The Good Comrade

by Una L. Silberrad

"Quite well, thank you," Julia answered. She had just come to the place in her father's letter where he regretted that such very light refreshments were the fashion at wedding receptions. "It is, of course, as your mother says, less expensive, but at such a time who would spare expense—if it were the fashion? I assure you I had literally nothing to eat at the time, or afterwards; your mother thinking it advisable as soon as we were alone, to put away the cakes for future visitors. At such a time, when a man's feelings are nearly touched, he needs support; I did not have it, and I cannot say that I have felt myself since."

Julia read to the end of the letter; Mijnheer had by this time taken up a paper, but Joost watched her as she folded the sheets. He did not speak, it seemed he would not intrude upon her; there was something dog-like in this sympathy with what was not understood. She felt vaguely uncomfortable by reason of it, and spoke to break the spell. "Everything went off very well," she said.

The words were for him alone, since Mijnheer was now reading, and also knew nothing of the subject. The smile brightened on his face. "Did it?" he answered. "I am very glad. They must have missed you much, and thought often of you."

Julia nodded. Chèrie had said. "I must say I think it is a pity you were not here; it is important to have some one with a head in the background; mother and I had to be the fore, so of course we could not do it; if you had been here several things would have gone better, and some waste have been saved."

This remark Julia did not communicate to Joost; she put the letter in her pocket, and went to fetch the dinner. After dinner she was to go on an errand for Mevrouw. It would take a long time, all the evening in fact, for it was to an old relative who lived in a village about three miles from the town. Walking was the only way of getting to the place, except twice a week when a little cargo boat went down the canal, and took some hours about it. This was neither the day nor the time for the boat, Julia would have to walk; but, as she assured Mevrouw, she much preferred it. Accordingly, as soon as dinner was finished, she was given a great many messages, mostly of a condoling nature, for the old lady was ill in bed, some strengthening soup, and a little bottle of the peach-brandy. With these things packed in a substantial marketing basket, she started.

Through the town she went with that easy step and indifference to the presence of other people that Denah so criticised, faster and faster her spirits rising. Once or twice she looked in at the low windows that stood open on the shady side of the street; there she saw the heads of families smoking their after-dinner pipes, while their wives and daughters sat crocheting and watching the passersby. There were chairs with crimson velvet seats in most of the rooms, and funny little cabinet, or side-board things of bright red mahogany, with modern Delft vases, very blue indeed, upon them. And always there was a certain snugness, perhaps even smugness, about the rooms. At least, so it seemed to her as she looked in, almost insolently pleased to be outside, to be free and alone.

In time she came to the outskirts of the town, the canal lay on her right, and on her left, flat green fields, cut up by innumerable ditches, and set with frequent windmills, all black and white, and mostly used for maintaining the water level. There were people busy in the fields, but to Julia they only gave the idea of ants, and did not intrude upon her mind in the least. It was all very quiet and green around, and quiet and blue above, except for the larks singing rapturously. Certainly it was very good to be away from the Van Heigens, away from the ceaseless little reiteration of Mevrouw's talk, from the minute, punctilious conventions, from Joost's quiet gaze, from the proximity of the hateful, necessary blue daffodil. With a violent rebound Julia shook off the feeling that had been growing on her of late, and was once more possibly reckless, but certainly free, and no longer under the spell of her surroundings. Her young blood coursed quickly, her eyes shone, the basket she carried grew light; she might have sung as she went had not Nature, in withholding the ability, also kindly withheld the inclination.

Soon after leaving the town, a side road cut into the main one; a waggon was lumbering down it at no great pace, but just before the branch road joined the main one the driver cracked his whip loudly, so that his team of young horses started forward suddenly. Too suddenly for the comprehension of some children who were playing in the road; for a second or more they looked at the approaching waggon, then, when the necessity dawned upon them, they ran for safety, one one way, one another, and the third, a baby boy, like a chicken, half across the way to the right, then, after a scurry in the middle, back again to the left, under the horses' feet.

Julia shouted to him, but in the excitement of the moment she spoke English, and not Dutch, though it hardly mattered, for the little boy was far too frightened to understand anything. It certainly would have fared badly with him had she not followed up her cry by darting into the road, seizing him by the shoulder, and flinging him with considerable force against the green wayside bank. She was only just in time; as it was, the foremost horse struck her shoulder and sent her rolling into the dust.

For an instant she lay there, perilously near the big grinding wheels; an almost imperceptible space, yet somehow long enough for her to decide quite calmly that it was impossible to scramble to her feet in time, so she had better draw her legs up and trust to the wheels missing her. Then suddenly the wheels stopped, and some one who had seized the horses' heads addressed the waggoner with the English idiom that is perhaps most widely known.