.

It never takes me long to get to work, once my subject is selected. I sprang from the boat while Peter handed me the chair, stool, and portfolio containing my stock of gray papers of different tones; opened my sketch frame, caught a sheet of paper tight between its cleats; spread palettes and brushes on the floor at my side; placed the water bucket within reach of my hand, and in five minutes I was absorbed in my sketch.

Immediately the customary thing happened. The big bank of gray cloud that hung over the river split into feathery ma.s.ses of white framed in blue, and out blazed the glorious sun.

Meantime, Peter had squatted close beside me, sheltered under the lee of the side wall of the bath-house, protected equally from the slant of the driving rain and the glare of the blinding sun. Safe too from the watchful eye of the High Pan-Jam who managed the bath, and who at the moment was entirely oblivious of the fact that only two inches of pine board separated him from an enthusiastic painter working like mad, and an equally alert marine a.s.sistant who supplied him with fresh water and charcoal points, both at the moment defying the law of the land, one in ignorance and the other in a spirit of sheer bravado. For Peter must have known the code and the penalty.

The world is an easy place for a painter to live and breathe in when he is sitting far from the madding crowd--of boys--protected from the wind and sun, watching a sky piled up in mountains of snow, and inhaling ozone that is a tonic to his lungs. When the outline of his sketch is complete and the colors flow and blend, and the heart is on fire; when the bare paper begins to lose itself in purple distances and long stretches of tumbling water, and the pictured boats take definite shape, and the lines of the rigging begin to tell; when little by little, with a pat here and a dab there, there comes from out this flat s.p.a.ce a something that thrilled him when he first determined to paint the thing that caught his eye,--not the thing itself, but the spirit, the soul, the feeling, and meaning of the color-poem unrolled before him,--when a painter feels a thrill like this, all the fleets of Spain might bombard him, and his eye would never waver nor his touch hesitate.

I felt it to-day.

Peter didn't. If he had he would have kept still and pa.s.sed me fresh water and rags and new tubes and whatever I wanted--and I wanted something every minute--instead of disporting himself in an entirely idiotic and disastrous way. Disastrous, because you might have seen the sketch which I began reproduced in these pages had the Lieutenant-Commander, R.T.N., only carried out the orders of the Lord High Admiral commanding the fleet.

A sunbeam began it. It peeped over the edge of the side wall--the wall really was but little higher than Peter's head when he stood erect--and started in to creep down my half-finished sketch. Peter rose in his wrath, reached for my white umbrella, and at once opened it and screwed together the jointed handle. Then he began searching for some convenient supporting hook on which to hang his s.h.i.+eld of defence. Next a brilliant, intellectual dynamite-bomb of a thought split his cranium. He would hoist the umbrella _above_ the top of the thin wall of the bath-house, resting one half upon its upper edge, drive the iron spike into the plank under our feet, and secure the handle by placing his back against it. No sunbeam should pa.s.s him!

The effect can be imagined on the High-Pan-Jam inside the bath-house--an amphibious guardian, oblivious naturally to sun and rain--when his eye fell upon this flag of defiance thrust up above his ramparts. You can imagine, too, the consternation of the peaceful inmates of the open pools, whose laughter had now and then risen above the sough of the wind and splash of the water. Almost immediately I heard the sound of hurrying footsteps from a point where no sound had come before, and there followed the sc.r.a.ping of a pair of toes on the planking behind me, as if some one was drawing himself up.

I looked around and up and saw eight fingers clutching the top of the planking, and a moment later the round face of an astonished Dutchman.

I haven't the faintest idea what he said. I didn't know then and I don't know now. I only remember that his dialect sounded like the traditional crackling of thorns under a pot, including the spluttering, and suggesting the equally heated temperature. When his fingers gave out he would drop out of sight, only to rise again and continue the attack.

Here Peter, I must say, did credit to his Dutch ancestors. He did not temporize. He did not argue. He ignored diplomacy at the start, and blazed out that we were out of everybody's way and on the lee side of the structure; that there was no sign up on that side; that I was a most distinguished personage of blameless life and character, and that, rules or no rules, he was going to stay where he was and so was I.

"You tam blowdy rock. It's s'welve o'clook now--no rule aft' s'welve o'clook,--nopody ba'd now;"--This in Dutch, but it meant that, then turning to me, "You stay--you no go--I brek tam head him."--

None of this interested me. I had heard Peter explode before. I was trying to match the tone of an opalescent cloud inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the shadow side all purplish gray. Its warm high-lights came all right, but I was half out of my head trying to get its shadow-tones true with Payne's gray and cobalt. The cloud itself had already cast its moorings and was fast drifting over the English Channel. It would be out of sight in five minutes.

"Peter--_Peter!_" I cried. "Don't talk so much. Here, give him half a gulden and tell him to dry up. Hand me that sky brush--quick now!"

The High Pan-Jam dropped with a thud to his feet. His swinging footsteps could be heard growing fainter, but no stiver of my silver had lined his pocket.

I worked on. The tea-rose cloud had disappeared entirely; only its poor counterfeit remained. The boats were nearly finished; another wash over their sails would bring them all right. Then the tramp as of armed men came from the in-sh.o.r.e side of the bath-house. Peter stood up and craned his neck around the edge of the planking, and said in an undertone:--

"Tam b'lice, he come now; nev' mind, you stay 'ere--no go. Tam blowdy rock no mak' you go."

Behind me stood the High Pan-Jam who had sc.r.a.ped his toes on the fence. With him was an officer of police!

Peter was now stamping his feet, swearing in Dutch, English, and polyglot, and threatening to sponge the Dutch government from the face of the universe.

My experience has told me that it is never safe to monkey with a gendarme. He is generally a perfectly cool, self-poised, unimpressionable individual, with no animosity whatever toward you or anybody else, but who intends to be obeyed, not because it pleases him, but because the power behind him compels it. I instantly rose from my stool, touched my hat in respectful military salute, and opened my cigarette-case. The gendarme selected a cigarette with perfect coolness and good humor, and began politely to unfold to me his duties in connection with the munic.i.p.al laws of Dordrecht. The manager of the bath, he said, had invoked his services. I might not be aware that it was against the law to land on this side of the bath-house, etc.

But the blood of the Jansens was up. Some old Koop or De Witt or Von Somebody was stirring Peter.

"No ba'd aft' s'welve o'clook"--this to me, both fists in the air, one perilously near the officer's face. The original invective was in his native tongue, hurled at Pan-Jam and the officer alike.

"What difference does it make, your Excellency," I asked, "whether I sit in my boat and paint or sit here where there is less motion?"

"None, honored sir," and he took a fresh cigarette (Peter was now interpreting),--"except for the fact that you have taken up your position on the _women's_ side of the bath-house. They bathe from twelve o'clock till four. When the ladies saw the umbrella they were greatly disturbed. They are now waiting for you to go away!"

III

My room at Heer Boudier's commands a full view of the Maas, with all its varied s.h.i.+pping. Its interior fittings are so scrupulously clean that one feels almost uncomfortable lest some of the dainty appointments might be soiled in the using. The bed is the most remarkable of all its comforts. It is more of a box than a bed, and so high at head and foot, and so solid at its sides, that it only needs a lid to make the comparison complete. There is always at its foot an inflated eider-down quilt puffed up like a French souffle potato; and there are always at its head two little oval pillows solid as bags of ballast, surmounting a bolster that slopes off to an edge. I have never yet found out what this bolster is stuffed with. The bed itself would be bottomless but for the slats. When you first fall overboard into this slough you begin to sink through its layers of feathers, and instinctively throw out your hands, catching at the side boards as a drowning man would clutch at the gunwales of a suddenly capsized boat.

The second night after my arrival, I, in accordance with my annual custom, deposited the contents of this bed in a huge pile outside my door, making a bottom layer of the feathers, then the bolster, and last the souffle with the hard-boiled eggs on top.

Then I rang for Tyne.

She had forgotten all about the way I liked my sleeping arrangements until she saw the pile of bedding. Then she held her sides with laughter, while the tears streamed down her red cheeks. Of course, the Heer should have a mattress and big English pillows, and no bouncy-bounce, speaking the words not with her lips, but with a gesture of her hand. Then she called Johan to help. I never can see why Tyne always calls Johan to help when there is anything to be done about my room out of the usual order of things,--the sweeping, dusting, etc.,--but she does. I know full well that if she so pleased she could tuck the whole pile of bedding under her chin, pick up the bureau in one hand and the bed in the other, and walk downstairs without even mussing her cap-strings.

When Johan returned with a hair mattress and English pillows,--you can get anything you want at Boudier's,--he asked me if I had heard the news about Peter. Johan, by the way, speaks very good English--for Johan. The Burgomaster, he said, had that day served Peter with a writ. If I had looked out of the window an hour ago, I could have seen the Lieutenant-Commander of the Red Tub, under charge of an officer of the law, on his way to the Town Hall. Peter, he added, had just returned and was at the present moment engaged in scrubbing out the R.

T. for active service in the morning.

I at once sent for Peter.

He came up, hat in hand. But there was no sign of weakening. The blood of the Jansens was still in his eye.

"What did they arrest you for, Peter?"

"For make jaw wid de tam bolice. He say I mos' pay two gulden or one tay in jail. Oh, it is notting; I no pay. Dot bolice lie ven he say vimmen ba'd. Nopoty ba'd in de hoose aft' s'welve 'clook."

Later, Heer Boudier tells me that because of Peter's action in resisting the officer in the discharge of his duty, he is under arrest, and that he has but _five days in which to make up his mind_ as to whether he will live on bread and water for a day and night in the town jail, or whether he will deplete his slender savings in favor of the state to the extent of two gulden.

"But don't they lock him up, meanwhile?" I asked.

Boudier laughed. "Where would he run to, and for what? To save two gulden?"

My heart was touched. I could not possibly allow Peter to spend five minutes in jail on my account. I should not have slept one wink that night even in my luxurious bed-box with English pillows, knowing that the Lieutenant-Commander was stretched out on a cold floor with a cobblestone under his cheek. I knew, too, how slender was his store, and what a G.o.dsend my annual visit had been to his butcher and baker.

The Commander of the Red Tub might be impetuous, even aggressive, but by no possible stretch of the imagination could he be considered criminal.

That night I added these two gulden (about eighty cents) to Peter's wages. He thanked me with a pleased twinkle in his eye, and a wrinkling of the leathery skin around his nose and mouth. Then he put on his cap and disappeared up the street.

But the inns, quaint ca.n.a.ls, and rain-washed streets are not Dort's only distinctions. There is an ancient Groote Kerk, overlaid with colors that are rarely found outside of Holland. It is built of brick, with a huge square tower that rises above the great elms pressing close about it, and which is visible for miles. The moist climate not only encrusts its twelfth-century porch with brown-and-green patches of lichen over the red tones, but dims the great stained-gla.s.s windows with films of mould, and covers with streaks of Hooker's green the shadow sides of the long sloping roofs. Even the brick pavements about it are carpeted with strips of green, as fresh in color as if no pa.s.sing foot had touched them. And few feet ever do touch them, for it is but a small group of wors.h.i.+pers that gather weekly within the old kirk's whitewashed walls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ANCIENT GROOTE KERK]

These faithful few do not find the rich interior of the olden time, for many changes have come over it since its cathedral days, the days of its pomp and circ.u.mstance. All its old-time color is gone when you enter its portals, and only staring white walls and rigid, naked columns remain; only dull gray stone floors and hard, stiff-backed benches. I have often sat upon these same benches in the gloom of a fast-fading twilight and looked about me, bemoaning the bareness, and wondering what its _ensemble_ must have been in the days of its magnificence. There is nothing left of its glories now but its architectural lines. The walls have been stripped of their costly velvets, tapestries, and banners of silk and gold, the uplifted cross is gone; the haze of swinging censers no longer blurs the vistas, nor the soft light of many tapers illumines their gloom.

I have always believed that duty and beauty should ever go hand in hand in our churches. To me there is nothing too rich in tone, too luxurious in color, too exquisite in line for the House of G.o.d.

Nothing that the brush of the painter can make glorious, the chisel of the sculptor beautify, or the T-square of the architect enn.o.ble, can ever be out of place in the one building of all others that we dedicate to the Creator of all beauty. I have always thanked Him for his goodness in giving as much thought to the flowers that cover the hillsides as He did to the dull earth that lies beneath; as much care to the matchings of purples and gold in the sunsets as to the blue-black crags that are outlined against them. With these feelings in my heart I have never understood that form of wors.h.i.+p which contents itself with a bare barn filled with seats of pine, a square box of a pulpit, a lone pitcher of ice water, and a popular edition of the hymns. But then, I am not a Dutchman.

Besides this town of Dort, filled with queer warehouses, odd buildings, and cobbled streets, and dominated by this majestic cathedral, there is across the river--just a little way (Peter rows me over in ten minutes)--the Noah's Ark town of Pappendrecht, surrounded by great stretches of green meadow, dotted with black and white cows, and acres and acres of cabbages and garden truck, and tiny farmhouses, and absurdly big barns; and back of these, and in order to keep all these dry, is a big dike that goes on forever and is lost in the perspective. On both sides of this dike (its top is a road) are built the toy houses facing each other, each one cleaner and better scrubbed than its neighbor, their big windows gay with geraniums.

Farther down is another 'recht--I cannot for the life of me remember the first part of its name--where there is a s.h.i.+pyard and big windla.s.ses and a horse hitched to a sweep, which winds up water-soaked luggers on to rude ways, and great pots of boiling tar, the yellow smoke drifting away toward the sea.