The Silver Skates Page 14

  “Now vot for you shay dat, Penchamin? He no defend te citty mit breek – he fight like goot soltyer mit his guns. You like make te fun mit effrysinks Tutch.”

  “No! no! no! I said he defended the city like a brick. That is very high praise, I would have you understand. We English call even the Duke of Wellington a brick.”

  Jacob looked puzzled; but his indignation was already on the ebb.

  “Vell, it ish no matter. I no tink, before, soltyer mean breek, but it ish no matter.”

  Ben laughed good-naturedly, and seeing that his cousin was tired of talking in English, he turned to his friend of the two languages:

  “Van Mounen, they say the very carrier pigeons that brought news of relief to the besieged city are somewhere here in Leiden. I really should like to see them. Just think of it! At the very height of the trouble, if the wind didn’t turn, and blow in the waters, and drown hundreds of the Spaniards, and enable the Dutch boats to sail in right over the land with men and provisions to the very gates of the city! The pigeons, you know, did great service in bearing letters to and fro. I have read somewhere that they were reverently cared for from that day, and, when they died, they were stuffed and placed for safe keeping in the town hall. We must be sure to have a look at them.”

  Van Mounen laughed. “On that principle, Ben, I suppose when you go to Rome you’ll expect to see the identical goose who saved the Capitol.* But it will be easy enough to see the pigeons. They are in the same building with van der Werff’s portrait. Which was the greatest defence, Ben – the Siege of Leiden or the Siege of Haarlem?”

  “Well,” replied Ben thoughtfully, “van der Werff is one of my heroes – we all have our historical pets, you know – but I really think the siege of Haarlem brought out a braver, more heroic resistance even than the Leiden one. Besides, they set the Leiden sufferers an example of courage and fortitude, for their turn came first.”

  “I don’t know much about the Haarlem siege,” said Lambert, “except that it was in 1573. Who beat?”

  “The Spaniards,” said Ben. “The Dutch had stood out for months. Not a man would yield, nor a woman either, for that matter. They shouldered arms and fought gallantly beside their husbands and fathers. Three hundred of them did duty under Kenau Hasselaer, a great woman, and brave as Joan of Arc. All this time the city was surrounded by the Spaniards under Fadrique of Toledo, son of that beauty, the Duke of Alba.* Cut off from all possible help without, there seemed to be no hope for the inhabitants, but they shouted defiance over the city walls. They even threw bread into the enemy’s camps to show that they were not afraid of starvation. Up to the last they held out bravely, waiting for the help that never could come – growing bolder and bolder until their provisions were exhausted. Then it was terrible. In time, hundreds of famished creatures fell dead in the streets, and the living had scarcely strength to bury them. At last they made the desperate resolution that, rather than perish by lingering torture, the strongest would form in a square, placing the weakest in the centre, and rush in a body to their death, with the faint chance of being able to fight their way through the enemy. The Spaniards received a hint of this, and believing there was nothing the Dutch would not dare to do, they concluded to offer terms.”

  “High time, I should think.”

  “Yes. With falsehood and treachery they soon obtained an entrance into the city, promising protection and forgiveness to all except those whom the citizens themselves would acknowledge as deserving of death.”

  “You don’t say so!” said Lambert, quite interested. “That ended the business, I suppose.”

  “Not a bit of it,” returned Ben, “for the Duke of Alba had already given his son orders to show mercy to none.”

  “Ah! That was where the great Haarlem massacre came in. I remember now. You can’t wonder that the Hollanders dislike Spain when you read of the way they were butchered by Alba and his hosts, though I admit that our side sometimes retaliated terribly. But as I have told you before, I have a very indistinct idea of historical matters. Everything is utter confusion – from the Flood to the Battle of Waterloo. One thing is plain, however: the Duke of Alba was about the worst specimen of a man that ever lived.”

  “That gives only a faint idea of him,” said Ben, “but I hate to think of such a wretch. What if he had brains, and military skill, and all that sort of thing! Give me such men as van der Werff and – what now?”

  “Why,” said van Mounen, who was looking up and down the street in a bewildered way, “we’ve walked right past the museum, and I don’t see the boys. Let us go back.”

  Chapter 25

  Leiden

  The boys met at the museum, and were soon engaged in examining its extensive collection of curiosities, receiving a new insight into Egyptian life, ancient and modern. Ben and Lambert had often visited the British Museum, but that did not prevent them from being surprised at the richness of the Leiden collection. There were household utensils, wearing apparel, weapons, musical instruments, sarcophagi and mummies of men, women and cats, ibexes and other creatures. They saw a massive gold armlet that had been worn by an Egyptian king at a time when some of these same mummies, perhaps, were nimbly treading the streets of Thebes; and jewels and trinkets such as Pharaoh’s daughter wore, and the children of Israel borrowed when they departed out of Egypt.*

  There were other interesting relics, from Rome and Greece, and some curious Roman pottery which had been discovered in digging near The Hague – relics of the days when the countrymen of Julius Caesar had settled there. Where have they not settled? I, for one, would hardly be astonished if relics of the ancient Romans should some day be found deep under the grass growing round the Bunker Hill Monument.*

  When the boys left this museum, they went to another and saw a wonderful collection of fossil animals, skeletons, birds, minerals, precious stones and other natural specimens, but as they were not learned men, they could only walk about and stare, enjoy the little knowledge of natural history they possessed and wish with all their hearts they had acquired more. Even the skeleton of the mouse puzzled Jacob. What wonder? He was not used to seeing the cat-fearing little creatures running about in their bones – and how could he ever have imagined their necks to be so queer?

  Besides the Museum of Natural History, there was St Peter’s Church to be visited, containing Professor Luzac’s memorial, and Boerhaave’s monument of white and black marble, with its urn and carved symbols of the four ages of life, and its medallion of Boerhaave, adorned with his favourite motto: “Simplex sigillum veri”.* They also obtained admittance to a tea garden, which in summer was a favourite resort of the citizens, and, passing naked oaks and fruit trees, ascended a high mound which stood in the centre. This was the site of a round tower, now in ruins, said by some to have been built by Hengist, the Anglo-Saxon king, and by others to have been the castle of one of the ancient counts of Holland.*

  As the boys walked about on the top of its stone wall, they could get but a poor view of the surrounding city. The tower stood higher when, more than two centuries ago, the inhabitants of beleaguered Leiden shouted to the watcher on its top their wild, despairing cries: “Is there any help? Are the waters rising? What do you see?”

  And for months he could only answer: “No help. I see around us nothing but the enemy.”

  Ben pushed these thoughts away, and resolutely looking down into the bare tea garden, filled it in imagination with gay summer groups. He tried to forget old battle clouds, and picture only curling wreaths of tobacco smoke rising from among men, women and children enjoying their tea and coffee in the open air. But a tragedy came in spite of him.

  Poot was bending over the edge of the high wall. It would be just like him to grow dizzy and tumble off. Ben turned impatiently away. If the fellow with his weak head knew no better than to be venturesome, why, let him tumble. Horror! What meant that heavy crashing sound?

  Ben could no
t stir. He could only gasp:

  “Jacob!”

  “Jacob!” cried another startled voice, and another. Ready to faint, Ben managed to turn his head. He saw a crowd of boys on the edge of the wall opposite – but Jacob was not there!

  “Good Heaven!” he cried, springing forwards, “where is my cousin?”

  The crowd parted. It was only four boys, after all. There sat Jacob in their midst, holding his sides and laughing heartily.

  “Did I frighten you all?” he said in his native Dutch. “Well, I will tell you how it was. There was a big stone lying on the wall, and I put my… my foot out just to push it a little, you see, and the first thing I knew, down went the stone all the way to the bottom, and left me sitting here on top with both my feet in the air. If I had not thrown myself back at that moment, I certainly should have rolled over after the stone. Well, it is no matter. Help me up, boys.”

  “You are hurt, Jacob!” said Ben, seeing a shade of seriousness pass over his cousin’s face as they lifted him to his feet.

  Jacob tried to laugh again. “Oh no – I feels little hurt ven I stant up, but it ish no matter.”

  The monument to van der Werff in the Hooglandse Kerk was not accessible that day, but the boys spent a few pleasant moments in the stadhuis or town hall, a long irregular structure somewhat in the Gothic style, uncouth in architecture, but picturesque from age. Its little steeple, tuneful with bells, seemed to have been borrowed from some other building and hastily clapped on as a finishing touch.

  Ascending the grand staircase, the boys soon found themselves in rather a gloomy apartment containing the masterpiece of Lucas van Leyden, or Hugensz, a Dutch artist, born three hundred and seventy years ago,* who painted well when he was ten years of age and became distinguished in art when only fifteen. This picture, called The Last Judgement, considering the remote age in which it was painted, is truly a remarkable production. The boys, however, were less interested in tracing out the merits of the work than they were in the fact of its being a triptych – that is, painted on three divisions, the two outer ones swung on hinges so as to close, when required, over the main portion.

  The historical pictures by Carel de Moor* and other famous Dutch artists interested them for a while, and Ben had to be almost pulled away from the dingy old portrait of van der Werff.

  The town hall, as well as the Egyptian Museum, is on the Breedestraat – the longest and finest street in Leiden. It has no canal running through it, and the houses, painted in every variety of colour, have a picturesque effect as they stand with their gable ends to the street. Some are very tall, with half of their height in their step-like roofs – others crouch before the public edifices and churches. Being clean, spacious, well shaded and adorned with many elegant mansions, it compares favourably with the finer portions of Amsterdam. It is kept scrupulously neat; many of the gutters are covered with boards that open like trap doors; and it is supplied with pumps surmounted with shining brass ornaments kept scoured and bright at the public cost. The city is intersected by numerous water roads formed by the river Rhine, there grown sluggish, fatigued by its long travel, but more than one hundred and fifty stone bridges reunite the dissevered streets. The same world-renowned river, degraded from the beautiful, free-flowing Rhine, serves as a moat around the rampart that surrounds Leiden, and is crossed by drawbridges at the imposing gateways that give access to the city. Fine broad promenades, shaded by noble trees, border the canals, and add to the retired appearance of the houses behind, heightening the effect of scholastic seclusion that seems to pervade the place.

  Ben, as he scanned the buildings on the Rapenburg canal, was somewhat disappointed in the appearance of the great University of Leiden. But when he recalled its history – how, attended with all the pomp of a grand civic display, it had been founded by the Prince of Orange as a tribute to the citizens for the bravery displayed during the siege; when he remembered the great men in religion, learning and science who had once studied there, and thought of the hundreds of students now sharing the benefits of its classes and its valuable scientific museums – he was quite willing to forgo architectural beauty, though he could not help feeling that no amount of it could have been misplaced on such an institution.

  Peter and Jacob regarded the building with even a deeper, more practical interest, for they were to enter it as students in the course of a few months.

  “Poor Don Quixote would have run a hopeless tilt in this part of the world,” said Ben, after Lambert had been pointing out some of the oddities and beauties of the suburbs. “It is all windmills. You remember his terrific contest with one, I suppose?”*

  “No,” said Lambert bluntly.

  “Well, I don’t either – that is, not definitely. But there was something of that kind in his adventures, and if there wasn’t there should have been. Look at them, how frantically they whirl their great arms – just the thing to excite the crazy knight to mortal combat. It bewilders one to look at them. Help me to count all those we can see, van Mounen. I want a big item for my notebook.” And after a careful reckoning, superintended by all the party, Master Ben wrote in pencil: “Saw, Dec. 184–, ninety-eight windmills within full view of Leiden.”

  He would have been glad to visit the old brick mill in which the painter Rembrandt was born, but he abandoned the project upon learning that it would take them out of their way. Few boys as hungry as Ben by this time would hesitate long between Rembrandt’s home a mile off and tiffin close by. Ben chose the latter.

  After tiffin they rested awhile, and then took another, which, for form’s sake, they called dinner. After dinner the boys sat warming themselves at the inn – all but Peter, who occupied the time in another fruitless search for Dr Boekman.

  This over, the party once more prepared for skating. They were thirteen miles from The Hague and not as fresh as when they had left Broek early on the previous day, but they were in good spirits and the ice was excellent.

  Chapter 26

  The Palace and the Wood

  As the boys skated onwards, they saw a number of fine country seats, all decorated and surrounded according to the Dutchest of Dutch taste, but impressive to look upon, with their great, formal houses, elaborate gardens, square hedges and wide ditches – some crossed by a bridge, having a gate in the middle to be carefully locked at night. These ditches, everywhere traversing the landscape, had long ago lost their summer film, and now shone under the sunlight like trailing ribbons of glass.

  The boys travelled bravely, all the while performing the surprising feat of producing gingerbread from their pockets and causing it to vanish instantly.

  Twelve miles were passed. A few more long strokes would take them to The Hague, when van Mounen proposed that they should vary their course by walking into the city through the Bosch.

  “Agreed!” cried one and all, and their skates were off in a twinkling.

  The Bosch is a grand park or wood, nearly two miles long, containing the celebrated House in the Woods – Huis ten Bosch – sometimes used as a royal residence.

  This building, though plain outside for a palace, is elegantly furnished within, and finely frescoed – that is, the walls and ceiling are covered with groups and designs painted directly upon them while the plaster was fresh. Some of the rooms are tapestried with Chinese silk, beautifully embroidered. One contains a number of family portraits, among them a group of royal children who in time were orphaned by a certain axe which figures very frequently in European history. These children were painted many times by the Dutch artist Van Dyck, who was court painter to their father, Charles I of England. Beautiful children they were – what a deal of trouble the English nation would have been spared had they been as perfect in heart and soul as they were in form!*

  The park surrounding the palace is charming, especially in summer, for flowers and birds make it bright as fairyland. Long rows of magnificent oaks rear their proud heads, conscio
us that no profaning hand will ever bring them low. In fact, the wood has for ages been held as an almost sacred spot. Children are never allowed to meddle with its smallest twig; the axe of the woodman has never resounded there. Even war and riot have passed it reverently, pausing for a moment in their devastating way. Philip of Spain, while he ordered Dutchmen to be mowed down by hundreds, issued a mandate that not a bough of the beautiful wood should be touched – and once, when, in a time of great necessity, the State was about to sacrifice it to assist in filling a nearly exhausted treasury, the people rushed to the rescue, and nobly contributed the required amount rather than that the Bosch should fall.

  What wonder then that the oaks have a grand, fearless air? Birds from all Holland have told them how, elsewhere, trees are cropped and bobbed into shape – but they are untouched. Year after year they expand in unclipped luxuriance and beauty; their wide-spreading foliage, alive with song, casts a cool shade over lawn and pathway, or bows to its image in the sunny ponds.

  Meanwhile, as if to reward the citizens for allowing her to have her way for once, Nature departs from the invariable level, wearing gracefully the ornaments that have been reverently bestowed upon her: so the lawn slopes in a velvety green, the paths wind in and out, flower beds glow and send forth perfume; and ponds and sky look at each other in mutual admiration.

  Even on that winter day the Bosch was beautiful. Its trees were bare, but beneath them still lay the ponds, every ripple smoothed into glass. The blue sky was bright overhead, and as it looked down through the thicket of boughs, it saw another blue sky, not nearly so bright, looking up from the dim thicket under the ice.

  Never had the sunset appeared more beautiful to Peter than when he saw it exchanging farewell glances with the windows and shining roofs of the city before him. Never had The Hague itself seemed more inviting. He was no longer Peter van Holp, going to visit a great city, nor a fine young gentleman bent on sightseeing – he was a knight, an adventurer, travel-soiled and weary, a hop-o’-my-thumb grown large, a Fortunatus* approaching the enchanted castle where luxury and ease awaited him – for his own sister’s house was not half a mile away.