The Good Comrade

by Una L. Silberrad

Anna was at once fired with a desire to make herself a cool morning dress, and asked a dozen questions as to how, while Denah's busy fingers undid the faulty crochet work, and her tongue explained the mistakes. Mevrouw did not listen much to either, but noticing the glasses were empty, pressed the visitors in vain to have more lemonade. They refused, and finding them quite obdurate she toddled into the little room where Julia had been doing the shrimps, to come back again, bearing a large bladder-covered bottle of peach-brandy. The girls declined this very firmly, but Julia was sent for more glasses, and soon they were all sipping the rich flavoured liqueur without protestation.

It was over this that they planned an expedition to the wood. No one knew quite who suggested it; when people all talk at once it is not easy to say who originates an idea; anyhow, it was agreed that the weather was so dry and the trees so lovely and Mevrouw so seldom went out. She really felt—did she not?—that she would enjoy making a small excursion, she was so wonderfully well—for her. What did Anna think her mother would say? Perhaps they might join together for a drive?

Anna thought her mother would be delighted; indeed, she often spoke of the charms of a country excursion; Denah was called upon to corroborate, and did so volubly. Where should they go? Half-a-dozen different places were suggested; why not go here, or there, or to the wood? Yes, the wood, that would be lovely. They could take their tea out; if they were well wrapped up, of course, protected from the damp and the wind, might it not be possible?

So by degrees the plan was brought to the first stage. Denah and Anna were to talk it over with their mother, and if she thought favourably of it, then "we must see." By that time Denah had set the crochet work quite straight, and with kisses and hand-shakings the visitors departed. Julia went back to the little room where first she washed the glasses that had been used, afterwards she finished the shrimps and washed them and put them ready for supper in a china dish like a large soap dish on three feet. When that was done, it was necessary to lay the table for dinner and superintend the getting of that meal.

The Van Heigens dined at four. It had taken Julia all the month she had been with them to in any way get used to that time. Mijnheer and the only son, Joost, came in from the office for two hours then. The office joined the house and the great dim orderly bulb barns joined the office, so the father and son had not far to come in whichever place they might be. Julia and Mevrouw fetched the food from the kitchen and cleared the table, as well as getting their own meal; but that was nothing when you were used to it, any more than was the curious butter and nutmeg sauce that always seemed to play a part at dinner.

Mijnheer had a good deal to say to Julia, principally about his business. The letters she had written for him during the illness of the clerk who usually did his English correspondence, had given her some little insight into it. This she had profited by, being in the first instance really interested, and, in the second, not slow to see that the old man, far from resenting it, had been pleased. He talked a good deal about his affairs now, giving her little bits of information and explaining rather proudly his method of doing business, and his father's and his grandfather's before him. Joost, as usual, said little or nothing; he must have been five or six and twenty, but he had hardly ever left the parental roof, and was usually so hard at work that he had little time or inclination for frivolity. He had earnest child-like blue eyes that Julia did not care to look at, any more than she did the round yellow face of Mr. Gillat's watch. This was rather a pity as she could not always avoid it, and certainly he looked at her a good deal, in fact whenever he thought he was not observed. Of course he always was observed, by her at least; that was a foregone conclusion; the observation gave her some uneasiness.

After dinner the father and son went to sit on the veranda, and Mevrouw helped Julia take the dishes into the white marble kitchen and the glasses into the little off-room. Later, Julia came to sit on the veranda, too—it was somewhat stuffy being all closed in with glass windows. There they drank pale tea, the pot kept simmering on a spirit-stove, and read the foreign papers which had just come. Mevrouw did not read, she made tea and did crochet work, a strip like Vrouw Snieder's, only yellow instead of red. Julia, it is to be feared, did not try to master the pattern so kindly set right by Denah; she could not resist the breath from the outside world which the papers brought.

At six o'clock Mijnheer and his son went back to the office, and Julia, having washed the tea-cups, joined Mevrouw in the sitting-room. It was never very light in that room, for the walls were covered with a crimson flock paper and the woodwork was black; while the windows, which looked on the canal, were always shaded till dark. They sat here at work on the morning gown, till supper time. Mijnheer sometimes came in an hour before supper, as early as half-past eight; Joost had usually too much to do to come in before half-past nine. After supper, when the things were cleared away, they had prayers; Mijnheer read a chapter from the Bible, and they sat round the table and listened, and afterwards he said, "Now we will pray," and they sat a while in silence. Julia sat, too, her keen, observing eyes cast down and a curious stillness about her. After that every one went to bed; Julia and the maidservant had two little rooms right up in the eaves of the house; the family slept on the floor below. Julia was glad of this, though it was possible to imagine her room would be very hot in summer and very cold in winter. But she was glad to be well above the sleeping house, and to be able to look from her window across the wide country, over the dark bulb gardens—laid out like a Chinese puzzle with their eight-foot hedges—to the lights of the town on the one hand, and, better still, to the dim curve of the Dunes on the other. It is to be feared she sometimes spent a longer time at her window than was wise, seeing the early hour at which she had to rise; but no one was troubled by it, for she was careful to take off her shoes first thing; the rooms were unceiled, and it was necessary to tread lightly if one would not disturb people below.

On the day after that of Anna and Denah's visit, Herr Van Heigen offered to show Julia the bulb barns. It was a Saturday, and so after dinner, the workmen having all gone home, there was no one about and she could ascend the steep barn ladders without any suffering in her modesty. At least that was what Mijnheer thought; Julia, her modesty being of a very serviceable order, may have given the matter less consideration, but she accepted the offer.

The barns were very large and high, many of them three storeys and each storey lofty. The light inside was dim, a sort of dun colour, and the air very dry and full of a strange, not unpleasant smell. Everything was as clean as clean could be; no litter, no dirt, the floor nicely swept, the shelves that ran all round and rose, tier upon tier, in an enormous stand that occupied the whole centre of the place, all perfectly orderly. On the shelves the bulbs lay, every one smooth and clean and dry, sorted according to kind and quality; Mijnheer knew them all; he could, like a book-lover with his books, put his hand upon any that he wished in the dark. It seemed to Julia that there were hundreds upon hundreds of different sorts. Not only hyacinths and tulips and such well-known ones in endless sizes and varieties, but little roots with six and seven syllable names she had never heard before, and big roots, too, and strange cornery roots, a never-ending quantity.