IN less than five minutes Edward stood beside Marie. He found her lying as one crushed, her face buried in the cushions of her couch. Sobs, already low and faint with exhaustion, reached his ear.
‘Look up, m’amie —look up, my beloved, my own,’ he murmured, bending over her bowed head with mingled alarm and tenderness.
But she shook off his caressing touch. ‘Go—go!’ she gasped out.
‘For whom, beloved? For your brother?’ There was a quick movement that he took for assent.
‘Yes, oh yes,’ he said soothingly. ‘I will go for him. But I cannot leave thee until those sweet eyes—’
She raised herself suddenly, and looked him in the face, with eyes not sweet, but wild and strange. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
His heart stood still with terror, but he forced himself to answer calmly, ‘Who but thine own true love come back to thee? Marie, my life, my heart—’
‘Who was it then that came with lying words—with a scarf and a signet ring, and a star on his brow like thine? Oh yes, I remember. It was Austen—Austen Wallingford. Are you Austen—or Edward?’
‘Beloved, I am Edward Wallingford, who laid his heart at thy feet in Leyden—for life and death, and the eternity beyond.’
‘And Rose died, and you went away? And then—then Roskĕ—Hold me—oh, hold me! My head goes round. I fear me, I am going mad.’
In an instant Edward’s arms were about her, and her head was on his breast. Then at last his silent caresses accomplished what his words perhaps might have failed to do. The poor storm-tossed heart slowly grew to realize that this indeed was ‘very Edward.’
She breathed a low and brokers appeal to him for forgiveness of her doubt. ‘And tell me about it all,’ she prayed, ‘for I am in confusion. I think—I fear—that I did something wrong—something against the Prince.’
‘Indeed, it was quite otherwise.’
‘Oh, but tell me, Edward!’
‘I will, beloved; I will surely tell thee all. Only not all at once: for thou art not strong enough to bear it. But be sure, dearest, all is well. We are together, thou and I; and no man can part us more.’
‘But what became of him—the false one—Austen?’ She uttered the name with a visible shudder. ‘Is he gone?’
‘He is gone.’
‘And whither?’
‘That I know not. I only know I was mistaken for him, arrested at the city gate, and put in prison.’
‘You? Put in prison here? I never knew it.’
‘You were too ill to know it, dearest. It was Dirk who saved me. He changed clothes with me, and sent me forth in his stead, a free man.’
‘Now you bewilder me again; for I know you would not go forth, and leave another to suffer in your place.’
‘Not when he told me you were dying? Not to see your living face again?’
‘Was I so ill, then? But Dirk—brave Dirk—how fared it with him?’
‘Worse than I knew—or, even for that, |iI| would scarce have left him there. But all is right now—was set right, indeed, as soon as the Prince, whom God bless, had mended enough to be told the tale by thy brother, who was, as thou knowest, in constant attendance upon him. The Prince spoke to St. Aldegonde, who spoke to the magistrates, and Dirk straightway was set free, with honor. And further, beloved, canst keep a secret?’
‘Why, yes—’
‘Canst keep it from thy brother?’
A sudden look of alarm flitted across her face, which had been growing calmer and calmer as they talked together. ‘Who asked me once to keep a secret from my brother? And I yielded—and it was not well.’
Once more Edward soothed her with loving words and caresses. ‘There is no harm in this secret,’ he explained. ‘It is but kept from thy brother for the love of him.’
As she still looked anxious and troubled he went on. ‘This it is—Dirk was offered a place in the Prince’s guard, but, though he adores the Prince, he refused, that he might stay with Dr. Adrian, and serve him. And he prayed thy brother might not know, lest out of very love he should try to change his purpose.’
‘Well done of Dirk,’ said Marie, not unmoved.
Both to Edward’s relief and Adrian’s, Marie was not seriously the worse for these disclosures. Her mind was slowly, but surely, recovering its grasp of the past and its balance in the present. The next day she asked Edward to tell her about his long captivity, and his deliverance.
The first part of the request he rather evaded. ‘There will be time enough, dearest, in the days to come, to tell thee all. Not that there is much to tell, save just this—throughout all God was with me.’
‘But I would know at least how you regained your freedom?’
‘Verily, I understand it not well myself. Austen had, been gone for long—on what errand I little knew. He had left money with me, and had given me in charge, for spiritual ministrations (which of course I rejected) to one high in office amongst them—called the Regent, I think—whom I take to have been his own Director, as they say—and for kindly care and service to a good-hearted lay brother, of whom I shall always think with gratitude. He it was who gave me the hint, that if I chose to try and escape, I should find the way open. It was on the very day that the news reached us of the Prince’s assassination; and I have often wondered since, if there could have been any connection between the two.’
(There was a very real one, but Edward never knew, and was never meant to know, its nature or extent.) ‘My friend the Director—or Superior—or Regent—a tall red-haired man, of stately presence, I think I see him now—told me, with exultation, that the Prince was dead, and “gone to his own place.” I said, I made no doubt of it, and it was place where they would never come. Soon afterward poor Brother Denys came to me with the whisper of hope. At first I doubted of it, fearing some snare. But I thought of seeing thy face again, Marie, and dared everything. His words proved true; I suspect that, for whatever reason, the Jesuit fathers meant to get rid of me. My adventures on the way I shall keep for a pleasant tale, to while away the hours of some winter night. Enough, I am here, and thou beside me, dear heart.’
A few days later the quiet Place aux Gants witnessed a stirring scene. A great coach, with four horses, and attendants in blue, white, and orange, drew up at the door of the modest dwelling of Dame Catherine Blois, much to the wonder and admiration of all beholders. There stepped out a lady in silk and ermine, leading by the hand a pretty little girl, and attended by a handsome dark-eyed boy of fifteen. Adrian— summoned by Neeltje, who rushed into his study without even a deprecatory cough—hurried out bareheaded and with the lowest of reverences, in time to load in Madame la Princesse, come to visit his sister. Marie’s story was better known now at the Prinsen-hof than she knew it herself; and a girl who, all alone, had locked in and stood guard over a man she suspected of a share in. Anastro’s plot, had certainly some claim to be considered a heroine. Nor had Charlotte of Bourbon forgotten Utrecht, or the face of the dead child she kissed after the mournful triumph there.
Her own face was pale with long watching, and her eyes had dark rims round them. The physician’s quick ear noted her constant cough; although doubtless, after her long confinement, fresh air was essential to her, the keen winds of that late spring made him tremble for her. There had grown up in his heart a great reverence for this loving, deep-hearted woman: a physician has many opportunities of watching men and women in the furnace seven times heated, and seeing which of them come forth like gold.
Whilst the Princess and her little daughter, Mademoiselle Louise-Juliane, talked with Marie in the house, Adrian stood at the door, conversing with her stepson, the young Count Maurice, who could by no means be persuaded to come in. He was abundantly brave, as he had shown on that terrible Sunday, when he stood on guard over the assassin’s body, and had it searched in his presence; but he was also desperately shy, already evincing that dislike to ladies’ society which he retained all his life.
Adrian found the time much longer than did Marie; who told him afterward, with a beaming face, that the visit of the Princess had made her quite well, she was able for anything now.
‘But, brother,’ she asked, the old look of perplexity returning for a moment, ‘was I brave that day, and true to the Prince? I do not remember.’
‘You do not remember,’ Adrian answered. ‘But he does.’