NEXT morning found Adrian stiff and weary, but otherwise none the worse; Rose, however, was quite worn out and unable to rise. Little Roskĕ had been restless and feverish; but, on waking in the morning from an unquiet sleep, she saw beside her something which did her more good than medicine. With a cry of rapture she folded Käatje’ in her arms, none the less dear because the painted face was a blur, and the tiny garments spoiled with rain. She was lavishing caresses on her recovered treasure, and murmuring terms of endearment, when Joanna Jäsewyk came in.
‘Poor child!’ she said, ‘she is as foolish over that poppet as some folk we know of are over their idols of wood and stone.’
‘But how came it here?’ asked Rose.
‘Would you believe it, Mevrouw? That silly lad Dirk went back for it every step last night in the rain and the dark, as if he could not, at least, have waited till the morning.’
‘He could not at least have waited till the morning,’
Roskĕ’s decided little voice broke in. ‘My Käatje would have died from the cold and fright. I told him so. I said, “Go at once!”’
Rose roused herself to reprove gravely. ‘Then you said what was very unkind. You thought of the senseless poppet, not of poor Dirk, who had carried you all that long way, and was so tired and cold.’
But Dirk, as it proved, had brought back something else from his midnight walk.
Adrian was sitting on the bench outside the door, enjoying the sunshine that followed the storm, when he saw before him Dirk’s strong, square, honest face, with its crown of dark hair.
‘Does this belong to you, Mynheer?’ he asked, holding out a book, leather bound and silver clasped.
Adrian almost sprang from his seat. It was his private note-book, containing the priceless records of the observations and experiments he had been making since left Antwerp, those made previously having been deposited for safety in the hands of Plantin. He always carried it about his person, so when he missed it the night before from its own especial pocket in his coat, he gave it up for lost.
‘My good boy, I am infinitely obliged to you; you know not what a service you have rendered me,’ he said, as he took the precious volume lovingly in his hand, and opened it, to ascertain whether the min had penetrated the stout, thick cover. Fortunately, the contents were but little injured. ‘Where did you find it?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Beside the ditch, near the place you crossed at. It was almost in the water—would have been washed in, no doubt, if left much longer. Happily, just then the rain ceased, and the moon shone out, so the light fell on the clasp, and I saw and picked it up. Moreover, I heard a splashing in the field hard, by, and when I looked, there was your horse, so I caught him and rode home. My uncle is going to fetch your cart by-and-by.’
‘But why did you go back there at all? You must have been out all night,’ said Adrian, rather surprised at these energetic proceedings.
‘I had business of my own.’ returned the boy, and went off quietly to his daily work.
Presently old Jäsewyk came out, sat down in the sunshine beside Adrian, and enlightened him about many things. He had known the Gospel, he said, for more than thirty years; being one of the converts of De Backer, the proto-martyr of Holland, who suffered at the Hague, as Mynheer might have heard. That was a long time ago. He was quite young when he came here to live, with his wife and little children, hoping to escape persecution in this lonely spot.
‘And did you so escape?’ asked Adrian.
‘In God’s Providence, yes. But those old times were very hard. Oft and oft we were in sore peril, along with the Brethren we were privileged to shelter. Afterward, indeed, the cross pressed but lightly upon us of Holland and Zealand. For the Prince of Orange, our Stadtholder, protected us; and I trow that many times he risked the king’s disfavor because he would not have the cruel ‘Placards’ executed within his borders. But the last six years, since he left us, and that child of Satan, the Duke of Alva, came, have been the worst of all. God help us, who have lived to see such times!
‘Those recommended to us by our secret friends elsewhere (as you were, Mynheer) came often to be concealed, or to be helped forward on their way. Formerly, it was for the first; since the standard of freedom has been raised again, it is mostly for the second. ‘Tis the best way we can help the Cause, since none of us can fight, as fain we would, under the Orange flag. I am too old, as you see. Koos must stay here to keep things together; his brothers, Jan and Piet, are in England, exiled for the Faith—prosperous men, following the cloth trade. My wife is long dead; my two daughters also have gene before me—one a little maid, like your Juffrouw, the other but just now, Dirk’s mother. Besides my son Koos and his wife— the best of children to me—we have here two servants. One of them, Grietjen, is the widow of a martyr—and yonder goes the other.’
Adrian looked, and saw a very lame old man limping painfully towards the cabbage bed, knife in hand. ‘Years ago, at Bergen-of-Zoom, poor Hans was taken up for a Calvinist,’ Jäsewyk explained. ‘Because he was a true man, and would not betray his fellows, he was so tortured that he has been lame ever since, as you see. They kept him till he could walk to the stake; but in the end, being slackly guarded, and the jailor a secret friend, he contrived instead to walk out of prison. He was sent here for safety by our friends; and as he was unable to work, I kept him for a servant.’
‘It is not the world’s way to keep a servant because he is unable to work,’ said Adrian smiling.
‘It will be time enough for us to learn the world’s ways when the world ceases to hate us. And then, perhaps, the Lord may have something to say,’ Jäsewyk returned.
‘Dirk’s mother was your daughter, then?’
‘Yes, Mynheer. She married a carpenter from Asperen, against my will, though it grieves me to say it, now both of them are dead. For Dirk Willemszoon, though a good-living, upright man, and very kind-hearted, was still in the bonds of Papistry. Glad was I when the news of his conversion came to us; but unhappily, the preacher who brought him out of Babylon had received the pernicious doctrine of the Anabaptists, and taught it to Dirk, who could not be expected to discern between things that differ. Therefore while I trust he is with God, yet can we not number him amongst the blessed company of our martyrs, although he endured a prolongad and terrible conflict with marvelous patience. My Anna died soon after; as young Dirk tells us, she never raised her head again.’
‘It was then, I suppose, that Dirk came to you?’
‘Yes. He worships with us, of course, though he always says that he follows his father faith. Poor child! he does not even know what that was; for all his longing is to go to the war, and fight the Spaniards, whereas people of that sect think it unlawful to bear arms at all. A strange lad Dirk is, strong of his hands, but still of his tongue. He works like a man, and can be trusted as much, but—save that one time when he spoke to me of the war—he tells no one what he thinks. I would I saw in him more certain indications of true piety. But he shows little interest in anything, except the war and the Prince of Orange.’
‘As for getting to Leyden, Mynheer, of which you spoke last night, you must wait until some reliable tidings reach us. The last thing we heard was a rumor that Leyden was strictly besieged by the Spaniards. In any case, a large pair of their army, under their General Valdez, must be between us and it.’
Adrian looked dismayed. ‘What shall we do?’ he asked.
‘What else but stay where you are?’
‘And burden you with the support of three useless people?’ ‘I trust God has not so left me to myself that I should call anything done for Him a burden,’ said the old Calvinist. ‘But, beside all that, Mynheer, I owe you a good eight months’ food and shelter.’
‘My friend, you mistake, you can owe me nothing. I never heard of you, till Kruytsoon told me.’
‘Mynheer, I have but one father in Christ, the martyred De Backer; yet have I had many instructors, and none more dear to me than M. Gille de Marchemont. The time I went south, I stayed a year in Tournay, and I used to hear him there, though he preached in French, his native tongue, which is not mine. Kruytsoon tells me in his letter what you did for him. Eight months he lay helpless in your house, and you tended him as a son tends a father. Think he is now returning your hospitality; only, I fear, in less comfortable fashion.’
‘Did Kruytsoon tell you also that Rose, my wife, is the daughter of Marchemont?’
‘No,’ said Jäsewyk, with a start, and a look of surprised delight.
The knowledge of this connection gave the whole family great pleasure; their guests henceforth were more than welcome. It was besides a real enjoyment to the thoughtful old man to have Adrian to talk to; for his son and his son’s wife, though good and devout, were not his equals in intelligence. Rose, as soon as she recovered, cheerfully aided the women in their household tasks, and especially in their needlework; and little Roskĕ was one of God’s lilies, who ‘toil not, neither do they spin,’ yet make the earth a happier place for their presence. Hitherto, Dirk had been the only representative of young life in the forest house, and that only in name, for the young life was dead in him—he was a man before his time. Now the light laughter of a child rippled through the house, little restless feet pattered to and fro, and a little voice was heard—perhaps sometimes too often.
It may have been as well, for the peace of the elders, that Roskĕ found from the first a willing slave in Dirk. Although, as his grandfather said, he did the work of a man, he was never too busy or too tired to gratify her every whim; to make, with the skill of a carpenter’s pupil, little playthings for her; or to carry her in his arms, when it pleased her to ride in state. In return, she assisted him in his labors by pulling up half-a-dozen seedlings when he weeded the garden, or going with him to the wood to gather sticks, and coming home radiant, with a tiny fagot and a torn petticoat. Dirk soon knew the small experiences of her short life; and she was too young to notice that he gave her in return none of his own; except, very seldom, a passing glimpse of a happy home far away in Asperen, of a dear mother and a loving father, who taught him day by day as he stood by his bench, while he was working at his trade. He told her, however, that, as soon as he was tau and strong enough, he meant to go and fight the Spaniards— ‘and kill them!’ he would sometimes add, with a look in his face Roskĕ did not like to see. It frightened her.
Sometimes she would order him to sing; for she had a soul for music, and Dirk a sweet voice. Hymns he would not sing; but he had one song of which she never tired, the noble ‘Wilhelmus.’ This she made him sing over and over again, until, with a child’s quick memory, she had learned it all by heart.
Thus, not impatiently, but in a kind of restful pause, they awaited tidings from the outer world. These were unusually slow in coming. ‘Never,’ said Jäsewyk, ‘even in the worst days, have we been so long without a visitor. It must be because the country all around us is the seat of war.’
Tidings came at last. It was Christmas, and the snow was on the ground. Roskĕ had a quarrel with Dirk. She had asked him to take her to slide upon the ice-covered pond at the end of the garden, and he had refused. Refused a command of hers! ‘I hate the ice,’ he had said to her, though rather to himself. It betrayed my father to his death.
‘I’ll have nothing to do with it;’ and he went sadly, and as she thought angrily, away to his work.
Roskĕ stood at the door disconsolate. She had a little stick in her hand, with which she broke the fragments of ice that filled the crevices of the path, thinking angrily the while of Dirk and his transgressions. But by-and-by there came tender relentings of heart; and she was looking anxiously for the return of her playfellow, when she saw a strange man approaching with a burden on his back.
‘God save thee, little maid!’ said he as he came up to the door. ‘Wilt go and tell Father Jäsewyk that Reinout the peddler is here?’
Roskĕ knew quite well what a peddler was. She had an inspiration. Throwing down her stick, and looking up in his face, she asked eagerly, ‘Please you, Master Peddler, have you any caps in your pack?’
‘For pretty little maidens such as thou?’
‘Oh no, mother makes my caps.’ Roskĕ was a Dutch maiden now, a quaint little figure in close cap, tight bodice and starched apron, and heavy petticoats down to her feet. ‘I mean a boy’s cap,’ she added, ‘a very pretty one, for holidays.’
‘I am afraid I have not such a thing. Perhaps—’
‘Hush— ‘tis a secret,’ she cried, in a small agony, as she saw Dirk, who had caught sight of the peddler, racing up. ‘Welcome at last!’ he cried. ‘Come in, come in, Master Reinout! I will tell my grandfather.’
The peddler was soon seated in the living room, with every person in the house around him, except Grietjen, who was deaf, and busy besides preparing the meal for him. He had already taken a cup of wine from the hand of old Jäsewyk. ‘And now,’ said he, ‘I will open my pack.’
Roskĕ’s eyes sparkled, but she was doomed to disappointment. For he meant his burden of news—the commodity he really dealt in, and for which the others were only a blind.
‘What sort of wares in it? White or black?’ asked Koos Jäsewyk eagerly.
‘More white than black this time, thank God! To begin with the glorious deeds done by His soldiers in His war—but you have heard perhaps of Alkmaar already?’
‘That we have. Brave little town! The first to show that a whole Spanish army may be baffled by a handful of determined men.’
‘And women,’ said Joanna Jäsewyk. ‘Don’t forget they stood on the ramparts beside the men. Nor did any leave their post, till they dropped down dead or dying.’
‘And now,’ resumed the peddler, ‘there has been a great sea-fight off the coast of Zealand, and God, who sits above the water-floods, has given the victory to His own.’
‘Thank God!’ said old Jäsewyk. ‘Glorious news!’ his son added. Roskĕ fidgeted a little, thinking of the pack; but Dirk stood with flashing eyes and open mouth, devouring every word.
Reinout resumed presently, ‘Alva has set sail for Spain. If curses could sink a ship, his would have touched the bottom ere it left the port.’
‘Whom have they sent us in place of him?’ asked Koos.
‘A certain Don Luis de Requesens, Grand Commander of Castile, of whom no one knows any ill, or any good. Upon one thing only all agree, he cannot be as bad as his predecessor. Even Spain could not furnish us with two Alvas. God forgive me, for I scarce believe He made him! Do you know his last exploit?’
‘Do not tell us what will only rouse passions it is hard to still again,’ said old Jäsewyk, with a glance at his grandson’s flushed face and blazing eyes; ‘tell us rather such untoward news as you may have, since both kinds usually go together, and it is well to hear all.’
‘The ill news is, that the Lord of St. Aldegonde has been made prisoner. But the Prince has told the Spaniards that the head of their Admiral, our prisoner, shall answer for his; so, though he is in the lion’s mouth, we hope he will come out safe. What concerns you more, my masters, is that the successes of our friends elsewhere have driven a great Spanish force into this neighborhood. Between this and Leyden, and all round Leyden, is just now the worst place in the world for honest men to set foot in.’
‘Are we in danger here?’ asked Joanna in some trepidation.
‘You might be safer if the Spaniards were farther off,’ said Reinout judiciously. ‘I passed two companies on the march between this and Delft, but luckily no one noticed me.’
‘What do you think of our chance of getting to Leyden?’ asked Adrian.
‘I think nothing at all of it, Mynheer. You can’t get there. The Spaniards have besieged it; and unless Count Louis of Nassau comes to the rescue (as our friends hope he will), it is like to go ill with the city of the two keys. So now you have my pack, bad and good. Stay, I remember one thing more. The Prince has declared himself one of the Reformed. He joined the Church openly, at Dort, in October.’
‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation!’ said old Jäsewyk solemnly, raising his hands to heaven.
Adrian looked surprised. ‘It may be a great gain to our party that he has committed himself thus,’ he said, ‘and I can understand your being glad of it. But—why call this thing the salvation of the Lord?’
‘I will tell you when these are gone.’
Grietjen just then announced the traveler’s repast, and except Jäsewyk and Adrian, went with him to the room where it was served.
‘It is eighteen years,’ Jäsewyk began, ‘since I first saw the Prince of Orange. That was the time I went South. I was in Brussels when his late Majesty the Emperor abdicated the throne, and I saw all the great folk who were there, him among the rest. A tan, slight youth, just two-and-twenty, splendidly handsome, proud in bearing, magnificent in dress; and even then there was that in his face you might trust to the uttermost—if you were to be trusted, though if you sought to deceive him you would find him subtler than yourself. With the richest heritage in Europe, and the Emperor’s special favor—fit at once to be the counselor of kings and the idol of the multitude—if ever man yet had his portion in this world, it was William of Nassau. What had he to do with the Word of God, and the persecuted remnant that held it? To be sure, his mother was a Lutheran, but (besides that Lutheranism savors of compromise) he had been taken from her, a child, and brought up in the Emperor’s very chamber. Yet, even then, he had begun to pity us.’
‘I have heard,’ said Adrian, ‘that the Prince disapproves of all punishing of men for what they believe.’
Jäsewyk looked a little shocked. ‘I can scarcely think,’ he said, ‘that such a wise man as the Prince would hold so absurd and mischievous an opinion. Of course, we all know that Anabaptists, and such like misbelievers, should be restrained by the Civil Power.—But a good master always pays his servants’ charges, and, Mynheer, when any man shows kindness to the Lord’s servants, He pays.’
There was a long pause, for Adrian did not understand. However, at last he said, ‘The Prince has come back now. It is not the first or the second time. However oft defeated and driven into exile, yet can nothing shake his steadfast determination to die in this land, or to save it. He and you—men of Holland and Zealand— have made your choice now for life or death. When you raised the Orange flag in these provinces you flung down the dice. “Jacta est alea.”’
‘Mynheer, I must say I mislike your talk about dice and games of chance. The plain truth is, that as God sent the Israelites Moses, and afterward Gideon and the rest, so He has sent us William of Nassau. To him alone, as God’s minister, can we look for salvation out of the hands of our enemies. But God’s ministers are not promised light tasks, nor an easy time upon earth. From what I hear, I would not know now, in the sad-faced, care-worn man, the splendid youth I remember. His vast wealth he has poured forth like water, leaving himself, they say, scarce even bread to eat—and his brothers are doing the same. His life he perils daily. Would we not be meaner than the dogs that fawn on their masters for a bone, if we gave him back no return for all that?’
‘You do give him reverence and gratitude in full measure.’
‘We of the Faith have more to give. God is my witness that day and night, for all these years, my prayers have gone up for him.’
‘For his success?’
‘No—that were for ourselves, not for him—I prayed that God, who is sure to pay, would not pay him as He paid the King of Babylon for his service against Tyre—with a richer kingdom than he lost, even the treasures of Egypt. That is the servant’s portion, not the son’s. ‘Twas a bold thing to ask for one of the great ones of the earth, and yet I dared—I strove mightily with the Lord in prayer—that He would put him amongst the children, and give him the inheritance amongst them that are sanctified. I had no assurance that I was heard, I knew not if he was of the number of God’s elect—not until to-day. Now, at last, I know. What else but God’s Spirit could move him, at the very lowest ebb of our fortunes, to join the little flock of His people? And when the thing we have asked of God is given us like that, then indeed we see the salvation of the Lord.’
Adrian made no reply. Of late a feeling had been growing upon him, that passionate devotion to religious belief, such as made men and women around him ready to die for it, was far less easy to the thoughtful and cultured—like himself—than to the simple and unlettered. Therefore, he took a heavy discount off the raptures of his host, at the conversion of a man whom he profoundly reverenced as the greatest practical intellect he knew. ‘The Prince sees the Reformed Faith is the best, and he wishes to unite himself more closely with its professors,’ he thought. ‘But I think, if he knew of them, he would hardly thank good Master Jäsewyk for his prayers.’