Читать книгу The Further Adventures of O'Neill in Holland - Brown John Irwin - Страница 7

“Don’t talk any more about that grammar-book,” I interposed. “It’s all very well in its way, but it doesn’t account for half Jack’s adventures. Now I can let you into a secret. Please don’t look so apprehensive, O’Neill! As it happens, I had a descriptive letter from Enderby just about the time that Jack was making the most brilliant progress with his Dutch vocabulary. It gave me a vivid picture of what was going on in the Hague when this linguist of ours got really started to work.

O’NEILL AS A GUIDE

Here are two of these long epistles. In the first he tells me all about the MacNamaras – Jack’s cousins, you know – who came across from Kilkenny, for a trip to Holland. They were at the Oude Doelen when he wrote, and our friend Jack was posing as a great Dutch scholar and showing them the sights.

(From Enderby to Cuey-na-Gael)

Doelen Hotel,

The Hague.

My dear Cuey-na-Gael,

You would be amazed to see the confidence with which O’Neill acts as guide to the MacNamaras.

MacNamara père is mostly buried in museums, or is on the hunt for archaeological papers, so Kathleen and Terence are left on Jack’s hands.

He has been everywhere with them, and has evidently impressed them with his astounding Dutch. To them it seems both correct and fluent. They have only had three days of it as yet, and haven’t had time to find him out. Kathleen is as haughty as ever; and I can see she chafes at being obliged to submit to the direction of a mere boy, as she regards Jack.

She was furious the day before yesterday, when in passing through one of the back streets he asked her if she had ever noticed what the Dutch Government printed in front of the surgeries.

MEN MANGLED HERE

She glanced up and, to her horror, read: “Hier mangelt men.” It was only a momentary shock; she guessed soon enough what it meant; but it gave her a turn all the same. Perhaps it wasn’t a very finished kind of joke, but she needn’t have been quite so fierce about it.

“You’re cruel,” she said, “cruel and heartless! Why even your dogmatic and intolerable chum, Mr. van Leeuwen wouldn’t have been so harsh as that.”

Now it was that little speech of hers that suggested something to me. Was there ever anything between her and van Leeuwen? They were at the University about the same time, and it seems van Leeuwen was a great friend of the father, who had him down to his place in the country and showed him his manuscripts. But I believe Kathleen couldn’t stand him. They used always to be arguing about the Suffragettes, and passed for official enemies, in a way, – at least as uncompromising leaders on opposite sides. She was fond of saying that van Leeuwen was a standing proof that mere learning couldn’t enlarge the mind. Once in a private debate she referred to him as a “learned barbarian and a retrograde mediævalist.”