The Silver Skates Read online

  Then he looked up from the pavement and rested his eyes upon the carved oaken pulpit, exquisitely beautiful in design and workmanship. He could not see the minister – though, not long before, he had watched him slowly ascending its winding stair – a mild-faced man wearing a ruff about his neck and a short cloak reaching nearly to the knee.

  Meantime, the great church had been silently filling. Its pews were sombre with men, and its centre radiant with women in their fresh Sunday attire. Suddenly a soft rustling spread through the building. All eyes were turned towards the minister now appearing above the pulpit.

  Although the sermon was spoken slowly, Ben could understand little of what was said. But when the hymn came, he joined in with all his heart. A thousand voices lifted in love and praise offered a grander language than he could readily comprehend.

  Once he was startled, during a pause in the service, by seeing a little bag suddenly shaken before him. It had a tinkling bell at its side, and was attached to a long stick carried by one of the deacons of the church. Not relying solely upon the mute appeal of the poor boxes fastened to the columns near the entrance, this more direct method was resorted to of awakening the sympathies of the charitable.

  Fortunately Ben had provided himself with a few stivers, or the musical bag must have tinkled before him in vain.

  More than once a dark look rose on our English boy’s face that morning. He longed to stand up and harangue the people concerning a peculiarity that filled him with pain. Some of the men wore their hats during the service, or took them off whenever the humour prompted, and many put theirs on in the church as soon as they arose to leave. No wonder Ben’s sense of propriety was wounded, and yet a higher sense would have been exercised had he tried to feel willing that Hollanders should follow the customs of their country. But his English heart said over and over again: “It is outrageous! It is sinful!”

  There is an angel called Charity, who often would save our hearts a great deal of trouble if we would but let her in.

  Chapter 30

  Homewards Bound

  On Monday morning, bright and early, our boys bade farewell to their kind entertainers and started on their homewards journey.

  Peter lingered awhile at the lion-guarded door, for he and his sister had many parting words to say.

  As Ben saw them bidding each other goodbye, he could not help feeling that kisses as well as clocks were wonderfully alike everywhere. The English kiss that his sister Jenny gave when he left home had said the same thing to him that the Vrouw van Gend’s Dutch kiss said to Peter. Ludwig had taken his share of the farewell in the most matter-of-fact manner possible, and though he loved his sister well, had winced a little at her making such a child of him as to put an extra kiss “for Mother” upon his forehead.

  He was already upon the canal with Carl and Jacob. Were they thinking about sisters or kisses? Not a bit of it. They were so happy to be on skates once more, so impatient to dart at once into the very heart of Broek that they spun and wheeled about like crazy fellows, relieving themselves, meantime, by muttering something about “Peter and donder” not worth translating.

  Even Lambert and Ben, who had been waiting at the street corner, began to grow impatient.

  The captain joined them at last. They were soon on the canal with the rest.

  “Hurry up, Peter,” growled Ludwig, “we’re freezing by inches. There! I knew you’d be the last after all to get on your skates!”

  “Did you?” said his brother, looking up with an air of deep interest. “Clever boy!”

  Ludwig laughed, but tried to look cross, as he said: “I’m in earnest, anyhow. We must get home sometime this year.”

  “Now, boys,” cried Peter, springing up, as he fastened the last buckle. “There’s a clear way before us! We will imagine it’s the grand race. Ready! One – two – three – start!”

  I assure you very little was said for the first half-hour. They were six Mercuries skimming the ice. In plain English, they went like lightning – no, that is imaginary too. The fact is, one cannot decide what to say when half a dozen boys are whizzing past at such a rate. I can only tell you that each did his best, flying, with bent body and eager eyes, in and out among the placid skaters on the canal, until the very guard shouted to them to “hold up!” This only served to send them onwards with a two-boy power that startled all beholders.

  But the laws of inertia are stronger even than canal guards.

  After a while, Jacob slackened his speed – then Ludwig – then Lambert – then Carl.

  They soon halted to take a long breath, and finally found themselves standing in a group gazing after Peter and Ben, who were still racing in the distance as if their lives were at stake.

  “It is very evident,” said Lambert, as he and his three companions started on again, “that neither of them will give up until he can’t help it.”

  “What foolishness,” growled Carl, “to tire themselves at the beginning of the journey, but they’re racing in earnest – that’s certain. Hallo! Peter’s flagging!”

  “Not so!” cried Ludwig. “Catch him being beaten!”

  “Ha, ha!” sneered Carl. “I tell you, boy, Benjamin is ahead.”

  Now, if Ludwig disliked anything in this world, it was to be called a boy – probably because he was nothing else. He grew indignant at once.

  “Humph, what are you, I wonder. There, sir! Now look and see if Peter isn’t ahead!”

  “I think he is,” interposed Lambert, “but I can’t quite tell at this distance.”

  “I think he isn’t!” retorted Carl.

  Jacob was growing anxious – he always abhorred an argument – so he said in a coaxing tone: “Don’t quarrel – don’t quarrel!”

  “Don’t quarrel!” mocked Carl, looking back at Jacob as he skated. “Who’s quarrelling? Poot, you’re a goose!”

  “I can’t help that,” was Jacob’s meek reply. “See! They are nearing the turn of the canal.”

  “Now we can see!” cried Ludwig in great excitement.

  “Peter will make it first, I know.”

  “He can’t – for Ben is ahead!” insisted Carl. “Gunst! That iceboat will run over him. No, he is clear! They’re a couple of geese anyhow. Hurrah! They’re at the turn. Who’s ahead?”

  “peter!” cried Ludwig joyfully.

  “Good for the captain!” shouted Lambert and Jacob.

  And Carl condescended to mutter:

  “It is Peter, after all. I thought all the time that head fellow was Ben.”

  This turn in the canal had evidently been their goal, for the two racers came to a sudden halt after passing it.

  Carl said something about being “glad that they had sense enough to stop and rest”, and the four boys skated on in silence to overtake their companions.

  All the while Carl was secretly wishing that he had kept on with Peter and Ben, as he felt sure he could easily have come out winner. He was a very rapid, though by no means a graceful skater.

  Ben was looking at Peter with mingled vexation, admiration and surprise as the boys drew near.

  They heard him saying in English:

  “You’re a perfect bird on the ice, Peter van Holp. The first fellow that ever beat me in a fair race, I can tell you!”

  Peter, who understood the language better than he could speak it, returned a laughing bow at Ben’s compliment, but made no further reply. Possibly he was scant of breath at the time.

  “Now, Penchamin, vat you do mit yourself? Get so hot as a firebrick – dat ish no goot,” was Jacob’s plaintive comment.

  “Nonsense!” answered Ben. “This frosty air will cool me soon enough. I am not tired.”

  “You are beaten, though, my boy,” said Lambert in English, “and fairly, too. How will it be, I wonder, on the day of the grand race?”

  Ben flushed, and gave a proud,
defiant laugh, as if to say:

  “This was mere pastime. I’m determined to beat then – come what will!”

  Chapter 31

  Boys and Girls

  By the time the boys reached the village of Voorhout, which stands near the grand canal, about halfway between The Hague and Haarlem, they were forced to hold a council. The wind, though moderate at first, had grown stronger and stronger, until at last they could hardly skate against it. The weathervanes throughout the country had evidently entered into a conspiracy.

  “No use trying to face such a blow as this,” said Ludwig. “It cuts its way down a man’s throat like a knife.”

  “Keep your mouth shut then,” grunted the affable Carl, who was strong-chested as a young ox. “I’m for keeping on.”

  “In this case,” interposed Peter, “we must consult the weakest of the party rather than the strongest.”

  The captain’s principle was all right, but its application was not flattering to Master Ludwig. Shrugging his shoulders, he retorted:

  “Who’s weak? Not I, for one, but the wind’s stronger than any of us. I hope you’ll condescend to admit that!”

  “Ha! Ha!” laughed van Mounen, who could barely keep his feet. “So it is.”

  Just then the weathervanes telegraphed to each other by a peculiar twitch – and, in an instant, the gust came. It nearly threw the strong-chested Carl; it almost strangled Jacob; and quite upset Ludwig.

  “This settles the question,” shouted Peter. “Off with your skates! We’ll go into Voorhout.”

  At Voorhout they found a little inn with a big yard. The yard was well bricked, and, better than all, was provided with a complete set of skittles, so our boys soon turned the detention into a frolic. The wind was troublesome even in that sheltered quarter, but they were on good standing ground – and did not mind it.

  First a hearty dinner – then the game. With pins as long as their arms, and balls as big as their heads, plenty of strength left for rolling, and a clean sweep of sixty yards for the strokes, no wonder they were happy.

  That night Captain Peter and his men slept soundly. No prowling robber came to disturb them, and, as they were distributed in separate rooms, they did not even have a bolster battle in the morning.

  Such a breakfast as they ate! The landlord looked frightened. When he had asked them where they “belonged”, he made up his mind that the Broek people starved their children. It was a shame – “such fine young gentlemen, too!”

  Fortunately the wind had tired itself out and fallen asleep in the great sea cradle beyond the dunes. There were signs of snow; otherwise, the weather was fine.

  It was mere child’s play for the well-rested boys to skate to Leiden. Here they halted awhile, for Peter had an errand at the Golden Eagle. He left the city with a lightened heart: Dr Boekman had been at the hotel, read the note containing Hans’s message and departed for Broek.

  “I cannot say it was your letter sent him off so soon,” explained the landlord. “Some rich lady in Broek was taken bad very sudden, and he was sent for in haste.”

  Peter turned pale.

  “What was the name?” he asked.

  “Indeed, it went in one ear and out of the other for all I hindered it. Plague to people who can’t see a traveller in comfortable lodgings, but they must whisk him off before one can breathe.”

  “A lady in Broek, did you say?”

  “Yes,” very gruffly. “Any other business, young master?”

  “No, mine host – except that I and my comrades here would like a bite of something and a drink of hot coffee.”

  “Ah,” said the landlord sweetly, “a bite you shall have, and coffee too, the finest in Leiden. Walk up to the stove, my masters… now I think again – that was a widow lady – from Rotterdam, I think they said – visiting at one van Stoepel’s, if I mistake not.”

  “Ah!” said Peter, greatly relieved. “They live in the white house by the Schlossen Mill. Now, Mynheer, the coffee, please!”

  “What a goose I was,” thought he, as the party left the Golden Eagle, “to feel so sure it was my mother – but she may be somebody’s mother, poor woman, for all that. Who can she be, I wonder?”

  There were not many upon the canal that day between Leiden and Haarlem. However, as the boys neared Amsterdam, they found themselves once more in the midst of a moving throng. The big ice-breaker had been at work for the first time that season, but there was any amount of skating ground left yet.

  “Three cheers for home!” cried van Mounen as they came in sight of the great western dock (Westelijk Dok). “Hurrah! Hurrah!” shouted one and all. “Hurrah! Hurrah!”

  This trick of cheering was an importation among our party. Lambert van Mounen had brought it from England. As they always gave it in English, it was considered quite an exploit, and, when circumstances permitted, always enthusiastically performed, to the sore dismay of their quiet-loving countrymen.

  Therefore their arrival at Amsterdam created a great sensation, especially among the small boys on the wharf.

  The Y was crossed. They were on the Broek canal.

  Lambert’s home was reached first.

  “Goodbye, boys!” he cried as he left them. “We’ve had the greatest frolic ever known in Holland.”

  “So we have. Goodbye, van Mounen!” answered the boys.

  “Goodbye!”

  Peter hailed him. “I say, van Mounen, the classes begin tomorrow!”

  “I know it. Our holiday is over. Goodbye again.”

  “Goodbye!”

  Broek came in sight. Such meetings! Katrinka was on the canal! Carl was delighted. Hilda was there! Peter felt rested in an instant. Rychie was there! Ludwig and Jacob nearly knocked each other over in their eagerness to shake hands with her.

  Dutch girls are modest and generally quiet, but they have very glad eyes. For a few moments it was hard to decide whether Hilda, Rychie or Katrinka felt the most happy.

  Annie Bouman was also on the canal, looking even prettier than the other maidens, in her graceful peasant’s costume. But she did not mingle with Rychie’s party; neither did she look unusually happy.

  The one she liked most to see was not among the newcomers. Indeed, he was not upon the canal at all. She had not been near Broek before, since the eve of St Nicholas, for she was staying with her sick grandmother in Amsterdam, and had been granted a brief resting spell, as the grandmother called it, because she had been such a faithful little nurse night and day.

  Annie had devoted her resting spell to skating with all her might towards Broek, and back again, in the hope of meeting her mother or some of her family on the canal, or, it might be, Gretel Brinker. Not one of them had she seen, and she must hurry back without even catching a glimpse of her mother’s cottage, for the poor helpless grandmother, she knew, was by this time moaning for someone to turn her upon her cot.

  “Where can Gretel be?” thought Annie, as she flew over the ice. “She can almost always steal a few moments from her work at this time of day. Poor Gretel! What a dreadful thing it must be to have a dull father. I should be woefully afraid of him, I know. So strong, and yet so strange!”

  Annie had not heard of his illness. Dame Brinker and her affairs received but little notice from the people of the place.

  If Gretel had not been known as a goose girl she might have had more friends among the peasantry of the neighbourhood. As it was, Annie Bouman was the only one who did not feel ashamed to avow herself by word and deed the companion of Gretel and Hans.

  When the neighbours’ children laughed at her for keeping such poor company, she would simply flush when Hans was ridiculed, or laugh in a careless, disdainful way, but to hear little Gretel abused always awakened her wrath.

  “Goose girl, indeed!” she would say. “I can tell you any of you are fitter for the work than she. My father often said last summe
r that it troubled him to see such a bright-eyed, patient little maiden tending geese. Humph! She would not harm them, as you would, Janzoon Kolp. And she would not tread upon them, as you might, Kate Wouters.”

  This would be pretty sure to start a laugh at the clumsy, ill-natured Kate’s expense, and Annie would walk loftily away from the group of young gossips. Perhaps some memory of Gretel’s assailants crossed her mind as she skated rapidly towards Amsterdam, for her eyes sparkled ominously and she more than once gave her pretty head a defiant toss. When that mood passed, such a bright, rosy, affectionate look illumined her face that more than one weary working man turned to gaze after her, and to wish that he had a glad, contented lass like that for a daughter.

  There were five joyous households in Broek that night.

  The boys were back safe and sound, and they found all well at home. Even the sick lady at neighbour van Stoepel’s was out of danger.

  But the next morning! Ah, how stupidly school bells will ding-dong! ding-dong! when one is tired.

  Ludwig was sure he had never listened to anything so odious. Even Peter felt pathetic on the occasion. Carl said it was a shame for a fellow to have to turn out when his bones were splitting, and Jacob soberly bade Ben “Gootpye!” and walked off with his satchel as if it weighed a hundred pounds.

  Chapter 32

  The Crisis

  While the boys are nursing their fatigue, we will take a peep into the Brinker cottage.

  Can it be that Gretel and her mother have not stirred since we saw them last? That the sick man upon the bed has not even turned over? It was four days ago, and there is the sad group just as it was before. No – not precisely the same, for Raff Brinker is paler. His fever is gone, though he knows nothing of what is passing. Then they were alone in the bare, clean room. Now there is another group in an opposite corner.