The Chauffeur and the Chaperon Part 29

"You were going to propose?"

"That--you stayed a little longer. You were to take us--them, I mean--on an excursion to-day in your motor-car. They're getting ready now.

They'll be--_so_ disappointed."

"I'll lend you--them--my car and my chauffeur."

"No, it would be horrid without y--It would be too ungracious.

I--they--couldn't accept."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't you think maybe you'd better stay a little longer?"

"No, Miss Van Buren, I go now, or I--go with you to the end." I wonder if she guessed just what I meant by those words? "I'll not stop, after what's pa.s.sed between us, for a day longer, except on two conditions."

"Conditions? _You_ make conditions with me?"

"Certainly, I have the right."

"You are extraordinary."

"I am a Dutchman."

"Oh, here comes Lady MacNairne--in her motor-coat and hood. She bought them yesterday--because they're Tibe-color. What excuse can I make? Oh, what _are_ your conditions?"

"First, that you tell me you want me to stay."

"I do--on their account."

"That's not the way."

"Well, then, I ask you to stay. I hope your next condition isn't as hard."

"You must be the judge. It is, that you'll be civil to me, and friendly--at least in appearance. I have done, and will do my best for you and 'Lorelei.' In return, I'll have no more snubs."

"But if they've been deserved? No! I won't be brow-beaten."

"Nor will I. Good-by, again, Miss Van Buren."

"Here comes Phil now, in _her_ motoring things. Oh dear! Have it as you like. I will--be nice to you."

She smiled in spite of herself, or else to encourage me with a sample of future treatment; and giving way to impulse at last, I held out my hand.

"Shake hands on the bargain, then, and it's signed and sealed," I said.

She laid her fingers delicately in mine, and dared not look resentful when I gently pressed them.

For all I cared, she might see the Paris _Herald_ now. For all I cared, the sky might fall.

XVII

Never was man in better mood for the rush and thrill of the motor than I, after the conquering of Miss Van Buren. It was but a shadow victory, a tempest in a tea-pot, yet it was so good an augury of a further triumph for which I hoped in future, that the joy of it went fizzily to my head, and I could have shouted, if I had been alone in some desert place with n.o.body by to know that it was a Dutchman who made a fool of himself.

It was the first time I had had the car out in Amsterdam; for the city, with its network of electric trams and tremendous traffic, is far from ideal for motoring, and I wanted to keep the nerves of my people cool for sight-seeing. Therefore the automobile had been eating her head off in a garage, while we pottered about in cabs, driven by preposterously respectable-looking old gentlemen, bearded as to their chins, and white as to the seams of their coats.

To take "Lorelei" to all the places I meant to see to-day would have occupied half a week, though none were at a great distance from Amsterdam but the waterways there do not in all places connect conveniently for a boat of "Lorelei's" size, though we might have left "Waterspin" behind. So I proposed the car, and everybody caught at the idea.

There was not one of the party who by this time had not studied guide-books enough to know something of Muiden, Laren, Baarn, Hilversum, and Amersfoort; but they might have searched Baedeker and all his rivals from end to end without finding even the name of Spaakenberg; and little quaint, hidden Spaakenberg was to be the _clou_ of our expedition. It was ten o'clock when I got them all--including Tibe--into the car; indeed, it always seems to be exactly ten o'clock when we start on any excursion, even when it has been decided over night that we should set off promptly at nine. But Starr, who pretends to knowledge of women's ways, says we are lucky to get away anywhere before eleven, seeing that at the last moment one of the ladies remembers that she must write and post an important letter, which will take only five minutes; or she finds she has forgotten her purse in a drawer at the hotel, and must go back; or she thinks she will be too cool or too hot, and must make some change in her costume; or if nothing of this sort happens, Tibe is lost sight of for a second, and disappears in pursuit of new friends.h.i.+ps, canine or human. He has then not only to be retrieved, which is usually an affair of twenty minutes, but has to be caressed for an extra five by his mistress, who never fails to abandon hope of seeing him again the moment he is out of sight.

To test the quality of Miss Van Buren's resolutions, I asked her to take the seat beside the driver, expecting some excuse; but she came like a lamb; and the taste of conquest was sweet in my mouth.

In Haarlem all had proved such good motorists that, despite the ferocity of Amsterdam trams, I was scarcely prepared for the emotions which began to seethe in the _tonneau_ the moment the car was started and the chauffeur had sprung to his place at my feet. According to my idea, there's no courage in reckless driving, but selfishness and other less agreeable qualities; still, we did not exactly dawdle as we left the Amstel, to swing out into the tide of city life.

"Heavens, he's going to kill us!" I heard the Chaperon groan. "Ronald, tell him to stop."

Miss Rivers was also giving vent to despairing murmurs. Tibe was "wuffing" full-noted threats at each tram which loomed toward us, and Starr was attempting to advise me over my shoulder that the ladies would wish to be driven less furiously.

To my joy, Nell looked back and laughed. "Why, we're not going more than seven miles an hour," said she.

"Then, for goodness' sake, let's go _one_," implored her chaperon. "I never dreamed of anything so awful."

I slackened pace. "Are you an old motorist?" I inquired of my companion, as if I were used to asking her friendly, commonplace questions.

"I never was in a car until the other day with my cousin," said she, in the same carefully unconscious tone. "And I'm afraid in my feet and hands now; but the rest of me is enjoying it awfully. Yes, that's the word, I think, for it _is_ rather awful. I shouldn't have dreamed that trams could look so big, or bridges so narrow, except in nightmares.

And--and you can't make your horn heard _much_, can you, over the noise on the stones? Oh, there was a close shave with that wagon, wasn't it? I felt bristling like a fretful porcupine--oh, but a stark, staring mad, blithering, _driveling_ porcupine!"

It was delicious to have her talk to me, and to feel that because she trusted my skill, she was not really afraid, but only excited enough to forget her stiffness.

"Perhaps Amsterdam wouldn't be a pleasant place to learn 'chauffeuring'

in," I said; "but it's all right when you have learned."

"It's a good thing," she went on, "that motoring wasn't invented by some grand seignor in the Middle Ages, when the rich thought no more of the poor than we do of flies, or they'd have run over every one who didn't get out of their way on the instant. They'd have had a sort of cow-catcher fitted on to their cars, to keep themselves from coming to harm, and they'd have dashed people aside, anyhow. In these days, no matter how hard your heart may be, you have to sacrifice your inclinations more or less to decency. I dare say the Car of Juggernaut was a motor. Oh, what a _huge_ town! Shall we ever get out of Pandemonium into the country?"

We did get out at last, and suddenly, for in Hollow Land the line between town and country is abrupt, with no fading of city into suburb and meadow. One moment we were in the bustle of Amsterdam; the next, we were running along a klinker road, straight as a ruler, beside a quiet ca.n.a.l. Such horses as we met, being accustomed to the traffic of Amsterdam, had no fear of the motor, which was well; for on so narrow a road, with the ca.n.a.l on one side, and a deep drop into meadows on the other, an adventure would be disagreeable. But it was not all straight sailing ahead. Outside the traffic, I put on speed to make up for lost time, and the car quickly ate up the distance between Amsterdam and Muiden.

My pa.s.sengers broke into admiration of the medieval fortress with its paraphernalia of moats, bastions, and drawbridges, which give an air of historic romance to the country round; but their emotion would have been of a different kind had they guessed the risk we must take in running through the winding fortifications. It was not so great a risk that it was foolish to take it, and thirty or forty cars must do the same thing every day; but the fact was, that we had to run through these tunnels on tram-lines, with no room to turn out in case of meeting a steam monster from Hilversum. I had chosen my time, knowing the hours for trams; still, had there been a delay, there was a chance of a crash, for our horn could not be heard by the tram driver, nor could he see us in time to put on his brakes and prevent a collision.

With the girl I love beside me, and three other pa.s.sengers, not to mention the chauffeur, it was with a tenseness of the nerves that I drove through the labyrinth, and I was glad to clear Muiden. Next came Naarden--that tragic Naarden whose capture and sack by the Spaniards encouraged Alva to attack Haarlem; and then, without one of the party having dreamed of danger, we swung out on the road to Laren, a road set in pineland and heather, which would have reminded the real Lady MacNairne of her Scottish home. There was actually something like a hill here and there, which the strangers were astonished to find in Holland, and would hardly believe when I said that, on reaching Gelderland, I would be able to show them a Dutch mountain two hundred feet high, among a colony of smaller eminences to which half the Netherlands rush in summer.

Meanwhile they were satisfied with what they saw; and it is a pretty enough road, this way between Amsterdam and Laren. At first we had had the ca.n.a.l, with its sleepy barges, peopled with large families, and towed by children harnessed in tandem at the end of long ropes; its little shady, red-and-green wayside houses, with "Melk Salon" printed attractively over their doors. We had had avenues of trees, knotted here and there into groves; we had pa.s.sed pretty farmhouses with bright milk-cans and pans hanging on the red walls, like placks in a drawing-room; we had seen gardens flooded with roses, and long stretches of water carpeted with lilies white and yellow; then we had come to pine forests and heather, and always we had had the good klinker which, though not as velvety for motoring as asphalt, is free from dust even in dry weather. We had run almost continuously on our fourth speed; and even in Laren I came down to the second only long enough to let them all see the beauty of the Mauve country.

Starr knows Anton Mauve's pictures, and his history; but the ladies had seen only a few delicious landscapes in the Ryks Museum. Still, they liked to hear that at Laren Corot's great disciple had found inspiration. Nowhere in the Netherlands are there such beautiful barns, each one of which is a background for a Nativity picture; and it was Laren peasants, Laren cows, and the sunlit and cloud-shadowed meadows of Laren which kept Mauve's brush busy for years.

After the charm of Haarlem's suburbs, Hilversum, where merchants of Amsterdam play at being in the country, was disappointing; but having lunched in open air, and spun on toward Amersfoort, we ran into a district which holds some delightful houses, set among plane trees, varied with flowering acacias and plantations of oak. Everywhere our eyes followed long avenues cut in the forest, avenues stretching out like the rays of a star, and full of a tremulous green light, shot with gold.