DIRK had contrived, on his way to the Church of the Thanksgiving, to lay hold of a sailor from the fleet, and to whisper an eager question.
The sailor answered aloud, ‘Almost well again, thank God! Coming here to-morrow.’
‘Thank God!’ Dirk echoed with remarkable fervor. ‘What did he say?’ asked Tant’ Marie.
‘That the Prince is coming—coming to-morrow,’ Dirk answered joyfully.
In the crowded church he saw some one whom he recognized, and who recognized him; and when the multitude dispersed the two managed to meet, and a hearty greeting passed between them.
Dirk noticed that Wallingford had received a wound since they parted. He had a long deep cut above the left eyebrow. ‘Oh, it is nothing!’ he laughed. ‘Only a Spanish compliment, received from one of those ceremonious dons when we requested them to quit the North Aa.’
Then Dirk, with the freedom of a son, presented Mynheer Edward Wallingford to Doctor Adrian Pernet, who at once asked him to come home with him, for of course the men of Leyden gladly opened their houses to their deliverers.
The whole party, with the addition of Floriszoon, were soon enjoying a repast of bread and salt herrings, which, to all of them except Wallingford, seemed a royal banquet. Rose, who was trying, in spite of her weakness, to act the courteous hostess, apologized for all deficiencies in the serving of the meal, explaining that they had long ago dismissed their domestics, being unable to find food for them.
‘That shall soon be remedied,’ said Adrian, looking with concern on her pale and wasted face.
They had much to hear and to tell. Everyone knew now that the noise they had heard during the night was caused by the sudden and unaccountable fall of a large part of the city wall, that between the Cow-gate and the Tower of Burgundy; but Adrian and the rest had still to learn the particulars of Dirk’s adventure.
All were eager to hear from Wallingford what had been doing outside, during their seclusion. He described, with much animation, the efforts of Admiral Boisot and his gallant little fleet to reach the city, with the various obstacles and hindrances they encountered. He told also of the unceasing care and watchfulness of him whose genius had originated and organized the whole splendid, desperate enterprise, and now they learned—all except Dirk for the first time—that his labors had well-nigh cost him his life.
‘And you knew all along, that the Prince lay sick, almost unto death said Adrian, turning to Dirk. How did you ever keep silence?’
‘I was not going to cut your hands off,’ Dirk answered. ‘Though, when men asked why he was not with the fleet, it used to go hard with me—harder than passing through the Spanish lines, or going out to the Lammen Fort.’
‘He has scarce recovered yet, but he is coming here tomorrow,’ Wallingford said.
On the morrow, accordingly, they went forth to see him, all except Rose, who said she was tired, and would rather rest. But no one must stay indoors for her, she meant to sleep the whole time. Roskĕ, as well as her mother, would have been better in bed; but she pleaded so earnestly to come with the others that her devoted servant Dirk, as usual, took her in his arms. They had not far to go: the Prince, accompanied by the Burgomaster, the Commandant, and other chief persons of the town, rode leisurely through the principal streets, returning the greetings of the people, and stopping often to receive petitions, to condole with the suffering, or to commend those who had shown exceptional bravery.
The procession, for some reason, came to a halt at the corner of Bree Street, where our friends were standing. During the pause, the Burgomaster, espying Dirk amongst the crowd, beckoned him forward.
He had been holding Roskĕ as high as he could (she was a light weight now), that she might see the Prince. She had just exclaimed, in wonder at the sight of the face so worn with recent illness, ‘He looks as bad as any one else! Has he too had no bread to eat?’ when Dirk saw the Burgomaster’s summons, but did not think at first it could be for himself. Those around, however, did not leave him long in ignorance. They cried out to him, and pushed him zealously forward, barely allowing Adrian time to take Roskĕ. ‘It must be his ring he wants,’ thought Dirk. ‘I am glad I have it safe, and with me.’
As soon as he came near enough, he said, bowing low, ‘Here is the ring, your worship—quite safe.’
What had been for so long a strange sound in Leyden, the sound of a laugh, was heard from some of the suite, but the Burgomaster said kindly, ‘Keep the ring, my lad, in remembrance of thy gallant deed.’ Then, accosting the personage beside whom he rode with quite as much reverence as Dirk had shown to himself, he said, ‘Here, your Excellency, is the brave boy who went alone to the Fort of Lammen, and proved that it was deserted.’
Did earth and heaven come together for Dirk Willemszoon that hour? Was he Dirk Willemszoon at all, or some one else quite new, strange and different? Was it a dream—a glorious dream and vision of the night—or was it an actual fact, vouched for afterward by at least a more of credible witnesses—that the Prince spoke to him?
His words—high words of praise—came to him through a golden mist of joy and glory. It was a radiant, rapturous Dirk who a moment afterward flung his cap—the holiday cap—high in air, with the shout, ‘Vivat Oranje! Oranje Boven!’
The sombre, sad-hearted youth was a happy boy again, and yet never had he been so completely a man.
Royalty has this gift from God—countervailing, by His great law of compensation, much sorrow and much care and peril—that a word, a smile, a look even, can uplift thus marvelously the heart of the receiver. The royalty of William of Orange was not inherited; it was that rarer and more precious kind which is won—and won rightly, according to the great Law of the Kingdom, ‘Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.’
Dirk disappeared again into the crowd. He lost sight of his friends, but all around him were friends now, eager to congratulate or to praise. At last he broke away from all, and dived into a solitary, almost deserted street. It led him to the church of St. Pancras. He mounted up to the tower, new no longer crowded with eager, wild-eyed watchers, and stood there in the teeth of the wind—for a strong easterly gala was blowing again that day. Hope deferred had made the heart sick indeed, but now that the desire had come it was a tree of life!
More than his desire had come to Dirk, even an honor and glory of which he never dreamed. Oh, if he could but tell his father that the Prince had spoken to him, had praised him! Do we ever miss our dead so much as when a great joy comes to us, and we cannot share it with them? It is not so hard to bear sorrow alone; we can even say amidst our tears—
‘Well done of God, to halve the lot
And give (them) all the sweetness!’
But when the finger of joy touches us, then we long—oh, how passionately!—to share the thrill with those to whom it would be all, or more than all, it is to us.
‘But,’ said Dirk to himself at last, ‘he may know it, he and my mother too—how can I tell? Yet this I can tell, he has had long ago a better “Well done!” than the Prince’s— “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!”’ And then the thought came to him, ‘Perhaps all this time he has been longing to tell me about that! And perhaps—who knows?—this joy of mine may be God’s way of letting him tell me just a little bit of what his joy is like, that I may feel it in my heart, and be glad for him!’
With the glow of these thoughts in his heart and on his face, Dirk returned home, to be brought back to common life by finding Roskĕ in the crisis of a desperate, uncontrollable fit of naughtiness. But then she had been, through the past weeks, so pathetically good and patient, that it was rather relief to see a small foot stamped angrily, and hear passionate sobs and cries, instead of watching silent tears steal slowly down a pale, woe-begone little face. Dirk, sure that day of victory ‘all along the line,’ and doubly sure of it with his own little lady, advanced confidently—rather too confidently—to the rescue. He could soothe her of course—only let him try! But he was repulsed—repulsed decisively, ignominiously. No, she did not want him. He did not care for her any more. He left her to go to the Prince. She wanted to go to the Prince too, to thank him for sending them bread, to have him speak to her and touch her. And she would, some day, in spite of them all. They should see, and so should Dirk.
We are told there is no such thing in Nature as unrelieved shadow; and certainly in the moral world there is no such thing as unshadowed light. The one little shade upon Dirk’s day of triumph was the humiliating fact that Roskĕ proved more amenable to the English stranger than to him. For Wallingford, in the midst of the tempest (or perhaps rather when it had nearly spent itself), succeeded in making a diversion. He began an alarming description, in very bad Dutch, of what English children would say when they heard that the children of Leyden, instead of thanking God for giving them bread again, were crying loud enough to be heard in the street, and all about nothing. Roskĕ, in answer, said some very contemptuous things about English children—but she listened, and came down gradually into quiet weeping. So, at last, a subdued and penitent little girl was carried off to bed, this time by Wallingford. Dirk was left alone, to reflect upon the checkered events of the day. He had been praised by the Prince of Orange, but he had been repulsed by Roskĕ Pernet, aged seven years.
In the morning, as her father had predicted, a sick child had to be watched and tended. He had rebuked her mother’s distress over her sin.” It is no more the babe’s sin than if she fainted,’ said he. ‘It is the natural result of what she has gone through, and perhaps the beginning of a fever.’
So it proved; but the foyer never ran high, and good food and careful tendance soon restored the child. Dirk had abundant opportunities of proving his devotion; and foyer again, after that one occasion, did Roskĕ give her young knight any serious cause for jealousy, although Wallingford was soon upon intimate terms with her, as with all. He won golden opinions from every one.
Adrian found his society very pleasant. From the first he thought he saw something familiar in his face, and was haunted by the idea that he had known him before, though when or where he could not imagine. Wallingford did not speak much of himself; he had been educated at Oxford, he said, and he mentioned casually one day that he had paid a visit to the Continent a few years before, so Adrian supposed they must somehow have crossed one another’s paths.
The physician was too busy to dwell much upon the subject. The Duke of Wellington’s saying that, except a great defeat, there is nothing sadder than a great victory, was illustrated in Leyden after the siege. Beside the blanks, never to be filled on earth, left in almost every home, the plague was still lingering in her midst, and the air was heavy with infection. Those who escaped were so reduced by hunger as to want care themselves, rather than to be fit to take care of their stricken relatives.
The services of Adrian and his professional brethren were sorely needed; and we gather that they were zealously and efficiently rendered, from the honor put upon their craft in the extraordinary pageant by which, a few months later, the citizens celebrated their victory. There appeared in the procession the Goddess of Medicine, on horseback, holding in one hand a treatise on the healing art, and in the other a ‘garland of drugs.’ Adrian fully deserved to have this singular garland bestowed on him as a crown. Now that there was food and medicine for the sick, the stimulus of hope restored his energies, and he was busy amongst them day and night. Dirk and Wallingford gave all the time they could spare from more active labors, such as repairing the city wall, to helping him in his ministrations: his wife and sister helped also to the outside of their ability. Rose often lamented that she could do so little, so very little.
One day Koos Jäsewyk visited the town, and relieved Dirk’s apprehensions by telling him that their little clearing had escaped devastation, the wood in which his grandfather’s dwelling was, happening to be just outside the ‘polder’ where the waters came. They had heard how Dirk had distinguished himself, and proved a credit to the family, or rather—what was much more in the eyes of these simple people—how he had done good service to ‘the Cause.’ Koos brought him his grandfather’s blessing; and also for his friends and himself, a welcome present of ‘the fruits of the land,’ fragrant apples, delicious pears, and excellent fresh vegetables. Dirk, in return, sent his grandfather the Burgomaster’s ring for a token.
Koos said, ‘He shall keep it for thee, nephew, till thy wedding-day.’
Whereupon Wallingford, who had just come into the room, remarked jestingly, ‘He will need to keep it as long as Jacob waited for Rachel: till thy little Roskĕ grows up for thee, Dirk.’
Dirk’s confusion was overwhelming. If Mynheer Wallingford had named him with the Burgomaster’s daughter, it would not have been more of an impertinence, almost a profanity. Happily, none of the Pernets had heard the horrible insinuation; but for long afterward, whenever he thought of it, he grew hot and red.
Wallingford’s idle jest may have been a bubble blown from off a foaming cup of happiness, filled, as he hoped, for his own lips.
One afternoon, a little later, Adrian came in unexpectedly, and found Rose lying on the settle in the parlor, amidst the cushions so abundant in the comfortable Dutch homestead. It was mid-winter now, and the ruddy glow from the deep-set fireplace shone upon glazed tiling and quaintly-carved, well-polished furniture.
‘Art ill, m’amie?’ he asked, coming to her side with a look of concern.
‘Oh no, not ill. Only tired, and resting for a little. Canst thou stay with me a while, dear heart?’
‘Willingly,’ he answered, drawing over a carved, high-backed chair, and sitting down.
‘I know something, Adrian, that thou knowest not, with all thy wisdom and all thy learning.’
‘Ay, so dost thou. Many things, dear wife.’
‘But this is something that concerns thine own sister.’
‘My sister Marie?’
‘Our sister Marie.’
‘It was like thee, my Rose, to take her for thy sister from the first. Well did you hold together through all those dark days. Not like that fool Berger, whose wife died of the plague, and who pretends now that her sister stole away her jewels in the confusion. But then he is a miser, and a Glipper.’
‘Who is not like that fool Berger?’ asked Rose with a smile. ‘But, Adrian, hast thou observed how beautiful our Marie has begun to look, now that our flowers are lifting up their heads again, after the passing of the storm?’
‘There is one flower, the fairest of all, that I long to see revive,’ said Adrian, looking at her fondly. ‘But I think it droops still.’
‘Thy Rose was ever fair in thine eyes, Adrian. And so fair, methinks, is Marie in the eyes of our English guest.’
Adrian started, looking discomposed. ‘I would not this had happened for a thousand crowns,’ he said.
‘But why?—why?’ Rose ejaculated in surprise—indeed, in dismay. ‘Till now thou didst like him well. What has come to change thee?’
‘I like him more than I trust him, my Rose.’
‘It is true that of late—for the last few days—I have noticed that thy manner towards him seemed different. Surely he can have done nothing to forfeit thy good opinion.’
‘No, he has not done anything.’
‘Then why mislike him, dear heart? I cannot understand it. He is good, devout, warmly attached to the Protestant faith. I know that, in his own land, he worships according to the English ritual. But thinkest thou that need divide us from him?’
‘Certainly not,’ Adrian answered.
Rose went on earnestly: ‘Think of all that Dirk and others have told us of his valor when serving with the Fleet! Yet he is gentle as a maiden with the sick and with Roskĕ. Moreover, we know him to be of honorable birth, and that his father hath a fair estate in his own land.’
‘If all he says be the truth, Rose.’
‘The truth? How have you come to doubt his word?’ Rose asked in increasing astonishment. ‘Have you ever known of his saying the thing that is not?’
‘No; but what if he were acting the thing that is not?’
‘I—do—not—understand.’
‘I thought, from the first moment I saw him, that I knew his face. I said nothing about it, not being sure. But the thing haunted me, I could not get it out of my mind. Three days agone, he came to fetch me in the house of a patient, and helped me to put on my outer coat. In the act, as he and I stood there together, it flashed upon me—I know now who he is—Henry Smith.’
‘Henry Smith? You are talking mysteries to-day, Adrian. Who is Henry Smith?’
‘I forgot that he was gone ere I knew thee. In fact, my Rose, our acquaintance began with my giving thee his cloak and cap by way of disguise, that night—that blessed night— you and your father came to me first.’
‘Oh, then you mean your pupil, who ran away from you! But what could he have to do with Master Wallingford, the Englishman?’
‘Perhaps a good deal,’ said Adrian, with a strange smile. ‘Perhaps as much as I have to do with Adrian Pernet.’
‘What has come over you, Adrian? What mysteries are you talking?’ asked the bewildered Rose. ‘Speak plainly, I implore of you.’
‘Then, to speak plainly, I have grave reasons for suspecting that Edward Wallingford is as much Henry Smith as I am Adrian Pernet.’
‘But if he were, he would say so.’
‘Would he? If men conceal their names, or take feigned ones, they do it for a purpose.’
‘But what purpose could he possibly have? What should he do it for?—The thing is absurd! That youth, you told me, was a protégé of the Cardinal, a pupil of the Jesuits. What should make such an one risk his life for us Protestants?’
‘That he might betray us the more effectually.’
‘Horrible! Oh, Adrian, upon what do you found such a dreadful suspicion?’
‘Upon the man’s face, which is that of the boy, grown older. There is the mustache, and the hair is brown, not golden like Henry’s; but those are the only changes and quite what one would expect. Moreover, he is an Englishman, and Henry had at least an English father.’
‘I do not believe a word of it, Adrian. And it is not like you to take up such a notion. But ask him yourself. That is all you can do.’
‘My dear, innocent Rose, do you think he would confess?’
‘No; but you could judge from his bearing. ‘Twere too dreadful to think of, if he be not what he seems. For—this is what I meant to tell thee, Adrian—I have seen those sweet eyes of Marie’s brighten wonderfully when he entered the room.’
‘If my suspicions are just, I shall be very sorry for Marie, supposing—which I scarce can do—that she has had her fancy caught by him. But I shall be still more sorry for our good town, which has just escaped such awful perils, to have a traitor within her walls, perhaps plotting her destruction.’
‘But I understand he is going soon, to serve under the Prince.’
‘And to practice treachery there? Would that be better, think you, nay Rose?’
Rose raised herself on the couch, and spoke with energy and decision. ‘I think, my Adrian, that you are wholly mistaken in this thing. It cannot—cannot—be true. Since Edward Wallingford came to us, have we seen naught in him save what beseems an honest gentleman and a Christian man. Dirk says, that amongst the wild Sea Beggars in the Scorpion he was still the same—bravest of the brave in all fighting, while from those sins to which fighting tempts men he kept himself pure.’
‘Alas, my dear Rose, neither you nor Dirk can know what you would call in your Scripture language, “the depths of Satan!” I have heard, ere this, of his taking the form of an angel of light.’
‘I believe, with all my heart, that you are wronging a good and true man,’ said Rose, still more earnestly. ‘And, beloved, the matter is serious. Should a hint even of your suspicions get abroad, it would cost our guest his life.’
‘That is true. A spy—or a traitor—would find small mercy here just now, and no wonder. ‘Twere the most merciful course, for himself even, to let him know he is suspected, that he may escape in time. After all, he has eaten bread and salt with us.’
‘He is not a spy or a traitor. Trust a woman’s heart, Adrian.’
‘Whether you are right or I, the honest course is to tell him what I suspect: I think so too. Tell him as soon as you will, for your own satisfaction.’
‘I will speak with him to-night. My eyes are not quick to see, like thine, and well I know it. Yet, what I see— I see.’
He went out, leaving Rose in great uneasiness and perplexity. His own words were true; he was short-sighted, and also unobservant to a fault. His want of memory for faces was a proverb in the household. He was constantly mistaking patients and passing acquaintances in the street. Strange was it, then—more than strange—that he should pretend to recognize, in a man of three or four-and-twenty, a boy whom he had not seen for more than eight years!
Yet, now he had got the idea, Rose did not think it strange that he should cling to it, even obstinately. She knew quite well—quite as well as she knew how much escaped his unobservant eyes—how proud he was of them, how unwilling to be proved in the wrong, when he thought they had for a wonder discovered anything. As Richelieu valued himself more on his bad dramas than on his good statesmanship, so Adrian valued himself, and assumed airs of superior shrewdness, when by chance he made a discovery—as he had really done in Rotterdam, where he found out the dishonesty of a trusted servant. It was not often that he had an opinion at all upon such matters, but when he had, he held to it.
Rose, on the other hand, was strong in her conviction of Wallingford’s truth, and sure that she had guessed the secret of Marie’s heart, even before Marie knew it herself. For his own satisfaction, she wished Adrian to speak to him; but could he be trusted to do it with the wisdom, the calmness, the self-possession necessary in such a crisis? Her judgment told her he could not. In the stress of the storm, Adrian was a good steersman, for peril steadied his nerve and strengthened his hand; but when the ship got into calm water he was apt to relax his grasp and let her drift. His was not the skill for careful guidance amidst reefs and shallows. There was cause, therefore, for much anxiety as to what he might say to Wallingford, and what Wallingford might be provoked into saying to him.
In the dark days Rose had found the refuge of her soul again; and now she turned to it instinctively, as the babe to its mother’s breast. She remembered the words, ‘If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God,’ and she thought, ‘I may surely ask for another, as well as for myself.’ But was that all she needed to ask for her husband? Could she be sure—could she think even—that his heart was at rest, like her own? So she glided naturally from a special request for a special need, to the large, comprehensive prayer for him which filled her heart now, almost without ceasing. ‘Oh, satisfy him with Thy mercy!’
Then there stole over her gradually a restful calm, a sense that she was heard both in the larger prayer and in the lesser. In that calm she fell asleep.