Walter still did not understand. When, under the protection of the Holsmas, he was safe on the outside again, and the entire party had escaped the mob by taking a side street, he reiterated that he did dare show his face to his mother and Stoffel.

"It doesn't make any difference about the money," said Holsma. "I will attend to that. Why, boy, you're scared half to death. You're shaking. Come along home with us where you can rest a bit and quiet yourself."

The distance, however, proved too short to have the desired quieting effect on Walter.

"My mother will be angry when I come home late."

Holsma told him that a messenger should be sent to his mother at once, so that she would know where he was.

The doctor gave him a sedative and led him into a room adjoining that in which the Holsma family were sitting. Walter was to walk up and down the room till he felt better; but he soon got tired of this and did the very thing that he was not to do; he sat down on a sofa and fell asleep.

Whether, in general, it is a good thing to keep in motion after a fright--that I do not know. Walter, on the contrary, always felt the need of sleep under such circ.u.mstances; and this remedy, with which nature provided him, usually restored his mental equilibrium. Perhaps, after all, it wasn't real sleep: he merely dreamed.

Again he was lifted up, higher and higher, borne by strong hands. A man bit him in the hand. The fact was he had scratched his hand on a refractory horsehair, which had become tired of acting as stuffing for a sofa-pillow.

An angry woman a.s.sailed him with abuse. Stupid? Not stupid? We, the ma.s.ses? She let him fall. But he fell in Sietske's lap; and there wasn't a single sliver of gla.s.sware.

He was happy--but the horsehair scratched him again. Then he heard a voice. Was he still dreaming? Yes, dreaming again of soaring and falling. There was Femke.

Of course there had to be something about her in his dream, and about bleaching the clothes. Father Jansen was there, too, exhibiting to the stars the particular garment that Femke had patched. Orion and the Great Bear admired this specimen of her handiwork. Walter did not.

"Did you do it yourself?" he heard Sietske asking in the next room. "Or couldn't you get through the crowd?"

"No, it was impossible to get through such a mob. I turned it over to the man with the peddler's wagon."

What was that? Walter sat up. Father Jansen was gone; Orion, too; and the clouds, and the "ma.s.ses"; but--that voice!

He heard it again.

"I know him very well--oh, so well! He's a good boy." This he heard Femke say!

He jumped up and ran into the room where the Holsmas were. He saw a triangular piece of a woman's dress disappear through the door; then the door closed.

He didn't have the courage--or was something else beside courage necessary to ask, "Is that Femke?"

On his way home that evening Walter did not suffer in the least from the sensation of being borne through the air; or from anything similar. He was on the earth, very much on the earth. He felt lowly.

If he had only seen that bit of Femke's dress somewhere else, and not at the Holsmas--not in that swell family; not in the company of Sietske, who had so much money in her "savings-bank," nor in the presence of the vain William, who was studying Latin!

He was brave enough to feel ashamed of himself; and that's all I can say in his favor.

Let us now look at things from the point of view of Juffrouw Pieterse. That lady was in the clouds. She was hoping that the messenger who had brought her news of Walter had not been able to find her flat at once. The idea of someone from Dr. Holsma's asking for her through the neighborhood was decidedly pleasant. The longer he might have had to inquire for her the better!

"Of course he was at the grocer's," she said. "Such messengers never know where they have to go. Of course he told that the 'young gentleman' was staying at Dr. Holsma's! And such a man always tattles; such people don't do anything but tattle. But, as far as I'm concerned, everybody can know it. I only mean that such people like to tattle. But--say, Walter, how did it happen that you went with the family? You're a nice rascal. Stoffel, what do you say?"

Stoffel made a serious face--as much as to say: "Hm! I'll have to think over it. He's been up to something."

"I met the Holsma family in Kalver Street," Walter said. He told the truth; he had met the family in Kalver Street. But why didn't he tell anything about the extraordinary circ.u.mstances under which he met them? Ah--there's the rub!

"Your back is so sticky!" complained Pietro, whose care it was to look after the washing.

The family rubbed, and felt, and smelt; and then they declared unanimously that Walter's back had been guilty of absorbing all kinds of sticky gases and liquids.

"Really, it smells like lemon," said Trudie.

"And like wine!"

"And it's just coated with sugar. Boy, where have you been? Don't you have any sense of shame? To go to visit such swell people with lemon and sugar on your back! It's a disgrace, a disgrace."

"There was such a crowd on the street."

"That don't explain the wine on your back--nor the lemon--nor the sugar. What say you, Trudie?"

There was complete unanimity. Timid, as usual, Walter didn't have the courage to tell everything. Nor would this have done any good. The understanding of the Pieterse family was like a rusty lock that no key will open. Walter knew this, and remembering former sad experiences, allowed the storm to rage above his head. Unfortunately he, too, in a sense, was rusty. His n.o.bility of character had suffered; he had been guilty of cowardice.

He felt it. No minister could pray it away. Not even G.o.d himself could revoke it. Everyone must act according to his conviction, Mevrouw Holsma had said. He had not done this.

A dog would have kissed the hem of Femke's garment, meeting her after such a long separation. For it was she. Certainly it was Femke--or----

Oh, he was hunting for or's!

Could it have been somebody else? It must have been somebody else. How could Femke be at Dr. Holsma's?

No, no, it was she! Didn't she say that she knew me? Didn't she speak with the same voice that I heard when she called me a dear boy and gave me the kiss at the bridge?

She didn't know then what a coward I am! She wouldn't deny me and betray me. She would say to everybody: That is Walter, my little friend that I kissed that time, because he was so brave in fighting off those boys!

And I? Oh, help me G.o.d!

No, G.o.d has nothing to do with it. I am a coward. I can't live this way.

He thought of suicide; and in this mood he spent that Thursday night. He arose Friday morning with the firm determination to put an end to his unworthy existence.

Fortunately, just after breakfast he was put to work on a job that is calculated to reconcile one with life.

He had been tried and convicted, the verdict being unanimous. The penalty was that he should wash his jacket till it was clean. He entered upon the task with such enthusiasm that in an hour he was running to his mother crying triumphantly:

"Look, mother! You can't see a trace of it now!"

This little conquest dispelled all the clouds that had darkened his life.

There are plenty of people who would gladly fall into a barrel of lemonade if they only understood the salutary effects of cleaning a coat.

The poor unfortunate who has never washed his own clothes does not know what life is.

I will ask her pardon, thought Walter; and he pictured it all to himself, wondering whether it would do for him to fall at her feet at Holsma's, in the presence of the one who had delivered the message. Finally, however, he quieted himself with the thought that Femke would probably not be at the doctor's very long. He hoped to be able then to settle the matter quietly, when only the two concerned were present. This was not courageous, to be sure; but his punishment was already on the way.