ON that same 20th day of October, 1576, while Edward Wallingford was defending that door in Maastricht with the courage of despair, little Roskĕ Pernet was sitting in the balcony of her father’s house in Utrecht, weaving lace. Swiftly the small fingers flew amongst the bobbins; and rapidly, beneath their magic touches, the pattern grew. Roskĕ detested her needle, and despised her knitting pins; but she loved this kind of work, and promised to be very skillful in it.
Lace cannot well be made without looking at it, so her eyes, veiled by their long lashes, were bent demurely downwards; and one golden curl, which had escaped from under her stiff white cap, fell down too, nearly touching the pillow. It was the only irregular thing about the quaint little figure in the blue petticoat and black bodice, relieved by kerchief and apron, and snowy cap with the golden ornaments, like spoons, that kept it in its place on her shapely head. But the downcast face was like a bud, which would ‘know its time’ to unfold into a glorious flower. The large eyes seemed to have caught their blue from Southern summer skies, while the rounded features promised, in their every line and tint, a yet fairer perfection in the future. They had already that sweet, puro look one so often sees in children. The pureness was always there, like the delicate hue of an alabaster lamp the sweetness came and went, like the presence or absence of the light within. Roskĕ was no angel child; no aureole, save her own golden hair, encircled her beautiful head. She was very human; generous, unselfish, loving, but sometimes passionate, and often self-willed.
Her sweet childish treble trilled out high and clear, like the song of a bird. Her voice, which gave promise of remarkable power, easily reached the street below. The passers-by lingered to listen; until quite a little crowd had gathered outside the house. Part of the charm, no doubt, was in the words she sang; words which suited as well the time, and place, and circumstances as they seemed to suit ill the rosy lips that were pouring them forth with such unction and fervor. For she sang the noble ‘Wilhelmuslied’ —
Of lineage high and noble,
Imperial ancestry
My boast, above all others,
A Christian Prince to be.
For God’s Word well beloved,
All fearlessly and free,
I ready am to venture
My life and liberty.
My trust, my shield and buckler,
Thou hast been, and art still;
On Thee my hope is founded,
In me Thy word fulfill,
That I may be found able
To serve Thee evermore,
The tyranny destroying
That wounds my deep heart’s core.
From all those who withstand me,
And persecute and hate,
Thy servant, Lord, deliver;
Oh, be it not my fate
That their wiles should surprise me,
And their hands be embrued
(Success their efforts crowning),
In my most guiltless blood!
My princely fervent spirit
Remains unbroken still,
My heart in days of trial
The peace of God doth fill.
My prayer to Him has risen,
That He my cause will plead
My innocence proclaiming,
Fulfilling every need.
Ye, my poor flock forsaken,
In peril dire and deep—
Dispersed, worn, and wasted—
Your Shepherd does not sleep.
His word unfailing ever
Be still your staff and guide;
The day of toil is waning,
Rest comes at eventide.
The last words of the singer were drowned in a ringing cheer from the crowd below, followed by repeated, thundering shorts of ‘Vivat Oranje! Oranje boven!’
Roskĕ threw down her pillow, stood up, and leant over the low parapet, well pleased. Fresh cheers greeted her as she stood there; for the Orange Party in Utrecht was daily growing stronger; in fact, it would soon be strong enough to sweep away every opposing force.
How she would have responded it is impossible to say. She was quite capable of making a little speech, exhorting all men to love and obey the Prince; and perhaps she would have done it, had not the voice of her Aunt Marie called loudly from within, ‘Roskĕ!—Roske!’
The habit of obedience prevailed. With a sigh of regret she turned her eyes from the exciting spectacle of the street, and her thoughts from the ‘princely fervent spirit’ of her hero, took up her pillow and went in.
‘Sit down, child, and take thy sewing-work,’ said Tant’ Marie, in a tone of reproof. ‘Thou shouldest not ring so loud out there on the balcony. They will have heard thee in the street.’
‘They have heard me, Tant’ Marie,’ said Roskĕ, well satisfied. ‘And it has done them good,’ she added grandly.
‘Heaven help thee, poor babe,—talking like that of doing good to thine elders! But know that it is not meet, nor seemly, for a little maid like thee to sing so loud that folk in the street stop and listen to her. Thy father would not like it.’
‘My father likes everything I do,’ Roskĕ retorted with much truth. ‘Do you not, father?’ she asked, as Dr. Adrian Pernet came that moment into the room. He was now about seven and thirty; his hair and beard were already touched with gray, and his tall spare form stooped a little. His face, usually dreamy and abstracted, was lit up just now with suppressed pride and pleasure; for, through the open windows of his room below, he had heard every word of Roskĕ’s song, nor had he missed the applause that greeted it. No disapproval checked his joy in her: but for all that he did not wish her to see it. ‘What do I not, my Roskĕ?’ he asked with assumed unconcern.
‘Do you not like me to sit in the balcony and sing, father?’
‘Why not? Sit there as often as thou wilt, ma mie. So thou dost not fall over,’ he added, his hidden amusement and satisfaction finding vent in a very feeble joke.
‘But, father, may I sit there and sing the Wilhelmus?’
‘Why not?’ Adrian said again; and probably he would have said the same, had she proposed to deliver a sermon instead of a song. ‘Prithee, Marie, wilt sew on this button for me ere I go forth?’
‘Me—me, father!’ Roskĕ cried, rushing across the room to find her usually hated needle and thread.
‘Make it firm, thee. Pastor Duifhuis must not think my little daughter cannot sew.’
‘You may trust me, father,’ said Roskĕ; whilst kind Tant’ Marie, forgetting her late annoyance, sought out and gave her what she needed.
‘Thou goest to see Pastor Duifhuis, brother?’ she said. ‘Wilt thou ask him if there be any tidings?’
Adrian nodded, well knowing what she meant. Since their coming to Utrecht, she had heard from Edward Wallingford once, and once only. Perhaps that was as often, all things considered, as she had a right to expect. Still, Hope does not always tarry the leisure of her bold and confident brother, Expectation.
Roskĕ sewed on the button to admiration—to her father’s admiration at least. Then she brought him his doctor’s hat with the modal of the Gueux upon it, his shoes, and his gold-headed cane, receiving in payment the usual kiss—and the look that told, what she knew already, that she was the very light of his eyes.
To her, he was the best and greatest man that had ever lived. Her world contained two great beneficent powers, the Prince of Orange and Dr. Adrian Pernet. These two between them would have made every one happy, were they not, unfortunately, opposed and thwarted by three mighty powers of evil, the Devil, the King of Spain, and Dr. Kaspar Maldeer. The two first ate already well known to our readers; the third was a rival physician, who, jealous of Adrian’s professional successes in Utrecht, had circulated certain calumnies against him. Especially, he had accused him of want of orthodoxy, a heinous crime in the eyes of the zealous ‘Reformed.’ But Adrian had a good friend in Pastor Hector Duifhuis: a remarkable man, who seems, from the scanty records we have of him, to have been a sort of sixteenth-century Charles Kingsley. He was unusually broad-minded and large-hearted, and certainly much stronger upon duty than upon doctrine. If all that is told of him be true, he carried toleration even to a blameable excess. But that he should practice it at all, and still more that he should profess it in that age, marks him out as no common man. In the eyes of his brethren his own orthodoxy was doubtful; and he did not help to establish it by casting his shield over the scientific physician. Adrian used to hold long and intimate conversations with him, to what purpose no one knew. Roskĕ supposed he was teaching the pastor ‘all about bones;’ Marie hoped the pastor was teaching some better things to him.
Adrian’s grief for Rose was ‘as deep as life or thought,’ and all the deeper for its silence and repression. If gradually from the wound the keen and thrilling pain died out, it was because he had found an anodyne in impersonal thought, and a sweet balm in the one love left him on earth. That which would not alone have soothed his grief but healed it, he knew not yet, for ‘his eyes were holden.’ The supreme consolation of loving submission to the will of a loving Father was not his; he had to live his life as best he could without it. So do thousands all around us, bearing their own burdens, and bearing them alone. Often they bear them very bravely drawing the amenities of social life like an outer garment over the deep wounds within. They die and make no sign; or they live on, which perhaps is harder. But if the secret of their hearts could be revealed, its pathos would lie ‘too deep for tears,’ too deep for anything save impassioned prayer. Not one of us, who have the Birthright and the Blessing too, should fail to send up for them a cry of uttermost longing— ‘Bless these who know Thee not; even these also, O our Father!’
Some lightening of his burden had come to Adrian when he found his notebook again. As soon as he was settled in Utrecht—in a home of his own, for he did not care to remain with the Floriszoons—he sent to Rotterdam for his books and scientific implements, including the skeleton. So he gradually slipped back into the pleasant paths of scientific research, from which for a time he had been diverted. ‘I would have despised myself,’ said Madame de Staël, ‘if I could have written during the Reign of Terror;’ and to Adrian it would have been equally impossible to have studied bones and sinews during the agony of Leyden. But now that the pressure was removed, and he found himself able, with a moderate amount of exertion, to earn a sufficient, and even a liberal maintenance, there was nothing to prevent his returning to his favorite pursuits. It was at this time that the structure of the eye and the laws of sight began to engage his attention and awaken his interest. He hoped to add somewhat, in this department, to the sum of human knowledge. He conceived the idea of uniting with these new researches his former studies upon the human hand, and publishing all together in a great work, upon the hand, the eye, and the ear. Should time be given him to accomplish this, his name might go down to posterity linked with that of his great master Vesalius. Could ambition’s self dare to look higher than that? Fame, perhaps, might not come to him while he lived. Still, it would come afterward. He did not call it Fame, he called it ‘Immortality;’ and it was the only immortality of which he thought much just then.
Yet, after all, it might not tarry so long on its way. Who could say how soon it might come, bringing with it wealth enough for him to surround his little Roskĕ with luxuries, to make her an heiress, to arrange for her a brilliant marriage? Sometimes his imagination played about this subject with quite curious insistence. Dearer than any crown that Fame might place upon his own head would be the bridal crown of his Roskĕ—the crown of honor, glory, prosperity and joy.
This then was what he sought, although not all he sought, amongst the dry bones, which were anything but dry to him. The chase, it has been truly said, is better than the quarry, the labor more than its results. To Adrian the labor and the chase were absorbing, fascinating, whatever the end of both might be.