Book: The Good Comrade

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Julia bought her cakes, and went about the town feeling as
holiday-like as the gayest peasant there, although she had no
wonderful holiday head-dress of starched lace and gold plates. She did
not see any one she knew, except old Marthe, Herr Van de Greutz's
housekeeper. She had met the old woman several times when she was
marketing, and was on speaking terms with her now, so she had to stop
and listen to her troubles. They were only the same old tale; her
newest young cook had left suddenly, and she had come to the town to
see if she could get another from among the girls who had come in for
the fair. She had no success at all, and was setting out for home,
despondent, and not at all comforted to think that she would have to
trudge in and try all over again the day after to-morrow. To-morrow,
itself, the great day, it was no good trying; no girl would pay
attention to business then.

In the evening Julia went again into the town, but this time with
Mijnheer and Joost, and dressed in her best dress. It was not at all a
new dress, nor at all a grand one, but it was well chosen, well made
and well fitted, and certainly very well put on; the gloves and hat,
too, accorded with it, and she herself was in a humour of gaiety that
bordered on brilliancy. Was she not going to have a holiday to-morrow,
and was she not going to spend it in company with a man she liked,
and in despite of Dutch propriety, which would certainly have been
thoroughly and outrageously shocked thereby? Denah knew nothing of the
causes at work, but she was not slow to discern the result when she
and her father and sister met the Van Heigen party that evening. She
smoothed the bow at the neck of her best dress, and looked at her
gloves discontentedly; she did not altogether admire Julia's clothes,
they were not at all Dutch; but she had an intuitive idea that they
came nearer to Paris, the sartorial ideal of the nations, than her own
did. She looked suspiciously at the English girl, her eyes were
shining and sparkling like stars; they were full of alert interest and
half-suppressed mischief. She looked at everything, and overlooked
nothing, though she was talking to Mijnheer in a soft, purring voice,
that was full of fun and wickedness. Now she turned to Joost, and her
voice took another tone; she was teasing him, making fun of him in a
way that Denah decided was scandalous, although his father was there,
aiding and abetting her. Joost did not seem to resent it a bit; he
listened quite serenely, and even turned a look on her as one who has
another and private interpretation of the words. Anna saw nothing of
this; she only thought Julia very nice, and her dress pretty, and her
talk gay. But Denah, though not always so acute, was in love, and she
saw a good deal, and treasured it up for use when the occasion should
offer.

They ate _pooferchjes_, sitting in a funny little covered stall; at
least, the top and three sides were covered, the fourth was open to
the street. A long, narrow table, with clean white calico spread on
it, ran down the centre of the place, and narrow forms stood on either
side of it. It was lighted by a Chinese lantern hung from the roof,
and also, and more especially, by a flare outside of the charcoal
fire, where the _pooferchjes_ were cooked. A powerful brown-armed
peasant woman made them, beating the batter till it frothed, and
dropping it by the spoonful into the little hollows in the great sheet
of iron that glowed on the stove without. The glow of the fire was on
her too, on her short skirt and her fine arms, and the flaring light,
that flickered in the breeze, danced on her strong, brown face, with
its resolute lines, and splendid gold-ringed head-dress. People kept
passing to and fro all the time, or stopping sometimes to look in;
solemnly-gay holiday people, enjoying themselves after their own
fashion. The light flickered on them, too, and on the brick pavement,
and on the trees, plentiful almost as canals in the town. Julia leaned
forward and looked, and listened to the guttural Dutch voices, and the
curious patois to be heard now and then, and the distant notes of
music that blended with it. And the flickering lights and shadows
danced across her mind, and the simple holiday feeling of it all got
to her head.

Then the _pooferchjes_ were done and brought in, little round, crisp
things, smoking hot, and very greasy; something like tiny English
pancakes--at least one might say so if one had not tasted them. And
then more people came in and sat at the opposite side of the table, a
gardener of another bulb grower, and his two daughters. He raised his
hat to the Van Heigen party, and received a similar salutation in
return, though he and they were careful to put their hats on again, a
draught being a thing much feared. Mijnheer shook hands with the
father, and they entered into conversation about the weather; the
girls looked across at Denah and Anna, and more still at Julia, whose
small, slim hands they evidently admired.

But at last the _pooferchjes_ were all eaten and paid for. To do the
latter the notary, Mijnheer and Joost all brought out large purses
and counted out small coins with care, and the party came out, making
way for new-comers. They did not go straight home again, as was first
intended, Julia's interest and gaiety seemed to have infected the
others--all except Denah, and they walked for a little while among the
booths of toys, and sweets, and peepshows, and entertainments. And as
they went, Denah grew more and more silent, watching Julia, who was
walking with Joost; the arrangement was not of the English girl's
seeking, but Denah took no account of that. The thing of which she did
take account was that they two talked as they walked together, he as
well as she, but both with the ease and quick comprehension of people
who have talked together often.

Mijnheer stopped to look at the merry-go-round; he admired the cheerful
tune that it played. He was not a connoisseur of music; a barrel-organ was
as good to him as the organ in the Groote Kerk. The others stopped too;
Anna exclaimed on the life-like and clever appearance of the bobbing
horses, whereupon her father suggested that perhaps the girls would like
to try a ride on the machine, and then befel the crowning mischief of the
evening. Julia and Anna accepted the proposal readily. Denah declined; she
felt in no humour for it; also she thought a refusal showed a superior
mind--one likely to appeal to a serious young man, who had no taste for
the gaudy, gay, or fast, and who also had a tendency towards seasickness.
But, alas, for the fickleness of man! While Denah stood with her father
and Mijnheer, Julia rode round the centre of lighted mirrors on a prancing
wooden horse, and Joost--the serious, the sometimes seasick--rode beside
her on a dappled grey, to the familiar old English tune,
"Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-a."




CHAPTER IX

THE HOLIDAY


The Dunes lay some little distance from the town, a low, but
suddenly-rising hill boundary, that shut in the basin of flat land.
They were all of pure sand, though in many places so matted with
vegetation that it was hardly recognisable as such. Trees grew in
places, especially on the side that fronted towards the town; the way
up lay through a dense young wood of beech and larch, and a short,
broad-leafed variety of poplar. There was no undergrowth, but between
the dead leaves one could see that a dark green, short-piled moss had
managed to find a hold here and there, though so smooth was it that it
looked more like old enamel than a natural growth. The trees had the
appearance of high summer, deeply, intensely green, so that they
seemed almost blackish in mass. There was no breeze among them; even
the dapples of sunlight which found their way through the roof of
leaves hardly stirred, but lay in light patches, like scattered gold
upon the ground. Flies and gnats moved and shimmered, a busy life,
whose small voices were the only sound to be heard; all else was very
still, with the glorious reposeful stillness of full summer; not
oppressive, without weariness or exhaustion, rather as if the whole
creation paused at this zenith to look round on its works, and beheld
and saw that they were all very good.

There were no clear paths, apparently few people went that way;
certainly there was no one about when Julia and Rawson-Clew came. It
is true they saw a kind of little beer-garden at the foot of the
slope, but there was no one idling about it.

"We shall have to come back here for lunch," Julia said.

And when he suggested that it was rather a pity to have to retrace
their steps, she answered, "It doesn't matter, we are not going
anywhere particular; we may just as well wander one way as another.
When we get to the top this time we will explore to the right, and
when we get there again after lunch, we will go to the left; don't you
think that is the best way? This is to be a holiday, you know."

"Is a real holiday like a dog's wanderings?" Rawson-Clew inquired;
"bounded by no purpose except dinner when hungry?"

Julia thought it must be something of the kind. "Though," she said,
"dogs always seem to have some end in view, or perhaps a dozen ends,
for though they tear off after an imaginary interest as if there was
nothing else in the world, they get tired of it, or else start
another, and forget all about the first."

"That must also be part of the essence of a holiday," Rawson-Clew
said; "at least, one would judge it to be so; boys and dogs, the only
things in nature who really understand the art of holiday-making,
chase wild geese, and otherwise do nothing of any account, with an
inexhaustible energy, and a purposeful determination wonderful to
behold. Also, they forget that there is such a thing as to-morrow, so
that must be important too."

"I can't do that," Julia said.

"You might try when you get to the top," he suggested. "I will try
then; I don't think I could do anything requiring an effort just now."

Julia agreed that she could not either, and they went on up straight
before them. It is as easy to climb a sand-hill in one place as in
another, provided you stick your feet in the right way, and do not
mind getting a good deal of sand in your boots. So they went straight,
and at last got clear of the taller trees, and were struggling in
thickets of young poplars, and other sinewy things. The sand was
firmer, but honeycombed with rabbit holes, and tangled with brambles,
and the direction was still upwards, though the growth was so thick,
and the ground so bad, that it was often necessary to go a long way
round. But in time they were through this too, and really out on the
top. Here there was nothing but the Dunes, wide, curving land, that
stretched away and away, a tableland of little hollows and hills, like
some sea whose waves have been consolidated; near at hand its colours
were warm, if not vivid, but in the far distance it grew paler as the
vegetation became less and less, till, far away, almost beyond sight,
it failed to grey helm grass, and then altogether ceased, leaving the
sand bare. Behind lay the trees through which they had come, sloping
downwards in banks of cool shadows to the map-like land and the
distant town below; away on right and left were other groups of trees,
on sides of hills and in rounded hollows, looking small enough from
here, but in reality woods of some size. Here there was nothing; but,
above, a great blue sky, which seemed very close; and, underfoot,
low-growing Dune roses and wild thyme which filled the warm, still air
with its matchless scent; nothing but these, and space, and sunshine,
and silence.

Julia stopped and looked round, drawing in her breath; she had found
what she had come to see--what, perhaps, she had been vaguely wanting
to find for a long time.

"Isn't it good?" she said at last. "Did you know there was so much
room--so much room anywhere?"

Rawson-Clew looked in the direction she did; he had seen so much of
the world, and she had seen so little of it--that is, of the part
which is solitary and beautiful. Yet he felt something of her
enthusiasm for this sunny, empty place--than which he had seen many
finer things every year of his life.

Perhaps this thought occurred to her, for she turned to him rather
wistfully: "I expect it does not seem very much to you," she said;
"you have seen such a great deal."

"I do not remember to have seen anything quite like this," he
answered; "and if I had, what then? One does not get tired of things."

Julia looked at him thoughtfully. "I wonder," she said, "if one would?
If one would get weary of it, and want to go back to the other kind of
life?"

She was not thinking of Dune country, rather of the simple life it
represented to her just then. Rawson-Clew caught the note of
seriousness in her tone and reminded her that thought for the past or
future was no part of a holiday. "Remember," he said, "you are to-day
to emulate dogs and boys."

She laughed. "How am I to begin?" she asked. "How will you?"

"I shall sit down," he said; "I feel I could be inconsequent much
better if I sat down to it; that is no doubt because I am past my
first youth."

"No," she said, sitting down and putting her hat beside her; "it is
because your folly-muscles are stiff from want of use; you have played
lots of things, I expect--it is part of your necessary equipment to
be able to do so, but I doubt if you have ever played the fool
systematically. I don't believe you have ever done, and certainly
never enjoyed anything inconsequent or foolish in your life."

"If you were to ask me," he returned, "I should hardly say you
excelled in that direction either. How many inconsequent and foolish
things have you done in your life?"

"Some, and I should like to do some more. If I were alone now, do you
know what I should do? You see that deep hollow of sparkling white
sand? I should take off my clothes and lie there in the sun."

Rawson-Clew turned so that his back was that way. "Do not let me
prevent you," he said.

Julia made use of the opportunity to empty the sand out of her boots.

He looked round as she was finishing fastening them. "But why put them
on again?" he asked.

"Because I haven't retired from the world, yet," she answered, "and so
I can't do quite all I like."

"When you do retire, will this ideal summer costume also be included
in the programme? Your taste in dress grows simpler; quite ancient
British, in fact."

"The ancient Britons wore paint, and probably had fashions in it; I
don't think of imitating them. Tell me," she said, turning now to
gather the sweet-scented wild thyme, "did you ever really do anything
foolish in your life? I should like to know."

He answered her that he had, but without convincing her. Afterwards,
he came to the conclusion that, whatever might have been the case
before, he that day qualified to take rank with any one in the matter.

All the same, it was a very pleasant day, and they both enjoyed it
much; it is doubtful if any one in the town or its environs enjoyed
that holiday more than these two, who, from different reasons, had
probably never had so real a holiday before. They wandered over the
great open tract of land, meeting no one; once they came near enough
to the seaward edge to see the distant shimmer of water; once they
found themselves in the part where there has been some little attempt
at cultivation, and small patches of potatoes struggle for life, and a
little railway crosses the sandhills. Twice they came upon the road
along which, on working days, the peasant women bring their fish to
market in the town. But chiefly they kept to the small, dense woods,
where the sunlight only splashed the ground; or to the open solitary
spaces where the bees hummed in the wild thyme, and the butterflies
chased each other over the low rose bushes.

A good deal after mid-day, at a time dictated entirely by choice, and
not custom, they made their way back to the beer garden. It was a very
little place, scarcely worthy of the name; the smallest possible
house, more like a barn than anything else, right in the shadow of the
wood. The fare to be obtained was bad beer, excellent coffee, new
bread, and old cheese; but it was enough, supplemented by the cakes
bought yesterday in the town; Julia knew enough of the ways of the
place to know one can bring one's own food to such places without
giving offence. As in the morning, when they first passed it, there
was no one about, every one had gone to the fair, except one taciturn
old woman who brought the required things and then shut herself in the
house. The meal was spread under the trees on a little green-painted
table, with legs buried deep in sand; there were two high, straight
chairs set up to the table, and a wooden footstool put by one for
Julia, who, seeing it, said this was certainly a picnic, and it was
really necessary to eat the _broodje_ in the correct picnic way.
Rawson-Clew tried, with much gravity, but she laughed till the
taciturn old woman looked out of window, and wondered who they were,
and how they came to be here.

When the meal was done, they went back again up the steep slope, and
then away on the left. The country on this side was less open, and
more hilly, deeper hollows and larger woods, still there was not much
difficulty in finding the way. The latter part of the day was not so
fine as the earlier, the sky clouded over, and, though there was still
no wind, the air grew more chilly. They hardly noticed the change,
being in a dense young wood where there was little light, but Julia
lost something of the holiday spirit, and Rawson-Clew became grave,
talking more seriously of serious things than had ever before happened
in their curious acquaintanceship. They sat down to rest in a green
hollow, and Julia began to arrange neatly the bunch of short-stemmed
thyme flowers that she carried. They had been quiet for some little
time, she thinking about their curious acquaintance, and wondering
when it would end. Of course it would end--she knew that; it was a
thing of mind only; there was very little feeling about it--a certain
mutual interest and a liking that had grown of late, kindness on his
part, gratitude on hers, nothing more. But of its sort it had grown to
be intimate; she had told him things of her thoughts, and of herself,
and her people too, that she had told to no one else; and he, which
was perhaps more remarkable, had sometimes returned the compliment.
And yet by and by--soon, perhaps--he would go away, and it would be as
if they had never met; it was like people on a steamer together, she
thought, for the space of the voyage they saw each other daily, saw
more intimately into each other than many blood relations did, and
then, when port was reached, they separated, the whole thing
finished. She wondered when this would finish, and just then
Rawson-Clew spoke, and unconsciously answered her thought.

"I am going back to England soon," he said.

She looked up. "Is your work here finished?" she asked.

"It is at an end," he answered; "that is the same thing."

Then she, her intuition enlightened by a like experience suddenly knew
that he, too, had failed. "You mean it cannot be done," she said.

He opened his cigarette case, and selected a cigarette carefully. "May
I smoke?" he asked; "there are a good many gnats and mosquitoes about
here." He felt for a match, and, when he had struck it, asked
impersonally, "Do you believe things cannot be done?"

"Yes," she answered; "I know that sometimes they cannot; I have proved
it to myself."

"You have not, then, much opinion of the people who do not know when
they are beaten?"

"I don't think I have," she answered; "you cannot help knowing when
you are beaten if you really are--that is, unless you are a fool. Of
course, if you are only beaten in one round, or one effort, that is
another thing; you can get up and try again. But if you are really and
truly beaten, by yourself, or circumstances, or something--well,
there's an end; there is nothing but to get up and go on."

"Just so; in that case, as you say, there is not much going to be
done, except going home."

Julia nodded. "But I can't even do that," she said. "I am beaten, but
I have got to stay here all the same, having nowhere exactly to go."

This was the first time she had spoken even indirectly of her own
future movements. "But, perhaps," he suggested, "if you stay, you may
find a back way to your object after all."

She shook her head. "It is the back way I tried. No, there is no way;
it is blocked. I know, because it is myself that blocks it."

"In that case," he said, "I'm afraid I must agree with you; there is
no way; oneself is about the most insurmountable block of all. I
might have known that you were hardly likely to make any mistake as to
whether you were really beaten or not."

"I should not think it was a mistake you were likely to make either,"
she observed.

"You think not? Well, I had no chance this time; the fact has been
made pretty obvious to me."

She did not say she was sorry; in her opinion it was an impertinence
to offer condolence to failure. "I suppose," she said, after a pause,
"there is not a back way--a door, or window, even, to your object?"

"Unfortunately, no. There are no windows at the back; and as to the
door--like you, it was that which I tried, with the result that
recently--yesterday, in fact--I was metaphorically shown out."

Julia had learnt enough by this time, though she had not been told for
certain, that her first suspicions were right; to be sure, it was the
explosive which took Rawson-Clew to the little village evening after
evening. She had gathered as much from various things which had been
said, though she did not know at all how he was trying to get it, nor
in what way he had introduced himself to Herr Van de Greutz. Whatever
method he had tried it was now clear he had failed; no doubt been
found out, for the chemist, unlike Joost Van Heigen, was the very
reverse of unsuspecting, and thoroughly on the look-out for other
nations who wanted to share his discovery. For a moment Julia wished
she had been in Rawson-Clew's place; of course she, too, might have
failed--probably would; she had no reason to think she would succeed
where he could not; but she certainly would not have failed in this
for the reason she had failed with the blue daffodil. The attempt
would have been so thoroughly well worth making; there would have been
some sport in it, and a foe worthy of her steel. In spite of her
desire for the simple life, she had too much real ability for this
sort of intrigue, and too much past practice in subterfuge, not to
experience lapses of inclination for it when she saw such work being
done, and perhaps not done well. Of this, however, she naturally did
not speak to Rawson-Clew; she rearranged her flowers in silence for a
little while, at last she said--

"It is hateful to fail."

"It is ignominious, certainly; one does not wish to blazon it from the
housetops; still, doubtless like your crochet work, it is good
discipline."

"Maybe," Julia allowed, but without conviction. "Yours seems a simple
failure, mine is a compound one. If it is ignominious, as you say, to
fail, it would have been equally ignominious in another way if I had
succeeded. I could not have been satisfied either way."

"That sounds very complicated," Rawson-Clew said; "but then, I imagine
you are a complicated young person."

"And you are not."

"Not young, certainly," he said, lighting another cigarette.

"Nor complicated," she insisted; "you are built on straight lines;
there are given things you can do and can't do, would do and would not
do, and might do in an emergency. It is a fine kind of person to be,
but it is not the kind which surprises itself."

Rawson-Clew blew a smoke-ring into the air; he was smiling a little.

"How old are you?" he said. "Twenty? Almost twenty-one, is it? And
until you were sixteen you knocked about a bit? Sixteen is too young
to come much across the natural man--not the artful dodging man, or
the man of civilisation, but the natural, primitive man, own blood
relation to Adam and the king of the Cannibal Islands. You may meet
him by and by, and if you do he may surprise you; he is full of
surprises--he rather surprises himself, that is, if his local habitat
is ordinarily an educated, decent person."

"You have not got a natural man," Julia said shortly; she was annoyed,
without quite knowing why, by his manner.

"Have I not? Quite likely; certainly, he has never bothered me, but I
should not like to count on him. Since we have got to personalities,
may I say that you have got a natural woman, and plenty of her; also a
marked taste for the works of the machine, in preference to the face
usually presented to the company?"

"The works are the only interesting part; I don't care for the
drawing-room side of things; they are cultivated, but they are too
much on the skin. I would much rather be a stoker, or an engineer,
than sit on deck all day and talk about Florentine art, and the Handel
Festival, and Egyptology, and the gospel of Tolstoy, and play cricket
and quoits, and dance a little, and sing a little, and flirt a little,
ever so nicely. Oh, there are lots of girls who can do all those
things, and do them equally well; I know a few who can, well off,
well-bred girls--you must know a great many. They are clever to begin
with, and they are taught that way; it is a perfect treat to meet
them and watch them, but I never want to imitate them, even if I
could--and there is no danger of that. I would rather be in the
engine-room, with my coat off, a bit greasy and very profane, and
doing something. There would be more flesh and blood there, even if it
were a bit grubby; I believe I'm more at home with people who can
do--well, what's necessary, even if it is not exactly nice."

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