The Good Comrade. Una L. Silberrad
the sides open to the air. Vrouw Snieder and her two daughters were already within, with their bow-trimmed umbrellas, sunshades, mackintoshes, shawls and basket. There was necessarily a good deal of greeting; Mijnheer and Joost shook hands with all the three ladies, and inquired after Herr Snieder, and received polite inquiries in return. Then Denah insisted on getting out, so that Mevrouw should be better able to get in; also to show that she was athletic and agile, like an English girl, and thought nothing of getting in and out of a high carriage. Mevrouw kissed her husband and son, twice each, very loud, called a good-bye to the servant, and got in. Julia shook hands, said good-bye, and also got in. Denah watched her, and observed the shape of her feet and ankles jealously. She glanced sharply at Joost, but he was not guilty of such indecorum as even thinking about any girl's legs, so, having said her good-bye, she got in reassured. Finally they drove away amid wishes for a safe drive and a pleasant excursion.
Of course there was a little settling to do inside the carriage, the wraps and baskets to be disposed of, and each person to be assured that the others had enough room, and just the place they preferred to any other. By the time that was done they stopped again at the house of Mijnheer's head clerk; here they were to take up two children, girls of fourteen and fifteen, who had been invited to come with the party. The carriage was not kept waiting, the children were out before it had fairly stopped; they were flaxenly fair girls, wearing little blue earrings, Sunday hats, and cotton gloves of course—all the party wore cotton gloves; it was, Julia judged, part of the excursion outfit.
Now they were really off, driving out beyond the outskirts of the town; along flat roads where the wheels sank noiselessly into the soft sand, and the horses' feet clattered on the narrow brick track in the centre. For a time they followed the canal closely, but soon they left it, and saw in the distance nothing but its high green banks, with the brown sails of boats showing above, and looking as if they were a good deal higher than the carriage road. They passed small fields, subdivided into yet smaller patches, and all very highly cultivated. And small black and white houses, and small black and white cows, and black and white goats, and dogs, and even cats of the same combination of colour. Everything was rather small, but everywhere very tidy; nothing out of its place or wasted, and nobody hurrying or idling; all were busy, with a small bustling business, as unlike aggressive English idleness as it was unlike the deceptive, leisurely power of English work.
Denah and Anna looked out of either side of the carriage, and pointed out things to Julia and the two little girls. Here it was what they called a country seat, a sort of castellated variety of overgrown chalêt, surrounded by a wonderful garden of blazing flower-beds and emerald lawns, all set round with rows and rows of plants in bright red pots. Or there it was a cemetery, where the peaceful aspect made Denah sentimental, and the beauty of the trees drew Anna's praise. The two elder ladies paid less attention to what they passed; they contented themselves with leaning back and saying how beautiful the air was, and how refreshing the country. The girls said that as well; they all agreed six times within the hour that it was a delightful expedition, and they enjoying it much.
In time they came to the wood. An unpaved road ran through it of soft, deep sand, which deadened every sound; on either hand the trees rose, pines and larch and beech principally, with a few large-leafed shivering poplars here and there. There was no undergrowth, and few bird songs, only the dim wood aisles stretching away, quiet and green. Suddenly it seemed to Julia that the world's horizon had been stretched, the little neatness, the clean, trim brightness, the bustling, industrious toy world was gone; in its place was the twilight of the trees, the silence, the repose, the haunting, indefinable sense of home which is only to be found in these cathedrals of Nature's making.
"Ah, the wood!" Denah said, with a profound sigh. "The beautiful wood! Miss Julia, do you not love it?"
Julia did not assent, but Denah went on quite satisfied, "You cannot love it as I do; I think I am a child of Nature, nothing would please me more than always to live here."
"You would have to go into the town sometimes," Julia said, "to buy gloves; the ones you have would not last for ever."
Denah looked a little puzzled by the difficulty; she had not apparently thought out the details of life in a natural state; but before she could come to any conclusion one of the little girls cried, "Music—I hear music!"
All the ladies said "Delicious!" together, and "How beautiful!" and Denah, content to ignore Nature, added rapturously, "Music in the wood! Ah, exquisite! two beauties together!"
Julia echoed the remark, though the music was that of a piano-organ. The horizon had drawn in again, and the prospect narrowed; the silence was full of noises now, voices and laughter, amidst which the organ notes did not seem out of place. And near at hand under the trees there were tables spread and people having tea, enjoying themselves in a simple-hearted, noisy fashion, in no way suggestive of cathedral twilight.
The carriage was put up, the tea ordered, and in a little they, too, were sitting at one of the square tables. Each lady was provided with a high wooden chair, and a little wooden box footstool. A kettle on a hot potful of smouldering wood ashes was set on the table; cups and saucers and goats' milk were also supplied to them, and opaque beet-root sugar. The food they had brought in their baskets, big new broodje split in half, buttered and put together again with a slither of Dutch cheese between. These and, to wind up with, some thin sweet biscuits carried in a papier-maché box, and handed out singly by Vrouw Van Heigen, who had brought them as a surprise and a treat.
"Do they have such picnics as this in England?" Anna asked, as she gathered up the crumbs of her biscuit.
"I have never been to one," Julia answered, and inwardly she thought of her mother and Violet driving in a wheeled ark to the wood, there to sit at little wooden tables and stretch their mouths in the public eye.
"Ah!" said Vrouw Snieder; "then it is all the more of a pleasure and a novelty to you."
Julia said it was, and soon afterwards they rose from the table to walk in the wood. The two elder ladies did not get far, and before long came back to sit on their wooden chairs again. The girls went some little distance, all keeping together, and being careful not to wander out of sight and sound of the other picnic parties. Once when they came to the extreme limit of their walk, Julia half-hesitated. She looked into the quiet green distance. It would be easy to leave them, to give them the slip; she could walk at double their pace with half their exertion, she could lose herself among the trees while they were wondering why she had gone, and making up their minds to follow her; and, most important of all, when she came back she could explain everything quite easily, so that they would not think it in the least strange—an accident, a missing of the way, anything. Should she do it—should she? The wild creature that had lived half-smothered within her for all the twenty years of her life fluttered and stirred. It had stirred before, rebelling against the shams of the Marbridge life, as it rebelled against the restrictions of the present; it had never had scope or found vent; still, for all that it was not dead; possibly, even, it was growing stronger; it called her now to run away. But she did not do it; advisability, the Polkingtons' patron saint, suggested to her that one does not learn to shine in the caged life by allowing oneself the luxury of occasional escape.
She turned her back on the green distance. "Shall we not go back to where the music is playing?" she said.
They went, walking with their arms entwined as other girls were doing, Julia between the broad, white-skinned sisters, like a rapier between cushions. The two younger girls ran on in front. "There is Mevrouw," they cried. "She is calling us. The carriage is ready, too; oh, do you think it is already time to go?"
It seemed as if it really was the case. Vrouw Snieder stood clapping her hands and beckoning to them, and the coachman appeared impatient to be off. With reluctance, and many times repeated regrets, they collected their wraps and baskets, and got into the carriage.
"Good-bye, beautiful wood, good-bye!" Denah said, leaning far out as they started. "Oh, if one could but remain here till the moon rose!"
"It would be very damp," her mother observed. "The dew would fall."
To which incontestable remark Denah made no reply.
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