There were no signs of "Wilhelmina," and my heart felt light as we went through a great lock into the Geldern Yssel, which would bear us to Holland's most beautiful province, Gelderland.
XXVIII
My luck was out in Gelderland.
We had a good day, teuf-teufing to pretty little Dieren, big white clouds swimming with us in sky and under water, where they moved like shining fish down in the blue depths. Butterflies chased us, white, scarlet, and gold, whirling through the air as flower-petals blow in a high wind; and my thoughts flitted as they flitted, for I was too drunk with that elixir, joy of life, to care, as the others seemed to care, that Sir Philip Sidney died at the battle of Zutphen; that the River Geldern Yssel was cut thirteen years B.C. to connect the Rhine with something else; that by-and-by we were going to see Het Loo, the Queen's favorite place; or indeed anything else that could possibly be improving to the mind. I cared only that Nell and Phyllis were more beautiful than ever, and that I still might have a chance—with one of them.
"Let Alb score a little," I thought, "by his knowledge of history and Royalties past and present. I'll paint each of the girls a picture, and they'll forget that he exists."
But I did not yet know my Alb and his resources. I had forgotten that Gelderland is his special "pitch," the province he annexed at birth. Fate, however, did not forget.
We got to Appeldoorn that first night; and the palace of Het Loo is close to Appeldoorn, so we drove out and slept at a hotel near the palace gates. Here it was that the worm turned. In other words, Alb became a persona grata, while I remained an ordinary tourist.
Alb had influence in high quarters. He got up early, and went off mysteriously to exert it, returning in triumph as the rest of us, including Tibe, were breakfasting on the broad veranda of the hotel in the woods. Anybody could go into the palace-grounds, but he had got permission to take his friends into the palace itself.