ADRIAN’S path, during the four weeks that followed the Joyous Entry, was not strewn with rose-leaves. He was very anxious about public affairs. Like other thoughtful men in Antwerp, he stood in much doubt of the new Duke of Brabant; whose mean, unkingly exterior he took for an index of the soul within. It was almost too hard a talk, even for the Prince, to make men trust the brother of the royal butcher of St. Bartholomew. ‘We must have help against Spain, and whence except from France can that help come to us?’ Adrian asked continually of himself and of others. But he asked it with a foreboding heart.
More personal cares pressed upon him heavily. He had carried out his intention of sending for Dirk, in spite of the strong and wholly unexpected opposition of Marie.
‘I thought you set much store by him,’ he said to her. ‘And, moreover, he is Edward’s friend. He will be glad to see him.’
‘I have naught against the lad,’ Marie allowed. ‘Only it looks as if you could not live without him. I think you make Popish idols of him and of the Prince.’
Adrian smiled. ‘How proud Dirk would be, if he heard you name him in such company! But in truth, it is partly for Edward’s sake that I desire his presence. I would, Marie, thou wouldest use thy influence with thy betrothed, that he shut himself not up in his chamber like a fasting monk or a sick maiden, instead of going to the Palace of St. Michael, and consorting with his own countrymen who have come with the Duke—gentlemen, too, of such fair fame and noble bearing. There is the illustrious Lord Leicester; and Sir Philip Sidney, of whose youthful renown Edward himself told us with such pride in Leyden.’
‘Speak to Master Wallingford yourself,’ Marie answered shortly. ‘As for me, what I have not I cannot use.’
‘“Master Wallingford!”’ repeated Adrian, with a helpless, puzzled look. ‘Ah, Marie, I am sore afraid things are not right between you!’
‘Right enough, if people would only let us alone,’ said Marie, with unmistakable temper, or want of it.
This was not the only instance in which she showed an irritation which was very new to her. Moreover, she had grown absent-minded, and neglectful even of the household duties she used to perform so zealously. It was an evidence of this, that Adrian went forth one morning with his starched ruff awry, and a conspicuous rent in the front of his doublet.
He was met in this condition by his much-respected pastor and friend M. Grandpére, who improved the occasion to exhort him—with a plainness of speech characteristic of the times—to take unto himself, as wife, some staid and pious gentlewoman, of suitable years and good conditions.
Adrian turned away from his spiritual pastor and master in no very happy frame of mind. He wandered into the public garden, which was near, and the day being fine and mild for early March, sat down upon a seat to rest and think. Here an unexpected solace came to him. A group of merry children, all little girls, were playing about, under the charge of a couple of attendants, gentlewomen, whose dress and language showed them to be French. Adrian well knew the little children of the Prinsen-hof,—no palace, but a large hired house near the citadel, where the Prince had made his home. He lured one of them to his side, a winning little girl of six or seven, who was very willing to climb upon his knee, and to inform him she was Mademoiselle Louise-Juliana de Nassau, Princesse en Orange;’ adding a great deal more, in a pretty childish lisp which it gave him a thrill of sweet anguish to hear. Strange it was to feel the touch of the little hands again; he loved it, even while it wrung his heart. And was there not a bond between him and this baby Princess? Her father had held Roskĕ; in his arms.
As he returned to his silent dwelling he said with himself, ‘Thank God for giving our deliverer, amidst all his troubles, the priceless solace of a happy home!’
It was Sunday morning, the 18th of March, the birthday of the Duke of Anjou and Brabant. Dirk had arrived in Antwerp very late the night before; so he went to an inn (of more modest pretensions than Wallingford’s Vieux Doelen), and only met his friends at the door of the grand cathedral, where the Masa was now replaced by a simple service and sermon. Adrian could not marvel that Wallingford failed to recognize, in the handsome bearded man, the boy he had known and loved. He said, ‘Come back with us, both of you, after service, and dine, and you shall find each other again.’
They did so; and sat over their meal for a long time, talking. But what they said each to other, no one of them remembered afterward. It was blotted at one stroke from the minds of all.
Dirk had for some time been sitting in silence, gazing as one in doubt and perplexity on the face of Wallingford, when noise in the Place outside attracted his attention He rose, and went to the window. ‘Since the Duke, has come, do they keep Sunday by rioting here?’ he asked, pointing to the excited crowd that came rushing into the Place.
A great cry—a cry like none he had ever heard before—drowned his voice. Grief and rage mingled in it; but in the long wail that ended it grief alone was heard. All were at the window now. Adrian flung it up and shouted, ‘What is it?’
One word alone surged up from the tossing crowd, ‘The Prince’ — ‘The Prince!’
‘He is dead!’ said Dirk with white lips, turning to the rest.
Adrian clung for support to the window frame. He had known all his life, as it seemed to him, that this thing would be, and would be to-day.
Wallingford said, ‘You don’t know that.’ His face too was deadly pale.
But Adrian rallied his forces again, in another moment he and Dirk were already half-way down the stairs.
The two who were left stood silent. Wallingford looked dazed and irresolute, and seemed about to leave the room. But apparently thinking better of it, he approached the window instead, and leaning out, asked for tidings. A man detached himself from the crowd, and spoke. ‘He is killed,’ he said. ‘After dinner, at the Prinsen-hof, one approached with a petition, and as the Prince took it from him, drew a pistol from under his coat and shot him through the head. A vile assassin, hired by the King of Spain!’
‘No; by the Duke of Anjou and the French,’ a bystander interrupted fiercely; and wild words began between the two, others joining in.
Wallingford raised his voice again, but either it was hoarse and weak, or the uproar was too great for him to be heard. At last he shouted, ‘What has become of Him?’
He had to repeat the question twice ere any one guessed that he meant the assassin. Then some one answered, ‘Killed on the spot.’
He drew a long breath, stood up, closed the window deliberately, and turned away.
Looking round the room, he saw that he was alone ‘Marie,’ he thought, ‘has been turned faint by the tidings.’ But it was not anxiety for her which set the mark of such an ashy pallor on his too expressive face. Any one who saw him would have called it sheer terror. He was beginning slowly to recover his natural expression when Marie re-entered the room. At a glance he saw that a change had passed over her. There are times that make the weakest strong, the most timid brave.
Without saving a word she went to the window, re-opened it, and threw something out. ‘What is that?’ he asked. ‘The keys of this room,’ she answered quietly, taking her stand by the open window.
That was ill done. If you are afraid the house will be attacked by the mob, you have taken a poor way to prevent it: ‘I am afraid of nothing now. Austen Wallingford, you are a murderer! The brand of Cain is on your forehead!’ ‘How dare you utter such words?’
‘By my despair and my self-loathing. How could I have been so blind to your horrible purpose? God forgive me! But I fear He never will.’
‘Now indeed, you are raving mad! What wild delusion is this? Of what do you suspect me?’
‘You may have words for such a crime. I have none.’
‘Then I am to infer you suspect me of shooting the Prince of Orange in his own house, although I was not out of your sight this day, from before the preaching until this very hour, when I stand and listen to your ravings! Heard a man ever the like?’
‘I am a woman, Austen Wallingford, and no doubt you suppose me a fool. Indeed, I can scarcely blame you, for I have behaved as such. Yet even a fool understands that the man who struck the blow must have confederates—accomplices—worse villains perhaps than himself. You are one of them.’
‘‘Twere idle to argue with a woman beside herself. Yet there is one thing which may give you pause. Were I as innocent as poor little Roskĕ in her grave, still, in the present temper of men’s minds, the lightest hint of such an accusation would suffice to doom me.’
‘I know it. Therefore I have locked the door, and I stand here at the window, so that if you try to escape before my brother comes back, I have only to call out three words to yonder crowd, and you are a dead man.’
‘And Edward is a dead man too. Remember that.’
‘I do. If he stood beside me here, his own lips would say—better die a thousand deaths than be false to the Prince Whom you put in the place of God. So God has judged him, and given him over to his enemies.’
‘That He has not. After death, no more that they can do! Neither to the Prince, nor to Edward.’
‘You will repent this frenzy one day. Enough, I will not stoop to protestations or entreaties. If it please you to sacrifice two lives, one of which ought to be dear to you, I will not hinder you. A man can die but once.’ He folded his arms and took his stand beside her in the window.