All this she said with a quaint, bird-like air, and I began to be impressed with the curious fascination which emanates from this strange, small person. I am in her secret. I know she is a fraud, though of all else concerning her I am in ignorance—perhaps blissful ignorance. I have none too much respect for the little wretch, despite her gray hairs; yet, somehow, I felt at this moment that I was on her side. I was afraid that, if she asked any favor of me, I should run to do it; and I could imagine myself being ass enough to quail before the mite's Liliputian displeasure. As for Starr, I could see that he dared not say his soul was his own, if she laid claim to it. He might raise his eyebrows, or telegraph with his eyelids, but a certain note in that crisp, youthful-sounding voice, would reduce him to complete subjection, in what our German cousins call an augenblick. No wonder that Tiberius—who looks as if he could play lion to her martyr without a single rehearsal—fawns, crawls, and wriggles like the merest puppy at the lifting of her tiny finger, when she wills—as is seldom—to be obeyed by him. All must feel the same queer power in the woman, be we dogs or men.
"Well, I'm glad you got your country back from Napoleon," said Miss Rivers. "Nobody, except the Dutch, could have made it so cozy, so radiantly clean and comfortable. Dear little Holland!"
I laughed. "Dear little Holland! Yes, that's the way you all pet and patronize our Hollow Land, and chuck it under the chin, so to speak. You think of it as a nice little toy country, to come and play with, and laugh at for its quaintness. And why shouldn't you? But it strikes us Netherlanders as funny, that point of view of yours, if we have a sense of humor—and we have, sometimes! You see, we've a good memory for our past. We know what we're built upon.
"Think of the making of Holland, though I grant you it's difficult, when you look at this peaceful landscape; but try to call up something as different as darkness is to light. Forget the river, and the houses, and the pretty branching canals, and see nothing but marshes, wild and terrible, with sluggish rivers crawling through mud-banks to the sea, beaten back by fierce tides, to overflow into oozy meers and stagnant pools. Think of raging winds, never still, the howling of seas, and the driving of pitiless rains. No other views but those, and no definite forms rising out of the water save great forest trees, growing so densely that no daylight shines through the black roof of branches. Imagine the life of our forefathers, who fled here from an existence so much more dreadful that they clung to the mud-banks and fought for them, a never-ending battle with the sea. That was the beginning of the Netherlands, as it was of Venice, and the fugitives built as the Venetians built, on piles, with wattles. If you've seen Venice, you'll often be reminded of it here. And what rest have we had since those beginnings? If not fighting the sea, we had to fight Spain and England, and even now our battles aren't over. They never will be, while we keep our heads above water. Every hour of every day and night some one is fighting to save the Netherlands from the fate of Atlantis. While her men fight she's safe; but if they rested, this 'peaceful, comfortable little country' would be blotted out under the waters, as so many provinces vanished under the Zuider Zee in the thirteenth century, and others, at other times, have been swept away."
"Do you think our motor-boat could ride on the flood, and drag 'Waterspin,' if any of the most important dykes or dams happened to burst?" inquired the Chaperon. "I hope so, for what you've been saying makes one feel exactly like a female member of the Ark party."
Everybody laughed; but her joke pricked me to shame of my harangue.
"Nothing will 'happen to burst,'" I assured her. "We Dutch don't lose our sleep over such 'ifs.' Every country has something to dread, hasn't it? Drought in India, earthquakes in Italy, cyclones and blizzards in America, and so on. Our menace is water; but then, it's our friend as well as foe, and we've subdued it to our daily uses, as every canal we pass can prove. Besides, there's something else we're able to do with it. The popular belief is that, at Amsterdam, one key is kept in the central arsenal which can instantly throw open sluices to inundate the whole country in case we should be in danger of invasion."
"But you'd drown your land and yourselves, as well as the enemy," exclaimed Aunt Fay.
"Better drown than lose the liberty we've paid for with so much blood. The old spirit's in us still, I hope, though we may seem slow-going, comfort-loving fellows in everyday life. When we make up our minds to do a thing, we're prepared to suffer for the sake of carrying it through."
Again I met Miss Van Buren's eyes, and I think she realized that I am typically Dutch.