The Chauffeur and the Chaperon Part 13

"Your cousins are old-fas.h.i.+oned," she went on, "though dear people; I've known them since I was a child, and am fond of them for their own sakes as well as Robert's. You must not think that everybody in our country dines at five. For instance, if you visited in my set at The Hague, you would find things more as they are in France. When Robert and I are married _I_ shall manage the house."

We listened civilly, but liked her none the better for her disavowal of van Buren ways.

"Horrid, sn.o.bbish, disloyal little wretch," said Phil, afterwards, quite viciously. "Your cousin's a hundred times too good and too good-looking for her; but she doesn't know that. She fancies herself superior, and thinks she's condescending to ally herself with the family. I do believe she's marrying your cousin for his money, and if she could get a chance to do better according to her ideas, she'd throw him over."

"It isn't likely she'll ever have another chance of any sort," said I; "Robert won't get rid of his bargain easily."

"She's going with us this morning, and makes a favor of it," went on Phil. "She says she's tired to death of the pictures; but I'm sure ten wild horses wouldn't keep her at home."

Be that as it may, the power of twenty wild horses in motor form rushed her away in our society and that of her fiance.

In the beautiful forest, which I was happy in seeing again, we threaded intricate, dark avenues, and came at last (as if we had been a whole party of tourist princes in the tale of the "Sleeping Beauty") to the House in the Wood.

The romance of the place grew in my eyes, because a princess built it to please her husband, and because the husband was that son of William the Silent who best carried on his father's plans for Holland's greatness.

I'm afraid I cared more about it for the sake of Princess Amalia and Frederic Henry of Orange, than for the sake of the Peace Conference, because the Conference was modern; and it was of the princess I thought as we pa.s.sed through room after room of the charming old house, hidden in the very heart of the forest. Had she commanded the exquisite Chinese embroideries, the wonderful decorations from China and j.a.pan, and the lovely old china? I wouldn't ask, for if she had had nothing to do with that part, I didn't wish to know.

In the octagonal Orange Salon where the twenty-six Powers met to make peace, and where the walls and cupola are a riot of paintings in praise of Frederic Henry and his relations, we strained our necks to see the pictures, and our brains to recall who the people were and what they had done; but even the portrait of Motley, which we'd just pa.s.sed, and the knowledge that he wrote in this very house did not always prod our memories.

Robert would not let us stay long at the House in the Wood. He took us to see the site of the Palace of Peace, which Mr. Carnegie's money and a little of other people's will build, and then flashed us on to The Hague in time to reach the Mauritshuis as it opened.

Robert didn't pretend to know much about the pictures, though he was patriotically proud of them, as among the best to be found, if you searched the world. But the fiancee was in her element. "Tired to death"

of these splendid things she might be, in her small soul, but she was determined to impress us with her artistic knowledge.

"I know exactly where all the best pictures are," she said, motioning away the official guides, "and I will take you to them."

She had a practical, energetic air, and her black eyes were sharp behind her _pince-nez_. I felt I could not be introduced by her to the glorious company of great men, and basely I slipped away from the party, leaving Phil to follow with outward humility and inward rebellion--a martyr to politeness.

Oh, how glad I was to be left alone with the pictures, with n.o.body to tell me anything about them! I flew back to buy a catalogue, and then, carefully dodging my friends, whose backs I spied from time to time, I gave myself up to happiness.

I didn't want to see the Madonnas and nymphs and G.o.ddesses, and Italian scenes, which a certain school conscientiously produced, because in their day it was the fas.h.i.+on. I wanted only the characteristically Dutch artists, the men who loved their dear Hollow Land, putting her beyond all, glorifying her, and painting what they knew with their hearts as well as eyes--the daily life of home; the rich brown dusk of humble rooms; the sea, the sky, the gentle, flat landscape, the pleasant domestic animals.

My acquaintance with Dutch art was made in London at the National Gallery; now I wanted to see it at home, and understand it as one can best understand it here.

I soon found the great Rembrandt--"the School of Anatomy," and stood for a long time looking at the wonderful faces--faces in whose eyes each thought lay clear to read. What a picture! A man who had done nothing else all his life long but paint just that, would have earned the right to be immortal; but to have been only twenty-six when he did it, and then to have gone on, through year after year, giving the world masterpieces, and to be repaid by that world in the end with poverty and hards.h.i.+p! My cheeks burned as I stood thinking of it, and somehow I felt guilty and responsible, as if I'd lived in Rembrandt's day, and been as ungrateful as the others.

I had expected to be disappointed in Paul Potter's "Bull," because people always speak of it at once, if they hear you are going to Holland; but if you could be disappointed in that young and winning beast who kindly stands there with diamonds in his great velvet eyes, and the breath coming and going under his rough, wholesome coat for you to look at and admire, when all the time you know that he could kill you if he liked, why, you would deserve to be gored by him and trodden by his companions.

How I wanted to have known Jan van Steen, and thanked him for his glorious, rollicking, extraordinary pictures (especially for "The Poultry Yard"), and have slyly stolen his bottle away from him sometimes, so that he might have painted even more, and not have come to ruin in the end! How I loved the gentle Van Ruysdaels, and how pathetic the everlasting white horse got to seem, after I had seen him repeated again and again in every sort of tender or eccentric landscape! Poor, tired white horse! I thought he must have been as weary of his journeyings as the Wandering Jew.

There are two Rubens in the Mauritshuis which intoxicated me, as if I'd been drinking new red wine; and there is one little Gerard Douw, above all other Gerard Douws, worth a three-days' journey on foot to see. In a window of the Bull's room I found it; and I stood so long staring, that at last I began to be afraid the others might have gone away. They came upon me, though, all too soon, and exclaimed, "Why, where _have_ you been?" and "We've been looking for you _everywhere_." I said I was sorry, and wondered how I had been so stupid as to miss them. Then we were marshalled away by Robert for luncheon, as we'd been three hours in the Mauritshuis, and before long we must be driving to the _Concours Hippique_.

Only three hours in some of the best society on earth, and I shall be expected to tell about my impressions when I go back to England! I know well that I can tell nothing worth telling; and yet, even in this short time, I feel that I understand more about Holland and the Hollanders than I could have come to understand, except through their pictures--more even than Motley could have told me.

I said to myself as I went away from the galleries, that Dutch painting would stand for me henceforth as an epitome of the Dutch people. No one but the Dutch could have painted pictures like theirs--so quaint, so painstaking, and at the same time so splendid. Their love of rich brown shadow and amber light was learned in the dim little rooms of their own homes, and of inns where the bra.s.s and pewter gleamed in the mellow dusk of raftered kitchens, and piles of fruit and vegetables fell like jewels, from paniers such as Gerard Douw took three days to paint on a scale of three inches.

We had a hasty luncheon at a nice hotel with an air of Parisian gaiety about it, and sped away in the motor to the Horse Show, which was to be held in a park between The Hague and Scheveningen. It was advertised on every wall and h.o.a.rding, even on lamp-posts, and Freule Menela (gorgeous in a Paris frock and tilted hat) prophesied that, as the Queen and Prince Consort were honoring the occasion, we should see the loveliest women, handsomest men, and prettiest dresses, as well as the best horses that Holland could produce.

"When I say Holland, I mean The Hague; it is the same thing," she added, with a conceited toss of the chin; and I thought she deserved shaking for her sly dig at Robert of Rotterdam, than whom there can be no handsomer young man in the Netherlands.

Cousin Cornelia in filmy gray, and the twins radiant as fresh-plucked roses in their white frocks and Leghorn hats, had arrived, and were in one of the many long, open loggias close to the red-and-gold pavilion which was ready for the Royalties.

Over the pavilion, with its gilded crown and crest, floated the orange flag as well as the tricolor of Holland; everywhere flags were waving and red bunting glowing, and there was far more effect of color than at an English race-meeting. Every box, every seat, was full; pretty hats nodded like flowers in a huge parterre swept by a breeze; smart-looking men with women in trailing white walked about the lawns; and Robert and Menela pointed out the celebrities--amba.s.sadors and amba.s.sadors' wives, politicians, popular actresses, celebrated journalists, men of t.i.tle or wealth who owned horses and gave their lives to sport.

All the men of the _haut mond_ were in frock-coats and tall hats, and most of them looked English. There were few of the type which I preconceived as Dutch, yet I saw faces in the crowd which Rembrandt or Rubens might have used as models; thin, dark faces; hard, shrewd faces, with long noses and pointed chins; good-natured round faces, with wide-open gray eyes; important, conceited faces like the burgomasters in ancient portraits.

"Not a type has changed," I said to myself. "These people of to-day are the same people who suffered torture smiling, who were silent on the rack, who drove the Spaniards out of their land, and swept the English from the seas."

This was my mood when a stir among the throng heralded the coming of the Queen, and I applauded as patriotically as a Dutchwoman the young daughter of the brave house of Orange and Na.s.sau.

She had a fine procession, and made an effective entrance through the wide gates that swung apart to let in her outriders in their green livery, and the royal coaches, with powdered coachmen and footmen in blazing red and gold. A charming young woman she looked, too, in her blowing white cloud of chiffon and lace, and ostrich-plumes. While she circled round the drive with her suite, I heard the Dutch National Hymn for the first time, and also a soft and plaintive air which is the Queen's own--a kind of "entrance music" which follows her about through life, like the music for a leading actress on the stage.

When the Queen in her white dress, the stout, bland Prince Consort in his blue uniform, and the ladies of the Court were settled under the crimson curtains of the pavilion, officers who were competing in the Horse Show--Hollanders in green and cerise, and plain blue; Belgians in blue and red; two or three Danes in delicious azure--were brought up with much ceremony to be introduced.

"There goes Rudolph Brederode," said Robert, a light of friendly admiration kindling in his eyes for a tall, slim figure in black coat and riding-breeches. "See, her Majesty is wis.h.i.+ng him good luck. He--"

But my cousin glanced at me, and remembering my base ingrat.i.tude, decided that I deserved no further information about his hero, who ought to be my hero too.

I pretended not to hear, and watched the show of beautiful horses and carriages. They went round and round the great gra.s.sy ring, each driver (and some of them were English) taking off their top-hats in front of the Royal Pavilion.

There was a good deal of this kind of entertainment, but the best part of the show was saved for the last, when all the glittering carriages had disappeared from the course. Then came the jumping compet.i.tion, in which the finest riders, officers and civilians, were to prove what they and their horses could do.

The crowd had wearied of the long driving contests, but as the Dutch soldiers ran out across the gra.s.s to take their places beside the hedges, hurdles, water-jumps, and obstacles, there was a general brisking up.

Then began the real excitement of the afternoon. People greeted their favorites with applause, and Cousin Robert's hero had the largest share.

He made a splendid figure on his delicately shaped roan, a creature all _verve_ and muscle like his master, graceful as a cat, and s.h.i.+ning in the sun with the rich effulgence of a chestnut fresh from the burr.

I couldn't help a jumping of the pulses when the bell rang, and the good-looking young men on their grand horses cantered into the ring.

Rudolph Brederode was the last, and his horse came in on its hind legs, pawing and prancing with sheer joy of life and its own beauty; yet what a different beast from that other who had also pirouetted to the sound of music in the morning! I wondered if William the Silent thought--but of course he didn't.

One by one the horses started, urged on or held back by their riders.

All rode well, but not one got round the course without a fault--a jump short at a ditch; a hind hoof that brushed a hedge; the ring of an iron shoe on a hurdle; or a wooden brick sent flying from the top row on a high wall; not one, until Rudolph Brederode's turn came.

At the last moment, a pat of his hand on his horse's satin shoulder quieted the splendid creature's nerves. Instantly it was calm, and coming down from fun to business, started off at the daintest of canters, which broke at exactly the right second into a n.o.ble bound.

Without a visible effort the adorable beast rose for each obstacle, floating across hedges and walls as if it had been borne by the wings of Pegasus. The last, widest water-jump was taken with one long, flying leap; and then, doffing his hat low to the Royal Box, the conqueror rode away in a storm of applause.

"It's always like that. Brederode never fails in anything he undertakes," said Robert, as happy as if he, and not his friend, had been the victor. "I'm off to congratulate him now."

Two minutes later I saw the hero among the crowd, his head towering above most other heads; then I lost sight of him, and turned again to watch the course, for the riding was not nearly finished yet. But with the triumph of the great Water Beggar's descendant, the best was over.

No one else did as well as he, or had as fine a horse, and I found myself looking for him and Robert. Maybe Robert would bring him to the box in spite of all. It was a pity the others should be cheated of a word with him--which even the twins seemed to hope for--just because Robert had to punish me.

But he did not come, nor did Robert until after the Royalties had gone, and Cousin Cornelia was ready to go too.

RUDOLPH BREDERODE'S POINT OF VIEW