IT behooved men, in those days, when their lives were short, and brimful of incident and adventure, to settle their affairs quickly. Adrian meant to speak to Wallingford that very evening; but he was detained all night at the house of a patient, and when he returned in the morning he found that Wallingford wanted particularly to speak to him.
He received him with somewhat the air of a fencer who stands on guard, and asked him what he wished to say.
Wallingford, surprised at the tone, raised his eyebrows a little, but answered in his usual manner ‘I have received this morning my commission from the National Estates.’
The Estates of Holland and Zealand were the body of which William of Nassau was the soul, and in formal and public acts it was the body which appeared.
‘Then,’ said Adrian, ‘I am to congratulate you.’
‘Certainly, M. Perrenot.’ They were speaking French, as they usually did amongst themselves. Wallingford knew it much better than Dutch.
Adrian asked sharply: ‘Who told you my name was Perrenot, not Pernet?’
‘I forget. I think it was Madame. —But indeed, my friend, you may congratulate me. Never did Israelite under Gideon or David, or Greek at Marathon or Thermopylæ, serve in a holier cause, or under a nobler leader.’
‘Strong words, M. Wallingford. Do you go at once?’
‘I only wait the orders of my colonel, as to when and where I am to join my regiment.’
The two men stood in silence, looking each other in the face. Adrian found it very hard, unexpectedly hard, to bring out what he had to say to this fair-browed, honest-looking Englishman.
Wallingford, too, was experiencing a difficulty which a few days before would scarcely have troubled him. He could not help seeing, whether he guessed the cause or no, that the face of Adrian ‘was not towards him,’ in the expressive Scripture phrase. Yet he was the first to break the silence. ‘M. le Docteur Perrenot—or Pernet if you will—I have a favor to ask of you, a very great favor. May I?’
‘Any man may ask a favor, M. Wallingford. Will you sit down?’
They had been standing in Adrian’s study. Now they sat down; Adrian with his face, Wallingford with his back, to the window.
‘I have been very happy here,’ Wallingford began. ‘I have to thank you, M. le Docteur, and every member of your family, for most welcome hospitality and for much kindness.’
‘No need of thanks. Your company has been pleasant to us all,’ Adrian could not help saying, the instinct of hospitality prevailing over the spirit of suspicion—and he said no more than the truth.
‘They that have had much, desire more,’ Wallingford went on, not without hesitation. ‘And I hope, monsieur, that you will not think me the most ungrateful—as you must needs think me the boldest—of men, if I propose repaying your hospitality by robbing your home of the choicest and fairest of its jewels.’
He spoke in the style common to cultured Englishmen of his day and generation.
‘Well, monsieur, go on,’ said Adrian when he paused; though his tone was not as encouraging as his words.
‘M. Perrenot, I love your sister, the Demoiselle Marie,’ Wallingford said plainly; and now he spoke in the style of a lover, of any age or dime.
‘And therefore,’ said Adrian a little dryly, ‘you would ask her to share the destinies of a soldier of fortune in this wild and cruel war.’
‘Not so; you wrong me. All I ask for at present is promise—betrothal. The war will not last always. When there is an honorable peace—or when my part therein is honorably fulfilled, an’ if God spare my life—I can bring my bride to a fair English home, where love and reverence will encompass her, and where, even for this world’s goods, she will lack nothing.’
‘Knows my sister aught of this, M. Wallingford?’
Wallingford hesitated. ‘My lips have been silent,’ he said at last. ‘But the heart has other ways of speaking, and I dare not say to you that hers has not understood.’
‘I have heard you, M. Wallingford. Now it is right that you, in your turn, should hear me.’
‘It is certainly right, monsieur, and what I most desire.’
‘And first, will you answer me, truly and candidly, a few questions?’
‘As many as you will, M. le Docteur. I fully recognize your right to ask them. Would you ask concerning my father’s position in his own country, his estate and revenue? According to his rent roll, he has by the year—’
‘Spare yourself the trouble of entering upon that for the present, M. Wallingford. Instead, I wish to ask of you—’
Here, conscious that from his position he could not see the lace of Wallingford, he rose and drew sidewards. Walling-ford was about to rise too, but he stretched out a detaining hand. ‘M. Edward Wallingford, when were you last in Antwerp?’
‘In Antwerp? I was never in Antwerp.’
‘I understood you to say you had traveled, ere this.’
‘In France only. In the time of peace, before the terrible St. Bartholomew, three of us, myself and two Oxford friends, went forth together to see the fair city of Paris, and other wonders of the land of France. We were not long there, for the strange meats and sour wines made one of us so ill that he was like to die.’
‘Will you swear upon the holy gospels that you never were in Antwerp—never in your life?’
‘Why should I swear anything so unnecessary and uncalled for? Does any one accuse me of a crime, committed in a city I have never seen?’ asked Edward in a tone of amazement.
‘Were you ever a scholar in the Jesuit College of Treves?’
‘Me? At a Jesuit College? M. Perrenot, you must be dreaming. I was taught my Humanities by a tutor, a learned man of honest conditions, who had been the friend of good Bishop Latimer, the martyr of God. Afterward, I went to Oxford, as the manner of our youth is. I was never out of England, save for that journey to France, until I came here.’
‘You show at times some acquaintance with the rudiments of medicine.’
Wallingford looked more and more astonished and uncomprehending. ‘What, in Heaven’s name, has my haphazard knowledge of a few simples to do with my being at Treves, or in Antwerp?’ he asked. ‘I had a friend in Oxford, a student of medicine, who used to discourse by the hour about Galen and Hippocrates, and what was more to the purpose, told me of two or three safe and useful remedies.’
‘You have an answer for every question, M. Wallingford; Somewhat strange and unexpected questions, I cannot but find them,’ Wallingford said. ‘But speak on, M. Perrenot, ask me what you will.’
‘Then I ask this one question more. Look me straight in the face, I pray of you, as you answer it. Have you ever known a youth who called himself by the name of Smith?’
Wallingford laughed outright. ‘I have known a dozen,’ he said. ‘The name is common with us, as its equivalents, Schmidt, Faber, Fabricius, are elsewhere. I remember the saying of a learned doctor in Oxford, that amongst our rude forefathers there was no art, or craft, so highly valued as the smith’s. Hence men were proud to be called after it. But I pray of you, M. Perrenot, be plain with me. To what is all this leading? What have you heard of me? Am I accused of robbing or murdering someone who dwelt in Antwerp, and bore that not very remarkable name?’
‘Yes, Edward Wallingford, I will be plain with you. God forgive me if I wrong you, still I cannot but think—Marie, my dear sister, what do you want here?’
Whilst he was speaking, Marie had glided into the room, as noiseless as a ghost, and almost as colorless, and now she stood between them, laying her hand on the arm of Adrian, ‘Come, brother, at once,’ she said breathlessly— ‘Rose has fainted.’
Henry Smith and his delinquencies, Edward Wallingford and his mysteries, vanished from the mind of Adrian. A moment brought him to the couch where his wife was lying unconscious, little Roskŏ standing beside her, with large awe-struck eyes, in which great tears were slowly gathering. Adrian sent the child for wine, and put his hand on Rose’s pulse. ‘How was it?’ he asked of Marie.
She explained briefly. This morning she ate scarce anything—but it is always so now. She said she would go and see Mother Kampen and bring her some soup. I went for it to the kitchen. When I came back she was taking her cloak out of the great oak chest—but she turned and said to me, ‘I think I will rest a little first.’ I saw her tremble and grow white, and was just in time to get her to the couch before she fainted quite away.’
‘Oh, father, is she dead?’ faltered Roskĕ, returning with the wine. Children do not easily believe in death but in the evil days this child of seven had already seen enough to make—
‘The sphinx of life stand pallid
With her saddest secret told.’
‘No—no,’ her father answered:—he was bending over Rose, loosing her clothing. Looking up, he met the sympathetic eyes of Wallingford, who had followed them into the room; and he sent him to the shop to ask Floriszoon for certain restorative medicines. ‘It is not death,’ he said to himself. But his heart, which felt like load within him, added in a whisper, ‘Not yet.’
Even when, after a long time, consciousness returned, the shadow did not pass. There was no real return of strength.
So things went on for a week, or more. Life seemed to Adrian to be standing still. Yet Rose never spoke of herself as ill. She was only tired, she always said; she only wanted a little rest. All combined to surround her with an atmosphere of loving ministration, and none showed more thoughtful and delicate sympathy than Edward Wallingford. It was almost impossible, to a man like Adrian, to continue to suspect the unobtrusive yet ever serviceable friend, who ‘was never in the way, and never out of the way,’ of being a spy and traitor, and consequently a villain. Especially when Rose trusted him so entirely. She did not speak of him again to Adrian, but she treated him as a brother, and would sometimes say to him little things which meant much, such as this— ‘Marie looks pale to-day. Take her forth, I pray of you, to breathe the air for a while.’ From which it may be seen that those sad days were not without their gleams of consolation, for Edward and for Marie.
One evening, whilst Adrian was sitting with Rose, she moved her lips.
‘Did you want to speak to me?’ he asked, coming back from a mournful dream of the future, which stretched out very blank before him.
‘No, beloved; not especially. What I have said to God for thee, He keeps. One day, He will speak.’
‘Is there naught I can do for thee, my Rose?’
‘Thou hast done all for me—all that man can do. Remember that always. There has been no shadow on our years together, save those which God sent. You must never say hereafter, “I could have been more— done more.” You could not.’
Adrian forced back his tears to say, ‘But hast thou nothing to tell me of, m’amie? No wish, even—about for example?’
‘Only that thou wouldest teach her to fear and love her father’s God.’
‘Thy father’s God.’ Adrian corrected.
She fixed her large eyes on him earnestly. ‘Thy God, Adrian—and my father’s God, and mine. Because the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Adrian, to-morrow we will ask the Pastor to come and give us the tokens of His love, and this time there will not be one lacking at the Feast. Though I know you went away that day only that we might have all the bread.’
But Rose was to keep the Feast in another place.
In the dark of the next morning, a light flashed into the eyes of the sleeping Roskĕ, and looking up bewildered, she saw Dirk beside her. She would have cried out; but he stopped her in time.
‘Hush, Juffrouw, Mevrouw will hear,’ he said. ‘Dear Juffrouw, she wants you to come to her and say good-bye.’
He helped the dazed and frightened child to rise, and wrapped her carefully in a warm cloak he had brought. ‘Is mother going away?’ she asked, only half awake.
‘Not going away, going up,’ Dirk said. He led her by the hand; she was not a babe now to be carried, but a woman child, entering upon her woman’s heritage of love and sorrow.
Throughout the night remembrances of her father had been floating fitfully across the weakened brain of Rose. ‘Because,’ thought Adrian, ‘she expects so soon to see him.’ But on his saving something of this, she answered: ‘No, not him. It is the Lord I shall see first. He has the key, and opens the door. But my father stayed for me—for the last kiss. And I must stay for Roskĕ.’ And so, ere the breaking of the day, Roskĕ was sent for. Her mother could not stay for her any longer.
An awful silence reigned, as she entered, in the torch-lit room. Her father lifted her on the bed, and the parting kiss was given in silence. But at the touch, the child’s self-control gave way, and with a deep, half-smothered sob, she wailed, ‘Mother, mother, I will come too’
‘Take her away,’ said Adrian in a hoarse whisper. Dirk led her out; and soon Tant’ Marie came, took her tenderly in her arms and said: ‘My poor child, thy mother is with God.’
Thus ‘departed in God’ the last victim of the agony of Leyden: the gleaning of the grapes after the vintage of Death.