The Silver Skates Read online

  Hilda turned, and with one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun, seemed to him to be floating through the air, nearer and nearer.

  “We cannot take this money,” panted Hans, “though we know your goodness in giving it.”

  “Why not, indeed?” asked Hilda, flushing.

  “Because,” replied Hans, bowing like a clown, but looking with the eye of a prince at the queenly girl, “we have not earned it.”

  Hilda was quick-witted. She had noticed a pretty wooden chain upon Gretel’s neck.

  “Carve me a chain, Hans, like the one your sister wears.”

  “That I will, lady, with all my heart. We have whitewood in the house, fine as ivory – you shall have one tomorrow,” and Hans hastily tried to return the money.

  “No, no,” said Hilda decidedly. “That sum will be but a poor price for the chain,” and off she darted, outstripping the fleetest among the skaters.

  Hans sent a long, bewildered gaze after her. It was useless, he felt, to make any further resistance.

  “It is right,” he muttered, half to himself, half to his faithful shadow, Gretel. “I must work hard every minute, and sit up half the night – if Mother will let me burn a candle – but the chain shall be finished. We may keep the money, Gretel.”

  “What a good little lady!” cried Gretel, clapping her hands with delight. “Oh! Hans, was it for nothing the stork settled on our roof last summer? Do you remember how Mother said it would bring us luck, and how she cried when Janzoon Kolp shot him? And she said it would bring him trouble. But the luck has come to us at last! Now, Hans, if Mother sends us to town tomorrow, you can buy the skates in the marketplace.”

  Hans shook his head. “The young lady would have given us the money to buy skates, but if I earn it, Gretel, it shall be spent for wool. You must have a warm jacket.”

  “Oh!” cried Gretel, in real dismay, “not buy the skates! Why, I am not often cold! Mother says the blood runs up and down in poor children’s veins, humming ‘I must keep ’em warm! I must keep ’em warm’.”

  “Oh, Hans,” she continued, with something like a sob, “don’t say you won’t buy the skates, it makes me feel just like crying. Besides, I want to be cold – I mean I’m real, awful warm – so now!”

  Hans looked up hurriedly. He had a true Dutch horror of tears, or emotion of any kind, and, most of all, he dreaded to see his sister’s blue eyes overflowing.

  “Now mind,” cried Gretel, seeing her advantage, “I’ll feel awful if you give up the skates. I don’t want them. I’m not such a stingy as that, but I want you to have them, and then when I get bigger they’ll do for me. Oh-h, count the pieces, Hans. Did ever you see so many?”

  Hans turned the money thoughtfully in his palm. Never in all his life had he longed so intensely for a pair of skates, for he had known of the race, and had, boy-like, fairly ached for a chance to test his powers with the other children. He felt confident that with a good pair of steel runners he could readily distance most of the boys on the canal. Then, too, Gretel’s argument was so plausible. On the other hand, he knew that she, with her strong but lithe little frame, needed but a week’s practice on good runners to make her a better skater than Rychie Korbes, or even Katrinka Flack. As soon as this last thought flashed upon him, his resolve was made. If Gretel would not have the jacket, she should have the skates.

  “No, Gretel,” he answered at last, “I can wait. Some day I may have money enough saved to buy a fine pair. You shall have these.”

  Gretel’s eyes sparkled, but in another instant she insisted, rather faintly:

  “The young lady gave the money to you, Hans. I’d be real bad to take it.”

  Hans shook his head resolutely as he trudged on, causing his sister to half skip and half walk in her effort to keep beside him. By this time they had taken off their wooden “rockers”, and were hastening home to tell their mother the good news.

  “Oh! I know!” cried Gretel in a sprightly tone. “You can do this: you can get a pair a little too small for you, and too big for me, and we can take turns and use them. Won’t that be fine?” and Gretel clapped her hands again.

  Poor Hans! This was a strong temptation, but he pushed it away from him, brave-hearted fellow that he was.

  “Nonsense, Gretel. You could never get on with a big pair. You stumbled about with these like a blind chicken before I curved off the ends. No, you must have a pair to fit exactly, and you must practise every chance you can get, until the twentieth comes. My little Gretel shall win the silver skates.”

  Gretel could not help laughing with delight at the very idea.

  “Hans! Gretel!” called out a familiar voice.

  “Coming, Mother!” and they hastened towards the cottage, Hans still shaking the pieces of silver in his hand.

  On the following day, there was not a prouder nor a happier boy in all Holland than Hans Brinker, as he watched his sister, with many a dexterous sweep, flying in and out among the skaters who at sundown thronged the canal. A warm jacket had been given her by the kind-hearted Hilda, and the burst-out shoes had been cobbled into decency by Dame Brinker. As the little creature darted backwards and forwards, flushed with enjoyment, and quite unconscious of the many wondering glances bent upon her, she felt that the shining runners beneath her feet had suddenly turned earth into fairyland, while “Hans, dear, good Hans!” echoed itself over and over again in her grateful heart.

  “By den donder!”* exclaimed Peter van Holp to Carl Schummel, “but that little one in the red jacket and patched petticoat skates well. Gunst!* She has toes on her heels, and eyes in the back of her head! See her! It will be a joke if she gets in the race, and beats Katrinka Flack, after all.”

  “Hush! Not so loud!” returned Carl rather sneeringly. “That little lady in rags is the special pet of Hilda van Gleck. Those shining skates are her gift, if I make no mistake.”

  “So! so!” exclaimed Peter with a radiant smile, for Hilda was his best friend. “She has been at her good work there, too!” And Mynheer van Holp, after cutting a double 8 on the ice, to say nothing of a huge P, then a jump, and an H, glided onwards until he found himself beside Hilda.

  Hand in hand, they skated together, laughing at first, then staidly talking in a low tone.

  Strange to say, Peter van Holp soon arrived at a sudden conviction that his little sister needed a wooden chain just like Hilda’s.

  Two days afterwards, on St Nicholas’s Eve, Hans, having burnt three candle ends, and cut his thumb into the bargain, stood in the marketplace at Amsterdam buying another pair of skates.

  Chapter 5

  Shadows in the Home

  Good Dame Brinker! As soon as the scanty dinner had been cleared away that noon, she had arrayed herself in her holiday attire, in honour of St Nicholas. “It will brighten the children,” she thought to herself, and she was not mistaken. This festival dress had been worn very seldom during the past ten years – before that time it had done good service, and had flourished in many a dance and fair when she was known, far and wide, as the pretty Meitje Klenck. The children had sometimes been granted rare glimpses of it as it lay in state in the old oaken chest. Faded and threadbare as it was, it was gorgeous in their eyes, with its white linen tucker, now gathered to her plump throat, and vanishing beneath the trim bodice of blue homespun, and its reddish-brown skirt bordered with black. The knitted woollen mitts and the dainty cap showing her hair, which generally was hidden, made her seem almost like a princess to Gretel, while Master Hans grew staid and well behaved as he gazed.

  Soon the little maid, while braiding her own golden tresses, fairly danced around her mother in an ecstasy of admiration.

  “Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother, how pretty you are! Look, Hans, isn’t it just like a picture?”

  “Just like a picture,” assented Hans cheerfully, “just like a picture – only I don’t like those stocking thing
s on the hands.”

  “Not like the mitts, brother Hans! Why, they’re very important – see, they cover up all the red. Oh, Mother, how white your arm is where the mitt leaves off – whiter than mine, oh, ever so much whiter. I declare, Mother, the bodice is tight for you. You’re growing! You’re surely growing!”

  Dame Brinker laughed.

  “This was made long ago, lovey, when I wasn’t much thicker about the waist than a churn-dasher. And how do you like the cap?” turning her head from side to side.

  “Oh, ever so much, Mother. It’s b-e-a-u-tiful! See! Father is looking!”

  Was their father looking? Alas, only with a dull stare. His vrouw turned towards him with a start, something like a blush rising to her cheeks, a questioning sparkle in her eye. The bright look died away in an instant.

  “No, no,” she sighed, “he sees nothing. Come, Hans” – and the smile crept faintly back again – “don’t stand gaping at me all day, and the new skates waiting for you at Amsterdam.”

  “Ah, Mother,” he answered, “you need many things. Why should I buy skates?”

  “Nonsense, child. The money was given to you on purpose, or the work was – it’s all the same thing. Go while the sun is high.”

  “Yes, and hurry back, Hans!” laughed Gretel. “We’ll race on the canal tonight, if Mother lets us.”

  At the very threshold he turned to say: “Your spinning wheel wants a new treadle, Mother.”

  “You can make it, Hans.”

  “So I can. That will take no money. But you need feathers, and wool, and meal and—”

  “There, there! That will do. Your silver cannot buy everything. Ah! Hans, if our stolen money would but come back on this bright St Nicholas’s Eve, how glad we would be! Only last night I prayed to the good St—”

  “Mother!” interrupted Hans in dismay.

  “Why not, Hans! Shame on you to reproach me for that! I’m as true a Protestant, in sooth, as any fine lady that walks into church, but it’s no wrong to turn sometimes to the good St Nicholas.* Tut! It’s a likely story if one can’t do that without one’s children flaring up at it – and he the boys’ and girls’ own saint!* Hoot! Mayhap the colt is a steadier horse than the mare?”

  Hans knew his mother too well to offer a word in opposition, when her voice quickened and sharpened as it did now (it was often sharp and quick when she spoke of the missing money), so he said gently:

  “And what did you ask of good St Nicholas, Mother?”

  “Why, to never give the thieves a wink of sleep till they brought it back, to be sure – if he’s power to do such things – or else to brighten our wits that we might find it ourselves. Not a sight have I had of it since the day before dear Father was hurt – as you well know, Hans.”

  “That I do, Mother,” he answered sadly, “though you have almost pulled down the cottage in searching.”

  “Ay, but it was of no use,” moaned the dame. “‘Hiders make best finders.’”

  Hans started. “Do you think Father could tell aught?” he asked mysteriously.

  “Ay, indeed,” said Dame Brinker, nodding her head, “I think so, but that is no sign. I never hold the same belief in the matter two days. Mayhap Father paid it off for the great silver watch we have been guarding since that day. But, no – I’ll never believe it.”

  “The watch was not worth a quarter of the money, Mother.”

  “No, indeed, and your father was a shrewd man up to the last moment. He was too steady and thrifty for silly doings.”

  “Where did the watch come from, I wonder,” muttered Hans, half to himself.

  Dame Brinker shook her head, and looked sadly towards her husband, who sat staring blankly at the floor. Gretel stood near him, knitting.

  “That we shall never know, Hans. I have shown it to Father many a time, but he does not know it from a potato. When he came in that dreadful night to supper, he handed the watch to me and told me to take good care of it until he asked for it again. Just as he opened his lips to say more, Broom Klatterboost came flying in with word that the dyke was in danger. Ah! the waters were terrible that holy Pinkster week! My man, alack, caught up his tools and ran out. That was the last I ever saw of him in his right mind. He was brought in again by midnight, nearly dead, with his poor head all bruised and cut. The fever passed off in time, but never the dullness – that grew worse every day. We shall never know.”

  Hans had heard all this before. More than once he had seen his mother, in hours of sore need, take the watch from its hiding place, half resolved to sell it, but she had always conquered the temptation.

  “No, Hans,” she would say, “we must be nearer starving than this before we turn faithless to Father!”

  A memory of some such scene crossed her son’s mind now, for after giving a heavy sigh, and filliping a crumb of wax at Gretel across the table, he said:

  “Ay, Mother, you have done bravely to keep it – many a one would have tossed it off for gold long ago.”

  “And more shame for them!” exclaimed the dame indignantly. “I would not do it. Besides, the gentry are so hard on us poor folks that if they saw such a thing in our hands, even if we told all, they might suspect Father of—”

  Hans flushed angrily.

  “They would not dare to say such a thing, Mother! If they did – I’d…”

  He clenched his fist, and seemed to think that the rest of his sentence was too terrible to utter in her presence.

  Dame Brinker smiled proudly through her tears at this interruption.

  “Ah, Hans, thou’rt a true, brave lad. We will never part company with the watch. In his dying hour dear Father might wake and ask for it.”

  “Might wake, Mother!” echoed Hans. “Wake – and know us?”

  “Ay, child,” almost whispered his mother, “such things have been.”

  By this time Hans had nearly forgotten his proposed errand to Amsterdam. His mother had seldom spoken so familiarly with him. He felt himself now to be not only her son, but her friend, her adviser.

  “You are right, Mother. We must never give up the watch. For Father’s sake, we will guard it always. The money, though, may come to light when we least expect it.”

  “Never!” cried Dame Brinker, taking the last stitch from her needle with a jerk, and laying the unfinished knitting heavily upon her lap. “There is no chance! One thousand guilders! And all gone in a day! One thousand guilders! Oh! whatever did become of them? If they went in an evil way, the thief would have confessed to this on his dying bed – he would not dare to die with such guilt on his soul!”

  “He may not be dead yet,” said Hans soothingly. “Any day we may hear of him.”

  “Ah, child,” she said in a changed tone, “what thief would ever have come here? It was always neat and clean, thank God! but not fine, for Father and I saved and saved that we might have something laid by. ‘Little and often soon fills the pouch.’ We found it so, in truth. Besides, Father had a goodly sum already, for service done to the Heernocht lands, at the time of the great inundation. Every week we had a guilder left over, sometimes more, for Father worked extra hours and could get high pay for his labour. Every Saturday night we put something by, except the time when you had the fever, Hans, and when Gretel came. At last the pouch grew so full that I mended an old stocking and commenced again. Now that I look back, it seems that the money was up to the heel in a few sunny weeks. There was great pay in those days if a man was quick at engineer work. The stocking went on filling with copper and silver – ay, and gold. You may well open your eyes, Gretel. I used to laugh and tell Father it was not for poverty I wore my old gown. And the stocking went on filling – so full that sometimes when I woke at night I’d get up, soft and quiet, and go feel it in the moonlight. Then, on my knees, I would thank our Lord that my little ones could in time get good learning, and that Father might rest from labour in his
old age. Sometimes, at supper, Father and I would talk about a new chimney and a good winter room for the cow, but my man, forsooth, had finer plans even than that. ‘A big sail,’ says he, ‘catches the wind – we can do what we will soon,’ and then we would sing together as I washed my dishes. Ah, ‘a smooth sea makes an easy rudder’ – not a thing vexed me from morning till night. Every week Father would take out the stocking and drop in the money, and laugh and kiss me as we tied it up together. Up with you, Hans! There you sit gaping, and the day a-wasting!” added Dame Brinker tartly, blushing to find that she had been speaking too freely to her boy. “It’s high time you were on your way.”

  Hans had seated himself, and was looking earnestly into her face. He arose and, in almost a whisper, asked:

  “Have you ever tried, Mother?”

  She understood him.

  “Yes, child, often. But Father only laughs, or he stares at me so strange I am glad to ask no more. When you and Gretel had the fever last winter, and our bread was nearly gone, and I could earn nothing for fear you would die while my face was turned… oh! I tried then! I smoothed his hair, and whispered to him, soft as a kitten, about the money – where it was, who had it. Alack! he would pick at my sleeve, and whisper gibberish till my blood ran cold. At last, while Gretel lay whiter than snow, and you were raving on the bed, I screamed to him – it seemed as if he must hear me – ‘Raff, where is our money? Do you know aught of the money, Raff – the money in the pouch and the stocking, in the big chest?’ But I might as well have talked to a stone – I might as…”

  The mother’s voice sounded so strangely, and her eye was so bright, that Hans, with a new anxiety, laid his hand upon her shoulder.

  “Come, Mother,” he said, “let us try to forget this money. I am big and strong – Gretel, too, is very quick and willing. Soon all will be prosperous with us again. Why, Mother, Gretel and I would rather see thee bright and happy than to have all the silver in the world – wouldn’t we, Gretel?”