NEVER morning rose more brightly over an eager, joyous city, than rose over Antwerp the morning of July 13, 1566. The continuous tramp of feet outside awoke the sleepers early, after brief repose. Those in the household of the Place aux Gants were no laggards. Rose and Betteken had soon performed their necessary household tasks: then Betteken donned the stuff bodice and petticoat, and the elaborately starched white linen cap, that suited her station; while Rose might now resume without danger her simple holiday dress, the robe of taffetas with hanging sleeves and embroidered front, and the close-fitting cloth hood, out of which her sweet face peeped daintily.
She had thought her father sleeping, and looking, as he slept, unusually well. Suddenly, however, he called her to his side; and, to her surprise, expressed a wish to be carried into the other room, ‘if the doctor will permit, and if it is not inconvenient to any one,’ he added, with his usual gentle deference to others.
Rose feared it might try his strength too much; but he answered her cheerfully, ‘Oh no, I feel so strong to-day.’ Adrian, who had gone out, came back just then, and not only gave a willing consent, but went at once to ask the help of their landlord, whose arms were stronger than his principles.
The move was soon accomplished, and Marchemont laid comfortably upon Adrian’s bed. Then Adrian proffered his escort to Rose and Betteken, for the streets were crowded, and the house of the Venetian merchants at some distance. ‘Surely, then,’ said Rose, ‘you will stay with us and see the Prince?’
Adrian shook his head: ‘I have not time,’ he said. ‘I am as glad as any man that the Prince is coming to keep order in the town, for he is a tower of strength to us all. Still, I have no particular desire to see that handsome, Spanish-looking face of his.’
This assertion Rose did not quite believe. How could any one not care to see the Prince? The doctor, as usual, was sacrificing himself to his duties. But had she known why he wished not to be long absent from Marchemont that day, she would not have gone herself.
She bent down to give her father the farewell kiss, never omitted, however brief her absence. He looked at her fondly, wistfully: ‘God guard thee, my child!’ he said.
‘How well he seems to-day!’ she remarked to Betteken as they went out.
Adrian returned soon, and Marchemont stretched out his hand to him with a welcome which was almost eager. The physician sat down beside him, and taking the thin hand in his, quietly laid a finger on the wrist.
‘I have something to say,’ Marchemont began, speaking quickly and, for him, very clearly.
‘Say on, my friend. But—you are not as strong this morning as you seem. Do not excite yourself.’
‘Never was I so calm! I am in the midst of a great deep calm, like a sea of glass, that no storms can ruffle.’
‘I am afraid,’ Adrian said uneasily, ‘that I do not understand you.’
‘You will one day,’ Marchemont said, ‘and there is no one for whom I so desire it. M. Adrian Perrenot, do you think I have lain here all these months without learning to love you—love you as a father loves a son?’
Adrian felt a pulse stir in his heart, and a moisture rise to his eyes. His had been hitherto the life of thought, not of feeling. Even for his adored master, Vesalius, his passion had been an intellectual one; and for his own family he felt a dutiful regard, but no tenderness, save perhaps for his little sister Marie, his pet and playfellow. Had these friends of yesterday, thrown casually upon his protection, awakened something in him which had slumbered hitherto? How would it be with him when the father died, and the daughter vanished from his view? How should he bear it? With an effort he roused himself to answer Marchemont: ‘I have not done much to—to deserve it,’ he said.
‘“Greater love hath no man than this—that he lay down his life—” and yours might easily have gone for mine—a price in the world’s sight far too heavy. Adrian Perrenot, yours is a valuable life.’
‘The world, of which you speak, hardly so accounts it.’
‘Mark my words—the world, in the long run, will come round to you, and to such as you. But it will take time. Ay, Time!—that strong angel of the Lord—working out His purposes, slowly, surely—without haste and without pause. From where I stand now, I seem to catch a glimpse of many things that He will do.’
Here Adrian, in his character of physician, suggested quietly, ‘You did not sleep well last night? You had dreams?’
Marchemont smiled. ‘I know what you would imply,’ he said. ‘No; I never slept at all. No dream came to me, nor yet any waking vision. With the eye of sense have I seen nothing. But with the eye of faith I have seen all. For I have seen the face of Christ.’
Adrian kept silence. To this, there was nothing he could answer.
Marchemont went on: ‘Through the blind faith of these poor sheep around us, who fear nothing more, now they know the shepherd is at hand, came the first gleam of light to my darkened soul.’
Adrian was interested now. ‘Ah! you were darkened then—even you?’ he asked.
‘It was the hour and the power of darkness. Dark looked the future of all I love—dark the prospect of the Cause I lived for—dark my hope of thy salvation, for which, day and night, I have wrestled with my God in prayer.’
‘If it will comfort thee concerning me,’ Adrian answered, not unmoved, ‘know that I have renounced the vain superstitions of the vulgar, and may call myself, with truth, a Protestant.’
‘Ah, my friend, I would not have you “unclothed, but clothed upon!” I do not want you to renounce, but to receive. When you do—when you wear the garment of salvation and the robe of praise—then remember me, Adrian Perrenot. Lay up my words, and tell them again to—to—my Rose.’
‘Why not tell them to her thyself, my friend?’ said Adrian, wondering much how Marchemont expected him to have access to Rose in the future days, so as to tell her anything. Yet, somehow, the suggestion gays him a thrill of exquisite pleasure.
‘Because they are not for her—now,’ Marchemont answered. ‘He gathers the lambs in His arms, and does not ask them to ford the deep places. No; “the treasures of the deep that lieth under” belong to us, who have been there. I have. “A day and a night,” and it seemed to me a whole life-time of agony, “have I been in the deep.” There no light was, no certainty, no hope. I doubted everything—everything —that He hears, that He cares, even that He is. But at last, out of the depths, I raised a despairing hand to touch Him. I thought it shame to be more poor in faith than these simple folk around us, who pour forth all their trust at the feet of a fellow man. And rightly, sine in him lies their only hope of an earthly salvation. Yet, what has he done for them, after all? Whilst my King, my Captain—’
After a pause he resumed ‘For a while I clung to Him in the darkness, with the hand of faith benumbed and dead. I did not think or feel. I only willed. “I will not leave Him,” I said. “There is nothing that can separate us, or loose this clinging hand. Were it possible that He is not, or could tease to be, then will He and I go down into the gulf of nothingness together. Surely in what place my Lord the King shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will Thy servant be!” Living or dying, Christ is mine, and I am Christ’s.
‘Then the light broke. Then I saw Him as He is, the Living One, the True, the most real thing in heaven or on earth. But I cannot talk of it. Only I know I smiled at my own folly in dreaming my own existence more sure than His, and my hold on Him stronger than His hold on me. Me whom He loved—for whom He was slain—before the foundation of the world.’
‘My friend, take care,’ Adrian interrupted, alarmed at his intensity of feeling. ‘You will exhaust—you will harm yourself.’
‘There can nothing harm me now. (Unless, again, I were to turn my face from Him, and that He will not let me.) In His pierced hand He holds my lot, and the lot of all His redeemed. For these, His little flock, as for myself, I am at peace. What He will do with them I know not now, but I shall know hereafter. It may be they need more chastening yet. It may be that after this respite there will come upon them another time of trial, even fiercer than the past. But in His own time He will send deliverance out of Zion. Or, a deliverer.’
‘Have you then no anxious thoughts for aught that you will leave behind on earth?’ Adrian asked in a low voice.
‘I know what you would say,’ Marchemont answered. ‘No. I leave her with God.’
After a long pause he spoke again, with a dreamy, far-off gaze, but in a voice more full and clear than usual. ‘On—on—far away, far above—I see a gleam of glory. In the time appointed, at the end of the days, He that shall come will come. No mere earthly deliverer—the Prince of Peace, the King of Glory, on whose head are many crowns. He goeth forth to victory, and the armies of heaven follow Him upon white horses.’
Then his look, a tender, softened look, turned upon Adrian. ‘But, my friend, remember it is He whose vesture is dipped in blood, and whose name is called the Word of God. Only through sacrifice is redemption wrought, and only the Divina—the Word—can redeem.’
Adrian was moved. Could there be more in all this than the wanderings of a fevered brain? Certainly it was sublime; could the sublime be after all the true? He rose, and walked into the outer room for a moment’s quiet thought. He went to the window and stood there, looking and listening. The Place outside was deserted; but out of the distance came a long continuous roar, like the sound of breakers on the strand.
Scarcely for a moment did he stay to hear it. Then he came back to his patient. ‘The Prince has come,’ he said.
There was no answer. He approached the couch, and bent over it. One glance told him all. The Prince had come indeed for His faithful servant.
Yet the parting spirit lingered a little on its flight. The gates of sense seemed closed, but the heart still beat, the laboring breath still came and went—slowly, yet not painfully, for sorrow and pain were past forever now.
Adrian went to meet Rose on the threshold, and alter few hurried words of preparation led her in. She knelt down beside him, took his hand in hers, and breathed in his ear that sweetest of all human words, ‘Father!’
Was that what he waited for? There was a sudden look of consciousness, of recognition—a smile, a gentle pressure of the hand—and all was done.
That night the great city rejoiced and made merry. A heavy load had been lifted off its heart, and joy and gladness succeeded Bloom. Only God could hear ‘the sob in the dark and the falling of tears’ where, in one of its thousand homes, a young girl with a desolate heart kept watch beside her dead.