to return the money to her, there were no more doits; and, besides, Leentje was dead.
This pained him very much, for he had thought a great deal of her. She was ugly, even dirty, and was stoop-shouldered, too. Stoffel, the schoolmaster, said that she had an evil tongue: She was thought to have started the report that he had once eaten strawberries with sugar in the "Netherlands." This was a small garden-restaurant.
I am willing to admit the truth of all this; but what more could one expect for seven stivers and a slice of bread and butter? I have known duchesses who had larger incomes; and still in social intercourse they were not agreeable.
Leentje was stooped as a result of continuous sewing. Her needle kept the whole family clothed; and she knew how to make two jackets and a cap out of an old coat and still have enough pieces left for the gaiters that Stoffel needed for his final examination. He fell through on account of a mistake in Euclid.
With the exception of Walter nobody was satisfied with Leentje. I believe they were afraid of spoiling her by too much kindness. Walter's sisters were always talking about "class" and "rank," saying that "everyone must stay in his place." This was for Leentje. Her father had been a cobbler who soled shoes, while the father of the young Juffrouwen had had a store in which "shoes from Paris" were sold. A big difference. For it is much grander to sell something that somebody else has made than to make something one's self.
The mother thought that Leentje might be a little cleaner. But I am going to speak of the price again, and of the difficulty of washing when one has no time, no soap, no room, and no water. At that time waterpipes had not been laid, and, if they had been, it's a question if the water had ever got as far as Leentje.
So, everyone but Walter had a spite against Leentje. He liked her, and was more intimate with her than with anyone else in the house, perhaps because the others could not endure him, and there was nothing left for him to do but to seek consolation from her. For every feeling finds expression, and nothing is lost, either in the moral or in the material world. I could say more about this, but I prefer to drop the subject now, for the organ-grinder under my window is driving me crazy.
Walter's mother called him, "That boy." His brothers—there were more beside Stoffel—affirmed that he was treacherous and morose, because he spoke little and didn't care for "marbles." When he did say anything, they attributed to him a relationship with King Solomon's cat. His sisters declared he was a little devil. But Walter stood well with Leentje. She consoled him, and considered it disgraceful that the family didn't make more out of such a boy as Walter. She had seen that he was not a child like ordinary children. And I should scarcely take the trouble to write his story if he had been.
Up to a short time after his trip to Hartenstraat, Ash Gate and the old bridge, Leentje was Walter's sole confidant. To her he read the verses that slender Cecilia had disdained. To her he poured out his grief over the injustice of his teacher Pennewip, who gave him only "Fair," while to that red-headed Keesje he gave "Very good" underscored—Keesje who couldn't work an example by himself and always "stuck" in "Holland Counts."
"Poor boy," said Leentje, "you're right about it." They went over into the Bavarian house. It's a disgrace! And to save a doit on the pound.
She claimed that Keesje's father, who was a butcher, let Pennewip have meat at a reduced price, and that this was what was the matter with all those Holland counts and their several houses.
Later Walter looked upon this as a "white lie," for Pennewip, when examined closely, didn't look like a man who would carry on a crooked business with beefsteak. But in those days he accepted gladly this frivolous suspicion against the man's honor as a plaster for his own, which had been hurt by the favoritism towards Keesje. Whenever our honor is touched, or what we regard as our honor, then we think little of the honor of others.
When his brothers jeered at him and called him "Professor Walter," or when his sisters scolded him for his "idiotic groping among the bed-curtains," or when his mother punished him for eating up the rice that she intended to serve again "to-morrow"—then it was always Leentje who restored the equilibrium of his soul and banished his cares, just as, with her inimitable stitches, she banished the "triangles" from his jacket and breeches.
Ugly, dirty, evil-tongued Leentje, how Walter did like you! What consolation radiated from her thimble, what encouragement even in the sight of her tapeline! And what a lullaby in those gentle words: "There now, you have a needle and thread and scraps. Sew your little sack for your pencils and tell me more of all those counts, who always passed over from one house into another."
CHAPTER IV
I don't know what prophet Walter got as punishment for that pawned Bible. The pastor came to preach a special sermon. The man was simply horrified at such impiousness. Juffrouw Laps, who lived in the lower anteroom, had heard about it too. She was very pious and asserted that such a boy was destined for the gallows.
"One begins with the Bible," she said significantly, "and ends with something else."
No one has ever found out just what that "something else" is which follows a beginning with the Bible. I don't think she knew herself, and that she said it to make people believe that she possessed much wisdom and knew more about the world than she gave utterance to. Now, I admit that I have no respect for wisdom that cannot express itself in intelligible words, and, if it had been my affair, I should have very promptly drawn a tight rein on Juffrouw Laps.
Stoffel delivered an exhortation in which he brought out all that had been forgotten by the preacher. He spoke of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, who had erred similarly to Walter and had been sent to an early grave for their sins. He said too, that the honor of the family had been lost at the "Ouwebrug," that it was his duty, "as the eldest son of an irreproachable widow and third assistant at the intermediate school, to take care of the honor of the house——"
"Of Bavaria," said Leentje softly.
That "a marriage, or any other arrangement for the girls, would be frustrated by Walter's offence, for no one would have anything to do with girls who——"
In short, Stoffel accented the fact that it was "a disgrace," and that "he would never be able to look anyone in the face who knew of this crime." He remarked distinctly that the schoolboys must know of it, for Louis Hopper had already stuck out his tongue at him!
And finally, that he "shuddered to cross the new market-place"—in those days criminals were scourged, branded and hanged here—because it reminded him so disagreeably of Juffrouw Laps's horrible allusion to Walter's fate.
Then followed all sorts of things about Korahs, Dathans and Abirams, whereupon the whole family broke out in a wail. For it was so pathetic.
Walter comforted himself with thoughts of Glorioso, and, whenever that "something else" of Juffrouw Laps was spoken of, he just dreamed of his marriage with beautiful Amalia, whose train was carried by six pages. I fancy Juffrouw Laps would have made a pretty face if she had learned of this interpretation of her mysterious climax.
All efforts to compel our hero to tell how he had spent that money were in vain. After all known means had been applied, the attempt to force a confession had to be abandoned. Water and bread, water without bread, bread without water, no water and no bread, the preacher, Stoffel, Habakkuk, Juffrouw Laps, tears, the rod—all in vain. Walter was not the boy to betray Glorioso. This was what he had found so shabby of Scelerajoso, who had to pay the penalty, as we have seen.
As
